Continuing somewhat on Marcs post “Tips for designing multiplayer games”, I thought I’d try and take the discussion further. I’ve been thinking about what it is that makes a great multiplayer game compared to a great singleplayer game. In my humble opinion, making a good singleplayer game isn’t all that hard.

Not that I haven’t spent sleepless nights pondering gameplay-issues and whatnot, but in the end the process of making a singleplayer game is more straight forward. You’ve only got one player to consider, probably/maybe a story of some kind (preferably where you get to rescue some fine lookin’ dames), 3 lives and you’re off. (This does not apply to puzzles but I will get into that in another post.)

But when it comes to making a great multiplayer game you’ve got a whole bunch of other issues to address. As Marc mentioned in the previous article, there are some good pointers to follow when your starting out on your multiplayer adventure. For example: don’t limit your game to just two players. We’re talking MULTIplayer here… Two people games can be great, but as Marc said: you increase the risk of games ending early because one of the players quit. A great multiplayer game will allow people to join and leave while the game is running without breaking or restarting the game. Not all types of games can handle adding a new user in the middle of the gameplay, but this is simply solved by letting the user spectate while we wait for the next round. This is the method we used for Nonoba Racer for instance

And what about story? Should there be a story? Does it matter or is it pure gaming pleasure we’re after?

I’ve been thinking about porting some of the games I’ve made in the past to multiplayer versions, but for the most part I come up short. Mostly, I think, because they are in fact singleplayer games. The idea behind the games just isn’t broad enough or is to focused on single player to work as multiplayer games. And when I try to add on stuff like bonuses and time-limits and whatnot, the original clean and simple gameplay gets lost in the mix, and the game just isn’t funny anymore…

The conclusion is simple; the mechanics that make a single player game fun is not necessary the mechanics that work in a multiplayer game. It’s still all about game play, but a multiplayer game does not necessary need a story line. The goal of multiplayer is as much about socializing as it is about playing the game. For example a game like UNO. It is rather boring if played against a computer, but becomes an addictive pastime if you add other people to the mix.

Nonoba Racer & Multiplayer Snake is for me, two very good examples of great multiplayer games. More than two players at a time, fast paced and a classic and simple gameplay…

Still I am not an expert, but is tasked to collect and write about these concepts.

Therefore dear reader, if you got a great article or your own ideas about what works please comment below and I will be collecting everything to be on the new Nonoba Multiplayer Resource site!

Over Christmas I will be working on tutorials to get people started with Nonoba’s MP API. So stay tuned!

Last but not least I enjoyed reading  this article about casual gaming. I am sure you will enjoy it as well.

Merry Christmas!

I recently joined the Nonoba-team, and I thought it appropriate to introduce myself to y’all!

I’ve been working in the games/animation -industry for about 8 years now, primarily developing flash games, but i’ve also been involved with a lot of animation & gameplay-development.

I’m a huge Nintendo-fan, mostly because they are such connoisseurs in gui-design and gameplay. And just like Henrik, I too got that lovely NES when all of my friends where playing their C64’s

I’ll be keeping myself busy with creating new content for Nonoba, and if there’s anything you’d like to see/read about (new features, articles, tutorials, question and so on and so forth…..), feel free to drop me a line (fredrik(at)nonoba.com), or just post your requests here on the blog

So I’ll be hanging around here on the blog and over at the Nonoba site a lot in the time to come, so I’m looking forward to hearing from ya…

word!

Multiplayer Snake has actually been on Nonoba for a while, but seems to be a hidden treasure since not that many people have played the game. I love it and think it is a lot of fun!

The game is a perfect example of how new players can join in at anytime, and even though you can die pretty fast, you are back into the game really fast as well.

The graphics are nice and clean without any extravagant details that take focus away from the actual game.

I also think it is great with the way the scoreboard comes up after each game and the big letters saying whether you won or lost. There is also a great feature with being able to skip a round if you don’t hit space to join in when it starts.

I think that a lot of the features in this game are great and many developers could learn from this simple but cool game if they want to make their own multiplayer game.

Good job ptgames!

We just wanted to post a little reminder to all you developers out there on the interwebs. As you might know, we have a few different competitions for Flash game developers, including our big Multiplayer kick-off competition where the winner receives $15,000.

• The most played game during each week wins $500.
• The most played game during each month, that uses one of our APIs, wins $2,500.
• The best multiplayer game created using our Multiplayer API wins $15,000.

More info on the contest can be found at: http://www.nonoba.com/developers/contests

More info on our APIs can be found at: http://www.nonoba.com/developers

The deadline for entering into the big Multiplayer kick-off competition is on November 1st 2008, so the quicker you develeop and upload a multiplayer game, the bigger the chance is that it will get a lot of plays and attention, which increases your chances of winning!

You can find some good tips on creating multiplayer games here on this blog at: http://blog.nonoba.com/2008/10/14/tips-for-designing-multiplayer-games/

If you have any questions, please contact us, and we will try to help you as fast as possible.

Good luck!

Here are three general tips to make your multiplayer game better. The tips cannot be applied to all games, but hopefully to most of them:

Single players can play: One of the great things with Nonoba Racer and Space Invaders Multiplayer is that you do not need someone else to start the game. You can start playing and practicing by yourself, and then when someone else is ready to join, the real fun starts. This is much better than having to to wait for another user to log in to be able to play, which in many cases will lead to players leaving the game if no one is immediate available.

Join at any time: In combination with the first tip, it is preferred when a player can enter a game at any point. Space Invaders Multiplayer illustrates this perfectly, as you can join the game at any point, and quit whenever you feel like it, and still get a score. It’s of course harder to apply this tip to games that naturally feature rounds or turns, but why not experiment with those rules?

2+1=4: If you limit your game to two players, you increase the risk of games ending early because one of the players quit, which is frustrating for the player that’s left behind. The more players you allow in your game, the bigger the chance is that the game can continue even if someone has to leave, and the bigger the chance is that players can find and join running games.

Is it fair? Like with Nonoba racer, where you earn points for winning and where you can upgrade your car, you should be able to get an advance over your friends. You might be a bad driver and just want to be able to buy a better car. As a developer you can then use our Payment API to enable these users to “cheat” by buying a better car. It is much more probable that a player wants to buy upgrades in a multiplayer game, as they are competing directly with other players, and might even be friends (or foes!) of those they are competing with.

I hope these few tips can inspire some more developers to create some super cool games for Nonoba!

Best regards Marc

So a few people have been requesting an irc channel for the developers of multiplayer games to hang out in. Therefore I am proud to introduce you to #nonoba on freenode.

We´re happy to inform that we now have more than 200,000 users. Welcome to all of you, we hope that you will enjoy your time at Nonoba, and please bring your friends, so that you can beat them in some of our great multiplayer games.

We’d also like to highlight two new games with Nonoba Payment; Pede Off and Stomp! Nice games, which easily can steal a lot of your time. Enjoy.

At the Casual Connect Conference we attended a focus group, which talked about the female gamer segment. It was a discussion led by Kathy Johnson from Consort Partners.

During the introduction I was rather surprised by the fact that 150 million female players are online every month, with nearly 2/3 of those being over 35 years old. (According to the Casual Games Association)

The panel was made up of five females all above 35. They were hard core casual gamers from king.com! They would plan their day, so that they could play for hours.
The panel included both single ladies and mothers, and they were all very competitive. When several games were displayed they knew most of them, and they even had really high rankings. They loved to have the rankings, they loved to be challenged, and they loved to win.

This is a huge segment with purchasing power. This is what they want:
• Puzzle games that can challenge them
• Nice graphic
• Several levels
• Fifty-fifty on whether to play single or multiplayer. They like the challenge against themselves, but also love to beat some one else.
• They want achievements

All of this is possible with our APIs – Dear developers, take the day off from your regular job and start making cool games for this segment. If you got a great idea, well, let us know, maybe we can come up with a sponsor deal.

“Get those brain cells to run, so that you can come up with a cool game plan”.

A few comments have been made on what I actully do when not beating Chris in Tennis on the Wii. I work with generating more traffic to Nonoba, and helping with business related operations. We are trying to get better distribution of games, as we want everyone to know and play the games that are on our site. It is so much more fun when there are several games to join in the multiplayer game lobbies.

We also need to find more developers who can make some great multiplayer games with our API, so if you know anyone, just tell them to contact us.

I have been on vacation lately, which is why the blog has been a bit dead, but Chris took all my vacation for the next year when I won Wii Golf the last time, so that should not be a problem anymore.

I will try to upload some more notes from the conference during this or next week, sorry about the delay.

While browsing the net the other day we found this cool webpage where you can create your own word mashup, based on a series of words. Here is an example:

Go to wordle.net to make your own.