10min/day-Turn-Based Strategy?

[kingaschi]

We are currently completing a 10min/day-turn-based strategy game.
What's that? The game is targetted at people who don't have time
to play more than 10-20 minutes a day, but still want to play!
You basically make your moves once a day. Each day, you see what
happened with your moves from the day before and you make your
moves for the next day to come. The game is multiplayer. It works
on Windows, Mac and Linux. I would say the graphics are decent and
the game play is fun (I play it myself as well, not that this really
counts!) It's similar to play-by-mail games, however, you won't have
to go through the hassle to send out your moves from hand, every-
thing is automated.

There are some issues with that concept, so I would like to get some
feedback from the forum:

1. You can't just go and play a game. You sign up for a game and wait
until it is full. Some people loose interest, if they can't play
right away. How to fix that?

2. It's not (yet) designed to play a whole game at a time, because it
would be hard to get more than 2 or 3 people online at the same time.

3. Is the 10min/day concept feasible? Do you like to play only 10-20
minutes a day per game (you can sign up for more than one game at a
time though)

4. Other suggestions?


The link to the game: Game Site

Screenshots:
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2
Screenshot 3

[Mark Sheeky]

See http://www.towergames.com/ for a working indie online strategy game model.

One turn per day seems a little slow to me. Couldn't you program a simple AI that would allow players to try the game on their own? Giving people a clear idea of what the game is like without making them sign up will probably improve interest in the game.

One idea to get several people online might be to have a specific day or time when you encourage people to be online at once.

Mark

[Hamumu]

Sounds great - like Tradewars (sorta) or any of those BBS empire games. I would enjoy something like this. It becomes an addiction to come home and get your orders in. I remember the BBS days!

I don't like the sign up and wait for it to fill business though. Why not one large persistent world you can join into? That's how Tradewars worked, and at least some if not most of the empire-style games. And of course, that world would be reset every so often, which leveled the playing field. But you didn't HAVE to wait until a reset to join.

[dburger]

I like the idea.

I played a once a day, turned based, space battle strategy game at work in the early 90s. It was a lot of fun. Each morning when each of us programmers got into work it would be fun to spend 15 minutes seeing what happened from the previous day and plot out the next moves. The graphics were simply ascii space maps and tables of stats.

8-12 of us would play for a few weeks. One thing I recall is that the game escalated quite fast (earning more resources and building more war ships), which I think is important, or the players will loose interest before it really gets going.

Good Luck.

[Sillysoft]

I think the idea is a good one. However if you could also add some computer AI it would add a whole other element to it. I would suggest you do that.

I didn't see any buy links on your website. Are you going to be selling this?

Also, I would change the line at the bottom of your website. "© 2005 by Aevum Obscurum Entertainment - Disclaimer: By using this site or anything related to it you waive all your rights towards Aevum Obscurum Entertainment or its members." sounds like I am giving up my rights to you. Not very friendly.

[kingaschi]

Thanks for the feedback so far. We are planning to charge a monthly/
yearly or per game fee, once we get enough players together.

I agree, I demo mode with AI player would be good to have. However,
I am currently caught up with other stuff, so I didn't have time to do
that yet. I will give it higher priority!

Having just one huge map is an interesting concept as well. I just wonder
how the winner will be determined? The game could end after a predefined
time period and the biggest empire would win. However, you will end up
making your moves in your local area, and the large world wouldn't matter to
you at all. Any ideas on that?

[DavidRM]

When we first designed Artifact, we planned to have it be a slow, thoughtful strategy game. People would log in for about 30-45 minutes each day to oversee their kingdoms and manage their troops. Basically, 45 minutes would be a single "day", and 24 hours would be a "month". Games would run for 4-6 weeks, ending when one alliance held all of the artifacts.

Doesn't seem too much different from what the OP thinking.

Here's how it went...

During alpha testing, and continuing during beta testing, we set the game to be "fast", with a 2-minute day and 1 hour month. We set it fast to make testing easier. We wanted the game to tick along faster so we could test everything without having to wait a month or two.

It stuck.

In fact, that "fast" setting is now called "Slow", and while that game variation has its devoted following, it's never been a large % of the player base. Most of the games are much, much snappier, with months clicking by in 15 minutes, 10 minute, or 5 minutes.

Sometimes I wonder how the game would've gone had we followed that original design with the slow progression. Our experience with the players we attracted and kept, though, is that we needed to make the game faster and faster.

Still, I wonder.

-David

[Jay_Kyburz]

I've played allot of turn a day strategy games and love them. I will make one myself one day. You can really get into a game when you have been managing an empire for a month!

I also really enjoyed a game called space empires that was real-real time. You could log in at any time and tweak your empire and launch attacks!

[kingaschi]

Sometimes I wonder how the game would've gone had we followed that original design with the slow progression. Our experience with the players we attracted and kept, though, is that we needed to make the game faster and faster.

I don't know??? Maybe there is no market for these 10min/day
games? The problem is the marketing. I think this type of game is rather
uninteresting for people who prefer to play for hours at time. Gonna have
to think about that.

Another problem is the announcement of the game start. Currently it is
done by email. Once the game is ready for play, usually a couple of days
later, an email is sent out. However, I noticed, the email gets filtered out
as spam. Is there another way besides email to notice about the game start?
IM tools? I don't feel email is the way to go myself, however what's left?
People don't come back to check if the game is ready. I definitly wouldn't!

[Sillysoft]

I think that email is the best way. Are you sending them out yourself? Try and make them as legit as possible to get by spam filters.

[kingaschi]

The games are updated automatically by the server and emails are sent out automatically as well. The emails have a valid return address and have my
name as sender name.

It's all legit. The text used is rather generic, which might be the reason
for the mails getting stuck in spam filters. However, what's there more to
say than e.g. " your game "..." started, please login and make your moves.

[Zackary T CastleFree]

This type of game was the exact design we went on our first game, FaitH (http://www.dragonclawstudio.com/faith/). A 10 minute/day game. Here's how it went:

Almost everyone said the game was "painfully slow" except a few hardcore players. Since we didn't want to alienate our paying players, we started a "battle" server with the speed twice as fast and tax time every hour instead of every 12 hours. Everyone whined and said it was stupid.

A year later, the Battle Server is totally dominating our revenue stream.

My advice is to have a game you CAN play 10 minutes/day but also that you CAN play every hour at least. Just give the illusion of time passage.

For example, on our RPG server, we gave gold to our players every 12 hours. Just give 12 times less gold every hour instead. Time SEEM to flow faster but it really doesn't. It doesn't alienate those who want a slow gameplay and it give the illusion to others that the game is moving fast although it really doesn't.

It's my first post here so hi btw, I'm a lurker. Generally too busy to post.

[Sillysoft]

There are a ton of things that spam filters check for. A while ago when I was writing some server code that sends out emails I fiddled with it to bring down the spam factor as much as possible. I use SpamAssasin to filter my email, and it can display a list of all the tests that it thinks show spamyness.

Things like setting a 'Message-Id' header and adding the proper encoding/mime-type for HTML mail all have an effect.

Also, you should check that your server isn't on any email blacklists:
http://rbls.org/