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Essays

Breaking Stalemates on Product Design Questions

    One of the challenges of early product design is creating the initial product hypothesis on what the product actually is. Internally, products tend to be more easily described as a bundle of features, but it’s difficult to convert that into an actual description. Marketing and initial product design is often the realm in which everyone has an opinion, and it’s hard to judge which one is more valid. Should this button be red or blue? Is this the right message for the user, or should we phrase it another way? The answers to the questions, however, can be very important… Read More »Breaking Stalemates on Product Design Questions

    Lessons from designing a product in less than 24 hours

      Last weekend, Sachin Rekhi and I did connectme.cc as a little hackathon project for the Cloudstock Hackathon. I’m proud to report that we were a finalist for the event and even made it onto Techcrunch! If you’re not familiar with it, Cloudstock is a small event offshoot off of the larger Salesforce.com Dreamforce conference designed to bring developers and cloud technologies together. Meet our project: connectme.cc The premise behind connectme.cc is simple. Send your business card with one text. Even though we’re living in this world with social networks and online profiles, many of the existing applications are dependent on both… Read More »Lessons from designing a product in less than 24 hours

      How to Price Your Virtual Currency (Dataset Across 57 Social Games, SNS and MMO/Virtual Worlds)

        One of the key early decisions to game design or creating a virtual currency platform is designing the price and exchange rate of virtual currency. Unfortunately after it’s been released, it’s also one of the most difficult to change, because the change impacts the userbase and economy of the system as a whole. So if you’re starting out, how do you decide how to price your virtual currency? Three Types of Virtual Currency To answer this question, I started by looking across a broad swath of popular social games, social networks, and some MMOs and virtual worlds. Currency is typically used… Read More »How to Price Your Virtual Currency (Dataset Across 57 Social Games, SNS and MMO/Virtual Worlds)

        Roundup: Ongoing Gamification Debate

          Gamification as a buzz word seems to be picking up steam and there’s a lot of conversations going on about the topic these days. After my recent post defining gamification and giving examples of it, I’ve pulled together a roundup and quick summary of the topics. To start off, the web can’t seem to decide whether or not gamification is a real word. Wikipedia deleted the word from its index and since then it’s reappeared again. There also seems to be a disagreement about whether it’s spelled gamification vs. gameification, and it looks like a pretty even heat. Trying to… Read More »Roundup: Ongoing Gamification Debate

          What is Gamification and Real World Examples of It

            What Is Gamification? Gamification is a new vocabulary word lately, and there’s even a summit about it. What is the definition of gamification? The word gamification is used to describe companies integrating game mechanics into their non-gaming product or service to drive user engagement. These companies are “gamifying” their products and services by adding light game mechanics on top of them. What does that actually look like? While the term is relatively new, the tactics aren’t and have already been in play for quite some time. Here are some examples of gamification in action. Real World Examples of Gamification Collecting… Read More »What is Gamification and Real World Examples of It

            Quick Notes from Smartphone Games Summit — Android, Social, Freemium and More

              I stopped by the Smartphone Games Summit today, and thought I’d post a few notes. Great job to Charles Hudson and mediabistro for another great event. One of the interesting sessions in the morning was a session called Smartphone Game Trends, presented by Peter Farago, VP of Marketing for Flurry. Smartphone Game Trends Consumers are changing in their behavior from portable games (DS) to iPhone On iPhone, 1% of games are on iPhone (in a pie with portable and console) but they claim 5% of revenue share. Issues with Android Install base for Android is almost equal to iPhone, but… Read More »Quick Notes from Smartphone Games Summit — Android, Social, Freemium and More

              Why Startups Should Care About PR

                One of the common questions that startups ask is whether or not they should bother with hiring a PR agency. PR agencies are fairly expensive for small businesses to work with, often thousands per month on a retainer basis. The most common complaint I hear is that they’re pricey, and difficult to measure the return on investment. So when does it make sense to hire a PR firm? How PR Can Help Startups SEO: Getting links from news outlets can significantly help generate inbound links from top-tier publications and help your company move up the search engine rankings. Credibility: Many startups… Read More »Why Startups Should Care About PR

                How Games Fulfill Maslow’s Hierarchy

                  It struck me the other day how well Maslow’s hierarchy of needs maps directly to many social game mechanics. Maslow’s hierarchy was introduced in the 1940’s as a concept that people are motivated to satisfy basic needs before they build up to other needs. The lower level of the pyramid is built off of hygiene needs, such as health, food, water and sleep. After those conditions are satisfied, people’s needs progress up the five levels to emphasize psychological and social needs. Levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy Self-actualizing needs — fulfillment of your true potential Esteem needs — personal worth, achievement, social recognition Social needs — belonging, love,… Read More »How Games Fulfill Maslow’s Hierarchy

                  Three smart ways Frontierville executes on game mechanics

                    The entire company has been playing Zynga’s Frontierville for the last few weeks as a group observation on social games. I’m amused (and a little embarrassed?) to admit that I’m one of the few people I know in the games industry that actually enjoys playing these games. However, as penance for an excessive amount of time wasted, I’ve decided to blog about some of the interesting things that they are doing to make the game effective. 😉 1. An !Explosion! of Rewards (Achievement) After harvesting crops or feeding hungry animals, Frontierville really emphasizes the reward. Huge piles of coins, food and collectible… Read More »Three smart ways Frontierville executes on game mechanics