There's an excellent new article up on GameDaily.biz today examining how effective game websites are at driving sales. In it Scott Meldrum of HypeCouncil (warning - ANNOYING music!) takes a critical look at the websites for Bioshock, Guitar Hero 3 and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

The sites, while in many cases beautiful, come up sorely lacking when it comes to some of the key functions you expect from a major marketing vehicle. There was little call to action for purchase, little or no attempt to create a community around the sites and almost no attention paid to turning your users into Mini-Marketers for the games.

Bummer... but not at all unexpected, to be quite honest.

Where are the feeds for game news? Where is the link to purchase Bioshock digitally? Where is my AIM icon pack? What about keeping people coming back once the game has launched?

Now, The Cult of Rapture does have some awesome goodies but it is so, so hard to find... and doesn't really seem to fit in at all with the big, Flashy main Bioshock site. Could it be that the two were designed by different folks? The Cult by people who "get it" and the main site by people who, quite frankly, don't?

The Guitar Hero 3 site does offer a glimmer of hope with the Backstage Pass but breaks one of my cardinal rules for websites: the dreaded "coming soon." I can almost guarantee you that I'll never come back to see if you finished what you promised.

We're always preaching to developers about how community needs to be a part of game design from day one. It looks like that message needs to be expanded to more forcefully include marketing as a part of the design process.

Commande & Conquer 3 was an excellent case study for this approach. We worked very closely with the team at EA LA to get as much of the site up and functional as soon as possible. C&C Online was there to provide a constant stream of information for fans of the game.

There were forums for users to chat with one another, developer blogs on the design process and in-depth podcasts for users to download and listen to again and again. In addition to a wealth of information we gave them a real reason to visit: gamers were allowed to pre-register their nicknames for the retail release.

Perhaps most importantly the site morphed once the game was released. The marketing material was still there for new users but new, live content appeared. Ladders, clans, Battlecast and other features were exposed giving people a real reason to return time and time again.

It pains me to think of all the time and money spent on the ineffective sites Meldum profiled. How much more effective could they have been in driving sales by recognizing and using the simplest of tools the Web has to offer? What more could have been done post-launch to keep users coming back, priming them for the next installment in the franchise...

Word on the street is that there's this great new game in town. Halo something or other. I hear it is breaking all kinds of sales records, causing rampant truancy at schools across the nation and is also the future of gaming.

What impresses me most, though, about Halo 3 aren't the big things but rather the small things, the niceties, that most people are probably going to ignore.

The Forge? It reminds me of the skate park editors in early Tony Hawk games. I've seen better level editors and, let's face it, most user-created maps are crap. I admit, though, that I am curious to see what the little twist playing games while editing takes place will turn up. Those of you who played SourceForts can probably relate. An 8-player deathmatch with all eight players simultaneously editing the very same map has fascinating potential. A small twist sure to reap rewards.

The replay system, too, has all be done before. There's a long history in the Quake community of making games, Half-Life gurus took it to another level and then, of course, there's the rabid RTS replay-consuming community. (See also the great BattleCast feature we worked with Command & Conquer 3 on earlier this year.) What I love about the replay system in Halo 3 is just how drop-dead easy it is to use. A hallmark of the Halo series is the attention paid to usability. While usability is certainly no "small thing" it definitely is oft overlooked.

Truth be told, I think the matchmaking in Halo 3 is just average. It's fairly easy to find a match but, being the fast-twitch gamer that I am I'm frustrated any time I have to sit and watch my Xbox tell me "Searching for close match." Thankfully there's a gorgeous little map on the matchmaking screen that has little dots on the globe showing me from where online players hail. (We had a similar feature in GameSpy Arcade's lobbies - see "Playing Peer to Peer Games.") I love it! I could stare at this thing all day. It's a tiny little feature, but one that distracts me from the tedium of matchmaking and makes me feel connected to the community.

I haven't seen much hooplah about the player stats shown on Bungie.net perhaps that's because, given what the Battlefield franchise and others have done on the web many find it fairly ho-hum - aside from the slick presentation. What I absolutely think is a small but important feature is the feed available for every player. I can now add a friend's feed to my favorite reader and get hourly updates on his ownage.

All of these little things, along with dozens more, take a game that is "merely great" to all new heights. I hope that more developers take note and start sweating the small stuff. As consumers grow more savvy they're going to expect these niceties and, maybe, start to punish developers for "merely" making a great game.

We participated in the last Gamasutra Podcast and debated with a few other industry folks whether or not the new E3 works.

Susan Arendt, from Wired, N'Gai Croal, General Editor of Newsweek, and John Davison of 1UP were there to represent the media. Denny Thorley, President of Day 1 Studios, and I were there to represent developers. Opinions on the new format varied, with media being disappointed while Denny and I thought the new format largely worked. Give it a listen and let us know whether or not you agree.

I was recently listening to Science Friday on NPR and heard a fantastic interview with John Maeda, Associate Director of Research at The Media Lab at MIT. During the interview Maeda discussed his book The Laws of Simplicity.

The laws range from the obvious (Law 1: Reduce "The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.") to the nearly contradictory (Law 9: Failure "Some things can never be made simple.") You can - and should - read more about each of the laws on Maeda's blog. It struck me as I was listening that complexity is among the greatest barriers we in the game industry face.

Complexity prevents us from expanding our audience.
Need proof? Just watch a non-gamer struggle with a controller. The 360 controller, which I consider quite usable, has two stick controls, a D-pad, 7 buttons on the top of the controller and 4 triggers hidden from view. Over time, of course, using the controller becomes second nature - a natural extension of the player. But not everyone has the time to commit to learning, nor the desire to learn some new skill in order to play a game.

Touching is good. And intuitive.

A large part of Nintendo's success with the DS and the Wii, I would argue, comes from stripping away the complexities of the controller. What could be simpler than tapping directly on the screen of the DS? Or swinging the Wiimote just like you would a golf club? My three year-old quickly figured out how to pet her Nintendog (named 'Anchovy' in case you were interested) and my father has no problem playing Clubhouse Games - online, even!

That's Law 1 in action, folks. How could you put it to use in your game?

Complexity prevents users from discovering (and enjoying) higher-order functionality.
We've focused a good bit in recent years in adding more and more complex functionality to our suite of products. One of the questions that constantly comes up during design meetings is how to add Feature X such that the interface doesn't become needlessly complex? Or, perhaps more importantly, whether or not anyone will really make use of a feature if it requires too much thought on a user's part?

We are, for example, big proponents of lots of filtering in a server browser. It allows users to get a smaller list, making the browsing process faster (Law 3: Time). It also makes the list far more relevant, making it easier to select a server that meets your criteria. Great!

So many options, so much complexity.

Sort of. In practice, though, we often see filtering implemented as a jumble of drop-downs, multi-state checkboxes and text-entry fields. Worse still? The filter options are all present but defaulted to none. Why not pre-select some? Like "not empty/not full" or "not passworded." Law 5, people. Simplicity and complexity need each other.

Complexity causes frustration, fatigue and failure.
As a game developer you want to evoke emotions in your players. You want them to feel attached to the characters. You want them to feel a rush of adrenaline in the heat of battle. You want them to forge strong friendships with the people they play with online.

You don't want them feeling frustrated because they don't understand how a feature works. Or feel fatigued by having to do the same tasks every time they play. Law 7 states that more emotion is better than less. So long as it is positive I'd say that's true. The last thing you need, though, is more negative emotion.

Immediately after hearing the interview I put in an order for The Laws of Simplicity. Download the podcast and see if it has the same effect on you. Who knows, maybe the game you're working on right now could use a little simplicity!

I really welcomed the disappearance of the week-long assault on my senses that E3 had become in recent years. Our primary focus at the show has been to meet with our publisher and developer partners to discuss current projects as well as begin talking about things they had announced at the show. The mega-event had grown so over-the-top that it was difficult to get anything done. As the E3 booths grew more elaborate and the decibels increased meetings held on the show floor literally turned to exchanges shouted between drum beats.

I was relieved when the ESA announced the format change last year. President Doug Lowenstein cited making the show more "business-friendly" among their key reasons for the change:

"When we asked key audiences what they wanted in the new event, we heard that they wanted opportunities for high-level meetings in a business-like setting, to play games, network, and socialize, to see major company offerings while also preserving the sense of discovery that is so much a part of the show, and to hear substantive presentations on the most important issues and trends facing the industry," Lowenstein said.

Sure enough, this year's format was great for business. The 30 minute shouting matches were gone and replaced by leisurely conversations with publishers and developers in private, quiet locations. It was easy to bump into someone walking down Ocean and have an impromptu discussion on the way from the Fairmont to Lowes. What a change!

What was missing, though, was the "sense of discovery." What was missing, more specifically, was Kentia Hall.

Kentia always held a special place in my heart. You never quite knew what you would discover there. There were crazy peripherals, like the CyMouse, that you controlled with your head instead of your hand. I saw the first cool use of a USB camera on a PC at Kentia in Gaijin's Flight of Fancy in which you controlled your dragon and cast spells via gesture recognition.

Kentia was always the home of the risk-taker. While there was certainly a large number of flat-out kooks (God love 'em!) showing their wares in Kentia you could always find one or two gems that you knew would go on to greatness. You can never forget the biggest thing to ever come from Kentia: Guitar Hero. Would Rock Band be all the rage this year without the help of Kentia oh so many years ago? I tend to doubt it.

There was no place at this year's E3 for the smaller developer to participate. If the ESA can crack that nut next year I think that the new E3 will be on the right path.

I'm getting a little tired of all the hype over cross-platform play recently. First it was Shadowrun. Now people seem to be all gah-gah over Universe at War allowing PC vs. Xbox 360 play.

Now, don't get me wrong. I think cross-platform is a good thing, especially when it comes to building a community around a game. No more segmentation of audience by platform. You don't have a little group of Xbox gamers and little group of PC gamers; you have a great big, happy group of Universe at War players. Nothing but goodness, there.

We've been big proponents of cross-platform play for a long time. Together with Terminal Reality we successfully brought PC, Macintosh and Dreamcast users to play against each other in 4x4 Evolution... in October of 2000. Yes, the Dreamcast (R.I.P.) and, yes, in 2000.

4x4 Evolution multiplayer on PC, Macintosh and Dreamcast

Since then we've worked with a number of developers on PS2 vs. PSP games, including the World Series of Poker games. Our long-time friends at Aspyr do an admirable job of keeping PC and Mac users playing together in the same universe in the Civilization IV and Battlefield ports to the Mac. Hell, we even powered the cross-platform Halo on PC and Mac!

Cross-platform isn't rocket science. It's just smart community building.

What rubs me the wrong way about all of the recent cross-platform news is that it is being touted as something new and technically amazing - and that journalists seem to be buying it. I said "Universe at War allowing PC vs. Xbox 360 play" in the first paragraph and I meant it. There's nothing new here, other than a change in Microsoft's attitude.

The story really ought to be, "What's taken you so long?"

The always excellent Bokardo published the second entry in a series on Common Pitfalls of Building Community. (Look for part 1 here.) I thought the first point, not appointing a full-time community manager, was particlarly applicable for the games industry as more and more games look to build a vibrant community both inside and outside the game.

The MMO/persistent world guys have this all figured out. They appoint community managers from the day that a game is announced and carefully herd their community like a much-loved flock of sheep. That said, I still talk with developers on a nearly daily basis who think they can slam a server browser and some leaderboards into their game and - bam! - online and community is done.

Not so, kind sirs. Your community needs a manager, just as a party needs a host. They need an official representative to speak with, an advocate within your studio, someone to mete out justice, someone to set the tone and site mores.

Some of the folks we work with, like the Command & Conquer team, have known this for years and actively manage their community from the inside. (Hi, APOC!) APOC is in the forums every day talking with users, posting news and updates to the site and always on the lookout for troublemakers to punish and community stars to rave about.

For those who use our competition tech to create web-based ladders we offer community management as a part of our service. Take a look at the Star Wars: Empire at War space ladders for an example. [Guard]Valdimer is always there monitoring the ladders for suspicious activity and keeping the community up-to-date on ladder information.

One last thought: Don't make make the mistake of thinking one of your designers or developers can act as the community manager. Once your community becomes active, a place where thousands of users flock each and every day part-time just won't be good enough. Plan ahead for success. Build that CM into your live team's budget or give us a shout to help you out.

The monthly DigiPen PodClass podcast is all about computer and video game development, courtesy of the DigiPen Institute of Technology in lovely Redmond, WA. Host Omaha Sternberg, who also hosts the iGame Radio podcast for MacRadio, gives a run-down on industry news, interviews game industry professionals, and DigiPen faculty on a variety of game development topics.

For Issue 13 of the PodClass Omaha turned her attention to... us! We chatted about our mission at GameSpy, what developers can do to differentiate themselves and how they can use the collective might of the IGN family to get their title front-and-center with our audience. Issue 13 also features Jeremy Mayes and Tom Rassweiler of Arkadium talking about advergaming and advertising in games.

Stream or download the PodClass and hear what we have to say.

Like what you hear? Subscribe to the podcast and get a new issue each month.

First we launch a blog and now we're podcasting? If we can find a way to work in "social networking" and "mash-up" we'll be all set.

When I saw Chris Paladino's most recent post on Managing the 100-Person Friend List I had three thoughts:

1. God bless us geeks and our obsessive ways. Only the best among us would use Excel to scrupulously catalog their play habits.
2. Why on Earth is there a 100-person friend limit on Xbox Live?
3. And why on Earth must one keep a spreadsheet like that when software can do it for you?

Xbox Live attempts this last bit for you with their "Recently Played" list. That's a great feature and I use it all the time. It doesn't have all the detail that the spreadsheet contains, so I can understand the need, I guess. But why the 100-person limit? It seems antithetical to the whole concept of a buddy list.

I have 573 buddies on my list, gathered across 50+ games over the past 5 years. I met n3Eo playing Tony Hawk 4 on the PS2 back in 2002. I see him playing Command & Conquer 3 most often these days. BT_Davids owns me when we play Battlefield 2142. XchiN still pops up playing C&C Renegade almost every single day.

Do I play with n3Eo or XchiN? Nope, not in years. But their very presence on my list has a huge impact on my sense of community. I'm a part of a large - and growing - group with some real history. Limiting it to 100 would mean severing ties with people I gamed with in the past.

My Comrade Buddy List

Creating a vibrant community is, afterall, the whole point of a buddy list. Don't you have buddies from high school or college that you very rarely see or talk to? And when you do speak you trade stories about the crazy night when you trashed the quad after your football team won. (Or something.) Should you excise them from your life because you hadn't interacted more than 4 times over the past 3 months and 27 days?

No, of course not.

And you shouldn't have to with your buddy list in games, either.

Now Chris mentions "non-trivial technical hurdles" that are the source of this limit.

I'll be blunt and say that seems rather hand-wavy to me. We've been helping game develpers add buddy lists to their games for years now with no limitations at all.

It is our job as technologists to find solutions to the problems that users have. It is our job to enable them with tools and functionality to build a vibrant community.

"Non-trivial hurdles" be damned.

I saw this weekend that clever folks at Team Ninja are giving gamers an actual, honest-to-God reason to play their demo: free loot. (Thanks, Joystiq.) Players are rewarded with in-game currency based on the length of time they play the demo.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma (PS3)

It struck me that there were a number of other interesting and unique things that a developer could do to put their demos to better use.

Link to Pre-Orders
Why, oh, why, do we still see static "Buy me when i finally come out!" images at the end of game demos? Digital retail is here! Stop asking people to remember that your game will be coming out in the future and start taking their money now.

Interested? Talk to our friends at Direct2Drive about digitally distributing your game and enabling their awesome pre-load functionality in conjunction with your pre-order program. At the very least link to some sort of retail pre-order landing page explaining where you can buy retail.

Reserve Your Nickname
Games that use our Community services have the option of letting their players choose unique nicknames on a per-game basis. Encourage people to "claim" their name by using the same namespace in your demo. (Expire old, unused nicknames at a later date or use our "Naminator" to suggest creative name variants.)

Accumulate Stats from the Demo
We see more and more games featuring leaderboards and stats. Why not combine the demo and retail info into one, unified leaderboard? Let your players jockey for position at the top in the demo and then see if they can maintain that position once the retail game comes out. We're doing this right now with the Ghost Recon 2 (PC) demo on GameSpy Arena.

There are a million other ways to make your demo a more powerful selling tool, I'm sure. When it comes time to assemble the demo resist the urge to slap together a single player level with a static "buy me" image at the end and find one of those million ideas that will work for you.