Daikatana & Airport Mania?

The programmer who I've been working with on Airport Mania sent me the following image as a gag, which considering the light-hearted nature of Airport Mania contrasted with Daikatana's in-your-face approach only makes it all the more funny. I couldn't resist but to share :). If you're not familiar with Daikatana's famous ad, check it out here.

Incidentally, Airport Mania is set for limited release (meaning it's only available in one place - http://www.airportmania.com/) this Thursday April 10th, with a full release through Reflexive.com on the 14th and your favorite portal in the coming weeks! :)

The Indie Games Summit + My game

I'm at the GDC this week and will be hanging out at the Indie Games Summit Monday and Tuesday, and the IGF booth some of the rest of the time (Reflexive's own Axiom Overdrive is a finalist).

I kept somewhat copious notes of the first day of the Indie summits. There were some great presentations, including a very solid basic marketing presentation by Introversion. You can ready my highlights, responses and all my notes at GameTunnel (http://www.gametunnel.com/articles.php?id=673)

As well a sneak peak look at the game I've been working on is now up over on my Reflexive blog. The game is Airport Mania: First Flight, and I describe it as a mix between Aerobiz (one of my favorite SNES games) and Diner Dash. The game is more click-management than sim. YOu can see a bunch of not quite final pics of the game at Reflexive (http://www.reflexive.com/index.php?PAGE=Blog&BID=162)

Oh, and if you are at the GDC, be sure to say 'hi.'

Piracy and Casual Games

My latest article has been published over at Gamasutra, and it has create a good bit of stir. I'm actually pretty happy about that as I really hoped it would be the springboard to some good discussion.

I thought I'd put in some additional details here in my blog. I ended up cutting 3 pages from that article while writing, which is very abnormal for me, but it was just TOO dry a read to keep all the info in.

On Ricochet Infinity the 92% piracy again was comparing full version against full version.

Some more numbers on that game: (these thanks to James C Smith, who made the game)
43% of the downloaded copies (including demos) went online (which means we can't track 57% - they may have not installed or not gone online, but as I mentioned in my article we can't assume that those who didn't go online were less likely to pirate than those who did go online)

Full data of all the downloads (from Reflexive.com):
2.3% Bought the game
29% Pirated the game
14% Went online with the demo
57% Never went online

So the 92% is the percentage of the full versions used online that were pirated.

The encouraging piece of all the numbers, I suppose (other than the very high CR of RI) is that of the non-pirates, the percentage who bought the game was a pretty high conversion ratio. I've often stated that the XBLA conversion ratios are inflated due to the $300 barrier of entry...people had to have already spent $300 to get to XBLA, clearly they are people who spend money on games. Online we cater to people who do and who won't. Clearly, if you removed the pirates (who according to the Ricochet Infinity numbers may account for 67% of ALL downloads in the casual space) the conversion ratio of the entire casual games industry would increase a lot :).

Another piece of data that seems useful is when we made the Fixes to the DRM.
Fix 1 was 12/15/05
Fix 2 was 7/12/06
Fix 3 was 4/18/07
Fix 4 was 12/5/07 + 12/12/07 (there was a minor follow-up to this fix)

Ricochet Infinity was released on 7/31/07

I actually had wanted to write this article months ago, but with the recency of that last fix...which was being worked on obviously prior to November, I wanted to give us at least some time to get a feel for how the results went.

Notably, that first Fix had dramatic sustainted results. I've mentioned this elsewhere, but that change is CLEARLY visible in the growth charts that we keep here at Reflexive. (and incidentally, a modified version of one of those growth charts was in my IGS powerpoints from last year's GDC...(text video)

Two last thoughts
I had planed to talk about one potentially positive result of piracy that I found interesting, but couldn't fit it into the article well, so I'll mention it here. In Ricochet Infinity anyone can create a level set and upload it to the server and watch it become popular...or ignored :). We've found that a good portion of pirates created level sets. I find that fascinating myself and it may speak to some possibilities of using piracy to a positive end.

The 1000:1 ratio is really, I think, the key takeaway of the article. Several people have grasped that and started applying it to different numbers in the industry, and the results are very disappointing. Clearly if we could always have a big gain from a fix that maintains itself, it is worth spending the time to fight piracy. However, since that isn't always the case, it can sometimes (often?) be pretty discouraging to try and stop piracy. I don't think that means that we should be any least earnest in our fight, but the ratio is quite interesting. I'd love to see some other portals disclose their numbers publicly to further the discussion :).

AppleTV, Movie Rentals and Casual Games

I read about how AppleTV will enable Movie Rentals with great interest. The Movie industry is of course quite mature and they have learned a thing or two about how to maximize the money from their movies.

Consider the following revenue sources:
- Theaters
- DVD
- Pay Per View
- Cable Movie Channels
- Network TV

Now consider those sources in terms of time. They don't happen all at once. The movie industry uses their value chain to make the most money they possibly can. When they started looking at making movie rentals available through AppleTV, the industry had to figure out how to make more money out of the value chain, and so movie rentals through AppleTV were timed to occur 30 days after the DVD release.

I think it is very fascinating especially in consideration of casual games. I've mentioned it to some degree before, but it bears further consideration. How does the casual games industry monetize itself?

- Premium online sale
- Reduced price online sale
- Monthly subscription
- Free with ads

That's true for the majority of games though for hits you can usually add in retail and very likely extend the list with mobile and other platforms. That's not a problem. The problem I think the casual games industry is running into is the growing pains of figuring out the timing of each item on the value chain. The movie industry sees that they can maximize revenue over time by making the offering available in different ways over time. From day one casual games are available at full price and at a discount as well as in most subscription services. Free with ads is delayed in most cases, but that may change.

The danger I think is in the focus on trying to maximize all the customers right away instead of creating value over time at distinct points. My guess is that the industry could increase their revenue by:
- First releasing the game at a premium price, making it unavailable for the discounts that are immediately available nearly everywhere in the industry
- Second making the game available through the discount programs
- Third making it available through subscription programs
- Fourth making it available as free through ads

I think the time frame involved is likely to be 6 months from step one to step four and the value of the content and the revenue from it is likely to rise. The current system amplifies short sales windows for each game and decreases lifetime revenue under the guise of trying to maximize profit in the 4 week period after a game's release. It's especially difficult for the smaller developers who are for the most part just along for the ride.

O Casual Gamer

My newest article for Gamasutra went up yesterday, if you haven't read it you can find it here.

as games have become more mainstream, our understanding of who is buying thegames has become increasingly niche.

The point may have been overstated a bit, but I think the topic is very interesting. Essentially the idea behind the article is trying to take a deeper look at who casual gamers are and what motivates them to play.

I think one of the most difficult things to do is to look at the world through someone else's eyes. Whenever we consider anything we tend to relate it to our own view of the world. Unless you are really 'that' situation you can't really understand how it feels to be there. Trying to understand takes real effort and time to consider as many factors as possible.

As far as the casual gamer goes, they are feared and disparaged quite frequently. While that behavior is worthy of its own article, the question for the businessman is not how make gamers treat casual gamers better, but how to make more money off of casual gamers. Based on many of the casual games released on the consoles, I think we have a long ways to go in understanding what motivates casual gamers.

Some things that seem to have a positive impact
- Positive themes
- Female protagonists
- An easily and oft-obtained feeling of success
- Extreme accessibility

There are many values that are likely being fed by those things such as a sense of accomplishment, a feeling of progress and a sense of individual freedom. I'm not so sure the list of values for core gamers would be very different, but it appears that the road to the values is different.

Some things that seem to have a negative impact
- Coming under attack
- Not succeeding
- Complexity (in how you interface with the game or how it is played)
- Space themes
- Long range goals without any short range goals

Some things that don't seem to have any impact
- Darker themes (death, murder, frightening images)
- Frantic play
- Work themes
- Invulnerability/inability to lose

I'm sure the lists could be greatly expanded and debated. If you made your own, what would you put on them? What is leading casual gamers to play, and what personally held values are being positively stroked when a casual game is played?