Launch of First Facebook MMOG from Singapore by TYLER Projects

This week could turn out to be quite a watershed for Singapore’s entry into the Facebook applications market with the launch of our first-ever Facebook MMOG!

TYLER Projects (an E27 demo alumni) has decided to tap on their experience in game development from successful hit games like Mobile Weapon (with 1.5 million gamers and counting) and moved into the hotbed of Facebook games. Titled “Battle Stations“, TYLER is gearing up for a real go at the fast-expanding Facebook user universe.

What is it?

I have tried out the game over the past week and while kinks are to be expected in their current beta release, it has proven to be addictive in its gameplay dynamics. In MW: Battle Stations, you command a battle ship where your plays are regulated on a turn-based format and choose between a number of roles from explorer to an attacker or trader.

Comparisons

This is a marked contrast to another Facebook MMOG called “Pirates” which gets monotonous after a while cos you can only explore and get a feeling of having nothing to do after about 10 clicks. “Pirates” also pissed me off cos they are more concerned with getting me to invite/ spam my friends than letting me actually play. That could explain why “Pirates” has about 100, 000 over users so far. In my opinion, I think having users to invite friends before they have even tried using the application is a stupid move of many Facebook app developers out there. A more effective way to grow word of mouth is to insert invite-oriented functions only after the user is deemed to have interacted sufficiently with the app. In a game, such a move will work wonderfully especially when the gamer runs out of turns and is dying to get bonus turns through inviting friends.

Another Facebook MMOG that deserves mention is “Warbook“. Here, you create and manage the expansion of your kingdom against other players in an absolute land grab affair. With barracks, training ground, construction of defensive barriers, there could be tons of stuff to do. Warbook’s concept is not new but it will be worthwhile tracking their growth among Facebook users who are known for their high engagement times within the site. Will gaming be an further evolution of the socializing activities of social networking users? This question is worth exploring in a future post.

The Game Gods Speak

Leonard Lin, co-founder of TYLER Projects, has been the main man behind the release of MW: Battle Stations. From being a sceptic of social networks like Facebook a lil more than a month ago, Leonard is now warming up to it, no thanks to much goading and harrassing over MSN IM from me. =) Below, he shares his experience with our readers on the whole game building process. More can be found on their blog.

Technical issues

It’s our first time creating an MMOG and the first time creating an application on the Facebook platform so it was quite a challenge.

Once of the tough technical problems we had to deal with was with cookies. We used i-frames for our game and Facebook’s cookie session was not recognized for the i-frames because IE didn’t consider our app, which was an external site, safe. The first few players got a cascading frames bug because they just couldn’t sign in to the game and the window would load inside a new frame every time they tried to enter the game.

Fortunately there are solutions to all these problems posted in the Facebook developer group. Once we figured out the technicalities, the Facebook platform was actually quite nice to work with.

Designing the Game

I tried some other multiplayer Facebook games that were launched before our game, Warbook and Pirates, just to check out the competition.

Pirates got a bit repetitive after a while because it was all HTML and every action required you to follow a link to a new page. I didn’t quite like that so I decided we should use Flash as well allow people do get through their turns quickly without having to spend too much time on the game.

Warbook was a bit too competitive, whenever I was attacked and defeated I had to build up my kingdom almost from scratch and that was a huge turnoff for me. I wanted to ensure a good PvP experience for everyone so we minimized the losses from PvP and made it really easy to recover from an enemy attack in BattleStations.

Further developments

We’ll also be working on a host of new features for the complete version like more varied ship designs, more weapons and items, an auction system and an avatar shop for you to customize your character.

 

Too much reading, lets start playing NOW!