The Death of 3-in-a Row

[Bmc]

Does anyone know if any sites/blogs have posted any notes regarding this session at GDC?

Some links for anyone who is interested in GDC 05 coverage

http://www.gamasutra.com/gdc2005/
http://www.gamedev.net/columns/event...?coverage_id=3

[Andy]

Pardon Bmc,

I had no time to read the links (Seriously!) but...

They (around) were stating the same by two years ago at least - that's exactly why I so hate any predictions and marketing idiots around - they just pose like they know the truth and later dissapear at all or change their opinions on opposite ones like that should be all the time.

Hate them, hate them!

[otaku]

I have pictures and an audio recording. When I return from GDC I will post them on my site at http://www.otakunozoku.com/

I felt the panel was very publisher centric. i.e. "team up with us if you want to be rich" & "Team up with us because we all own the market" & "Team up with us and make the games that we want to have on our portal."

While the panel itself was interesting, I really felt that as an independent developer that it had little to offer to developers other than to make the audience believe that the only way to be "successful", i.e. make lots of money (for them, not you) was to "team up" with a large portal.

[DavidRM]

3-in-a-row will die the week after FPS's die, I figure.

-David

[merovingian]

Originally Posted by DavidRM

3-in-a-row will die the week after FPS's die, I figure.

-David

I hear it will be replaced by 3-in-a-line...

[Ricardo C]

Ask Reflexive is match-3 games are dead. I'm sure they'll answer you if they can hear you, what with the being trapped under piles and piles of money...

[PoV]

Originally Posted by otaku

... my site at http://www.otakunozoku.com/ ...

Whoa, nice. It's none other than Mr. GBC crib sheets Otaku himself. And I thought it was just some ordinary Otaku.

[svero]

I believe there's probably fundamental psychological and neuroscientific underpinnings to why we think things are "fun". So unless we evolve or our brain chemistry changes radically in the next little while, I believe there's a large percentage of us that will still enjoy matching colors or shapes etc... And if its still "fun" then presumably it should still sell. So I figure 3-in-a-row is not going anywhere.

[Jim Buck]

I was at the session. Basically, they said that as much as they thought it was dead a year ago, some examples came out this past year that proved them wrong (Big Kahuna Reef, Jewel Quest, etc). I agree. As much as FPS games were "dead" in '00 (depending on who you talk to), we keep seeing new ones come out that are pretty good (Far Cry, HL2, etc). That will always be the case with any genre someone predicts is dead - someone will come out with a twist on the genre and show that it can never fully die.

[Applewood]

Things never die. (Well, with the possible exception of beat em ups which I'm seriously glad to see the back of).

I believe the point is, they're no longer worth the effort unless you can add something that's genuinely new and actually improves the gameplay instead of just being 'different'.

Lots of punters out there love match-3 and fps games, but the real question we should be asking ourselves is "How much can I make out of this when there's 96 others already for sale ?"

[Jim Buck]

What is a beat em up game?

[Bmc]

Originally Posted by Jim Buck

What is a beat em up game?

I'm guessing he means game like Capcom's Final Fight (http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?...F&game_id=7794) or Double Dragon. I could be wrong though because they still make those, just in 3D now.

[Matthew]

I was at that session too; I'll post some thoughts after I get some sleep tonight. The title was a just a provocative lure. Everyone on the panel disagreed with the notion that 3-in-a-row games were dead, or will be dead (someone compared it to discussing whether sitcoms would ever die in the TV market).

[Nexic]

I'm planning to go the match-2 route, or maybe match-4

[svero]

Originally Posted by Nexic

I'm planning to go the match-2 route, or maybe match-4

Heathen.


..

[Matthew]

Clearly the route to riches is to innovate with a match-1 game. I was joking about this with James while we were waiting for the session to start. It would be interesting to pump production value into a non-game and see how well it would sell in the casual space (Shape Shifter, anyone?)

[simonh]

Isn't match-2 what the new Sony PSP game Lumines does? Supposedly quite fun.

Actually, I wonder how long it will be before we see an indie clone of Lumines.

[tolik]

I've already proposed far more simple design here:
http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthr...0734#post30642

[James C. Smith]

Originally Posted by otaku

I felt the panel was very publisher centric. i.e. "team up with us if you want to be rich" & "Team up with us because we all own the market"

Wow! I was there and I didn’t hear that at all. I guess it all depends on your perspective. I am sure my perspective is very different given my successful relationships with portals. But I didn’t hear them saying anything about why you should team up with them. They were just all speculating about who their target market is and what games they want to play. They discussed issues like reaching a larger audience when/if it ever becomes socially acceptable to be a gamer in the US. They talked about revenue from ads rebounding after the dive they took in 2000. They speculated about avatar customizations that are popular in some countries but not the US. They explained that bad 3 in a row games don’t sell and good ones can.

They were talking about how their businesses work, who their customers are, and what games they buy. This may or may not be similar to your business. They never claimed to speak for indie developers, shareware authors, or anyone else but themselves. They described the trends in the business of big companies selling millions of downloadable games to the masses.

[James C. Smith]

Originally Posted by Ricardo C

Ask Reflexive is match-3 games are dead. I'm sure they'll answer you if they can hear you, what with the being trapped under piles and piles of money...

lol! :-) We can hear you just fine. But it takes us a little while to response when we are busy organizing the money into neat stakes so that the piles don’t overwhelm us. ;-)

I like what they said about 3 in a row being just another genre or play mechanic. Quake is not the same game as Unreal just because they are both FPS games. The 3 in a row machine is familiar to many players. There are an endless number of games you could design which use this familiar play mechanic at their core. There will certainly be many more successful 3 in a row games but the market is also accepting of other styles of play. 3 in a row is not dead, but it is the end of the era where a game had to be a 3 in a row to be enormously successful on casual games sites. At least that is what I heard them saying.

[Chaster]

I went to the session, and agree with pretty much everything James said... The title of the session was just misleading... All the panel members said it (3 in a row) wasn't dead, and wasn't going to die any time soon.

However, I do wish they would have spent some more time speculating on new "hot" genres for the casual gaming audience.. (they did a little bit, but I think the topic is always fun to talk about and would have enjoyed a bit more...)

[alfie]

Originally Posted by Chaster

However, I do wish they would have spent some more time speculating on new "hot" genres for the casual gaming audience.. (they did a little bit, but I think the topic is always fun to talk about and would have enjoyed a bit more...)

What did they think would be the new "hot" genres for casual games@?

[Chaster]

Originally Posted by alfie

What did they think would be the new "hot" genres for casual games@?

I think I inadvertently led you on a bit... They didn't do much in the way of saying "this genre will be hot!", but more like what they think will be important (multiplayer/cross platform/etc.) for the next generation of games...

It's already getting fuzzy for me... I was just happy to finally get a direct contact with Yahoo's game submission department..

Chaster

[otaku]

Perhaps I was a little misleading in my earlier post about the panel being "portal/publisher" centric. I only presented a single point in the panel. Yes. The panellists presented a lot of knowledge. They argued (almost all in agreement) that 3-in-a-row was not dead. That online and multiplayer was going to be a big thing. That reaching a broader audience, especially with localisation (this being the biggest issue that they see in casual games today) was very important to the portals. And they also talked about revenue ads. There was a majority (majority, not complete) consensus that the shelf-life for an indie game was three or four months. The moderator had a severe nervous twitch and wasn't really paying much attention to the answers. And I stand by my earlier assertion that a proportion of the presentation was portal propaganda.

To those waiting for me to post the audio recording I made I have to apologise but my Palm Pilot decided to corrupt the file (this is the second time it has acted this way. Both times at GDC. Once last year during a talk by Steve Pavlina, and now this year. Hrm, both times at an "indie" development panel. Strange...) I do have pictures. They just aren't as exciting. (picture attached)

For those wondering, I the long-haired guy sat in the front, on the left row taking pictures with the SLR.

[Omega]

I think the peak of popularity for 3 in a row games has yet to come.