What a logical world!

I was in Wendy's. The hispanic thug-types were talking about after-market value on restored classic cars. The aging jock was talking about how disappointed he was that a radio show was using "untenable" assertations. The two high-school kids I couldn't hear very well, but they must have been talking about high-level math. What else could make kids want to kiss so much?

Also, I got Soul Calibre III for $18.

The world seems smarter than yesterday.

"What a Logical World"

I see trees of green... and chlorophyll too.
Creating our oxygen... from cast-off CO2.
and I think to myself,
"What a logical world!"

I see a sky of blue... from refracted rays.
A white sun red... through atmospheric haze.
And I think to myself,
"What a logical world!"

The colors of the rainbow... at 42 ascencion,
Are shining in the eyes... of those who pay attention.
I see friends shaking hands... bumpin' molecules.
They're really saying... "Physics rules!"

I hear babies cry... I watch them grow,
to full-sized youths... from a tiny embryo!
And I think to myself,
"What a logical world!"

(Synthesizer solo!!! Preeeeeow!)

The colors of the rainbow... at 42 ascencion,
Are shining in the eyes... of those who pay attention.
I see friends shaking hands... bumpin' molecules.
They're really saying... "Physics... rules."

The stars in the night... shining ten-thousand fold,
I gaze in awe... at light twelve thousand years old.
And I think to myself,
"That's twice as old as some misguided people think the planet is..."
And I think to myself,
"That's twice as old as some misguided people think the planet is..."
Ohhhhhh yeeaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh...



Try a filk verse for your own favorite subject! It's easy!

Casual vs Retail Piracy

Last post, I noted that many casual games are being pirated - occasionally as much as retail computer games, often as much as half as much. Obviously, there's a lot of details which may screw this up. For example, I might be checking networks which tend to cater specifically to casual gamers, or some other unknown might be skewing the numbers.

However, with the numbers as they stand, it raises an important question:

How much is piracy affecting ANYONE?

If casual games are being pirated on a scale comparable to retail games, what does that mean? It means that retail games are not suffering piracy significantly worse than casual games.

There are a few possibilities:

The first is that piracy isn't really all that bad for either of them. After all, popular casual games are certainly raking in the cash. (Unpopular ones don't make anything, but that isn't piracy's fault...)

The second possibility is that both casual and retail games suffer hideously from piracy. This seems unlikely because my admittedly-handwaved numbers strongly imply that piracy is only eating a small portion of casual game profits. Retail games are suffering only slightly worse.

The third possibility is that retail games aren't selling very many copies at all, and their piracy levels are significantly higher, percentage-wise. This seems kind of unlikely to me, but I've been wrong before. And I'm probably wrong now.

The fourth possibility is that there is a huge "invisible market" of pirated retail games that isn't included in my study. For example, how much are Chinese clones costing you? I don't know a lot of Americans who get Chinese clones, so it probably doesn't terribly harm the Western sales. There may be other such markets that weren't in this study.

Which of the four possibilities is right?

All told, my opinion is that piracy is not affecting retail games in Western nations any more than casual games in Western nations. Now, that means that either both are suffering horribly from piracy, or neither is suffering much.

How much effect you believe piracy to have is probably largely determined by whether or not you pirate things. I honestly have no idea.

But I can tell you a few things about which casual games are pirated.

It appears that a certain kind of casual game is only rarely pirated: any casual game with a story. By that I don't mean "saving the cake factory". I mean a character-heavy story which progresses, however minimally.

There are absurdly few pirated copies of games like Outpost Kaloki and Aveyond. You could presume these games didn't sell very many copies, but Aveyond is holding in the top ten at Yahoo! Games, so it's sold a hell of a lot of valid copies.

Games like Zuma and Cake Mania are pirated a LOT. The only link I can see is that they don't have a story.

They "feel" "easier to program". "It's just a bunch of people walking in with bubbles over their heads" "it's just a random bunch of exploding gems". High replay value, but not much "personality".

That's just weak theory, though. I don't know why it's true, and I'm not even 100% it is true. But it's the only connection I can see. Games where you have a character that interacts with other characters seem to have less piracy.

Do they sell as well?

Well, out of the top ten Yahoo! Games, two or three are games with a narrative. Given that more non-story games are produced than story games, this seems about right.

However, Popcap features precisely ZERO narrative games in its top ten.

A difference in the audience of the portal, perhaps?

Anyhow, that's all that I could dig up. :)

Opinions? Comments? Fun things you can do with chicken feathers?

Casual Piracy

I've read a post that seems to imply that piracy is a big deal for casual developers.

Now, no lie, pirating a casual game is skanky. It would be evil in a way that bilking a giant evil corporation isn't. Don't argue about that last bit, it really isn't the point of this essay either way.

But is it actually a problem? Do people actually pirate casual games?

I thought, "That's absurd. People don't pirate casual games. First, they're not popular enough, second blah blah blah blah blah. Here, I'll just prove it by going and looking..."

Cake Mania, a popular Yahoo! game: more than 250 sources on the immediate net - roughly half to a quarter that of major titles such as Playboy: Mansion. (Playboy: Mansion is my yardstick. People love to pirate that game, and the numbers don't seem to go up or down much over time.)

Diner Dash, another popular Yahoo! game: 300-400 sources, although some smell like spam.

Virtual Villagers: ~175 sources.

Aveyond: ~40 sources.

Talismania, switching to popcap: ~125

Bejeweled 2: Motherlode of about 900 sources - more than many AAA games. Moreover, these are "package pirates", featuring dozens of popcap games...

Zuma reveals the same, mostly because it's in the same packages.

I'm kind of shocked. Actually, I'm just flat-out shocked, there's really no "kind of". Some of these games are pirated at rates comparable to Halo 2.

Now, if there are 250 sources for a pirated version of your game, that means that there are 250 computers actively sharing it. The net is vaster than this little region, but we'll be conservative and say that there are only 2500 sources in all the various P2P networks. Chances are, that's an order of magnitude low, because I think this P2P system stops looking at 200 sources.

These are people who keep it actively shared. For every person who keeps it actively shared, there are at least eight who download it and shlep it off to their desktop instead of their shared folders, or delete it when done. So, say, 20,000 downloads.

Now, we can argue about the validity of calling these lost sales until our faces turn blue. But many of the reasons people argue that pirates wouldn't buy are invalid here. There's no faceless corporation: at least a quarter of your payment goes straight to the devs. There's no excessive cost: these games cost, at most, $20. So lets presume that SOME of these pirates would have made legitimate purchases.

If we get standard solid conversion rates, that would be 2%. 400 copies, at $5 kickback to the developer, is $2000. That's a pretty chunk of change, and probably less than a quarter the actual loss... but how much is it, percentage-wise?

Well, Pharaoh's Curse sells about $2000 a year. However, there are NO sources for it. This implies that piracy is not a huge chunk of the profit, or there would be a few dozen sources. It could be that piracy needs a "critical mass", but that critical mass is obviously significantly more than $2000.

Galactic Civilizations 2 is NOT copy protected. How many copies of IT are there floating around?

Checking multiple spellings, there are less than a hundred (most of which claim to be "cracked". Ha!)

If I knew how much Galciv 2 sold, I could use this to frame a likely answer. It could be that Galciv is in a "middle band", not selling as much as a top ten on a major portal, but selling much more than $2000 a year. If it does sell closer to $2000 than $20,000, their unprotection may actually have brought them into a higher piracy bracket than protected games... but is that something which has affected sales, or not?

To end on a standard mainstream media note: the only thing we know for sure is that people pirate casual games.

A lot.

WTF?

Does someone want to tell me why "dx = math.sin(1);" returns an accurate number, but "a = 1; dx = math.sin(a);" returns "NaN"?

That is stupid as hell. Seriously, if somebody knows a workaround, I'm all ears. Unless it's to make "a" into a "Number", which I already tried.

Edit: Fascinating. It works if I write "Math.sin" instead of "math.sin". But then why did it work at all? The hell?

This has been your daily dose of stupid fiddly debugging.

Bubeq!

Working on Flash. Here's a simple game. It's flash, but should be given its own window due to dimensions:

Bubeq!

This is the FIRST game I've made, but it's actually more than it seems. This is "Bubeq Flat". You play by clicking on the bubbles you want to pop. The cost of popping a bubble is noted in the upper right, and slowly increases. There are five hundred bubbles to deploy before deployment stops. Normally, you'd lose when the bubbles reach the top, but not in this build.

This game is not a final game. Not only is it missing things like win conditions and options, it is actually a restricted version of the "real" game.

The way it's built, this version of Bubeq clears three-of-a-kinds (vertical and horizontal). However, the code supports the ability to put in ANY patterns you want cleared. For example, maybe "blue-green-blue" gets cleared, or "yellow-white-white-yellow" (it's best to make them reversible). Moreover, it can be horizontal only, vertical only, or both. Plus, each pattern can be worth a different amount.

The basic idea is that you "buy" patterns. So, when you start, maybe you start with clearing only threes-of-a-kind. But after the level, you can purchase other patterns - easier or harder - to make your life more profitable. If these purchases are linked to equipment, it will not only change the way you look with each purchase, but also limit what patterns can be equipped simultaneously.

It's going to be brutally complex for the player, but not for the programmer... I think most levels will only use 3 or 4 colors.

Hardcore Casual

Recently and not-so recently I've written about casual games, and how "simplicity" isn't something you can assume for much longer.

Casual games are a fairly new market, and are just now developing the power of genre. Looking back at early computer games and arcade games, we see the same basic thing happening: start simple, get complex.

Each "wave" of game has addressed a new audience. First, video arcades. Their games were short and hard, meant to eat quarters and keep players churning together. Second, home systems (computers, Atari, etc). Their games were intended to convince players that the $60 they spent was worth it by doing just the opposite: taking forever to complete. Third: casual games. Addressing an audience who will often play for a long time, but only in small chunks and games which can be interrupted and canceled.

Each wave addressed its audience in very particular ways. Mechanics appropriate to one group need much tweaking to be appropriate to another. But each wave, without fail, steadily added complexity.

As genres were built up, short-term complexity was added. More moves, more items, more buttons, more options. Each built on the standards that the audience had liked in its genre.

You can already see this happening with Casual Games. Atlantis Sky Patrol, Virtual Villagers, Fish Tycoon, Diner Dash 2... all of these games might not feel complex to you, but compared to their ancestors, they are as much more complex as eels to earthworms. This trend will continue, restricted by the nature of the audience: an audience that can't guarantee even five minutes before the boss walks by. An audience which requires interesting play literally every minute of the game.

In addition, however, as genres were built up, long-term complexity was added. No matter what the target audience, games began to keep data long-term. First, it was simply top scores. Then it was characters and positions. Now, whole rosters. This is true of home systems, this is true of arcades, and it is coming true of casual games.

But the same restrictions apply. The long-term complexity that will be added to casual games will be, at least at first, a mild sort. Think those 3D chat avatars, or the ability to build and furnish your own homes, or to put together a complex friend tree. But as closely related to the casual games as a first-person-shooter dossiere to the first-person-shooter.

Obviously, the way this is most likely to succeed is if some game place, something like Popcap, creates a piece of middleware. The backbone of the middleware creates a massive, shared system for avatar customization, stuff collecting, friend relations, permissions, and so on. Then people can create games - mostly casual ones - which feed back onto that backbone. Like Secondlife, but without the horrible pain.

This has a whole bunch of interesting features. For example, you'll have to arrange it so that pornographic content can't be popped up on your screen without permission, ever. These are often people at work and/or children. Also, older games which few people play will still have unique rewards to offer, so there will be steady "trawling" for "oldschool loot"...

We're likely to see this kind of backbone driven by micropayments, but exactly how that will be set up is still a mystery to me. There are a lot of options.

The effect of this scattered-attention audience on "narrative"-based games is pretty dramatic. The narratives we see on big games of today won't be happening. We're more likely to see very slow narratives (adventure-title type narratives) and more of a "legend-style" narrative, where it's more about character design and a few critical events rather than a specific progression.

There are other effects... it's an exciting field!

Harmonix Says...

Saw Guitar Hero 2 tonight. Experienced it, really. Very loud.

It's pretty much the same game, as expected. The most obvious and nicest improvement is a two-player coop mode with independent difficulty levels. Their scoring hasn't improved any, though. Still doing flat DDR scoring, which I always thought was shabby. Others have agreed.

Most of the chatter indicated that there were some pretty nice additional features. Apparently, pull-offs and hammer-downs are slightly easier, there's a slow-down mode for learning hard solos, and the game's difficulty doesn't stop at merely "devilish" but continues right on to "plain evil". Apparently, there's also a lot more female guitarists.

Also, to my distinct displeasure, they continued the overamped guitar trend. In my opinion, that is a bad choice, because it really diminishes the game's party appeal. All you can hear is the lead (and, in GH2, bass) guitar. Really, really, loud. However! However! I asked the project lead, and he said he was pretty sure you could tweak the amping to normal levels, which makes me happy.

He also looked at me like a complete loon for asking it...

What I would really like for a game like this is guitar-dependant sounds. Many guitars have distinct sounds to them, and some musicians can tell the difference between two different models of Gibson. "1962... a good year." Even the most plebean, tone-deaf person will hear the difference if you substitute a banjo for an electric guitar.

I think that would be cool, if your pick of guitar actually affected the sound of your part of the song. This also means that you are likely to pick specific guitars for specific songs. Obviously, sometimes you want something a bit more razzy, death-acid style, and other times you want a more mellow, solid rock sound.

Sure, it's one of those silly hardcore things. If you could get the rights, the next and more impressive step would be to have an audio track for each singer singing each song. That would really, really rock.

That's just talk, though. Looks like Guitar Hero 2 is to Guitar Hero as what We Love Katamari was to Katamari Damacy. That's a good thing.

And, damn, they have a hell of a lot of fanboys... the crowd was 3x normal.