Whoops! Late submission! XP

Hello hello hello! Sorry Prof for the late late posting - I just woke up, and i can assure you that i haven't read anyone's post yet, so i've really no idea if you've already posted! *whoosh!* With our first Facebook app "out of the way", and our presentation o ver and done with, i finally can get some rest! It's been tough, juggling all that memory with that my other classes require on an average of 3 hours of sleep a day (and about zero, the last couple of days >.<).. Prof Ben is truly evil! hahaha.. but it's been a wonderful journey! With group mates like Khoa, the motivation really exists to "chiong for it", even though the workload is heavier than it was supposed to be and the going really gets tough!

Hokay! I'm supposed to blog about the presentations! But even without this requirement, i would have blogged/talked about it to my friends, cos the ideas that were brought up were really interesting, and almost every app provoked some thoughts about it! I'll talk a bit about a few apps, so do bear with me!

So we started off with Elven Blood, which i thought was really similar to Battle Stations, another facebook app that i've been playing XP (with less blood, and gore, of course!) Two points about Elven blood that caught my attention:

The comment/idea that Elven Blood captured the market of 1 mil people by reaching out to actual gamers, not casual gamers. (e.g. RPG/fantasy gamers)
- I personally feel that most apps on Facebook have to be generally targeted towards being able to reach out to casual gamer, due to the nature of Facebook. This is probably the reason why Elven Blood chose to keep the gameplay as linear, so i'd be simple for gaming idiots like me to understand! haha.. I can enjoy playing Battle Stations and Elven Blood because it's not hard to learn and it's very old school (so the concept is generally very simple and involves simple gameplay). That being said, i find it hard to believe that RPG/Fantasy gamers (apart from social gamers) would really play this app! Rather, the target market for games like Elven Blood and Battle Stations is likely to be casual gamers and social gamers who enjoy a nice story, aren't willing to pick up on some complex game, but dont' mind spending a few minutes/hours of office/lecture time each day playing the game and completing quests! hahaha! :D It's just a personal opinion tho!

Get the right mix, let the game die, and then do it again, 3 times!
Haha, got to tell you, i laughed when you stated that point! But it's a really good idea! Imagine giving MTV Crib a makeover, and it gets popular, and you simply replicate that game three times, tweaking the storyline as it goes to suit what the crowd wants - u'd satisfy your users needs as the new app improves in standard, and you'd have the same crowd playing your game four times! That's 4 times the profit for just one set work of programming! (of course, the graphic artists will have a hell of a time, but you guys don't care do you.. *sulks*) Good thing to think about eh? It's very very similar to how products in the market work:

Every product has to decline someday right? So what companies do just before that happens is to bomb a new product in so that their new product matures as their old one starts to decline! Cool concept hor? Haha.. so the trick is - dont' do so much.. do one time then do upgrades, but on a new platform! (version 1.1, version 1.2) hahaha.. So now you all know why your Sony Ericsson phones have the Wxxx and the Wxxxi! Cheap to produce, earn lots more $$!

Causes was the next app up, and that hit pretty close to home. You see, causes is an app that keeps its hands clear of the $$, but is indirectly involved with real money. So they don't have contact with the money passing through their app. It's a channel, but only a channel. The actual money doesn't go to them. This is provided, of course, that Causes doesn't impose a claim on a percentage of the money raised (which i doubt they do cos no one would use it then). Two questions that i asked myself:

What provokes people to donate?
- This entire concept boggles me. I simply can't understand why people would go online, SEARCH for a cause (or someone might have spammed their friends with the cause) and donate, especially when there are a million and one registered charities out there that are already begging for donations! Of course, they might really be passionate about something, but even so, with tens of organisations asking for donations for similar Causes (SPCA etc), which one would you donate to, and WHY that one? Or would you donate $1 to each? xP And then you have all the 'official' organisations fighting to make their voices heard as well! But then again, half the Causes are non-monetary (e.g. religion/petitions). So it could be that a large bulk of these users support Causes that aren't monetary. After all, the amount of money most Causes raised is really little as opposed to the amounts that come in during our wonderful Ren Ci shows.. haha!

(btw i went to Causes and was AMAZED to find that i've almost 200 friends who have added the app! *faints*)

How reliable can this app be? - People from all walks of life can simply post up whatever they want, however they want. (HT wants a new car! haha) There seems to be no censorship whatsoever! The group suggested imposing greater regulations to keep the reputation of the app, so that it'll be more reliable, but with so many people posting causes, maintenence will be costly and the process will slow down if every single Cause has to be censored!

So why does it hit close to home?
This was the exact same problem that i faced when working on Spree Kingdom. How can i keep the reputation of Spree Kingdom as one that is reliable? Because while the money has nothing to do with me, it is part of my group's responsibility to give users the best spree experience possible. (and it is well known that incidents have happened where spree organisers have run off with the money!) How can we provide our users with a sense of security when it comes to dealing with their money? In the end, Spree Kingdom came up with two ways - Censor the spree organisers and provide user ratings. Censorship of spree organisers are tedious though, but for now (while starting up) necessary. We decided to (for now) only invite spree organisers that have organised over 100 sprees, and censor each one of them. Tedious as this may be, it seems necessary, for now. In the future, perhaps spree-ers themselves can apply to be spree organisers when they have participated in a certain number of sprees and have achieved good user ratings throughout. Imagine applying that same censorship to Causes! *faints!*

Another app presentation that i simply have to talk about is Graffiti Wall! I LOVE IT I LOVE IT I LOVE IT! haha.. But i'd never really use it. Why? Because right now all it caters to is the artistic community. It's Paint, in its simplest form. And it's lovely, but it just isn't mass!

So what about the non-artist?
I found myself continually asking - What if i'm not talented? What if i can't draw? (because 3 years ago, i couldn't even draw stick figures, not that my drawing is that great now too!) All i'd be able to do is to admire these works of art from afar, and wish and wish and not post, simply because i'd be soooo ashamed of my drawing! Or i'd be super annoyed by all the rubbish drawings that other create just to take up spam space on my wall! So what about non-artists, or beginning artists, or people with the eye for composition but just can't draw? Is there any way to make it 'beautiful but not purely artistic' without compromising the level of art that is already there?

Photoshop instead of Paint?
Like Elven Blood, i'd suggest an upgrade! (not a complete replication of the old version XP) The basics are already there, but how about a new app to capture the non-artist crowd? How can that be done? Well, instead of the basic Paint version, how about the basic Photoshop version? xP Now photoshop IS complicated. But the things that allow people to create, from scratch, are the Brushes. Imagine if Play! Graffiti Wall (an upgrade for Graffiti Wall) was created, with the ability to use brushes/play with opacity! Users could create their own brushes and upload it for everyone to use, and non-artistic people and artistic people would be able to create their own art! Granted, it'll make the interface a lot more complicated, and the programming a lot harder, and the whole simplicity of Graffiti Wall would be 'lost', but WOW! You'd reach out to a whole new group of people! And there'd be a whole new world to explore! And for the old school Paint artists who are ever proud to show off their abilities to create from scratch, there'd always be the old Graffiti wall. So two separate target markets, like Giogio Armani (Graffiti Wall) and Armani Exchange (Play! Graffiti Wall) :P

Questions posed to everyone...on ETHICS!
(I shall make it easy for everyone to reply me :P) I don't want to go on and on about each individual app, cos all of them brought up significant points as they went through them. But one last thing (something that has bugged me for months) that i wanted to bring up was the idea of ethics. Don't shy away now, ethics is smth that we all have to deal with someday! How ethical is it to produce a game/app that encourages: - Violence/War/Blood & gore (Elven Blood) - Sex selling/making your friends do stuff (Friends for sale, tho i know SDU must love this xP) - Friendship betrayal, even if it's just for a short while (Whopper sacrifice) - And more! You see, i had a major arguement with a friend over this. We wanted to produce a game very similar to Pet's Society. However, i wanted my pet to be able to reproduce baby pets with your friend's pet, to indicate a closer link to that friend. But my friend got really upset, saying that i would be corrupting the minds of young children in doing so. And if you think about it, it could go to the stage of sex selling! So... what do YOU guys think? What would you do? Keep it clean? How clean is clean? What will be your stand when you create YOUR app?


On a side note, for those who haven't gone to Spree Kingdom yet, here's Shu Shu! She's our new mascot, my baby. haha. <3> So why Shu Shu? Cos erm.. (and this is cheesy) it's y'know, the english translation of mouse. hahaha.. *such originality, i know* So Shu Shu came about cos (almost) everyone uses a computer mouse for online stuff (except programmers, i've no idea why!), and so Shu Shu was born! haha.. She even has a scrolly wheel in the center of her forehead! XP

And so, with love :)
~Peaceout! XD