Zynga has raised an additional $180m in funding from Digital Sky Technologies (DST), the same group that put $200m in Facebook.

Ubisoft is developing almost double the games for Natal as for Sony’s motion wand — 10 vs. 4 to 5. Interesting vote of confidence in Natal, or just a vote of confidence in the Xbox, in general?

Some interesting observations about things that annoy consumers in microtransaction-supported games, and possible solutions. One example: “I find it kind of annoying that when you rent items it is in real time, not in-game. So if you rent an item for a week and then only play twice a week then you only have the item for four or eight hours.” Solution: a durability system could give the player a sense of controlling his investment, since the inevitable deterioration of the item is the player’s responsibility rather than an arbitrary game rule.

According to a recent study of the US gaming market, mobile phones account for 3% of total games spending, traditional PC games account for 20%, consoles for 57%, MMOs for 9%, and game portals for 11%. European consumers, on average, spend less on portals & MMOs and more on traditional PC gaming.

November console game sales: 37% of sales were for the Xbox 360, 29% for the Wii and 19% for the PS3. Xbox is up from just 28% in 2008. All of that growth can apparently be credited to Call of Duty.

As expected, many Facebook users are initially responding with wariness or outright hostility to developer requests for their email address. (For those that haven’t heard: Facebook applications will no longer be able to send notifications to users, per a recent change in the platform’s policy.) This was well-put: “Much like any other web app developer, Facebook app developers are going to have to really engage and earn the trust of their users in order to get a significant number of user emails.”

There’s more to life than games:

Henry Mintzberg on executive bonuses: “The problem isn’t that they are poorly designed. The problem is that they exist.” Amen!

Observation #3: A polished game stands out from the crowd.

Some of the games that I played could really have used a few additional rounds of playtesting and design iteration before they were submitted to the IGF. The developers of those games would probably have been better off holding back their games until next year’s competition.

I know this can be tough to swallow. Perhaps you’ve worked long and hard on your game, and you really want some recognition for your effort. You might be counting on that recognition to help boost your marketing or business development efforts. I can imagine many an indie developer thinking, “My game isn’t perfect, but it shows a hint of something great, so I’m going for it!” And to be clear, that’s a fine attitude — if you wait until your game is “perfect,” you’ll probably never finish it! But unfortunately, some developers jump the gun and submit their games before they are truly fun, much less “perfect.”

If you’re creating a new gameplay mechanic (or an interesting twist on an old mechanic), make sure that you have implemented at least one very polished, very entertaining instance of that mechanic. A single, excellent level is better than five mediocre levels, in my opinion. Per observation #2, other developers are making me trudge through hours of tedious gameplay, so I’m going to be especially appreciative of a developer who wows me with ten short minutes of brilliance.

Of course, “very polished” doesn’t necessarily mean “short and sweet.” But many independent developers don’t have the time or resources to produce several hours of very polished gameplay, so all I’m saying is that if you can’t, you might as well err on the side of short and sweet. I’m fairly certain that you’ll be better off!

PS. Don’t forget to frequently playtest your game on other people. It doesn’t take long to lose your sense of perspective when immersed in a project; a pair of fresh eyes will significantly increase your odds of ultimately developing a polished gameplay experience. Also, for an example of a relatively simple indie game that is extremely polished, check out geoDefense (or its sequel, geoDefense Swarm) on the iPhone.

Observation #2: if at all possible, it’s best to entertain a judge from the very first minute — just like a potential customer.

Several of the games I evaluated simply weren’t very fun to start with. Some even came with explicit caveats which I will collectively paraphrase as follows: Dear judge, you must play this game for several hours before you understand why it is special.

Who wants to slog through an endless tutorial that isn’t inherently fun before actually getting to enjoy themselves? Who wants to trudge through hours of uninspired gameplay before the “magic” of the game’s design reveals itself? As a judge, I’m willing to do it because I feel obligated, but which game do you think I’ll probably give the higher score: the game that entertained me for three consecutive hours, or the game that entertained me for only the final hour out of three hours, total? With rare exception, it will be the former. And you can bet that most consumers will vote the same way with their wallets. In summary:

• Long-winded, boring tutorials are bad (seems like this should be self-evident, right?)
• Conversely, dumping people into a game without any explanation of how to play is also bad, unless the initial gameplay experience is very intuitive. For an example of a game that does a good job of introducing the player to the core mechanics of the game, see Braid.
• Games that don’t become very interesting (or don’t reveal their “special sauce”) until the player has invested lots of time into them are not inherently “bad”, but unfortunately such games are often doomed to smaller audiences. Most people simply aren’t willing to give a game the benefit of the doubt if it doesn’t entertain them relatively immediately. Long story short, developers should think carefully about finding ways to expose their game’s “special sauce” right away.

PS. On a tangent, my old post on crafting a good game demo might be interesting to some of you.

I volunteered to be one of the many judges for the IGF this year. Here are some of the random observations that I jotted down while working my way through the batch of games I was assigned to evaluate. Hopefully these observations will be useful to people entering the competition next year.

Observation #1: you can’t win a competition if the judges can’t play your game.

Out of all the games I was asked to judge, approximately half did not run on either of the two different Windows PCs in my home. One is my laptop, which is much more powerful than a netbook but isn’t one of those “desktop replacement” models with a $400 video card. The other is my brand new gaming desktop, a machine probably more powerful than 99% of computers in US homes today. I could also have tried the games on my wife’s laptop, but if by some chance a game somehow corrupted her PC she would have killed me, so I opted not to risk that. ;-)

I’m not surprised half the games wouldn’t run; the compatibility-related frustrations of PC gaming were precisely why, after many years of shunning consoles, I eventually threw up my hands and made the Xbox 360 my personal gaming platform of choice. And this isn’t a knock against the organizers of the IGF; they screen every game to make sure it runs before they submit it to judges for evaluation. The IGF can’t be expected to try every submission on fifteen different PC configurations… that’s the individual game developer’s job. But this isn’t even a knock against developers, because I appreciate how challenging traditional PC game development can be.

And that’s really the point of all this (I know, it took me long enough to get there.) If you’re an independent game developer working on a downloadable PC game, you really need to ask yourself if the benefits you get from your engine actually outweigh the portability benefits of Flash, and to a lesser extent, solutions like Unity. I doubt that consumers are, in general, much more forgiving than IGF judges. Requiring a download probably drives away half your potential customers right off the bat — the actual percentage varies depending on the game and the audience, of course. You’d better be certain that the game concept and technology you’ve settled on is so compelling that it justifies not only losing customers to a download, but also losing another large percentage to compatibility problems!

On a final note, this seems like a good time to once again reference Danc’s flash love letter: a worthwhile read for all PC game developers.

Update: After much additional effort, I was eventually able to play 70% of the games in my batch. I had to give up on the other 30%.