stuff123

A Message to All Game Designers

We all play enough games on the Facebook platform to have some better ideas to share with all the game designers that are making new and interesting quests for all of us. He are some of my observations.

The Attack button(s) are in the wrong place. Instead of putting all the game stats and the results page scrolling at the top they should be like a page pulled out from a roll of toilet paper—from the very bottom please. There should always be a “Repeat the Last action” button at the very top of the screen. Scrolling up and down in a web browser is painfully slow and we all can’t read mice print so don’t make it so small that we can’t read it.

Keep the buttons spread out so you don’t accidentally hit the wrong button. There are two many engineers and computer designers building games and not enough actual players involved in the design. The game must be efficient but it must be pleasing to the eyes and very playable. Boring looking games get put on the shelf first.

Keep everything to one small page that uses the full width of usable screen minus the ad space. If necessary make two and three columns, instead of one long column. Make the most often used buttons appear at the top of each column and the least used appear at the bottom of these columns.

Don’t add things to the game that are just very frustrating to the player in the name of making it more challenging. Repeating a pattern of two or three directions 8 or 9 times is a waste of time and just annoys the player. Just make it cost more to do these steps but make them 3 or 4 only. Low probability payouts are better handled by increasing the game cost and increasing the probability. A 1 in 20 opportunity to get something to drop is not worth the effort. Double the cost and make it 1 in 10.

Chances of getting an item to drop less than 5% will ultimately frustrate the player and they may never come back to the game. And there goes your chance to make any money from that player. Remember the customer service phrase. A happy customer will tell 2 friends. An unhappy customer will tell 7!!

Change your tables for selling anything in a game to something better than 50% of the original value. Make everything in the game for sale. What is the point of giving out free items that have no play value. You just annoyed the player again.

If the game is designed properly you should not have to get a message that says you cannot battle with someone in your own tribe/guild/horde/team. Programme it so the player can’t do this. And programme fail safes so the player doesn’t waste more resources than necessary. If it takes 500 units of some resource to max out a category, you should not be able to spend 600. You should get a warning message.

If you have multiple games, share the good design ideas with all the games. I don’t understand this concept in any business. Why would you not want to make all your products better and with little cost because the research and development is already proof by the number of players that are playing the better designed game.

Forget about the idea of bulletin boards and find your answer to the problem in a list of irrelevant other problems. All you do is show the player that there are a lot of unhappy players. This is just bad advertising.

Real customer support people need to respond to customer complaints in any and every business. If you choose to roadblock you customers, you will soon have no customers if they can find a better alternative. Are you willing to take that chance?

Make your game experience fun, challenging and wanting them to come back for more. It is in your best interest.