playyoo

I sat down with Kars Alfrink, interaction designer, teacher, and consultant for Playyoo, to get a behind-the-scenes look at the Game Creator, and see if he’d indulge me in revealing what’s next. For those of you attending the upcoming GDC conference in San Francisco next week, be sure to check out Kars’ talk on Feb 18: Designing a Casual Social Gaming Experience for Generation C.

[photo courtesy of Ram Yoga]

So, the Game Creator has been released for over a month now. What has it been like to see it in use? Any surprises?
First off, it’s been a lot of fun to watch how people are using the Game Creator and see their creations. Sure, there have been some pleasant surprises – for instance, I’ve seen some really cool snake levels, where people just went crazy with the layout of the levels. The Game Creator is about personal expression. And the games seem to fall into two categories. The first group of games uses graphics with a broad appeal – for example, a famous character, a scantily clad model, or a known politician. And then there are the games that are entirely personal. They make no sense to you or me, only to the person who created it and their friends. For example, I saw one variation of Lunar Lander where you need to land a crab on someone’s, let’s say Debbie’s, head. Now, I have no idea who Debbie is, but I can imagine Debbie is a friend or sister of the game’s creator. And it must have been a lot of fun for them to include the picture, and then have an easy way to distribute it to their friends.

At its initial release, the Game Creator has 6 game types: Lunar Lander, Pairs, Revenge, Snake, Tic Tac Toe, and Ping Pong. Why these six?
In the early planning stages, we created a long list of potential games. We picked these six for various reasons: familiarity, opportunity for customization, and suitability for the mobile platform. Sticking with well-known games is key. With known games, there’s no learning curve. People already know how to play the game, and can instantly start thinking of ways to change it.

So, will we see some other games from the list?
Sure. From day one, we always knew we were going to add more game types to the mix, and give people even more choices. I’m not going to give anything away right now, but we are working on some other game types, and definitely want to strike a good balance between classic arcade types and puzzle games.

Let’s talk a little about the social aspect of Playyoo, and in particular the interaction between the Game Creator and the larger Playyoo community.
For game designers, the social aspect is a fun thing to watch. They can see who’s playing their game, who’s getting the high scores, and various comments from players. With the Game Creator, most of the fun comes from creating games for your friends. From that standpoint, the games themselves become “social objects”, to use a term from the social media circle. The games essentially become an ‘excuse’ to have conversations with people.

And do you see different conversations forming around original games and those made with the Game Creator?
If you look at the conversations around original games, they tend to focus on the specifics of game play – does the game work, did it take too long to complete, was it too large. So here, designers can get instant feedback from players. It’s a little different with Game Creator games. The discussions center around the underlying message – like the silly picture someone put in, or the political figure that was used. But, the key here is that both conversations can coexist on the same site. I see a lot of parallels with Flickr. I post photos that I captured on my camera phone. The comments on my photos aren’t focused on my photography skills, or the lighting, or any of that, but more the story behind the photo. On the other hand, my friend is an avid photographer with a professional-grade SLR camera. His photos generate comments on composition, technique, lighting, and more.So, in some ways, the Game Creator is like the camera phone for the mobile gaming world. It might not be a perfect comparison, but it’s all about breaking down the barriers to creation and self-expression.

It’s amazing how quickly time flies. The Playyoo Game Contest is in full swing, and we’re just a few short weeks away from the deadline. To be clear:

• You have up to February 15 to submit a game & be eligible for the contest
• Winners will be determined based on popularity and community activity as of February 28

Haven’t submitted your game yet? Don’t despair- you have until February 15th. But remember, winners are determined by community activity (i.e. number of times played, number of people who have recommended or marked it as a favorite). So, if you still want to enter your creations (whether they’re created with Game Creator or your own design skills), you might want to come up with a creative marketing & self-promotion campaign to go along with it. Encourage friends, family, anyone to download, play, and recommend. After all, if your mom marks your game as a favorite, it’s not against any of our rules.

Well, there’s a first time for everything, and on Tuesday morning we had our first serious outage. So, what went wrong ? Well, to be absolutely honest, we’re not exactly sure, since an issue with the application server software pulled the rug out from under the feet of our monitoring and logging systems, and hence everything vanished in a puff of bad logic.

But we’ve learnt our lesson, and we’ve now got monitoring systems monitoring the systems which monitor the systems running the monitoring systems, so hopefully we’ve not only got it covered, but we should be able to come up with pre-emptive measures in the future.

We’re not going to promise it won’t happen again. We’re not insane. But hopefully it’s a lot less likely.

We’re very sorry for the loss of service, and especially for anybody who lost work in the Game Creator.

I’ve been known to be a picky eater- not horribly so, but let’s just say that if someone were to put food in front of me at random, there’s a chance I might not eat it. Why am I mentioning this? Well, here at the office we compare the new game stream feature to a sushi boat (that carousel conveyor that circles sushi dishes around). It’s a great visual image, and people (at least those who have been to a sushi restaurant) understand the feature right away.

But, game stream is actually not your ordinary sushi boat. A more accurate comparison would be a sushi boat where you called ahead, told the chef which types of sushi rolls you like, and that’s all they sent down the line. And- it would be just like the restaurant knew your food allergies, and made sure to never send anything containing crab, for example.

So, how does this work? When you sign up for Playyoo, you can personalize your game stream settings – and create the perfect balance of card, casino, shooting, action, puzzle, etc. that will satisfy your game appetite perfectly. If your main games are puzzles, but you might play a racing game or two- you can make this happen. 

And behind the scenes, Playyoo is working hard to make you’re your game stream will only present games that are compatible with the specifications of your phone. We know how frustrating it is to go through the work of downloading or checking out a game, only to realize later that it just won’t work. So with Playyoo, you can be sure that the games you see, are games you can play.

If you haven’t set your preferences yet, you can find it here (or you can find the link on the top right of the screen once you’ve logged in). So be sure to set your game stream preferences and pick your menu.

With the launch of Playyoo beta, there’s definitely an excited energy at the office - coupled with the inevitable stress from long nights and one too many espressos. And all these frazzled nerves got me thinking about an older (well, 2003) study conducted by the Utrecht University on the effects of game play on the job. (you can read more about the study here).

Scientists followed a group of 60 employees at a Dutch insurance firm – half were allowed to play up to an hour of simple computer games like Solitaire a day, while the other group wasn’t so lucky. And sure enough, the employees that played felt better about their jobs and were more productive. So, a round of solitaire can help break up a long work day, give the brain a break from complex work, and help people be more effective (think recess back in elementary school).

So, go ahead. Take a time out from your hectic schedule and try out a game or two on our beta site. The experts say you should.