Ranking

The last few days I’ve been thinking about how I would arrange the ranking system. I decided to have one ‘main ranking’ and besides that multiple other, less important, rankings. This iswhat I’ve got:

1.   Most Sales: the quantity of sales you make decide your ranking
   
2.  Most Goods Produced: the quantity of goods you produce decide your ranking
   
3.   Stock Market Profit: the total profit you made by trading shares on the stock market decide your ranking
   

These are the ‘side rankings’. It’s the main ranking which I’m not sure about. Now I have:

1.  Ranking: your total value (in ‘points’). An example how this would be arranged: Cash on hand + (each level of each building you own x 3) + (each piece of empty land you own x 2) + ((every good + gold you own)  x 1) + (every resource you own x 0.5)

I think I can’t do much wrong with this, still if anyone has a better idea, feel free to tell me ^^. The ‘side-rankings’ would be available during each rounds. The ‘main ranking’ only after each round.

A little game theory based on "Maslow's hierarchy of needs"

This is a post about little theory of mine concerning the development of browser based games.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

Maslow's hierarchy of need says human's needs are divided into 5 levels.

Most important first:

1. Physiological needs (water, food, ... )
   
2. Safety needs (security from crime, health security, ... )
   
3. Social needs (friendship, ... )
   
4. Esteem (achievement, respect by others, ... )
   
5. Self-actualization (morality, creativity, ... )

When  the first need is satisfied, people will move on to the second need, and so on.

So why do people play (browser based) games? Where do games fit into this hierarchy?

I think it's pretty clear.

• Social needs
  
• Esteem

I would consider Self-actualization too, but I think that's less important. Note some people don't even get to this last level of needs.

When people play games, the reasons are:

• They want to make friends
  
• They want a feeling of achievement (e.g. quests)
  
• They want respect by others (Dude, see my lvl 100 char!!!)
  
• ...

I conclude that if a game wants to be succesfull it should take care of the social needs and esteem of it's players.

An intresting topic on bbgamezone was for me "Game Play vs. Graphics". And "What makes a good game?". In both topics there were people for graphics and there were people for gameplay. But most people agree that the community makes the game, the community makes the players stick around.

I noticed this in games I played already to.

My little theory applied on some games:

Erepulik:

Built on it's community, became very popular. The "social needs" are taken into account. Maybe it could invest some more in "esteem".

Neopets:

The "respect by others" is very important here. You can win prizes, collect things, make a beautifull pet, ... just to show off to your fellow players!

Tribalwars:

This game has good gameplay, but the reason I sticked around was because of the "clan" I was part off.

I bet you could apply this theory to almost every popular browser based game out there will forfill one of these 2 needs. And the bad games, the failures, couldn't forfill them.

Not browser based games usualy took care of the "esteem" (achievement), but now are focusing more and more on the "social needs". Playing together is always better than playing alone :D.

I didn't do a lot of research, so there is a very real chance I'm wrong on this, so feel free to comment.

Though, this is just a little theory of mine. And Maslow's hierarchy of needs isn't exact sience either. (chapter: "criticism" on Wikipedia)

Still alive!

Hey again,

It's been a while since my last post :D. But I'm still alive. I've been working realy hard on the gaming and it's going well. I started learning JavaScript (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript) a few days ago and that also is going well.

If I get to it, I'll give you guys more information about what I've done already and what the next steps will be. But for now just know the project is more alive than ever!

See you soon, hopefully