From the monthly archives:

August 2009

The Failure of Independent and Casual Games

by Jason Surguine on August 30, 2009

mario

This is really just food for thought. I’ll also toss in some game ideas at the end I’ve always wanted to see :)

The Independent and/or Casual Games market is no longer casual, nor independent. I’ve known this for a few years, but I never saw how bad it affected some developers until recently. Another developer friend of mine recently submitted a wonderful game design prototype to one of the biggest publishers of independent, casual games and was turned down with the some of the following reasons:

As a leader in the Casual Games industry we have a very strong understanding of what our customers are looking for and these types of games generally do not resonate well with our audience.

That’s quite understandable, the game was pretty unique in design. But they went on to reason:

The Casual Gaming audience is almost entirely female with most over the age of 35. As such, the most popular genres on our site are Hidden Object, Time-Management, Sims, and Adventure games.

With that said, other types of games do not mesh well with the Casual/Independent demographic. Although we have seen success with other types of games in the past, we have seen a significant decline in their performance as our users move away from traditional casual games.

Okay, starting to sound like another sector of the gaming industry already… but let’s get a bit more detailed:

“The Casual Gamer wants games that offer them a very rich experience in which they can lose themselves and become as engaged in them as they would a good novel.”

Maybe I’m confusing independent games with casual games. I’m not sure. But having tons of extra content added on and catering the market to stereotyped games for stereotyped audience sounds a bit closer to core gamers to me. Doesn’t it? Besides, adding a storyline like a good novel? Doesn’t seem very casual anymore.

I had some high hopes for the Casual Games market, until I saw that it was being cornered by all of the big casual games developers and I heard from a lot of my developer friends that the publisher is basically deciding which games they will develop next, without any creative freedom. Which takes away from the games being Independent and Casual (in my opinion) in the first place.

There are still lots of wonderful game designs I would still love to see/do from the Independent (I guess, non-Casual?) Developers like:

Late Night Talk Show Host: Choose your guests for the night, music, programming, interview questions, responses to the guests answers, etc

Sushi Shop (Lemonade Stand)* There have been sushi games, but nothing close to what I want to see ;)

Architect game not based on physics, but on aesthetic design of different architectures for different applications.

News Anchor game, select the most important events for the show, how to present them, the order of the news, etc.

Con-Artist (like the characters in Ocean’s 11, not GTA)

Fortune Teller, very similar to Con-Artist, but with a different theme, and based on actual occult nonsense.
Game for Girls (from my research, Girls love role-playing different jobs they will never do or always wanted to do) such as:

Flight Attendant, seating arrangements, distributing the drinks, helping with luggage, catering to grumpy customers, etc

Hospital Nurse (caring for patients with all the stuff Doctor’s don’t do)

Hair Stylist/Makeup Artist, tons of ideas for these

Tour guide/Travel agent; can be combined into one game where you decide the itinerary for the customers, and then guide them on the actual trip.

Flower Arranger (apparently, this is huge for wedding planning and girls want to do it and would be really easy to implement)

Patissier (Confectionery/Pastry/Chef); designing pastries, balancing ingredients for different tastes of customers, etc

That’s enough for now. In any case, there are plenty of great game ideas, plenty of talented developers, and very few places for them to distribute them. The largest indpendent/casual gaming site that I know of is Game Tunnel. But even these days, it seems that much of their advertising revenue and developers would be coming from all of the big publishers. So once again, independent developers will have to create another independent niche outside of what was independent gaming.

Ah well, I still believe that brilliant games will always rise to the top, so I’m not too worried :)

Japanese Election Day is Today

by Jason Surguine on August 29, 2009

votejapan

Big Day for Politics in Japan today. Depending on how people vote, it could usher in a new era of politics with less bureaucracy (the polls say the new Democratic Party is on track to win, giving the first clean change of government in 54 years) or well… it will just stay the same. So go vote, 票決して下さい！

I’m no expert on Japanese politics, so I’ll leave it at that.

It’s 4am as I write this. This is what happens when you stay up for 40 hours working on something. When you try to get back into a sleep cycle, you sleep for 2-4 hours  then constantly wake up/fall asleep randomly for the next few DAYS.

Totally worth it though. :)

What Everybody Ought to Know About Gypsies/Roma.

by Jason Surguine on August 28, 2009

gypsy

People are recently becoming interested in the Roma (also commonly referred as Gypsies). Good. I figured it wouldn’t be too long before the English speaking world took notice of this unique race of people, since I encountered the Roma quite a bit while I was living in Hungary.

Yeah, I said race, not culture. It’s true. And believe it or not, they have nothing to do with Egypt (where the Gypsy name came from).  According to Wikipedia, the Roma/Gypsies, “… are an ethnic group of Europe tracing their origins to medieval India.”

And now they’re everywhere. Sources say up to 10 million Roma exist throughout the world. The biggest populations are throughout Europe, especially Eastern Europe (including Hungary) and Anatolia,  Southwestern Europe and Southern France, we even have a few populations in the Americas.

They have their own language. About half of them are speak it full time, but when two Roma from completely different areas of the world meet, they can start speaking Roma.

They’ve been crapped on throughout history. Like many ethnic minorities, there are tons of atrocities that range from countries banning their language and music from being used in public, women being sterilized as part of a state policy (to reduce their population) to the Nazis in WW II marking them for extermination and/or concentration camps (with an estimated 220,000 to 1,500,000 deaths).

They’re fantastic musicians. If Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms took notice of the Roma music, there must be something to it. Throughout Eastern Europe, everyone refers to that great Gypsy Music (even if they don’t like the people. You’ll hear wonderful comments like ‘I don’t like Gypsies, but man, their music is great!’). Jazz musicians may recall a certain awesomeness that is Django Reinhardt.

They’ve been linked to crime. Here’s where the movies and pop-culture is partially right. While many Roma are portrayed as fortune tellers, even more are portrayed as outlawed, pick-pocketing thieves. Honestly, this is kinda true. I had my phone stolen by a gypsy while living in Hungary. A Bulgarian professor wrote an article stating the ‘Roma should be confined to ghettos because they do not assimilate, are culturally inclined towards theft, have no desire to work, and use their minority status to ‘blackmail’ the majority’… which leads me to my next point:

They’re still being crapped on. Even today, throughout Eastern Europe (yup, including Hungary) Roma are often live in low-class ghettos, are subject to discrimination in jobs and schools, and are often subject to police brutality. Roma children are forcibly segregated from normal schools.

Even in Italy, more than the fact that their Pizza is awful, it was declared a national emergency that the Roma population represented a national security risk and that swift action was required. The Roma are accused with responsible for rising crime rates in urban areas. Simple math shows that the Gypsies in Italy have a total of 0.3% of the population (one of the lowest proportions in Europe) so… that’s unlikely. Even more scary: ‘In July 2008, the Italian government began fingerprinting all Roma, including children, whether or not they are Italian citizens. The government claimed fingerprinting would cut crime, avoid children being used for begging and help identify illegal immigrants for expulsion.’ What year is it again?

Western Europe doesn’t get off the hook either, bad stuff happens to the Roma even in the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Germany, and Norway. There is even a definition for hating on the Roma now (which I can’t possibly pronounce) called Antiziganism.

They have some help. In 2005, the Decade of Roma Inclusion started up. The initiative of twelve European countries hope to improve the socio-economic status and social inclusion of the Roma minority across the region. It’s been roughly 4 years and they’ve accomplished a few things, but nothing amazing has happened… yet.

They have nowhere to go? You may find several similarities to other ethnic minorities throughout history. The Jews of course come to mind, but before you even mention it, a major difference lies in that even if Roma were given their own country (you know, like we did with Israel), none of them would want to go there. Maybe.

Wikipedia stuff:

Roma

Antiziganism

Decade of Roma Inclusion

Arvale: Short Tales for iPhone almost done…

by Jason Surguine on August 28, 2009

arvalestbox

I’ve just finished editing all of the new dynamic music tracks (which resulted in over 70 files) for the iPhone version of Arvale: Short Tales, and I’ve been awake for 40 hours or so.

Oh, I never mentioned I was working on Arvale: Short Tales for the iPhone… so I guess I’ll post a bit of info on it’s progress.

All that’s left is, um… to implement the music into the game, again. I would go into the technical details of how much of a huge pain in the ass that will be (switching from xm files to mp3 files for dynamic music), but honestly, I don’t want to :)

By dynamic music, I mean music that changes -whether as a variation of the melody or similar- depending on the state of the player (similar to how iMuse system that Lucasarts used in their games). For example, when a character opens a door and enters a new area, the music will flow seamlessly into the new theme, or when the player enters a battle, the melody stays the same, but you get a steroid-injected, pulse pounding battle version of it.

I’m also modifying the story quite a bit, as we’re planning on pulling the 4 main characters apart to release them as separate games. This will hopefully result in a better player experience overall. The first character/game that will be released should be Varju, the Druid character.

More details later, when I have more sleep.

Tokyo Landing Permits, Earthquakes and Typhoons

by Jason Surguine on August 28, 2009

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For the record, I’ve survived three Earthquakes and one Typhoon since I arrived in Tokyo. And that was within one week.

I might have mentioned Tokyo a few times recently. As I write this, that’s where I am. It’s only temporary of course. While I wish it were permanent, life just doesn’t work out so easily. I was lucky just to get into the country this time :)

Because I visit Japan so often, trying to figure out the customs/immigration system has been interesting. While there is a Visa Waiver program with most countries, including the USA, they have an interesting 90 Day Landing Permit which I still don’t fully understand. Searching the web I’ve never been able to find a definite answer for it either.

In any case, US citizens are allowed into Japan 90 days within every 6 month period. As long as you stick with that, you shouldn’t have to worry about their weird 90 day Landing Permit sticker they place in your Passport.

My math was a bit complicated, as I had recently been in Japan in May for 20 days, which means I could technically be in the country for another 70, but that time in May could also have been applied to my previous visit in December since that was within its 6 month period, which also means the 90 day Landing Permit from May lasts all the way to August. This time previous Landing Permit ended 1 day before I would be arriving in Japan (by sheer coincidence), so they gave me a new 90 day Permit… which, if I used all 90 days, I would still be over the 6 month/90-day limit. Confused? Me too :) (I have no idea what would have happened if I arrived on the last day of the Landing Permit. Would they kick me out after one day?)

Honestly, the immigration officer didnt even look through my Passport. This time of year, Westerners come in droves so I imagine she was thinking, ‘Westerner-Summer-Stamp-and-Go’ already, so… maybe I was simply lucky.

And Earthquakes make me sea sick.

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