Co-Founder of Plixl

It’s official!  Nathan (whom you met previously) and I have started an independent game company, Plixl!  I’m simply overjoyed at having it be official – it’s such a wonderful feeling  We’re currently busy at work on our first title, a casual game for mobile devices – we plan to release late summer!

We’ll have so much more to share soon, but for now:

like us at www.facebook.com/plixl

follow us @plixl www.twitter.com/plixl

and check out our webpage www.plixl.com

oh, and we’re even here angel.co/plixl and here www.linkedin.com

Talk to you soon!

Global Game Jam 2013

My husband, Nate and I successfully completed the Global Game Jam in San Francisco!  It was an exhausting yet exhilarating experience.  The challenge – build a game in 48 hours with a common theme.

For the theme, a sound file was played of a beating heart – there were a ton of different directions we could go!  The craziest part was settling on a game idea in less than 30 minutes so we could start building something right away!  Nate and I started out building a rhythm based Uno experience – we were to tap the right card on the heartbeat!  Along the way, the gameplay evolved into more of a solitaire mechanic and took on a not-too-bloody, blood cell theme  We named it Blood Thinner.

We built it for the iPad, but it is also playable online just the same.  Tap blood cells one number higher or lower than your last – Zero and Nine loop around.  The faster you tap, the faster the blood cells spawn.  Try to tap as many blood cells as you can in 60 seconds to get the highest score!

Play Here and let me know what you think!

How NOT to Design Breakthrough Inventions

I’m incredibly excited to share the ’60 Minutes’ television segment featuring David Kelley, How to Design Breakthrough Inventions!  Besides his career, it focuses a bunch around David Kelley’s early relationship with Apple and his long lasting friendship with Steve Jobs.  It offers only a quick overview of IDEO’s process, but I love how the beginning of the segment focuses on some of my favorite core values – building on the ideas of others, empathy and diversity in teams.  These values are key to promoting creativity and innovation among teams.

In fact, the first thing I noticed when I flew to IDEO’s headquarters in Palo Alto, CA for my 10-hour long interview workshop was how supportive people were in conversations.  This communication style wasn’t just used when coming up with ideas – it was a communication style that permeated almost every conversation I had at IDEO.  This doesn’t mean people were ‘soft,’ on the contrary conversations discussing difficult matters would still be effective and had the unique ability to do so without reducing morale, creativity or productivity.  I’ve written a few blog posts about this topic, the most relevant being Be Courageous:  Look for Success and Feedback is Not a Four Letter Word.

Since I’ve already posted about HOW to do use this communication style, I’d like to share a few communications and development methods that are NOT effective for creativity, morale and productivity.  After all, this blog post is titled ‘How NOT to Design Breakthrough Inventions:’

“Your Idea Sucks”

Actual wording can be anywhere from “not compelling or inspiring,” “that’s a bad or terrible idea” to “that’ll never work or that would fail.”  This is what can happen when this method is used:

They may have worked hours on this idea and were very proud of it.  Now they may feel like their hard work was poo-pooed on which can make them feel undervalued, like they wasted their time or that they suck at coming up with ideas.  This type of feedback is unlikely to be a good experience for them.  As a result, they may feel they are being unfairly criticized and become resentful.  Worse, they may become fearful of bringing forth new ideas so they can avoid this negative experience in the future.  Even if they do continue to work on ideas, they’ll have a hard time being creative since fear dampens the creative process.  Don’t expect innovative new ideas from this person in the future.

My advice to you, give actionable feedback, empathize with your team and spend the time to teach and not scold.

“This Just Isn’t It”

This is a basic lack of feedback.  This can happen by using phrases like “its not really want I want,” “come back with something else” or “this just isn’t it.”  Without following up with detailed feedback, this method should rarely be used.  This is what can happen when this method is used:

They are most likely eager to please you and probably tried to give you what you wanted.  Now they may feel directionless, like they are spinning their wheels and are wasting their time.  If this pattern continues, they may start to lose faith in the leadership since they may think you aren’t confident in your vision.  Ultimately, they may feel like a drone following orders, lose their sense of ownership or feel their expertise is undervalued or underutilized.  This kind of environment may make it difficult to hold a strong vision for the project.  Without the core team member holding the vision, and without being motivated by ownership, the project will suffer.  In the end, the person may spend their efforts just trying to get anything approved so they can move forward and to get out of the stressful loop – even if they don’t fully believe in it.

If you’re the manager, my advice to you is to have the confidence to give actionable feedback and spend the time to do so.  The more you put into your employees, the more you will get from them.

“Let’s Pivot… for the 15th Time”

In fast changing markets sometimes pivoting is an important strategy, but pivoting too many times can lead to ineffective results.  When this type of decision comes from above and when it becomes a regular occurrence, this is what may happen:

Similar to a lack of feedback from above, the person may feel they are spinning their wheels and wasting their time.  If the changes seem arbitrary  they may think you don’t have a confident vision in the product and may lose faith in your leadership.  Again, the more time spent in the pivoting process, the less ownership they may feel and they may lose their vision.  At a certain point they may begin to feel that any work they do complete will be lost in the next pivot and they may stop putting their heart into it.  Whether the changes are arbitrary or valid, the more time spent in this stage, the further away the ship date becomes.  Soon, competitors will have released multiple products in the time you’ve spent fumbling around with one.

My advice to you, settle on a clear goal before sending your team down any path.  Remember the 80/20 rule – even if there might be something “not exactly aligned,” as long as the product is fun, it’s likely to be more beneficial from a commerce and a team morale perspective to settle on a direction and move forward.

Zynga’s The Ville vs. EA’s Sims Social: Core Loop

There are major differences in the gameplay between Zynga’s The Ville and EA’s Sims Social.  I’ll describe these differences and in my opinion, identify which game is more fun.

First, I’ve taken a look at the games’ core loops.  The core loop consists of the main activities the player completes over and over again – there are lots of other things to do in each game outside of this, but I’m just focusing on the very basic flow of the game.

The Ville

In The Ville, the player’s main goal is to get the most impressive house possible and expand their property.  The player does this buy buying and placing decoration items into the home or yard.  The player will need to earn the coins for these decorations, mainly by completing jobs – like painting or a print business.  However, in order to complete these jobs, the player needs to earn smiles by interacting with friend characters or cooking and eating food.

The secondary goal is to continually increase the efficiency of their job contracts by buying new productivity items with better job contracts.

Sims Social

In Sims Social, the player’s main goal is to increase their home value by spending coins on decorations – they don’t get any gameplay benefit from this but since it’s how they are judged amongst their friends, it’s motivating to keep that number going up.  To earn coins, the player will need to complete activity tasks like painting and cooking.

The secondary goal is to master each activity item and buy new activity types with higher earnings.

Which one does it better?

Home Value – The Main Goal

Both games’ goals are the same – get the most valuable house possible.  Sims Social provides a great way to motivate the player to do this, simply by ranking the player amongst their friends by using this value.  The Ville does not do this, so they miss out on this opportunity to motivate the player.

Sims Social’s rankings by home value 

However, The Ville’s expansion mechanic makes up for this and actually provides a better experience overall by tying the value into the expansion feature.  Since the player needs to increase their home value to unlock new expansions, and that the expansions have interesting discovery items, the player is very well motivated to increase the home value.

The Ville’s expansions need enough home value to unlock, and look what you get!

One point for Zynga’s The Ville!

Productivity – The Secondary Goal

Both games use productivity items like easels and computers to produce coins.  The Ville’s mechanic requires the player to spend smiles to start the contracts and most require a long wait time to complete.  I find this to be overcomplex and frustrating when I run out of smiles, run out of energy or don’t have the ingredients for the food I need to earn the smiles.  There are too many blockers and not enough fun rewards – it feels like work to me.

The Ville’s Art Studio

Sims Social’s mechanic requires the player to initially acquire collectibles (from gifts, completing task, farming…) to unlock each activity.  Once the activity is unlocked, the player is free to spend their energy to master each task.  The player is rewarded for mastering the tasks by unlocking even cooler activity types.  I find this mechanic to be much more fun – the mastery element makes me feel like I’m progressing and my work is paying off.  And even though the player must acquire the collectibles in order to unlock each task, I still find it fun since it provides meaningful choice on how to find these items.

Sims Social Still Life Easel featuring Mastery

One point for EA’s Sims Social!

Tie Breaker

It looks like we’ll need a tie breaker here.  And for me, this was actually a deal breaker.  One of the features in Sims Social is the inspiration meter.  The inspiration meter keeps track of the character’s needs – like going to the bathroom, sleeping, washing up or social.  Over time, the character needs the player to fulfill these needs.  The integration of this mechanic made me feel like I was spending too much time watching my character go to the bathroom – it was fun the first few times, but every few minutes come on!  For this exact reason, I quit playing the game.

Sims Social “Inspiration” Meter

I was throughly relieved when learning The Ville did not feature such a strict requirement.  Therefore, Zynga’s The Ville wins for most fun game!

Now the question is, with all the recent news about cloning, who is willing to make a game combining The Ville’s home value mechanic with Sims Social’s productivity mechanic and make me a happy gamer?