Casual Games Summit

1
Postmortem Where Casual Games Meet Virtual
Worlds Brad Edelman CTO Kenny Shea Dinkin VP
Creative Director
2
Why are we here?

• Its time for innovation in casual games
• Diner Dash Hometown Hero is a start
• Well tell you whats interesting about it and
  then challenge ourselves and in the industry to
  keep going!

3
Who are we?

• GEEKS

4
It takes all kinds of Geeks!

• Game Design Geeks
• Art Geeks
• Computer Programming Geeks
• IT Operations Geeks
• Business Marketing (honorary) Geeks
• Making games is a collaboration

5
Brad Computer Geek

• MIT Computer Science
• Adobe PageMill
• shockwave.com Shockmachine
• Macromedia Flash, Flash Video
• CTO/Co-founder PlayFirst

6
Geeking out in the 80s!
7
Who are we?

• Kenny Shea Dinkin
• VP and Executive Producer/Creative Director,
• PlayFirst Inc.
• Run PlayFirsts portfolio of casual, downloadable
  games like the Diner Dash line, Chocolatier 1 and
  2, The Dream Chronicles, Wedding Dash, Dress Shop
  Hop, The NightShift Code, Doggie Dash, Mystery of
  Shark Island, Trijinx, Oasis, Plantasia

8
Kenny Shea Dinkin Sensitive Artist Geek

• I play guitar
• I paint
• I brood
• I fret

9
Kenny
10
What is PlayFirst?
11
PlayFirst Accomplishments

• High growth, VC funded company. Just closed
  successful C round.
• 32 published/developed downloadable games
• 16 boxed products going into retail mix for
  Holiday 2007
• 11 products available on mobile
• Playground SDK Public Release - GDC 2007
• DINER DASH!
• 200 MM downloads of Diner Dash
• Diner Dash launch on Nintendo DS and Sony PSP
• Mobile Diner Dash top 10 hit, 7 products to
  market
• Announced Diner Dash for Download Consoles

12
A Very Brief History of Time
13
The Stone Gem Age
14
The Renaissance
15
Modern Times (2007)
16
Casual Games are Hot!

• So why work so hard on changing??
• 2 conversion is pathetic
• Coopetition diminishing between portals
• Development costs rising
• Higher barrier to entry
• More games
• More consumer choices

17
The New World
18
Lets Take a Look

• So what makes Diner Dash Hometown Hero different
  from previous casual downloadable games?

19
Internet Based Multiplayer Matchmaking Lobby
20
Internet Based Multiplayer Competitive Play
21
Internet Based Multiplayer Cooperative Play
22
User Generated Content My Diner Create your
own!
23
User Generated Content Play in My Diner
24
User Generated Content My Waiter
25
Micro-transactions / In-game Store
26
Episodic Content
27
More for Free

• Not time limited
• Game Play limited
• First 7 levels
• Multiplayer is completely free!

28
DinerDash.com
29
This product is different

• Its call to arms
• We want marketplace vibrancy
• Its awesome, its a hit, but we cant sell in on
  portals?
• But do the new business models and game play
  modes work?

30
Yes, it works!

• More than 50 of Diner Dash Hometown Hero
  transactions come from sub-5 items
• PlayFirst.com users who have purchased only
  sub-5 items are growing significantly
• 57 of Diner Dash Hometown Hero purchasers are
  first-time buyers who had never purchased in the
  20-only business model
• Diner Dash Hometown Hero is our fastest selling
  game ever on PlayFirst.com
• Episodic Content is popular and drives strong
  sales weve released 1 new restaurant/story
  episode per month since launch.
• The new DinerDash.com community is active and
  growing
• 500,000 multiplayer games played
• 70,000 waiters uploaded
• 50,000 diners uploaded

31
To understand Diner Dash Hometown Hero (DDHH)

• We need to take a look at the entire Diner Dash
  series

32
An Art History of Diner Dash
33
An Art History of Diner Dash

• 2004 -- PlayFirst sets a portfolio vision
• 1. People playing a PlayFirst game will never
  ask why am I playing this game again?
• Led naturally to characters and storylines
• 2. PlayFirst games will be connect with 35 year
  old women offering them quotidian everyday
  themes (no dragons, no spaceships) and
  aspirational characters they can identify with
• Diner Dash, developed by GameLab was our first
  published product and turned out to be the
  platonic ideal of what we were shooting for

34
Diner Dash started as Lunch
35
(No Transcript)
36
(No Transcript)
37
2004 What made Diner Dash different?
Evolution of the Casual Game 2005
38
Diner Dash 2?

• 2005 -- PlayFirst has a hit!
• Now what?
• Had to be both familiar and fresh
• 1. New Mechanics and game-play
• 2. New Dynamics and meta-structure
• 3. New Aesthetics and story
• Without GameLabs help we set out to sequelize a
  mega-hit

39
New Mechanics

• New customers
• Families
• Crying Baby
• Cellphone Addict
• Fitness Fanatic
• Bookworm
• New strategies tied to customer types
• Noise waves (Families, Cell Phones)
• Highchair
• Mop
• Bench seating
• Telephone
• Entertainer
• Hostess
• Drink Server
• Busser

40
Mop
41
Family and high chairs
42
Cellphone addicts
43
Partner Character
44
New Dynamics
Meta structure choose one of three décor
upgrades between levels
45
New Dynamics
Unlockable items
46
New Aesthetics

• New Look!
• New Characters!
• New Story!
• Moving backgrounds (Rotating restaurant on top of
  a building)

47
New look
48
New Characters!
49
(No Transcript)
50
Moving backgrounds
51
Diner Dash Flo on the Go

• To three or not to three?
• The challenge of sequelizing a hit sequel

52
DD Flo on the Go
53
Diner Dash Flo on the Go

• New Mechanics
• New Customers
• Lovebirds
• Tourists
• New level twists
• Flashlight mode
• Shaking levels
• New Dynamics
• Flos Closet
• Unlock new clothes between levels
• Unlockable Content (expert levels)
• Choose one of many décor upgrades between certain
  levels
• Functional upgrades between levels
• New Aesthetics?
• New Story

54
Lovebirds
55
Flashlight Levels
56
Better Upgrades
57
Shaking Levels
58
Unlocking Items
59
New Story
60
Flos Closet a hint of whats to come
61
Diner Dash Derivatives
62
(No Transcript)
63
SpongeBob Diner Dash
64
SpongeBob Diner Dash
65
Diner Dash Mobile
66
Diner Dash PSP
67
Diner Dash DS
68
Flo Devotion Success of Diner Dash

• Consumers have spent more than 35 million on
  Diner Dash
• 200 million downloads on PC and Mac
• 2 million people have purchased DD games across
  platforms
• DD dominated top 10 on mobile in 2007
• Flos My Space Page received 300 friend requests
  within first hour of posting 49 wishes on her
  birthday
• Sweepstakes Dress Like Flo (light email) 3,530
  entries submitted
• Facebook 14 Diner Dash groups
• Coming to console in 2008

69
2007 3 hits in the series Mobile Derivatives So
what do we do now?
70
Meanwhile, back at the ranch

• We were working on lots of things, not just Diner
  Dash

71
Connect Four Cities
72
Connect Four Cities

• Its a fun game, but not against the computer.
  More fun when real people make mistakes.
• PlayFirst had always been interested in expanding
  the casual downloadable market to include
  Multiplayer.

73
Connect Four Cities
74
Connect Four Cities

• We did it! We deployed our multiplayer server
  architecture!
• We made our first Multiplayer game!
• We explored a lot of issues!
• We designed a multiplayer mode that we could
  scale back for portal deployment.

75
We built it, but they did not come ?(and we
learned)
76
Together

• Connect Four Cities didnt discourage us from
  believing in multiplayer and social game play.
• We wanted to expand upon the foundation we built
  and explore building community into our download
  games.

77
Together A login box?
78
Diner Dash with Together
79
Together

• Now deployed with 10 games
• Our Playground SDK based games snap easily into
  the framework easy to leverage
• Its a modest success
• More needs to be done to integrate game play
  elements into the social interaction

80
THE POST SUCCESS DILEMMA
2-3 conversion? Thats success? Too much free
content! 20 cliff? If this is the top brand in
casual games, cant we do better? Where is the
Future pointing us? Lets experiment!
81

The future

• Micro-transactions and avatars
• Multiplayer
• User Generated Content
• Serialized Content
• Advertizing
• Social play, community

How do we make them authentically connect with
Casual players?
82
2
83
Imagined Communitybuilding a story world

• Wedding Dash
• Doggie Dash
• Dress Shop Hop

These games are spin offs, like Laverne and
Shirley or the Jeffersons
84
The Sequelization Challenge
?
85
(No Transcript)
86
(No Transcript)
87
(No Transcript)
88
Can you make a multiplayer game out of a single
player time management game?

• Diner Dash lent itself to multiplayer
• Competitive Play
• Collaborative Play
• Anybody here ever been a waiter?

89
Collaborative or Competitive?
Conventional wisdom was our players would prefer
collaborative play
Turns out competitive play worked better
90
Once you had multiplayer, avatars (waiters)
followed naturally

• We cant all be Flo!
• My Waiter was the natural extension of Flos
  Closet
• Led to clothing store, micro transactions and
  in-game store

91
Customize My Waiter
We wanted players to be able to buy items in-game
Mistakes we didnt build a preview area in the
store
92
Once we had multiplayer and avatars, user
generated content also followed naturally

• If I can design my waiter, why not my own diner?
• Naturally viral invite people to play in my
  diner
• Led to upgrade store, micro transactions as well

93
My Diner
94
Im making it look easy, right?

• Together offered a great technical solution, but
  from a design perspective it offered enormous
  challenges

95
Design Metamorphosis I The Original Technology
96
Design Metamorphosis II Lipstick on a pig?
97
Design Metamorphosis III A Better Technology
98
Design Metamorphosis IV The Integration
Challenge
99
Design Metamorphosis IV The Integration
Challenge
100
Design Metamorphosis V Cleaning the slate
think of these as puzzle pieces
101
Design Metamorphosis V Cleaning the slate
102
Design Metamorphosis VI The Imagination
Challenge
103
Design Metamorphosis VII The Final Lobby
104
(No Transcript)
105
(No Transcript)
106
(No Transcript)
107
Final product
108
Serialized Narrative and the map of the world

• Diner Dash has lent itself to ongoing restaurants
  and serialized story episodes
• Using the Map has allowed us an elegant way to
  sell new restuarants and alert players when new
  content is available

109
Expandable content
110
Dinertown
111
Diner Dash Boutique (Buy Restaurants)
112
Serialized Restaurants
113
Episodic Story in Diner Dash
114
Main Menu troubles
115
Main Menu
116
Main Menu
117
Technology

• Diner Dash Hometown Hero is a complex system.
• The challenge in engineering Create the right
  Abstractions!
• Connect Four Cities and Together helped pave
  the way.

118
Component Based Architecture

• Diner Dash Hometown Hero is built from a
  collection of components
• The game team was able to focus on the game play,
  design and art.
• Much of the work/engineering was done by our
  web-site and server engineering team
• Integration points are minimal and well defined

119
Components? Like what?

• Updater
• Keep the game current by downloading updates at
  start-up
• Game
• Yes, the game itself is just a component in the
  system
• Digital Rights Management
• Enforce business model / e-commerce rules
• Items Manager
• Handle acquiring assets and permissions for my
  waiter / my diner / episodic content
• User Generated Content
• Handle uploading content, Handle
  browsing/downloading content
• Multiplayer
• Facilitate getting an opponent, and
  sending/receiving messages
• HTML Components
• Web pages are used to implement user interface
  for non game specific re-usable functionality

120
Visual Composition of Components
121
Digital Rights ManagementNot all components are
visual
122
Multiplayer Composition of Components
123
Breathe

• Just one more

124
User Generated Content Composition of Components
125
Purchasing Items In-game
126
Purchasing Items On-line
127
More Examples

• Browse the Diner Gallery (embedded HTML
  component)
• Play a Diner from the Diner Gallery(game just
  responds to a message)
• Play a Multiplayer game in a user generated
  diner, with a another users user generated
  waiter(game just responds to a message, uses
  items component to acquire assets and temporary
  digitial rights to those items)

128
Items Sales / Micro-transactions

• Tip of an iceberg with huge potential.
• Plenty of work to do around virtual currency and
  small dollar amount transactions.
• We cleanly abstracted from the game, leveraged
  our existing e-commerce engine
• Game will benefit from improvements over time
  without any re-coding in the game
• We just launched PlayGold

129
In-game store embedded HTML control
130
On-line store just a different style sheet!
131
2 web sites are more than 1!
132
Technology Considerations

• User Generated Content Creates Storage Challenges
• Item Sales require expanded DRM rules and
  implementation
• Running an on-line game is running a service
  downtime is more sensitive than an e-commerce site

133
Technology Wrap Up

• And if you do it right, no one will even notice
  or think about the technology ?

134
Focus on making a great game, not on making your
game work.
135
Why Playground?

• Free!
• Designed by experts
• Over 1,000 developers in the community
• Road Tested
• Framework behind over a dozen hit casual games,
  including
• Dream Chronicles
• Chocolatier
• Dress Shop Hop
• Diner Dash Hometown Hero

136
Features

• Easy-to-use C API
• Feature-Rich
• 2D/3D Hardware acceleratedgraphics
• Music and Sound FX
• Flash cut scenes
• Scalable fonts, text effects
• Customizable GUI widgets
• Lua Scripting
• Universal Deployment
• Powerful Localization
• Compact Runtime
• Professional Documentation
• Community Support

137
Developer Dash

• Up to 100,000 awarded
• All you need to do
• Prototype in Playground SDK
• Commercially viable casual game
• Submitted in 2008
• 30,000 awarded in 2007
• No need to publish with PlayFirstto qualify
• Innovative games wanted!
• http//developer.playfirst.com
• Download the SDK and get started!

138
Conclusion

• DDHH was PlayFirsts first bold experiment.
• It was hard and it is just the beginning.
• It was worth it.
• Call to arms to the portals! Let us innovate!
• This project took (Even more) Cross Functional
  Collaboration Struggle to get all teams to work
  together
• we want big growth and expanding opportunities
  with casual games
• Break the model connect with consumer on new
  business models
• Embrace Innovation users love it!

139
QA

• Thank you!
• Stick around, well take questions!
• Brad Edelmanbrad_at_playfirst.com
• Kenny Dinkinkenny_at_playfirst.com
• Visit http//www.playfirst.com