My inspiration blog - by Eline Kwantes

Inspiring presentation - Design outside the box - DICE 2010

Spotted at Twitter (via the Dutch @marketingfacts), this is a presentation on game design you must see. Also contains some interesting insights from the speaker on ClubPenguin and Webkinz. Very inspiring and extremely funny (especially at the end), so start watching!

Mobile & social: show me the money

This was the title of a presentation by Volker Hirsch from Scoreloop. Past week at the Gaming Conference Casual Connect in Hamburg, I've had the privilege to listen to his story. Here's a summary of what was quite interesting...

A lot of people seem to think the money is in social gaming. Easy, you would think, just find a social network and do something with it.

According to Hirsch from Scoreloop, that’s not the right answer. A social network is not automatically a community! It can connect you to a community though, but just being there is not enough. Where to find a community? Hirsh is confident it’s on mobile.

Mobile is: BIG, POWERFUL, PERSONAL.
Some examples:
Big – more than 4,6 billion phone subscriptions in the world!
Powerful – you always have it with you, most of the time in arms reach and has a built in billing system
Personal – people are not eager to share phones with someone else, it is your own phone

To utilize the power of the mobile community and make money out of it, Hirsch introduces the concept of “Object Centered Sociality”. This means you should see your game as a social object and lever it towards the community. Easier said than done? Look into human value drivers, they will enable you to do this.

Human value drivers that drive people to buy games:
- hope
- belonging
- feeling important
- security
- getting more out of life

In the end you should make sure to “Connect with Fans (CwF) and create “Reasons to Buy”. Together, they will give you a “Business Model” that sticks, he is convinced.

CwF + RtB = BM

To connect with your players, you should drive engagement:
- interact
- see your game as social object
- turn your players into fanatics
- connect with them IN the game
- connect players with each other

So what should you do?
- create fanatics
- provide avenues for passion
- incorporate community
- allow your players choice
- keep it in context

And how can you do this?
- reward: highscores, but make customizable and relevant
- connect to their community
- add person to person challenges/tournaments (playful contextual interaction)
- award & reward fanatics
- use in game transactions and virtual currencies (contextual monetization)

Finally, make sure you use real cross promotion. Turn your fanatics into ambassadors. Make sure people recommend your game to their friends (74% of send-a-friends get opened & clicked on), Try to make this possible on the platforms available.

See the full set of slides on SlideShare.

How does hail work? Effing Hail - the game

Came across this game at Josh Spear's Trendspotting blog - Effing Hail. It's a good example of what we'd call 'edutainment'. Learning by playing a entertaining game...

"Intuitiongames is hosting an info-graph game titled “effing hail” explaining the weather through destruction. (...) The premise of the game is to keep the small pieces of hail in the sky so its get bigger and bigger. Once they get to a certain size the small gust of wind you control can direct your moster ice rock to crash into a skyscraper or a plane. Damage is the goal." says Josh Spear.

Ola Waterspelen - the game

As you know, I don't write a lot about work, but this one I wanted to share... :)

With a full team we've been working on the OLA Waterspelen (Watergames) online game, which is ment to get kids enthusiastic about the brand and especially the mini events with the same name... Realtime, kids can enter a competition in swimmingpools all around Holland. It's a great concept by the big ice cream brand (probably the biggest there is in the world?).



Anyways, just wanted to share this game with you. The concept is an 'interactive boardgame'. A bit similar to 'ganzenbord' or 'monopoly', only then we added interactive elements such as minigames... Not only am I really proud of what the illustrator has accoplished, also the minigames are very well done and the game is fun to play as well...

You should play it to get the feel of it, so why not just try? Check out: www.olawaterspelen.nl

Playing a game on (big)screen with your mobile phone

On wise.com I came across this idea a while ago. Megaphone has found a way to attract more people to a big (screen) ad. On a screen you see a game, in which you can participate yourself by calling in and using your phone as a gamecontroller. Nice huh?

Read the whole article on Springwise.com.

Game inspiration - Submachine Zero

Got this game pushed straight into my inbox by Lost at E Minor... Find Submachine Zero quite inspirational and thus did not want to keep you from seeing it :)

Visit Jayisgames.com for the Submachine Zero game.