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Battle Stations makes MyPaper's headlines

Battle Stations on Singapore MyPaper's headline - Upload a Document to Scribd

Original article from my paper <<我报>> Singapore's first free chinese newspaper,

The following is the Chinese to English translation.

Page 1:

3 university students founded a gaming software company that did not take off, and nearly collapsed. Fortunately, the social networking site, Facebook, provided a lifeline at the most critical moment.

The company,Tyler Projects, started anew and designed the massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) “Battle Stations” and launched it on Facebook. The revenue generated saved the company and enabled them to continue their dreams.

Battle Stations is a type of social game, and is the first Facebook MMOG launched by Singapore developers. It is currently the most popular Singapore Facebook MMOG.

Battle Stations generated a monthly revenue of US $30, 000.

Figures show that Battle Stations has 15, 000 daily active users (DAU). In other words, Battle Stations has an earning potential of US $2/mth/DAU.

According to experts, social gaming have an earning potential of up to US $1.20/mth/DAU.

Having higher earning potential than other social games, Battle Stations' popularity is apparent.

If the 55,000 monthly active users is used as an indicator, Battle Stations can earn US$0.58 from each player on average.

According to one of the company's partners, Leonard Lin (27 years old), some social games and web applications can only earn US $0.01 from each active user.

What criteria is needed for a social game to become popular and profitable? Will social gaming development be a potential source of revenue for game developers in Singapore? Today's “Headline News” will take you through the world of social gaming.

Page 2 (Section on Tyler Projects only):

Local video game start-up companies find it hard to attract investors. Because of this, Tyler Projects had to find more sources of revenue.

Leonard Lin recalled the situation 2 years ago, “We were full of ambition, and wanted to create a “Final Fantasy” like computer game. When the game was finished, there were over 3 million unique downloads for the trial version. But only 1500 copies of the full version were sold.”

After analysing and going through gamer's feedback, Leonard and his partners realised that the games they create need to have earning potential, such as through advertising revenue and sale of virtual goods. “We couldn't spent one year designing a product that can't earn revenue.”

60% of Battle Stations' revenue comes from virtual goods, 20% comes from in game cost per action advertising (eg inviting players to fill up surveys, buying discounted items, etc), remaining 20% come from conventional advertising.

Ultimately, a social game needs to increase its player base in order to be profitable. “The game needs to be easy to pick up, yet must have enough depth and scope, as well as many small gaming sections, in order not to lose the gamer,” said Leonard.

“Some very popular social games and applications are over simplistic, causing their popularity to be transient, leaving little chance for earning revenue.”

The game must also limit the the expenditure of the player. Usually, virtual goods sold by fighting genre games give an advantage to the player. If the purchase of such virtual goods is not limited, players with greater spending power will quickly gain invincibility in the game, and lose the desire to play further. Gamers who are unable to afford the virtual goods may feel injustice and thus quit the game.

Tyler Projects will chose a two prong approach to further develop its business. Besides building public opinion by rolling out social games that have depth and scope, simple social games will also be rolled out to attract more users, in order to attract investors to invest in the company. The company, in collaboration with Scrawl Studios, plans to rolled out a beta version of “5 Kingdoms” at the end of October.

Battle Stations now on Friendster

Battle Stations is now available on Friendster as well!

:)

http://widgets.friendster.com/battlestations?src=add&instance_id=1

New Hangar/Ship Interface

More aesthetically pleasing interface for managing your equipment.

Also allows saving "builds" for easy swapping of entire equipment sets.

:)

Ocho Cash Shop

Our Ocho cash shop is now available for Battle Stations players in Facebook.

Check out the items on sale:


Demon Battleship



Outfits


Hats


More here: LINK

I got banned from Facebook....

This morning I got an email from Facebook:

"You made one or more wall posts that violated our Terms of Use. Among other things, posts that are hateful, threatening, or obscene are not allowed. We also take down posts that attack an individual or group, or advertise a product or service. Continued misuse of Facebook's features could result in your account being disabled."

What the *bleep*?! The only wall posts I made within the last month were:
- review of the movie “Wanted” which I posted on the wall of the Singapore group and mySingapore app
- a message on the Battle Stations wall asking players not to post their problems there because we don’t check the wall regularly

Possibly I was removed for “advertising a product” so better not post movie reviews.

I have NEVER made an obscene, profane, hateful, attacks an individual or group wall post (forum posts during the Chaos days yes, but wall posts never).

There wasn’t any warning or a pink box of death or anything. I just got removed.

I'm not going to create a new account because I don't believe in creating multiple fake accounts (not to mention all the photos and apps that I’ve added, I don’t want to have to start again from scratch).

I've sent an email to disabled@facebook.com and started working on a Facebook clone which I’ll call “Freedombook".

BS new title screen

Made a new title screen for the about page in Facebook since we've already swapped to the new character graphics for the live servers.



Also made this new screen for the character creation showing all the base classes. Hope that'll entice new players to endure the not-so-friendly interface long enough to learn the game.

New York, New York

I was away from BS most of last week trying to clear work before by my trip. After almost 24 hours in the air and transit (managed to practice some 日本語 on the flight since I flew ANA), I'm in NY. I'm stay just a few blocks away from the bull. Would be really convenient to get posted here considering you can stay a block away from the financial district.



I had a discussion with friend who is a marketing consultant (the kind offers practical advice doesn't just spew crap about 4Ps). She commented that it's rather impractical to allocate resources to provide the close communication with the players as our user base grows (much less hire a communications director for 4000 USD /month to do PR for a free game). I'm also behind on my studies for my exam in June so I going to be on the BS forums a lot less often.

Someone will probably say I used the earlier paragraph just as an excuse. I just want to piss him off by doing that which he hates so much.



Eating like this everyday could quickly turn into a health hazzard but I thought I should indulge just a bit before I go to Europe. Damn record high Euro.

Red Dragon!

Actually the new NPC is called the Crimson Drake but it'll give you an idea of the new NPCs you're likely to encounter in the new version.



Watch the replay here!

Countdown to the Full Version

TY's uploaded the demo replay that uses the new battle system and interface. The demo of the combat system isn't yet fully optimized so it might take a while to load.

Watch it here, now!

Here's screen shots, basically the same thing you'll see in the demo:




I'll put Reuben's combat music in as soon as we're done with optimizing and fixing up the rest of the skills.

New character selection screen (still needs some work):


I estimate we're about 3 weeks from the full version. Would have been earlier but some of us have to go for reservist.

PvE for BS + why we trashed the ship system

So there I was playing Tabula Rasa defending the the Arieki Landing Zone control point and thinking: "You need a bunch of tier 3 players to defend this place properly it keeps getting overrun and I can't do my quests properly if it keeps getting taken over."



I also thought: "Hey we should have something like this in Battle Stations where players can defend and assault a control point. It's like the clan wars but it's PvE and you can do it frequently instead of waiting for the clan fort to rez."




So basically we can set up control points between certain ports. The Imperial City is at war with Al Amraan so it's not unexpected that there'll be a blockade of sorts. If you travel between these cities while the blockade is up you'll encounter NPCs which will attack you. If you survive you can still get past the blockade.

There'll be a fixed number of NPC ships in the blockade (maybe a mobile fortress as well) and if players manage to sink all the NPCs the blockade will be removed (for a while) and players can travel between the cities freely once again.

Why we trashed the old ship system

There are gameplay reasons (trying to remove the huge power difference at level multiples of 5 and 10). Another reason we got rid of the old ship system because this is how we want to render our ships from now on:



... and we can't make 50+ of these ship designs which is why we have the new ship system to make all ships last longer. I've yet to assign this design to a particular ship (yes this what it'll look like in the game).

Battle Stations full version MEGA update

Here's a super progress update on our work for the full version. I've been holding back for a few weeks but I think since we're quite close to launching this it's about time for an update. Below are some of the screen mock-ups for our full version due out in a few weeks:



These are work-in-progress screen mock ups so we'll be replacing the icons with our own and making a few more changes before the final version goes live. We hope the new interface will make navigating the game easier for players as well as streamline our database calls.



We're still committed to our mission of making Battle Stations the best MMOG app on Facebook and we'll be really rushing things along in the next few weeks to get all of this live ASAP.



New system updates
Some other changes in the full version besides aesthetics:

- New calculations for craft, gunnery, navigation bonuses
- New ship system (completely new, simpler than the one in the trial server)
- New combat system with skills
- New Tavern system where you can buy food and drinks <- used to power skills
- Class skills (Grappling hook, gold cannon, etc)
- Weapons rebalanced and with added effects (slowdown %, flaming, etc)

Not all the new character outfits and background images will be ready by the time we launch so we'll add those in progressively.

New ad network - ValueClick!
You might also have noticed the new banner ads displayed at the top of each page. I'm please to announce that Battle Stations is the first Facebook app in the WORLD to be added to the ValueClick, Inc. network (NASDAQ: VCLK), which is one of the world's largest integrated online marketing companies.

We'll need a few days to filter out the campaigns we want. I assure you that even though we need ads to support our continued development of Battle Stations and other games, we will try our best to ensure a enjoyable gaming experience. I'll be getting rid of the smiley and glittery ads.

For an added bonus here's the Aeros background. The city isn't colored yet so it's just a line art overlay for now.