NOTE: And we’re back! After overcoming a series of technical hitches the back-end of the blog is back up and running and posts can resume. I’m looking to revamp the blog a bit over the next month to fit in more with this new chapter in my life and career, so stay posted for an MP reboot. A quick post to kick things off:

Image from Pet Society by Playfish who are seriously ripping it up on the social game scene

I’ve had the good fortune over the last few months to take a ground up look at the games market and feel out the opportunities for a new studio looking to create original content.

While the iPhone is certainly an exciting new platform and PSN / XBLA are now solid, reliable bets for high-quality indie content, the area I’ve become the most enamored with is instead browser based social gaming. The immediacy of the format is intoxicating and its demographic reach simply without equal. This makes for not only huge market potential, but brutal competition and some seriously exciting design challenges more demanding than the daily grind on the next console sequel.

So I’ve been doing a lot of reading, but one article stood out for me, once again from the fantastic Lost Garden’s danc:
Flash Love Letter – Part One
Flash Love Letter – Part Two

It’s a medium in its infancy. There are few examples of real quality and success. It will grow, and I’m inspired by the possibility that I might be involved with one of the developers that rises to the top in this crazy micro-payments gold rush.

He hits the nail on the head in terms of the platform’s potential, but more importantly, dives into some practical design, business, and marketing tips for realizing true value in your game for you and your players. A highly recommended read.

Also, I’m very keen to know: Have you paid for a Flash game? If so which one and why? Are there any awesome Flash games out there you would like to pay for but there just isn’t that premium option?

Good to be back :)

I was excited to see yesterday that the Gamestar Mechanic Beta is now open to the public, swiftly signing up and beginning to play through the first season. I first saw the game in Katie Salen’s presentation during the Serious Games Summit last March, and was immediately captivated by its premise and generally top notch production values. I highly recommend giving the game a go, whether you’re interested in games for education or even just for a bit of fun. Yes, you heard that right, this is a new standard for serious / educational / meaningful games in that it is indeed fun in its own right.

Click here to play Gamestar Mechanic

Gamestar Mechanic is a game about making games. In particular it’s designed as an immersive interactive primer in game design, no programming or art skills required. Right away you’re thrown a bunch of simple game challenges to beat, clashing egos with the other players in the arcade, learning the basic controls of the top down or side scrolling interface. It gets really interesting when you stumble upon a malfunctioning game reactor core thats about to go critical. The games are all broken and the facility will blow unless you fix it. And so the centrepeice of the experience comes into play, a big red switch that flicks you between play mode, and EDIT. You’re now able to rearrange all of a levels elements, configure enemy’s AI, set win conditions, etc All of the fundamental building blocks of game design are there, and while a veteran designer might be frustrated by the limitations of the interface, it in insanely easy to pick up and be productive with right off the bat.

An interesting aspect of its implementation is the heavy focus on narrative, something that I’d expect was a hard sell to the funding bodies, but pays off in spades. GameLab have done a terrific job of crafting the world of Factory 7. The depth of their imaginary world is immediately apparent, a completely original canon wrapped in political intrigue and quirky characters, anchored by a classical hero’s journey tale of a young “mechanic” who aspires to be a great game designer. This drives the player through the various play / edit challenges that the game presents, feeding shreds of the story in as you progress through the world’s arcades and collect new items with which to build your own levels. The balance and tuning in the game really is downright professional, and something which I could easily see becoming a hit as a cart for the DS whether people knew it was “educational” or not.

This really is a shining example of where “Serious Games” need to go. A few things that GSM gets right that others in the field should pay special attention to:
– The lessons are interwoven into the gameplay, you really do learn by experiencing the mechanics at play. After editing your first level, it completely changes the way you look at all the play challenges after that. They gently introduce elements into levels like timing, AI pattern recognition, projectiles, gravity, all these building blocks are experienced first hand by the player before they’re then thrown into their toolkit
– Even if you didn’t give two hoots about game design, this would be fun. It stands alone as an intriguing, innovative game that is smart and well balanced. I can probably count on one hand the amount of other games with any inkling of educational content that I could say the same for
– The immersion in this narrative isnt disturbed by any hard link to curriculum. This is SO key. The game makes no mention of learning anywhere, it is not being sold as an “educational” game, which removes so many barriers when it comes to uptake with students
– The aesthetic is magical, leveraging common elements from the very hip eastern / western fusion comic style, but still managing to stay different enough to avoid looking like a copy-cat. The animations, character design, coloring, music, and sound effects work harmoniously to present a world you just want to keep playing in.

I’m going back to finish off season one. Everyone should give this a shot, and send your feedback to the creators, they deserve to have a strong community behind the project to help them refine the final product.

It is my sincere hope that the project continues to get funding and is as successful financially as it is creatively.

I Fell In Love with the Majesty of Colors via Kongregate

Lovely art game that loosely fits into the Perspectives genre of Meaningful Play:

“Last night I dreamed I was an immense beast, floating in darkness. I knew nothing of the surface world until I fell in love with the majesty of colors.

“(I Fell in Love With) The Majesty of Colors” is a pixel-horror game that puts the player behind the tentacles of a titanic, writhing sea creature. It’s a tale of love, loss, and balloons with five different endings. Will you befriend the humans or fight them? The choice is up to you.”

Its quick, tidy, charming, and all kinds of awesome.

Questionut from the BBC

This game is pretty neat. When I saw it’s quirky mystical graphical style and it’s exploratory, intuitive interface, I immediately had very high hopes. Too bad those hopes were almost completely dashed when I was halted by none other than the infamous Multi-Choice Challenge! This is a fantastic example once again how far too many developers are interested in making things visually intriguing, and then running out of time to actually think about how to integrate the educational content into actual gameplay contexts. The actual learning component always seems to be retrofitted, like all the ugly rusting air-conditioning units that line the exterior of Shanghai apartment blocks.

However! I do like this more than Brain Age for a couple of reasons:
– There’s a world which you can escape into and visually it’s really neat, so it doesn’t feel nearly as much like work.
– They mix knowledge testing with skill testing and intertwine both with the visual surrounding.
– They also place many of these multi-choice questions in real life contexts.

It’s just such a shame as I just don’t see how they failed to connect together all these things into a cohesive experience.

P.S. There’s a big difference between learning games, and testing games. Where are all the learning games!?