[casual_games] Use of keyboard on casual games

[Stephen Triche]

The problem is computer games, like movies, are a very expensive piece of art/entertainment to produce. As such, business will always play a bigger role in its creation than other, more traditional, mediums.

What is "profound, engaging, and intuitive" is often a very personal thing and difficult to nail down for large audiences, making it risky to invest large budgets in what is not proven.

You complain that it's the same old stuff that gets multimillion-dollar backing. Well, at least from the financial perspective, that's precisely what the multi-million dollar arena is for, the (mostly) sure thing, the paradigms that have proven themselves in the "minor leagues" of indie development.

 

If someone is convinced that a new concept or paradigm is fun, then they should develop that idea on their own or with a small team. If it is really worthwhile, it should be fun even without a huge budget backing it. It takes work, sure, but work worth doing I think.

It seems silly to complain in a generalized way about what people/organizations do with their large sums of money. If you think it's worthwhile, prove it on a smaller scale first. It's naïve to assume someone will fund a project on faith alone.

 

Perhaps some clones are not so much clones as they are a proven indie idea being given its first bit-budget chance.

 

That brings up an interesting question for a publisher.

Giving an idea a chance is one thing, but do you give its developers the same chance?

 

- Stephen Triche

Yatec Games

www.yatecgames.com <http://www.yatecgames.com/> 

 

________________________________

From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of oscar oscar
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 2:13 PM
To: IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List
Subject: Re: [casual_games] Use of keyboard on casual games

 

In my experience... and mind you... I've only been doing as long as I have been doing this... ;) 

Publishers and Distributors are no MORE or LESS  insightful than Movie Producers... 

And if you are aware of the crap that gets multimillion-dollar-backing... be in on the Big Screen or in a 7-minute Downloadable... then you know that the people who control the purse strings, more often than not, chase TRENDS... not SATISFACTORY User Experiences. 

Further, many of the cats and kittens who say "so it is written, so shall it be" have neither written NOR read anything of relevance to the matters at hand. 

They just have CASH, they have their limited successes and failures... and based on the last 13 months of "this game did this much biz" they determine that your idea is SHITE or is GOLD. 

You can skew usage figures and Focus Groups to say whatever you deem necessary. 

"THEY" are not always interested in profound, engaging, or even intuitive "Player Experiences" 

They want what they perceive to be immediate, pervasive and viral dissemination of LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR  experience 

Interface Follows Design. And Design Follows Vision. 

If Vision deems "Unique" interface, then Design should the Vision. 

Of course, my rant has NOTHING to do with the economics of getting some quick-clone of "pick-three" or "sudoku" on crack on the top ten list of some nebulous "usage and ratings portal". 

oscar
McDonalds makes 
more money off their
Real Estate than they do
their food... because the
Real Estate is worth
Something... ;) 

On 5/30/07, Juan Gril <juangril at jojugames.com> wrote:

Pedro, that's why I'm recommending we start talking about "best practices" instead of rules. Your example of Super Granny 3 is quite valid (although you are reading the game-sales-charts data in a wrong way). 

Your comment on:
"I will never like green strawberries if I never taste them, right? Yet they might be better that the red ones..."

Is wrong because you are making an assumption that it has been an arbitrary decision, when it has not, as Publishers and Distributors make focus groups and user tests every week with real users, and they have already proved that most people who buy downloadable games have difficulty playing a game with a keyboard. 

And I'm going to give you my opinion after having watched many user tests why downloadable game buyers are having difficulty with the keyboard. Most downloadable games players (based on, for example, Popcap's survey of last year) have never been exposed to PC videogames or console games. The use of buttons (in a keyboard or in a gamepad) is completely foreign to them. But they use the mouse in the computers they use at work, so they are familiar with that form of interaction between computers and them. 

In web games sites like Miniclip or Addicting Games or Kongregate, you have a lot of people like college students, male office workers, and kids who all have played videogames. So use the cursor keys to play a game is something more natural to them. 

When I was saying before to design the game for the right channel, what I was saying is this: if you are trying to make money on downloadable games, it's a "best practice" if you design a game that it's going to use the mouse to be controlled. And if you have a game that's keyboard controlled, you may want to think about distributing it on another channel, as it may do better there. 

And no one stops you for putting keyboard control as an option on any casual game anyway, so have fun with it.

Please keep in mind that I'm trying to avoid the use of the word "rules" as they can always be broken. 

Cheers,

Juan

 

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