Archive for August 26th, 2007
Catan is a great board game. Catan for Xbox Live Arcade is just as fantastic. It plays very well and has few faults.
It should be trivial to create a good PC version of it, right?
Wrong. Different developers lead to entirely different results.
The Catan PC game for Yahoo/Downloadable is utterly horrible. The menus interfere with the gameplay and information is bombarding you constantly (see overloaded UI) and you have no idea what you should be paying attention to. It’s fun factor is next to zero.
Also trading cards is slow and simultaneously too fast. UI feedback is poor too. When you propose a trade, the computer players don’t reject you like they do in Catan for XBLA they just merely wait there until you decide to stop your selfish begging – as if they know. You are also forced to watch computer players think… wait… and trade cards. Kill me now please… with a dull spoon.
Execution is key. An inexperienced team can ruin a great idea. Catan for the PC should have been play-tested and refined more. It’s amazing how two games with the exact same gameplay can illicit completely different responses from the same player.
XBLA: Excitement and thrill of beating the AI players! The idea of AI opponents with a bit of emotion (but no personality) is a great idea.
Yahoo/Downloadable: Confusion: Whose turn? Why am I watching cards being traded? I turned up the speed to max! Frustration: Why can’t I buy that settlement? Oh crap I can see I don’t have a wool card – that tiny, tiny, tiny 0 is unreadable…. UNINSTALL!
August 26th, 2007
James Gwertzman talk at Casual Connect is great. He provides a great Excel spreadsheet.
Model: Standard Recoup
Unit revenue: $8 per copy (to publisher).
Developer cost: $150,000
Royalties: 50% (not going to happen, but hypothetical)
Publisher cost: $225,000 (150% of costs)
Units for Publisher to break even: 28,125
Units for Developer to start earning royalties: 37,500
August 26th, 2007
In the “Secrets of Game Development” podcast posted by the Casual Game Association the first thing that is mentioned is the cultural difference between gamers in different country.
Each country is offended by different symbols and words, so each game needs to be customized per country or the game needs to be designed in an universal fashion.
Working in animation, I’ve know that pigs are offensive. Girls playing with boys is offensive. Kids playing semi-dangerous sports without helmets is a big no no. Nudity… fuggabout it. Violence? Not in Europe… Why? The North American market is big, but not big enough to support a smaller-budget animated TV show. The same issue confronts casual games. The casual market is big, but the global market is even bigger.
Some notes on the podcast:
- The design doc is at least useful for creating an “asset manifest” (list of assets to be created)
- Think about using SCRUM + Agile.
- Hire quality people not mediocre talent
- Consider Subversion – NOT SourceSafe. SourceSafe is “Dog food” that even Microsoft won’t even eat. Too funny. To be honest, Subversion + CVS are terrible for 3D art due to file sizes… but good for smaller projects and code.
August 26th, 2007
Looks like some great stuff there – I’ll be listening to the Catan XBLA podcast for sure. I read the GDMag post-mortem and was SHOCKED. Absolutely SHOCKED at the whole process…
August 26th, 2007