SOMA, the perfect Let’s Play experience

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Let’s Play videos are popular on YouTube but controversial for a few reasons. I think overall those videos are doing more good than harm, especially for the horror genre whose game SOMA is a very good example of.

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Game Design Tips #3 : Don't be afraid to try something new in a sequel

Sequels in video game follows the same dilemma that in the movie picture industry : what to remove from the first opus, what to keep to maintain the spirit and what to add to make it exciting again. The bottom line is, whatever you choose, people will get disappointed and/or angry. Decisions on features will only change which people you will annoy. In the video game industry, I guess that it boils down to the following alternative:

If you change too much, long-time fans of the first installment will rant about the so-called “lost spirit” of the series. You will attract curious new players to your game, and they will be able to play the previous game if they enjoyed the new one, because it won’t be a copycat. And you’ll get the chance to win the long time fans back with the next game of the series.

If you change too few, long-time fans of the first installment will rant about the so-called “lack of creativity” of the series. You will attract curious new players to your game, but they will feel awkward playing previous game, because this will be the same game, but with less features. Next time you’ll announce a new game in the serie, expectations won’t be that much from either group of players.

Example : Dungeon Keeper series, both games are worth playing, Civilization series [fr], with the I-II-III being fairly identical, while the IV and the V being slightly different from each other.

Counter-example : Original Fallout series, playing the first game after the second is just a waste of time (or for the story only), Constructor series, with Street Wars (Constructor Underworld) being Constructor but better, or Anno series [fr], whose graphic enhancements doesn’t completely cover the lack of new game concept in each and every sequel.

Game Design Tips #2 : Offer choices for different paths

Game designers are sometimes tempted to offer players a way to start over again the game while they maintain their first run. This is a great feature if the game offers multiple choices and big decisions processes. That way the players can explore different facets of the game and keeps enjoying the game over and over again.

Of course, if the second run is too close from the first, it’ll just seem a waste of time. And a faint attempt from the game makers to artificially over-extend the game lifetime at the expense of new features, which is often bad received.

Example : EVE Online‘s alternate characters are a great way to explore the rich skill tree of the game.

Counter-examples : TrainStation‘s second station, Simple Hospital‘s second hospital (and third and fourth and fifth), Dungeon Overlord‘s second dungeon…

Game Design Tips #1 : Far goals are appealing

Disclaimer : I’ve been a video game player for more than 20 years now, and even though I’m not myself a professionnal game designer, I’ve slowly built up over the time a sort of game design philosophy based on my gaming experience. These tips are ordered by arrival in my mind to write them up, there is no priority whatsoever.

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How the Bullfrog heritage is being robbed by Facebook Games

I’m a huge fan of late productions of Bullfrog Productions game studio. Dungeon Keeper, Theme Park, Theme Hospital, Populous, Syndicate… You name it, I love it (or I never played it). I was pretty sad when I found out that the studio closed his doors to merge with Electronic Arts.

Since then, I have been longing to play spiritual sequels of those great game. Alas, each and every games inspired from these classics disappointed me (you can read a comparison I wrote in french about Theme Hospital and Hospital Tycoon here). Even when Peter Molyneux was in charge, like for Black and White, I’m never been as thrilled as I was with Bullfrog’s productions.

Then I dived in Facebook “social” games. I found out that most of them don’t meet my quality criterias except for a few like TrainStation, but it didn’t bother me much until I tried three specific games: Simply Hospital, Rollercoaster Mania and Dungeon Overlord. All three share cruel resemblances with old Bullfrog titles and that caught my eye.

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TrainStation, the game that made me add 200+ unknown people on Facebook as friend


I’ve already ranted about Facebook games, hey, I even made a comparison table between a few Facebook games. But not everything is bad, and TrainStation is one of the few games that truly leverages Facebook “friend” network and stays addictive beyond the first 30 minutes of play.

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6 Ways of Making your Facebook Game Suck

Facebook has been a social game platform for a few years now. The lack of quality of the first few games to be released on this platform could easily be explained by the youth of the concept. But no more. So here’s a few useful guidelines if you still want to make your Facebook web-browser game suck in 2011.

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