Panda's Big Adventure

Our son, Rob, has just published the third game in his Panda series on his Bad Viking games web site. This one is called Panda's BIG Adventure. Having played it, I think it will appeal to old and young alike. There are one or two amusing scenes.

For this one he has moved away from the sniper format in Panda, Tactical Sniper and in Panda II to one where you have to collect things in different scenes. It doesn't take long to play but it will test your lateral thinking.

If you are above these kinds of games, try them on your kids. They're fun and they'll make them think a bit too.

Panda Tactical Sniper II

Rob's new panda game is up and running. It's in the beta stage at the moment, available only here on Bubblebox. com for a few days before it will be released to the web.

The first version of the game mentioned here has registered more than 2 million plays since it was launched in October.

He goes back to Lille University today where he seems to be finding the time to work on these games. Who know's, it may be the beginning of a career?

A few more seconds......

Rob has passed me some interesting statistics for his new game, Panda: Tactical Sniper, mentioned in earlier blogs below (Fifteen seconds of fame and Panda: Tactical Sniper).

In one day, yesterday, it was played 80,000 times bringing his worldwide play total to 190,000 since Monday. It has been played so far in 159 countries and has been hosted by 149 different web sites. Mochiads.com, the advertising company that concentrates on such games, awarded him its $100 game-of-the-week prize.

Malcolm Gladwell (discussed here) once wrote about something he called a "tipping point" in his book of the same name, noting the multiplying phenomenon when something takes off. But on today's web the tipping point rush is so rapid that it overwhelms like a wave and recedes just as rapidly.

There remains an issue of sustainability for such games but perhaps that is not important. No-one ever talked about sustainability in cigarette-card collecting or among playground games such as Pokemon cards (although Pokemon itself is still going). These things come and go but, in the meantime, Rob's target for this one is a million plays and he just might get it.

Fifteen seconds of fame

It's been a big week for Rob's game. I Googled Panda, Tactical Sniper this morning and came up with nearly 340,000 pages - not all the game, obviously, but certainly all the early references take me to it.

I've just been chatting with Rob in Lille on Skype. In the short time we were talking some 1,000 people started playing his game in different parts of the world.

He explained the publishing process to me. First he agreed a deal with the owner of the Bubblebox.com site. When the game was published there on Monday it was still in "test" and the reactions of people who played it highlighted one or two glitches which were ironed out by yesterday (Thursday) when it was released generally.

The way this works is that some web sites pick it up and put it on their sites while he can submit it to others.

Since Monday the game has been played more than 70,000 times and this figure is probably already out of date by the time I can write and publish this blog. I know that the internet deals with big numbers but the figures for this and other such games are bringing home to me the multiplying factors of the web, particularly among that early teen age group that comprises the "market."

I use that word cautiously since we usually associate markets with financial transactions but in the flash game world very little money is changing hands, one reason why it has been left by the big commercial players to the masses of youngsters who enjoy making and playing games for themselves.

"There is such fast turnover in these games that there is no time for anyone to review them before players move on to the next one," says Rob. Not so much 15 minutes of fame, then, but 15 seconds.

It's like a sophisticated version of children chalking squares on the playground for a game of hopscotch. But revenues are being earned through advertising and these can accumulate to reasonable earnings for the most popular games.

The top games, says Rob, might earn as much as $10,000 through advertising but better money can be earned through a site sponsorship.

One possibility that Rob has not yet explored is earnings through product placement. His game features a well known biscuit brand - HobNobs - but he doesn't have a deal there. Games that do have such arrangements are called "advergames".

No, Rob, isn't going to be able to retire on his gangster Panda but he's learning a lot about internet publishing and marketing. At the design stage he was discussing the potential appeal of marrying the puzzle game format with that of shooting games. That's innovative stuff.

Oh yes, and he's studying maths too, in French, just now. This is not a "full time" industry. It comprises thousands of mostly young people all over the world, like this chap who has done Rob's art work, working in their spare time, rarely meeting with each other co-operating instead through instant messaging. It's a different world.

Panda: Tactical Sniper

I don't play computer games much but my middle son, Robert, who began to take an interest in the summer when he created this game, has moved on with a new game called Panda: Tactical Sniper.

It was published for the first time yesterday (Monday, October 13) and has been played almost 30,000 times already. That seems to me an astonishing figure yet it is still a comparatively modest number compared with some of the industry leaders.

I say "industry" because this kind of games publishing is an industry in its own right. Rob has been paid a good fee up front for the work (with bonuses if it succeeds) and an artist was employed to improve on his work.

This particular genre is a "sniper game." Rob is no fan of gun games but they are a popular choice among young adolescent males. He is more in to problem-solving and he has worked the sniping activity in to a puzzle game that is no pushover.

Of course it works on both levels and those who want to rack up a big score go through it again for speed and accuracy once they have worked out the puzzles. I have been looking at a few of the other games on this site and some are very clever indeed.

It's easy to be put off by all the advertising on the sites but in this world where sites such as Facebook have still to make a profit this is one part of the internet that really works as a business.

I sent him a couple of my own ideas this morning which failed to impress. Instead (between his studies) he is engaged in creating an obvious follow up - Panda II.