Apple, cross-promotion, Discovery Engineering, eCPA, Electronic Arts, Europe, Facebook, Fantasy Sports, guano, iPhone, potato, sheep, South America, SPI, whales, wolves

A BROWSER MANIFESTO – PART 10

After doubling European farming output with the potato, there was a further tripling of value from another South American import: the bird droppings known as guano. Let’s apply the fertilizer metaphor to how we can make games better with a new technical discipline that I’ll call Discovery Engineering. In short, how do we start with the same game but add engineering and technology that brings in much more new daily traffic as well as more frequent return visits?

Our gaming guano starts with my very old concept that great games must be Simple, Hot and Deep. I’ve been saying this since I founded Electronic Arts in 1982 and it remains true nearly 30 years later. Consider the ocean, which is simple enough in concept and access that everyone likes to go to the beach. The babies are playing in the sand and puddles while the kids that can walk are getting wet and letting the lapping waves chase them. It’s hot and the graphics and sound are fantastic; everyone is enthralled by the spectacle and can’t get enough. And no matter how far you go it just keeps getting deeper until you need a surfboard or scuba gear and have to worry about sharks. The analogy I used earlier was how the depth satisfies the whales, also known as wolves, who generate your revenue. The wolves need to conquer the sheep that are represented by the casual players. Hence the game must appeal to everyone like the ocean. You cannot even begin to make this work if the game is not Simple, Hot and Deep.

There are additional things that can now be embodied in the game itself that will drive more traffic and return visits. Game mechanics that are very satisfying to play by yourself are of less value than mechanics that engage you in competition and contact with other players, which provokes both viral spread and higher return rates. Repeatable game mechanics that are driven more by algebra and stats, like Fantasy Sports, are not only more efficient to build than a content treadmill, but they provoke endless competitive comparisons leading to higher return rates and more spending.

Independent of the game, additional technology layers can be wrapped around it to generate more free traffic. The APIs of an SNS like Facebook are one great example. Apple makes it easy to send an email invitation but any of these ideas is going to be more effective if the game is not limited to one platform. Everyone that is looking at email or Facebook is but one click away from the browser, regardless of his or her preferred game platform. If your game runs in the browser without requiring any plug-ins, installs or memberships you have a better chance of getting the recipient of an invitation to try it right now. If they like a short trial session, they may later become a Facebook member or buy an iPhone but even if they don’t they can play your game in any case.

My favorite example of Discovery Engineering is how we do cross-promotion. Many people dislike this idea because they don’t understand it and are clinging to the past. Old School thinking says that customers go to destinations and that you would be crazy to distract them or let them exit prematurely once you have gone to all the trouble to bring them to your game. But if your game is in the browser, the player only invested in one simple click to get to you. Not only was the “investment” nothing, he’s busy right now, possibly at work or at school, and he’s going to be leaving your website within seconds regardless of how you treat him.

The principle of cross-promotion is to get something of value when, inevitably, he leaves. Hence we show a display ad banner offering a few other games to try. If the current game is no longer holding his attention, he’s a goner anyway. But if he clicks on a game in the banner, he goes to a competitor’s game for a free trial, and that competitor now owes our company a return click from one of their customers that we don’t already have. If your product is lousy this will only make you fail faster. But if you make a superior game you will double your customers this way, because your game is good enough that your departing player will remember to come back to your game again. And your competitor is giving you a new customer who will also like your game, so you’ll have two good customers instead of just one. Voila, your eCPA just dropped in half, which dramatically increases the chance that the game’s lifetime value will be profitable.

It is for the same reason that auto dealerships cluster together on the same street. But many game developers are too paranoid and distrusting to do this kind of cross-promotion. They’re afraid to help a competitor or they’re insecure or overly protective about their game. But we know this works for us; it’s the best guano we’ve got.

Rio Review

Rio is inconsistent and short on personality, but there's some enjoyment to be had in this multiplayer party game.

The Good

• Many enjoyable minigames   
• Just $30.

The Bad

• Doesn't take advantage of film license   
• Some games are too basic to appeal to players of any age.

In the tradition of Fuzion Frenzy and the Mario Party games comes Rio. Rio tosses the vibrant avian stars of the animated film of the same name into a host of simple minigames. Not all of the games here will hold the interest of even young players for very long, and Rio fails to capitalize on its film license, squandering its story and giving its characters short shrift. But young players (and their parents) will find some enjoyment in the better minigames here, and the reasonable $30 price makes its shortcomings a little easier to overlook.

If you've spent any time with party games, everything about Rio will feel immediately familiar. You, and hopefully one to three friends, progress through a series of games simple enough that brief instruction screens before each one tell you everything you need to know about how to play them. There are 43 games in all, but don't take that to mean there are 43 entirely different types of experiences to be had here. Many of the games are very similar to each other, and they can be grouped into just a few categories.

Welcome to Rio, where birds engage in reckless activities for your enjoyment!

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There are some basic rhythm games in which the characters dance or play a musical instrument, and you need to push a thumbstick in a certain direction in time with onscreen prompts. These games move at a pace that most players of any age will find easy to keep up with and some will find too easy to be interesting. Then, there are shooting galleries in which you move an onscreen reticle to target fireworks or marmosets. The fireworks minigame is absorbing because your score multiplier increases each time you score a hit and gets wiped out if you miss, which encourages you to take shots carefully. Shooting marmosets is much less interesting. The screen is constantly filled with the animals, so you just move your reticle around and fire as much as possible, which quickly gets old.

In some games, players drop fruit from a high ledge onto marmosets or onto another player below. Being the one the other players are targeting is exciting; you dodge left and right and try to mislead your opponents about which direction you're going to head in next. But dropping fruit from above is less engaging. The camera is too far out to give you a clear view of the action, and when targeting marmosets, there are so many creatures and so much movement down below that it's difficult to keep track of who's hitting what. As a result, there's little satisfaction to savor when the watermelon you toss strikes true.

A number of games are variations on musical chairs. You and your competitors run around trying to collect as much fruit as possible, and when the music stops (or when villainous cockatoo Nigel appears), you scurry into a hiding place or leap onto a perch. As in actual musical chairs, there's a rush of excitement when the time comes for everyone to hurry to safety and someone is left in the cold. A few games are pure tests of your reflexes. One, which is conceptually identical to a game in Fuzion Frenzy, places you atop a moving vehicle and requires you to press buttons to leap over and duck under obstacles. Another has you and the other birds flying down a street, moving up and down to avoid fire hydrants, awnings, and other hazards. These modes start out slowly and progressively get faster and faster, ratcheting up the excitement as players are eliminated until only one is left standing.

These birds spend a lot of time either collecting fruit or kicking fruit.

The largest group of games are those that put you and your rivals in a small, contained area. These have you collecting fruit while avoiding an incoming tide; collecting fruit while jumping over a rope; running around and throwing snowballs, mud balls, or soccer balls at each other; or doing some other simple activity to try to earn the most points. These games move quickly and control well, making it satisfying to snag those bananas and mangoes from an approaching opponent or nail your friend with a soccer ball to the beak in dodgeball. Power-ups that provide brief score multipliers, speed increases, or other benefits like stealing points from a competitor lend the action an element of unpredictability without being frequent enough to make the contests feel purely like games of chance rather than skill.

There are a number of ways to play Rio. A Story mode loosely follows the events of the film. You play a few games in a given location and then a character from the movie updates you on your standings and tells part of the story before you move on to the next location from the film to play a few more games. The characters who narrate the story--Luiz the bulldog, Mauro the marmoset, and Nigel the cockatoo--repeat sections of dialogue so frequently that kids may be reciting them along with the characters before you've even finished it once, making this mode one you won't want to return to after completing it. Carnaval Wheel mode has players spin wheels to determine which game will be played next and the point value of that game. In Garland Gala, you earn garlands based on your performance in the minigames and then toss them at targets to score points and determine the game's victor. Carnaval Dance has you competing with other players to get a certain number of marmosets into your conga line, and it awards you four marmosets for each first-place finish in a minigame, three for each second-place finish, and so on.

The problem with all of these modes is that the selection of games you play is random. Initially, this is fine, but before long, you've seen all the minigames and inevitably will prefer some to others. For this reason, Party mode, in which you can create custom games with whichever minigames you want to play and lets you compete as individuals or on teams, is likely to be your go-to mode. There are also quiz variations in Party mode. In quiz games, players are asked questions between each minigame, with correct answers contributing to your position in the standings. These multiple-choice questions cover both places related to the movie ("Do you know which country Minnesota is in?") and specific plot points from the film, which make them as much a test of whether you've seen the movie as they are a test of knowledge. Additionally, repeats start cropping up in these questions after just a few games, so you won't select the quiz variants more than a few times.

This is Nico. He wears a bottle cap on his head for some reason.

It's a shame that the game doesn't take better advantage of the film on which it's based. The six birds that make up the playable characters really stand out on the screen, thanks to their vibrant feathers, but their personalities don't come through at all. Each has a few lines that he or she rattles off frequently during minigames, but that's about it. The disappointing Story mode uses snippets from the film so brief that you might miss them if you blink. Where other games aimed at kids, like Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, have used their characters to great effect, Rio's failure to capitalize on the source material feels like a missed opportunity.

There's no online support here; you can only play locally. Given the game's party vibe and target audience of young children, this isn't much of a setback. It's the sort of game that ought to be played with people in the same room. Not every minigame is a winner, and they could have benefitted from more charm and personality, but there's enough family-oriented fun here to make this good-natured game an enjoyable diversion.

By Carolyn Petit, GameSpot

Angry Birds

Destructive physics help make this a very charming puzzle game, and the great level variety seals the deal.

The Good

• Extremely fun physics   
• Easy to pick up and play   
• 200-plus levels.

The Bad

• Limited strategy   
• Winning often requires luck.

Most casual news watchers are familiar with explosives that have names like "bunker busters" and "daisy cutters." However, in Rovio Mobile's popular game, Angry Birds, multicolored chickens can take on the properties of these same bombs when pushed to the limits by egg-stealing green pigs.

In Angry Birds, you have to use birds as missiles.

Explosive chickens, adorable as they are, would be pointless without big buildings to topple, and Angry Birds provides more than 200 of them, with more added all the time. You can thoroughly demolish anything from stone castles to glass houses as you punish those evil, egg-stealing pigs.

To play, you simply load up a chicken in your slingshot, pull back while setting your angle, and let go to start the destruction. Angry Birds' gameplay is incredibly easy to understand, and the visual payoff for blowing stuff up is consistently impressive. Blue chickens split up in midair for a spread effect; heavy bomb chickens explode and send structures flying; and egg-laying hens let you deliver a yolky payload directly below.

You always receive the chickens in a particular order, which diminishes some of the strategy. Even though some chickens can be used to set up chain reactions, like using a burrowing hen to soften up a building's stone exterior and then following up with a ticking explosive chicken to blast out the walls--you don't get to do this if you don't get the chickens in this order.

Angry Birds has more than 200 levels, with more added all the time.

Although you might fling your chickens in the same spot each time, the game's sensitive physics system usually gives different results. It's generally impossible to re-create specific trajectories and reactions, so there's some luck involved where obtaining a high score (and a full three-star rating) is concerned. There aren't really any tangible benefits to completing every mission with a three-star score, besides boasting about your score on the online leaderboards, anyway. Angry Birds has some minor issues, but most of the time, you won't notice because you'll be too busy trying to squish pigs and make full use of your chicken arsenal. The game's weapons, physics, and varied levels are really quite excellent, and they make this military-farm-complex a whole lot of fun.

This review was provided by GameSpot mobile content partner SlideToPlay.com.

By Andrew Podolsky/SlideToPlay.com, GameSpot