Farming in CityVille (We Miss VillageVille??)

Its quite strange, yeah, but it has already been implemented and became a hit idea to combine farming with building roads, buildings, shops, etc. Look like an already trusted and applied technique of Farming game was used again as a sidekick in CityVille. More or less, they have a great user experience with Farmville and they integrated that farming feature upto some extent in CityVille as well, so the users who are keen of growing their own stuff don’t need to go to FarmVille or any other Farm game on Facebook for the sake of farming.

How about VillageVille? we miss it, don’t we.

What’s Next : WorldVille

As  Facebook is crowded with Farm games, pet games and city building games its now time for a change. What’s next ? Something new, something different, something challenging.

A game that spans across various countries of the world at least top 5 or top 10, like USA, France, UK, Germany, Spain, Australia, Japan, China, Russia and Denmark.

You are a traveler. You  start at the airport. Your next flight is to London, UK (surrounding a typical British environment especially there red uniform royal soldiers on horses, London Eye, London Bridge, etc)  where you’ll be required to complete a level like buying properties, building houses, growing local veges and fruits. After 5 levels, you head to Paris, France where you are experiencing Paris environment. Here you experience French traditions and values like good nice French wine, bread and Eiffel Tower. Similarly, you visit Germany, Spain, Australia, India, Egypt, Turkey, etc…

This game is very ambitious and exciting for the audience. As it possesses learning, entertainment, cultural, social and invaluable experience for the user as they are taken to different worlds…

And the publisher of this next hit is …. ooops….. shhhhhh……

Game Review from the Past : The Dagger of Amon Ra

The game is based in 1926 and specifically in a museum. The game play includes lots of suspense and surprises, so keep your fingers crossed. Some events happen with surprises especially cold blooded murders in the museum and nobody knows who’s doing it. Surround by mummies, statues and artifacts in the ancient museum, Laura Bow, a reporter cum investigator (YOU) are trapped in the museum to spend a night. And during the night, she comes across various life threatening and heart beating incidents. Its a very well written and designed game by Sierra. Its a sequel to “The Colonel’s Bequest” which was also a good one but was based on Sierra’s old type and act interface. The Dagger of Amon Ra was based on Sierra’s Creative Interpreter interface (SCI 1.1) point and click.  Its really a cool game and worth it if you like suspense and surprises.

Best selling PC Video Game of 2010

According to an independent survey,  the best selling PC Video Game of the year 2010 was The Sims with total 16 million copies sold. Looks like people all around the world has been busy building cities whether its a desktop PC game like The Sims or an online game like Cityville on Facebook, they just love to build cities and towns

Source: Wikipedia / EA

Not every game is for iPhone

The prime example we have at hand is of Lucas Art’s Monkey Island 2. It was a huge hit when it was released for PC by Lucas Arts and was distributed along with new computer systems and laptops for quite sometime due to its popularity and fame.

The company thought that it would also do great on iPhone but unfortunately it didn’t and was kind of flop on iPhone. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a huge company or an individual. The planning, execution of plan and taking it to the last really matters. A good example is of Angry birds which was an enormous effort by a bunch of dudes who made the difference. Similarly, many individuals became millionaire with their unique but appealing ideas on iPhone and did just great.

So, market research is an essential part before planning your product. The target audience should be able to absorb your app idea.

Don’t just make a move, make it a SMART one

Play Old Dos Games on your New Machines

If you would like to try out old DOS games like Prince of Persia, Donkey Kong, PAC Man, Space Quest 2, etc. on your new Machine like Pentium 4 +,  no worries. Just download DOS BOX and install it.

So, what is DOSBox?

DOSBox is an open source DOS emulator for famous platforms like MAC OS, Windows, Linux. Its mainly focussed for running DOS games.

Just Visit: http://www.dosbox.com/

Penetration Attacks: On-Line Games

It has never been easier before to penetrate into a Facebook game whether its arcade, social or strategy, etc. The client / server communication over the  HTTP protocol is easily visible and can be misused easily. More or less most of the leading sites like Gmail, hotmail, etc have migrated to HTTPS which guarantees encrypted client server communication and better security of user’s data.

Issues:

Scoring and Monetization Aspects

A very important concern for Game developers is the security of their game’s scoring and monetization aspects. Many startups don’t even bother and don’t want to pay attention to such issues.

Encryption and Obfuscation of SWF game files

Always remember to encrypt and obfuscate your game’s SWF file before you upload it, otherwise its open for the world and any kid can download it and decompile it in no time. So be cautious and alert about your games, otherwise you’ll have to pay for it later.

Solution:

1. Hire an in house online  security consultant for your games and client server communication so he can check out the possible penetration leaks and holes in your application.

2. Hire a Company with expertise in penetration testing of online applications and find out about the vulnerabilities in your games.

Free Game Promotion Network

If you have a quality game on Facebook and want to publicize it freely through a network of other leading game companies like big fish, zynga, etc. there is an easier way to do that and App Strip have all the answers.

http://www.appstrip.com/

Reach Millions of New Players

It’s a Facebook premier FREE game promotion network. So, don’t just sit there, apply now as its free at the moment

Psychology behind City Building games

A lot of research has been done on the user’s psychology and temptations. Most of the user’s have an eternal wish to build their cities / towns according to a map in their minds. 99.99 % of the users are those who are not related or never will be related to any real life City Planning or Implementation. People are just curious about how their dream city will look like. They want to build big mansions, community centers and other buildings in their dream city.

The idea is quite old for computer games. It all started in 1989 when SimCity was released. It was a PC desktop city-building simulation game and paved the way for other vendors to jump into this genre.

There had been lots of games built on city building idea but on the desktop. Facebook brought a new and exciting way for game companies to come up with social and interactive games through which users can interact with their friends.

CityVille broke all the records of other games by Zynga proving that people just LOVE to build their own styled and themed cities in their own virtual world.

Thats the bottom line of this thread.

Operating Systems Market Share

Looks like Microsoft is top of the charts as usual with Windows XP holding 55% of the market share, followed by 22% by Windows 7 and last but not least Windows Vista with 11% shares.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Operating_system_usage_share.svg