Some beautiful thoughts on the development of gameplay:
Games have been largely about collision for the past 30 or so years — collision-based games where you have to dodge something to survive, or pass the finish line before somebody else.
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Now they’re getting a little more emotional, more psychological. The games are more conduits to interact with each other, rather than to tell them a story.
Of course, because making games more like movies is actually a step backwards. It’s old-media-think rather than new-media-think. It’s like when someone spots a new way to display information (augmented reality) and the first thing they think of is how to use this to advertise cars. Games should depend on their differences, not their similarities to old media. That is their real strength.
That changes everything about how you market to your players, how you interact with your players. [Free-to-play] means you have a constant dialogue with your players, and that you’re making sure they’re aware of what’s going on in your game.
This means developing multiple channels of communication. It’s not about demanding access to their Facebook wall or the ability to use their account to auto-tweet – quite the opposite. Give them reasons to follow your Twitter account and participate in your other media channels. Think about what will make them watch your YouTube gameplay videos. Think about the activities in your game and whether they can still play and interact within your world when “not actually playing your game”.
“There’s a lot of opportunity for developers to find their way into the market. The new revenue models also offer new opportunity to design games. It’s up to whoever is nimble enough to make the most of that.”
A company being agile enough to respond to the market and having the resource (in people, in talent) to be capable of responding is vitally important. Finding the right people is the number one issue in developing every business.