Info About Poker Card Reader

This is another guest post from White Rabbit’s Hassan Baig. I hope you’ll enjoy Hassan’s writing as much as I do! More about the author at the end of this piece.

“Walls are only built to keep out people who don’t want it bad enough” – Randy Pausch, Last Lecture Series

Some drab definitions first

Drab definition 1: First you’ll need to understand what a ‘network effect’ is in the social media context. A ‘network effect’ is the ability of the social graph to exert influence. So the higher the network effect, the more important the role of the social graph becomes.

Drab definition 2: There are two kinds of network effects: positive and negative. A positive network effect is where the size of the social graph positively correlates with the utility of the underlying system. A negative network effect has a negative such correlation.

Drab example 1: So for instance, the telephone service has positive network effects – the more people have the telephone, the greater its utility becomes. If you were the only person on the planet with a phone, it would be a useless device.

Drab example 2: Roads have a negative network effect associated to them – the more traffic on a road, the less utility it has.

What is social gaming?

Social games are games where the user experience is positively correlated to their social graph.

Or in simpler terms, a social game is some computer game which is more fun to play with your friends. And what separates it from a multiplayer game is that not all your friends need to be online for you to benefit from their presence.

The most popular social games are found on Facebook, however several other social networks – hi5, Orkut, Myspace, Qzone, 51.com have been long associated with social gaming too.

Examples of famous Facebook social games are Farmville, Pet Society, Happy Aquarium, Mafia Wars, Texas Hold’em Poker etc.

You’ve probably seen at least one of these games right?

Why should you become a social-game developer?

Face it, we as a country are not going to break into the AAA gaming market. And by great, I mean World of Warcraft great, not ‘I-know-you’re-not-the-best-but-I’ll-praise-you-out-of-congeniality’ great. If you’ve ever read Adam Smith, you’ll know that market forces are blind to fake congeniality. In short, we’re not going to compete with the big boys of AAA.

Ever.

Social gaming, on the other hand, is a different story. The production values are not tremendous, the development cycles are not capital intensive, the development timeline is not measured in years (but weeks).

Also social games are instantly monetizable (through virtual goods), i.e. the business model is not a slave to acquisitions or IPOs.

Plus you monetize in dollars. Unless you want to shoot yourself in the foot and build a game for the local market; overlooking the fact that Facebook lets you be truly global.

Yes, you monetize in dollars.

That looks very promising for a place like Pakistan – you gotta love that exchange rate.

You don’t have much time

Now the bad news: the next 12 months are pretty much the last days for a small-fry, unfunded studio to get into the fray. Production values are being pushed up – it’ll be costly to get in later. Save yourself a bucket load of cash – get in now.

Research resources

The following are going to be your best friends. You have to read updates from these everyday. Forever. Not doing your homework will be your dream’s tragic death.

• appdata.com
• insidesocialgames.com
• and to an extent, gamasutra.com

In a growing industry, there’s plenty of room for clones

If chuffed about what kind of games to develop, or don’t have your creative juices flowing, remember that even the worst-cast scenario is not that bad. Read the sub-heading again: in a growing industry, there’s plenty of room for clones. That’s right. The following are happily co-existing clones in famous Facebook genres. Each has more than a million monthly active users.

• Happy Aquarium, Fishville, Happy Fish, Fish Isle, Fish Life…..
• Pet Society, PetVille, Happy Pets, My (Lil) Pets….
• Farmville, Farm Life, Barn Buddy, My (Lil) Farm, Island paradise, Tiki Farm….

Even cloning can get you success. The worst-case scenario isn’t that bad.

Development technologies

Though not an exhaustive list, you’ll at least be getting your hands dirty with: Adobe Flash, AS3, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop/GIMP, amfPHP, Facebook API.

Game mechanics

• This doesn’t work

1) Synchronous, multi-player games don’t work (exceptions: Poker, Wild Ones). Chances are your friends and you log in at different times to check their Facebook. Thus games contingent upon finding a friend to partner with aren’t successful. The few successful synchronous games that do exist have game-play which doesn’t need your social graph.

2) Games requiring time and intellectual attention in large chunks don’t work. Remember, Facebook is not a gaming portal, it’s a social portal. So users are not looking for hardcore game mechanics.

• This works

1) Asynchronous games are a hit. Most turn-based games fall in this genre.

2) The stickiness of a social game is primarily driven by an ‘appointment gaming’ mechanic. Google this term to understand what it means (it’s pretty basic).

3) Monetization is driven by stickiness. I.e. the aforementioned point can translate to big Benjamins.

Monetization strategies

Don’t take it from me, hear it from the horse’s mouth here, here and here. You’ll need a combination of all of these strategies. It’s all very intuitive.

The hurdles and how to overcome them

Anticipate the following problems before-hand and take amelioration measures:

• Frequent power outages. Can easily gnaw away up to 4 hours of productive time if back-up power not available.
• Thin devscape in Pakistan. I.e. not much in terms of development talent available locally. But finding good people is not impossible. Remember, these aren’t AAA titles you’d be developing. The production values need not be stellar; the back-end code need not be super-optimized. Pakistanis do have a chance.
• Lack of research. If you don’t research the industry, you’re toast. If you dislike reading and analyzing, fuggedaboutit. Read up everyday. Play Facebook games – as many as you can - everyday. Know your competition!
• Dwindling motivation. This can happen since you’d be doing something no one else in your country is doing. No one will understand what you’re doing. No one will support you. To keep spirits high, keep reminding yourself and your team in those late night work shifts and gloomy hours why you were doing it in the first place. Keep your vision close to your heart.
• Outsourcing. Outsource artwork if extremely necessary. Do not outsource coding modules – you’ll need this expertise in-house after the game goes live. Besides, going back and forth with your outsourcer to get the asset or the code right wastes time. If your game’s production is taking more than 12 weeks, you’re late.
• Scope creep. You have 12 weeks to release your first iteration to the public. Keep scope minimal – once the game is built, iterate out from there. Do not run after perfection.
• Lack of pre-production. Take at least 3 weeks to plan out production. Do not plan on the fly.
• Failure to take analytics seriously. Once your game goes live, read those user numbers all the time. Chase the under-performing metrics like crazy.
• Facebook’s dwindling social window. I.e. Facebook became too spammy with social gaming newsfeed in late ‘08 and mid ‘09. Mark Zuckerberg then decided to filter out much of the social gaming related news. Beginning in winter ‘09, Facebook announced a roadmap of changes to the Open Platform which may make getting viral traction trickier. So move now rather than later. Ensure you’re app’s already up and has a user-base before Zuckerberg’s roadmap dilutes virality.
• Experimenting with game mechanics too much. If it ain’t broken, why fix it? I’ve had master developers pitch Augmented Reality (AR) apps at me where the user can control avatars on-screen with hand movements in front of their cams. I call it the Minority Report syndrome.  AR may be the next wave, but I keep telling them that monetize the current wave first, we’ll make money with the next one later. Whoever built social games before the advent of the Open Platform never made it big. Why? It just wasn’t the right time. Monetize now, establish yourself, and then have a $20 million R&D department dedicated to all the AR you ever want in life.
• Failure to filter out pseudo-gurus. I’ve talked to a gazillion people in Pakistan about social gaming. And not a single person knew about the industry. This is not an exaggeration. If you’ve done your research, do not be swayed by ill-formed opinions, no matter who’s saying it. People will not only feed you wrong information, they will also up-sell that information to increase your bill. No you do not need 3D work, no you do not need a pricey licensed server, you do not need a massive advertising budget, and you do not need to hire consultants.
• Hiring a team which hinders the creative process. In normal game development, you can be as creative as you want and experiment around. In social gaming though, there’s a set formula. Of course there is room for trend-setting, as with any niche. But your creative wiggle-room here is limited. Your job is to ensure your team understands this. Otherwise, you’ll be getting into frequent planning tiffs with them as they’ll fantasize about ‘never-done-before’ themes. Such tug-of-war can kill your time-scales.
• Hiring an opportunist. This one time, I gave a guy a job offer and his next reply was “Cool to work with you. I’d like a laptop for work. A mac preferably”. Another time a guy said “I want profit sharing in your products for me and my wife”. Another guy asked for Rs. 150K per month for writing game code. Needless to say, none of these guys were excited about the job. They were there for the pay day. Why would anyone head towards a start-up for a healthy pay day? This reflects poorly on their decision making. You do not want, nor can afford, such opportunists.

That’s a long to-do list. And it wouldn’t work if it were anything less. I guess it’s a good time to re-read the quote at the beginning of this article. Good luck with your venture if you end up taking this up.

Hassan Baig is a LUMS and Duke University grad with substantial experience on Wallstreet as an investment banker. Currently, he’s running a Facebook Development start-up out of Islamabad called White Rabbit, Inc. You can contact him at baig.hassan-at-gmail.com in case you want to ask a question, help out, condemn, fund, apply, laugh at, advise, get advice, interview, pester, make an example of etc.

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