Iris wrote some interesting things about game characters in her blog.

Some other interesting Podcasts if you are into web 2.0 development.

• Ruby on Rails Podcast – especially the interview with Glenn, Vanderburg.
• Ajaxian Podcast- especially the interview with Glenn Vanderburg

or into technology entrepreneurship:

• Venture Voice

Ruby on Rails (RoR) is a web framework built on Ruby that uses a modified version of the Model-View-Controller design pattern which every good programmer must know and use for User-Interfaced based applications – like a website and a game.

It includes a web server but you can also run it on Apache and IIS with some changes. I think it is not necessary to do that until you want to deploy.

If you use Windows and want to try RoR:

1. Download the Ruby for Windows Installer.
2. When you have installed it, start the command prompt and type: gem install rails –include-dependencies
3. To use MySQL with RoR, download the MySQL/Ruby driver instead of using the built in gem -install (assuming you already have MySQL server installed).

If you want a PHP framework that is based on the design of RoR check out Code Igniter. But seriously, you should take a look of RoR, it is sexy.

The Wikipedia article on RoR is a good introduction.

Check out BaseCamp and CampFire, which is done by 37 Signals – a pioneer in the concept of web 2.0 and AJAX.

• Microsoft(R) Windows(TM)/Vista Operating System
• Microsoft Office 2007, Firefox must run with Word and Excel.
• 2GB of DDR-3 RAM because of massive memory leak problems due to javascript hack.
• 1GB Hard Disk space.
• Microsoft Paint – all bitmap files will be saperated displayed here.

COST: US$1, 000, 000 per license

So yeah, we are developing a trading card game. I can’t tell you the details of the game yet but I hope you can see the alpha version live for yourself at the end of the month. Nevertheless, we are about 40% to alpha release. Zie Aun is doing concept and design. Iris, Kwang, Moy doing art & animation. Kuan is doing the flash client & java server. I am working on the web app and database.

But this post is not about Hatchling’s first game, but rather about the design (not talking about game mechanics design), technologies and the near future.

Combining Web 2.0 (think Google, Flickr, BitTorent, Digg) and online gaming means using the web as a complete platform to deliver entertainment. Think YouTube; which disrupted the entire platform for video publishing and distribution.

A game of the near future:

• has the usual good gameplay, graphics, etc.
• doesn’t take longer than 10 seconds to load
• allow for user expression and encourage emergence (i.e. Will Wright’s Spore)
• has a fun underlying game mechanics but the game mechanics (not just the social element) becomes more fun as more people play it
• is for everyone (blurring the line between the demographics)
• is educational besides entertaining
• is linked to other media

A Web 2.0 site:

• is an attitude; let’s blog, go google that up, tag me, subsribe to my feed
• treats the web as a complete platform, filling in the space between the user’s browser and the web’s contents (by the user and other users).
• is made up of small components loosely coupled together at the request of the user
• ‘s most valuable asset is its data that is generated by its uers.
• allow content to come to the user rather than the user going to the content; like www.onelurv.com
• is about participation rather than publishing and servers.
• is made for more than just the web browser.
• is in a perpectual beta; The Google / Open Source way, no scheduled release but rather: release early, release often.
• is all about the user.

Web 2.0 IS about PLAY, so where are the games? Are you ready for the Web 2.0 Game of the near future?

Lastly, if you haven’t already, do checkout JumboPlay, which allow you to download and stream (yes STREAM) full original games to your hard disk. I highly recommend it.

Some of the readers here know that I have a new Dell Laptop. Incase you didn’t, her name is Kiera (Kiera Knightley) and she is a Dell XPS M1210. Her brain is Dual Core 1.83 GHz with 1GB of RAM. She has stomach for 80 GB (really just 75 GB with those stupid Dell Partitions) and a surprisingly cheap nVidia 256 MB GeForce Go 7400. Best of all, this baby is only 12” in width, 7.5” in height and weights only 1.83 kg!

Kiera can play Oblivion on 75% of the highest setting smooth enough. The upside of that is that I do not need a next-gen console until Bioshock, Mass Effect or Tennis comes out. The downside – Oblivion, although not a very good game, is very addictive.

The Dell XPS M1210 is one of the best Core Duo based laptops in the market today. It is built on extremely solid base, has GREAT performance, is the cheapest of its kind (mine cost about RM 5500 (plus software RM700, a RM350 bag, etc)) and is fully customizable (add more RAM, CPU, HDD, etc).

Change – The Challenge of Today

I like any entrepreneurship/management talk that starts and focuses on Change – especially someone who truly understands it, someone that walks the talk. There are two main themes of change – strategic and fundamental change. Strategic change: Amazon taking bookstores online. Fundamental Change: Automobile industry. Change happens and is here to stay. The world changes so rapidly; if you do not understand how it is changing, you will not be able to do anything in today’s world.

Three themes of Innovation

1. Resilience
2. Renewal
3. Revolution

Companies need to be resilience in order to stay in business today. That means companies that do know how to change will not be able to stay in business in the new world. This applies to both startups and big corporate firms.

Companies need to undergo renewal in order to make money today. Companies that take a look at how they are doing things and then improve certain key functions have higher chances of making money today. A startup that does the same thing as people in the past will not succeed.

Companies need to revolutionize the way they think about their business if they want to be at the top of their game. Today we live in the idea age. Innovators, those who have the knowledge, experience and courage to create and lead will win.

Three questions to ask as a startup

1. What need does this product/service meet?
2. Why is this solution better than any other solution to fulfill this need in your market?
3. How competitive is my way to meet this need?

Change – The Challenge of Today

I like any entrepreneurship/management talk that starts and focuses on Change – especially someone who truly understands it, someone that walks the talk. There are two main themes of change – strategic and fundamental change. Strategic change: Amazon taking bookstores online. Fundamental Change: Automobile industry. Change happens and is here to stay. The world changes so rapidly; if you do not understand how it is changing, you will not be able to do anything in today’s world.

Three themes of Innovation

1. Resilience
2. Renewal
3. Revolution

Companies need to be resilience in order to stay in business today. That means companies that do know how to change will not be able to stay in business in the new world. This applies to both startups and big corporate firms.

Companies need to undergo renewal in order to make money today. Companies that take a look at how they are doing things and then improve certain key functions have higher chances of making money today. A startup that does the same thing as people in the past will not succeed.

Companies need to revolutionize the way they think about their business if they want to be at the top of their game. Today we live in the idea age. Innovators, those who have the knowledge, experience and courage to create and lead will win.

Three questions to ask as a startup

1. What need does this product/service meet?
2. Why is this solution better than any other solution to fulfill this need in your market?
3. How competitive is my way to meet this need?

Two of my most recent business ventures (Electronic Sports World and Hatchling Games’ Project Card-Chess) rely heavily on the internet, in particular online distribution and marketing. The emphasis is on low marketing, storage and distribution costs. The internet has fundamentally changed the way business works, the way consumers looked at “companies” and the way people looked at value. Companies that fully embraced the Internet and based business models around it thrived massively. Often it was entrepreneurs that created Internet-based companies that went on to become household names globally. These companies include Google.com, Amazon.com, eBay, Audible, Netflix, Neopets, etc. This business model is also known as The Long Tail , first coined by Chris Anderson in a 2004 Wired article. P2P, RSS, Blogging, Bittorent and other similar internet technologies are exhibits features of The Long Tail. Do read the linked article for a brief understanding of this model.

In the digital entertainment industry, Neopets.com is an example of a company with a Long Tail effect. Neopets.com is reported to be one of the most visited web sites in the world. The simple games on their website attracted so many players, mostly non-gamers that they were brought by Cartoon Network and MTV. Neopets avoided heavy competitions such as Electronic Arts, Sony, Nintendo, Square-Enix and Blizzard Entertainment, who have created market dominating games. To defeat the then leader in search engines, Google thought about their business in Internet terms running on Internet time. Neopets.com, arguably the most financially successful game development company in the world did the same.

Let Blizzard dominate the MMORPG market, you simply cannot compete on their ground. If the MMORPG players want to play World of Warcraft, they will – and there is nothing your new game can stop them unless it is really BETTER. Not because you think its better, because you KNOW your customers will think it’s better. How many RPG developers can say that? That is why I look forward to Bioware’s new MMORPG in Austin, Texas, USA.

I believe to succeed on the Internet is to ask the right questions, rethinking fundamental conscious and subconscious assumptions. Asking these questions will be the basis of Hatchlings Games’ game design, platform choices, financing and other business-critical decisions.

Questions such as, what is an MMOG?

Does MMOG just stand for “Massively Multiplayer Online Game” which mean a world that is massive and online multiplayer and that there is a game in it? Does this online world REALLY exist? If it does, how do you make you know and feel that it exist? Is realism the key? Are there other fundamental human emotions that make you feel that something is real?

Project Card-Chess will be designed with such question in mind.

There are many more questions, such as will people pay to play the game? What is it in it for the player? Why would the player care? Why are Japanese cultures so emphasized in Japanese animations and games? Can the same be done for a Malaysian-made game? What are Malaysian cultures that can be explored in a fictional world?

Questions like these ultimately make a game unique.

I will post about other questions on my next blog entry. Two questions interest me the most, one that is design-related and the other business:

How can Hatchlings Games put Malaysia on the map of the digital entertainment world?

How are we going to make money and are our assumptions flawed?

It really is a lot of balancing work: between time, budget, passion, gameplay, look and feel, platform, marketing, etc. For me, it all has to balance till it’s FUN and MEANINGFUL.