News from GameBiz

"Sales of the PlayStation Portable have increased by over six times on the previous week's figure, according to Media Create."

If one title (Crisis Core: FF VII) can do this to PSP, I wonder what LittleBigPlanet will do to PS3 :)

Also:
"Nintendo stock has become the second most valuable in Japan. As noted by Reuters, Nintendo sits behind only Canon to become the second most valuable traded company. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group has a bigger market value than Nintendo, but shares are currently suspended due to a imminent share split."

And:
Goozex launched a new Facebook application designed to promote and support gaming communities on Facebook. Facebook members can share their own game reviews, ratings, and personal libraries for more than 23,000 game titles.

These and other interesting news from: Gamesindustry.Biz.

Exergaming from the North

I get to see a bit of Ruska (autumn colors) while wisiting Rovaniemi (near arctic circle). Unfortunately I lost my luggage and did not get it back until in the evening. Due to which my presentation ("Music as play" >> response is the medium -- music, rhytm and/or sound as a way to interact with a game or other kinds of interactive software) was not the best I can offer but people seemed to get something out of it which is of course the most important thing.

I also met some of my fellow students from the dawn of media studies. We had fun when listening artists like Desert Planet, Huoratron and Dj Scotch. Before Tivoli (the bar) we did some exercise. Asko Alanen from Smartus was kind enough to give us a tour at the Smartus Playground. This was the first time I actually got to test the playground and I was pretty excited. There were not that many variations of games but it has a lot of potential. There were still a number of issues to consider starting from usability to interestingness (longevity) of the play. Anyhow we went back to the playground on the next day and talked with the kids playing at the yard. They were really excited even though --evidently-- they had played the games for a number of times already. Motivational factors were similar to other digital games -- to beat one's own record, to top the high score and to have fun. At the moment the most obvious target group is junior level kids but with a bit different approach, design and placement I am sure this could work well with a bit older youth, families or other groups as well.

At the moment SmartUs playgrounds can be only found in distant places in Finland (from the Helsinki viewpoint) and few places in Europe (see Smartus website). If you are into exergaming or novel ways of exercise, "stealth exercise" or related, I recommend to test the playground. It is also effective reminder that one does not necessarily need a mobile phone to do "mobile" or digital exercise. In this case simple plastic card (exercise credit card for kids ;D) is all you need.

Boring puzzle & women's explosive clothing

Lately I have been talking about new approaches in game design. How to understand the users (gamers), how to renew the business with modete risk and create something new? Even though I know a lot about the users it is not always easy to reach the target nor to present somewhat novel idea to the cynical gamers. It is always good to remind how difficult it actually is to try to understand the end users.

For example:
Joystiq.org wrote about Neves game on DS: "The original Japanese Lucky Puzzle is a classic example of a wolf in sheep's clothing. With only seven pieces, players had to construct a variety of shapes and objects. Neves is attempting to capture the brain teasing market that the DS seems to dominate. Like other brain games on the platform, the game is immensely easy to pick up and play. Multiplayer is also a surprising and fun addition to the game."

Sounds good?

And what do consumers have to say about this?

"Seems boring." (FI)
"Don't worry, the final build will feature explosions and naked women too =P" (Leo)
"Will the final version also include women whose clothing explodes off their bodies?" (lessbiasedthanmost)

Another funny chain of comments referred to difficulties people had with the voice recognition on Braintraining.
"Blue! Blue! Bloo, Bluu, Blew...*some time later* Paper, Paper, PAY-PURR, PAIPIR, pay-parrr...*some time later*" (Kye)
"How on earth are they going to put voice controls in it? =p "Select piece number eight... move left, left, left, up, little bit to the right..." ?" (bm)

Yes, it is a question of pitching, usability, marketing, game design, focusing on right target group etc. But still.. if we end up with "gaagaa-guuguu" or naked women in a puzzle game -- something should be re-evaluated! Anyhow - funny comments! I had a blast -- in a Monday afternoon way!

IGDA Finland Presentations #1

Place: Pääposti Auditorium (Postikuja, C), follow the IGDA signs
Date: Tuesday 11th September
Starts: 17.30
Ends: 19.00 — the chat will continue at the System Rock!

The first ever IGDA Finland Presentations (sponsored by Remedy) session will focus on money. We will give you tips how to get a share of 300 000 €’s for your game! You’ll also learn how the others have done it.

Erik Robertson from Nordic Game Programs will give you last minute hints how to get funds from the Nordic Game Program and beat the rest of applicants from other Nordic countries!

The second speaker is Ilari Kuittinen from Housemarque. He will talk about their experiences and future visions of downloadable console titles.

The last presentation of the evening will be held by Timo Vuorensola. Rautataivas crew would like to share their thoughts about Rautataivas game and find out possibilities for cooperation!

See you there!

Highligts from last week

FUN:

* Elite Beat Agents for DS
* Trauma Center - Second Opinion for Wii

SURPRISE:
Helsinki Casino was full late Monday evening. Maybe that's everyday for others, but totally new experience (1st time!)for me

LETDOWN:
SuperMarit Bombastic cancelled

WAIT FOR:
* Ars Electronica 5-11 Sept. in Linz

* First IGDA Finland Presentations on 11th Sept at Helsinki
* Media studies @ Univ. of Lapland 15 years PARTY! 21st Sept.

* MindTrek on 3-4 Oct. in Tampere

TESTING:
FaceBook applications (Egotics, TrendHunter, Pictogame's "I kick you")

SOCIAL JARGON TOP 10 (BY GUARDIAN):

Dopplr (travel), Extate (intelligent search), Garlik (identity), MindCandy (gaming), Moo (print on demand), OnOneMap (search), Touch Local (directory), Trusted Places (local UGC), Zopa (P2P lending) and Zubka (Recruitment).

Sort-of-Finnish-versions: Vailoma (travel), Faimous (intelligent search), MoiPal (gaming), Igglo (search), thinglink (directory), Oma Kaupunki (local UGC), IRC-galleria (P2P) Jaiku (moblog).

When I saw this Habbo-like front page of pdma conference I was excited! Finally someone has put effort on organizing a conference on innovation online. Unfortunately that is not the case, but Habbo for adults approach is nice anyway.

Stick tricks

Stick Trampoline

Funny game :)

Who will win: Zuma or Facebook?

Park Associates has put out somewhat doubtful information regarding the popularity of casual games. As much as I tend to think positive and like casual online games, I find it somewhat difficult to digest the news.

Park Associates is right about casual games being current and cool topic at the moment. Anyhow it surely is quite a challenge to compare registered users (e.g. Second Life), actual users (e.g. LinkedIn) and non-registered users (casual game sites) against each other. Most of casual game sites run solely on advertising revenue and do not ask for registration. It is true that you can buy the games in a "try-before-buy" matter but I would say it is exaggerated to say casual game sites have more mature revenue models. Additionally I wonder how Park Associates actually compare SNSs with casual game sites? What type of sites actually belong into this category (btw)? Fun games, money games, puzzle games, short games, simple games...?

Whatever the case, this is surely an interesting topic to discuss. According to Park Associates: "While developers and publishers look to sites such as YouTube, Facebook and MySpace as inspiration for community features in upcoming games, research shows that 34 % of US internet users play games online on a weekly basis (and according to one study more than half are females), compared to 29 % who visit online video sites and 19 per cent interested in social networking."

That's something!

[Partial source GamesIndustry.biz]

"Sex in Games" by Samsung

Trance Vibrator for Rez (PS2) was used as a sex toy though it was not explicitly marketed as such. It is one of the many examples Brenda Brathwaite has used when talking about Sex in Games. Now Samsung is giving their's contribution to the topic by filing a patent for device which measures body temperature.

According to Gizmondo.com: "A cell phone that lets lay-deez know if they're running a higher-than-normal chance of getting pregnant is the latest idea from Samsung. Samsung has filed a patent with the US Patent & Trademark Office for a portable device for user's basal body temperature (BBT) and method for operating the device. An ultrasonic or laser-based distance sensor, and an infrared ray temperature sensor installed around the speaker of the phone measures the distance of the phone to your ear and the temperature inside your eardrum. Then, software inside the phone processes the measurements and transforms them into BBT records, before recommending that, yes, you can have hot, crazy rumpo with no consequences, or yes, you've got a chance of making Junior if you get busy tonight." Yep!

Samsung is active in another games-related field as well. They filed another patent for mobile phone-gaming device. N-Gage déjà vu? Mobile phone manufacturers seem to be persistent about turning mobile phones into portable gaming devices. Samsung seems to believe that one button gaming will be followed by richer audiovisual game experiences. And that mobile phone manufacturers have a way to compete against Nintendo (DS) or Sony (PSP). It seems quite far fetched that they could actually compete against current wireless consoles but... Samsung has done tremendously well lately so who knows? And there are many lessons learned from N-Gage.

I still remember what I did last summer

...or was it fall? Anyhow, I confess spending hours and hours in gaining more weight and lowering the age of my brains. I was totally obsessed by Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training and Big Brain Academy. Every waking hour on a bus, at work, at home... was potential time for extreme training - truly HC! After my brains remained 20 year old for several weeks, my brains weighted nearly the maximum weight and I got a pile of platinum coins from different tasks, I started growing tired of it.

Last Friday Dr. Kawashima came back to my life. More Brain Training game was waiting for me when I got home. Is this the end of relaxed evenings and lazy mornings? Is this the beginning of another gray era of measuring weights, making pairs, memorizing stuff and calculating up and down?

After playing the sequal for four days, I am somewhat relieved to find that More Brain Training is too similar with the first one. Coin calculation is somewhat copied from Brain Age and tasks where you have to memorize numbers is practically same as the one at the original Brain Training. Dr. Kawashima is still the same amusing guy with a number of tips for the gamers. This does not mean that the game is a lousy one. It still offers a nice set of brain training activities, but for me it is too similar with the original Brain Training exercises.

If you would like to experience the fun of brain training but do not own NDS, check out Pelikone web site which was launched at Assembly a week back. Pelikone has some puzzle games too. My favourite Pelikone puzzle is Roadmania, but still... it is not nearly as entertaining as Dr. Kawashima... so... maybe this is not the end of our relationship after all :)

Assembly for tourists

If you consider visiting Finland next summer (beginning of August), do include Assembly computer festival to your itinerary. You don't have to be into games, digital music, youth culture or anything like. Assembly is a huge experience for tourists as well. Or perhaps you would prefer moving your office to Arena for four days ;)? The atmosphere is something completely different and out of the ordinary. This year over 5000 participants (~20 countries) settled to Helsinki Arena for four days and competed in different compo categories (from music and graphics to programming). Also Finnish Dance Gamers and GuitarHero gurus were there as well as working members from Finnish game developers association. Pelikone.fi web site was released. It is yet another "user generated games" site. (You'll find most recent ones (=Uusimmat) and Most popular ones measured by number of plays (=Pelatuimmat) and Most popular ones measured by the rating (=Parhaimmat). Also cool IRC-Galleria page was set up for Assembly.


The first photo is an overview of the Arena (from 2004) and the cute pink cuff is from this year ;)

Games as a [sort of] sporting event

As an addition to my previous post, the NY Times writes about World Series of Video Games Tournament.

"Wiewers flicking channels looking for a ballgame or golf tournament may instead encounter a couple of young guys rocking out on plastic guitars, or some (literally) disembodied digital boxers throwing uppercuts, or a fanciful animated wizard casting a spell."

Manly men play In the Groove

The odour of sweat and persistent THUMP THUMP sounds ascertained me to be at the right place. On Saturday and Sunday the best of the best Finnish dance gamers were competing for the Finnish Champion title.

It was small surprise that basically all competitors were male. It was also interesting to see how casual but sportmanlike the guys were. They were resting and stretching before their turn (2 songs at a time) and supporting other players after their shot.

The competition would have been a good wake up call for those who consider gaming to be bad for your health or antisocial activity. This time we didn't see those doupters in the audience, just dance gamers and a bunch of people following the competition. BTW Finnish Dance Gamers Association was added as a affiliate of Finnish Dance Sport Assocation (May 2007).

The competition was played with In The Groove arcade machine. For those who don't know, a short introduction to dance games might be useful. DanceDanceRevolution and In the Groove are the best known dance games on the market. Konami (Japan) has been the father of dance games and it actually acquired Roxor (developer of In the Groove) last year. In the dance games a player is stepping on the up-right-down-left panels when the corresponding arrow on the screen reaches the right spot. In the Finnish Championships competitors were evaluated according to their accurancy (hitting the right panel at the right time) percentage. Every song has a unique stepping pattern reflecting the rhythm of the song.

Ok.. but back to the competition. There was A (bar and no-bar > to lean on) and B category. Rangifer (red clothes) won the B-category. My absolute favourite was Hardcore of the North - Säkkijärven polkka remix played on Saturday. Unfortunately I don't have a video of that but WOW! It was super!

Puzzle for the clever

Would you like to win 2 million $? All you have to do is to solve a puzzle. "Eternity II" will be lanched on 28th July. It is a puzzle with the $2million prize (online demo available).

¨Unlike most puzzles, which only have one correct way of completing the final solution, there are thousands of ways that Eternity II can be solved to win the $2 million prize. The puzzle consists of 256 square pieces that are bordered by coloured patterns which must be aligned across the whole puzzle.¨

You can check the demo version from Eternity II website. It is really compelling game. My best time is 1.49.

Adult female gamers Do exist!

Greeting from Åland! The streets of Mariehamn are full of snails and crowd attending Rock Off festival.

I was browsing eCOGRAs study on eGaming when I came across very interesting data regarding female players. I have guessed that women find online leisure games (played just for fun, killing time) more interesting than gambling/money games but according to eCORAs study "online" is the key word here. Online enables easy access to games (both leisure and gambling), social interaction and relatively low risk for female players. According to the study 54.8% of online casino gamers are female and what is most interesting is that we are not talking about 'young adults' here, the online casino queens are ~46-55 year olds. [Internet poker is 73.8% dominated by young male (26-35 year olds).]

And similarly to leisure games, there are profound differences between how and why men and women gamble online. My observations: internet is everyday life tool also for (adult) women, women do kill time and get entertained online (earlier it was strongly pointed out that women are occupied with children, cooking, housekeeping and do not have time to have fun with games), women and men get motivated or excited with different issues (level of risk, social interaction, relieve of boredom...).

I also believe that online gambling sites will move towards Social Networking Services and leisure games in many ways. This will put up exciting possibilities both for game developers and researchers. This is an interesting data to be discussed further at SuperMarit Bombastic!

Back on track -- user generated games

After long & relaxing holiday I am currently focusing on innovation methods and pondering what values people get from playing games [Easy to play, social interaction, excitement, fun, entertainment, relieve boredom, gaining something, reputation, bonuses, branding], what are the motivational and risk factors in games and what type of horizontal innovations [Everyday life >> leisure >> games >> wellbeing] could be developed. I will share my thought of that a bit later.

This time I wanted to put forward YoYo Games which is somewhat related to GreatGamesExperiment and Kongregate. Lessons learned? This is clearly a trend and it surely is evolving (which make it interesting to follow). It remains to be seeing how different user generated games (portals) are from mainstream publications/concepts and will truly innovative concepts/games be posted to such portals. In the music industry (e.g. MySpace) it works well but games industry has totally different operational logic. Anyhow it is nice to see the trend of user generated games (incl. MyGame.com, Pictogame.com & related) growing!

Highlights from CultureTechnology (Korea)

CultureTechnology07 was one of the most diverse conference I have attended for a while. Interactions between technology and culture were looked from different viewpoints ranging from online games to digital cinema and from virtual performances to music shows. Albeit it was challenging to follow (due to variety of viewpoints and theoretical approaches) it was very inspiring! In a way "out of the box" thinking for me. It was excellently organized, so big thank you to KAIST and their cooperators!

The highlights:

- Social Networking Services (SNS) are huge and highlight interesting trends in online cultures

- CyWorld have 16 million users (out of 48 million population)

- The success factors are somewhat similar to other online communities: friend list/relationships (il-chon), guestbook, photo scrap book, avatar and testimonials (il-chon pyung)

- Daum.net is the largest portal (e commerce) site in Korea (23 million members) by Daum Communications

- The company provides e-mail (Hanmail.net), an online community (DaumCafe), an Internet search engine (DaumSearch), and multi-media content (Contents Plug)

- Unemployed youth (Baegsoo) is an interesting group creating of novel type of virtual lifestyles

- Baegsoo.com is a site for unemployed youth in Korea

- Online wasn't as visible in the streets/malls as it was in 2003 when I visited Seoul for the first time (It seemed that consoles are gaining more popularity but still pc online gaming has its strong foothold in Korean game culture)

- Jake Song (XLgames) was talking about the success factors of Korean online games. According to Mr. Song: high speed internet, weak console market, together culture, PC Bang culture (founded by ICT specialists fired from bigger corporations due to financial crisis at the end of the 90s) and every developers were the key factors why the success of games such as Lineage and MU amazed westerners in 2003 (those were the first big MMOG hits)

- Mr. Song sees the future of online games to focus on storytelling, user generated content, realism (Ai, physical and visual) as well as technology (interaction, emotions etc.)

- Content is advancing technology not the other way around (anymore)

- Presentation slides available: http://culturetechnology.org/

Images:

** Seoul by night

** Excellent dinner

** MGame's Holic was on beta at COEX mall. (It was really interesting format and nice set of minigames utilizing computer vision).

** 2.0 is everywhere :)

"Finland 7 points"

Interactive Entertainment Today listed Europe's top 50 game studios. Remedy was the only studio from Finland (with 7 points). Finnish mobile game developers have been well on view but there are still things to be done before they top the charts.


I think this list is a good reference point when trying to come up with better processes, higher quality products, technical innovations or original IP. And how can you come up with better processes or learn from the professionals? If you live in Finland, I warmly welcome you to the IGDA Finland lecture series this fall. We'll have an excellent line of speakers and we deal with practical issues on game development and lessons to be learned from other professionals.

Mobile Games 2010

Nokia's Mobile Games 2010 report is out now. 'The Mobile Games 2010 report looks at how mobile gaming could be like in year 2010 from three points of view: games and players, technology, and business. The study was done by interviewing about 20 mobile game publishers, developers, operators, and inviting experts to write articles on the topic.'

Another view to the topic was given by Robert Tercek at GDC07. I met Robert at the E3 (in 2003) for the first time when he chaired an excellent mobile game session. I have been a fan ever since. The GDC keynote titled 'The first decade of mobile games' offered good points to the questions: 'What can we learn from the first decade of this new platform?' and 'What will come next?'. These two presentations/reports give a good overview of the history as well as current / future trends of mobile gaming.

Fête - Fête

The summer is finally here as well as various summer events and parties. The week started at the sunny terrace of Merimakasiini. I was having a dialogue/presentation with Marjo Laukkanen about the possibilities of social media, online communities and game-like services for youth work. The Youth Department of the city of Helsinki already has Netari (online facility for the youth) at the Habbo world and now they are looking for ways to reach more youngsters via the net. We tried to highlight that online world is not a separate world from the everyday life but an extension and not all of the online worlds are alike. Some support anonymous real time communication, some services are a way to show off etc. We created a list of terms to highlight the contradictions (see the image). In the evening I joined the IGDA Helsinki crew meeting. I am excited to be involved in the activities and I'll hope to get a "lecture/presentation series" up and running this fall. The Finnish game industry is growing and maturing rapidly. There are a lot of knowledge to be shared and IGDA lecture series is a perfect way to share the findings and experiences. I really hope developers agree with me on this. We'll see.

One manifestation of the vitality of Finnish game industry is high level game releases. Bugbear and Housemarque were celebrating their newest releases FlatOut Ultimate Carnage and Super Stardust HD on Wednesday. Super Stardust HD is already out (for PS3) and FlatOut (XBox 360) is to be relased on June 22nd in Europe.

On Thursday I discussed about the Millennials and the changes in working environment. The event was organized by Youth Academy and we really had a great discussion. My key point was that young people are applying communication practises of past time into the working life. Blogs, wikis, P2P networking, Rating, Ranking and Reputation and openness are just a few issues companies should seriously consider as MeWe/Millennial/Y-generation is already utilising these possibilities in the working life as well. But companies still do not have clear ideas about the social media phenomena, they do not know how to look at blogs, should they control "P2P / viral communication" and what to do when youngsters do not care about hierarchies or official procedures but instead do things proactively and ask from online networks and friends instead of some "gurus". Forum Virium Helsinki organized nice barbeque party in the evening. And on Friday I chatted with Finnish A-Clinic Foundation. They are creating really interesting "Shadow World" service for youth whose parents are alcoholics. It is yet another novel kind of attempt to utilize social networks and game-like worlds to deliver an important message and enable trusty interaction with youngsters in a same situation as well as with experts. Wine Tasting party at the beautiful balcony of Suze's brand new home was a perfect ending for the week :)

As a final reminder for all you girlgames and game designers out there, be sure to register for SuperMarit Bombastic! See you there in September.

Defining digital games

Is it PlayStation or Playstation? What is fragging? How would you define "spawn point"? What are the common modifiers for genres?

David Thomas, Kyle Orland and Scott Steinberg just published an additional reference guide to the "Video Game Marketing and PR" book. They are trying to describe all terms relevant to the game industry professionals and journalists.

Should be useful, interesting! Check it out: The Videogame Style Guide and Reference Manual.