Episode 5 : Facebook Seminar

It's really quite a shame, that I'm not allowed to blog about my own presentation material. I would just love to go on and on and on about Graffiti.

There's just so much to talk about, and so much to be surprised about.

A total of 7 applications were presented during the seminar. All applications are worthy, most of them pretty creative, some flashy, and most requires complex technical programming. All these factors combined, with a carefully planned out game-play sequence or work flow, it's no surprise that the active user counts reached into the millions.

Graffiti, however, if you noticed, has none of the qualities mentioned above...

Its not really too creative or novel, no flashy animations or colors were used in the design, and I doubt that its too difficult to do up the program with the world wide web's support. It's active user count, however, sky rocketed ... and even with big names like Intel and Dell throwing in sponsorship moollahs.

One can publish an article analyzing the reasons for its blossom ... but personally, I believe, it sums down to 3 simple letters.

...
U G C , at its best.

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I'll stop here for now ... and leave the imagination to everyone else. Do think through one question though:

Can you think of another facebook application like Graffiti, which allows the creation of true User-Generated Content to promote its growth?

Applications that allows the user to choose from a limited template of items shouldn't be classified into the same category. Fluff friends lets you choose a pet out of a limited number of creatures ... and to choose backgrounds from a limited set. The "uniqueness" of these "UGCs" is limited only to the finite mathematical permutation of these different items. In the case of Graffiti, however, the permutations are infinite ... just like Wikipedia and YouTube.

And know what? Drawing a Graffiti expression, is much simpler and motivating than writing up an entry in Wikipedia, or making a video for YouTube.

Lastly, before I begin my application seminar entry proper, here's the highly acclaimed ...

"Personification of Evil"

Bwahahaha ...

I'd like to thank my beloved friend, Liu Ling, for her work on the Graffiti. :)

Facebook Seminar Application Critique

Being quite an avid gamer myself, and for my constant amazement and curiosity at games programming, I'm going to talk about Elven Blood. Partially also, that it is VERY IRRITATING having hordes and hordes of invitations from friends to join their parties in Elven Blood.

The team gave a pretty thorough presentation for the application. Many points caught my attention, and got me thinking. Here's my 2 cents.

1) Shortness of Quests
This particular sentence from the presenter especially got my thinking gears moving :

"The Quests are completed too soon ... Development can't keep up with gameplay .... usership dropped tremendously"

In general, I believe that multiplayer games on the internet can be classified into 3 categories:

1. Linear Gameplay
   An example is Playfish's Geo Challenge. A fixed number of stages are set, and fixed by the developers. Players can only play the stages from start to finish with minimal interactivity with others. The only basis of competition is via the scored points.
   
   
2. Exploratory Gameplay with Maintainance
   Partially-linear games which are exploratory in nature, but require frequent developer's expansion and intervention to retain players. Elven Blood probably belongs here. User can interactly nicely with other players ... but the main objective of the game is probably to completes quests. So ... what's next after all the quests are completed? The developers will have to create expansion and continuations. No doubt that these games will attract a good mass of initial users, but to retain them, the developers will end up working all day to maintain it. Not too desirable...
   
   
3. Exploratory Gameplay with Low Maintainance
   Warbook, Battlestations, Pet Society? Same as category 2, except that the game is pretty iterative in nature, such that it still remains fun even when the developers stop development for a long while. In Warbook, after players get more gold and more land, they attack other players, become more powerful, and the cycle repeats. Along the way, they form parties that bond and disperse. In these ways, a community is formed. Lesser developer intervention may be necessary, so in the meantime, the developer can go ahead to persue other money making avenues.
   

Elven Blood falls into category 2. The game is fun initially ... but the proliferation of players mean that development will have to be fast to maintain this source of revenue. The fun derived from the game is almost as short lived as the finite features programmed into the game.

At time, I wonder if these kind of games are worth perusing at all. It may work if its a single player game like Final Fantasy, but in a multi-player environment, we really need borderless and limitless gameplay to simulate a true community. That way, the players can enjoy the game timelessly, and the workload will be reduced on the development side.

2) Blessings and Sponsorships
From my understanding, Elven Blood obtains its revenue from companies which advertised in its platform. Clicks or views to these companies' website are integrated in-game as "blessings", which can grant boons and enhancement to one's character in the game. The presenters claimed that this will not distort or disrupt game-play ... but I can't help but disagree to a certain extent.

By granting bonuses whenever players clicked or signed up in the advertiser's websites, I feel that the developers are openly manipulating the players like marketing chess-pieces in the game. In a way, indirect manipulation. It certainly starts a chain effect to force people to click on the ads, since they cannot receive blessings (and get ahead in the game) without them.

Sure, some gamers might not have the initial intention to invoke these blessings. However, seeing so many other players (sometimes opponents) getting ahead by spamming the blessings, they are forced to follow suit. This sets off a chain reaction. If not handled well, the gaming environment can be thoroughly destroyed and overtaken by marketeers and profiteers. User ship will like fall to a halt, and complaints and critics can be expected to appear from everywhere.

I've come across an MMORPG called Dark Ages. What I have heard, is that the money minded admins have ended up destroying the game by releasing powerup items cheaply for real money. User (who originally have to pay to play the game) became dis-illusioned by the blatantly obvious marketing core of the system, and simply stopped coming.

Eventually, a game is meant to be fun, fair and entertaining. An ideal business model should return revenue (albeit a little lower), but at the same time maintaining the fairness of the gaming environment. The most basic form of advertising that falls under this, I believe, will be banner advertisements. Other forms may perhaps be additional features, like what Intel and Acuvue did to Graffiti.

3) User Generated Quests
UGC has proven itself to be an undeniable means of spurring user activity. Minimal developer intervention is needed, as the user's creation continues to make the applications stay afloat or soar.

I can't seem to picture, however, the idea of having user-generated quests integrated into Elven Blood. Among the good users, there can be many malicious users lurking around with inappropriate intentions. If their generated contents goes unchecked in a game like Elven Blood, the whole game-play may become quite twisted. On the other hand, if developers were to check every single one of the submitted quests, development workload may amplify by a large degree, and many contributors are bound to be dissatisfied and turned away by the quality control.

What I feel about UGCs, are that there are no midpoints to it. The flood gates can either be fully opened, or tightly shut.

I may be wrong ... but I'm a little doubtful about the suitability of user generated contents being integrated into online games.


Elven Blood
Before attending the seminar, I have largely heard about Elven Blood, and have been in constant bombardment by invites to join parties from the x-th inner circle. I didn't try out the app then, as i didn't feel that I'll like it. It seems to me like a very forceful embedding of a marketing powered game engine onto facebook. Also, from what I have previously heard about the application (which turns out to be correct as explained during the seminar), it is not as scalable as users might have expected it to be. From the time of the very first bombardment of invites I have received from friends to add the application, I have a hunch that the application will only last as a hype.

The fascination is not completely over yet though. Let's wait and see how things go from here.