20 Great Innovations in Casual, Social and Mobile Games

That You Should Steal

Stuart Dredge

Who am I?

• Journalist since 1998 – new media, games, mobile

• Blogger since 2005(ish) – gadgets, virtual worlds

• Twitterer since 2007 – cats, babies, breakfast

What is Pocket Gamer?

• Consumer mobile games site: J2ME, iPhone, N-Gage, Android

• PocketGamer.biz – trade site for mobile games industry

• Printed mags for operators, N-Gage and Zeemote

• iPhone podcast

What’s all this about?

• The session title is a big fat lie

• 50 ideas. You may want to steal 20 of them. Maybe.

• iPhone, casual and social (but mostly iPhone)

• Not all of these games are good

MATES

Restaurant City

• Hire your friends as chefs, waiters, cleaners

• Viral without feeling like you’re marketing to mates

• Danger: your mum might get hooked

Tower Bloxx / Bumper Stars

• See your friends’ scores while you’re beating them

• Constant competitive carrot to keep playing

• Back it up with a brag feature

Dr. Awesome

• Taps into your address book to get friend names

• You then get to ‘treat’ them

• No privacy infringement / connectivity

Premier Football

• Facebook football manager game with your friends

• More notifications when you pick people

• Gets around licensing issues

FaceFighter

• iPhone boxing game from Ready 2 Rumble developers

• Turn a photo into a fighter

• Perfect for pub show-offs

Who’s Your Friend / Word Challenge

• WYF: Facebook game – guess who your pixelly friend is

• Ranks you against your friends at end of game

• Word Challenge: mini-game

• Danger: too many friends?

MUSIC

Audiosurf / Phase / Dance Fabulous

• Use your MP3 collection as basis for rhythm game

• Racing / Falling notes / Dance

• Works for PC or iPhone/mobile

• Danger: can you cope with Napalm Death?

The Sims DJ

• iPod version of the game lets you DJ with your tunes

• Lets you listen as well as play –solves issue of competition

• Danger: Can your game cope with Nap...

Song Summoner: The Unsung Heroes

• Square Enix’s tactics RPG uses songs as warriors (Barcode Battler mechanic)

• Encourages gamers to delve deep into collections

• Also promotes sharing and song-swapping

Pole Position Remix

• Classic Pole Position, but billboards from album covers

• Incidental to gameplay, but once noticed...

• Danger: You don’t know what albums they’ve got

BUZZER! Music Quiz

• iPhone game tests your knowledge of your library

• Guess the intro / album / artwork / genre / artist

• Two-player split screen

Sonifi

• Official app for trance artist BT

• Bluetooth mixing – one takes beats+bass and one takes melody+harmony

• No actual game or scoring, but there could be...

LOCATION

Underworld

• iPhone dealing game –sweets, not hard drugs

• Turns local map into list of dealing spots

• Don’t need to actually run around them

JOYity

• Android platform to make your own LBS challenges

• Treasure hunts, tag, racing...

• Gets around the problem of games only working in one city

Gowalla

• Collecting game –icons, stamps, pins...

• Only worked in certain cities at the start

• BUT people could create their own landmarks

Seek’n’Spell

• iPhone game that DOES make you run around

• Collect letters and create words with them

• Works with one friend

• Not geeky (or not too geeky)

Foursquare

• Not a game, but a social networking app

• BUT wraps game-like elements around it – badges etc

• Just go to your usual places and do your usual things

TWITTER

Star Defense

• iPhone Tower Defense game with Twitter feature

• Brag about your score with a tweet in-game

• Check out other people’s and challenge them

Spymaster / SNODS / 140 Mafia

• Not games that use Twitter, but Twitter games

• Built around Twitter, and tweeting every action

• Intrusive and annoying? Yes, but early days

TweetBricks

• Yes, it’s Tetris with tweets

• BUT those tweets belong to your friends (or you)

• Twitter’s open API has potential for games

• (Well, some games)

TweetCraft

• Twitter plug-in for World of Warcraft

• Contradicts previous point about fantasy worlds

• Limited potential? Maybe

CONNECT

Anytime Pool

• Pool game for Facebook, iPhone and mobile

• Key thing: play across all of them seamlessly

• Asynchronous turn-based gameplay works well for this

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09

• Complete the mobile game, get bonus in the console game

• Relied on EA login, but could be done with code

• Reason for console gamers to bother with mobile

Prototype (trailer)

• Viewers logged in with Facebook Connect

• Pulls out profile data and friend photos

• Shows what’s possible when you start with personal data

My Brute

• Or, indeed, any mafia game on the iPhone

• Friend codes with rewards –wolves’n’weapons

• More viral-ness without feeling like marketing

• Danger: pyramid scheme?

Leaf Trombone World Stage

• Not the game (although playing a virtual trombone is kinda cool...)

• But the X-Factor style judging over the network

• Also UGC aspect of composing songs for others

Noby Noby Boy

• Strange but marvellous PS3 download game

• Stretch Noby Noby Boy as far as you can

• Cumulative global total to reach GIRL and unlock new levels for the game

VIDEO

Spore Creature Creator

• Let people Make Stuff, then Show That Stuff Off

• Even if it’s penises

• It’s machinima for the masses! Or something.

Real Racing

• iPhone racing game with own Cloudcell community

• Auto-uploads replays of best laps to YouTube

• Web 2.0 equivalent of ‘let’s see that again!’ moment

Poker Face – Don’t Miss a Beat

• Using YouTube interactivity for Lady GaGa (and other UMG artists)

• Very simple, but neat

• Early days for these kinds of games – can fit in with wider ideas

RETHINKS

Scrabble Plus

• Casual take on Scrabble with more solo modes

• Scrabble Golf, Scrabble Battle and Scrabble Wizard

• Putting, power-ups and categories make the game fresh

Tetris Pop

• Turned Tetris into three-minute mini-games

• Different rules/formats, but kept true to core gameplay

• (Yes, I did use this one at Develop last year)

Pac-Man Remastered

• Bluetooth multiplayer where you play as the ghosts

• Why not make this a solo mode too?

• Anti Pacman – online Flash game does this too

UEFA Euro 2008

• Rethinking trad football game controls for new players

• Sliding bars rather than feverish key presses

• Still a game of skill, but in a different way

• Danger: dumbing down?

Bejeweled Blitz

• Bejeweled on Facebook with one-minute games

• Same mechanic with one crucial difference

• (Okay, chess got there first)

• Followed up with Zuma Web Connect this week

MASH-UPS

Puzzle Quest / Aurora Feint

• Mapping one genre (RPG) onto another (match-three puzzle)

• Build depth around casual core gameplay – or do you?

• Why map RPG onto puzzle and not other way around?

Chocolate Shop Frenzy

• Diner Dash meets Bejeweled

• But when there’s lots of Diner Dash meets Diner Dash games...

• Two genres familiar to same audience

Samurai Puzzle Battle

• Puzzle game meets strategy game meets action game

• Similar benefits / concerns to Puzzle Quest

• Rave reviews shows freshness of genre-splicing

Bejeweled / Peggle in WoW

• Add-On for WoW with two popular casual games

• Takes advantage of need to kill time while waiting for friends

• Tradeskill ramps up with skills / roll for loot

STUFF THAT’S INTERESTING BUT WON’T

FIT INTO AN EASILY DEFINABLE ONE-WORD

CATEGORY

Car Jack Streets

• Top-down GTA-style game for iPhone (and now DSi)

• Time is the key – make $50,000 every real-life week

• Push notifications could enhance this feature

• Danger: players drop out

Spore Origins

• iPhone version of Spore that uses the camera

• Design your perfect Spore in a way that suits the platform

• Camera-enabled feature, NOT a camera-focused game

And before you ask...

iSamurai Bluetooth

• Two-player sword-fights with your iPhone

• This year’s iPint/PhoneSaber

• Difference: putting a game structure around the novelty

Pet Society

• Poo

• Golden Poo

• Rainbow Poo

• Expect the unexpected

SurrounDEAD

• iPhone shooter that uses the compass (on 3GS)

• Takes a non-gaming feature and uses it for a game

• Novelty – would YOU play it in public?

Galaxy On Fire 2

• Space adventure/shooter with whizzy 3D graphics

• Free distribution model –freeplay and then pay

• Step further – used pirate sites to get the game out there

YoVille

• Virtual world / game on Facebook

• Partnership with SPCA in San Francisco – virtual cats and dogs in return for donations

• $20k in five weeks

WordFu

• Boggle with attitude – dice and letters/words

• Martial arts sounds whenever you make a word

• Comes into its own with two players

Flight Control / DrawRace

• Not direct control over object, but instead draw its path

• (PES on Wii – similar idea)

• FC = juggling, DR = feel

Pocket God

• The 99-cent game that’s trailblazed episodic content for the iPhone

• Weekly updates

• Selling 18k copies a day at its peak – despite (or because) updates were free

Enviro-Bear 2010

Cheers!

Me: sdredge@gmail.com

Pocket Gamer: spanner@pocketgamer.co.uk

PocketGamer.biz: jon@pocketgamer.co.uk

Quick plug: www.iphonegamesbulletin.com