Since I have been back from Casual Connect Europe in Hamburg I have had wacky dreams.  Maybe a bit of jet lag induced.

Here is a dream I had last night.  EA (Electronic Arts – ERTS) gathered a bunch of Maxis alumni to discuss reviving old Maxis IP to help the EA bottom line in 2010. For the meeting, EA re-opened the old 2121 N. California office.  The execs were a mix of old and new: JR, Probst, Braun, and even Sam Poole!  The alums were all of the gang from back in the day, working on stuff that got canned after the acquisition of Maxis by EA.  Games like Sim Mars, The Mindwarp, SimBee, Sim Castle, and the Elliot Portwood titles.

Sim Mars and Castle art

So there was lots of deliberation, digging through the vaults, and the Maxis team and EA execs found the perfect games to update and revive.  We talked about what it would take to refresh them, and how to make them hits in today’s market.  The game concepts, themes, designs, branding, gameplay and everything about the GAMES were ideal to make lots of money for ERTS shareholders.

So, it was settled.  Great games were planned.  QED.  Ship it. 

Not quite.  Then, the EA execs start arguing. 

 - “Jewelcase, cardboard, or DVD Box?”.
 - “When can we book a retail endcap?”
 - “Is this feature list text to long to fit on a game package?”
 - “What is the CoGs for CD versus DVD?”.
 - “Is our key retailer shelf allotment booked through 2011?”.
 - “Has the price of oil driven up delivery costs?”

Then the EA execs turned to me and asked: “Rick, what do you think? Given all these concerns, is it still worth producing these games?”

And I said, “Don’t ask me.  All my games have been digitally distributed for the past ten years”.

Last night was another of the incredible game-biz gatherings known as the Minna Mingle.  Jessica Tams and the Casual Games Association do a terrific job putting these events together, and bringing together people who love games.  It is nice to hang out and chat casually, without the overhead of powerpoint presentations, invoices, or term sheets.  I do have a criticism of the lecture content from the panel of experts.

MIND YOUR LANGUAGE!
This Mingle started with an hour lecture on Social and Community Games billed as The world as I see it: five minutes from ten social gaming virtuosos. It featured comments from such proven, venerable game authorities as Zynga, SGN, Gaia, “Bret”, MySpace, and Ooga.  Added together, those companies have almost 10 years in the games business.  Each company rep got to speak extemporaneously for 5 minutes on social games.  Most talked about the waves of VC cash, how the sector was set to explode, tricking users into playing, how this is just like -but Bigger than- the Dot-Com days, and how important it is to make horrible games that cater to the lowest common denominator.  In 60 minutes, the panel of game experts NEVER USED THE F WORD!!!

WHAT THE F#&%?!?
Once again, in 60 minutes, a panel of ten experts on how to make great social and community games never used the word FUN.  The lone outlier was Sean Clark of EA/Pogo, who did stress the importance of quality gameplay for building social networks.  One big diff is that Pogo actually owns their community, rather than piggybacking on others.  His heresy was countered by several others who said the best way to make a social game is to rip off Mob/Mafia/Gang Wars and reskin it with a different theme.

So the takeaway is that the game companies that have sprung up to capitalize on the popularity of Facebook and MySpace are not really game companies.  They are marketing companies that are building/buying/borrowing an audience to flip before the buzz fades.  They (notable exceptions are Kongregate and Pogo) use off the shelf web tools to borrow a segment of another company’s userbase.  Where is the long term value in IP, infastructure, and subscriber community?  Where is the FUN?

Original, fun, creative, addicting, innovative, well produced, beautifully designed, rewarding, compelling.  It is all that.  Congrats to the team at 2DBoy on this terrific game.  You gotta play World of Goo. 

In 1990, sociologist Ray Oldenburg put forth the notion of the “Third Place”.  Places are the anchors of a person’s life and socialization.  The first place is Home, the second is Work, and the Third Place is a neutral, social setting for friends, community, and interaction.  Examples of third places are Pubs, Malls, and Starbucks.

It is now commonly accepted that online communities can be someone’s Third Place.  Facebook, chatrooms, Second Life, and Pogo.com all offer real-time, social, friendship, connections of Cheers or Central Perk.

For balance, people need all three Places.  But what about people who don’t have a second place?  There are people have Home, and a social Third Place (real or online), but lack the escape and reward of the Second Place.  Many of these people turn to Casual Games as their Second Place.

Housewives, telecommuters, retirees and the unemployed all miss out on the Second Place.  It is no coincidence that these groups also account for the majority of Casual Game players.   Casual Games are the ultimate Second Place.  If the activities in the games were real, they would be the best jobs on earth:  Bright, cheery, repetitive, rewarding, encouraging, and strong advancement potential.  Globe trotting in Jewel Quest; running a restaurant in Diner Dash; setting trends in Jojo’s Fashion Show; finding clues and solving mysteries in Hidden Object games.  All these games offer an escape from the isolations and frustrations of being at home all day. 

There is no badge for doing laundry, or level up for paying bills.  No trophy for watching Oprah.  The Second Place usually has timecards, measurable objectives, and rewards for a job well done.  Casual games offer their players the clock, meter, focus, reward, and advancement that are missing from their daily lives. 

As casual game creators, we can tap into the notion of our games as a Second Place to make them even more appealing, sticky, and fun.  Whether the game is about delivering pizza or sorting flowers, it should play and feel like the greatest job on earth.  Playfirst has tapped into this.  From the thousand foot level, Flo has a crappy job, dealing with grumpy customers and bussing dirty dishes.  But, the game plays out like a Dream job, with objectives, success, recognition, reward and advancement on every turn.  As you sit in your cubicle reading this (much like the pre-Diner frustrated Flo), wouldn’t you want YOUR second place to be Flo’s in DinerDash?

As casual game business people, we can really learn from this, and Pogo (and Facebook, and Yahoo).  The Holy Grail is to merge the Second and Third Places.  Merging fun, rewarding and repetitive yet engaging games with friends and communication is what Pogo started 10 years ago.  Pogo even kicks it up a notch by offering real rewards like cash and prizes, on top of the virtual and psychological rewards.  Facebook is a terrific online Third Place, but keep an eye on the casual games there, and the folks who play them.  Those lacking a traditional second place will come to check notifications, but stay for hours to play.  As facebook skews older, more people will rely on it for their Second and Third Places.

This logic applies to bricks and mortar as well.  By extending the scope and services of an establishment from Third Place into Second, by blurring those lines, a business can become more vital, and more profitable.  Customers come for a sip and a chat, and then stay (and spend) for hours.  In these cases, playing games makes customers feel productive and less idle, as they relax and lounge.  For ages, bars and pubs have had pinball, arcade and casino machines. Starbucks offers wifi connections, ostensibly for professionals to work while they sip.  But with the increase in portable networked devices, my money is on Starbuck’s casual gamers overtaking the telecommuters.  Nolan Bushnell (of Atari fame) has mastered the concept of extending the Third Place.  First for families with Chuck E. Cheese’s, (working really hard to earn prize tickets that are not worth much; welcome to Second Place, kids!) and now updates it with his uWink Bistros, which are pub/restaurants with networked game terminals at every seat.

While mass-market games are for everybody, Casual games have come to be defined by a single demographic (Women 35-54).   They play up to 40 hours a week.  They put in overtime to reach a goal or badge.   They appreciate the reward and accomplishments bestowed on them in-game.  They take their games seriously.   For most of our casual game players, it is their career, and we need to recognize and reward that to keep them from finding a new Second Place.

Three weeks ago iQ212 released Emoticons^TM, our first game.  As part of our multi platform launch strategy, Emoticons is on PC, web/facebook, and soon on mobile.  There are big differences between launching a PC or mobile game, and an app for the web.    Fortunately iQ212’s experience comes from diverse platforms.  Here is a bit of our recent experience releasing Emoticons on Facebook.

The best advice for launching a game on Facebook is to not launch it.  Retail and mobile games launch.  An online game does not need to launch, it can continue to live and grow tied to the umbilicus of the web.  Too often, traditional game companies outsource their online version (often as a Marketing expense) and and paste the delivery up on a server.  Fire and forget. A good online game requires a different way of developing and launching.

Emoticons was on Facebook a day after we started development.  At first the build had no game logic, scoring, animation, or server calls, but it was up on the Fb canvas page and the entire team could poke at it.  By building it online, in the setting the users would be playing it, we were able to tweak and plus as we developed.  Every day we would add features and polish, and we would also slowly add real users.  The iQ212 team at first, then family, then friends. 

There are no ads in Emoticons for facebook, yet.  The game is the message and we didn’t want to clutter it with random advertising.  For now we want players to download the PC version, learn about the upcoming mobile version, and invite friends to the facebook version.  Once the Emoticons brand is more established we will incorporate ads and make the shift from retail revenue towards ad revenue.

As Emoticons rolled out to a wider Facebook audience, we watched our stats and honed the experience to ensure a quality gameplay experience, as well as the viral potential.  We have received good advice from smart people, especially RockYou (they KNOW viral and facebook).  After a few weeks we are now up to almost one thousand daily players, and five thousand total. We look forward to a big ad push to expose Emoticons to a wider audience and hasten the viral spread.  Though our focus is now on new games, we still come back to Emoticons as Facebook unveils new features, and to enhance the experience for our players.

So the take-away is that to take advantage of the power of Facebook, you need to take time to craft your game using Facebook as you develop.  Copying a flash file to a webpage will not cut it.  Learn the APIs, adapt to the changing platform, and listen to your players as you roll out.  The benefits will result in a better game, happier players, viral spread, and ultimately more revenue.

Wow! I found this on the web today and had to share it.  Brief History of Match Three Games  Some guy wrote a long paper on the history of match three games.  Feel free to pass it along.

Who knew?  I thought Gamehouse invented the Match Three game in 2001!  Turns out that Match Three games have been declared “old fashioned games” because they really ARE!

Great news for Tuesday, Emoticons is available today!  We had one minor setback: as a cute, innovative, mass-market, puzzle game, no game portal would carry it.  But yesterday we redesigned it into a Hidden Object game and TODAY it is live on every game portal!  Check out the screenshot of the new Emoticons below.

iQ212 has been in business for a year and we have finally launched our first game, Emoticons^TM.  It is an original puzzle game that is now available for PC and web/facebook, and will soon launch on mobile carriers.  Hopefully you will be seeing and hearing lots more about Emoticons as it spreads to new game portals and platforms.  Please try it out and let us know what you think. www.EmoticonsGame.com

Gary Gygax co-created Dungeons and Dragons in 1974.  His obituary today got me thinking and reminscing.  I was in elementary school in the late 70s when D&D made it to California.  I recall my fourth grade teacher having to explain to me the difference between chain mail and postal mail! 

As kids my friends and I played with army men, and occasionally would incorporate dice and rulers, and impose rules.  When we ran around the hills and fields of pre-Sprawl Bay Area, we role played as knights, and soldiers, and cowboys.  Just as we were about to cross from kids to adolescents, along came Dungeons and Dragons, a game with imagination, and heroes, and monsters, and that was OK for big kids, and even adults to play.

Gary Gygax made it OK for grown ups to keep dreaming, playing, imagining, and inventing.  I’d wager that MOST of us in the games industry over age 30 got our start playing DnD back in the day.  Back then there was Atari and DnD, and you could not buy Atari for a week’s allowance.

One thing in his obit by the AP made me smile, they perfectly described DnD: “Dungeons & Dragons players create fictional characters for themselves and describe their adventures with the help of complicated rules and unusually shaped dice.” 

Who else credits Gary Gygax for their lifelong love, creation, and play of games?

GDC was fun, informative and productive for me and iQ212 this year.  I think my GDC Mobile lecture accomplished its goal of getting people thinking and talking about casual and mobile design and the issues that even good games face when entering the mobile gauntlet.

My talk was called “Tetris: the Best/Worst Mobile Game Ever”.  Nice coverage of the talking points is here. 

In short, I declared Tetris as the best game ever.  Then I deconstructed the game, to look at the design elements and to see why it was such a great game, and how its play transferred to mobile. 

Slim Jim brand beef jerky was used as an example to illustrate the shelf space problem on mobile carrier decks.  A supermarket has all kinds of beef choices: filet mignon, short ribs, and prime rib roast, etc.  They have the shelf space for it.  But a convenience store only sells one type of beef, Slim Jim.  Small footprint, long shelf life, broad appeal, always in season, and in snack size portions.  It is because of this shelf space issue that carriers feature Tetris and that Tetris is a perennial best seller.  So Tetris is not beef jerky, but carriers are a bit like 7-11.

At the end of my talk, I asked the room, “If Tetris were invented today, how many of you think it would get published by mobile carriers?”  Exactly one guy in a room of 75 people raised his hand.  It is a telling indictment on the state of mobile when the best game in the world would not get published today.