Casual Games SIG/Conference Calls/August 2006

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Table of contents

[edit] Role Call

[edit] Who's Here

Robert Carrol, Brian Robbins, James C Smith, Jason Akel, Kane Minkus, Wade Tinney, Margaret Wallace, Charles Merrin, James Gwertzman

[edit] Who's Not

[edit] Attendees Anticipated

[edit] Apologies

[edit] Action Items

  • Send contact info (vCard) to Jason Akel who will resend back out as a document
    • Include any IM handles too
  • Wiki how to keep it updated or current
  • Subject-Focused Papers better to create focused papers, rather than updating the current whitepaper
  • Subject-focused call put some tactical details behind these ideas, scheduled for Tuesday, 8 August, 2pm EST

[edit] Next Call

  • Tuesday Sept 12th, 2PM EST Note the special date because of Austin conference
  • Special Publications Call On Tuesday Aug 8th
    • Use Real's system, or FreeConference.com?

[edit] From Last Month

[edit] GDC submissions

  • Wade, Brian, Robert all got the sessions submitted, just waiting to hear back

[edit] Process / Governage

  • SIG Constitution?
  • SIG Leadership
    • Chair - Brian
    • Secretary - Charles
      • Charles can start taking notes on the call
    • Others?
      • Kane - look at his in-house designer, to see about potentially working on getting us setup into MovableType
      • Brian & Kane will work to make that happen

[edit] Goals for the year

[edit] Idea Overview

Need to define how to choose what to get done, better to identify a few and get them done than wander on too many

  • HelpShare Q&A Jason - Provide a means for developers and publishers to ask questions of each other. The advantage is to ask very specific questions, as opposed to general broad questions that could appear in a wiki. There is a concern about a potential monetary compensation model. debated as a technical resource, free unless $ change hands
  • DRM Jason - Expand the information about DRM, and going to DRM providers and getting them to speak to it. Making this information a lot more expanded. What's the goal of the resource? Answer: Since some devs are trying to self-publish, and knowing more about the options. how to select, which to use, pros and cons, aggregate information around DRM as a resource, how test DRMs, implications of multiple DRMs for developer, educational goal
    • Which portals are using each DRM? DO you customize to each? etc.
    • Essentially provide consolidated information about DRM for the community
  • Network reach of aggregators Jason - Expanding the information about what aggregators reach what sites. Essentially a coverage list. what does each distribution choice mean, coverage map with reach
  • Generic Business Information Rob - Provide sample NDA's, contracts, and other business documents, for newer developers. Note that some of this is a cross-over with the Business & Legal group (http://www.igda.org/biz/) contract repository, NDAs, resource of business contracts, how does everything work, need a list of contracts to include, standard contracts
    • Need to get a complete list of all the documents we'd like to see
  • Casual Game Post Mortems Rob - Try to start organizing these for casual games, what went right, wrong, etc.
    • Could this be part of the Quarterly?
    • Also try to get distribution out to Gamasutra, Game Developer, etc.
  • Standardization Rob - Software packages, DRM, etc. Can we help to lead a push to standardization on software?
  • Data Standards Initiative James G Charles - Get it rolled out and adopted by the end of the year. data initiative, need to get implemented to set stage
    • Feedback has been all positive
  • Advertising Standards James G Charles - Help represent developers in the discussion about advertising standards in games, to ensure developer interests are taken into account. advertising in games, MSFT has business needs to achieve, discussion of industry efforts, make sure developers are included and not forgotten
    • Sharing best practices in the form of a public repository - this will help improve the entire industry
  • Other Standards? James G - Is there any other standards that we can/should be involved in.
    • DRM as a standard, in-game upsell, potential from James at Reflexive
    • in game upsell - demo reel with preset scripts
    • 7 levels forever - PopCap with hammer heads
  • CGA Bridge James - Making sure there is good collaboration between the CGA and the IGDA. CGA bridge, need to communicate between them.
  • Support audio development Kane - This can be a big mess unless everyone knows how the process works. Educate and teach people of the importance of audio, and how to work with audio creation
  • Conference Support Kane - Can the SIG play a role to help make the conference content better? Make more interaction? develop conferences more, need to move beyond just the same people, need more interactive experience, how to create inactive forum for developers
  • Awards Kane Wade - Help establish a Casual Game Awards? Can the SIG do this on our own? Want to recognize our peers, with everyone on the same playing field
    • Have a People's Choice award? (across portals?) This reflects the actual users instead of developers! people's choice award, have all portals implement a technique for players to submit to a common body, more important to let the people speak
  • Facilitate Community James Smith - Provide better ways for developers to get in touch with each other, and talk about related issues. Events, mailing lists, message boards, etc? Difficult to get these seeded with good discussion. Important point is to talk to peers, and not entire world of pros, amateurs, etc. more direct discussion with developers, how to get them talking with each other, talk with their peers (not the newbies)
    • closed mailing list for people with at least one game credit?
  • Encourage more articles and data sharing James Smith - Industry wide. Can we setup a format to encourage people to share this useful information and data? Can we have some sort of built in distribution to help make sure this data can be shared? encourage users to share content via writing, write a formal white paper, via a web site?
    • Could this be our new website?
  • Quarterly Wade - Need to have assistance with this. We can find ways to make this easier to pull together, and at the same time better information (post-mortems, etc). Maybe we adjust the schedule/frequency? Need help with the quarterly, possible forum for articles mentioned by James, get industry-wide pickup.
    • Setup a call to discuss this
  • Evolve the existing mailing list? Wade - Can we search the list archives? Provide easier access to this. Can we tag postings to get pulled out into categories, etc. Can the list be upgraded? upgrade mailing list as a foundation for a lot of needed discussion
  • Developer Reach out Margaret - Can we connect better with other developers? Especially international? What about getting students more involved in the community? how to reach out to developers we don't even know, perhaps internationally?, work through universities (Parsons)
  • Conference Group Gatherings - Help to organize these, and make them happen at conferences
  • Wiki Maintenance - Keep this up to date, and monitored
  • White Paper Update - Do we update it this year? Pushing into the wiki, etc.
  • Put more effort into existing tools -


[edit] Personal Notes

1. Brian Robbins

a)

b)

c)

2. Jason Akel

a) DRM: Provide a full understanding for developers how they should prepare for and choose various DRMs (more from business perspective than technically), particularly if they plan to self-publish. Catalog the options. Advantages, disadvantages. Pricing ranges. Note DRM and commerce options employed by each of the top ~25 portals/aggregators. Solicit statements from each DRM providers (Trymedia, Digital River, Reflexive, etc.). Solicit comments via IGDA casual list for comments on each.

b) HelpShare Q&A (UPDATE 8/1 - Discussed with Exec Director Jason Della Rocca - in review by committee) Create question and answer system like Yahoo! Answers and Google Answers to supplement or even replace boards and build long-term knowledge base. Applicable for all of IGDA. Category for casual games. HelpShare, the only private label Q&A service, is a client of mine and I can arrange for an inexpensive/pay-for-itself deal. Users are rewarded with points or real cash for being selected by question asker as having the best answer to the question. Categories can be custom to IGDA. Already mentioned this to Mitzi McGilvray, IGDA board member, and client of mine (she works for TikGames) - Mitzi likes the idea.

c) Catalog the network reach of the aggregators: Create location for distributors/aggregators to post their networks so developers know where their games are reaching. Create more transparency. Might be difficult to achieve this as they will not want to expose for fear of competition attempting to steal.

3. Robert Carrol

a)Generic Business Information I’d like to work with the SIG and others to collect and post samples of NDA’s, contracts and other useful business documents on the IGDA site as reference materials.

b)Casual Games Post-Mortems I would like to put out a call for people to write up their experiences while developing or publishing games. I’m sure there is a vast wealth of mistakes and successes that the community could learn from. Depending on the response we could create some type of article from publication from this.

c)Standardization There has been a lot of talk about making standard processes in casual game development and distribution. We should be at the forefront of this, though I’m not sure how?

4. James Gwertzman

a)continue working on the data reporting standards initiative; try to get it actually rolled out and adopted this year.

b)participate actively in the ongoing discussion around standards in the industry for advertising; make sure the views of developers are represented.

c) provide a bridge over to the CGA that Jessica is getting off the ground.

5. Charles Merrin

a)

b)

c)

6. Kane Minkus

a)Awards

b)

c)

7. James C Smith

a) Facilitate more direct discussions between developers: I want the IGDA to help me connect with my peers (experienced casual games developers) and share information with them. The mailing list is probably the best tool for this. Maybe it could promoted it more and maybe we could do more to initiate discussions on the list.


b) Encourage developers, publishers, and portals to write "articles" or some other format for presenting research findings and theories. Preferably this would be done in a way that could allow for fallow up discussion. For example, Brian F. from Reflexive did research into how download size affects number of downloads, download completion rates, and sales. This includes raw data, analysis, and conclusions. I would like a ‘forum’ for publishing this information and encouraging fallow discussion about it. More importantly, I want to encourage others people in the industry to publish their findings and theories about other topics relevant to casual games. Would this be best done as an article in the quarterly, or a web article, or a forum post, or a mailing list post?


c)

8. Wade Tinney

a)

b)

c)

9. Margaret Wallace

a)will help with any initiatives that others want to drive

b)

c)

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