Categories
community games design massively multiplayer mmo signup processes web 2.0

Customer Relationships and Support for Online Games and MMOs

Here’s a question about increasing the profitability and decreasing the development cost of any MMO, although probably no-one except the web-people will recognise it as such (and even some of them won’t get it):

How do you improve the customer support for an existing MMO?
[where do you start, and what do you target?]

Categories
programming server admin

How to install PEAR on OS X 10.5

The simple guide I found here doesn’t actually work, although it “mostly” works. Several bits are out of date. Even then it only *partly* works, because it leaves all PEAR commands as requiring root to run. That may be what you want, but I doubt it. Not what I wanted.

Categories
server admin

Small Fixes for phpMyFAQ

phpMyFAQ is a nice idea, and mostly it’s well done, but with a few basic mistakes in how it’s been implemented that were so annoying I couldn’t live with them. There’s no Debian package for this app, sadly, so things like “using a better version of TinyMCE” require you to manually fix them all (no package-management based solution here, unless you want to maintain it yourself?).

Categories
dev-process iphone programming

iPhone Development FAQ

In my joyous travels developing a fun little iPhone game recently, I kept track of all the many tips and tricks and gotchas I came across. There are a fair few bugs in Apple’s IDE (including at least one critical one that bit me), some stunningly bad flaws in the Objective-C language (it’s *horrible*), and some slightly surprising lack of docs from Apple in key areas (like: how/when do I get paid?)

There was too much to blog it all, so instead I installed a free FAQ software and I’m gradually transferring my notes over to this FAQ (only got a few questions in there at the moment, just fresh installed):

http://iphonefaq.t-machine.org/index.php?action=show

(the one you probably want to start with is: How to make applications for the iPhone?)

There’s an awesome feature to this FAQ too (not that I’ve tested it): anyone can go to the site and click “Ask a Question” and it gets added to a list for admins to answer and post. You can even answer your own question at the same time as asking it.

If you’ve been developing iPhone apps yourself and have some burning questions or neat tips of your own, feel free to go to the FAQ and add them in. Any problems, email me (email address is on the About link at the top of this page)

Categories
alternate reality games conferences games design

Dan Hon rips into ARGs

Dan’s put up the slides from his talk at the Let’s Change the Game Conference – but more importantly he’s done a long writeup with the slides embedded in the text, so you can get the flavour of the talk he gave even though you missed it.

He set out to be mean and nasty and ranty, but I think Dan is far too nice and friendly a person with too little viciousness in him to be like that in person. IMHO, on the day he was much more genteel, and so in some ways I think the written version of the talk is even better than the talk itself.

Anyway, well worth reading if you have any interest in making better ARGs. Don’t expect to get any concrete advice, this is a talk aimed at prodding you to re-think objectively just how often you give in to temptation and use weak devices and shortcuts that if you saw someone else doing you’d berate them for. Although it may not seem like it, I think Dan’s talk is an excellent intro for beginners to ARGs, since it will likely warn you off the big temptations that experienced ARG makers avoid or use with care, but newbies these days may find it easy to go overboard on. Don’t take it too literally, if you know all about ARGs already.

Categories
games industry recruiting

Gamasutra: Pay employees as little as possible

Gamasutra’s just posted an Opinion piece (so it’s not GS’s position, they’re just giving air-time to the author) about the interview process for getting a job in the video game industry.

Right up-front the author states that one of the three aims of the employer is:

“To pay as little as possible”

What?

No.

Don’t work for companies who have that on their agenda, unless there really aren’t any better opportunities available (hey, it’s a recession – maybe you just have to accept a second-rate job right now).

A company that wants to pay as little as possible cares less about you than they do about sucking value out of you for their profit and spitting you out once you’ve been used up. Note: this is not “making best use of their assets”, this is “carpet-bagging value-extraction”. It’s an attitude that leads to miserable work environments and unstable teams.

So, to anyone getting a job in the industry: Please stop propping-up the bad business models of the companies that do this, and work for the most decent company you can find instead.

EDIT: clarification, after several people responded to say that the statement really meant the company was just aiming to “pay no more than is necessary to secure your services”:

  • I will pay a contractor “no more than is necessary”.
  • I want more from an employee. I will pay them how much I value their contribution to the company.
  • Then when I ask or hope for more from them than 37.5 hours a week and a “I only do what it says in my job description” attitude, I can feel that the balance of payment is fair.
  • And when a contractor says “that’s not in my contract”, I’ll feel guilty for trying to sneak a freebie past them – and blame *myself*, not them, for saying no.

(NB: I like the overall idea of the article, but I object to quite a few other details, especially from the employer perspective; for instance, telling candidates to pretend to be something they’re not just in order to get the job is not appreciated, dude. Both company and candidate need to be honest in the interview, because otherwise one or both of you will get rather unhappy starting about 2 hours into your first day on the job, and it’s not a relationship that’s going to last)

Categories
games industry massively multiplayer

“Cats and Dogs, playing together…” (Thomas Bidaux starts blogging)

Bienvenue au blog, M. Bidaux!

“There were many reasons, but mainly, we decided against it because we knew that we would be very busy and the blog was always going to be left as a “when we have time” thing, and that always translate into in a “if we have time” thing.

The main issue was the commitment a good blog requires. There is nothing as sad as a blog you really like that gets updated irregularly. We will solve this right now, in this first post, just by managing the readers expectation: we won’t commit to have regular updates and features on this blog.

It’s OK, Thomas – we won’t stop loving you if the blog updates are irregular. I think it adds to the charm.

Fortunately for us, Thomas and Diane forged ahead anyway, and the ICO Partners blog is now open for business, featuring “in an approximate English and at irregular intervals”:

* news from the online game sector
* views on common and uncommon problems we encountered working on online games
* news on ICO Partners activities

Categories
computer games games industry massively multiplayer

Oh, OK, so … *another* reason Age of Conan failed…

…could be that the “beat your staff with a stick, and if that doesn’t work … beat them harder” style of management was de rigeur for the Norwegian games industry:

AoC, in the words of an (alleged? ex?) employee:

the problem with Age of conan is that the game was in “crunch” for almost 3 years.

…who had *great fun* working for a company called Funcom:

then i was sick for a week, after having worked so intensely. i’ve never been that sick before, says “theodor”.

after having researched if the workers rights are after the work environment laws, and talked to his colleagues about this, he was asked in by the management. there he got a lucrative quitter-package if he stopped working the same day, which he agreed to.

…and Anarchy Online:

Keskin tells that he chose to leave Funcom because he was treated very badly by person in management. as he was being laid off, he claims that lies were spread about him from the management to his earlier co-workers.

i worked on anarchy online, and played that game for several years. it was a joy to work on the game, but if you ask questions, either about what they say to the public, or about something ethical– there’s a lot of strange things going on there– they turn around very quickly.
even if the whole thing is about if you want to do improve projects you’re working on, keskin says.

Of course, it could all be a big misunderstanding (mistranslation), since I don’t speak Norwegian, and I have no idea where any of my Norwegian friends are these days to ask for a second opinion on the translation (PS: Bjorn, if you ever read this blog, get in touch :)).

Categories
community facebook iphone web 2.0

iPhone App Store: Social Network and Game Portal

The App Store is just another casual games distribution platform + social network. You can pretend it isn’t (sometimes I think Apple is still pretending that it’s just an extension of iTunes, and ignoring the social side completely – Doh!), but that doesn’t make it true :).

Apple’s had the iPhone version of the App Store running for more than half a year now, and made tens of millions of dollars from it, so what’s it like? Where’s the social stuff good and bad? Where’s the game distribution stuff good and bad?

Categories
design games design games industry massively multiplayer

Does It Lose Money When You Do That? Don’t Do That

(a.k.a. “How to invest in MMO development … profitably”)

The world is full of games companies that blow stupid amounts of money on making online games (typically “massively multiplayer online games” (MMO)). It’s time to put a stop to this madness; honestly, I thought everyone learnt their lesson about 5 years ago when we had the last wave of “everyone’s making an MMO … oh god, these things are TEN TIMES as expensive and ONE HUNDRED TIMES as difficult as we thought … Run away!”. Apparently not.

I think there’s two ways you can learn for yourself how to make a profit from developing online games:

Categories
games design iphone programming

My first iPhone game – download now!

As part of our super top secret new startup we’ve been making some educational games, and for fun (in my spare time) I tried porting one to my iPhone. It’s a simple maths game which I thought would work well with a touch-interface. If you have an iPhone, you can get it here:

Download from Apple iTunes Store

(this is a bit of an experiment – if enough people like the game, I’ll take the time to plug it in to some serverside stuff we’re doing which will add a bunch of feedback/stats/scores features for anyone who’s got the game)

Categories
alternate reality games conferences education

ARGs in Charity and Education – Channel 4

Alice Taylor, Channel 4

From the ARGs in Charity and Education conference last week. Alice was forthcoming on real data – and, more importantly, C4’s outlook/perspective – on a bunch of issues. Very useful stuff.

As ever, errors and ommissions my own, and my commentary [in square brackets].

Categories
alternate reality games conferences education

ARGs in Charity and Education – Operation: Sleeper Cell

Juliette Culver

Main post on the conference is here.

As ever, errors and omissions my own, and any personal commentary is in [square brackets]

EDIT: updated with some corrections, courtesy of Juliette

Categories
alternate reality games conferences education

ARGs in Charity and Education – Summary + Keynote

This week, I was at the tiny one-day conference on Alternate Reality Games, and their use in charity and/or education, at Channel 4’s offices in London. All proceeds from the conference went to Cancer Research UK (I think it was mainly organized by the team that this year won the competition to get funding for their idea for a charity ARG, sponsored by CRUK, with help from the guys at Six to Start).

As with all other conferences I go to, here’s are writeups of all the sessions I attended. Unfortunately, Channel 4’s offices are a bit … um … 20th Century: their auditorium has no power points. It has sockets that have been covered over with screwed-on metal covers to prevent you using them. Pretty amazingly dumb, considering how funktastic the rest of the building is. So, I ran out of power halfway through, and couldn’t cover all the sessions. Sorry!

Categories
dev-process programming recruiting startup advice

Google cutting 20% time

Oh, wait, actually they’re not. But people love to misinterpret statements with the word Google and the number 20 in them.

As I put in the comments:

Frankly, I’ve generally not bothered to correct anyone who didn’t bother to research it themselves – except in the cases where they were in my own organization, and attempting to make decisions about related matters based on misconceptions of the supposed Google rule.

Of course, my dear lovely friends may have been lieing to me. I very much doubt it (and even if I didn’t, what they’ve said over the years has made a lot more sense than most of the hearsay you hear on the web) – but the point here is that I’ve bothered to ask.

Google has so many employees that if you preach on subjects like 20% time – which, by the way, I think is one of the most fundamentally important (and least well-understood) issues in corporations, job choice, and why you get up in the morning, but that’s another post – then you have no excuse at all for not going and asking an employee how it works. Last time I looked, they had bajillions of offices around Europe, not to mention the sprawl all over the US.