Googleoids... I'm #3. And other stuff.

So, I've been playing some more Droid games lately. And Googleoids caught my attention. I love word and anagram games and loved the idea of the game: 8 letter anagrams, each letter is encapsulated within a google image search result of each of the letters. The letter/image capsule float around the screen as you drag them into slots at the bottom, trying to figure out the 8 letter word or submitting smaller words for lesser scores.

As you can see from the screen shot, I (as Jackalshorns -- an anagram of my name) am currently #3 on the leader board.

This was exciting the first time I saw it, but then I noticed a few things that made me less excited: The leader board wasn't all that well populated (not many folks play the game and submit their scores), and there were only a handful of 8 letter words in the game's database.

Kudos for the concept, but as with most games (or movies, books, songs, etc) the execution is critical in order to get a great payoff. I certainly hope that someone takes this game to the next level.

I'm not sure how hard it would be to get a nice mix of 8 letter anagrams that vary in difficulty/rarity in order to come up with a more compelling word list for competitive play, but certainly this would make leader boards much more interesting to competitive players.

Other Stuff


I sincerely hope to start writing more frequently, especially since I'm about to enter a phase of playing lots more games... From Facebook to Droid to PC and Console games now that the holiday season is upon us.

I'll start crafting some lists soon. Mostly I assume I'll try to get my hands on the blockbuster console releases (e.g., newest Halo, Dead Rising, Ratchet & Clank, Call of Duty, etc). But then I also need to think about the next wave of motion controller (or controller-less controller) games, too.


And, of course, I need to keep up with the games here: http://www.insidesocialgames.com/ for work and such.

But wait, there's more... Now that OpenFeint is available on Droid there are lots more quality games that I can play from my phone.

Damn it feels good to be a gamer right now.

Other random krag...

I'm always on the lookout for interesting examples/tidbits of user experience failures. Mostly I feel like I should have some interesting examples to use when I give talks.

Here are some I've stumbled across in the past month or so. Not much analysis, just want to post them for my own notes.

The Name Game


What's in a name? What is the link between name and online identity? Users can have many goals behind their choice of "name" they use as their online handle/moniker. Do they want authenticity? Authority? Anonymity? Odds are they have different names for different goals. That's why getting the player's name right is important.

And getting it wrong can be a costly mistake...

Social/Casual Games and Popups


Games are all about players making decisions -- and then getting feedback on their decisions. Lather, rinse, repeat. Some games make it unduly hard for players to simply make a choice.

Not enough primary and secondary buttons here, are there... First I feel the pain in my eyes, then my brain, then back in my eyes again.

Let's Give Away Money -- People Should Love That


My wife's aunt posted this, but I'm sure she wasn't the only one:

She's a pretty typical FarmVille player. I wonder how many CS tickets have the title "user doesn't understand how to use FB Credits". I'll bet that the typical user doesn't know whether to contact Zynga or Facebook to solve the problem which can lead to further frustration if you end up contacting the wrong CS support (and add extra cost to the non-responsible party).

Anyhow, back to work!

Blizzard Boofdown? It can happen...

Was trying to figure out a way to kill a few hours and remembered that I'd tried the StarCraft II beta and figured I should pick up the retail version. I'm not a competitive RTS player, but I fondly remember the single player campaign from the original and have been looking forward to doing some PC gaming after messing around with the Lego Universe MMO a bit a week or so ago.


I figured that the easiest way to purchase StarCraft II would be to simply launch my beta version... The game would present me with an upsell message and I'd start downloading the diff'd files via some sort of cool patching system.


Nope.


I got this informative message instead:

Huh. Big missed opportunity for an easy sale here.


Then I figured I'd just go to Battle.net and sadly, I got the following screen when I clicked "Digital Download":

I'm assuming that a few customer service tickets are being generated here...

To be fair, the site was entirely down -- there was no way to authenticate me as a user and have the website "intelligently" notice my purchase intention and ask me whether I wanted to be emailed/text messaged/etc when the site went back up so I could continue with my purchase.

However, such a bland and generic message is really disheartening to a user. Sure, the fact that the site is down means that some catastrophic error has occurred making it impossible to provide useful information like a time estimate as to when the site will be back online.

However, a simple time and date stamp -- with a notification of when the next update will occur (I imagine something like 15-30 mins) would go a lot further than this bland admonition.

Moreover, if you can post a page, you can certainly post some interesting links to other working content. Why not drive all this traffic somewhere useful where you can provide interesting distractions, build customer loyalty, and maybe even turn it into an opportunity for monetization.

Anyhow, criticizing Blizzard is like criticizing Valve... They've got a pretty sweet setup, a fanatically loyal paying customer base, and can afford missed opportunities like these as people will step over their ailing grandmothers to get their hands on new content. Just seems like a shame.

What I learned about Facebook games from my Mother-in-Law

So, I have a new job. I'm a Senior User Researcher at Zynga Game Network.

I'll still continue to play a wide range of console, pc, indie, AAA, student, free, casual, and social games. But I'll just be restricting my actual work to games we're creating at Zynga.

I'd been doing a bunch of consulting and contracting at Zynga before we decided to formalize the relationship -- and I really couldn't be happier with my new job.

Anyhow, enough about me. Let me tell you a bit about Anita, my mother-in-law. We both use Facebook to keep up with friends and family from both near and far. We also both enjoy several different Facebook games. Sometimes we even play the same game. Either way, I can expect to hear complaints from Anita when there's a bug or something exceptionally frustrating or confusing about a game.

One thing that really caught my attention the other day was her comment that she had completed a game of Cube Crash (from MindJolt games) by wiping out all of the cubes... and she never got any kind of bonus reward.

She mentioned several types of award that she would have considered appropriate:

• Some sort of "victory" animation and sound FX that congratulated her on her achievement (wiping the screen is actually not that easy to do in the game).
• A chance to share her accomplishment by bragging to her friends who also played the game.

She had to resort to calling me on the phone to brag -- and to complain about the above points.

I just love, love, love the fact that we can talk about games together -- and that something as "hard core" as achievements and social bragging are now wide spread and cross the generational gap.

Can't wait to have kids and have to tell them to be sure to "gift drills to grandma" to thank her for their birthday presents :)

Green Zone & Career Update

I just watched the movie Green Zone last night, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Something that emerged early on was a feeling that it was playing out like a cool mashup between a Bioware RPG and an Infinity Ward shooter.

There were key factions, all introducing themselves and seeking to influence and direct the main protagonist (Chief Miller). One after another they would approach him, give him a key piece of evidence designed to force a moral decision, and then send him on his way.

At several key plot points in the movie, Chief Miller's decision could have gone in any number of directions (well, about 3 -- perfect for a dialog tree...) and the results of his actions brought about interesting consequences that pushed the story along.

Throw in a bunch of cool, scripted, current day/near future firefight opportunities (cue Infinity Ward) and wow. You've got the makings of a great videogame.

... Spoiler Alert ...

What if Miller decided to side with Army brass instead of the CIA? What if he decided to kill Freddy to save the general? Maybe he could have fallen in love with the sexy reporter and helped her fake evidence so her reputation would have been saved...

... End Spoiler ...

Oh, and in other news I'm going to be announcing a career update later on today.