Google Plus Gaming vs Facebook Gaming

After a few hiccups, Facebook has gotten the notifications scrolling back and much better than Google Plus. This gives it a cleaner advantage in social gaming interface – even for the same game. and of course many more gamers!

Clearly the games stream is much more efficiently designed in FB, probably because they need to earn some ad revenue- that forces you to think more optimally for space. FB interface is also bug free compared to the constant error in G+ (error changing circle membership– ideally I wanted to create one gaming circle for all gaming friends)

See this  – not just compare the games stream/notifications only

vs

Google Doodle for Diwali Greetings

Hey,

If you like Diwali the festival and want Google to create a doodle for it, just send an email to proposals@google.com

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali

Diwali or Deepavali[note 1], popularly known as the “festival of lights,” is a festival celebrated between mid-October and mid-November for different reasons. For Hindus, Diwali is one of the most important festivals of the year and is celebrated in families by performing traditional activities together in their homes. For Jains, Diwali marks the attainment of moksha or nirvana by Mahavira in 527 BC.[1][2]

Diwali is an official holiday in India,[3] Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, Suriname, Malaysia, Singapore,[4] andFiji.

The name “Diwali” is a contraction of “Dipawali” (Sanskrit: दीपावली Dīpāwalī), which translates into “row of lamps”.[5] Diwali involves the lighting of small clay lamps (diyas or dīpas) in Sanskrit: दीप) filled with oil to signify the triumph of good over evil. During Diwali, all the celebrants wear new clothes and share sweets and snacks with family members and friends.

The festival starts with Dhanteras on which most Indian business communities begin their financial year. The second day of the festival, Naraka Chaturdasi, marks the vanquishing of the demon Naraka by Lord Krishna and his wife Satyabhama. Amavasya, the third day of Diwali, marks the worship of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth in her most benevolent mood, fulfilling the wishes of her devotees. Amavasya also tells the story of Lord Vishnu, who in his dwarf incarnation vanquished the Bali, and banished him to Patala. It is on the fourth day of Diwali, Kartika Shudda Padyami, that Bali went to patala and took the reins of his new kingdom in there. The fifth day is referred to as Yama Dvitiya (also called Bhai Dooj), and on this day sisters invite their brothers to their homes.

While the story behind Diwali and the manner of celebration varies from region to region (festive fireworks, worship, lights, sharing of sweets), the essence is the same – to rejoice in the Inner Light

from-

http://www.google.com/doodle4google/history.html

How can Google users/the public submit ideas for doodles?

The doodle team is open to user ideas; requests for doodles can be sent to proposals@google.com

 

 

Research on Social Games

Social Gaming is slightly different from arcade gaming, and the heavy duty PSP3, XBox, Wii world of gaming.  Some observations on my research ( 😉 ) on social gaming across internet is as follows-

There are mostly 3 types of social games-

1) Quest- Build a town/area/farm to earn in game money or points

2) Fight- fight other people /players /pigs earn in game money or points

3) Puzzle- Stack up, make three of a kind, etc

Most successful social games are a crossover between the above three kinds of social games (so build and fight, or fight and puzzle etc)

In addition most social games have some in game incentives that are peculiar to social networks only. In game incentives are mostly in game cash to build, energy to fight others, or shortcuts in puzzle games. These social gaming incentives are-

1) Some incentive to log in daily/regularly/visit game site more often

2) Some incentive to invite other players on the social network

A characteristic of this domain is blatant me-too, copying and ripping creative ideas (but not the creative itself)  from other social games. In general the successful game which is the early leader gets most of the players but other game studios can and do build up substantial long tail network of players by copying games. Thus there are a huge variety of games.

However there are massive hits like Farmville and Angry Birds, that prove that a single social game well executed can be very valuable and profitable to both itself as well as the primary social network hosting it.

Accordingly the leading game studios are Zynga, Electronic Arts and (yes) Microsoft while Google has been mostly a investor in these.

A good website for studying data about social games is http://www.appdata.com/ while a sister website for studying developments is  http://www.insidesocialgames.com/

As you can see below Appdata is a formidable data gatherer here (though I find the top App – Static HTML as both puzzling and a sign of un corrected automated data gathering),

but I expect more competition in this very lucrative segment.

 

 

PiCloud gives away 20 free compute hours PER month

Announcement from PiCloud- (and this is apart from the 5 hours free that a beginner account gets)

http://www.picloud.com/

 

Starting this month, all users will get 20 c1 core hours worth of credits each and every month.

 

  • If you ran out of your original 5 core hour credits, you can come back and play around some more!
  • If you have minimal computing needs, this means that you can now use PiCloud regularly without even having to enter a credit card.

 

Looking for more? Don’t forget, we’re giving away $500 worth of credits as part of our Academic Research Program. Applications are due this Thursday, October 27th

New game on Google Plus- Triple Town by Spry Fox

The latest game on Google Plus is Triple Town, by Spry Fox http://www.spryfox.com/, makers of Steambirds survival.

Spry Fox is made by two ex Microsofties Daniel Cook and Dave E. , and they already have hit games on their hands but true to their name, they use all platforms including Flash.

Triple Town has a slightly classic smoothed font/icon look for a build build game with cute animals. Detailed review as follows soon!

The game is a play on Tic Tac To, and uses a combination of tricks to keep you hooked, from smoooth iconery,cute bears, ninja bears,coins that buy you goodies. Basically 3 consecutive grass make a bush, 3 consecutive Bush make a Tree, 3 trees make a house, 3 houses make a church, trap bears and they turn into gravestones and 3 gravestones turn into– you get the idea. Use bots to clear space, crystals to make wild cards, and store and retrieve things from storehouse. Ninja bear teleports!