Update: I’m aware that We Rule is not the first game of this type, it’s just the first one that I’ve played. This post is more about the development philosophy behind We Rule, rather than about We Rule itself.

I put game in quotes because We Rule more of a toy, a tamagotchi, than a game. If you already know what We Rule is about, you can skip down to here.

What is We Rule?

The idea of the game is that you are the ruler of a castle and its surrounding land. You harvest crops for money, which can be used to buy homes for citizens and various buildings such as tailors, schools, mines, etc, all of which provide more money or various upgrades. This pattern cycles up as you level up; crops become more valuable, buildings become more expensive, and so on.

An important distinction is that in We Rule, all events occur in continuous real time. A crop that takes 12 hours to be ready for harvest takes 12 literal hours. Every element in the game takes a different amount of time to complete; some minutes, some days.

My reasons for removing the game from my iPhone

First and foremost is the feeling of intentionally breeding addiction. I’m not sure when the term “addictive” became a positive thing, but this type of game seems to take it to another level. I’m not talking about it being “compelling” in the way a game like Doodle Jump is. I’m talking about an addiction that pervades your normal life and thoughts throughout your day.

I found myself constantly wondering about my little kingdom, whether I was spending time with my newborn son, playing with my 3-year-old boy, trying to get some work done, or even trying to get some much-needed sleep!

What unsettles me is that I believe there are many aspects of this game that have been deliberately designed by ngmoco to make this the desired outcome.

Free to play

Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with free-to-play games, but this adds to that “first time’s free” bait & switch feeling.

Paying for Mojo

Every game needs to have a way to make money, We Rule offers ‘cases’ of Mojo for sale via in-app-purchase. Mojo can be used to eliminate wait times. I don’t really have a problem with this, just thought it was worth mentioning their sole source of income for the game, which takes advantage of basic human impatience. At best, it’s clever; at worst, diabolical. There’s no upward limit on how much you can spend; an addicted player could max out their credit card on this game.

Getting your friends online is required

Part of the getting started tutorial actually requires you to connect with a friend in-game on the Plus+ network. Of course every game developer wants their game to spread by word of mouth, but the amount of emphasis on getting your friends into this game just tips the scale a little more.

Being punished for absence

If you do not harvest your crops within a certain amount of time after they are ready, the crops will spoil. This kind of negative reinforcement for not logging in regularly is one of the biggest indicators for me that once they have you, they do not want to let you go, no matter your schedule or lifestyle. This game mechanic is what keeps the game on your mind throughout your day.

Always on

This is a game that you can walk away from, but you can’t turn it off. Because everything happens in real time, I found myself constantly wondering what was happening in my kingdom – if there were taxes to be collected, crops to be harvested, if things were progressing as efficiently as possible.

Final thoughts

All of these aspects gave me a bit of a “dirty” feeling about the game, once I fully articulated them in my mind. Sure, the game is kind of fun, the art is nice, and so on. But this is not the kind of game I want to play, and it also has made me realize what I want to stay away from in the games that I make. We Rule was carefully crafted out of a strategy of sucking money from as many users (never has that term seemed more appropriate) as possible.

I prefer to make games that I think are fun. Hopefully some of you will think they are fun too, and want to buy them.

On the 11th day of April, 360 gave to me:

A bundle of raffled books

99 dollar discounted hotel

80 minutes to make an improv game (go Owen!)

40 packed sessions

FIVE HANDS FREE TRAINING SESSIONS…

4 awesome days

3 expert panels

2 sessions by Imangi

And an all-night Touch Arca-ade Game JAAAMMM!

(sorry, couldn’t resist)

And if you use the link below to register, I’ll buy you a drink! See you there.

Register for 360iDev

But sometimes you need to get something in there, even if it’s just a placeholder, or you want to give your sound designer a starting point for mood and style. Here are a couple great tools for throwing together some music and sound effects, fast.

Update: As discussed in the comments, please note that it is difficult to overestimate the value of getting a professional to do your sound and music for you.

Voice Band for iPhone

This is incredible. Get that melody out of your head and turn it into real music, by singing into your iPhone. Just watch the video, you’ll see how awesome it is:

http://www.wavemachinelabs.com/voiceband/

sfxr

A handy tool for generating procedural sound effects, sfxr lets you choose a general style for the sound effect, then tweak the settings for it. If you find one you almost like, hit the “Mutate” button a couple times to get something similar to what you have. sfxr used to be Windows-only, but was recently ported to Flash, so now you can use it on any computer with Flash Player 10.

http://code.google.com/p/as3sfxr/

Another trick is to download Audacity and layer several sfxr sounds. Drag them out, reverse them, distort them, and come up with something much nicer than a clip right out of the box.

Thanks to Adam Saltsman for putting me onto sfxr.

Your computer microphone

I find that the most fun way to get sound effects is to make them yourself by banging things together, throwing things across the room, and generally making a racket as creatively as you can. Audacity has a decent noise-removal tool that lets you sample a bit of “quiet”, it then uses that data to remove noise. Even your laptop mic can be used for production sound effects this way.

I guarantee you’ll be happier with homemade sound effects than with stock you spent annoying hours searching for online.

The organizers are holding a bit of a contest among the speakers to round up attendees… if you use this link to register, I could have my room upgraded to a suite. In which case I might be forced to have a party up there. Maybe a Sunday night icebreaker?

In any case, the conference is looking like it’s going to be pretty amazing. If you make it out, come say Hi, I’d love to meet you!

Some notes:

• There are less than 20 early (cheap) tickets left for 360|iDev. Register now and save $100.
• Keynotes by Mike Lee and David Whatley
• Sessions from community leaders like Marcus Zarra, Brent Simmons, Joe Pezzillo, and Henry Balanon to name a few.
• Don’t miss the parties! Get your room at the Marriott San Jose (bit.ly/360idevhotel) before they’re gone. The parties WILL be there after we leave Ebay!

We made a cake to enter the Great App Bake-off, over at App Cakes. Who knew apps could be so tasty?

Below are some pics of the process:

The shape

The icing

The fondant

The base layers

The details

The big finish

All in all, the “surprised” version of Face Race Guy came out pretty well in cake form.

]]> http://weheartgames.com/2010/01/face-race-now-with-extra-delicious/feed/ 1 http://weheartgames.com/2010/01/face-race-now-with-extra-delicious/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WeHeartGames/~3/3n-hav06Cuk/ http://weheartgames.com/2010/01/announcing-the-face-race-contest-prizes/#comments Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:30:41 +0000 Mike Berg http://weheartgames.com/?p=384 Our prizes for the Face Race Photo Upload contest are online! We’re giving away a whole bunch of awesome party games to those of you who upload the most Face Race photos to Facebook. The games are:

• The Settlers of Catan (including the 5-6 player expansion, Catan Seafarers and the Seafarers 5-6 player expansion)
• Ticket to Ride
• Carcassonne
• Things
• Killer Bunnies
• Bohnanza
• Bananagrams
• Dutch Blitz

Click here for more details on the official contest page.

Click here to go to the contest page.

Get Face Race here (iTunes link)

Got a Christmas party still to go to? Bring it along and use the “Christmas” setting. Good times!

And Merry Christmas, everyone!