Unofficial Micro Business Sim Game Coding Challenge voting

[Chris]

I was thinking about the causes of the voting outcome, if it was the game style or maybe implementation? I did some changes to find it out. So, which one is better now?

Sock Trader http://www.thiswebgame.com/zeggy/ (unmodified version from the original challenge)
Pawn Shop http://www.lordsofmidnight.com/pawnshop.php (unmodified version from the original challenge)
Shop http://worldoflords.com/misc/games/shop.php (modified version)

Vote, and let your voice decide the future path of gaming industry

[andrewjbaker]

Nothing like tipping the vote in your favour... LOL.

I'd slap you Chris... but I'm too busy laughing... 

[Chris]

It's not about winning (at least not in case of minichallenge), it is about finding out what mechanics works and why. It's about finetuning our design skills. Sock Trader and Shop are extremely similar games, so these are IDEAL for the purpose of features comparison. It's not like I will have many opportunities like that in my life

[andrewjbaker]

I'm still chuckling... 

[Marek]

Interesting results so far... What do you make of it, Chris?

[Nox]

A rebel here

I voted but Shop this time - I believe it has improved (or maybe I just had a better mood for it), BUT 'm not totally sure about the vote and Sock Trader is still a strong competition in the least. However this time it was IMHO much closer.

To mention a few things - I believe shop has more possible strategies and therefore could last longer. ST would more easily get more players to game but imho lose them sooner while Shop will have less players for longer time. Actually IMHO in ST there's roughly just 1 strategy (several upgrades first, bribe later, add a few security but not much... with some luck I reached 1000-1400-ish points) which is not really much ... but it's easy and fun and fast

[Chris]

Interesting results so far... What do you make of it, Chris?

I will think, wait and maybe make a new version if I find out another possible cause.

I think we could exclude "Trying to decide what to invest in was fun". This time Shop had much more diversed strategies than ST. So, it is not it.

ST would more easily get more players to game but imho lose them sooner while Shop will have less players for longer time.

Yes, replayability gets in the way of first impression. Not mutually exclusive, but still incompatible I would say

but it's easy and fun and fast

Yes, that's might be the key thing... Shop has much heavier gameplay. It has 20 turns still you play it longer than 100 turns of ST. You have like 3 upgrades per turn while in ST you get like 1 upgrade per 5 turns. Plus you can run into negative... Definitely not easy and fast

Is it that faster and easier games always win over slower and harder ones? Is it a general theory or does it only apply to the games above?

[CygnusX]

Chris,

This may sound shallow, but why not trying to match Zeggy's interface and then have people vote?  I'm curious how much aesthetics sways things.

From a playability stand point, 2 things stood out to me.

1) This is a simple game.  My expectations were not very high on optimization complexity.  Thus, I actually preferred your original version to your second version. 

2) Zeggy's interface is in many ways more friendly than yours.  And as a player, I like friendly.  And I'm not just talking looks or Ajax.  Its much easier as a player to push a button to 'upgrade' an item (especially when there are only 4 choices)... but it is very difficult and scary to change the price of an item, choose and advertising technique, etc, when you're not familiar with the system.  This makes your game difficult to get into.  Also, with such a simple type game with no score board history, I found it difficult to convince myself to spend the time needed to learn your game.  Yes, it is much more strategically centered, but the reward I experience from playing just isn't high enough to validate the bigger learning curve.