[casual_games] Community Functionality

[James C. Smith]

What type of 'casual games' are you thinking of when you talk about all
these issues? Are these cell phone games, web based games, adver games,
subscription based, or downloadable try and buy? I am sure all those issues
you mentioned could apply to all of the platforms/business models that I
mentioned. But I would like to focus the discussion a little more narrowly
than that or else it is way broad and abstracts.

James C. Smith
Game Designer/Programmer: Ricochet Xtreme, Ricochet Lost Worlds, Big Kahuna
Reef, Big Kahuna Words



-----Original Message-----
From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org]
On Behalf Of Allan Simonsen
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 6:49 PM
To: IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List
Subject: [casual_games] Community Functionality


What community functionality are people looking at implementing?

I'm quite curious at where this is going, and how
we're essentially duplicating work provided by other
systems (IM, Mail, Web). However, since our target
audience isn't very tech-savy, they might be quite
happy to do everything inside the same context.

As an aside; are anyone using the SDK's provided (by
Skype, GMAIL, MSN, etc) to build IM or VoiP into their
titles?

At what point does your community functions threaten distributors?

We're seeing that a lot of distributors are cautious
about adopting community functions; anything that
connects to an outside website is viewed as a
potential leak out of their closed system.

Looking at what the current state of the art in
community systems are :
- Uploading and tracking highscores (seems generally
accepted)
- Uploading and tracking content (as long as it's
seemless)
- Tracking user information and ID (across single
title is okay, leveraging it across multi-title seems
a no-no)
- in-game IM/user mail services (similar to what
Mahjong Towers Eternity is doing.. seems to make some
distros edgy).

Anything I'm missing?

Enough 5c's will eventually make a whole dollar.

Allan

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