Originally written for Climax Studios for publication in Develop. Reposted with Permission. Also since I wrote the original article E3 happened and Sony has revealed a lot more of the stratergy, some of which is shown in this video which is a good primer on the subject.
Over the last year a lot of time has been spent thinking, writing and developing my thoughts on social gaming and by extension micro transactions. The last few months of my professional life have involved some fairly complex and sometimes scary monetisation designs and discussions.
Originally written for #AltDevBlog: Link to Original Post Games let us craft interactive systems in which we can play and explore. We play with limited rule-sets, physics, combat, squad based AI, and a million other complex systems which give us a world to explore.
I attempt to describe what the next 12 weeks roughly will be for me as I explore the problem of social interaction as defined in games. I give a brief outline of the concepts as a shallow introduction to the topic. Defining the Scope of the Problem
So I've lost sleep over the last week because I've been trying to convince people Social games are not evil. I've had some good counter arguments thrown at me. Sleep lost. Counter Arguments and finally I hit on the key. So I recorded a Presentation With AUDIO. ....but then the audio didn't record.
Okay so talk about timing. Just days after my last post it's announced classic team based tactical game Jagged Alliance is getting an online treatment.
As I currently furiously work on my Data Driven Dialogue system for the end of the month delivery and continue my job hunt with furious speed. There is one other project I desperately want to approach!
Image from Matt Hamm. So Games Horizon Conference for the second year running really pushed the social and freemium agenda. My viewpoint, shared by others I spoke to, is that the social gold rush is over but social is here to stay.