BOLA SOCIAL SOCCER on Facebook

I didn’t really do the Farmville thing. Loved the game structure and concept, just found the idea of town-based digital types ‘playing’ at being a farmer rather lame. Clearly I’m in the minority but my farming family background just won’t let me do it.

I’m also not that keen of football. And it’s probably the only genre of game that I can’t play either. Never really got past the first few seconds of any console football game. Kinda surprised in Bola though. It has all the hallmarks of something I should hate. Football, management game and a mini-football game to play too. Yet it’s brilliant. It’s very Farming in feel but clearly is trying to tap into the world’s most popular ‘real-world’ game.

Why is this interesting? Well all the people who have been addicted to Farmville just aren’t picking this up. They’re ‘Farmvilled out’. They’ve reached that cliff where they suddenly realise “Hang on, this is absolutely pointless!”… and they go about their normal lives actually talking to real people and who knows, doing real gardening. All the people that stood, dazed at the side line of Farmville tutting seem to welcome Bola. It’s like a ‘Thank god, a game that doesn’t make me look lame” moment. Ding, ding, social gaming round two…

I also notice they are now the 3rd most popular app this month on Facebook. Now there’s your business model…

PLAY IT here.

Split/Second on Facebook

This is the Split/Second Facebook app to help promote the console game. First up I have to confess, I helped make this but what struck me was the simplicity of the game and the power of several robust game principles when they come together in the right mix:

1) Game trailer are the best thing to sell games. Why not use the trailer AS the game.

2) Keep it simple, it’s Facebook!

3) Make the scoring mechanism granular enough to generate varied scores

4) Show your friends in a leader board – this REALLY hikes the replay factor

5) Create a game where YOU fail because of YOUR skills. You are compelled to prove yourself.

6) Stick it on Facebook, the biggest community on the web.

Several people have figured out a way of boosting your scores by gambling everything on guessing the next sequence. It’s infuriating simple but has so many ways to go from hero to zero.

PLAY IT here… my current high score is 8268 btw

Panfu virtual world

I only mention Panfu as it was the first site my daughter (9) actively recommended to me. Her friend had mentioned it at school and she’s seen a few adverts on TV. So I took a sneak peek to see what it was all about. In a nutshell, Club Penguin with Pandas… but not quite so good. The clincher for my daughter was the panda factor, nothing more.

Curious to see what becomes of it. Whether it gains traction and gets better or becomes abandoned. I only met 2 other pandas when I roamed around for 10 minutes or so. Watch this space kids!

Tuesday was a big day for me. About a year ago I doodled a concept on a notepad and took it into Digital Outlook. For those that don’t know, the agency I work for is also passionate about developing new characters and concepts from the ground up.

My scribbled idea started with the notion of “where do computer viruses eat and drink in such a harsh digital world?”. A quick look around the room later… bubblejet printer ink! I loved the idea that these devices act as savana-style watering holes for online lifeforms. What if you could tell when a critter was visiting your house and could do battle with it? What if you beat it and it fell under the printer’s rollers and out popped a printed sheet complete with squashed critter.

As they say… Zoikz was born (after the usual URL check!)

Then comes the Digital Outlook magic. With the idea whipped into shape with Angus Fletcher, RDF, Miniclip and Egmont all wanted in. For our part, launching it was simple. Zoikz was mainly targetted at 8-12yr old boys so a game on Miniclip would be a fantastic launch strategy to start building awareness. Egmont are the worlds largest publisher and also publish Toxic magazine targetted at 6-12yr old boys. Wouldn’t it be amazing if they ran a full page add on the same day as Miniclip launched a Zoikz game? Wouldn’t it be even more awesome if they ran a full page for the first 6 weeks then published a proper Zoikz cartoon? Well, that’s exactly why Tuesday was a big day… as that’s what happened!

I’m currently away from my PC and only have a restricted iPhone browser (insert rant about Apple / Flash here) so I haven’t actually seen it. Very annoying but very cool at the same time.

PLAY IT on Miniclip here.
Print out your cheat sheet then visit the minisite to see a Zoik in Augmented Reality 3D on Zoikz.com.
VISIT the microsite here.

Check out the article in NMA for a bit of name-checking.

Please DO let me know what you think. It’s really at its initial phase and although we have ideas, I would love to hear where you would like it to go.

There’s all sorts of things wrong with the control and physics (the car wheelies like a mad thing and rolls over at the merest whiff of steering angle) but I’m very impressed how easy it is to put something like this together from scratch! Like, 1.5 hours thanks to a few hints here. Very cool.

More to come!

Click the image to launch the demo. You’ll need to install the Unity player, but it’s pretty seamless.

Just noticed that our Mr. Men Pinball game has just re-appeared in the “Hot Games” top 6 on the Miniclip homepage. Considering this game has been around for about 2 years now, that’s fantastic! Not sure of the figures as they’re probably also a little guarded, but I’d expect it to be somewhere up near 40 million game plays by now. Amazing when you consider the population of the UK is about 65 million

That’s the power of a good advergame. Equate that to a traditional media spend on say, Yahoo or the Google Ad Network and the ‘cost per click’ or ‘cost per engavement’ is very impressive on Miniclip or similar gaming sites. People actually spent more time playing the Mr. Men game then the length of an TV episode of the Mr. Men Show! Click through to the Mr. Men Show site was similarly impressive. Double figures where the usual industry average for a click through on a banner is maybe 1.4%.

Obviously, advergames are one of my pet passions and I’ve made a few games before so this is kinda big news yet a big ‘I always told you so!’ moment. I’ll post something more useful in the near future but fo now, enjoy the pinball!

Note the little square bottom right. That’s cool.

You wait ages then two come along at once! Yep, just 5 days after Corn Pops Challenge was launched, our new baby, ‘Zubo Zurfing‘ has gone live (or Zubo Surfing as Miniclip has it… doh!). It’s very cool to have our games occupying two of the three slots in the Miniclip main promo area!

The game itself is a great achievement. Original gameplay, exciting, high-quality and fun to play. Probably one of the best games we’ve made at Digital Outlook. Big thanks to EA and GoFish for giving us the chance to make it! The aim is to get the 5 Zubo characters across a sound wave. You do this by exploding ‘sound bombs’ above and below the sound wave to cause ripples that fling you in the air. Of course, there are baddies, keys and bonuses in there to keep you on your toes.

What would I improve? Simple, more levels! What a great compliment to a game. It’s a great game engine that can ramp up and allow for mini-puzzles and level designs to test your skill. I think 20 levels should do it.

Anyways, I suggest you play it… play it now… and visit the Zubo web site, it’s quite fun.

Every game that makes it onto Miniclip is a momentous occasion for us and our latest is no exception. It’s called the Kelloggs Corn Pops Challenge and you have to complete the 4 mini-games to unlock your extra bonus. The style we were working off was pretty mad. Kind of a cross between the cheesy, early Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Yo Gabba Gabba. All credit to the good people at Kelloggs for letting us (Digital Outlook) put this one together. One of our other games is at 34 million plays and counting, so fingers crossed for this one!

It’s been a real labour of love. Each of the mini-games were based on a physics engine and it plays really well. The sounds really add to the experience and there are a few riffs in there from the ever resourceful Reason. Check out Jop’s blog for some more details but if I were you, I’d just play it.

One thing to note, an easter egg if you like, the mad looking guy at the end (the one with the wig) is actually the developer, Jop! I think Warhol underestimated the 15 minutes of fame thing…

Corn Pops Challenge Play these super-awesome challenges, unlock the golden cereal pieces and win!

Play this free game now!!

I deal with these guys a lot at Digital Outlook but never actually embedded their Arcade widget… easily rectified. It’s not rocket science, just go here, choose a game and get the code… except the embeddable flash apps are bigger than the ‘standard’ 450 pixel width of WordPress (this blog). You can alter the flash tags to be 450 width but it does come out a bit small. Works though…

You can do it to single games too…

Here’s an embeddable promo for a game we did for Mr. Men. Last time we checked it had done 32 million game plays in about a year. Not bad! Why not add a few to the total…

Mr Men Pinball Activate multiple targets for bonus points in Mr Bump Pinball!

Play this free game now!!

This site was has just popped up on my radar…

[ http://www.whattheyplay.com ]

As the header says, it’s aiming to be “The parents guide to video games”. Ok, if it was me I’d have capitalised the ‘THE” but there you go.

Anyway, some great articles on there. Lots of ‘Get the facts’ bluffers guides to popular technologies or platforms as well as links to reports on kids gaming and trends. There are several console categories, a blog and a bunch of interesting articles. Strange they don’t have a ‘web games’ section though given that likes of Miniclip are hugely influential in this space.

Here are some example articles worth a quick scan…

• Parents More Concerned About Video Games than Alcohol or Pornography
• Are You or Your Kids “Extreme Gamers”?
• Miniclip: Get the Facts
• What is WiiWare?
• Kongregate: Get the Facts
• Webkinz: Get The Facts

Needless to say, I’ve signed up to the newsletter, so I expect my spam folder to be a little heavier this month before I figure out where it went.