Simpson's Paradox » game culture

Pong Backlash

Meg — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 16:58:03 +0000

Atari‘s announcement of their upcoming $100,000 Pong Indie Developer Challenge came as a bit of a surprise to me, after their recent app-store cleansing of any indie games with any mechanics similar to existing indie games. Chris Priestman writes on IGM about the Apple’s removal of many — if not all — Atari-influenced indie games, at Atari’s request. He writes specifically on how this has affected indie devs Black Powder Media and their battle game Vector Tanks 3, but there are pretty far-reaching affects of this cleanout for indie devs and players of indie games. Since Atari pioneered many mechanics that are now common game design elements, copyright infringement seems to cover an awful lot of simple mechanics, and simple mechanics with new twists are a staple of indie development. Does Atari, then, own all simple shooters? All games with the physics of Pong? It’s hard to find an action game, indie or core, that doesn’t have a passing resemblance to standards like Pong, Asteroids, Missile Command, and so forth.

So that was in January, and in the end of February, Atari seems to be reversing this stance. Instead of banning these games from the Apple app store, they’re actively looking for iOs games from small studios that reimagine Pong. Wait, what?

My immediate thought was sympathy for the unlucky public-facing writer who was told to quit with the threatening cease-and-desist letters to indies, and start encouraging game pitches from indies… for the very concepts Atari was banning last month. Poor writer, I thought, jumping follow to wildly different company directives. (Perhaps I was projecting a little) I thought the indie games contest might be a direct reaction to the games community’s feelings on the app-store cleanse, that Atari might be trying to clumsily make amends with small studios. Then I thought it might be a case of one corporate branch not communicating with another. On the surface of it, one might well develop a promotional contest for Pong’s 40th, without expecting a conflict from legal’s work protecting the company’s IP.

While I still see this as a corporate gaffe more than a planned screwover of indie devs, a bit of shady wording in the official rules makes it even less advantageous to indie studios.

That promised $100,000 prize is not actually the cash that Atari will be handing to indie studio who breathes new life into their dying franchise, er, develops a fun new take on Pong. The winner will actually receive $50K (a pretty nice prize, if not marketed as $100K). The other half of the promised prize money is the maximum the indie studio can make as revenue sharing on their game. I guess Atari lays claim to the game’s revenue after explicitly offering assistance to market the game and resources to develop the game.

And, of course, implicitly reminding any small studio who may have a revamped Pong in the works, that this partnership with Atari on their terms is the only way to get that game made and released.

Via Atari Pong Indie Developer Challenge

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Pong Backlash

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Words With Friends

Meg — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:09:34 +0000

A friend of mine is newly single, and not exactly by his choosing. He seemed to want to talk about it.

“I was thinking,” my friend said, “Since I don’t gave a girlfriend anymore, I might as well get that new Star Wars MMO.”

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Words With Friends

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Amazon Jungle

Meg — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 01:47:23 +0000

Harold sent me an Amazon link to Wisegal, a casual game he produced, because it’s gotten a pretty stunning player review:

This game is very fun. It is not an easy game nor is it very hard. It is perfect. If you like hidden object games with a good story behind it, this game is for you!

I’m completely impressed with the review. Many outlets for player feedback are skewed towards complaints over commendations, if you know what I mean, which makes a thoroughly positive response like that one a real delight. And we journalists try to stay away from all-caps fanboy style reactions, we try so hard to be unbiased and thorough that it’s quite rare to write a review that’s so unequivocally positive (even for games I’ve really enjoyed).

I couldn’t be more impressed, but after telling Harold this, I can’t resist pointing out that listed under What Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?, is Tiger Eye, a game I’d worked on.

In a totally unrelated news, never ever look at how many used copies of your product are available on Amazon, or how inexpensive they are. Nothing good comes of that.

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Amazon Jungle

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Bring Me The MacGuffin

Meg — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:35:08 +0000

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Bring Me The MacGuffin

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Some Thought Involved

Meg — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 23:52:32 +0000

Caitlin, our brilliant QA lead, is testing one of the quests I wrote. Working in games has been my dream for a long time, but having a mission I designed currently in testing is sort of like the ego-bruising of an editor critique mixed with the frustration of locating all the usual options in a brand-new software version.

A couple hours into our shared rather unpleasant grind of sorting out what’s broken because of me, what’s the platform, what’s me, what’s programming, and what’s me, Caitlin stopped by my desk.

“It’s pretty smart,” she said, “how the end of the mission gives players *interactive item* that will prompt them to engage *overall game goal*!”

“Don’t sound so shocked!” I said, “There was actually some thought involved!”

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Some Thought Involved

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Things I Have Learned About Games

Meg — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 20:37:32 +0000

Behind every bright pink videogame promotion is a female game dev headdesking in frustration.

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Things I Have Learned About Games

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Games, Life, Whatever

Meg — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 16:29:10 +0000

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Games, Life, Whatever

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Write Flavor Text On Computer

Meg — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 16:21:44 +0000

Man, it’s like even my social games are telling me to get back to work.

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Write Flavor Text On Computer

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Casual Success

Meg — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 20:59:58 +0000

For questwriting at work today, I needed a map of the Next Island tropical continent. We don’t have a giant printer, so I printed out pages of map sections. Then, I looked at the unlabeled squares of terrain that I needed to reassemble into a useful game map.

All my years of casual gaming were just preparation for this moment.

(If you ever need someone to unlock a door with a slider puzzle, or arrange things in threes, I’m your girl.)

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Casual Success

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NYGaming June Roundup

Meg — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 22:17:23 +0000

A few weeks ago, I went to the NYGaming June meeting. I wrote on Socks, Inc. over at Indie Game Mag, and on Cloud Assassin over at I Heart Chaos. I also really enjoyed the Herograph demo, I’ll have more to say about that soon!
The best part of the evening was during the Cloud Assassin demo, when someone asked how they planned to monetize the game. See, in my work for Next Island and as a journalist, I often find myself hearing about how to make a game more viral or how to monetize on Facebook, and I have to admit it saddens me. As a gamergirl, I imagined the industry bubbling over with groundbreaking ideas, of developers bringing interactive stories to players, and coming up with exciting new game mechanics, and it breaks my idealistic heart when I find instead checklists of success metrics, ARPU, MAU, and the buzzworded “fun factor” slipped in as an afterthought. (Oh hey, friends, the next time I’m complaining about being broke, would someone please point out the direct correllation between being broke and avoiding every part of my industry that involves making money?)

Anyway, the developers were asked how they planned to monetize, and one guy paused for a moment and then said they weren’t interested in monetization as much as they had a great idea to make the game they wanted to play.

And the entire room applauded.

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NYGaming June Roundup

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