Lately Gamasutra published quite a lot of articles about independent and online games as well as their accessibility. I am marking all that here for future reference adding personal comments.
Usually independent games are casual and low-budget. They are played by
- hardcore players in the breaks between the AAA-game playing sessions,
- casual players,
- ex-hardcore players who don’t have that much time anymore because of studies, career, or family,
- and also the professionals of games industry and academic players (I tend to be of this type).
Major part of casual games is family-oriented. However, after a research, it was found that there are many things that should be improved for the games to fit to mum, dad, and the little Mary.
Quick starting. There should be no obligatory loading scenes, settings, or intros. Mandatory introductions and cut scenes really make me nervous. I remember that from Prince of Persia Warrior Within as well as from the other games, series, and TV broadcasts. The content should be accessible quickly. Google has already provided links directly to the content skipping the Flash intros. In my opinion, the best practice to force visitors to watch the intro is following the way of Simsons and Futurama. Each introduction should vary, because it adds interest what there will be this time.
Automagical saving at least at some checkpoints. Before a decade console games were much more difficult because there was no possibility to save them. OK, OK, there were codes by which you could play from the lastly achieved levels, but for example, without the gathered points. The computer games were often saved just after completing a level. There was quite a lot anger when one made a mistake just before the end of a level after 15 minutes of progress and she had to start everything from the beginning again, especially when the game was linear and one couldn’t choose an alternative mission or level.
Smaller controllers for kids. I had borrowed an XBOX joypad a few months ago. After installing appropriate drivers, I could play with it on a PC. I did some research on the situation of game controllers in browser games. At the moment Javascript has no events triggered by joysticks and joypads. Flash has no such technical possibilities either. It would be possible to manipulate the input from joysticks and joypads by Java or Adobe Director MX, but these technologies are quite heavy and the games made in them might only be interested to children who have much free time and academic researchers. There are also some additional utilities which simulate keyboard input by controller signals, but I don’t imagine that applied for the masses. So kids should forget the usage of joysticks and joypads in browser games for a while. But maybe they can beg their parents for a keyboard with adapted large keys.
Intuitive and not confusing control keys. While blind typing, I usually mix up the left [Shift] with [Caps Lock], [Caps Lock] with [Tab], or [Fn] with [Ctrl]. Others maybe misuse other keys. The keys which are usually mistaken shouldn’t trigger completely opposite actions. All in all the controlling should be intuitive. I’d say that it’s best to use usual combinations in usual situations. For example, [W], [A], [S], and [D] might be used as alternatives to [top], [left], [bottom], and [right], but not for additional jumping or shooting functions, because it’s de facto standard in other games.
Multiplayer mode. There are many Flash-based games which don’t exploit the technical opportunity to play for several players at once. The only usage of the net is usually just storing top players to a database, what lets different people compete with each other and this creates excitement as well. There are also very few games which let multiple players play on one computer, although this possibility might be interesting. By the way, there might be games for competing players (Liu Kang vs. Sub Zero), or for ones supporting each other (Sonic and Tails). The latter ones are much rearer and this might be a potential niche.
Localization with dialects in mind. When Anna visited me last time, she told me that Germans can’t speak English. They speak German English which is very similar to American English. When localizing games, it’s important to keep in mind that they should be presented to players in that language and dialect which is the native one of the target. Austrian German differs from German German. Australian English differs from Scottish English. The human body language differs from the alien body language.
Changeable difficulty. The fun factor is one of the most important ones in computer games. If a game gives you not enough attraction, then it will just be forgotten, because of better alternatives. Permanent loss just gets on ones nerves and exhausts rather than being fun. The level of difficulty should be adjustable in games. For example, the conditions for the winners can be made a little bit harder than the conditions for the losers in competitive games.
Game in short episodes. The levels or missions should take equal durations and better approximately 15 minutes than an hour or more. It’s easier to feel the progress and plan your time when playing in short episodes, wherever you are: at the PC or in the WC. 
Clear feedback of the controls. There should be some information provided about the success and mistakes of a player. Players should be informed at every step, what they’re doing wrong, in order to improve their turn. On another hand, if the technical messages are stupidly integrated into the game environment, then that’s also no good. For example, I hate the blinking arrows in the city of Need for Speed Underground as they tend to be virtual, but you can’t go through them.
Exploitation of web possibilities. Web games could have not only the multiplayer mode and ratings by collected points or improved skills stored, but also they could use all the profits of virtual social networks, like official informational website, forums, blogs, newsletters, voting (like in Kongregate which tends to be progressive website of browser games), and also fan-site kits (downloadable archives with high-quality website templates, screenshots, artwork and main information). People try the games because of gameplay, graphics, reputation or good marketing campaign, but they keep playing because of the community with whom they play. A smart step is to use already existing social networks and integrate games into them has been already done in Facebook (MindJolt) and MySpace (games.myspace.com).
Small price. Non-playing adult daddies would never buy a game to his child for 40-60€… Well, that’s possible if the kid has great results at school, bothers about the game for a long time, the ESRB rating fits the age and the maturity of the child and the parent earns much. Game developers and publishers could take more attention for modern game business models instead of the traditional ones. One can use advertisings instead of member fees, for example Google AdSense (contextual text ads) or MochiAds (ads and analytical tools integrated into Flash games).
I won’t make any public conclusions at the moment. That would be it, but there will be some more…
05/2008“. Deja tiek burbulas, tiek akiniai po kurio laiko buvo nuplėšti ir visą sieną užvaldė „BOSas“ (o gal „BDSas“?).
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