Monthly Archive

Last night I had a dream. I was throwing a ball around with some people in a swimming pool and someone suggested we play a game of water polo (I’m half Hungarian, so it’s in my blood…weird that a land-locked country would have such a history of obsession with water polo). An argument thus arose over whether imposition of rules would detract from the fun we were having or not.

In my dream, we decided to continue with the unstructured play rather than transition into a game with formal rules. That’s what we explicitly decided on, at least. In my dream-reality, however, what I realized (in retrospect) we decided on was to simply keep the status quo in terms of our understanding of the implicit rules in what we were doing. For instance, clearly it’d be against the implicit rules of behavior we were operating under to just toss the ball in the air repeatedly (playing catch with yourself). We’d be annoyed if someone violated that rule.

In other words, it wasn’t a choice between structured and unstructured play: There is no such thing as unstructured play. There’s always a structure involved in play, whether it’s pretending that you’re a fireman rescuing people from certain death or a kid playing catch with his dad.

I read a post this morning by Brian Green talking about casual vs. hardcore games on Facebook. I suppose this could have been a comment on his blog but I felt the urge to respond here.

Brian wrote:

I had dinner recently with someone that is doing a startup that wants to do smaller-scale games. He did an AJAX implementation of a social space, but that project had it’s own special challenges. His most recent foray is to make some games for the Facebook platform. His company built two games: one a more casual game that deals with throwing parties, and a hard-core game that has a men-in-tights theme and zero-sum PvP type mechanics. Guess which one did better.

If you said, “Obviously the hardcore one!” you have learned to anticipate my sense of irony. Well, that and it’d be a boring post if I just validated most people’s assumptions.

So, why does the hard-core game beat out the casual game on a pretty broad platform like Facebook?

Well, first, I don’t think that any lessons at all can be drawn from a single game beating another single game. Second, casual games win, flat-out, on Facebook. Maybe that will change but it’s not the case currently. Here are the top 10 games on Facebook right now, in order of active, engaged players (meaning someone who touched the game at least once in the last 24 hours).

1. Scrabulous (casual). Scrabble, online. 569k daily active users
2. Texas HoldEm Poker (casual). 392k daily active users
3. Speed Racer (casual). 289k daily active users
4. fluff(Friends) (casual). 277k daily active users
5. Quizzes (casual). 273k daily active users
6. Jetman (casual). 258k daily active users
7. Mesmo (casual). 250k daily active users
8. Vampires (casual despite the vampire theme). 250k daily active users
9. Mindjolt Games (a collection of casual games via a flash client). 159k daily active users
10. Zombies (reskinning of Vampires. Casual). 154k daily active users

No hardcore games in the top 10. The top hardcore game on Facebook is Warbook, with 104k daily active users.

Now, it’s not quite as clear-cut as the above. The way Facebook measures engagement is way too simplistic and binary. Either you are counted as a daily active user or you’re not. There’s no scalar measurement of HOW engaged you are. I would bet a lot of money that the average active user on Warbook, for instance, spends a lot more time (ie is more engaged) on Warbook than the average Vampires user spends on that app.

It’s completely unsurprising that casual games dominate Facebook, but what’s interesting to watch are the medium-term dynamics surrounding active users vs. users w/ your app installed (some of the apps above have millions of users but daily active user rates ranging from ~3% to ~15% of their total users). The games that initially dominated Facebook (Vampires, Zombies, Slayers, Werewolves…they’re all exactly the same game, reskinned) were extremely light and barely games at all. They’re at least as much a way to just ‘poke’ someone, which says, “I’m thinking about you,” as they are games. Those early, very light games now have very very low engagement rates of 3-4%.

Now look at the top two game apps on Facebook (Scrabulous and Texas HoldEm). Both are big steps up in complexity from the Vampires apps, and have increased levels of engagement. Texas HoldEm has approximately twice the engagement (7%) while Scrabulous has an astounding 25% engagement rate. Typically, the only apps that get engagement that high are very new apps (which naturally have a higher engagement rate), but Scrabulous has held onto a high engagement rate consistently for awhile now. Why? Well, there’s depth there that isn’t there in Vampires. Once you’ve bitten a few people, engaged in a few (basically random) battles, the average user is done. On the other hand, you can actually get better at Scrabulous, and the possibility space is a lot larger. There’s skill involved, just like in Texas HoldEm.

On the other end of the spectrum you have the fairly complicated Warbook. It’s got a high engagement rate (13%) but hasn’t managed to achieve the level of popularity that the more casual apps have, despite doing pretty well. It’s probably a little on the heavy/hardcore side for the platform it’s on, though I’m sure its owners aren’t complaining. I’ve heard it generates hundreds of millions of pageviews a month.

So what’s the right level of depth to offer on Facebook? Will more hardcore games enter into the ranks of the popular Facebook apps or is Warbook (60th most popular app currently) an aberration? I’m sure we’re going to see other hardcore games gaining users on FB but the way in which people interact with FB (less than 20 minutes/day on average, etc) does not lend itself well to traditional hardcore games. Further, good games on FB are as much about communication and/or self-expression as they are about gameplay.

We (Sparkplay) are going to be launching our first Facebook game in a few weeks, and the design process is interesting when compared to what I’m used to working on (MUDs/MMOs). The biggest difference is that we just don’t care about cheating or exploits that are possible by creating multiple accounts nearly as much because as I said above, it’s as much about communicating with your friends and expressing yourself as it is about “winning.” Going to be fun to see what we learn from our first app. No better way to learn than by doing it!

This is pretty damn sweet.

Season #5 of what is probably the greatest drama ever broadcast on American television begins tonight, as HBO’s The Wire returns. There’s never been a series with the sheer level of consistent brilliance that the Wire shows in its writing, its directing, and its acting.

The Wire is the story of the decay of America as witnessed through the eyes of the city of Baltimore. David Simon, the creator, lead writer, and exec producer of The Wire, is from Baltimore and knows it intimately. He worked for the Baltimore Sun (their primary newspaper) for twelve years, and wrote Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets in 1991 about his experience shadowing members of the Baltimore Police Dept Homicide force. That, of course, was the foundation for the tv series Homicide: Life on the Streets, which Simon worked on as both producer and writer.

The Wire’s first four seasons are intricately layered broad story arcs focusing on different aspects of Baltimore. In Season 1, Simon showed us life in the ghetto and introduced us both to the street-level dealers and the behind-the-scenes local drug bosses, who would figure prominently in the series until the end of Season 3. It also introduced us to the cops who drift in and out of prominence throughout the series.

Season 1 got horrible ratings. Why? It was incredible from literally the first scene in the first episode of the first season. It is, however, difficult. The Wire does not coddle its viewers and it expects them to commit to taking the time and care necessary to fully appreciate every aspect of its excellence. In a country where brainless tv like “Deal or No Deal” dominates the ratings, it’s unsurprising that The Wire didn’t do well I guess.

In Season 2, Simon and HBO ignored the public reaction and went for it. Although the story arcs from season 1 continued, they were backgrounded and the focus shifted to a set of new characters who represented the decline of the working class, as represented by the docks at the Port of Baltimore, and the people who work there. I love Simon for this. I mean, switching about 70% of your character focus takes balls, and it worked in spades.

In Season 3, Simon switched the focus away from the docks and into the political arena. Issues of race have been prevalent throughout seasons 1 and 2 but here they come to more of a forefront as a white councilman challenges the black mayor (in a city whose politics are fairly racially divisive apparently). The story arc that began in season 1 involving two behind-the-scenes drug lords comes to a conclusion in this season.

Season 4 switches to the schools and here Simon is continuing to show that no matter the best efforts of a few, the whole system is set up to encourage failure. It’s pretty soul-crushing to watch some of the kids and their almost inevitable downward spiral.

Season 5 is moving the focus to the media, specifically the Baltimore Sun where Simon worked for twelve years. The previews of this season that I’ve read suggest that it is nothing but awesome, provided you don’t actually work for or empathize with the Sun.

It’s going to be the saddest day in my tv watching history when this season of The Wire ends. I love HBO for being willing to fund this series (which cannot possibly have been a direct commercial success) thus far and hope that the buzz around season 5 is sufficient to let them see a win on at least this last season.

Go rent or buy season 1 on DVD if you’ve never watched The Wire. Even if you don’t like police dramas (I do not, as a general rule), The Wire will blow you away if you invest the time/energy into appreciating it.

George W. would never have been President if he wasn’t the son of a previous President. Hilary would not be a Senator or a Presidential Candidate had she not been the wife of a President.

What does it say about America today that there is a realistic chance that we could see 28 consecutive years of executive rule by two families? Sounds like some 3rd world country that labels its government “The People’s Republic” and is anything but to me.

I’d love to see a woman President. Just not one who is there because she was married to a previous President. Dynasties do not fit into the scheme of democracy. Keep that in mind today, Iowa.