From the Box to the ‘ Book

1. From the Box to the ‘Book Bringing a Retail Franchise into the Social Gaming World Demetri DetsaridisExecutive Producer Area/Code Caryl Shaw Sr. Producer Maxis/Electronic Arts

2. Who are these people? • Maxis is a wholly-owned studio of Electronic Arts. • Number of employees at kickoff: 9,920 (EA) • Known for titles Spore, SimCity and The Sims • Based in Emeryville, CA • Area/Code is an independent game developer. • Number of Employees at kickoff: 16 • Known for titles Parking Wars (Facebook) and Drop7 (iPhone) • Developers of location-based, mobile, web-based and social games • Based in New York, NY

3. What is this stuff? • PC Game • Designed by Will Wright & Maxis • Released in 2008 • Metacritic: 87 • Over 3M copies sold • Facebook circa 2008 had… • Slightly more than 100M users • Games like Lil’ Green Patch, Texas Hold ‘Em Poker, Friends for Sale, and Who Has The Biggest Brain? were surging toward the 5M user mark.

4. WIN! • Spore is more “casual” than the typical boxed PC title. • This fits Facebook’s userbase and EA’s efforts to diversify its audience. • Spore was always supposed to be multiplatform. Really???

5. What were our goals? • Create a new Spore game for the biggest social platform • Begin learning how to develop for Facebook • Stay true to the key concepts of Spore • Generate microtransaction revenue • Minimize costs by outsourcing to a team with relevant experience Goals

6. What were our goals? • Develop a successful Facebook title with a AAA publisher • Prove indie-style dev works on huge “franchise” games • Bring real multiplayer into the single-player Spore experience. • Make a fun game, worthy of mention alongside Will Wright’s name. Goals

7. What about the risks? • Social Games – expanding into an area where we had little experience • Delivering a true “Spore” experience • Will it make money? • Can we capture a new audience for an established franchise? • Would the developer be able to keep up? Risks

8. What about the risks? • Area/Code’s 1st traditional publisher collaboration – would cultures clash? • EA was new to social games – would they listen to the lessons we’d learned? • Spore never quite captured core gamer hearts – could we count on them as early adopters? • EA and A/C both wanted a more hardcore game than Facebook’s norm – was it just us? Risks

9. Before you do anything… • Proposal • Contract Negotiation • Design • Project Schedule Planning • Or um… should Design come first? Kickoff

10. What about the risks? • As we got started, we were also reminded of one other very important reality… Risks

11. Area/Code! • Relative Sizes* of the Spore Islands Partners

12. Top 10 • Spore Islands • Lessons

13. #10 • Do user testing – and believe it! • We did focus groups, but their lessons sometimes pointed in scary directions • We addressed most issues in Open Beta, but we could have started sooner! Lessons

14. Designing Social Spore • SporePC promised to let you see your friends’ creatures on your home world. • Facebook seemed made to deliver on that promise – and this became our #1 design goal. • We wanted players to: • Build their own life-forms • Place them in an environment • Evolve them to thrive in their surroundings Design

15. Designing Social Spore • Ultimately, our discussions came down to one central choice: are we building a “sim”? • If so, this slightly scary stuff would be true: • Build-tweak-repeat is the game’s core loop • User actions don’t give prompt feedback • We’d need big time server infrastructure • No role models on Facebook to study Design

16. Designing Social Spore • We really struggled with going the sim route. • Pros: • Leaning on Maxis’ skills and experience in the genre is kind of a no-brainer. • The Sims showed there was such a thing as a mass market simulation game. • Doing a sim would allow us to be deeper, cheaper via procedural content. Design

17. Designing Social Spore • We really struggled with going the sim route. • Cons: • What is a multiplayer sim anyway? • We wanted competition, but PvP and sims both skew hardcore. Too much for Facebook? • Given hardware demands, persistent real-time was impossible. But without it, creating player agency is difficult. Design

18. Designing Social Spore • Those are some big challenges. • Butwe decided to go for it. As indies, gameplay innovation is the way we succeed. It’s scary and risky, as it is elsewhere in the industry, but this is iterative game development. • It’s also how the bar is pushed on Facebook: before FarmVille there was Farm Town. Design

19. Designing Social Spore Risky • Lessons learned on Spore PC • Worried it was the wrong platform for a hardcore sim • What would the second-to-second gameplay look like? Design

20. Design Requirements • Waddaya Want? • Stay true to Spore PC • But be appropriate for Facebook • Creativity, creativity, creativity • Area/Code’s pre-conceived notions • Had a great knowledge of past Maxis titles • Not trying to make SimEarth, guys… Design

21. Designing Social Spore • We called it Spore Ecosystems and it would be Facebook’s first “on demand” sim: • When users want to see their creatures’ progress, the server looks at creature and environmental stats and generates results. • To avoid boring text, we would show the results of those “on demand” sessions graphically as mini-cartoons. Design

24. Building the Game • We used Spore creatures as character portraits with “toy” versions in the result animations. • At this stage, it looked like a cross between an X Wars game and a casual PC title. • While our Art Director worked on the UI, we play-tested a prototype internally with promising results. Development

25. Building the Game • At the Alpha external playtest, though, gamers liked it…but non-gamers were having a hard time connecting with their creatures. • This was partly UI, but partly game design – players spent lots of time watching creatures interact without doing much themselves. • Not too different from X Wars, right?Click, then see your results. But the complexity made it different enough. Development

26. Building the Game • Taking game design risks is an important part of competing on Facebook. • But novel designs make social gaming’s nimble development practices hard to follow. • Early user testing, taken seriously, lets you act quickly on potential trouble spots. Development

27. #9 • Tutorialize the game experience • We didn’t leave time to create dynamic help and instead delivered more standard click-through text boxes. • It wasn’t ideal and it cost us users. Lessons

28. Building the Game • We all know Facebook users aren’t hardcore gamers, but sometimes we forget just how much that matters. • Cramming a tutorial in late in the cycle is nuts when your players don’t even know the basics of the genre. • The tutorial must be ready for user tests, so start it at prototype. • Explain the game to your users asyou figure it out for yourself. Development

29. #8 • Agile works • …especially for high-speed, rapid-iteration projects. • It gives partners excellent visibility and eases planning. • But you have to use silly words. Not that big a deal. Lessons

30. Producing the Game • Area/Code was switching to Agile Development when we began SporeIslands. • The new process created a few hiccups, like getting used to the intentional transparency. • It also took us some time to adjust to shared task lists and weekly client builds. Development

31. Building the Game • There were eight staffers on the Spore Islandsteam: mostly veterans, most full time. • Maxis added another 1 ½ full-timers. • One of us had used Agile before. • Uptake difficulties aside (and you will have them), we recommend Agile heartily for Facebook development. • It helps keep you nimble and, as wesaid…you need that. Development

32. #7 • Total brand fidelity is unnecessary • We spent lots of time worrying about confusing users by diverging from Spore PC • They… didn’t care. Lessons

33. Producing the Game • What to do? What to do. • Art style deliberations • Executive oversight Production!

34. #6 • Metrics are your friend • We learned a huge amount from data collection, from purchase details to UI usage • Track as much as you can…then track more. Lessons

35. Metrics • Make them a priority • Shared between Dev & Publisher • Process to take action • Identify required reporting early • Take Action! Production!

36. Building the Game • Metrics came late to the party for us, as our studio-wide stat package wasn’t ready until after launch. • Open Beta is when it should have been ready • …but creating reusable code was vital. • Metrics, like user testing and Agile, help you turn faster. • We can’t stress enough how important that is in making socialgames. Development

37. #5 • The high road leads nowhere • You are in business to make money, especially with a big publisher. • Don’t scam your users…but if Purple Cows work, use Purple Cows! Lessons

38. Island Microtransactions • Our plan was always for Spore Islands to be supported by microtransaction revenues. • Early in the design phase, we started talking about how to integrate MTX opportunities wherever possible. • Even so, revenue generation should have been a greater focus, earlier in the dev cycle. $$$$$

39. Island Microtransactions • We studied the Facebook microtransaction market and saw that there are two basic tracks to MTX revenue: • Customization: Allowing users to pay to personalize their experience in the application (aka “dollhousing”). • Convenience: Giving users the option to pay to cut down on time spent grinding (i.e. automation of repetitive tasks). $$$$$

40. Island Microtransactions • We spent much time and trouble assuring balance between paying and free-play customers in the system. • Area/Code and Maxis/EA saw this as a vital part of maintaining the integrity of the brand, on a par with avoiding “scam” offers. WE WERE WRONG $$$$$

41. Island Microtransactions • It turns out that our player base, at least, had caught up to where Chinese gamers were five years ago. • When we made it possible for players spending more real cash to get ahead in the game faster, they were fine with it. • Don’t ignore potential revenue streams unless you’re sure they’re poisoned. $$$$$

42. MTX Gotchas • Only used one form of currency when most other successful games were using two • Cut a “dollhousing” feature that could potentially have been a good MTX feature (Island customization) • Didn’t allow players to Buy Observations at launch $$$$$

43. Boldly Going • Choosing a vendor • Setting up accounting in EA • Hosting and stuff $$$$$

44. #4 • Don’t change all of the rules at once • Innovation drives success in growing markets like Facebook, but can confuse mass audiences. • Small changes to known systems make new experiences easier to swallow. Lessons

45. Example: Grindcore? • As designed, Spore Islands had no levels, at all. • We were avoiding Facebook RPGs’ tedious treadmills and their 20-year-0ld problems. • But in our Open Beta, players begged for some kind of leveling – anything at all. • We quickly implemented a system that would let them level up their titles from one island-themed rank to another. Development

46. Example: Grindcore? • But even then, the players wanted more. They wanted to increase their stats. • Our elegant zero-sum system was designed to trade grinding for subtle systems mastery, but the average player didn’t understand it. • We resisted “making the game more ordinary” but missed that players were just looking for a familiar hook in a simgenre brand new to Facebook. WE WERE WRONG Development

47. Example: Creature Look • When we first started on Spore Ecosystems, it used Spore artwork for player-created creatures. • We moved away from this quickly, however, as it risked confusing players of the PC title… • …as well as alienating the more casual Facebook audience with its very “hardcore” 3D looks. Development