Gamzee Blog

I’m making a commitment to updating this blog more often. We’re going to aim for 2x a week getting posts up.

I went up to Casual Connect last week for some meetings. While I didn’t get to attend much of the conference, the general air was interesting. At each conference I go to, you can pick up an overall feel for the new hotness. GDC a couple of years ago, for example, everyone was bullish on social gaming on Facebook. Loads of traditional PC and console game developers were getting into the space. Inside Social Games last year, one of the buzzwords was HTML5 gaming.

At this year’s Casual Connect, there seemed to be two themes. One, people were bullish on mobile and cooling a bit on Facebook as a platform. That’s not surprising — even Facebook game giant Zynga has had some difficulty lately on Facebook (difficulty being a relative term, they’re still the largest and most profitable social game company, period), and while there are some big publishers on mobile, no single entity dominates the way that Zynga has on Facebook.

Two, social gambling is the new big trend. There’s been talk for a while about Facebook pushing to legalize online gambling so it can grow its business by providing the platform for people to play poker and casino games together. It would be a smart move for Facebook, along the same lines as providing platforms for social games and payments. Having worked at World Poker Tour for a while, I know first-hand that the online gambling market is gigantic and that players monetize far better than even hardcore MMO players.

It’s a very hard business, however, one that’s dominated on the one hand by online gaming providers and by traditional brick-and-mortar casinos on the other. IGT and Harrah’s have both gotten into the social/online gaming space recently through acquisitions of social game companies. And Zynga’s made a big push with bingo, Slingo, their poker games, etc.

While I’m sure Zynga will do well in the space because of their size, ability to attract top talent, and marketing expertise, there are some challenges that people are probably not aware of.

Firstly, it’s a different audience than almost all social games. At WPT, we operated real-money gaming overseas, free games in the states, and a subscription gaming product in the US and Canada. Those are three different audiences. My mom may play Zynga Poker, but she’s never going to risk $500 playing no-limit sit-n-gos. And a hardcore gambler who likes to multi-table doesn’t care about playing with his social graph or having tons of stars shooting out every time he wins a hand.

There are also major regulatory issues and questions of fairness. Random number generators are licensed and inspected; you have to have certain cash reserves on hand for payouts; and even major online gaming companies have suffered from cheating scandals. It requires a degree of watchfulness and the ability to react quickly that other games do not. Think about the cheating and scamming that goes on in games like World of Warcraft, or others where you can’t officially take money out of the system. Now apply that to a game where you can literally win hundreds of thousands of dollars from other players. Flash clients are notoriously easy to hack.

A lot of the success of online poker/gambling sites has to do with building great affiliate programs and the type of offers you give to players. It’s not uncommon to see a CPA of $350 plus a portion of the player’s rake (for poker) or losses (for table games/slots). That’s because a player who deposits is worth thousands of dollars. And smart players shop various sites for matching deposit bonuses and other freebies, maximizing what they can get for free.

Finally, providers on Facebook and mobile will have to make sure their games are responsive. Rocketfrog is a cool game, but it’s very buggy and takes a long time to play a tournament. If I had real money on the line, I would never play there.

/end of gambling diatribe

Team-Building Event

We recently had a celebratory team-building event (because we finished up v1.0 of our next game). We went to go-karting at Racer’s Edge in Burbank, where they have electric karts that go up to 45 miles per hour (which is insanely fast on a small indoor track). Abe won both races.

Then we bowled. None of us are great bowlers. Although I did get the high score with 153 on the second game.

Stay tuned for news on what the new game is and where you can play it soon.

Game Nights

We’ve been playing a lot of 7 Wonders recently. It’s a fun competitive empire building game with a lot of options for win strategies — you can amass resources, build up an army (that you get points for having a bigger army each round than your opponent on either side), build wonders, collect money to trade for victory points, etc. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of Race for the Galaxy, but with some more bits. And I’m pretty horrible at it, unlike RftG But it’s a great game, and I highly recommend it.

We’re trying to keep this blog updated. Generally failing in any reasonable sense of the word “udpated,” but we are trying

We had a small game night last night, just me, Sean, and Jordan, our new(ish) QA guy. We opted to try out Fiasco, a “storytelling game,” I purchased a digital download of last week. Fiasco aims to replicate a kind of loose, short-session Dungeons & Dragons, only with far less rules and no Dungeon Master. Drawing from small-time caper films where something goes horribly wrong (BLOOD SIMPLE, A SIMPLE PLAN, THE KILLING, FARGO, etc.), players take on various roles, have relationships with one another, and then most of us try to do something stupid, with the end result being catastrophe. The goal being to simulate in about two hours one of those caper films. Our first play session went reasonably well. We chose an Old West scenario, with Sean playing a grizzled ranch hand (Billy Bahb) and partner to Jordan’s ranch hand (Skeeter Montana). Years ago, a drunk Billy Bahb tried to convince Skeeter to purchase his railroad pushcart and goaded him into taking it down to the haunted mine, where Skeeter found old pirate gold (no idea why there were pirates in the Old West, but hell, it’s our first time playing). Back to the present of our story, and Billy tries to convince his no-good stepson Bobby Bahb (me!), a janitor at the hotel Skeeter owns with part of his gold proceeds to rob the hotel safe and get the gold back that should be rightfully his. Bobby sleeps with Skeeter’s wife after nailing him into the outhouse. Billy Bahb tries to (unsuccessfully) burn the outhouse down with Skeeter in it (Skeeter rocks the outhouse over on top of Billy Bahb). Billy Bahb’s wife, Dolly, tells him she slept with someone else, setting off a drunken rampage where he beats Dolly.

Billy Bahb asks for Bobby’s help again, with Bobby agreeing. Skeeter overhears and becomes paranoid. In the second act, Skeeter sends goons out to beat Billy Bahb and Bobby up and tie them up. Dolly comes in with a gun, shoots her husband in the leg. The Bahbs get free and open up the safe with Dolly’s help (she had the key due to her relationship with Skeeter; and of course, I have to sleep with her again). Bobby turns on his dad and knocks him unconscious. He and Dolly get the gold. Billy Bahb shoots his son in the head, Dolly shoots her husband a few more times, and Billy Bahb rides off on the handcart with the gold, down to the old haunted mine. Skeeter dies of his wounds, Bobby ends up mentally handicapped, working as a janitor in the new hotel in town, no longer a ladies’ man, and Bobby haunts the mine. Dolly winds up with the gold that conveniently fell off the handcart and takes over the town.

Fiasco was a lot of fun, and even with people who aren’t the strongest at improv, the suggestions and twists gave us a decent little story. Rules are fairly limited, which lets you craft a story fairly easily and also adds some tension and complications. I’m interested to try the game again.

We also played Small World, with Sean edging me out by a single gold coin at the very end (120-119). What a frustrating way to lose!

On to actual Gamzee product news. We’ve been working hard away on a few things. First is the iOS version of DownWords, which we actually finished and were ready to release. But then we realized we should wait, because we’re also adding some cool multiplayer features to the game that will make it that much better.

And we’ve also been working on our mysterious third game, which is seeing great progress. I can’t say what it is, but can say that it’s a very social, multiplayer game that should appeal to people who like things like Words With Friends and Draw Something.

But first, some news…

We’re in the home stretch on mystery game #1. It’s looking very nice. Stay tuned for more news.

Last week’s Game Night marked the debut of BANG!, a Spaghetti Western-themed card game that we’ve had in our office for around five months. We finally got around to playing it. BANG! is kind of a cross between Mafia/Werewolf and maybe a really dumbed-down Magic: The Gathering or Dominion, sans deck-building.

Players take on a secret role, except for the sheriff, and try to kill or help each other out secretly. The hidden role dynamic, variety of cards (we played with a super-set with several expansions), different characters, and other bits make for a fun, quick game. Plus, all the cards are in Italian and English, so you can practice your fancy accent.

This week, we brought out Small World again, for a four-handed game. It was the first time playing for Michael and Tom (Web Designer). But the great thing about Small World is that it’s pretty simple to pick up, a quick play, and fun. Despite some inadvertent cheating on my part, I managed to win the game, just barely. This was the first time I’d played any games with Emily where she didn’t win (although she did come in second).

It was Emiley’s first Game Night with Gamzee and she came out swinging. We tried Small World, a game I recently picked up and played a couple of 2-player rounds of with my fiancee. It is a game that I highly recommend. As board game fans know, good board games are expensive. Small World’s no exception, costing $49.99.

But Small World’s worth it. Aside from the gameplay (which I’ll get to in a moment), it features beautiful art, four different boards (for 2-, 3-, 4- and 5- player variations), nice thick cardstock race tokens, and nicely-designed and robust money, turn marker, custom pieces like mountains, heroes, a dragon, and fortifications, and a custom die (turning a 6-sided die into one that shows 0-3).

Gameplay is great. Unlike a lot of Eurogames, your time investment is limited due to the turn marker (8-10 turns, depending on the number of players). And the designer took time to craft four different boards for the varying amounts of players. It’s a very fun, well-balanced game with a clear strategy and a good amount of variation. The goal is to get the most victory coins, mostly through conquest, utilizing one or more races with different abilities and randomly-selected special powers.

Emiley cleaned up, winning handily.

We are pleased to announce Emiley Flowers joining the team, at least for a while, as a contract artist. Emiley is super-talented, and is going to be helping our art director, John Flynn out with cranking out all the assets making an isometric game requires.

You can check out some of her work here:

http://www.palidoozy.com/

On an unrelated topic, as game dorks, we have a weekly game night every Thursday evening. Most of the games we play are Eurogames and/or Fantasy-themed. Frequent favorites are Munchkin, Munchkin Booty (the pirate set), Talisman (2nd edition), and Settlers of Cataan. We actually have a bunch more games, but we usually wind up playing those.

Last week, we tried out Dominion, which John bought. For those who’ve never played, Dominion is a “Living Card Game,” which combines a lot of the appeal of Collectible Card Games, except there aren’t sealed, randomized packs, and you can get all the cards in a set for a low price (saving you hundreds to thousands of dollars versus something like Magic: The Gathering).

In Dominion, you have a varied set of communal cards that you can “buy” to add to your deck each turn. Each player tries to amass the most Victory Points, and play continues until three stacks of purchasable cards are exhausted or the stack of 6-point Victory Point cards (Provinces). What makes it cool is that the base set comes with a wide variety of cards, so you can swap out the purchasable cards with dozens of variants, making each game different with totally new strategies.

We played a couple games, the stock setup, which Sean won outright, and the “Large Size” deck variant, which has a bunch of cards that add cards to your deck (and one that gives you points for each 10 cards in your deck rounded down). That game was much closer, with a 2-point difference between last and first. I won that round

Next week, who knows? Michael’s been clamoring for some Trivial Pursuit. We have Bang!, and haven’t yet played (and I’m definitely interested). And I just bought Small World, but have only played with my long-suffering fiancee.

Howard and I headed up to Silicon Valley this week to meet with some venture capital folks.

The interest in Gamzee has been really nice; my theory is that when you combine an experienced team {and Howard counts for 90% of that } and HTML5/cross-platform games, you get a lot of people amped up. And it was nice to see some excitement out of the venture capital community.

The Bay Area was surprisingly warm. San Jose/Menlo Park’s always warmer than San Francisco, but even SF was bright and sunny (we had a meeting downtown, too). Which was a nice contrast to a couple of weeks ago when it was 50 or so. It was also nice to hear the various theses that VCs had on HTML5 and mobile gaming as markets/businesses.

Our theory is really simple:

1) Mobile is going to be huge; mobile social will eclipse regular social due to the larger number of mobile devices than desktop computers. Companies like Facebook and Google need to succeed with social networks on mobile because that’s where all the growth is. If you add in mobile social networks (right now, much bigger in places like Asia than here) and various other Web social networks and unknowns, the potential for growth is insane.

2) HTML5 is great because it lets you make one game for all devices (bonus for developers), and it lets users play games how they want — play on the Web, play on your phone, play on your tablet, or go back and forth from any combination of devices (bonus for consumers).

VCs had varying theories about the market. Some think Facebook will make HTML5 on mobile a smashing success because they have to. Some think it may take them a little while and that Google or Mozilla could pick up the slack. But they all agree that mobile social is huge and HTML5 is huge.

So we’re not as crazy as we seem.

I do realize that I’ve been to the San Jose airport a number of times over the last couple of years, and almost every time I eat at the mediocre Japanese place. Which I did this time, too. And I finally realized there are a bunch of other restaurants there, including a British pub. Apparently, I’m either very preoccupied when I’m at SJC or just not very observant. Or both.

Next time — fish ‘n’ chips. Or Mexican.

We have some really cool news that we’ll be sharing on Monday. (How’s that for a teaser?)

In the meantime, since that’d be a ridiculously short post…

One of the perks of being a game developer is that I play a ton of games, mostly social and mobile games (because that’s what I’m working on). I’m a huge fan of the “With Friends” series from Newtoy (now part of Zynga). Although they “borrowed” most of Scrabble, Words With Friends is a fantastic game that really leveraged Facebook well, and also works well for some friendly competition on mobile. Chess With Friends is also good, although none of my friends really play it.

Which brings us to Hanging With Friends. There’s a lot of stuff they do right with it. The graphics are cute, they leverage the whole tile system and bonus placement from Words With Friends. But there’s a serious flaw in the game. Namely, that there’s one dominant/superior strategy. If you want to win, just pick short words. You get more guesses the shorter your word is, but if you lay down something like Japer, there’s almost no way your opponent is going to guess it.

Which means that a lot of what the designer(s) intended — maximizing score and bonuses by playing longer words, trying to show off your vocabulary — just don’t work. If you want to win, just play 4- and 5-letter words every time. If they involve few vowels or unusual letter combinations, odds are, your opponent will get them wrong. If you play anyone else who’s realized this optimal strategy, it quickly becomes a race to see who’ll mess up guessing more short words and fall into the lava first. Not much variety, and not much fun.

The team should rethink this, possibly making players play words of six letters or more or compensating you in some gameplay-related fashion that affects the outcome of the match (not with bonuses or coins or some other metagame function that doesn’t apply).

Just my two cents.

Just got back from this year’s Mobilebeat (and Gamebeat), where we were fortunate enough to present in the Startup Competition.

Lots of interesting stuff going on, with a lot of excitement around payments (particularly NFC) and mobile wallets, a lot of excitement about HTML5, and some really cool demos of upcoming things like Nvidia’s quad-core chips for mobile devices. It was fascinating to see a tablet running a demo with realtime lightsourcing and curtains being rendered blowing in the wind or reacting to a ball passing through them with all the physics you normally only see on consoles or PCs with a high-end graphics card. It seems like with new hardware, new standards support, and 4G, we’re only a little while away from a renaissance in mobile gaming.

The other really gratifying thing was hearing some industry giants speak about the future of gaming (mobile and otherwise). Trip Hawkins from Digital Chocolate (and the founder of EA!) gave a long talk about how the walled garden approach (he called it a feudal serfdom) that Apple and companies like Sony use is over (where you’re making native content for that platform only), and that content longs to be free and soon will be thanks to technologies like HTML5. That was refreshing, because that’s our philosophy here at Gamzee!

And Peter Driessen, CEO of Spil Games, in a talk about HTML5 gaming said that although it’s early on in the space, there are a few companies doing interesting things with the tech right now, and then called us out by name. So that was pretty cool.

We didn’t wind up winning that startup competition (a startup called Onavo, which has already achieved some amazing success and funding by compressing the data your cell phone uses, did; and a really cool startup of college students, Tappmob, won the audience award in our category — they were super-impressive, because they looked to be in their teens and already started a company; it took me until my mid-twenties to start my first company), but it was an awesome experience to publicly present Gamzee for the first time. The feedback we got — from VCs, from other companies in the space, from fellow entrepreneurs, and from friendly folks who happened to see me speak — was outstanding.

There’s a bright future ahead for mobile and for HTML5 gaming, and we’re psyched to be leading the charge!

We’re looking forward to demoing our game to interested folks at Casual Connect next week.

Here’s the official story on Venturebeat. Looks like there are some pretty cool companies in the competition alongside us. Go startups!

http://venturebeat.com/2011/07/07/meet-the-8-consumerapp-startups-for-the-mobilebeat-2011-competition/

Gamzee has been selected as a Mobilebeat Startup Competition finalist in the Consumer/Applications category. We’re pretty psyched!

I’ll be making a short presentation about what we’re working on, the market, and our team next Tuesday, July 12th. If you’re up in San Francisco for the conference, please stop by and check it out. And vote for us