trendpreneur

One of the coolest things I find about multiplayer gaming is emergent play — when players change the rules of the game, creating mods or even just rulesets that turn the tables on the developers’ vision. From zombie-rules to no scope, MMO achievement races and self-imposed hard-modes… when players are left alone long enough with a game, something tends to happen that makes you sit up and think.

I’m ashamed to admit I’ve not actually played Team Fortress 2 — I missed the boat when it first came out. But this player-created mod, “Prop Hunt”, is nothing short of awesome. One set of players spawns as ‘normal’ objects and attempts to ingratiate themselves with the scenery before the other team spawns and burns them all to death.

Cue hilariously-soundtracked video (Benny Hill wouldn’t go amiss) of people trying to burn down perfectly ordinary barrels, moving chairs and the occasional “Oh god, I’ve spawned as a frog…” moment. Almost makes me want to play the game, now.

News about us is slowly spreading around the Intertubes;

• 4iP invests in FestBuzz (TechCrunch)
• 4iP invests in FestBuzz (4iP)
• 4iP invests in .. you guessed it (Paid Content)
• .. and it made HN too!

Also, like, totally check out our FestBuzz blog, for some reason it’s not getting much traffic (I need to promote it more on the Festbuzz.com homepage, for one) and there’s some awesome reviews starting to get posted on there by my citizen journo elite squad.

I read an interesting post interviewing Chris Anderson, exponent of “Free” (as in beer) — one of today’s emergent business and social models. It’s an interesting topical conversation, what with Google butting heads with Microsoft over Chrome OS — ‘course, the idea of a free operating system competing with Windows is a crazy brand new innovation, innit.

It’s a move we’re all watching intently, of course. As Ben Parr outlines, this is all part of the Google Revenue Equation: the more time you spend on the web, the more Google benefits. Wave and Chrome OS are just feeding into that. This attitude to ‘free’ couldn’t be more different from the free-as-in-speech approach of the GPL and OSS activists, but do today’s Internet consumers actually care?

One of the points that grabbed me from the Anderson interview was right at the end:

…the games world is the most interesting laboratory for freemium right now, and I follow it more closely than any other industry.

Gaming’s been innovating with payment and subscription models, with delivery, with publicity, with ways to grab audience and ways to get people doing social things for yonks now. Create a social network or platform and sooner or later a killer game comes along, whether it’s throwing sheep at people or building a spy ring.

What I find fascinating is the emergence of a single type of game across Twitter, Facebook and the iPhone: if this is the future, I want out. There’s a standard formula for these games: pick a setting (Mafia, Spies, Pirates, Zombies, Vampires..), think of a few vaguely thematic quests, think of an excuse for people to fight each other, do quests, buy items to become more powerful, and (occasionally) feed a social aspect in: friends can be part of your spy ring, or mob, so the more friends you have playing the game the more powerful you become, etc.

These games are absorbing for a few minutes and fairly decently playable if you’ve got nothing else to do, because there’s a sense of constant improvement – yes, it’s basically a textual grind-based MMO that occasionally makes itself relevant by involving your friends. But with six among the top 25 free games, what’s interesting to me is how it all feeds back into this ‘free’ idea.

Why are these games free? They support themselves with ads and various point systems. Install apps from the same developer and get points, complete specific sponsor activities (sign up to spammy websites, for the most part) or exchange cold hard cash. The Spymaster guys are candid about revenue: high revenue per user, and doing fantastically against comparable products. Seems like when there’s an edge available over friends, there’s no shortage of players willing to pay, in money or time.

So how does this feed back into freemium? Ultimately, games work well with ad-supported systems, especially those which actively require you to do something like install a partner’s product, because the results feed straight back into the ingame reward system. People aren’t stupid, and if five minutes filling out a survey makes them a virtual millionaire, they’ll readily sign up.

But in the world of web apps, where there isn’t such an obvious kick-back, and where advertising rings are tacky, it’s doubtful the kind of model being used to great success with the clone army of text-based RPG/MMOs will ever take off. Certainly not in the enterprise world; some consumer web apps might make this work, for example, filling out partner surveys or advertising to have an ad-free Spotify for 24 hours.

In the end, it’s all about consumer effort vs reward. We have smart consumers. They understand things aren’t actually free to make, but they’re getting used to things being free to consume — and becoming blind to advertising on top of all this. The freemium users of today are often supported by the premium users, with the product itself acting as enticement to switch from one camp to the other; but what if the free users could support themselves, in much the same way these ad-supported gamers do?

3D films. The phrase instantly conjures up memories of cardboard glasses found in cereal packets, entranced slack-jawed children and dinosaurs. I distinctly remember a lot of dinosaurs being involved.

Coraline 3D had none of these. The silly specs are still a factor, but they’ve grown up; today’s dimension-adding specs could almost be mistaken for celebrity sunglasses. If that celebrity were Jarvis Cocker.

As for the drooling, I’ll cheerfully admit to that. You see, despite growing up in an age where aforesaid cereal boxen were ten a penny, I’d never seen a 3D movie or, well, 3D anything before. No, not even The Polar Express. Part of that is to do with wearing glasses, part of that is a mere disinterest. However, when I donned my x-ray specs during the trailers, I was actually impressed, a feeling of entranced wonder that only deepened as the film began.

A notable moment near the start of the film, where a needle appears to jut out of the screen right into the viewer’s face, really made me sit up and take notice of this 3D thing. As the film progressed, it was clear that a lot of clever thought had been put into various depth effects, and while I became more accustomed to it, every so often a particularly inspired use of the mechanics made me giggle in wonder.

I think part of this is due to the film itself; its eerie presentation, its haunting characters, its entrancing alternate world. Whether I was more moved by the film or by the three-dimensional presentation, it’s hard to say, but the 3D experience definitely added something I wasn’t expecting.

A little bit of film spoilage follows:

Films these days, especially animated ones, strike me more and more as simply games on auto-play. Coraline was one of the strongest adherents to this rule I’ve seen in a while; the sense of exploration, of dimension-twisting imagination, of a quest and final battle all are crucial ingredients to many videogames.

Think Psychonauts twisted up with a bit of classic point’n'click — get flashlight, use flashlight on bat-dogs — but in today’s 3D. I’m getting strong overtones of American McGee’s Alice, as Coraline jumps through the rabbit hole; and even the graphical style, that of scrawny necks, spindly legs, smooth surfaces, dilapidated buildings, is reminiscent of any of a handful of games with a darker touch (the ‘sneezed on by Tim Burton‘ style).

Of course, this is ironic given the film’s stop-motion, albeit not entirely. Still, watching Coraline makes me want to make the game, not play it; if it has that effect on some of the young and talented, then only good things can come of it.

To me the interesting things happen when we’re watching the film, passengers in Coraline’s story, and start wondering what we would have done differently were it a game. Perhaps that, in itself, is the game — one of imagination and supposition, of creating our own possibilities and worlds, rather than blindly shooting zombies in glorious Technicolour.

Although saving the world from an undead apocalypse is always fun.

This week’s MMO Manager insight is somewhat reversed from the usual. Instead of MMO lessons applying to business, here’s a business post that applies beautifully to the world of MMO guild management.

Dumb Little Man’s “50 ways a manager can get employees to quit” post lists several ways a mis-managing manager can manage to alienate those he or she works with, and many of these apply to the world of WoW. There are a few key lessons any guild leader can learn from this list, notably in the form of don’ts:

• Giving people the wrong sort of reward (usually none at all)
• Talk more than you listen
• Reprimand people in front of the whole group
• Disproportionately rewarding those who are fun personalities but shoddy players
• Disproportionately rewarding females over males or otherwise showing favouritism
• Ignore complaints
• Give advice on topics where you aren’t the expert
• Hold irrelevant, long, over-frequent meetings
• Insist people do pointless tasks

This leads into some dos:

• Do treat everyone from an equal footing…
• …but be sure to recognise merit.
• Do listen to others and acknowledge that they may know more than you
• Do communicate that you’ve received feedback, and make internal processes (officer discussions) clear to everyone
• Do recognise when people go the extra mile for you
• Do take interest in your guildies and take action when needed

Obvious? Probably, but it’s always worth stepping back and checking you’ve not let little idiosyncrasies or habits slip in. Always prefer your favourite tank? Giving specific rewards to officers but not the proles? Ignoring feedback and finding yourself in the middle of long waits while officers discuss issues but members have no idea what’s being discussed? Maybe it’s time to patch up a few of those management skills.