Week 3

Last Wednesday was definitely a surprise to me, as our guest speaker Doug Pearson came into the classroom. Before that day I knew Doug only as a fellow badminton player, and that later changed into the CTO of Flowplay. The topic he presented to us in class about casual games was interesting. He said that more and more games were being created towards a new audience, the casual gamer. I have always consider myself as a "gamer," but lately I have been a lot more interested in games that are quick to play and require less of my time. It would make sense that as a full time college student, I just wouldn't have the time to put into a normal 60 hour RPG, but at the same time I feel that the interest level for me is not there anymore. I also had another discussion with a friend that is currently working on ideas for the next Microsoft console. He said that they may be looking at more towards casual gamers for the next generation, something that Microsoft is usually bad at. It will be interesting to see what will come up in the next few years from the console platforms.

I did get around to check out ourWorld, the game created by Flowplay. My first impression was that it was all about social interaction between players with little or no "game" aspect to it. Though this would probably be more appealing to teenage girls, but as a guy gamer I need to have a sense of achievement through playing some sort of game. I later did find the game appeal as I progressed through by receiving game badges and "flow" by attaining a certain score on a number of the games offered in ourWorld. I was disappointed that a lot of the things I wanted for the customization of my character appearance (I wanted a tatoo) could only be purchased with gems, their premium currency. I guess they have to make money somehow, and purchasing gems seems the best way to do it. The UI was definitely the most appealing to me, and would be an interesting topic for my research paper.