PopCap is sending holiday cheer with an update to the iPhone version of Plants vs Zombies. Plants vs Zombies characters will have festive hats and clothing, but there is more to this dlc. Players can now play as zombies in I, Zombie mode.

The update includes leaderboards and four new achievements: Better Off Dead, I,Win, Where the Sun don’t Shine, and Undead Space.

Also last week, Plants vs Zombies dropped the first hip hop beats.

A new study from GameHouse about women that play games just came out and everyone is focusing on what they feel is the important aspect of the study. Sex. The study surveyed 2000 US adults and shows that women that play online games have more sex than women that play games offline.

Let’s start with a few flaws that I find in the survey. One, 2000 people is not that large of a sample audience. First, they don’t qualify by what they mean with the term online gaming. Do they mean console online gaming? Or maybe PC? Is it separated by game genre? The first fact alone sets off my warning meters…according to their study, 55% of online gamers are women and 45% are men. While I would love to see the number of women gaming to continue to rise, the most recent stats from the ESA show that the number of women gamers is around 48%.

The study goes on to talk about relationship status of female online gamers versus female gamers. Most writers focusing on the stat that shows online female gamers have more sex. The other personal stats are so close with a difference of only 4% (including the sex question).

Then the most important stats I see state that female gamers actually don’t play online to be social. This is typically the reason that people think casual gamers play. They believe it’s a social outlet. But the study suggests otherwise. The issue is here, they don’t state if it’s online or offline female gamers that play for reasons other than social.

While an interesting infographic, I feel that these images still don’t tell the true story of female gamers online or offline.

We are always looking for ways to keep our minds sharp as we get older, and Bejeweled Blitz may have just joined the ranks of crossword puzzles and Sudoku as tools to help us do that. A recent survey study of more than 10,000 U.S. adults suggests that playing Bejeweled Blitz regularly could enhance mental sharpness and pattern recognition in adults over 50.

This survey, which is the first in a series that takes a rare look at the cognitive benefits of video game playing on adults over 50, focuses on Bejeweled Blitz and the tasks the game sets on the brain, including quick decision making, visual searching, and reaction time. Sharpness in performing other tasks was the benefit seen most often – 47.2% in people over 50. Pattern recognition was reported most in adults over 65, as well as the ability to perform timed tasks more quickly.

The results were presented by PopCap Games and University of Massachusetts Amherst psychology researcher Susan K. Whitbourne, Ph.D. at this year’s American Psychological Association convention in Washington, DC., and were well received by fellow researchers attending. Dr. Walter Boot, director of the Attention and Training Lab of the Department of Psychology at Florida State University, stated “I believe the work Dr. Whitbourne and her colleagues are doing, using Bejeweled Blitz, is both critical and exciting, and that more research like this needs to be done exploring not only the types of games that bring about cognitive benefits, but also the types of games older adults are willing to play and why. The best cognitive aging intervention in the world is useless if older adults aren’t willing and able to engage in it. By investigating attitudes and perceived benefits of video game interventions, this research has the potential to discover game interventions that are both effective and enjoyable.”

It will be interesting to see what comes from the remaining surveys in the series and whether or not any of them spark more research into this potential, such as including new hands on studies with people who haven’t ever played before. But maybe that’s the next step… actually evaluating Bejeweled Blitz’s effectiveness as a tool for cognitive improvement after investigating its potential. Of course, all I really have to say is that I hope Bejeweled Blitz is still around when I am 65 .

I think my favorite talk of the day at Casual Connect had to be The State of Social in Social Games led by Aki Jarvinen, Creative Director, Ph.D., of Digital Chocolate. He gave this talk at Casual Connect in Europe and the organizers had to have a repeat here in Seattle this summer.

There have been questions as to whether social games are really games, as well as how social social games really are. This discussion, addressed both of these, but really focused on how social social games are, starting out by posing the question – is social broken?

Social gaming in the developing world has been compared to passing notes under the door with friends instead of actually meeting face to face, or parallel play among toddlers. Both of these made sense to me. Yes, when we play social games with our friends, we aren’t face to face, which means that we are largely playing social games on our own, checking in on each other once in a while. Most of the time, we aren’t playing at the same time, which is, I think, the point. How can we expect social games to be completely social if they have to be built on people playing at different times?

Jarvinen focused in on the elements necessary for social relationships, including communication, bonding, social presence, and social space. The nature of social platforms takes away from a lot of what these require. Communication is the basis for any kind of relationship. Without communication, there can’s be any kind of intimacy. In most social games, there isn’t any true way to communicate while playing. This is the main thing I miss. Most communication sent between friends through social games is controlled by the game. True, sometimes there is the ability to “add a personal message,” but the personal message gets easily lost in the point of the game’s message, which is often “Dawn has sent you a gift in…” I would like a place to be able to chat or play cooperatively if it just so happens that we are playing at the same time. This would provide a much richer social atmosphere, but may not add any virality or monetization to the game (might even take away some of this), which is from the developer/publisher standpoint, the important thing. Luckily, the most popular social platforms have a chat built in to them, so if we don’t mind not playing in full screen mode, which takes away from the game experience, we can chat with friends who are playing, adding to the social experience.

But this does get back to the subject of social presence. Social presence requires immediacy. That is the main thing that social networks in general, social gaming included, are missing for lack of a better word – hence the passing of the note under the door. But I think instead of thinking of it as missing immediacy, we should think of it as filing in empty space in relationships when social presence is not available or possible.

So, I focused in on what the social point is in social games. True, there are aspects of social games that are both enhancing the social front and putting up obstacles to both the social experience of the game and the social experience of the platform. The obstacles, funny enough, present themselves as additional ways to interact with friends, but are really designed to create a viral thread for the game to expand on. Sure, they can sometimes add to the experience of the game individually, but they don’t really increase the social experience of the game. In fact, in some cases, these can put up barriers for friends within the social platform who don’t play, and who also don’t like their news feed spammed by someone “sharing” their achievements or asking for “help” with a task.

If social gaming means that we are playing a game on our own, simply taking a minute once in a while once in a while to check in on how a friend’s game is going, giving them a hand or a gift to help them out, perhaps it’s more appropriately called shared gaming. There may not be the optimal social activity there, but visiting a friend’s board, farm, neighborhood, or aquarium does offer a different way to connect with them outside of our normal relationship, but not instead of our normal relationship. I think this is the point that is missed when people start talking about social gaming. Because hey, if my friend isn’t home, if they live far away, or if we work opposite hours, I would rather pass a note under the door than lose them completely.

What do you think? What could make social games more social? Or are they social enough as they are?

Stay tuned for The Add Me Culture…

One of the most interesting things for me this year at Casual Connect was going to some of the discussions. Because Casual Connect is more for people in the industry, or people trying to work their way into the industry, I got a peek behind the curtain at what goes in to making casual and social games, some of the psychology, some of the business. This particular talk was given by Greg Mills from Digital Chocolate – makers of one of my favorite social games, “Zombie Lane.”

Now, if you have ever played a social game – particularly on Facebook – you have noticed that they are largely free to play. However, when push comes to shove, it’s difficult to get very far very fast when you play with no paid content. There is a multitude of ways to spend Facebook credits within many games that help move things along and level up more frequently, whether it’s buying basic units of energy in energy based games, or in game currency, or purchasing customizations or upgraded weapons to use less energy to start with. For those of us with competitive friends, these items are very tempting indeed.

Of course, those of us who do enjoy playing for free, the “freeloaders” as you will, do generate some cost to the system. So, basically this talk was to describe ways to monetize us without “cannibalizing” the “whales” – people who do pay to play. Of course, this is a sticky situation from a developer standpoint, but what about from a consumer standpoint? Chances are the 90% or so of us who don’t pay for content never will, or maybe we will buy one or two virtual goods here and there. So, how will our gaming experience change – or how does it differ from those few who do pay?

One of the points made clear by Greg Mills is that virtual goods and advertizing are both equally important. We will continue to see a push for us to start or continue to buy an energy pack here and there or a shiny new weapon. And those banner ads on the page that don’t interfere with the game aren’t going anywhere any time soon. However, he did bring up a few new ways some companies may bring in some advertising dollars.

One way is a preroll ad. We may start seeing advertisements while the game is loading, whether it be a static ad or a short video. These already exist in places like broadcasting network websites in order for us to be able to watch a clip or full episode of a show, we watch an ad beforehand – supposedly while the clip is loading. For me, this is not really disruptive for the playing experience. It seems to be a system in which the developers can easily put in for freeloaders and not for whales. For this option, it seems to simply be a matter of who will start putting them in first – a when, not if, scenario. I don’t expect it to take too long.

The other way he talked about, which is a little more intriguing to me, is more incentivized ads. Incentivized ads provide some sort of reward for clicking through to a website or watching an ad. Though these are potentially more disruptive, they are a greater win for all parties concerned. Players first and foremost get a choice whether or not to watch the ad or click through, but they also get a reward for choosing to, usually a good they would normally have to spend a small bit of money for, such as the ability to gift land mines to friends, or 5 extra energy. From the developer standpoint, these ads tend to pay out at a higher rate, since people are actively paying exclusive attention to the ads, which is a greater win companies advertising. These ads do exist already in some games. I, for one, think this is a good compromise for playing for free. A little bit of time and brain clutter for an increased ability to be competitive sounds like a pretty good bargain to me.

What do you think? How intrusive do you think advertising is on the gaming experience, and is it a fair trade to sit through ads in order to not pay for playing? Do you pay money to play these types of games in order to avoid advertising or in order to be able to play more?

Impressions

In the beginning of the day, Things were a little overwhelming. Attendance was definitely up at Casual Connect this year.
But, while pushing through the clusters of people, an overwhelming sense of familiarity took over. It kind of felt like coming home. Though this year, I took a little different strategy to my single day of attendance. I wanted to listen to some panels and see where things sat in the industry instead of trying to meet with a bunch of people singularly. I think this worked out well, and I am anxious to share what I heard, including some of the psychology behind game development, the subtle ways they keep free social games free, and the quality and quantity of social behavior in so called social games.

I did meet with a couple of people singularly and am happy with what I learned. Whereas in previous years, it seemed like there was a big separation and traditional casual games were starting to have to compete with flash games, social games, and mobile games. Now it looks like they are starting to become a cohesive unit and work together interchangeably across multiple platforms. I also saw some exciting new developments in new ways to play with new technologies that work with smart TV’s.

I will say that it did seem like there was a lot of focus placed on monetization and different ways to take payments, etc. There were more and more booths and companies dedicated to this side of the business, which has some importance in a conference of this type, geared toward more industry professionals and prospective industry professionals. But from a consumer perspective, it’s not something I want to see such a big presence from.

All in all, there were some good things going on, good energy, interesting people, organization, cooperation, and innovation happening this year at Casual Connect. Stay tuned for more details and specifics. I can’t wait to hear some feedback as to what some of the panelists said and the direction of the industry as a whole.

It was confirmed today that Electronic Arts has bought PopCap for what might be the largest amount spent on a game company yet. The amount after stocks and some other complicated figures, is around $1.3 billion. The rumors started a week or so ago on Twitter and it looks like in this case the rumors were true.

What I love is that PopCap turned around to show that they still have same creative humor that they are known for with the greeting to their new bosses above. EA CEO John Riccitiello noted that they don’t want to change how PopCap operates.

“PopCap has been an attractive target for us for years,” he said. “We think of it as one of the premier content creators in the history of our industry.”

EA does have a proven track record of not changing Bioware. Only time will tell if PopCap can maintain their individuality. In the meantime, where is our Bejeweled levels in Battlefield 3?

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