Raph’s Website » Webs.com: a case study of “design for everywhere”

Webs.com: a case study of “design for everywhere”

December 12th, 2007 (Visited 2337 times) Tags:

Dean Takahashi has a nice article up on the makers of Warbook. It’s a great example of games built under that “design for everywhere” pattern that I have been talking about for the last few months.

Exclusive: Webs.com comes out of nowhere with Facebook games with a billion page views

For instance, Street Race is a new SGN game that has no graphics. You simply sign up, get $1,000 in play money, buy a car, then race. In the race, you click on another user. Then nothing happens. Nothing. The next screen that comes up tells you if you won or lost, how much money you earned or lost, and the skill points you earned. As your skill points grow, you win more races and get more money to spend souping up your car. The social part comes in where you can get more money by inviting 20 friends to join.It’s simple and easy. That’s why the game has gotten more than a million page views on its first day. You can play a round in about one second.

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rascunho » Blog Archive » links for 2007-12-13 wrote on December 13th, 2007 at 12:26 pm:

[...] Raph’s Website » Webs.com: a case study of “design for everywhere” Dean Takahashi has a nice article up on the makers of Warbook. It’s a great example of games built under that “design for everywhere” pattern that I have been talking about for the last few months. (tags: http://www.raphkoster.com 2007 mes11 dia13 at_tecp games Facebook OpenSocial webs.com design_for_everywhere passive_web_gaming Warbook Raph_Koster) [...]

InternetActu.net » Des jeux partout wrote on December 17th, 2007 at 6:46 am:

[...] insignifiants que puisse paraitre ces jeux, ils ont attir� l’attention de Raph Koster, grand concepteur de jeux devant l’Eternel (il est derri�re le c�l�bre Ultima Online et le [...]

Des jeux partout « Polen’s blog wrote on December 17th, 2007 at 7:00 am:

[...] insignifiants que puisse paraitre ces jeux, ils ont attiré l’attention de Raph Koster, grand concepteur de jeux devant l’Eternel (il est derrière le célèbre Ultima Online et le [...]

moo said on December 12th, 2007 at 11:09 am:

One thing that completely mystifies me is watching otherwise-intelligent people go all googly-eyed over stupid Facebook games and even spend actual time playing them. All those zombies vs. pirates and stuff. What the hell? Haven’t these people played any *real* games before? I guess not, or they would instantly realize that real games are a thousand times better… (sigh)

Gene Endrody said on December 12th, 2007 at 11:42 am:

*Real* games? Wow, try defining that. (opposite of *fake games* I guess)

As opposed to assuming that millions upon millions of people are idiots, perhaps it’s time to consider why simple games succeed and whether designers who make them are actually on to something. You could jump to the conclusion that a designer was too incompetent to make anything more sophisticated and just got lucky. Or, in a moment of wisdom, you could consider that perhaps a greater truth was being revealed.

Tipa said on December 12th, 2007 at 11:59 am:

Pirates own zombies, but they both bow before the vampires.

Matt Fisher said on December 12th, 2007 at 3:44 pm:

Not sure what side to take in this one. I admire people that are able to come up with abstract games that are fun – it’s never been something I’ve been very good at, and when I’ve managed to it’s often been a complete accident.

In this case, though, I’m inclined to think that the success of the game is a combination of it being immediately available when people are doing something else they’re doing anyway – “Solitaire Success” rather than being something compelling enough that people would be willing to seek it out under other circumstances, and perhaps more importantly, the fact that it spreads virally. Get your users to spam their friends with requests to join/click on a link, and you’re going to get numbers, even if it’s trash.

When faced with these things, I have to go by “Money Talks.” Tetris was a simple, abstract game, and millions of people were willing to pay $50 for it, or however much Tetris was for the NES. Would anyone consider shelling out anything for this game? Anything at all?

While conceptually I’m on-board for finding other ways to monetize an audience, a willingness to look at something for free doesn’t speak nearly as loudly as shelling out something for it, and even less when the only reason they looked at it is because a friend suggested it for no other reason than that they’re rewarded by the game for doing so.

And no, I’m not assuming millions of people are idiots. Just that they have an uncomplicated palate when it comes to gaming. If this drags them in deeper, when they say go out and look for a *real* racing game, then great. But a lot more kids eat at McDonald’s than will ever eat at the table of any master chef. That doesn’t make McDonald’s better food, it just means it’s cheap and available and their parents can’t take them anywhere else.

Gene Endrody said on December 12th, 2007 at 6:57 pm:

Actually, I don’t mind using McDonalds as an example because it is so mass market. Like them or hate them, a great deal of research, money and understanding of their customer went into the MacDonalds menu – more than the vast majority of fancy restaurants. What they’ve done is way more sophisticated than it looks. Designing for an uncomplicated palate can be a very interesting design challenge and it forces you to challenge the *dogma you tend to absorb when designing hardcore games.

(*Dogma – The established belief or doctrine held by a religion, ideology or any kind of organization, thought to be authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted or diverged from.)

I totally agree with you about “Money Talks”. Money does cut through the hype. So who wins? Hardcore is earning more cash. Casual is generating a better return on investment. Let’s call it a tie.

JuJutsu said on December 12th, 2007 at 8:35 pm:

I’m quite willing to assume that millions of people are idiots. What difference does it make? Money from idiots spends just as well as other money. But I think moo may have a point; there are people that hang around this blog that like to think of games as art…as things that can improve the lot of humanity in some way. Not me of course but there are some…Anyone willing to say Street Race falls in those categories?

Matt Fisher said on December 12th, 2007 at 9:57 pm:

Spoken like a business major – if your only standard of success is return on investment, then I agree. A million page views in a day for a mini app that could probably be banged out in a couple of weekends by a single person? quite remarkable.

Personally, though, I’m more concerned about a quality experience, and advancing the medium. (Which I suppose is a luxury) I don’t see that StreetRace does either, other than showing that in a world where served impressions is king, (though I maintain that that world isn’t this one just yet) you don’t really need a product, just a marketing gimmick.

Kerri Knight said on December 13th, 2007 at 1:09 am:

Okay, here’s where I get to show my lack of game theory understanding :9.

Took me about an hour of digging to find the understanding games stuff, again. While this game does follow the rule that outcomes must be uncertain, does ‘random’ qualify? All I can see is random number generator, granted the likeliness of an outcome can be affected by what I can only define as ’stat mods’. This is a system that simply rewards frequent participation via power creep, not user competence. I don’t see much in the way of challenges to overcome, I’d summarize this as an ‘activity’ more than a ‘game’. I do appreciate the fact that it is content which drives social interaction. I’m also completely fine with the idea that people do it and enjoy it.

Again, maybe I’m showing my ‘enthusiast with no experience’ tag here, but is rewarding purely on participation vs. rewarding based on outcome a real defining attribute of games or am I splitting hairs?

chas said on December 13th, 2007 at 6:01 am:

I haven’t tried Street Race but I’ve seen some interesting game strategies come from the “random number” games like it. The “gameplay” isn’t in the act of racing, but in the act of identifying what foe to strike and how to minimize being struck by a foe. Oftentimes there’s a limit to how often you can engage a foe and how long you’re then open for another foe to race you. Making the most of that time is the key “gameplay” that emerges.

In similar games, the reward you get is dependent on the “purse” of your adversary. Choose too easy a target and he’s likely already picked dry. Choose too inactive a target and he won’t have much cash. You want an foe that’s active enough to have a large purse, but not so much that his stats would kill you.

Think of it as primarily a strategy game, with the “race” button more of a “I commit to my move” act in chess- all the maneuvering (albiet a small amount) is done before the click

Gene Endrody said on December 13th, 2007 at 11:03 am:

“I’d summarize this as an ‘activity’ more than a ‘game’.” You could make an argument either way, but either way you’re right on. Habbo often creates activities which can be easily argued are not games. My own Club Marian is not a game, it’s more of a social space with activities. However what they have in common with *real games* is that a designer can experiment with emergence. Once you get a feel for what user’s might do with the toys you throw into the world, you can create an experience that is very sticky because the players think they are the authors of the activities. That, particularly for teens, builds a community and then it’s the community that becomes sticky.

Gene Endrody said on December 13th, 2007 at 11:20 am:

“Spoken like a business major” I’m not sure if that was for me or JuJutsu, however game/activity design is a tool that can be used for different purposes. You will only advance the medium if people see and like your creation. Right now there’s so much navel gazing and self referencing going on in the mainstream games industry, that little games and activities like this challenge preconceptions. So in a small way, they do advance the medium.

Morgan Ramsay said on December 13th, 2007 at 3:52 pm:

I do appreciate the fact that it is content which drives social interaction.

I’d just like to add that content doesn’t drive social interaction; social interaction drives content.

Content just keeps socialization interesting, or in some cases, makes interaction much less so.

Nexus said on December 17th, 2007 at 10:28 am:

One startling trial by fire we all undergo is the evidence that simple, simple minded, crude, even sub-optimal, is often as successful as refined, sophisticated or feature-laden in meeting user expectations, which are none.

This is easily exploited in any HCI opportunity by those that design agressively as opposed to optimally. The “wrong” way to make something is to obstruct the user’s ability to achieve their own perception of the goal in the activity.