Text Sims, Business Models etc..

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by the_meanstrosity

I actually like Flasch's idea of a facebook app (PureSim Lite). Basically a light-weight version of PureSim that is free and thus allows you to get the PureSim name out there to an audience you might normally not have. Some of the other options stated in this thread have merit as well, but the Facebook one makes the most sense to me with the success of the text games like Mafia Wars, Farmville, etc on Facebook.

On this line of thought, some stats to consider. Of course we all know about Farmville & the incredible numbers it posts but what about lesser games?

The closest one I can think of to something like a hypothetical "PureSim Lite" is the football game Gridiron Live from Challenge Games. My own opinion? The game looked interesting until I realized the engine sucked, the devs break more features than they fix, and it's difficult to be competitive with human players unless you're spending money, all of which add up to a game that probably isn't going to catch on with the FB audience in a huge way. Now fair warning, it's got a graphic component, so it's not a great comparison in that respect either. But it IS a mainstream sport game app, and I haven't seen many of those on FB.

The site All Facebook - The Unofficial Facebook Blog - Facebook News, Facebook Marketing, Facebook Business, and More! attempts to track the DAU and MAU stats for all the apps (no, I don't see what they're using for their data source, could be 100% right or 100% wrong for all I know) but FWIW Gridiron Live has a DAU of 8796 and an MAU of 124,044, ranked 580th among all FB apps. They're drawing that traffic in part on the back of a much stronger app (Ponzi) that helps promote all their games but all of them started from somewhere around 0, quite possibly with a number at startup that'd be smaller than what Puresim could have initially with just the FB users at FOFC and his own site followers.

Only Gary could say for sure, but my own imagination is that exposing PureSim to 124,044 people in a year would fall in the category of "a good thing"

[Sgran]

Originally Posted by Tim Tellean

All of Gary's games do have graphics with a moving 2d oncourt display. FOF doesn't because Jim isn't interested in the graphics piece from what I have heard but Gary has Paul and now Ivan/Icy who work hard on the graphics for that eye candy appeal.
I'm just saying....

I think Gary's basketball games are a perfect example. The graphics are just a bunch of shirts moving around. You still have to read. I want to watch the game and see that Ben Gorden isn't getting Stephen Jackson to bite on his headfakes, and that's why his shot is off. I realize that it's asking a lot, but that's what I get from the soccer sims, and one of the other sports games needs to secure some financing and sink some money into this. I want Madden graphics with solid GM AI and career player progression. EA could do this, they just can't be bothered.

[DaddyTorgo]

baseball is different in that regard though...i don't necessarily need to see my guy jogging lazily after the ball.

maybe...pitch locations? i loved when i realized i could see that on OOTP, that added a lot of immersion to me. Baseball Mogul does it too. And there's already a "ball flight" component...so that's fine. IMHO I like the look of the stadiums in PureSim better than those in OOTP (now that I can get them to import easier).

If you want to clean up anything graphically it might be stuff like the FA and draft screens...make them look a little less "spreadsheety" I think. Then again, I like being able to sort by all those options, so I like the spreadsheet functionality, but maybe the look of it could be altered a little.

Advanced statistics...as many as the DB can provide.

[Philliesfan980]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

baseball is different in that regard though...i don't necessarily need to see my guy jogging lazily after the ball.

maybe...pitch locations? i loved when i realized i could see that on OOTP, that added a lot of immersion to me. Baseball Mogul does it too. And there's already a "ball flight" component...so that's fine. IMHO I like the look of the stadiums in PureSim better than those in OOTP (now that I can get them to import easier).

If you want to clean up anything graphically it might be stuff like the FA and draft screens...make them look a little less "spreadsheety" I think. Then again, I like being able to sort by all those options, so I like the spreadsheet functionality, but maybe the look of it could be altered a little.

Advanced statistics...as many as the DB can provide.

What I'm looking for is something inbetween what you describe (OOTP graphics - Ball Flight), and what Sgran wants (Madden type graphics). As I mentioned earlier in this thread, High Heat was just fine for me. In fact, having a ton of fancy animations and stuff like that would just make the game take longer.

[KWhit]

Hell, Microleague baseball had the right amount of graphics and that was over 20 years ago!

[cuervo72]

Originally Posted by KWhit

Hell, Microleague baseball had the right amount of graphics and that was over 20 years ago!

Agreed.

[cuervo72]

Actually now that I come to think of it, I tried to interest a friend of mine from HS in FOBL a few months ago; he said that it looked like a nice league but he didn't have that kind of time.

Then he went back to simming MicroLeague games on a C64 emulator.

[KWhit]

The thing that made Microleague graphically interesting is that it created suspense. You didn't know if that liner in the bottom of the ninth was going to drop in or not. And you watched, holding your breath, while your little 2D sprite ran its little ass off trying to catch it with the game hanging in the balance.

Now we just read words. And you can usually tell immediately what the play is going to be by how the text begins.

[Tim Tellean]

Originally Posted by Sgran

I think Gary's basketball games are a perfect example. The graphics are just a bunch of shirts moving around. You still have to read. I want to watch the game and see that Ben Gorden isn't getting Stephen Jackson to bite on his headfakes, and that's why his shot is off. I realize that it's asking a lot, but that's what I get from the soccer sims, and one of the other sports games needs to secure some financing and sink some money into this. I want Madden graphics with solid GM AI and career player progression. EA could do this, they just can't be bothered.

I don't disagree, FM is the gold standard right now but as others pointed out MicroLeague did it 25 years ago (I loved that game) and NFL Challenge did a good job giving you the feeling of action at least with Gary's we do have motion and not static or non-existent as the other "text" sims have, unfortunately the games went in 2 directions with text sims and accuracy or graphics and arcade results (Exceptions of course exist).
I think we'll see a coming together as the PC market dies out for sports sims and the facebook, iphone app etc. take over from the stand alone market.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Interesting article today about social media gaming apps & some numbers from a smallish player in the field (Playdom)

The Economics Of Facebook Games

The upshot of it all, based on his own company figures he would discuss?
-- Average development cost is $100k-$300k per app
-- Average conversion to microtransaction payments around 2%
-- Average monthly revenue per paying customer about $20 each
-- Typical marketing cost about 50% of development cost
-- Average cost per install about 50 cents, but as high as $3 per install if a company is pushing hard

edit to extrapolate: So 100k users = 2k paying users X $20 each = $40k per month average revenue per 100k users. And the even the lower end of the FB gaming app upper tier has a user base in the millions.

[Warhammer]

Originally Posted by Tim Tellean

I don't disagree, FM is the gold standard right now but as others pointed out MicroLeague did it 25 years ago (I loved that game) and NFL Challenge did a good job giving you the feeling of action at least with Gary's we do have motion and not static or non-existent as the other "text" sims have, unfortunately the games went in 2 directions with text sims and accuracy or graphics and arcade results (Exceptions of course exist).
I think we'll see a coming together as the PC market dies out for sports sims and the facebook, iphone app etc. take over from the stand alone market.

There's a lot to this. I have gone back to playing NFL Challenge on DOS Box and have had a on of fun playing the computer.

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

edit to extrapolate: So 100k users = 2k paying users X $20 each = $40k per month average revenue per 100k users. And the even the lower end of the FB gaming app upper tier has a user base in the millions.

Just to give a word of warning to people before everyone runs out to hire a poor innocent developer to make them millions via facebook ....

Most successful Facebook development companies appear to either use a well known existing brand or to use a 'throw mud at a wall and see what sticks' approach.

That second approach is simply that a company willl prototype and develop 5+ small games and see which ones gets the largest user base, then cut back to say two initially and develop those further then concentrate ultimately just on the most successful one going forward.

This obviously increases the up-front development costs somewhat and there is ALWAYS the risk that none of the applications developed 'stick' sufficiently to turn a profit - in gaming this is ALWAYS a large risk with any mass market product because there is only room for 'x' number at any time within a market place realistically.

This isn't to say you shouldn't consider moving into this development space - but I just wanted to give a little balance to the rather enthusisastic figures which can get bandied around at times.