20 Great Innovations in Casual, Social and Mobile Games That You Should Steal Stuart Dredge
Jul 15, 2015
20 Great Innovations in Casual, Social and Mobile Games
That You Should Steal
Stuart Dredge
Who am I?
• Journalist since 1998 – new media, games, mobile
• Blogger since 2005(ish) – gadgets, virtual worlds
• Twitterer since 2007 – cats, babies, breakfast
What is Pocket Gamer?
• Consumer mobile games site: J2ME, iPhone, N-Gage, Android
• PocketGamer.biz – trade site for mobile games industry
• Printed mags for operators, N-Gage and Zeemote
• iPhone podcast
What’s all this about?
• The session title is a big fat lie
• 50 ideas. You may want to steal 20 of them. Maybe.
• iPhone, casual and social (but mostly iPhone)
• Not all of these games are good
MATES
Restaurant City
• Hire your friends as chefs, waiters, cleaners
• Viral without feeling like you’re marketing to mates
• Danger: your mum might get hooked
Tower Bloxx / Bumper Stars
• See your friends’ scores while you’re beating them
• Constant competitive carrot to keep playing
• Back it up with a brag feature
Dr. Awesome
• Taps into your address book to get friend names
• You then get to ‘treat’ them
• No privacy infringement / connectivity
Premier Football
• Facebook football manager game with your friends
• More notifications when you pick people
• Gets around licensing issues
FaceFighter
• iPhone boxing game from Ready 2 Rumble developers
• Turn a photo into a fighter
• Perfect for pub show-offs
Who’s Your Friend / Word Challenge
• WYF: Facebook game – guess who your pixelly friend is
• Ranks you against your friends at end of game
• Word Challenge: mini-game
• Danger: too many friends?
MUSIC
Audiosurf / Phase / Dance Fabulous
• Use your MP3 collection as basis for rhythm game
• Racing / Falling notes / Dance
• Works for PC or iPhone/mobile
• Danger: can you cope with Napalm Death?
The Sims DJ
• iPod version of the game lets you DJ with your tunes
• Lets you listen as well as play –solves issue of competition
• Danger: Can your game cope with Nap...
Song Summoner: The Unsung Heroes
• Square Enix’s tactics RPG uses songs as warriors (Barcode Battler mechanic)
• Encourages gamers to delve deep into collections
• Also promotes sharing and song-swapping
Pole Position Remix
• Classic Pole Position, but billboards from album covers
• Incidental to gameplay, but once noticed...
• Danger: You don’t know what albums they’ve got
BUZZER! Music Quiz
• iPhone game tests your knowledge of your library
• Guess the intro / album / artwork / genre / artist
• Two-player split screen
Sonifi
• Official app for trance artist BT
• Bluetooth mixing – one takes beats+bass and one takes melody+harmony
• No actual game or scoring, but there could be...
LOCATION
Underworld
• iPhone dealing game –sweets, not hard drugs
• Turns local map into list of dealing spots
• Don’t need to actually run around them
JOYity
• Android platform to make your own LBS challenges
• Treasure hunts, tag, racing...
• Gets around the problem of games only working in one city
Gowalla
• Collecting game –icons, stamps, pins...
• Only worked in certain cities at the start
• BUT people could create their own landmarks
Seek’n’Spell
• iPhone game that DOES make you run around
• Collect letters and create words with them
• Works with one friend
• Not geeky (or not too geeky)
Foursquare
• Not a game, but a social networking app
• BUT wraps game-like elements around it – badges etc
• Just go to your usual places and do your usual things
Star Defense
• iPhone Tower Defense game with Twitter feature
• Brag about your score with a tweet in-game
• Check out other people’s and challenge them
Spymaster / SNODS / 140 Mafia
• Not games that use Twitter, but Twitter games
• Built around Twitter, and tweeting every action
• Intrusive and annoying? Yes, but early days
TweetBricks
• Yes, it’s Tetris with tweets
• BUT those tweets belong to your friends (or you)
• Twitter’s open API has potential for games
• (Well, some games)
TweetCraft
• Twitter plug-in for World of Warcraft
• Contradicts previous point about fantasy worlds
• Limited potential? Maybe
CONNECT
Anytime Pool
• Pool game for Facebook, iPhone and mobile
• Key thing: play across all of them seamlessly
• Asynchronous turn-based gameplay works well for this
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09
• Complete the mobile game, get bonus in the console game
• Relied on EA login, but could be done with code
• Reason for console gamers to bother with mobile
Prototype (trailer)
• Viewers logged in with Facebook Connect
• Pulls out profile data and friend photos
• Shows what’s possible when you start with personal data
My Brute
• Or, indeed, any mafia game on the iPhone
• Friend codes with rewards –wolves’n’weapons
• More viral-ness without feeling like marketing
• Danger: pyramid scheme?
Leaf Trombone World Stage
• Not the game (although playing a virtual trombone is kinda cool...)
• But the X-Factor style judging over the network
• Also UGC aspect of composing songs for others
Noby Noby Boy
• Strange but marvellous PS3 download game
• Stretch Noby Noby Boy as far as you can
• Cumulative global total to reach GIRL and unlock new levels for the game
VIDEO
Spore Creature Creator
• Let people Make Stuff, then Show That Stuff Off
• Even if it’s penises
• It’s machinima for the masses! Or something.
Real Racing
• iPhone racing game with own Cloudcell community
• Auto-uploads replays of best laps to YouTube
• Web 2.0 equivalent of ‘let’s see that again!’ moment
Poker Face – Don’t Miss a Beat
• Using YouTube interactivity for Lady GaGa (and other UMG artists)
• Very simple, but neat
• Early days for these kinds of games – can fit in with wider ideas
RETHINKS
Scrabble Plus
• Casual take on Scrabble with more solo modes
• Scrabble Golf, Scrabble Battle and Scrabble Wizard
• Putting, power-ups and categories make the game fresh
Tetris Pop
• Turned Tetris into three-minute mini-games
• Different rules/formats, but kept true to core gameplay
• (Yes, I did use this one at Develop last year)
Pac-Man Remastered
• Bluetooth multiplayer where you play as the ghosts
• Why not make this a solo mode too?
• Anti Pacman – online Flash game does this too
UEFA Euro 2008
• Rethinking trad football game controls for new players
• Sliding bars rather than feverish key presses
• Still a game of skill, but in a different way
• Danger: dumbing down?
Bejeweled Blitz
• Bejeweled on Facebook with one-minute games
• Same mechanic with one crucial difference
• (Okay, chess got there first)
• Followed up with Zuma Web Connect this week
MASH-UPS
Puzzle Quest / Aurora Feint
• Mapping one genre (RPG) onto another (match-three puzzle)
• Build depth around casual core gameplay – or do you?
• Why map RPG onto puzzle and not other way around?
Chocolate Shop Frenzy
• Diner Dash meets Bejeweled
• But when there’s lots of Diner Dash meets Diner Dash games...
• Two genres familiar to same audience
Samurai Puzzle Battle
• Puzzle game meets strategy game meets action game
• Similar benefits / concerns to Puzzle Quest
• Rave reviews shows freshness of genre-splicing
Bejeweled / Peggle in WoW
• Add-On for WoW with two popular casual games
• Takes advantage of need to kill time while waiting for friends
• Tradeskill ramps up with skills / roll for loot
STUFF THAT’S INTERESTING BUT WON’T
FIT INTO AN EASILY DEFINABLE ONE-WORD
CATEGORY
Car Jack Streets
• Top-down GTA-style game for iPhone (and now DSi)
• Time is the key – make $50,000 every real-life week
• Push notifications could enhance this feature
• Danger: players drop out
Spore Origins
• iPhone version of Spore that uses the camera
• Design your perfect Spore in a way that suits the platform
• Camera-enabled feature, NOT a camera-focused game
And before you ask...
iSamurai Bluetooth
• Two-player sword-fights with your iPhone
• This year’s iPint/PhoneSaber
• Difference: putting a game structure around the novelty
Pet Society
• Poo
• Golden Poo
• Rainbow Poo
• Expect the unexpected
SurrounDEAD
• iPhone shooter that uses the compass (on 3GS)
• Takes a non-gaming feature and uses it for a game
• Novelty – would YOU play it in public?
Galaxy On Fire 2
• Space adventure/shooter with whizzy 3D graphics
• Free distribution model –freeplay and then pay
• Step further – used pirate sites to get the game out there
YoVille
• Virtual world / game on Facebook
• Partnership with SPCA in San Francisco – virtual cats and dogs in return for donations
• $20k in five weeks
WordFu
• Boggle with attitude – dice and letters/words
• Martial arts sounds whenever you make a word
• Comes into its own with two players
Flight Control / DrawRace
• Not direct control over object, but instead draw its path
• (PES on Wii – similar idea)
• FC = juggling, DR = feel
Pocket God
• The 99-cent game that’s trailblazed episodic content for the iPhone
• Weekly updates
• Selling 18k copies a day at its peak – despite (or because) updates were free
Enviro-Bear 2010
Cheers!
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