Social Games
The Ten Most Significant Social Games of 2009
My article on the subject has gone up on Inside Social Games.
While it’s easy enough to figure out what the most popular games are simply by going over to AppData and looking at the numbers, I thought the end of the year might be a chance to reflect on what were some of the most [...]
Love and Hate Are Always Better Than Like.
Set Godin pulls apart a New York Times article on user feedback for the Kindle, and mentions something that everyone interacting with user metrics should be keenly aware of:
Amazon reviews never reflect the product, they reflect the passion people have for the product. As Jeff Bezos has pointed out again and again, most great products [...]
Why Zynga is worth $2.5 Billion
With their latest huge investor Zynga is now valued at somewhere around 2.5 billion dollars, give or take a billion (and who’s counting, right)?
As usual when these huge valuations come around, people tend to question whether or not the company is really worth it, especially when you consider they pulled off this kind of value [...]
Zynga gets shut down- Updated
After writing a few days ago that I felt that Michael Arrington had unfairly targeted developers as being culpable for scam advertising offers, Zynga goes ahead and proves me wrong by allegedly blocking the IP addresses of Facebook employees from seeing certain ads, and getting Fishville banned in the process.
That’s led to Facebook taking action– [...]
Streaming Social Games?
Has it dawned on anyone else that the real game changer for social and portable media is going to be remote computing delivery systems like OnLive? Seems like it has…
“Through the VolleeX engine, we can take full PC games, MMOs or even virtual worlds and stream them to any 3G enabled handsets, “says Vollee’s head [...]
Casual Gaming Metrics Applied to Social Gaming
This is a talk I gave at the Facebook Developer’s Garage back in March.
ISG Column: Good ain’t always better
My latest column for ISG is up
Every time a new market opens up the first games to appear are built on traditional, time-tested play patterns. From the DS to the iPhone, from XBLA to browser games, it’s always rock-solid gameplay that shows up first, with the fancy stuff pulling up in a later bus. And [...]
Latest post on ISG: Social Optimism
I’m still writing pieces for Inside Social Games, although you might not know it from reading this site…
My latest piece is on the bright future for Social Games. I’m currently working on something a little less optimistic.
Here’s the excerpt to whet your appetite:
I’m actually beginning to wonder if the future for social platform gaming may [...]
MediaShifting at Inside Social Games
I’ve joined forces with Inside Social Games, and you’ll be seeing my more in-depth pieces over there for the near future, although I’ll make sure they’re linked back here as well.
The first on is up now. You can check it out here
Here’s a taste:
While there’s lots to love about the iTunes experience as a customer, [...]
Giving Players a Chance to Socialize
Raph Koster is a designer who’s blog posts are always worth reading. His thoughts on the future of single-player were a big inspiration on my decision to focus on Social Games.
He’s just dropped a big post on ways to make virtual spaces more social, and there’s plenty of good stuff in there to mull over, [...]