GAME.minder 2 spotlight - Expansion

Yesterday we told you about what's new in the free version of GAME.minder but for those of you who demand a bit more from your .minder, we're offering 3 expansion packs with version 2.

AdAway

AdAway is an intravenous chemical solution that bonds with adiation particles before they have a chance to be displayed effectively removing all banner advertising. In the free version of GAME.minder, it's the ads that help keep the doors open. But let's face facts: Ads can get in the way and  some people prefer to not have to look at them. For you guys and gals, we offer a lifetime dose of AdAway -APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE AD BANNER!

Charted

Gamers are nothing if not meticulous. Boy oh boy, do we love our statistics. Interested in how many games are coming for 360 vs PS3? Which platforms are the most popular?  Which dates are the most popular for game releases? Charted brings all this and more; in full living color.

You can also see a breakdown of how many gamers are following any game and on what systems and even share any of these charts with friends via email (but more on that tomorrow). Ah yes, the visualization of data - it's what separates us from beasts. Or is that symbolic language? Or using tools? Or love?

Search and RE.stroy

It's easy to find a game if you know it's name, just search for the title. But what if you want to see other shooters? RPGs? Other games from your favorite developer? Or maybe you just want to to see what everyone else is following? That's where the Search and RE.stroy expansion pack comes in.

Genre, Developer, Publisher, Franchise, and popularity. Use all this additional metadata to search, group, filter or sort the games listing to your heart's content. It sounds simple but when you start to use it, it's like a whole new .minder, we promise!

GAME.minder ULTIMATE is just that - the one and only GAME.minder expansion pack you ever need to buy. Including all GAME.minder expansion packs, current and future, it gives you the ULTIMATE GAME.minder experience. If you like to pick and choose, you're free to do so but if you'd rather just get the best in one shot, this one's for you.

And it gets even better! GAME.minder ULTIMATE will be on sale for 50% off for the month of March for only $2.99. And if you download GAME.minder 1.2 right now, ULTIMATE is still at the current price of $1.99! All 3 expansions for the price of one? What're we nuts? Must be!

So thats what you can expect on the expansion horizon in GAME.minder 2. Tune in tomorrow when we talk social.

GAME.minder 2 spotlight - What's new?

GAME.minder 2 is polished and ready for it's big coming out party on Friday.  For the next 3 days of breathless anticipation, we'll highlight what's coming so you can be completely informed when it's time to download.Today, we'll focus on what's new for everyone. Tomorrow we'll talk about your expansion pack options and Wednesday, we'll talk social.  On thursday, you can all take a nap (you'll need it to get through PAX still breathing right?)

So what's new?

It's all just a game

The biggest news about GAME.minder 2 is the fly in the ointment, the proof in the pudding, the "I" in team - The GAME in the minder.  We're gamers right?  We like to play games.  So why wouldn't tracking games be a game in and of itself (can you say meta)?

In GAME.minder 2, you can earn points for doing all the stuff you were gonna do anyway: setting RE.minders and sharing games with friends.  Bonus points are awarded for being quick on the uptake or being lucky enough to hit certain numbers.  But don't just follow anything or risk the dreaded "boosting penalty".  As you start to build your score, you can see how you're doing against your friends now that GAME.minder supports Game Center.

And as long as we're talking about Game Center, don't forget to build that achievement score by reaching milestones in GAME.minder.  Some are pretty straightforward like scoring a certain amount of points or following a bunch of games but what would be the fun in just that?  There's all sort of hidden achievements for you to find as well!

Easy Peasy

Aside from the game, there are several other improvements in GAME.minder you may want to be aware of.  After using it for a while, we discovered we were bordering on gaming addicts.  Some of us were following upwards of 30 games which made for a slightly unwieldily RE.minder list;  especially since changing release dates could make a game jump all over the list.  So we added some simple sort options for the RE.minder list that allow you to sort your RE.minders by date or alphabetically.

We also got lots of feedback that the filters were useful, but only SO useful.  So instead of a separate filters screen, we've broken the search screen up to give you faster access to common groupings like "by release date" or "by system".  But don't worry, you can still filter out things you plain don't care about in your settings from the info tab.

Baby got Back(end)

Some of the most exciting updates are ones that will hopefully only be noticed by their absence.  The GAME.minder backend has been re-engineered in a lot of ways to allow, among other things, faster updates, more consistent error handling and better support for multiple release dates for a single game.  One of the coolest new features of the backend is two-way RE.minder syncing which mainly means: if you delete GAME.minder, downloading and re-installing will return your RE.minder list to you, good as new.

These updates also put in place a lot of the systems we will need to make international release date support a reality.  Sure, some games have separate release dates in different regions, but many of the games we're tracking come out simultaneously worldwide.  So we figured, why wait?  We'll let you citizens of the world get in on the party while we work on getting our more comprehensive region support in place.

That's enough for today.  Tune in tomorrow to find out all about the new expansion packs in GAME.minder 2.

GAME.minder on twitter and facebook

What's this?  Super Mario was just added?  With a link and everything?What on earth is going on?

If you've a keen eye, you may have noticed something popping up on the GAME.minder facebook wall (facebook.com/GAME.minder) or in the GAME.minder tweet stream (@GAMEminder) today.

We've had a lot of requests to give some sort of notice regarding when games get added to the system.  Sending a push to EVERY device for EVERY game would be doable but probably a bit obnoxious.  So rather than an opt-out, push-based solution, we've decided to give you an opt-in, follow-based solution.  Just "like" GAME.minder on facebook or follow @GAMEminder on twitter and you'll be able to see every new game, as soon as it's added to our system.

But wait a tick - what are these mndr.co links all about?

Put simply, they are your fast-track for setting new RE.minders.  We used the custom URL feature of iOS to allow us to give you 2-tap RE.minder setting, right from facebook or twitter!  When you see a game you want to remember pop up on the wall or in the stream, just:

1. Tap the link
2. Tap the platform you want to set
3. There is no step 3

GAME.minder 2 will open up and set the RE.minder for you.

There's only one thing to remember: this super-cool and infinitely nifty feature requires GAME.minder 2 which is coming out next Friday, March 11th, aka -"GAME.minder day", aka "The first day of PAX East", aka "iPad 2 day" (grumble, grumble, Apple trying to steal our spotlight).

So get your downloadin' finger ready and we'll see you next Friday!

...and how do you know you've won?

What is a game and how do you know?

We've been asking ourselves this question a lot as we develop GAME.minder 2.0.  My trip to the dictionary tells me that a game is "a form of play or sport, esp. a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck."

• Some games are defined by victory conditions (you finished building the spaceship first!)
• Some games are defined by defeat conditions (the blocks got stacked all the way to the top of the screen).
• Some games pit the player against other players
• Some against the computer
• Some against the clock
• Some against themselves.

But can a game be a success without a true "victory" or "defeat"?  Can it be fun even without any real opponent?  And can it be fun while also being a useful tool? For better or for worse, we'll try to find the answers to these questions with GAME.minder 2.0.  So mark your calendars ladies and gents - barring any App Store snafu's, GAME.minder 2.0 is scheduled to drop on Friday, March 11th, 2011.

Or maybe just pop open GAME.minder and set a RE.minder.

Every App is Multi-touch (even if it's not)

Back then…

In the mid to late 90's, there was something spreading across the internet like herpes. It promised freedom from the tyranny of table-based layouts, rich animations, vector graphics that could scale to any size and pixel perfect reproduction on any machine, regardless of browser, OS or platform.

That infection was (and is) Flash (Now Adobe, then Macromedia, previously FutureSplash).

What made this technology so appealing to designers was the promise that they could have complete and utter control over the presentation of their designs. No more worrying about how IE4 would render that table vs Netscape 3.2. No more sticking with Arial, Times New Roman and Comic Sans. Build your flash file at 400x600 and everything will always be exactly where you want it. But more than that, you are free to completely re-imagine the entire concept of web navigation. Forget about that back button, forget about users deep-linking to a specific page, your website is now a black box within which you, the designer, are god - usability be damned. In the immortal words of Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, "We were so busy figuring out if we could, we didn't stop to think about whether we SHOULD".

As with most new technologies, it took some time for people to learn what flash was good at and what it wasn't, when to use it and when it was over kill, and probably most importantly, WHY to use flash (some are still fighting to learn this lesson). Flash brought a bunch of new functionality to interface design. For instance, JavaScript offered rollovers but now flash could give you animated rollovers with dynamic hit areas. What this meant to the overall goal of usable interfaces is still up for debate but one thing that DIDN'T change through this r/evolution was the method of interaction - onscreen cursor, driven by a mouse.

Today

With the growing ubiquity of touch-based interfaces, we're seeing the first real paradigm shift in user-interface since Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC back in 1979. While Flash helped us to learn that interfaces could be fluid, living and changing things, touch is teaching us new lessons.

What makes touch such an interesting development is where it's being used primarily - mobile devices. In the mouse and cursor world, the interface can do anything, as long as it can be manipulated with a single point traveling across the screen. Those who maintain this thinking moving into the touch world do so at their peril. Sure, there will always be software that just needs a series of clicks (now taps) to function, but in the mobile world, those too are multi-touch apps.

Why? Because possibly more important than simply incorporating more than one finger on the screen is remembering a touch point that many seem to forget - the hand holding the device. On smartphone handsets, where it's possible to effectively hold the device in one hand and operate it with the thumb of that same hand, this is less of an issue than it is with the new, larger devices like the iPad and Galaxy Tab. On these devices, it's non-trivial to plan for how users will hold it in physical space.

The quintessential multi-touch experience for the iPad is Uzu, a particle/acid trip generator that can track all 10 fingers simultaneously. Obviously, if you are using this app by yourself, the only way to do so is to lay it on your lap or a table. Once you do so, its two-handed nature is a wonder to behold. Yet as fun as it is to play with, it can be awkward if there's no convenient place to lay it down. This becomes even more apparent if you try to thumb-type while holding an iPad in landscape orientation.

Then look at a game like Snood, a game that has historically used interfaces from controllers to mice and keyboards. The touch and drag mechanic works for aiming but the firing mechanic requires you to tap directly on the cannon. During development, it was probably assumed that most people would hold the device with one hand and manipulate the game with the other hand. But in practice, I have found that firing with an index finger is far less accurate than a thumb. Why? Because when held as you see in the second photo below, the thumb is anchored to the device. An index finger is essentially floating over the device. As you then move in to tap, your aim can shift and you tap (or even tap and drag) in a way you didn't intend. Most attribute this to some sort of "fat finger syndrome". Another way to say this is that touch interfaces have no state. When you stop moving a mouse, the cursor stays where you left it. When you finish a tap, the cursor disappears (if it ever existed in the first place).

I often play simple games like snood while I "watch" TV and I can tell you, holding the device like this for an hour leads to quite the cramp in my "firing hand". The designers of snood probably don't think of that game as "multi-touch" and that is why it's a game I can only play in short bursts. They've forgotten (or failed to learn) than in the world of mobile devices, EVERY app is a multi-touch app.

Congratulations - you are now a hardware designer

What this all means for the future of software interface design is that the lines between software and hardware are going to become VERY blurry. The world of flash began to teach us that just because you CAN put the navigation in a spiral around the center of the screen, that doesn't mean you should. Similarly, the touch world is beginning to teach us that EVERY piece of software is multi-touch, even if it's just a series of single taps because the hand holding the device is just another touch point.

This is why it's so awkward to do full typing on the iPad. Apple (paragons of usability though they may sometimes be) completely failed to plan for MOBILE typing on their MOBILE device. When it came time to tackle typing, maybe in an effort to avoid the "big iPod touch" moniker, maybe because it just didn't occur to them, they completely threw out everything they learned about thumb typing from the iPhone and instead, tried to build a touch-based laptop keyboard. If you are in portrait and need to type something on your iPad, your options are simple: double the length of your thumbs, find a table, or contort you body in to the "iPad crunch" as I call it (Knees together, back hunched. See below)

In a world where the software designer has planned for the hardware, you instead get something like this (click for a larger version) :

As we move into 2011, there will undoubtedly be a number of cool innovations in the multi-touch space. But the most important innovation has already happened, and it's simply time for everyone involved in interface design to remember -

Every App is Multi-Touch.

GAME.minder reaches 1000 - v1.1 preview

Yesterday, we reached a fantastic milestone, 1000 downloads of GAME.minder. This felt like a good time to share with the community some statistics and let you know some of what's coming in GAME.minder v1.1.-GAME.minder is tracking over 1000 games -We have 921 active users -Users are following an average of 4 games -An average of 5 games are reported per week -The most popular game so far has been Call of Duty: Black Ops with almost 200 gamers following it before it was released.

We're busy putting the finishing touches on v1.1 and I thought we could give you a slight preview of what to expect.

Given how many gamers are reporting games, we decided to really beef up the reporting system. It now functions on the same backend system as our "request a game" feature which allows you to give us more information about why you are reporting it as well as allowing us to let you know when we've addressed it in our system.

We've had several requests for 3DS games so, starting with 1.1, we'll be breaking out 3DS as it's own platform so if you're eagerly awaiting portable 3d gaming, you'll be able to track those games just like you would any other.

Some people noticed some draw errors with iADs and we've finally squashed those bugs as well as a couple others and we've streamlined the network update process and indicator making it a bit more useful.

Aside from that though, there's some even bigger news coming to GAME.minder v1.1, but for that, you'll just have to stay tuned. All I'm gonna say about it for now is that we think that you'll find it to be ULTIMATELY satisfying.

update: You can now read about GAME.minder ULTIMATE here.

Pricing Creativity

I was listening to the SlashFilmCast recently and they were talking about how movie ticket prices went up again this year.  It got me to thinking, why exactly are movie tickets all priced the same?  And video games too.  When the "next generation" of game consoles came along (Xbox 360/PS3), there was quite a lot of digital ink spilled over the "typical" game going from $50 to $60.  So how do we, collectively as a society, come to agree on these prices?In economics, we have the related concepts of supply and demand.  For physical goods, if the demand is higher than the supply, this puts upwards pressure on the price. Conversely, when you have a lot of supply and little demand, prices tend to shift downwards.  But creativity, be it a movie, video game, or a song, lives in a world of essentially limitless supply, especially when we take into account digital delivery.  How do we agree on "fair market value" for a good that CANNOT be depleted?

In the case of movies, a ticket price of course covers much more than just the "viewing experience".  It covers all the associated costs of running a theater.  If we applied a supply and demand model to movie tickets, something like "The Hurt Locker" (which is the lowest grossing oscar winning film of all time) would have cost something like 10¢ a ticket while "The Dark Knight" (which broke all sorts of records) would be like $30 a ticket.  This seems backwards but if supply remains constant, a higher demand would apply upwards price pressure.  But as I've said, supply and demand doesn't apply to creativity in the same ways we see in physical goods.  So we pay $10 a ticket, regardless of if we're seeing Transformers 2 or The Lovely Bones.

Is this the free market at work?  Industry wide price standardization is actually quite counter to the typical "free market" sensibilities but of course, intellectual property in and of itself doesn't really fit with free market sensibilities.  The idea of holding a patent or copyright is nothing if not a government mandated monopoly on an idea.  Within this context, we determine "fair market value" by pricing a thing (movie ticket, video game, app) and then seeing if people buy it.  If they do, at the given price, then the market will bear it, by definition.  We complain that video games went up $10 this generation but we still buy them.

Want to have fun?  The next time you go to the movies, try to haggle over the ticket price.  When you head to Target to buy the next Halo game, make the cashier a counter offer.  Who knows, maybe you'll start a pricing revolution.