Online 4X

4X games are great fun when fully developed. 4x stands for explore, expand, exploit and exterminate and lots of great games has been given this lable (Master of Orion etc.)

The tricky part for the developer is that it basically is four games in one, and each part has to be fun in itself and contribute to the whole.

Now, with online games you need to balance the different x's. If exploring is important you will end up eith a game where the biggest challenge is to google for spoilers, if its not important at all you loose one side of your game.

Puzzle Games

Recently the development of my strategy games has been set aside. Instead I’ve tinkered a bit with a few setups for Puzzle Games. Mainly using adobe flash and simple low-grade graphics I have created a few levels. It’s a well known type of game. You solve one puzzle, or level, to proceed to the next.

The best thing with this approach is that you can focus on making the level as fun as possible and you don’t have to worry too much about how the levels connect with each other.

The Setting is Important for the Success of Games

This piece of obvious truth is something that many developers often forget. The setting, the environment and atmosphere, of a game is important. No matter if the coding is smooth and the features are cool and new, the feeling must be there as well.

There are those who have mastered this art nonetheless. Take all the detective games that have been launched recently. Many of them use a Sherlock Holmes like environment since this is a familiar setting for detective games and mysteries. Other games use the 1970’s detective series as inspiration.

These settings help the player to achieve the correct mood and think in a “detective” way and thereby enjoy the game all the more.

Flash Games Madness

I like flash. Lots of people gets the oppertunity to create their own games. The problem is when the games look like this:








What am I even supposed to do? Sometimes I think the guy spent more time creating the webpage, ads and affialiate deals than the actual game.

By the way, check out the design on this page We Visualisering - Visualization

Online Games and Revenue Models

I’ve played some classic “build a town and summon an army” games lately. As always when I play these games I remember playing archmage several years ago. It was the first webgame I played and they made their money by encouraging ad-clicks by giving bonus turns if you clicked a few of them. This, of course, isn’t a valid way of making money anymore.

Nowadays some sort of premium membership seems to be the most popular way for online game developers to make some cash. You get to play for free and then you have to pay for bonuses and added benefits. In some games these are almost required if you want to stay competitive.

The premium membership way of making money has its drawbacks. If you’re unlucky your players wont think it’s worth it and if you over emphasize the bonuses they might feel that the game is unfair and leave. So, there must be another way.

What is the next thing going to be?

What do i call these games?

There's a lot of confusion. When my girlfriend asks what I’m doing I have a hard time to come up with names to describe the different games I play.

Everything from a flash ping-pong game to a text based detective game is called any number of different names. There are web games, browser games, online games, adventure games, rpg's and a lot more.

What are the game creators thinking about? Why do they call a riddle game you solve in ten minutes an rpg? Why?

Someone needs to create some rules and make everyone follow them. I suggest that WC3 stops messing around with xhtml and starts caring for some of the real stuff.

This blog will be about games

The games I will write about will typically be multiplayer games that are played in your web browser. These are called browser games, web games or online games. I think I’ll discuss this naming problem further in my next post.

Programming games like this gives you a whole new set of limitations. I want to take a look at how some of the popular games today have dealt with these limitations and speculate in how they can be improved. I will probably also write about revenue models and the costs of running a game like this.

If you’re interested in such games you might want to check back here once in a while to read my ramblings.

Hope to see you again soon.