As for us, we’ve been helping the two Disney studios in town wrap up games on two different platforms by providing coding support, as well as signing new contracts with a couple of other studios here in town which will keep us busy for a decent chunk of this year.  I can honestly say that 2012 is shaping up to be a better year than 2011, considering how dark 2011 was for so many developers in Austin… projects were hard to come by, and many that were signed did not ship for one reason or another.  I’m supposing that publishers are slowly coming out of their bunkers to test the air.

What have we been up to in our copious spare time?  Expansions to Trivia Adventure, minor redesigns to features, and we’ve started working on mobile games now too.  We are hoping to bring some neat new games to iPhone and Android, both tablet and handheld form factors, in few months.  Right now we’re kind of in the early stages, especially considering we only get some nights and weekends to grow that codebase, but I think we’ll have some novel games to show in the summer.

And since our company blog is only updated occasionally, I thought I’d cross-promote Tiffanny’s Sketchbook, our character artist’s practice works.  Apparently all the artwork we give her to do isn’t enough, so she arts at home too.

Some Observations About Linearity and Randomness in Social Games
The way social gamers tend to see games is through the social games lens, which is to say through a carefully crafted linear experience designed to be navigated in a specific order designed by the game developer. In my opinion, most social games that have random loot drops are doing them wrong for social game players. A “social game player” often is more isolated than in even a single-player RPG, as their communication with other players is quite limited.
They may not know that repeating a challenge will drop different items, and some may never discover this fact unless it is brought to their attention. Many players are used to being presented with linear gameplay and assume that what you see is all you can get, having had no experience with traditional RPG games as a frame of reference for that kind of game mechanic.

What that means is, we have to show the player what options are available to the random loot drop, and show that they didn’t get everything that might have been dropped. We have to show them that alternatives exist, and that they might want to come back to get a better item next time. In Trivia Adventure, we accomplished this by adding the Loot Wheel, which is essentially a roulette wheel with a sample of items arranged on the rim of the wheel. The user is invited to stop the spinning arrow–with a bit of a delay for it to slow down–which selects an item for them. Since the user can inspect all the items and decide which ones they want, this gives them a moment to build anticipation and hope for a specific outcome. We’ve added some more subtlety to the game mechanics for the Loot Wheel, but that’s the premise.

How We Applied This To Fishing
We built fishing with an eye toward other features in our game that are yet to be released, such as crafting and fetch-quests… the fish by themselves are of minimal value, but are stackable items so they don’t take up a lot of inventory space. This was a crucial change because the amount of individual fish would be a UI nightmare to navigate and a burden for players to carry to the store for sale. Further, we made sure that the items at the bottom of
the lake were slow-moving and easily identified as quality items that are often better than the player’s current gear. Players have the option to fish or not, and to choose how they fish by using (or buying) various hooks. Each cast of the pole costs a small amount of Momentum, which is our action currency, but we give away the cheapest hook for free, so fishing can be enjoyed by anyone at any time. In the end, we added a skill- and luck-based minigame to an RPG that feels like actual gameplay rather than a way for players to grind for better gear and stats, by showing players the options and offering them meaningful choices.

Trying to make things better for our users, I’ve given everyone in the game 50 free Steel Pennies in hopes that our horrible mistake becomes something people will laugh off. Some days you wish you could just hit rewind and do-over. This is one of those. Again, my sincerest apologies–we will endeavor to be more thorough in the future.

JH

Overall, however, Trivia Adventure is a fun game that’s a must play if you’re a fan of both trivia games and RPGs [...]

Other than the minor inaccuracies about the game mechanics (which are present in all game journals–not picking on Gamezebo!), we really appreciate the positive reviews and hope to exceed expectations!
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It launched in the first week of January for early testing by new players, and has been gradually picking up steam as users discover its intriguing blend of genres.

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