No, not a joke: Pogo.com are bringing out Fairy Godmother Tycoon. It's just a throwaway mention in this long and pretty informative interview over at Gamasutra with Pogo's VP, this poor fella here, who was stuffed into his best grey shirt, propped up against a bog-standard mottled grey background and told to SMILE, PLEASE.
Bless him, he did manage to get the smile to his eyes, but he's gritting his teeth so hard, you have to feel sorry for him. I wonder why EA do this to their people: aren't games about having fun? You'd never know it from their corporate headshots.
I digress. Here's a few choice quotes:
On guidance:
Additionally, on the Club Pogo side -- which is our subscription service -- we pioneered badges, or challenges into the casual gamespace. One of the things that does from a social component is that it provides a directed experience. When you have so many games on a site or service, sometimes it's difficult for people to figure out what game they want to play.
On women (or the propagated myth that casual gamers are all older females):
What we're trying to do is create a mass market product that will appeal to the broadest demographic possible. That's not to say that it's coincidental that it resonates with women, but I think it is the driving segment of the market, and we want to make sure that we design products that will appeal to them. I think we try to avoid experiences that we know are not going to resonate with that audience, rather than designing products specifically for women.
On free vs subscription:
We have about fifteen million unique players that are coming to Pogo every month. Of those players, we have approximately 1.4 million paid subscribers who are paying us either monthly or annually on the Club Pogo side.
And on fairy godmothers?
Fairy Godmother Tycoon is the newest game that's going to be coming out. It's a downloadable product, but a standalone experience. We're very excited about it. It really puts a twist on your traditional "tycoon" games.
I wonder if you'll be able to choose between good fairy godmother and evil fairy godmother. Cackle.
It's already out... has been for ages.
try here:
http://www.pogo.com/hotdeploy/us/promotions/survey/fairy-godmother/cs-page.jsp
http://www.bigfishgames.com/downloads/fairygodmothertyco/
Posted by: astrogirl | May 02, 2007 at 02:47