Cristian Mitreanu's Blog

Building a Video Game in Under 24 Hours and Winning a Hackaton

A week ago, I had an awesome experience. As part of a great team of seven, I won the hackaton/game jam "Life is a Game," which was hosted by Class Dojo, Artillery Games, Red Hot Labs, Phoenix Guild, Red Robot Labs, Signia Venture Partners, and General Catalyst Partners. My role revolved around level design and business model. Although I had previously participated in similar events, this experience was unique in that we managed to put together, more or less serendipituously, a perfectly-balanced team and build a playable first version of a game -- from scratch, in less than 24 hours.

It all started on Saturday morning (October 13th), after the participants had breakfast, watched a few talks given by some of the judges and organizers, joined a short icebreaker exercise, and voted on game ideas pitched by some of the fellow participants. It was then that our team began to emerge, drawn together by the idea of a "bee" game. After a fairly short (self-)selection process, the lineup looked like this:

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Audio - Scott Looney

Art Design - Adam Rickert

Engineering - Jim Fleming, Logan Smyth, Danielle Swank

Level Design & Business Model - Cristian Mitreanu, Elisabeth Uible

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During the brainstorming session that followed, we explored a few core mechanics ideas that ranged from maintenance (Adam's original idea, which brought the group together) to racing. Nonetheless, we quickly settled on something that was more "midde of the road," something that blended slingshot mechanics (as in Angry Birds) with bounce mechanics (as in Pinball or Billards). So, we ended up working on a game in which the player must help a chubby-but-happy bumblebee get back home by slingshoting (tossing?) it from flower to flower. And the rest is boring stuff -- work, several hours of work, where everybody did their part very well.

We even spent some time thinking about a name. Plan B and Bumble Bounce were the two most favorite options. (I personally liked and suggested Tossy the Bee and Bounzee Bee.) Ironically, in spite of our efforts, we went with Bumble Bounce without realizing that a game with the same name already exists in Apple's App Store. But since the domain name bumblebounce.com was available, we assumed that we were good to go. After all, time was a big constraint and, for the first version of the game, the name was not really a priority. And it still doesn't matter, at this point. :)

What matters is what happened on Sunday. During the presentation, the reaction to our twist on the already-proven mechanics was very positive. In fact, although we focused our pitch on a business model where the revenue would be generated through in-game advertising and revenue sharing with existent rewards programs, many people insisted that we should also think about a paid, advertising-free version. And we did think about it, but we wanted to show the judges that we had a go-to-market approach that cuts through the market noise and keeps the user acquisition costs low -- partnering with advertisers and rewards programs would be essential in getting the game in front of large audiences, quickly and affordably. Nonetheless, the fact that people got instantly passionate, insisting that they would pay for the game, was great.

And that was, without question, the best indication of our success. Having your potential customers and investors telling you not only that they would use your new product, but that they would also pay for it, is an early validation that real businesses strive for and rarely get. ... As I said at the beginning of this post, this game jam was a great experience!

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The game's logo from the home page on GitHub...

Screenshot from the game...

Another screenshot from the game...

And another one...

The team members section, also from the game's home page on GitHub...

One of the sketches detailing the design of the level 2, as well as the point system...

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For the time being, you can play the web-based game at http://hivemindgames.github.com/bees/game/index.html. Just pull the flower and toss the bumblebee. :)

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UPDATE 10/24/2012: Here's also a brief recording of a play session. Fun and addictive!

Changing the Way We Learn Business ...with a Casual Video Game

On September 17th at the Game Design Conference in San Francisco, I am giving a talk on the game mechanics and the importance of OFMOS in the development of a big-picture-centric way of learning business. I will update this post with the slides and, hopefully, a recording of the talk after the conference.

 

UPDATE 9/25/2012: The slides and speaker notes from my talk are embedded below. You can also download the PDF version of the document here. (It looks great on your on your tablet or smartphone!)

Ofmos - Trailer

Playing the Prototype of the Video Game OFMOS in 3.5 Minutes

I always wanted to provide an easier-than-playing-the-prototype way to experience my casual video game Ofmos. Now, it's here. Watch a recording (in HD, nonetheless) of me playing the prototype from start to finish in 3.5 minutes. Then, see if you can do it faster...

Reviews for OFMOS

A few of my former classmates have been kind enough to review the prototype of my video game Ofmos. Their comments were aggregated on the Illinois MBA blog, but I thought that it is much easier to just copy the original blog post here.

 

MBA Student Creates Video Game to Teach Business Fundamentals

Cristian Mitreanu, creator of the TEDxUIUC event, had put his expertise to work and created a new video game to teach us the fundamentals of making decisions at work. His game, OFMOS, is an innovative casual video game that mimics the basic actions taken by a CEO when deciding what the company should offer, when, and to whom. Rather than dealing with two separate portfolios, one of offerings and one of customers, this new theory allows us to analyze a company as a single portfolio of business entities. These entities are virtual business spaces defined by an offering and a set of customers, who have the same behavior relative to that offering. They are called "ofmos," a term derived from the combination of words offering-market-cosmos.

In a beta-test of the game, 4 MBA students played and provided feedback and comments about their experience. Keep reading to hear from Srini, Koichi and Brett...

 

One Second-Year MBA student, says:

"The game is innovatively designed, easy to learn yet challenging to play. The game moves quickly and requires you to stay on your toes. Business students can use it to understand how businesses need to constantly create new growth opportunities while their existing products move through the product lifecycle. Students would also understand that businesses need to diversify their offerings across premium to value goods."

Koichi Sato, Second-Year MBA:

"OFMOS is interesting but challenging because we need to determine what combinations of business units work the best in a short time. As I proceeded to harder levels, I failed many times and analyzed all the information available quickly to execute my plan.

If you are engaged in business, managers have to make decisions in many cases in terms of financial strategy, marketing strategy or organizational strategy. In any of these cases, one of the most important things is learning how to organize the information available in a short time and determine which strategy the company should take as soon as possible to capture the market or maximize profits. This experience helps to enhance the ability to analyze the information appropriately in a short time. Since we are supposed to be future business leaders as business students, this basic ability definitely helps us to acquire the sense of business.

As I mentioned, this game requires to make my decision in a short time. It reminds me of my experience as a project leader in new service development section. Almost all the decision should be made at appropriate moment. So this game absolutely helps me to enhance my skills as a decision maker. Moreover, this game contains some funs as well. I can say that the game will give us useful experiences with well-developed essence of business."

Srinivas Venugopal, Second-Year MBA:

"I immensely enjoyed playing the game. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in business or anyone looking to get sensitized to the general dynamics in business. While the game is entertaining to play, there seems to be more to it than just entertainment value. It enables visualization of the general dynamics in the marketplace and the process of running a business. This leads to enhanced comprehension of the dynamism in the market and consequently, better understanding of strategic business decisions required for marketplace success. I wish to congratulate Cristian and team for this stupendous effort in distilling the essence of business and capturing it in a manner that makes it easily accessible and enjoyable, simultaneously. Indeed, an impressive feat.

For those whose curiosity is piqued, I recommend reading the article by Mitreanu titled “A Fundamental Theory of Business”. I wish Cristian and team success in this endeavor of making mundane concepts in business come alive."

Brett Miller, Second-Year MBA:

"I enjoyed playing the Ofmos game. It made me think about the life of different types of products and how they perform in an evolving market. In Cristian's game the market for products is constantly maturing and that has an impact on the value of each product that you have out there. The evolving products in the game reminds me of the philosophy of continuous improvement, which is more related to operations management, but I think it also applies here also. To win the game the player needs to be continually planning and designing new products while checking on and actively killing off old ones. I know Cristian says strategy might be a bad word, but I think there is a strategy to this game, and it's one of continuous product development and improvement."

 

** OFMOS is intended to be enjoyed by most adults, with various levels of involvement -- from superficial immersion, where the player manages a system of moving objects, to deep immersion, where the player acts as a CEO running a large corporation over extended periods of time. The prototype, which can be downloaded at www.ofmos.com, is primarily intended to test the appeal of the game mechanics.

Play OFMOS - An Innovative Casual Video Game

Ofmos is a casual (think Tetris) video game that mimics the basic actions taken by a CEO when deciding what the company should offer and to whom. The game mechanics are based on the theory that I detailed in the book "Spointra and the Secret of Business Success" and in the presentation "A Fundamental Theory of Business." You can download the prototype at www.ofmos.com. And, of course, any feedback would be highly appreciated.