Building Casual Games in Flash
Philip Kerrman
philipkerrman.com/fitc/
Built most of these games for MSN messenger.
Casual Game: “Carefree game”
<50 megabytes
try -> explore -> buy
“adver-game”
-either fully sponsored (branded up the wazoo) or maybe a subtle watermark, or an ad you have to see before you play
casual games are not usually done in Flash—more often director/java, etc.
Casual game -> you pay for
advergame -> client pays for it
casual game market is HUGE, >50% women
a casual game will sell for ~$20
try/buy conversion rate:
>2% is a hit
1-2% is the norm
<1% is poor
portals will pay the author ~30%
Advergames
-usually work for hire
-simply skinning an existing game isn’t popular
-wide range of money-making opportunities for free games with advertising
-banner ads
-in-game sponsorship
-pre game ad
-in-game (break-time) ad
ARMS RACE
-more and more advanced graphics
-increased user expectations
XBLA—6m xbox users
-try but — very frictionless
-they say 75k – 300k to produce a game
-certification
-games sell for $10
conversion rates around 30-35%
-better revenue share: 50/50 or better
-gatekeepers
WINDOW LIVE MESSENGER
-250m users
15 unique game users per month
-potentially 30-35m players
30% average yearly growth
-subscriptions
-ad revenue
NOMENCLATURE
Up sell — try version gives you a nag screen to buy the full version
frictionless —
Portals — “publishers” for your casual games.
-big portals take a bigger cut, but tend to be more stable and more trustworthy
badges/achievements — visible “pride” based declaration of your awesomeness at a game
ADAPT YOUR SKILLS
-use the appropriate tools for the target market
TECHNICAL STUFF
1. GAME MUST BE FUN!!!!!
2. user experience
2. user experience
4. user experience
USABILITY
MS Games prototyped using PAPER mockups of all the screens
Casual games often have to live within a framework, which YOU have to adjust to, because THEY won’t change it for you.
You will need to include “ad breaks” functionality in your game
You are living in reality
-lean toward the lowest common denominator
MULTI-PLAYER
-griefing situations
-race conditions
-technical limits
-home-made random seed
-turn-based is MUCH easier
-don’t underestimate difficulty involved
2 player game > single player game * 2
AI
-many different ways of thinking about it
PORTING OF GAMES
-many many many venues in which a game can live
LOCALIZATION — allow for many different fonts, lengths of words
-this could be the hardest/most frustrating part of the development
CHEATS
-think of them as “hints”
-Keep the number of server requests to a minimum.
-synchronizing is difficult, but very important
-if two people perform an action on an object at the same time, before the info is sent to the server
-learn ways to make data smaller so it gets sent faster, especially in situations where a lot of info is constantly going back and forth
GRIEVING — one person quits, the other stays on, expecting to play
Games need to be bulletproof, and they need to talk loudly but briefly to the server
[jigsaw game] — every piece has the same registration point: 0:0. Even if it is visually all thee way across the stage, it is a small visible portion of a big empty movie clip
-international portal games can have a long development process