Just submitted my Charity Game Jam 2 entry so here is the postmortem.
What Went Right
While I seem to have no problem finishing weekend game jams, the same can not be said for the week-long jams that I enter. While I usually end up with a playable game, the result is quite far from what I plan on. Figuring that the main reason for this is vastly over-estimating how much time I will have to work on the game, I took the approach of designing a game that I would do during a weekend jam and spending the extra time polishing the game. I would probably have spent a bit more time polishing had it not been for what went wrong. This proved to be fairly successful, especially considering that I missed a couple of evenings as well as had to watch the Doctor Who anniversary special and go to a CFL party. Had I gone with the game I was thinking about developing when the challenge was announced it would have been a total failure.
What Went Right and Wrong
Once I knew what the game was going to be, I had planned out a system for having different levels. This was based on the types of coins that were in the bank, the target goals, and the pig speed. This sort of worked, but was not as effective at controlling difficulty as I would have liked so the game is a lot easier than I had anticipated. Had I not used real currency I could have had much closer point values for the different items that had to be collected that would have given me more control over the difficulty but that was not an option so the Loony and Toony kind of throw off the game balance. I suppose I could have gone with not using those coins but those are my two favorite coins. I suppose the lesson here is not to let your emotions get in your way of good design.
What Went Wrong
I should be polishing the game some more, perhaps fixing the difficulty issue by getting rid of the Twoony and replacing the Loony with a 50 cent coin but I am calling it a week due to Steam. This is also causing me to spend a lot more money than I should be. The worst part about Steam sales is that I already have a huge library of games so really have no need to buy more but the newer games that I want are on sale for a really good price so I end up caving in and buying some games and simply have to play them right away so I don't feel guilty for buying and then not playing them. Speaking of which, the game I just bought today has finished downloading so I had better finish writing this!
Showing posts with label Steam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Steam. Show all posts
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Friday, August 9, 2013
Steam Trading Cards
I have been thinking about the Steam Trading Cards quite a bit lately as my free evenings have been spent playing games in order to collect the free card drops for games that have trading cards. I have received quite a few cards and have been selling the duplicates on the steam marketplace. Overall, I think it was an interesting marketing idea but at it's current implementation is a flawed system. As a programmer, I am use to debugging things so figured I would debug the Steam trading card system. Unfortunately, I do not work at Valve so my thoughts will lead to nothing but the exceeding remote chance that someone at Valve will somehow read this post and agree with my opinions.
Marketing wise, I am not sure that the addition of trading cards will actually sway any purchasing decisions very much for most people. That said, interest in the game generated by people playing the game more to gather trading cards will lead other people to buy the game so from an extended sales perspective this system could be potentially valuable. Unfortunately, due to the way the system is designed, it does not really do this but instead focuses on making commission profit from the marketplace. Why do I say this, well lets look at how the cards work.
There are a set of cards for a game, the number of cards varies but I have seen 5 to 15 Half that number of cards are earned by card drops from simply playing the game. This is the brilliant part of the scheme as poorer players earn stuff simply for playing which encourages them to play. There is the problem of people simply running the game and not actually playing it, but I don't consider it a real problem as the vast majority of people will actually play the game. Once the player has earned the drops from the game, they need to trade with other people, buy cards from the market, or wait for booster packs. Booster packs are only eligible to people who have used all their drops. This actually is a good idea. The problem is that the booster packs gives you cards immediately instead of adding more card drops. This means that once you have received all the card drops you never have to play the game again. This means that instead of encouraging players to play games longer and benefit from the word-of-mouth sales from people continuing to play older games, they are only making a few cents of commission from the marketplace when people sell cards.
The obvious solution is to make booster packs card drops. Still, I am not sure this is the best solution. Getting free cards is really nice and encourages people to continually log on to Steam which could lead to more sales. A much better solution is to keep the random booster packs, but also to give people an extra drop each week capped at the half-the-cards limit. People with drops would no longer be eligible for booster packs which would encourage players to play the older games keeping the communities for those games more active and resulting in more sales. While this would mean more people would earn badges, it would also mean more people trading cards on the market so the market commission profit would not go away plus there would be more sales of trading-card related games.
Such a very simple change would actually make the trading card scheme interesting instead of resulting in people simply playing games to gather the trading cards then not bothering with that game anymore.
Marketing wise, I am not sure that the addition of trading cards will actually sway any purchasing decisions very much for most people. That said, interest in the game generated by people playing the game more to gather trading cards will lead other people to buy the game so from an extended sales perspective this system could be potentially valuable. Unfortunately, due to the way the system is designed, it does not really do this but instead focuses on making commission profit from the marketplace. Why do I say this, well lets look at how the cards work.
There are a set of cards for a game, the number of cards varies but I have seen 5 to 15 Half that number of cards are earned by card drops from simply playing the game. This is the brilliant part of the scheme as poorer players earn stuff simply for playing which encourages them to play. There is the problem of people simply running the game and not actually playing it, but I don't consider it a real problem as the vast majority of people will actually play the game. Once the player has earned the drops from the game, they need to trade with other people, buy cards from the market, or wait for booster packs. Booster packs are only eligible to people who have used all their drops. This actually is a good idea. The problem is that the booster packs gives you cards immediately instead of adding more card drops. This means that once you have received all the card drops you never have to play the game again. This means that instead of encouraging players to play games longer and benefit from the word-of-mouth sales from people continuing to play older games, they are only making a few cents of commission from the marketplace when people sell cards.
The obvious solution is to make booster packs card drops. Still, I am not sure this is the best solution. Getting free cards is really nice and encourages people to continually log on to Steam which could lead to more sales. A much better solution is to keep the random booster packs, but also to give people an extra drop each week capped at the half-the-cards limit. People with drops would no longer be eligible for booster packs which would encourage players to play the older games keeping the communities for those games more active and resulting in more sales. While this would mean more people would earn badges, it would also mean more people trading cards on the market so the market commission profit would not go away plus there would be more sales of trading-card related games.
Such a very simple change would actually make the trading card scheme interesting instead of resulting in people simply playing games to gather the trading cards then not bothering with that game anymore.
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