Slides from a GDC 2013 talk on how PopCap achieved success in China with a local adapation of Plants vs. Zombies -- and general advice for any western company considering entry into the Chinese market.
Slides from a GDC 2013 talk on how PopCap achieved success in China with a local adapation of Plants vs. Zombies -- and general advice for any western company considering entry into the Chinese market.
This is a version of the presentation by Stone Librande at GDC 2010, converted for people who don't have powerpoint. Please visit Stone's site at http://stonetronix.com/
This was given as a 1.5 hour lecture to the MDES students at CCA, removing the opening game play and the later exercise. It's better at 2-3 one hour lectures, plus game play.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Số người chơi: 2
Thể loại: Chiến thuật xây dựng, chọn bài, thẻ bài
Thời gian chơi: 30 phút
Theo nhiều cách khác nhau, 7 Wonders Duel khá giống với phiên bản chơi nhiều người 7 Wonders. Người chơi sẽ trải qua 3 thời kỳ xây dựng những công trình cung cấp tài nguyên, xây dựng quân đội, phát triển khoa học... nhằm phát triển nền văn mình và hoàn thiện kỳ quan của mình.
Điểm khác biệt lớn nhất, cũng như tên trò chơi đã thể hiện, là phiên bản này dành riêng cho 2 người chơi. Luật chơi được thay đổi cho phù hợp với 2 người và vẫn giữ được sự đa dạng và chiều sâu trong chiến thuật. Trò chơi đã giành được nhiều giải thưởng lớn dành cho boardgame 2 người và đây là 1 trò chơi bạn phải sở hữu nếu bạn thích dòng boardgame chiến thuật 2 người.
Xem thêm sản phẩm 7 Wonders Duel tại đây
http://boardgamesviet.com/products/7-wonder-duel-7-ki-quan-the-gioi
The Agile Marketing [R]Evolution: How to Harness the Power of ChangeAndrea Fryrear
Our belief that we have to "go big or go home" is holding us back from starting down the path towards agility. Instead of making a big bet on agile, we should take the agile approach and embrace incremental expansion and iterative improvement. These are the stories of three first-rate marketers doing just that.
Slides from the 2017 PAICR keynote presentation.
Link chi tiết: http://boardgame.vn/all-games/taluva-161
Trong Taluva, những người chơi đặt các miếng lát chứa đựng núi lửa và các loại địa hình đa dạng, kề cận hoặc trên các miếng lát khác. Vì vậy, hòn đảo sẽ trải rộng ra và trồi lên suốt quá trình chơi. Trong lúc đó, người chơi cố gắng dùng người để xây các liều, đền và tháp. Mỗi loại nhà xây có những hạn chế khác nhau về địa hình.
Cùng xây dựng hòn đảo, tranh giành lãnh thổ và giành chiến thắng cùng với Taluva!
Social Games in China - The New Import/Export Business!James Gwertzman
Slides from a GDC 2010 talk on social games in China.
For years, game developers in China and the US seemed to be speaking two different languages (literally!). Top games in China were online, intensely social, based on a free-to-play micro-transaction model, and had low budgets and low production value. Top games in North America, by comparison, were single-player, often console-based, with vast budgets and awesome production values.
Enter Facebook. Which business model seems more relevant now? The tables are turned. Instead of Chinese game developers studying the US market to learn all about production values, smart western game developers are studying the Chinese market to learn as much as they can about succeeding in this new world of micro-transactions -- and some are even trying to enter China themselves, either to acquire talent or to try and tap the vast Chinese market. 1 billion social gamers?
PopCap has had an office in Shanghai for over 2 years, and has experienced both the opportunities and challenges of doing business in China firsthand. Attend this talk for a rapid fire briefing on everything you need to know about online & social gaming in China, direct from PopCap's head of Asia/Pacific operations. Topics will include what's hot in Chinese online and social games, which companies to watch, how to enter the Chinese market, how NOT to enter the Chinese market, how to leverage low-cost Chinese talent, and more.
How to make people love your game in 90 seconds or lessDori Adar
Your game has to form a relationship with the gamer in SUPER SPEED. See here how to prepare it to the most important meeting of its life- the first date.
Read more at www.doriadar.com
Grafik düzenleme programları (Corel Photo Painter, Corel Painter, Fireworks, Photoshop), yeni bir resim oluşturmaktan çok, varolan fotoğraflar üzerinde düzenlemeler yapmanıza yardımcı olur. Photoshop piyasada kullanılan en profesyonel piksel tabanlı fotoğraf düzenleme programıdır.
Photoshop'ta;
• Fotoğraflar üzerinde çeşitli renk düzeltme ve değiştirme işlemleri yapabilirsiniz. Örneğin, fo-toğrafı genel olarak mavinin ya da kırmızının tonlarına çevirebilirsiniz.
• Fotoğraflar üzerindeki kusurları örtebilirsiniz. Örneğin; fotoğraftaki bir kişinin sivilcesini yok edebilir ya da kırışıklıklarını giderebilirsiniz.
• Fotoğraflarınızı harmanlayarak kolajlar oluşturabilir ya da fotomontaj çalışmaları yapabilirsi-niz. Örneğin, bir kadının saçlarını bir erkek fotoğrafının üzerine oturtabilirsiniz ya da uçan insan resimleri oluşturabilirsiniz.
• Fotoğraflarınızın üzerinde Photoshop'a ait özel filtreler kullanabilirsiniz. Örneğin, renkli resmi-nize fotokopi görüntüsü verebilirsiniz.
• Grafik tasarım ürünleri oluşturabilirsiniz. Örneğin, afiş tasarımları, broşür tasarımları vb.
• Tekstil sektörü için çeşitli desenler oluşturabilirsiniz.
Plants vs. Zombies 2 Pc Version (FREE DOWNLOAD)gear_george
Plants vs. Zombies 2: It’s About Time For PC - http://ow.ly/oBv6t
Plants vs. Zombies 2 It’s about time is now available in US App Store. Finally the wait is almost over for those iOS users. According to the infographic, the game has been downloaded nearly 25 million times. This essentially means that the total downloads for the game in the short time since its release has beaten the total lifetime downloads for the first Plants vs Zombies
Plants vs. Zombies 2 It’s about time were never officially launched for PC. However if you don’t have an iOS device, you can still play this game on your computer for free.
Click the Link Below to receive instructions on how to Play Plants vs. Zombies on PC/Laptop for Free.
http://ow.ly/oBv6t
This is a version of the presentation by Stone Librande at GDC 2010, converted for people who don't have powerpoint. Please visit Stone's site at http://stonetronix.com/
This was given as a 1.5 hour lecture to the MDES students at CCA, removing the opening game play and the later exercise. It's better at 2-3 one hour lectures, plus game play.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Số người chơi: 2
Thể loại: Chiến thuật xây dựng, chọn bài, thẻ bài
Thời gian chơi: 30 phút
Theo nhiều cách khác nhau, 7 Wonders Duel khá giống với phiên bản chơi nhiều người 7 Wonders. Người chơi sẽ trải qua 3 thời kỳ xây dựng những công trình cung cấp tài nguyên, xây dựng quân đội, phát triển khoa học... nhằm phát triển nền văn mình và hoàn thiện kỳ quan của mình.
Điểm khác biệt lớn nhất, cũng như tên trò chơi đã thể hiện, là phiên bản này dành riêng cho 2 người chơi. Luật chơi được thay đổi cho phù hợp với 2 người và vẫn giữ được sự đa dạng và chiều sâu trong chiến thuật. Trò chơi đã giành được nhiều giải thưởng lớn dành cho boardgame 2 người và đây là 1 trò chơi bạn phải sở hữu nếu bạn thích dòng boardgame chiến thuật 2 người.
Xem thêm sản phẩm 7 Wonders Duel tại đây
http://boardgamesviet.com/products/7-wonder-duel-7-ki-quan-the-gioi
The Agile Marketing [R]Evolution: How to Harness the Power of ChangeAndrea Fryrear
Our belief that we have to "go big or go home" is holding us back from starting down the path towards agility. Instead of making a big bet on agile, we should take the agile approach and embrace incremental expansion and iterative improvement. These are the stories of three first-rate marketers doing just that.
Slides from the 2017 PAICR keynote presentation.
Link chi tiết: http://boardgame.vn/all-games/taluva-161
Trong Taluva, những người chơi đặt các miếng lát chứa đựng núi lửa và các loại địa hình đa dạng, kề cận hoặc trên các miếng lát khác. Vì vậy, hòn đảo sẽ trải rộng ra và trồi lên suốt quá trình chơi. Trong lúc đó, người chơi cố gắng dùng người để xây các liều, đền và tháp. Mỗi loại nhà xây có những hạn chế khác nhau về địa hình.
Cùng xây dựng hòn đảo, tranh giành lãnh thổ và giành chiến thắng cùng với Taluva!
Social Games in China - The New Import/Export Business!James Gwertzman
Slides from a GDC 2010 talk on social games in China.
For years, game developers in China and the US seemed to be speaking two different languages (literally!). Top games in China were online, intensely social, based on a free-to-play micro-transaction model, and had low budgets and low production value. Top games in North America, by comparison, were single-player, often console-based, with vast budgets and awesome production values.
Enter Facebook. Which business model seems more relevant now? The tables are turned. Instead of Chinese game developers studying the US market to learn all about production values, smart western game developers are studying the Chinese market to learn as much as they can about succeeding in this new world of micro-transactions -- and some are even trying to enter China themselves, either to acquire talent or to try and tap the vast Chinese market. 1 billion social gamers?
PopCap has had an office in Shanghai for over 2 years, and has experienced both the opportunities and challenges of doing business in China firsthand. Attend this talk for a rapid fire briefing on everything you need to know about online & social gaming in China, direct from PopCap's head of Asia/Pacific operations. Topics will include what's hot in Chinese online and social games, which companies to watch, how to enter the Chinese market, how NOT to enter the Chinese market, how to leverage low-cost Chinese talent, and more.
How to make people love your game in 90 seconds or lessDori Adar
Your game has to form a relationship with the gamer in SUPER SPEED. See here how to prepare it to the most important meeting of its life- the first date.
Read more at www.doriadar.com
Grafik düzenleme programları (Corel Photo Painter, Corel Painter, Fireworks, Photoshop), yeni bir resim oluşturmaktan çok, varolan fotoğraflar üzerinde düzenlemeler yapmanıza yardımcı olur. Photoshop piyasada kullanılan en profesyonel piksel tabanlı fotoğraf düzenleme programıdır.
Photoshop'ta;
• Fotoğraflar üzerinde çeşitli renk düzeltme ve değiştirme işlemleri yapabilirsiniz. Örneğin, fo-toğrafı genel olarak mavinin ya da kırmızının tonlarına çevirebilirsiniz.
• Fotoğraflar üzerindeki kusurları örtebilirsiniz. Örneğin; fotoğraftaki bir kişinin sivilcesini yok edebilir ya da kırışıklıklarını giderebilirsiniz.
• Fotoğraflarınızı harmanlayarak kolajlar oluşturabilir ya da fotomontaj çalışmaları yapabilirsi-niz. Örneğin, bir kadının saçlarını bir erkek fotoğrafının üzerine oturtabilirsiniz ya da uçan insan resimleri oluşturabilirsiniz.
• Fotoğraflarınızın üzerinde Photoshop'a ait özel filtreler kullanabilirsiniz. Örneğin, renkli resmi-nize fotokopi görüntüsü verebilirsiniz.
• Grafik tasarım ürünleri oluşturabilirsiniz. Örneğin, afiş tasarımları, broşür tasarımları vb.
• Tekstil sektörü için çeşitli desenler oluşturabilirsiniz.
Plants vs. Zombies 2 Pc Version (FREE DOWNLOAD)gear_george
Plants vs. Zombies 2: It’s About Time For PC - http://ow.ly/oBv6t
Plants vs. Zombies 2 It’s about time is now available in US App Store. Finally the wait is almost over for those iOS users. According to the infographic, the game has been downloaded nearly 25 million times. This essentially means that the total downloads for the game in the short time since its release has beaten the total lifetime downloads for the first Plants vs Zombies
Plants vs. Zombies 2 It’s about time were never officially launched for PC. However if you don’t have an iOS device, you can still play this game on your computer for free.
Click the Link Below to receive instructions on how to Play Plants vs. Zombies on PC/Laptop for Free.
http://ow.ly/oBv6t
UXWeek 2015 - Designing for Behavior ChangeStephen Wendel
These are the full slides from my 3.5 hour workshops at UX Week 2015 - on how to design products that use behavioral economics and psychology to overcome obstacles and help users take action.
Pristones가 실제 서비스에 Growth Haking을 적용한 경험을 '삼성전자 미디어 솔루션 센터'와 상암 DMC 스타트업 모임 Spark@DMC에서 발표한 자료입니다.
주요 내용
- Growth Hacking의 개념 정의와 대표적 사례
- Growth Hacking의 기본 분석 방법론
- Growth Hacking 기법의 로켓펀치(http://rocketpun.ch/), 클럽믹스(http://clubmix.co.kr/) 실제 적용 사례
Konnect is a next-generation social learning and analytics platform that powers collaborative and informal learning within the organization. It helps to nurture personalized learning, promote peer interactions, and builds collective intelligence by measuring real-time learner trends, behaviour, and patterns. Konnect works on the fundamental belief that learning at workplace is far more progressive, perceptive, and predictive as it organically evolves through social interactions.
Stories are frequently used in learning situations (e.g. elearning training scenarios), but fiction writing has several strategies that can be used to make those stories more interesting and compelling (and less boring).
Instructional Design Web Comic #4 - AddendumJulie Dirksen
This isn't an actual presentation - it's extra material for an Instructional Design Webcomic that I do for my blog. You can see the original here: http://wp.me/ppXIw-fA (and all the ID webcomic here http://bit.ly/idwebcomics).
A presentation introducing students to the concept of Games and their importance in modern life. Non-technical, and suitable for use in a 'soft skills' module.
A quick presentation I put together for "Invest in Games 2011" in Stockholm(Sep 6):
1) Intro to King.com
2) Accidental Gamers & Facebook
3) Mobile & Tablet Gaming
4) Investing in Accidental Gaming
We are enthusiastic developers of mobile games and applications. We have more than 400 titles in our library in different categories and compatible already with Java, Blackberry, and Android. We have more applications on the line as well
The benefits of operating a free-to-play "game-as-a-service" are well known: elastic pricing, a direct relationship with your players, longer lifespan, and an opportunity to fine-tune after launch. But to fully realize these benefits, you need to plan your live operations strategy as carefully as you plan your game. This talk will show how you can build an effective LiveOps strategy using PlayFab.
PlayFab runs a LiveOps backend services platform that handles more than 35 million monthly active players, on more than 450 live games, from studios and publishers that include Miniclip, Rovio, Hyper Hippo, Capcom, Bandai-Namco, and Atari. Getting to that level of scalability hasn’t been easy, and this talk describes the times when PlayFab nearly went down – and what architecture changes we needed to make each time to reach the next level of growth. This talk also shares some of the unique challenges of operating a shared platform, where problems are often not PlayFab’s fault, but always PlayFab’s responsibility, including game bugs that look like DDoS attacks, platform partners who break their APIs, and the joys of cascading server failures.
Commander's Intent: Managing Through UncertaintyJames Gwertzman
What do game studios have in common with special forces? They both depend on empowering creative individuals to take initiative and make autonomous decisions, often under stress and uncertainty, while staying aligned with overall goals of an organization. Elite military organizations have been explicitly training their leaders how to do this for over a century whereas game studio leaders rarely, if ever, get formal training in effective delegation. It’s time to change that!
The Future is Operations: Why Mobile Games Need BackendsJames Gwertzman
The future of mobile gaming is in operations. It’s not enough to just have great gameplay — that’s table stakes now. Winning games need to be able to engage their players long after launch and keep them coming back for more. To do that you need a great live operations strategy and the backend tools to execute it. And while it used to be that if you wanted a backend for your game, you had to build it yourself, companies like PlayFab and others are now making it easy for everyone.
Behind the Scenes: Deploying a Low-Latency Multiplayer Game GloballyJames Gwertzman
A deep dive into the guts of running a low-latency multiplayer game on a global scale using Amazon Web Services. You’ll get the details on how the Top 10 F2P shooter Loadout was launched on both PC and PS4 and how PlayFab’s complete backend and live game operations platform is architected to handle the scale these kind of games demand. Delivered on July 7 at the AWS Loft in San Francisco.
Launching a great F2P game isn’t enough these days to win. You need a great live operations strategy as well — and the tools to execute it. We’ll talk about how to build our your operations plan and then take a deep dive into one key component: in-game events.
Technical Disruption and a New Golden Era of GamesJames Gwertzman
Faced with technical disruption, games companies are poised to return to what they do best: focus on high-quality gameplay and entertainment. Speech delivered at the Opening Summit of the International Games Week on April 21, 2015.
With free-to-play games, you need to plan your live operations strategy as carefully as you plan your game. Learn how to use in-game events and promotions to drive retention and monetization of your game.
Online games have suffered from some high-profile failures recently. This talk from 2013 looks at some of the root causes and the need for better tools now that games are now effectively high-performance transaction systems.
This is a presentation I gave at "Career Day" to graduating seniors at my children's school last fall. I'm sure most of the lessons in here went in one ear and out the other, since you can't really understand this stuff until you've been out there for a while.
Originally presented at GDC 2004, this was a candid, no-holds-barred look at why my first start-up company, Escape Factory, ultimately failed. There are plenty of stories out there about game studios that succeed, but not enough about studios that fail.
This presentation was also in part an attempt to make good on a promise to our angel investor to share all the lessons we learned setting up Escape Factory.
Definitive Guide To Funding Your Video Game MasterpieceJames Gwertzman
Originally presented at the 2007 Casual Connect conference, this presentation delivers a quick tour through all the various funding mechanisms available to start-up video game studios to get their games funded.
Originally presented at LOGIN 2009, this is a fast-paced and colorful trip through PopCap's first year in China, with advice for any company considering the challenge of entering the Chinese market (or any developing country, for that matter).
Slack (or Teams) Automation for Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Soluti...Jeffrey Haguewood
Sidekick Solutions uses Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions Apricot) and automation solutions to integrate data for business workflows.
We believe integration and automation are essential to user experience and the promise of efficient work through technology. Automation is the critical ingredient to realizing that full vision. We develop integration products and services for Bonterra Case Management software to support the deployment of automations for a variety of use cases.
This video focuses on the notifications, alerts, and approval requests using Slack for Bonterra Impact Management. The solutions covered in this webinar can also be deployed for Microsoft Teams.
Interested in deploying notification automations for Bonterra Impact Management? Contact us at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com to discuss next steps.
The Art of the Pitch: WordPress Relationships and SalesLaura Byrne
Clients don’t know what they don’t know. What web solutions are right for them? How does WordPress come into the picture? How do you make sure you understand scope and timeline? What do you do if sometime changes?
All these questions and more will be explored as we talk about matching clients’ needs with what your agency offers without pulling teeth or pulling your hair out. Practical tips, and strategies for successful relationship building that leads to closing the deal.
JMeter webinar - integration with InfluxDB and GrafanaRTTS
Watch this recorded webinar about real-time monitoring of application performance. See how to integrate Apache JMeter, the open-source leader in performance testing, with InfluxDB, the open-source time-series database, and Grafana, the open-source analytics and visualization application.
In this webinar, we will review the benefits of leveraging InfluxDB and Grafana when executing load tests and demonstrate how these tools are used to visualize performance metrics.
Length: 30 minutes
Session Overview
-------------------------------------------
During this webinar, we will cover the following topics while demonstrating the integrations of JMeter, InfluxDB and Grafana:
- What out-of-the-box solutions are available for real-time monitoring JMeter tests?
- What are the benefits of integrating InfluxDB and Grafana into the load testing stack?
- Which features are provided by Grafana?
- Demonstration of InfluxDB and Grafana using a practice web application
To view the webinar recording, go to:
https://www.rttsweb.com/jmeter-integration-webinar
Securing your Kubernetes cluster_ a step-by-step guide to success !KatiaHIMEUR1
Today, after several years of existence, an extremely active community and an ultra-dynamic ecosystem, Kubernetes has established itself as the de facto standard in container orchestration. Thanks to a wide range of managed services, it has never been so easy to set up a ready-to-use Kubernetes cluster.
However, this ease of use means that the subject of security in Kubernetes is often left for later, or even neglected. This exposes companies to significant risks.
In this talk, I'll show you step-by-step how to secure your Kubernetes cluster for greater peace of mind and reliability.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 3DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 3. In this session, we will cover desktop automation along with UI automation.
Topics covered:
UI automation Introduction,
UI automation Sample
Desktop automation flow
Pradeep Chinnala, Senior Consultant Automation Developer @WonderBotz and UiPath MVP
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Infrastructure.pdfCheryl Hung
Keynote at DIGIT West Expo, Glasgow on 29 May 2024.
Cheryl Hung, ochery.com
Sr Director, Infrastructure Ecosystem, Arm.
The key trends across hardware, cloud and open-source; exploring how these areas are likely to mature and develop over the short and long-term, and then considering how organisations can position themselves to adapt and thrive.
Builder.ai Founder Sachin Dev Duggal's Strategic Approach to Create an Innova...Ramesh Iyer
In today's fast-changing business world, Companies that adapt and embrace new ideas often need help to keep up with the competition. However, fostering a culture of innovation takes much work. It takes vision, leadership and willingness to take risks in the right proportion. Sachin Dev Duggal, co-founder of Builder.ai, has perfected the art of this balance, creating a company culture where creativity and growth are nurtured at each stage.
Generating a custom Ruby SDK for your web service or Rails API using Smithyg2nightmarescribd
Have you ever wanted a Ruby client API to communicate with your web service? Smithy is a protocol-agnostic language for defining services and SDKs. Smithy Ruby is an implementation of Smithy that generates a Ruby SDK using a Smithy model. In this talk, we will explore Smithy and Smithy Ruby to learn how to generate custom feature-rich SDKs that can communicate with any web service, such as a Rails JSON API.
Elevating Tactical DDD Patterns Through Object CalisthenicsDorra BARTAGUIZ
After immersing yourself in the blue book and its red counterpart, attending DDD-focused conferences, and applying tactical patterns, you're left with a crucial question: How do I ensure my design is effective? Tactical patterns within Domain-Driven Design (DDD) serve as guiding principles for creating clear and manageable domain models. However, achieving success with these patterns requires additional guidance. Interestingly, we've observed that a set of constraints initially designed for training purposes remarkably aligns with effective pattern implementation, offering a more ‘mechanical’ approach. Let's explore together how Object Calisthenics can elevate the design of your tactical DDD patterns, offering concrete help for those venturing into DDD for the first time!
4. PopCap’s Fastest Selling Game More than 1,500,000 copies sold so far More than 15M+ downloads for Available on PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Xbox Over $1M from iPhoneAppStore in 1st week #1 title on iPhone in China; top 10 on iPad
6. An “Industry” Favorite The top “casual” game in 2009 / 2010 Puzzle Game of The Year (2009), PC Gamer Nominee, Outstanding Achievement in Game Design (2009), Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Nominee, Casual Game of the Year (2009), Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Nominee, Best Downloadable Game (2009), Game Developers Choice Awards Nominee, Best Innovation in Game Design (2009), Game Developers Choice Awards Nominee, Best Game Design (2009), Game Developers Choice Awards Best Downloadable PC Game of 2009, CrispyGamer.com Top Casual Games of 2009, AdrenalineVault Casual Game of The Year (2009), Chicago Sun-Times Finalist, Best PC Strategy Game 2009, IGN.com Inductee, Game Hall of Fame (2009), MacWorld Nominee, Best Strategy Game of 2009, Gamespot.com Best Games of 2009 (#3), PadsAndPanels.com Best PC Game of 2009, Boysie Awards (Boys' Life Magazine) Best Hand-held & Downloadable Games of 2009, San Jose Mercury News Top 5 Games of 2009 (#5), MTV.com Top 20 Downloadable Games of 2009 (#13), CNET Downloadable Game of the Year (2009), Machinima.com Top 10 Games of 2009 (#3), CrispyGamer.com Best Downloadable Game of 2009, Inside Gaming Awards Best Games of 2009, BoingBoing.net Best Strategy Game of the Year, USAToday.com (2009) Finalist, PC Game of the Year, Spike TV Video Game Awards (2009) Finalist, Downloadable Game of the Year, Spike TV Video Game Awards (2009) Editor’s Choice Award, Mac|Life Magazine (Sept. ’09) Maximum Kick Ass Award, Maximum PC (July ‘09) Editor’s Choice Award, PC Gamer (June ’09) Editor’s Choice Award, WorthPlaying.com (2009) Editor’s Choice Award, GameShark (2009) Heavenly Gold Award, GamingHeaven.com (2009) Editor’s Choice Award, Destructoid.com (2009) Editor’s Choice Award, GamePro (July ’09) Editor’s Choice Award, IGN.com (2009) Elite Award, 411Mania.com (2009) A Global Award-Winning Phenomenon
7.
8. Zombie Temp Worker TodSemple Programmer George Fan Game Designer Laura Shigihara Sound / Music Rich Werner Art
156. Choosing the Artist Artist #1 Original Concept (George Fan) Artist #2 Rich Warner #2 Artist #3 Rich Warner #3 Artist #4 (Rich Warner)
157.
158. “Yeah it’s been really great to work at PopCap where I can run with my own ideas. When I worked at Lucas Arts, I did the character animation system for Star Wars Force Unleashed. I used a lot of 3D animation techniques in my “Reanimation” system for PvZ. The first character we did was the Peashooter and I like how we were able to have his head animate independently from his body so that he can shoot from any position. I’m really happy with how the animations are smooth without any pops. “Each person on a game gets to add their own personal touch. George of course put in many things like his signature character design and addictive game play. Rich’s art style really brought the character to life. And the thing that I’m most proud of adding was the silky smooth animation system.” -- TodSemple
176. Woah. I love the abominable snow zombies. Those are awesome. Best build yet! On the level with the yeti zombies, is there any way to unfreeze your sunflowers after they get snowballed? I tried fireballs but to no avail. Whoa, Santa Zombies! I still don't understand what I'm supposed to do about the polar bears or why they are even in this game. Dude. They drop the pies you need to feed the Yetis to quell their rage. You know- when they scream "TUNDRAAAAAA!" It'll make sense eventually. Keep playing.
177.
178. Summary Be inspired by other games, but innovate too. Prototype your ideas. Add fun, remove frustration. Don’t be afraid to be creative. Don’t worry about the name. Share creative ownership with the team. Test early, test often. Encourage feedback. Prevent players from making bad choices. Measure. Have fun!!
179. About PopCap Shanghai Set up in 2008 75+ Employees Working on new online & social games “In Asia, for Asia”
Editor's Notes
I wish I could tell you that I personally created Plants vs. Zombies. But I can’t. I was not part of the team that built this game.However, I am responsible for PopCap’s business here in China, as well as the rest of Asia, and in China, this is our most popular game. So I can tell you that our team here in Shanghai IS working on a cool new PvZ game just for china…. Even though I can’t tell you any details yet!!And as part of building this new game, we’ve learned a lot about PvZ, and we’ve thought a lot about why PvZ was such a great game.And so today, I’m going to share with you some of what we’ve learned…. Including some secrets about the making of PvZ that have never been shared in public before.So I hope you enjoy this talk as much as I’ve enjoyed making it.But first, I have to ask. Who here has played PvZ before? Who has NOT played PvZ?
Well, for that one person who has not played it, PvZ is a pretty unusual game. Your house is being attacked by Zombies, and the only way to defend yourself is to plant these strange plants which fight for you.Part of what has made the game so successful is its strange sense of humor – it’s a fun game, but it’s also a very funny game. Here’s a quick trailer that shows off the basic game play…
Before I start talking about how it was built, let me first share some numbers.This has been the fastest selling game in our history.Since the original PC launch we have launched it on iPhone, iPad, and we just announced this week the Xbox versions is coming soon too.
What we weren’t prepared for was how popular it would be with fans --- here are just a random sampling of some examples of that popularity, mostly images we found on the Internet. Has anyone see this video in the corner? It’s actually one of my favorite viral videos – a bunch of students from Harbin, China, created a live action recreation of PvZ. It’s awesome.
We’ve also won a lot of awards for this game…
One thing that’s unusual is how well Greater China has done in terms of sales here in APACThis giant spike here is iPhone sales… but what’s unusual is how well Greater China is represented.This is the first time we’ve ever had significant sales revenue from China.
So who was the mastermind behind PvZ?This man…. George Fan. He was the designer of the game, and was really involved in nearly every aspect of its creation. What’s unusual for a game this popular, however, is how small the team was who built it. Really just these 4 people --- George, Tod, Rich, and Laura.The other thing that’s unusual about this game is how long it took to create. George was working on this in total for nearly 4 years. In fact, the inspiration started while he was still working at Blizzard, before he joined PopCap. And that’s actually the first lesson of this presentation….
It’s okay to be inspired by other games. Great games like PvZ rarely come from no where. But you should try to innovate too – the best games are a combination of copying, to be familiar, while also trying to be different, to be fresh. So let’s look at the inspiration behind PvZ.
It all started with some tower defense “mods” in Warcraft III that George was playing.He remembers thinking to himself that these towers here looked like big plants… and he started to have the idea of growing plants to play a TD game.That’s actually the first inspiration for the game.
The second inspiration was this popular game, Desktop Tower Defense, which was one of the first times a TD game was reduced to a single screen with no scrolling.That became a big factor in making PvZ “casual” and approachable for everyone.
The next inspiration was this old fashioned game from 1983 – Tapper. I remember playing this as a kid in arcades! In this game you had to serve beer to players in these lines… and this game gave George the inspiration to have lines of action instead of a single long path, the way other TD games had historically done it.So if you take these three games together, you can start to see the ideas behind PvZ… but wait, there’s more!
One of George’s favorite movies when he was a kid was called Swiss Family Robinson. It’s a Disney film from 1960, where a family is shipwrecked on an island, and attacked by pirates.
The big ending to that movie is when a huge army of pirates attack the family, and they fight back using a huge variety of clever traps and inventions. George remembers enjoying all those clever devices.
For example, there is a trick bridge which dumps the pirates in the water.
There are crossbows in the trees which shoot arrows.
There are rope traps that pull the pirates up into the sky.
There is a tiger in a pit to bite any pirate who falls in.
They create a bomb out of a coconut.
Finally, they blow up a huge mountain of rocks, dumping the rocks down on the pirates.
And finally, the last inspiration was George’s own game Insaniquarium. Actualy he first created insaniquarium as a student, and entered it in a competition in 2002. The founders of PopCap saw the game at IGF, and persuaded George to publish it through PopCap.
2 years later,Insaniquarium finally shipped as a PC download game from PopCap. In fact, this game is the inspiration for many of the “Happy Acquarium” games popular now on Facebook and other social networks.
Part of what made Insaniquarium cool were all the pets, who all have special abilities… and so this is the final inspiration behind PvZ --- the idea of having lots of crazy creatures with different abilities.
In fact, if you look at all the plants in the PvZ almanac, you can see the imagination and variety that went into this.
So let’s start to focus on the game creation process itself… One of the key lessons that we follow at PopCap is to PROTOTYPE. When you think you know what your game is about, build a prototype. Start to play the game as early as you can, to figure out what’s working and what’s not working. Otherwise you risk wasting a huge amount of time and effort on a core idea that just isn’t fun.
So here’s a never-before-seen screenshot of the early prototype that eventually became PvZ. Back then, the game was called “Weedlings” and the core idea was you would plant seeds, grow plants, and then the plants would attack monsters in a tower defense style game.Now, when building a prototype, art doesn’t matter. Re-use as much as you can. So here you have the aliens from Insaniquarium assaulting your farm, and you've planted a few cabbage-pults in hopes of defending stemming their attack. In the bottom left corner you've planted some tubers and uber-tubers, which are your money crops. To harvest those, first you need to water the dirt to change it to grass, then you need to plant the tuber sprouts in the grass, next you water the tubers, then you pluck the tubers out of the ground when fully grown.Now, does that sound fun?No. And as soon as we started playing the game, it was clear that it wasn’t fun. And we found it out pretty quickly. In fact, it turns out that really these are two separate ideas here… planting and taking care of a plant is fun… but not in the middle of battle. To fight the monsters, you really just want to plant the plants right away and not wait for them to grow.
So that takes us to the next lesson --- focus on the fun. You need to be totally honest with yourself about what’s fun, and what’s not fun. And then you need to get rid of whatever’s not fun.
If you look here at some early concept art, you can see some of the ideas of PvZstartin to emerge… here you can see the idea of cards, and rows, and plants…..
But back then George was still thinking about fighting normal monsters, or aliens.
So where, you might ask, did the zombies come from? To understand that, you need to go back in time and look at some of the games coming out around the same time.So while George is exploring this idea of planting plants, and fighting monsters, a bunch of planting & garden games started coming out.
Plantasia was one of the first…. In fact, it’s possible that these planting games were the inspiration behind Happy Farm and some of the recent farming games on social networks.
As a genre, you started to see more and more planting games. And George started getting nervous – he was worried that by the time his game finally shipped, people would think he was just copying these other games. He was wondering how to stand out, how to be original.
In fact, look at this game from 2007. It’s exactly the core concept that George was working on – a tower defense game, where you plant plants to fight garden invaders like bugs.So when you’re worried about making your game different, what can you do??? The answer is obvious.
Add zombies!!!!!And that’s where the idea of plants vs. zombies was born.
Even in china, people are interested in original content. It doesn’t always have to be 3 kingdoms. You can create original or fresh content.
A related issue – don’t get hung up on the name. This is really important.You can’t believe how much time and effort went into trying to pick a clever & creative name for this game.
In the beginning, what’s interesting, is that the very first name for his game was Plants vs. Zombies. It was like a code name – no one expected it to be the real name.
In fact, the name for a long time was “Lawn of the Dead”, which was meant to be a really clever & creative reference to a famous Zombie movie called “Dawn of the Dead”
Unfortunately, however, we could not just use this name --- we might get sued. So we contacted the film director who owned the rights, and sure enough, he didn’t give us permisison. So we had to throw out that name and keep looking.
So we went back to PvZ --- but again, it was just a code name.
Then for a while we were calling the game “Zom Botany” --- but this name didn’t work out for other legal reasons.
Then we tried “Bloom and Doom” for a while… and that didn’t work out either.
At this point we started to go a little crazy… here is another never-before-seen list --- these are all possible names for PvZ which we didn’t choose for one reason or another.
Finally, getting desperate, we went back to the original name…. And of course, this is the name that shipped, and now that everyone knows it by this name, it’s hard to imagine that we ever considered using another name at all…And that’s how choosing a name goes.
Okay, let’s go back to this lesson. It’s so important, I have some more examples.
Right around the same time that George was designing PvZ, he was teaching his girlfriend, Laura how to play Magic the Gathering (who went on to compose the music, by the way, and has become a huge star in her own right). Who here has played Magic?The key idea of Magic is that you collect all these different cards, and then you “make a deck” out of those cards. And then you draw cards from that deck, and play against the other player.
So in a very early prototype of the game, George had the same idea. He had plant cards, and the player would “make a deck” out of these cards by assigning probability to different cards.
And then, when you played, cards would appear randomly at the top based on the probabilty of your deck.Let’s take a look…..(queue demo of 2006_07_26 build)Point out:How much of the game was already “right” at this stage --- rows, a grid, zombies, zombies with stronger defenses, planting plants, pea shooter, sunflowers, etc.How there are two ideas combined togrther here --- resources, which you need to “buy” cards, and cards appearing randomly.- actually, it turns out that these are both good ideas, separately. So let the player choose which to buy… or, give the cards randomly. But don’t do both.
So the problem with this idea, of course, is that it’s really frustrating when you really need a shooter and you keep getting sunflowers. So it turns out, that while it sounds good on paper, it’s a bad idea in practice. But the only way to figure this out is to play it --- which, again, is why building a fast prototype is so important.
Let’s talk for a second about the team… obviously getting the right team together is critical. And art, especially, is critical because it sets the tone for the whole game. I think for a lot of designers, there is this idea that artists are interchangeable.. That artists can work in any style, and do anything. And in general, it’s not true. Different artists have different styles. So when you pick an artist, you’re picking their style.For this game, it all started with this concept art created by George himself.He then interviewed a bunch of different artists, starting with the guy who did the backgrounds, Enrique.Then he tried a different artist, Sergio.Then he thought about maybe trying a pixel art look, so he asked pixel artist Derek Yu to do his take on the main characters.But ultimately, one of the Seattle artists, Rich Warner created this set of plants and zombies that made George pick the artistwe did a few iterations on the sunflower and the zombie...and here is the style we ended up with, I was really pushing for the zombie's and sunflower's faces to look similar to my original concept sketches
Related to the importance of team --- a great quote from Pixar. “Art challenges technology, technology inspires the art”. We saw a good example that here. the animation system. The idea was Tod’s the main programmer. He was inspired by Paper Mario. He created the system, and then that got Rich, the artist really excited.
So that leads to the lesson of pushing contributions down as far as you can – don’t treat your team members like robots who just do what you tell them. Encourage them to be as involved as possible in the creative process, because you never know where your best ideas are going to come from. George was clearly the boss, and makes the big decisions, but his team members are very involved creative as well, even the engineer.
Another lesson related to the early one about frustration --- test early, test often, with real people. Don’t just trust yourself. In fact, at PopCap, we take this very, very seriously.
We have a tool called “Burrito” and we post versions of our games in there at many different stages, and then we encourage people to post feedback – from across the whole company. And in the case of PvZ, this caught a potentially very serious issue.
Here’s the feedback. The point was that this guy’s wife didn’t know about the importance of planting lots of sunflowers first. So she was ending up with just peashooters, no sunflowers, and dying. It was frustrating for her, enough that she would want to quit.Of course, lots of people had lots of suggestions. “Add a tutorial” was the most common – namely, fix the problem by educating the player. Maybe.But then we investigated further….Get sun from killsTell player to plant 3 suns (tutorial)Reserve spots for sun flowersGive player more starting sun energyStart with sunflowers already in place
Turns out, at this stage of development, both sunflowers and pea shooters cost 100 energy, and in fact you started out with 200 sun energy.Now, most hard core gamers knew just what to do --- plant lots of sun to build up your economy, and don’t start planting pea shooters until the zombies come out. So for a long time, this 100/100 split was never seen as a problem.But for a beginnner player, when the level starts, you can click on either. So they start planting pea shooters because they seem more useful
And then you end up like this, with no sunflowers. You can still win in an easy level, but not on a harder level. So it was a problem.
In the end, the solution was pretty clever… change the price of sunflower to 50, and reset starting sun to 50. So at the start, the ONLY thing you can do is plant sun.Solution:Reprice sunflower from 100 to 50Tweaked sun generator to be a little slowerChanged initial energy to start at 50Now only one choice – guides the playerDownside: rebalance & retest entire game
So the lesson there is to prevent your players from making bad choices --- without taking away their freedom to choose, or making hard-core players think it’s too easy.Another example of this same law comes from the potato mine.
Consider this early level. Here, when you start the level, everything is “charged up” and ready to go. So a lot of beginning players would buy it all.
And end-up like this – pretty useless.So the fix was to start out with the “one-shot” items uncharged. So you need to wait 20 seconds before you can use them --- and by that time you’re spent all your money on sunflowers.
And for the final rule…. Measure. Don’t just use your own judgement. In our case, we created a beta build and distributed it to a few hundred users to play for several months before finalizing the game. The data we gathered from those tests were used to tweak difficulty and to balance the game. It’s the same thing that social games are doing now.
For example, here we flag levels that are too short – not enough to do.
Here we flag levels that are too difficult.
And here it’s interesting to note which plants people use AFTER the finish the entire adventure mode – helps us analyze player strategy.
This is so important… having fun and goofing around is an important part of making a game.For example, one great joke came from the development team on April 1st. In the US, April 1st is a day of jokes. And so the team had the idea of creating a fake ice level build. Here is how they announced it:
Sounds pretty cool, right? Let’s take a look at the demo….
And in the end, this joke ended up turning into the famous “Yeti Zombie” in the game --- which may not have happened if we didn’t have that joke.And this Yeti gives users yet another reason to replay the game.
Thanks for your time.I’d now like to open up the floor to questions of you have any.