My family decided to have a “do nothing day” today. We put on our pajamas and didn’t leave the house all day. We mostly played Wii together — Paper Mario and Boogie. Boogie was an especially big hit with the whole family. Even my wife who NEVER plays games grabbed the controller and spent almost an hour with it. Watching this was a reinforcement of my belief that the masses are the place to be when it comes to creating digital entertainment. I like the idea of creating things that anyone can pick up and play.
Boogie has a little something for everybody — you can compete either in Karaoke or DDR style competitions. There are virtual items to win and unlock and the characters are flexible enough that you can build an alien, a hip hop guy, or a hot babe as an avatar. The only problem I found was that all of us were able to finish it today. We all got good enough that we could play the hardest songs and still achieve gold status — this includes my non-gamer wife and my 7 year old daughter. It could really use more achievement and more challenge. Even though I really had fun playing it, I’m not sure I NEED to ever play it again.
The learning here for FlowPlay is that we’ll need to come up with enough end game quests to keep it interesting for the mature players. We’ll also have to pay a lot of attention to the life span of the characters — when do we award habitat, transportation and other milestones at just the right moment in the player’s lifecycle.
Tags: FlowPlay, virtual worlds, Wii
October 13, 2007 at 12:34 am |
We bought Boogie as well, and my first 10 mins of the experience was really positive, if I had stopped there I would have written a great review. But, then at about minute 11 it became apparent I had fully explored the mechanic and was utterly bored, very dissapointing.
BTW – good seeing you at Virtual Worlds.