Lecture 5, I-play

22/11/10

This lecture was given by Thomas Hulverson, who is a senior tester at I-play in Germany, a company which specialises in making facebook games. Facebook games, while not AAA titles, are a rapidly growing portion of the market, and since they require less creation time and assets than a normal game. In addition to this, games of this kind spread by going ‘viral’ this, he explained, is where the game circulates by people playing, then inviting friends to join, who invite their friends and so forth. And because the way these games generate money is by frustrating players to the point that they choose to spend money to advance faster, they have a high revenue potential.

In addition to this he explained the steps involved in developing a PC game of this kind:

• Project creation
• Sprint
• Sprint
• Sprint, first playable version
• Sprint
• Sprint
• Sprint
• Sprint, alpha testing
• Sprint, beta testing
• Content finalised, external testing & game balancing.

This lecture really opened my eyes to the potential of casual games, while they are not my personal preferred kind of gaming it is a big growth market, with a potential for fast profit, especially since small casual games can be built by small development teams, keeping production costs down. So I have definitely gained new insight into casual gaming, but it still remains a part of the industry that I do not see as an ideal place for myself, however the testing opportunities it offers while I’m working towards my goals are excellent.