montreal international game summit 2010

David vs.
GoliathVille
a call to arms for indie social game designers

Scott Jon Siegel http://numberless.net

@numberless scottjonsiegel@gmail.com
Hi people. My name is Scott Jon Siegel, and my talk today is "David vs. GoliathVille: A Call to
Arms for Indie Social Game Designers”.
 David vs.
GoliathVille but first, a brief disclaimer:
The opinions expressed
a call to arms for indie social game developers
here are those of the
presenter, and do not
necessarily represent the
views of his employer.

Scott Jon Siegel http://numberless.net

@numberless scottjonsiegel@gmail.com
Before I begin, I just need to include this little statement, in case I go off the rails a bit and
say something silly like “Kinect is just 4 Wiis duct-taped together” or something.
 Scott Jon Siegel
Social Game Designer
Zynga; June 2008 - August 2009
‣ Scramble Live, iPhone
‣ Café World, Facebook
Playdom/Disney; September 2009 - Present
‣ City of Wonder, Facebook

I'm here today giving this talk because I'm a social game designer. I've been working in social
games since 2008, which in social media terms was a long time ago. Back in Facebook’s “wild
west days,” I started my career at this little, 70-person company called Zynga, and I'm
currently working as a Lead Designer at Playdom, freshly acquired by the Walt Disney
Company.
 intro

But I'm not here to talk about either of these companies. In fact, I'm not here to talk about
any large companies at all. I'm here to talk about the people who are going to help save my
industry.
 call to arms

The original title of this talk was "sage advice" for indie social game designers. But I didn't feel like that
really matched what my goals were.

In giving this talk, I didn't want to get up here and talk down to you fine people. I don't want to tell
anyone to come work for me. What I want is to tell everyone to go work for themselves.
 call to arms

CALL TO
ARMS
The purpose of this talk, is to try really hard to start something. This is a call to arms.

What I want is to make you all as excited about social games as I am. If I can get one person
in this audience to go off, and make something PLAYFUL on a social network, then I'll have
succeeded.

And I'm not exaggerating when I say that I want to save my industry. It might not look like it
needs saving, and many people would argue it's doing just fine. But from a creative
perspective, social gaming's a little down and out. I'm sure many people HERE would agree
with that -- and I'm ready for a renaissance.
 call to arms

I'm challenging everyone here to re-think their assumptions about social gaming, but I'm
most directly talking to the indie community. The punk-rockers of games. Those small,
nimble, ad-hoc conglomerates of smart thinkers and doers who have become increasingly
active over the past year, with amazing events like IndieCade outside Los Angeles,
publications like Matthew Kumar's exp magazine, and venues like Babycastles Arcade in New
York City. The indies are doing amazing things in our industry.

And it's time they start taking social games seriously.

 part one

Because, it turns out, they don't. Right off the bat, let's admit that the independent games
community doesn't "get" social games. And, as part of not "getting them," criticizes the whole
for the sins of the part. Because they dislike the approach of some of the largest companies
and their games, they dismiss the entire thing, writing off this latest corner of the game
industry as a bubble...
 part one

...or a cash cow... or -- as at least one IndieCade attendee put it --

 part one

just plain evil.

And the indie community in some ways is reflecting a feeling that is percolating around the
entire game industry.
 the outsider

THE
OUTSIDER
Now, I work for one of the Goliaths of the industry. I'm no indie. And in talking about indies I
am most definitely an outsider. But if I'm going to convince anyone to value this space, I need
to make sure I understand exactly how the indie community feels about my neck of the
woods.
 the outsider

THE INSIDERS
So I asked around, and I got myself a cadre of indie figures to help me out. My little club of
insiders.
 the outsider

(sausage fest)

(I apologize for it being a bit of a sausage fest, but that’s a topic for another talk)

I got these representatives of the indie scene, and asked them Three Simple Questions:
 the outsider

Three Simple Questions

1. HOW DO YOU DEFINE “INDIE”?

2. HOW DO YOU DEFINE “SOCIAL

GAMES”?

3. WHY DO INDIES HATE SOCIAL

GAMES SO MUCH?

because I needed them to help me:

1) To help me, for the purposes of this talk, clearly define "indie"
2) To help me understand the common understood definition of "social games"
3) and to help me better understand why they thought indies hated social games so much.
 the outsider

i n d i e

So, the first thing I learned in this exercise of mine, was that Indies, it turns out, really don't
like when you ask them to put labels on things. Especially not themselves.
 the outsider

“These are dumb questions.”

Chris Hecker
Co-Founder, Indie Game Jam

Chris Hecker, co-founder of the indie game jam and a lead dev on Spore, called these "dumb
questions."
 the outsider

“The whole ‘what's indie’ thing is a

pointless circular discussion I’m
trying to distance myself from.”
Phil Fish
Chief Creative Officer, Polytron

Phil Fish, lead designer on Fez, says he finds the whole question of semantics somewhat
contrived.
 the outsider

“A lot of people seem to want to talk

about that, but it never produces
interesting ideas or useful
discussions.”
Jonathan Blow
Designer/Programmer, Braid

Jonathan Blow, creator of XBLA hit Braid, had a similar point of view.
 the outsider

“Indie is hard to define.”

Jenova Chen
Co-Founder, ThatGameCompany

Jenova Chen, designer of flOw and flOwer on PSN, took it easier on me, and just admitted
that it’s a hard word to define.
 the outsider

“There’s indie as method [...] and

then there’s indie as style...”
Frank Lantz
Chief Creative Officer, area/code

A few folks took a stab at definition, but it became clear that there’s at least two competing
ways of looking at the term. As Frank Lantz of area/code puts it:

"there's indie as method - smaller scale, lower-budget, smaller teams, working outside
traditional commercial contexts,

"and then there's indie as style - which is a reaction to big-budget mainstream style, simpler,
more direct, less polished, often intentionally primitive, crude, confrontational, ironic, self-
reflexive."

I like that. That works for me. And luckily, it works for this talk too.
 the outsider

Whether you’re indie as method, or indie as

style, social games have something compelling
to offer.

Because I think whether you’re an Independent Developer, or a punk-rock indie, damn-the-

man kinda guy, the social games space is more valuable to you than you think.
 the outsider

WTF ARE SOCIAL GAMES?

but I guess the larger question here is what I’m really talking about when I say social games.
And I do say it a lot.

My insiders were fairly evenly split on this one.

 the outsider

“GAMES ON FACEBOOK”

Half felt it was pretty clear that “social games”, at least right now, refers to games on
Facebook or other social networks. Jon Blow’s actual definition was a little more mean-
spirited, but we’ll give him the podium in a minute.
 the outsider

“GAMES INVOLVING SOCIAL INTERACTION”

The other half took the term in a bit more of an idealist direction, seeing social games really
as being quite literally games that have an emphasis on socially significant interactions. Even
here the camp was split between people who meant this in a purely digital sense, and then
those people like Chaim Gingold and Eric Zimmerman, who expand it to include the entire
pantheon of digital and non-digital multiplayer games.
 the outsider

“IT’S A POOR TERM, WHATEVER IT IS”

What most people agreed on, though, was that the term is pretty poor, however one
interprets it.
 the outsider

WTF ARE SOCIAL GAMES?

I’m inclined to agree. I throw mental quote marks up in my head every time I use the term
“social games”. It’s not just because they’re not social ENOUGH, but rather because I don’t
think the point of “social games” is being social.
 the outsider

Social Games are those which evoke

“emergent social play”
- Zimmerman/Salen, 2004

And besides, there already exists a thing called “social games”. Eric Zimmerman and Katie
Salen coined or re-coined the term back in 2004 as a descriptor for schoolyard games.
 the outsider

Games like Red Rover, Seven-Up, Telephone, and such. Games where the interaction between
individual people, and the choices made, carry a significant social weight.
 the outsider

ork
netw
^
SOCIAL GAMES
‣ social graph
‣ platform communication channels

There are echoes of that in “social games”, but it’s not the be-all and end-all. No, the only
reason “social games” are called “social games” is because “social network games” is a pain to
say. Ultimately, what matters about these games is what they have access to: a user’s social
graph, and the platform’s communication channels for reaching that user.

I’ll talk about why that’s important later.

 the outsider

WHY ALL THE HATE?

So, the question now, is why all the hate? Why do those in the “indie” scene -- however you
define it -- seem to actively avoid, and even detest, social games? Why has Phil Fish never
even played one?
 the outsider

“Indie game developers generally don't make social

games because they tend to actually like games, and
they tend to respect their players and want to give the
players good experiences. ‘Social game’ development is
generally about the opposites of these things. It should
be pretty obvious.”

Jonathan Blow gives what’s probably the quintessential answer.

 the outsider

I OBVIOUSLY DISAGREE.

Needless to say, I obviously disagree. Not just with the statement, but with the suggestion
that it’s social games themselves that come with expectations of bad user experience, and
disrespecting the player.

It’s somewhat tantamount to looking at the iPhone when the App Store first launch, and
saying the device has no potential because all it can make are fart apps. I get a little hot-
headed when people talk like this, for a good reason.
 part two

I SOCIAL
GAMES
I. Love. Social Games.

And when I talk about my passion for social games, I’m not just talking about a professional
passion. I wouldn’t work in this space if i didn’t care deeply about the direction it heads in.
So, the question is, why do I care?

For most people who say they love social games, there’s a few key talking points:
 i <3 social games

they’re HUGE.

Part 1 usually comes from just the sheer immensity of the space.
 i <3 social games

‣ over 195,000,000 active users on Facebook every

day

‣ 24% of all internet users in US & UK play social

games.

‣ of those users, 49% log in to social networks

specifically to play social games.

11% 9%

The complete lack of necessity for a chart on this slide.

The pressure to do it anyway so the slide wouldn’t feel unbalanced.
How sad I make myself sometimes.

80%

Source: Information Solutions Group, February 2010

These stats from February, though probably wildly out of date by now, give a sense of what
we’re dealing with. Lots and lots and lots of people.
 i <3 social games

they’re DIVERSE.

And not just people, but DIVERSE people. People of diversity.

 i <3 social games

US UK

Percentage of Social Gamers by Age

30%

Percentage
24%
18%
12%
6%
0%

18

+
-2

-2

-3

-4

-5

60
<

18

22

30

40

50
Percentage of Social Gamers by Gender
60%
Percentage

48%
36%
24%
12%
0%
Male Female

Source: Information Solutions Group, February 2010

Looking just at age and gender, you can see a much older, and more female representation
here than what most of the industry is used to.
 i <3 social games

the average social gamer is a

43 year-old woman.

Source: Information Solutions Group, February 2010

And according to this same study, the average social gamer is a 43 year-old woman. So,
there’s your reason to make social games. Because Nicole Kidman will play them.
 i <3 social games

they’re PROFITABLE.

Of course, probably the largest talking point is the money.

 i <3 social games

‣ 28% of social gamers have spent real money in social games.

‣ users who spend once are exponentially more likely
spend again.

‣ Virtual goods on track to generate $1.6 billion in US

revenue in 2010.

‣ Estimated to account for 20% of all gaming revenue by

2011.

Sources: Information Solutions Group, February 2010

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-20004317-62.html
http://www.socialtimes.com/2010/02/56-of-social-game-buyers-buy-again-according-to-social-gold/

There’s a lot of it. At a time when the rest of the industry is finding itself in a hard place,
more and more big-box devs and publishers are starting to get very interested in social
gaming as a money-making machine.
 i <3 social games

social gaming is

BROAD
social gaming

PRINTS
MONEY
So, social gaming is BROAD, reaching diverse demographics. And social gaming is PRINTING
MONEY, when the rest of the industry is struggling to do so.

These are the two reasons that most developers stand up on their soapboxes and shout "I
LOVE SOCIAL GAMES."

But these aren't my reasons.

 i <3 social games

Parking Wars
area/code, 2007
I love social games because in 2007 I played Parking Wars. And in 2007, Parking Wars was
the first truly great game on a social network.
 i <3 social games

But let’s go back for a brief moment. See, in 2005 and 2006, I interned at a company in New
York called area/code.
 i <3 social games

area/code is, by far, one of the savviest game houses in the entire United States. These were
just some of the brilliant people I had the pleasure to work with. Frank Lantz, Kevin Slavin,
Kati London, Kevin Cancienne.
 i <3 social games

And that guy on the left is Dennis Crowley, who went on to found Foursquare. (which reminds
me: I need to “check in” to this conference on Foursquare later. I was the mayor of Hotel
Bonaventure last year).
 i <3 social games

In 2007, area/code worked in cooperation with television network A&E to develop a Facebook
game for their reality television show based on the everyday jobs of the Philadelphia Parking
Authority -- the meter maids, towers, and booters of the city of Philadelphia.

I've never seen the show. I can't comment on it.

 i <3 social games

^ MY STREET

MY FLEET >

The game ignores most of the conventions of the show, and seemingly bases its design purely on the
title. Every player in the game is in control of their own street, and a small fleet of vehicles.

Every player in the game takes their cars, and parks them on their friend's streets. The longer you
leave a car in a parking space, the more money it accrues (up to a cap), and when you move the car,
you collect that money.

The catch is that spots have parking restrictions on them. Some are for certain color cars only, and
some it's "illegal" to park there at any time.

Which isn't to say that you can't park there. But if a friend catches you parked illegally on her street,
she can ticket you. You lose the money you would have gained, and she gains that amount.
 i <3 social games

=$

So with few exceptions, the gameplay takes place in that tension. The longer I leave my car illegally parked
on Kati’s street, the more money it makes, but the higher chance I have of losing that money if she tickets
me.

At the same time, Kati wants to wait as long as possible to ticket me, to maximize the money she'll make.
But if she waits too long I might just move my car.

Parking Wars is fun. It’s not perfect, but it did something that I've seen very few games do.

Let's talk briefly about the Magic Circle.

 i <3 social games

Dutch historian Johan Huizinga coined the term in Homo Ludens, his groundbreaking text on
the role of play in culture, which has since become a cornerstone of academic thinking about
games and game design.
 i <3 social games

In brief, the magic circle of any game -- digital or non-digital -- is the space created by the
rules of the game, and occupied by the player during play. The magic circle is a protection of
sorts. It protects the sanctity of play from reality. It's a critical piece of games as a form of
escapism.

Traditionally, the magic circle is a finite space. It exists within the bounds of the start and
end of the game. Or the bounds of when a player picks up, and later puts down a game.
 i <3 social games

But let's look again at Parking Wars. The Magic Circle is the time in which the player is on
Facebook, moving her cars, and ticketing her friends.

But when the player walks away, the game is still going. Her cars are increasing in value. Her
friends are parking on her street. And everyone is trying to decide when the best time to re-
engage is.
 i <3 social games

So, how does this get defined in Huizinga's image of the Magic Circle? It doesn't. You could
argue that the Magic Circle of Parking Wars never closes.

Or you could argue that, paradoxically, this aspect of play exists outside of the Magic Circle.
 i <3 social games

Or you could argue what I argue: that Parking Wars creates Magic Circles within the heads of anyone
actively playing. Even when you're not playing, you're still playing. You're making a decision when to
log back in, and you're wondering what activity is occurring in the game while you're away.

So, this was... new. Not entirely unheard of. The idea of persistent worlds has been around for a very
long time. MMOs and that sort of thing.

What's different here is the weight of the thing. Persistance generally implies that the magic circle of
the game world is HEAVIER than whatever circle dances in the player's head. But with Parking Wars,
those periods of engagement were tiny. You almost spend more time thinking about the game than
you do playing it.

Now, before Parking Wars, there was a very, very small contingent of games that shared this
unbalance.
 i <3 social games

Skyrates
Carnegie Mellon, 2006

One of these games was Skyrates, originally developed out of Carnegie Mellon’s
Entertainment Technology Center.

Players in Skyrates fly their world war 2 era planes around a large, mostly water-based, map,
seeking out land to organize trades of various materials.
 i <3 social games

Skyrates
Airship Studios, 2006

All the flight in Skyrates, however, occurs in real time. During flight, players can either stay
logged out, and just come back when their plane has reached its destination, or they can play
and participate in various dogfights during their travel period.

The combination of real-time flight and Dope Wars-style trading was so compelling that one
game developer recently admitted to planning parts of her day around her Skyrates flight
schedules. Another would check up on the game in the midst of meetings.

Does this sound familiar? Replace aeroplane with Strawberries and the same guilty
admissions are happening every day on Facebook.
 i <3 social games

Sharkrunners
area/code, 2007

Unsurprisingly, the other example of this type of play style is an earlier area/code title:
Sharkrunners.

Sharkrunners was developed for Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. It has players plotting
courses in pursuit of sharks, for the purposes of research. The boats would move in real time
on the ocean, and when they encountered a shark, the game would actually text message
players, telling them to log back in and resolve their shark encounter.

I actually had the pleasure to work on Sharkrunners, writing a lot of the game’s creative copy,
as well as helping playtest it. Here’s a fun fact: the names and locations of the sharks came
from real-world telemetry data, so the players were virtually chasing real life sharks out in
the ocean.
 i <3 social games

Sharkrunners
area/code, 2007

Fun fact 2: I actually make a cameo appearance in the game as Jay the crewmember. Here’s
me sending myself out on an incredibly dangerous dive.
 i <3 social games

“SOCIAL” GAMES

These few examples aside, the "callback" gameplay style of Parking Wars was largely new.
And this balance of "on" and "off" gameplay is what I believe is the singularly most defining
aspect of what we call "social games."

Social Games may at times be social, but that's merely a means to end as far as I see it.

And the reason "Social Games" exist -- the reason we've been defining this new type of
gameplay -- is because of the internet. And they exist because our model of interaction with
the internet began to significantly change around 5 years ago.
 i <3 social games

RSS
Really Simple Syndication

To be more accurate, it started to shift back in 1999, when RSS, or Really Simple Syndication,
began its slow prolification across the web. It just took until 2005 for RSS to really begin
picking up steam.

For those who don’t know, RSS is a family of standardized formats for publishing of regularly
updating content on the web. The standardization allowed for the creation of tools besides
web browsers for the digestion of internet information, as well as the remixing of this data in
various forms. It also changed the way people used and thought about the internet.
 i <3 social games

Before RSS

Prior to RSS, our relationship to the internet was largely static. There were news sites, but the
web was largely devoted to the dissemination of established information. The notable
exception to this was IRC and Bulletin Board communities, places where new information
could flow more freely. The rest of the internet lacked the means to have that flexibility of
information.
 i <3 social games

After RSS
When RSS gained widespread acceptance, it was like a dam burst. With the advent of RSS
feeds, formats like blogging grew exponentially in popularity. The web shifted to a
substantially more dynamic model. Now less like an ocean of information, the internet
became a fast-flowing river.
 i <3 social games

INFORMATION COMPULSION
‣ News Sites
‣ Blogs
‣ YouTube
‣ Facebook
‣ Twitter
‣ Tumblr
This is the beginning stages of INFORMATION COMPULSION. Information Compulsion teaches
us that there's constantly something new happening, somewhere, on the internet. The more
points of information you have, the more likely you are to find something new every time you
check.

This is the new, current model of the internet age. Blogging fed this model first, but it's
become more and more widespread with services like YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, and, of
course, FACEBOOK.

As people, we strive for information. We are compelled to know more about everything. And a
large part of this is escapism, a term already very familiar to game developers and game
enthusiasts alike. Information Compulsion is a form of escapism.
 i <3 social games

SHALLOW
ESCAPISM
a short-form indulgement of
distraction, often as a
punctuated instance of a more
long-term form of escapism.

But what social media provides is what I call Shallow Escapism. Short-form bursts of
information. When we're sitting at work, riding a bus, waiting to be seated at a restaurant, or
whereever we may be idle, what we seek in those moments is Shallow Escapism. Short-term
engagement, though notably, often as part of something larger. We’re playing a long-term
game, working through a long-term problem, in short, punctuated pieces.
 i <3 social games

ork
netw
^
SOCIAL GAMES
‣ social graph
‣ platform communication channels

and THAT, is what SOCIAL GAMING is. Social is, indeed, a means to an end. The social graph creates an
infrastructure of connected players feeding new information into the world, and combined with the
communication channels of the platform, create entry points throughout the day for a player to re-
engage -- however briefly -- with the magic circle.

So, fundamentally, this is a new model. We as an industry have spent years building for long-term,
single-session engagement. We view games as extended forms of escapism. And here's this new thing,
with this built-in model for something different. Something short, punctuated, that continues to play
out in the head, even when the player is not playing.

Ignore the profit for a moment. Ignore the massive user base. This is actually a big deal.
 i <3 social games

So, why are so few people seeing it? Because it comes associated with unwashed masses?
Because Facebook is passé if you're in the right crowd? Because companies like mine learned
how to turn it into a business?
 i <3 social games

Even noted game academic Ian Bogost doesn't take Facebook seriously. Ian created Cow
Clicker as a satire of what he saw as the mindless player clicking and publisher profiteering in
the space.

It's a game in which you click a cow. You can click your cow once every six hours, earning you
1 "Mooney." You can then share your click with your friends, and if they click your click, you
both benefit with additional Mooney. You can then spent Mooney to purchase new Cows. My
favorite's the Highland Coo.
 i <3 social games

Source: AppData.com, November 2010

The ridiculous thing is, without even trying hard Ian actually made a moderately successful
and compelling game. At its height, Cow Clicker had 24,000 Monthly Active Users, though it's
since dropped to around 13,000. But the remarkable thing is his DAU/MAU -- a common
metric for measuring player retention -- has been going up.
 i <3 social games

amaitokyo.deviantart.com
You know, an old writing professor of mine once challenged us to write bad fiction. He
wanted us to try and create something terrible -- ignore the rules of “quality” we set for
ourselves. The result was some actually interesting things. Once we were given permission to
write crappily, we were freed from constraints and certain expectations of what “good”
writing looks like. We were actually allowed to be playful. And it worked.

Ian Bogost has been making incredibly earnest games for years. The one time he tries and
makes something terrible, it gains tens of thousands of players within a month of its
uncelebrated release. Unanticipated golden poo.

So, I don't know. Maybe the indie community has its ironic necktie on too tight. Maybe some
of the most playful people in our industry are so busy feeling like they should feel opposed to
games on social networks that they're not willing to try being playful.
 part three

Or, you know, maybe they're scared.

After all, it's one thing to just make a game on a social network. But the idea of making a
successful game -- one that a hard-working developer can bank on -- is another thing
entirely.

Beyond the challenges of making something unique and innovative in this space -- or any
space -- social game developers have had to deal with what from the outside feels like an
incredibly crowded marketplace.
 david vs. goliathville

As the title of my talk suggests, there's this sense that competing on Facebook means
competing with the top dogs. And a lot of developers have shown up on the scene with press
releases and plans to overtake the titans of the industry.

It's an ambitious goal, and nothing is more healthy for an industry than competition, but I'm
going to level with you:
 david vs. goliathville

You can't take down the goliaths.

Much earlier, I mentioned the "wild west days" of Facebook. Back when Facebook first launched their
app development program, May of 2007 or so, they really didn't know what to expect. As such, the
policies around this system were remarkably lax. It took until 2008 for games to become popular on
Facebook, but before that developers were creating incredibly spammy apps, for the purposes of
driving traffic and ad clicks.

As time went on, Facebook updated its policies more and more. Experimented with new
communication channels, shut down old ones. By mid-2009, the platform became much more strict,
and the communication channels much fewer. Developers who grew rapidly during the early period
retain their additional traffic and installs. New players will struggle much more to get anywhere
approaching the same kind of numbers.
 david vs. goliathville

Source: DeveloperAnalytics.com, November 2010

Part of the issue is that the whole concept of "Marketshare" on Facebook is based on
aggressive ad spend, and tightly integrated cross-promotional advertising within a network
of games. New, small developers can not possibly compete with this.
 david vs. goliathville

MO USERS
MO PROBLEMS

But I guess the question is, why would they want to?

Aside from the massive costs that would be incurred by aggressive ad spend, the server costs
to maintain games with audiences in the tens of millions are monumental.

Because revenue is such a closely guarded secret in this industry, there’s little to no data
comparing the average revenue per user of a 200,000 DAU title to a 10Million DAU title.
Which is a shame.
 david vs. goliathville

But InsideSocialGames recently took a look at a more public metric. Using AppData.com, they
took a look at the growth trend of the Top 250 Facebook games. The graph would seem to
indicate stagnancy in social game growth. But watch this magic trick!
 david vs. goliathville

That’s the same data, excluding the Top 5 game developers. Now, one last surprise:
 david vs. goliathville

Same data once again, but this time ignoring the top 50 games, and any titles from the Top 5
game developers. No single game in this set has DAU over 200,000. You probably haven’t
even heard of most of them.

So, being a little guy doesn’t look so bad after all, does it?
 david vs. goliathville

I think the best advice I can possibly give anyone getting into social games, is don’t compete with the big guys. Instead,
cooperate with the small guys.

Work in small teams, work fast, and be flexible. Build playfully. Don’t be afraid to throw out code. Try things that nobody else is
trying. Test everything.

When you release a game, don’t buy ads immediately, if ever. Tell friends and family to play, to post newsfeeds. Tweet about it.
Tell sites that cover social games. Treat your early players like close friends. Keep them in the loop about changes. Ask what
they want. Chat and keep in close contact with other similarly-sized developers. Go make friends with the guys at HitGrab,
makers of MouseHunt. Or ZipZapPlay, makers of Baking Life.

If your game becomes more popular, share that success with your users. Make them invested in your milestones. Create special
items to commemorate big events, like your 1 millionth user. Create special items for your earliest players. Make them feel
proud for their long-term investment in your game. Be on the forums. Let your fans know you’re real people. Show humility. Be
playful.

And please, have fun doing it. And know that you’re building games in an incredible space, and tell others to do the same.
 the end

Scott Jon Siegel

http://numberless.net
scottjonsiegel@gmail.com
THANKS!
@numberless

IMAGE CREDITS:
‣ sijm.ca
‣ indiecade.com
‣ expdot.com
‣ babycastles.com
‣ apps.facebook.com/cowclicker
‣ flickr.com/photos/masterslate/2529062829
‣ apps.facebook.com/friendwheel
‣ apps.facebook.com/parkingwars
‣ areacodeinc.com
‣ http://www.flickr.com/photos/splityarn/3483403854
‣ commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Red_Magic_Circle.gif
‣ skyrates.net
‣ sharkrunners.com
‣ flickr.com/photos/joanna_young/3167061329
‣ flickr.com/photos/9422878@N08/4005702259
‣ someecards.com
‣ amaitokyo.deviantart.com

ILLUSTRATIONS by Shelley Monahan

‣ amachinethatmadesilence.tumblr.com

SPECIAL THANKS to Jenova Chen, Eric Zimmerman, Chris Hecker, Darius

Kazemi, Phil Fish, Frank Lantz, Jon Blow, & Chaim Gingold.

Thank you!