Archive for the ‘iPhone Game Design’ Category
Ian Marsh, creator of Tiny Tower, on user research, play-testing and F2P
Tiny Tower is the hit iPhone game which allows players to build and manage a towerblock and its residents (or ‘bitizens’!). Despite being free, Tiny Tower is continually in the top-grossing apps list due to it’s effective use of free-to-play mechanics.
I spoke to Ian Marsh, one half of Nimblebit, who have had numerous iPhone hits beyond their success with Tiny Tower, including Scoops, Pocket Frogs, Textropolis and more. Ian shared his insight into how understanding player behaviour affects the development of a popular iOS game, and the idiosyncracies of testing with free-to-play mechanics.
A small tower
How to make an addictive social game
Unlike some ‘triple A’ game developers, web-based social game designers quickly recognised how important usability and user experience are to their success. With customers being able to easily access their content for free, without making a commitment to paying for their gaming experience up-front, it’s extremely important to attract and retain players in the first few minutes.
Today I’ll be looking at the first 5 minutes of a successful social game, and highlighting which elements have made this game successful. In the future we’ll look at some games which have missed the point, and hence lost a large proportion of their customer base. From this, we can learn how to make an addictive social game. Click to continue…
The usability of iPhone’s Game Center
Long time readers may remember that I was excited about the prospect of Game Center, Apples new social gaming hub. Much like Xbox Live, PSHome, or indeed iPhone competitors such as Openfeint, it offers achievements, and the ability to play with friends, compare achievements and start multiplayer games. Due to iTunes’ erratic behaviour, I’ve only just been able to upgrade to OS4.1 and get it, and my initial impressions are less than enthusiastic. Game Center seems to make basic usability mistakes that you wouldn’t expect from Apple, and it’s … odd. Almost like it was designed by the work experience guy. Here are some of the major issues I found.
All Change – Apple’s new social gaming network
Been playing iPhone games recently? Then you’ve probably been bothered by pop-ups asking you to sign in with OpenFeint, Plus+, Crystal, or one of the other many social gaming networks on the iPhone. When I started writing this post, I was going to cover the problems that having many rival social gaming networks causes, and what Apple needs to do to fix it. However, I’m too late. Last week, Apple announced they are going to launch their own social gaming network, called ‘Game Center’. So instead, we’ll be looking at what this new social gaming network needs to do, and what player experience issues it needs to address.
What is a social gaming network?
As seen with Xbox Live, or Playstation Home, social gaming networks essentially all do similar things:
- Store high scores, often with leader boards for comparison with other players, by day/week/all time.
- Gives, and records achievements (or trophies) from within the game: meta-objectives which are publically listed on the player’s profile
- Contains a ‘friends’ list, of other players, with messaging facilities so that multiplayer games with these players can be arranged.
- Match finding, allowing the player to find suitable games that match their criteria, or games with friends.
Admittedly not terribly useful in solitaire...
Problems with social gaming networks on the iPhone.
The problems so far with implementation of these networks on the iPhone are caused by the wide number of competing systems.
Unlike the PS3 and Xbox, which each has one social gaming network on their device, Apple had (until last week) refused to act on implementing their own system, which has lead to the rise of many independent systems. Currently popular are: Crystal, Plus+, Openfeint, Agon and a recently announced competing network by Namco. Even ignoring the smaller, less widely implemented systems, there is still too much diffusion here.
Having a large number of competing systems offers an inconsistent user experience, with similar tasks (i.e. adding a friend) being handled differently on each system, which is ultimately detrimental to the player’s experience. Instead of playing the game, players have to spend too much time setting up accounts and adding the same friends from their other iPhone games.
The lack of a centrally imposed quality control means the implementation of these networks into games is rather haphazard. This can be seen with the free version of the iPhone ‘x-ray’ app, which emulates x-raying the player’s hand. The app has recently added Openfeint support, and so has achievements, leaderboards, a friend list, etc. These features don’t correlate with a single player, non-game. What sort of competition can a faux-x-ray have?
Achievement Unlocked: Found Keys
A closer inspection shows that the achievement points are all given for purchasing the paid version of the game. The social gaming network integration just serves to bribe the player with the chance to pay for points and inflate an artificial score (which can be compared to your friend’s score, see Farmville!).
What will Apple’s new system have to do
Apple’s system will have to improve the disjointed player experience that these systems currently give. To properly emulate the success, and ‘flow’ of the PS3 and Xbox’s networks, Apple should be aiming to entirely replace these competing systems.
The advantages of this would include:
- unifying all players under one system to ensure that friends can find each other, play against each other, without being spread across multiple systems
- The players only need to understand one workflow for each task (i.e. adding a friend), rather than learning the process for each system
- The player will only need to sign up once
- Achievement points earned in one game can be shared across all games, rather than just those on the same network, as currently.
Care would also have to be taken to enforce rules to ensure achievement points remain meaningful, by introducing a form of quality control to prevent poor apps from bribing people to download by handing out points cheaply.
When I ran user tests for an iPhone game last year, the openfeint login/sign up screens confused new users, who were just interested in playing the game. Apple will need to make the network invisible to uninterested parties, to prevent this. Perhaps this can link with their itunes ID, but the implementation of this is not obvious:- families often share an itunes ID across many devices
By introducing their own network, Apple have the opportunity to achieve a consistent, and hence improved, user experience when playing using the iPhone’s social gaming networks, and can only help things get better!
Shh! iPhone gaming should respect your sound settings
This one may be hard to illustrate, but it should be one of the first items on the checklist for developers, and is often missed. Let’s use a scenario to illustrate it, painting vivid pictures in your mind!
You’re sat in a lecture, and the topic is domestic life in 14th Century Catalonia (We don’t know why you’re here, you are a computing student. Maybe you thought there would be sandwiches). It’s dull. You’ve tried to check twitter, no internet connection. Time to play a game on the iPhone then, I guess. Check the phones on silent, yep the switch is flicked. Ok, time to rock!
Oh no – its playing the Marble Zone theme at full volume! We’ve been foiled, and you’ll never get the sandwiches now!
So what went wrong? Despite having the phone set to silent, the game still had sound. Depending on how diligent the coders were, this has been an issue with the iPhone for a while, as the iPhone won’t automatically silence apps when set to silent – this has to be manually coded. Quick ports or just forgetful coders (usually working in small teams) can miss this.
This becomes an issue because of user expectations – they’d expect the silent switch to work globally, and will be surprised and frustrated when this isn’t the case. As seen in the scenario above, it can lead to the user being embarrassed and worse of all (according to Alan Cooper) feeling stupid!
It’s not simply a ‘design choice’, as a logical look at the situation will tell us. Not only would manually setting the desired volume settings inside an application duplicate functionality that is already implemented in a much more functional manner on the device itself, but I can also think of no scenario where a user would want their phone on silent, but their game to make sounds. It’s just poor design.
So in summary… just don’t do it app designers!
(Also while you’re at it, let me listen to my own music in game!)
Who does this well?
A lot of games to be honest, as its not really a ‘do well’ thing, rather its just done or not done. So lets talk about Doom Classic, as it does do this. John Carmack’s finally (6 months after it was “almost ready”) released his port of the original Doom for the iPhone. Control issues aside, it’s a faithful port, and includes WiFi multiplayer. Its Doom, so you know what you’re getting, and its just as fun as it was 15 years ago. More relevant, it does respect the silent switch on your iPhone, so I’m justified in talking about it here! We’re all looking forward to when Carmack starts on his port of Quake.
Who does this badly?
Hook Champ, from Rocket Cat Games, is a fun platformer where the only means of getting anywhere fast involves swinging from the ceiling, over lava, through brick walls and away from the scary cursed..fish thing. Its fun, recreating the opening scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s just a pity that the game ignores your silent switch, and so plays at full volume regardless of your iPhone’s settings. You can set the volume in game. But you shouldn’t have too. A disappointing oversight!
Another offender is Sonic 1, but I didn’t feature that as I’ve already talked about it in a previous post (link to previous post). Oh dear!
Also, just quickly, thanks to Brian Franklin from WebHostingSearch for featuring this blog in their ’20 Great UX blogs’. Rather unexpected, but thanks!
