Brief notes from sitting in on the “Trends in Social Game Product Development” panel at Inside Social Apps conference in San Francisco, CA.

Trends in Social Game Product Development
Brenda Garno Brathwaite, COO & Game Designer, Loot Drop, Inc.
Bill Jackson, Creative Director, CastleVille, Zynga Dallas
Sebastian Knutsson, Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder, King.com
Mike Sego, CEO, Gaia Interactive

While acquiring customers has become more expensive over the last couple of years, monetization rates from top developers have continued to substantially improve. Today, there are examples of developers large and small that are finding distribution, engagement, and monetization success, despite all the changes in the world of Facebook and social gaming over the last year. At the same time, genres and content are continuing to evolve with new mechanics and game play. How should developers be thinking about product development in 2012? Top developers will discuss.

•  Bill Jackson – Social is the next generation in gaming. Not a new direction, but the logical next step. I do believe there is an opportunity in the gaming space for networked, synchronous play. Right now the right game needs to come along that demands it. This is something that’s well developed in the console game space, but not yet very well seen in the social gaming realm. Also exciting is progressing the asynchronous play out there right now.
• Mike Sego – Position that the only trend in game development is better graphics is wrong. The next step is naturally social. Lower cost to developing for social and mobile platforms – this allows for a much larger variety of games. Now, 3 developers working in a garage can open up a whole market of social and mobile. This is not as possible when you’re thinking only in terms of graphics and rendering improvements.  Building social features isn’t absolutely necessary for game development. It’s important to use social features appropriately, and use them to enhance the actual game, not just junk it up with social. Regarding synchnous play, I think the games that are most successful on Facebook are the games that mimic the usage pattern on Facebook – asynchronous. Games like Words With Friends work – people login and take their turn, and logoff – this is asynchronous.
• Brenda Brathwaite – Now that we have this ridiculous culture of fast follow and mobile, games like parking wars and Farmville is possible.
• Sebastian Knutsson – I see the the use of friends in the future of social development as moving more and more to collaborative gaming, and multiplayer gaming. I like Tetris Battles, organized and networked tournaments. Allowing people to connect with their friends is where it’s at.

• iOS App “Highlight” – Location based social app. Uses background location to correlate who else you’re physically near at a given moment, and provides a very basic interface with which to reach out. It’s an initial first-gen iteration of a powerful concept. It works well, and the next step for the company will be to revamp the UI, add a few more compelling features, and slowly monitize by forming partnerships with groups like Scoutmob, Foursquare, etc. Similar in functionality to Sonar, but more based on GPS rather than CheckIn activity. Coverage on GigaOM.
• Scoutmob – Another location-based deals site. Pushes out local deals to consumers, often very attractive discounts. Did the smart thing and integrated in with Foursquare to push deal discovery on checkin. Scoutmob website.
• Semi-hourly cow eye dissection at the Exploratorium.  I haven’t dissected a cow’s eye since high school science class, and it was fun to do it again. Amazingly, I think I retained most of my knowlege about mammal eye anatomy!

  

Course Summary, by Course Leader Roger Yim:

Instructors: Roger Yim, Emily Ledingham, Lindsay Yost

The Winter Outdoor Educator course was held in the Arizona Creek area outside of Grand Teton National Park. This was a 15 day self-sufficient expedition with 2 days of resort skiing at Grand Targhe Resort, a one day terrain tour and 2 days of classes and preparation. There were 13 students initially and 3 instructors. One student was evacuated in the first several days of the expedition due to an illness. The course was challenged with 120 cm of new snowfall, wet snow conditions and down to -18 C air temperatures. The curriculum focused on ski touring skills, winter camping, avalanche assessment/rescue and leave no trace. Students taught minin classes to improve their teaching skills and worked on self-leadership, peet leadership and some limited designated roles. Some of course highlights were improvement in skiing, avalanche and the impressive scenery of the Tetons. The students have developed a good foundation of backcountry ski skills.

Photos on Flickr (Slideshow)

Video on YouTube

• Day 1 – Food Rationing and Gear Selection
• Day 2 – Telemarking at Grand Targhee
• Day 3 – Backcountry Film Festival
• Day 4 – Avalanche Rescue Training
• Day 5 – Skinning and Field Gear Evaluation
• Day 6 – Into The Backcountry
• Day 7 – Snow Shelter
• Day 8 – Ski Touring
• Day 9 – Blizzard Evacuation Attempt
• Day 10 – Jake Deserts The Group
• Day 11 – Rescuing the Evacuation Team
• Day 12 – Avalanche Science
• Day 13 – Redemption From The Storm
• Day 14 – Climbing to High Camp
• Day 15 – Touring
• Day 16 – Avalanche Rescue Training in a Blizzard
• Day 17 – Whiteout
• Day 18 – Test Pits
• Day 19 – Touring
• Day 20 – Kick Wax
• Day 21 – Transferrence

• Woke up early at our final campsite. No breakfast, packed up quickly and skinned out the last 500 meters.
• Van and truck picked us up on side of road, and we drove 2.5 hours through driving snow, over Teton Pass, to NOLS Teton Valley Base.
• At base, each of us de-issued personal gear, and then cleaned and de-issued group gear. After being together as a group in the backcountry, we worked very effeciently together as a group in the front country.
• NOLS TVB staff made us a tasty, light meal for our return – too much heavy food after weeks on backcountry rations is a bad idea, makes you sick. So we ate a light lunch.
• After lunch, finally showers and change into fresh clothes. First shower/shave in weeks!
• Finally, at the end of a long day, graduation and final group meeting.
• People departed for Idaho Falls and Jackson soon thereafter. Most of us went to the same hotel in Idaho Falls. Good to stay in the frontcountry with a bunch of people.
• In Idaho Falls, we dropped our bags at hotel, and met up for dinner at Outback Steakhouse. A terrible chain restaurant, but after backcountry rations, a welcome site. Hearty, fatty, cheap chain food was just what was needed. Steak, lobster, shrimp, bloomin onion, beer, cake, ice cream, questadillas, hot wings, waffles, etc etc. Ate as much as we could.
• LATE night for us – passed out at 9:45. Shared hotel room with Scott.
• Tomorrow, final group breakfast at Dennys.

• Extra early wakeup at high camp this morning, to allow time to pack everything up and get going. Today we retraced two days worth of upward tracks in one day, so 9 hours of hard travel time were allotted.
• As part of getting ready to depart, we partially destroyed our snow shelters and kitchens. After living in them for so long, its a strange feeling to destroy it.
• As we departed, we laused for a quick group photo.
• Descending from high camp on telemark skis while towing a gear aled was intense, and not an easy feat. The running wisdom is “go faster than your sled”. Going around corners and through steep drainages is particularly difficult.
• When we finally reached the flat meadow, we decided not to put our skins on our skis for travel across the flats. Instead, we used kick wax to give is grip going across the snow. Kick wax comes in small round blocks, and is applied cold to the bottom of the ski. Unlike hot wax. Kick wax makes the bottom of the ski stick to snow. The wax does work to give more grip on the snow, but only a little bit. Even a slight incline becomes a major chore. Although it’s said that you can go faster with kick wax than with skins, I found it to be quite the opposite – skins are much better.
• Our final camp tonight is very close to the road, in a stand of aspens. We set Up a few megamids and a few individual shelters. A few people are bivying too.
• Tomorrow morning we’ll get picked up by the truck at 9:30 and will be on our way back to NOLS base for hot showers and fresh food.

• After breakfast, we convened as a group and made our way across the meadow to the base of the mountains. There, our instructors had created a full scale avalanche multiple burial scenario.
• We quickly organized, and started the search for buried avalanche victims. Most had beacons on, but two didn’t. Searching For buried victims without a beacon is very tedious, and requires the use of an organized probe line. We line up on one side of the slide zone and do a coordinated grid search with probes.
• Afternoon, I led a group on a fun tour to the hills north of our campsite. Got some good turns in, and a great burn skinning back up.
• This evening we did course and personal evals, and then had a relaxing campire. Had a good long conversation with Roger Yim.
• Tomorrow we ski with sleds back to the lowlands, in preparation for our departure from the backcountry.

• Cold cold cold today. Despite perfect blue skies, the temperature plummeted. My toes never warmed up in my constrictive telemark boots, and I was forced to come back to camp mid-morning to manually rewarm my toes. The alternative was frostbite and potential loss of feeling in my toes forever – not good. Staying on top of and preventing cold injuries out here is an ongoing prime objective.
• One of the tools we use to determine if a hill is going to avalanche is a test pit. This pit dig into the snow allows us to look at various layers of snow and determine the overall snowpack composition and strength.
• I dug multiple snow pits today on both steep slopes as well as more flat areas. It’s interesting to see the difference in snowpack composition between various geographical features. The effects of wind loading are also readily apparent.
• Back at camp, I worked with Pedro on multiple burial avalanche victim recovery. The actual techniques are fairly simple. What really takes time is getting the feel for the avalanche transceiver and how it interprets the radio homing signal. The radio flux line path it takes you in on sometimes feels counterintuitive, and it takes a while to figure out the quirks of each system. We use Tracker dts units.
• After dinner tonight we had a big group fire, and now sleep.
• Tomorrow I’m leading a group ski tour around some local terrain.

• Despite a clear and cold overnight, the storm came back in full force this morning.
• We did a quick few hours of skinning uphill. Definitely more dramatic in the raging storm. Route finding is also much more difficult in whiteout conditions. Tracks get covered up immediately, and there is almost no contrast between the ground and sky. Frequently when finding the way for the group up the mountain, I would simply walk into the ground. Much more balance and coordination required to stay moving without being able to see the horizon.
• By the time we had done one run, conditions had deteriorated to the point that we decided to go back closer to camp.
• Practiced avalanche rescue techniques for a bit, then went back to camp to hunker.
• Had a good one-on-one lesson with Roger on multiple burial avalanche victim recovery. Good to get some personal feedback on avalanche transceiver usage.
• After dinner tonight, had a feedback session with instructors. Lots of good ideas to consider regarding my teaching style and outdoor skills.
• More avy training tomorrow… Excited!

• Originally planned as a rest day, turned into avalanche rescue training day on account of extreme cold and blizzard conditions.
• Practiced multiple victim avalanche burial recovery scenarios with shovels/beacons/probes.
• In addition to using each other as victims, we also put avalanche beacons inside backpacks and buries the backpacks in the snow. This provides us with a realistic beacon locating scenario, since backpacks can be buried deep under the snow. Deep burial makes locating beacons more tricky, and precision shoveling without injuring the victim more involved.
• For practice, we were split into two teams – one team staging the slide area, and one team acting as rescuers. When it was my teams turn to stage the field, I was chosen to be the buried victim. Reminiscent to this past summer when I was the hypothermia vicim during Wilderness First Responder training.
• Day concluded with a massive storm blowing in, forcing us back to our snow shelters.
• Stormclouds cleared just in time to reveal a beautiful sunset behind the Teton Mountains.

• Woke up early morning before the sun. From our high camp, it’s possible to see out across the valley, across Jackson Lake, to the lights of downtown Jackson, Wyoming. A spectacular, and eerie view from deep within the backcountry.
• Also, on a cold, clear, high pressure night like last night, the biew of the stars is truly awesome. Standing under the bright stars in the cold of the -18 degrees C night makes it feel like you’re in space.
• Not a cloud in the sky today, and very cold temperatures.
• Quick breakfast, and then climbing skins on the skis and we’re immediately skinning up to the top of the peak.
• Since we’ve seen a bumch of layers of snow deposited since we’ve been here, climbing into steep terrain is a great opportunity for more avalanch science. We stopped periodically to look at snowpack and assess terrain features before moving across it. We also noticed a few avalanche runout paths from slides triggered last night.
• Had a great day skinning up and skiing down pristine terrain. Telemark turns in waist deep powder is a true pleasure.
• Overall, covered about 3500 vertical feet on skis today
• Early dinner tonight watching the sunset behind the Tetons.
• Tomorrow is a rest day to let bodies and blisters heal.

• Packed up camp early this morning. We’ve been eating lots of food and naturally assumed that our packs and sleds would be lighter. However, due to both Jake leaving behind his portion of gear, food, and fuel, and Emily’s team picking up a food and fuel cache a few days earlier, we were actually hauling a lot more.
• It’s a good thing, though. Up here at high camp, the temperature is a bit colder, and the wind whips down from the looming peaks faster and harder. All we can do to stay warm is layer up and keep eating emergy dense foods.
• Because Jake left the group, we’ve reorganized ourselves into three groups of four. Now, I’m in a new cook group, which is a good opportunity to fine tune “expedition behavior” with a new group of people. Also, my group is “vegetarian” so I’ll get some experience cooking a new menu.
• The skin up to high camp was hard, but relatively straightforward – we had already broke trail to high camp the day before while we were touring.
• Once in camp, we got to work setting up our snow caves. This time around much larger and more elaborate.
• The snow here is about 180cm deep, and I got a good workout shoveling it all out.
• Quick dinner tonight and bed. Looking forward to spectacular weather and high country ski touring tomorrow.

• Woke up this morning to the last bits of the storm. By the end of breakfast, snow had trailed off and dark clouds were beginning to turn into ligjt whisps.
• In preparation for moving camp higher up the mountain, we took light daypacks and skinned up to higher country to investigate the terrain.
• The weather kept getting better, so we continued up past our soon to be higher camp site and climbed up a small mountain.
• The bright sun, frozen trees, and windblown snow made for a dramatic ascent, which I lead.
• From the top, great views over Jackson Lake into the prominent Tetons.
• Naturally, we skied down all the way to low camp.
• Tonight in camp we did another snow fire, and a few fun readings.
• Tomorrow, we move camp up the mountain and dig new snow shelters.