Anatomy of a Facebook Game (on iPhone)
Anatomy of a generic Facebook Game
- Minigames/pickups that provide small amount of XP and/or Gold. These should happen/be accessible sparsely to prevent grinding.
- Micropayments to buy special tokens that can be exchanged for exclusive items / upgrades. Its the only way you're going to make any real money.
- Force the player to collect their earnings manually, it probably makes the player feel like they've achieved a lot if there is a lot of collect.
- Having friends who also play the game will allow the player to get more content. It brings you more potential customers by forcing the player to invite friends to access content (for those completionists out there).
- Make the game hard/slow early on (level 1-10), it will encourage players to buy special tokens to advance faster. To make this feel right to the player, the mid levels must feel like you can progress on your own (11-15). After this you want to ramp up the time it takes to level again (16-?) to make encourage them to spend money again. I'm guessing the cycle will continue.
- Allow players to visit other players game.
Anatomy of a good Facebook Game
Based on my own experience playing these two games, here is my ruleset that I think would make a good Facebook game.
- Minigames are preferable over pickups, the XP they give should be scaleable with your level so they are worth playing. I would also make the games have diminishing returns for playing them too often, so you can grind them.
- Micropayments are a lovely feature, but they should be worth it, like with Tap Zoo, they should be a way of accelerating your levelling or gold collection. I would also be nice if on level up they give a free token or two, and the ability to buy tokens for an large amount of gold. If you have put the effort in to get to a high level, then you should be rewarded. The game is already designed to reach certain levels within a specific time frame despite what you buy or spend by exponential experience required, so if after two months they have reached level 30, they should be able to spend 100,000 gold to buy 5 tokens, rather than 0.59GBP.
- Automation of collection of earnings is a must, there are better ways to give the player the satisfaction of knowing they've got a lot of something than just making them tap the screen like it is tap tap revolution. Look at the ring count up in Sonic, with that satisfying extra continue sound.
- Give a storyline for each level, most people probably won't get past level 30, 29 levels worth of mini stories is not going to break your budget, and will keep your players playing since you can introduce them to features or assets that they would never think to use themselves.
- Achievements, with OpenFeint and the Game Center, there is no excuse for not doing them. If you're game has very little content, then its nice to set people side goals for them to do.
- Use many variations of micropayments, i love how I can spend 0.59GBP to buy something, and end up spending more than 1.99GBP since I keep thinking, just one more. It should always be better value for money getting the 1.99GBP instead, but I'm cheap and think I won't need that many even though I will, so that is why I end up getting four 0.59GBP instead of one 1.99GBP.
- Do not make content dependant on how many friends you have, its almost as bad having multiplayer achievements on console games, I should not be forced to be sociable in a social game especially if noone else plays it. Reward the player with special tokens instead. They'll be encourage to invite more people just to get one extra token.
- Allow players to trade something that may be unique(ish) to them for something they want. They could even set up minishops, trading smurfberries for loan of a smurf for a couple of days for example.
Pokemon Berries
I wonder if GameFreak will make a Pokemon game where I can grow Pokeberries that attract wild Pokemon to my garden, that could be linked to my console game. Though I suppose that is essentially what the Global Link is, only without the need to upload a Pokemon into the dream world.
The reason they probably do not do most of these things is because it would make the game enjoyable to play at a slow rate, by forcing you to play slowly they annoy you just enough they you are willing to pay small amounts of money to move along in the game faster.
Great for short term money, however in the long run I cannot see it lasting, eventually someone will come along and do something the same but make it more free to play faster, and then you'll lose your target audience since they will bore of your game or just feel cheated out of the amount they spent in a month when their next iTunes receipt arrives.