Casual Gaming In China

l According to iResearch (www.iresearch.com.cn), in 2006 there were 17.9 million online casual gamers in China, or 62% of Chinese online gamers. For the same year, there were 15.9 million MMORPG gamers in China, or 55% of China online gamers. Therefore, the penetration of online casual gamers among China online gamers has surpassed the penetration of MMORPG gamers. Sales revenues for 2010 are expected to cross 18 billion USD. By 2012, there are expected to be over 119 million online gamers in China.

l In 2005, both MMORPG and online casual game obtained rapid growth. The market size of the Chinese MMORPG industry reached RMB 4.9 billion, 39% more than that of 2004, and 81% of China online game industry market size. After a five year development, the Chinese MMORPG industry has gradually stepped into maturity with the growth rate slowing down and the share among the total China online game industry market decreasing to 80%. On the one hand, social issues raised by MMORPG have attracted great attention and criticism. On the other, the growth of MMORPG users has declined.

l China is currently recognized as one of the biggest potential markets, says Xiaowei.

l By 2010, online casual games are forecasted to be about 40% of all online games.

l With this strong trend of development, people will spend more money on the casual games that they play.

l The MMORPG market will be thus squeezed; and casual gaming in China will share a bigger part of the market.

Poker Software Disaster!

Nobody hates blunders in their poker software as much as the developers who design it. When the most acclaimed and sophisticated software in the world in that particular niche makes a huge blunder, you really wonder where the hell it’s all gonna go!

Some famous programming blunders have created history! For instance, some two errors - improper input validation and output encoding, which could be exploited to launch SQL injection attacks - contributed to more than 1.5 million website breaches last year, according to MITRE and the SANS Institute.

In 2005, automaker Toyota announced a recall of 160,000 of its Prius hybrid vehicles following reports of vehicle warning lights illuminating for no reason, and cars' gasoline engines stalling unexpectedly. But unlike the large-scale auto recalls of years past, the root of the Prius issue wasn't a hardware problem - it was a programming error in the smart car's embedded code. The Prius had a software bug!

Flight 501, which took place on June 4, 1996, was the first, and unsuccessful, test flight of the European Ariane 5 expendable launch system. Due to an error in the software design (inadequate protection from integer overflow), the rocket veered off its flight path 37 seconds after launch and was destroyed by its automated self-destruct system when high aerodynamic forces caused the core of the vehicle to disintegrate. It is one of the most infamous computer bugs in history. The breakup caused the loss of four Cluster mission spacecraft, resulting in a loss of more than US$370 million.

Software blunders cost just the US economy over 80 billion annually in lost productivity and annual damages!

So, I present this alleged poker software blunder, that few know of; courtesy of my dear friend from Italy, Rodolfo Montanari (thanks Rodolfo, this post would not have been possible without you!) It may be true, or may not be, could be a modified image in photoshop, but worth a look :)

Poker Avatar

In online gaming, a poker avatar is used as a representation of the player in the virtual world. These are enhancements that are attractive to many online players and their competitive personalities – for the newbie player, a poker avatar appeals because of its interactive nature, which adds to the player’s overall experience and fun; and for the pros it can be a versatile tool to portray a particular personality trait or even their aggression. Your avatar today can typically be your own unique online identity.

It is quite common place for players to choose a poker avatar that actually represents some aspects of their real life characteristics or appearance. It could be argued that players might select a particular type of poker avatar to emulate or suggest a particular technique of playing. With a limited or unlimited ability in the software of changing the avatar’s expression, the player might even be successfully able to pull a bluff or induce a fold!

Then, there is the Bruce Wayne-Batman alter-ego syndrome, as I call it - I have at least four female friends, who actually choose a male poker avatar! They’re NOT alone, because statistics show that over 50% of online gaming addicts swap gender when choosing their virtual personality and over two-thirds (a very high number) of women indulge in it. This is no weird behaviour, there is a perfectly rational explanation behind it - my friends justified it by clearly stating that they’re simply less hassled and harassed when they choose a male poker avatar. Haven’t you been there in a play money room, when some one wants to take a seat next to yours, just because you have chosen a busty blonde poker avatar?

Well, card rooms abound the www and each have a unique way of representing player identities. We have rooms that do not have any avatars and players are merely represented by boxes or buttons. We then have rooms where any image or picture of your choice can be uploaded onto a circular or square image-holder button. We have rooms where poker avatars are a set of limited, two-dimensional, stationary human images that are either fixed by default or can be chosen on the basis of your gender and maybe a handful of other parameters of identification. We have rooms where your poker avatar is a cartoon-like two dimensional ready-made image of animals (a monkey, donkey, shark, dog, fish and so on), objects (ATM machine), ethnic or fictional characters. And last but not the least, we have the Maya artist’s career-high gaming delight – the real-life, customizable three-dimensional poker avatar where players can choose by gender, physical appearance, hairstyle, facial features, clothing, accessories and a host of other features akin to their own existing personality or create an entirely different personality that you’ve always wanted to possess. With a three-dimensional poker avatar, there is something for everyone! True to life stuff, really.

Now, at this point, I would ask you go and visit my poker software website merely to check out the new software that we are currently developing and to take a look at the poker avatar that you can yourself build there. In the lobby, there is a section called ‘wardrobe’. All you have to and do is check out the wardrobe and build your virtual personality and dress it up in whichever way you would like to choose. I have a friend who has managed to build her poker avatar there that looks a splitting image of her, built after a lot of playing around with the options we have there for players.

With a good 3d software that possesses the ability to implement and build your own poker avatar, yet doesn’t clutter or slow down your game play, you really don’t have to now be limited by other idiotic avatars. I had a friend telling me once that “this big, bad ‘shark’ took all my bankroll in one pot.” The truth was that my friend was merely having a bad beat during his initial days in online poker, and the winner was one of those user-id’s I personally knew, who uses a shark-cartoon poker avatar whom I’ve known to be intensely bluff-prone. Not that I am associating the shark avatar with bluffing, yet it’s so typical that someone would choose it and have this particular trait; or else choose a character wearing boxing gloves to symbolize and portray aggression. Or, then that lovable panda poker avatar that sits on your table (this one came out as soon as Kung Fu Panda became popular) whom you instinctively want to hug; and ‘pow!’ he hits you for all your money!

Yes, choosing your poker avatar is one of the entertaining aspects of online card rooms. It also may provide insights into your competitor’s behaviour and personality. And at the end of the day, it is so much easier to remember how someone is playing if and when we can attach a face to a playing style. It is quite simple, really: your poker avatar is part of your ego and part of your strategy; use it or lose it!

Poker In Hong Kong

Poker in Hong Kong is not the same as poker in America or Europe. It takes you quite a while to figure out where to play if you are a newcomer to the city, and if you can find time from the shopping, the sites, the food, the massages and the night life, and still miss your favorite game, you can go and catch up with poker in Hong Kong at a few really cool places that I’d love to share with you today.

Usually I’m so tired everyday that I get straight from work to home at anywhere between 10 p.m to 2 a.m. and crash anywhere I please. And whenever I get a night out to let my hair loose? Well, among the two things I am passionate about and usually how I spend my evenings: poker and/or karaoke. Hey, I love karaoke. Not the smallish, stinking seedy bars that are a backdrop of quite a few nooks and alleys, but those that have good ambience, great music selection and exceptionally good service. When I’m in China, I spend one night in a week at least in karaoke bars with my buddies or colleagues, singing the night away with loud music and some idiotic dancing. It’s fun.

When I am in Hong Kong, I prefer to go once a week to catch up on a poker game or two. Nowadays, it’s mostly with friends at my home or their homes or the sports club I’m a member of. Earlier on, I used to frequent a few great hotspots for poker in Hong Kong. The foremost among them is the Joe Hachem endorsed Hong Kong Poker House. Poker in Hong Kong is rather quite new and has picked up only recently with folks like Celina Lin endorsing global brands and Phil Lau winning the Macau APT back-to-back. You can get an idea from this: HKPH, as we call it, gets a quota of about 175-250 players a week. HKPH ambience is contemporary yet intimate and you will like it.

Here’s where it’s at: 1/F, 49 Hollywood Road, Central, Call: 2850 8833

Poker in Hong Kong can never be the same after Bankroll, the poker sushi bar happened. Well, bite into your favorite sushi or sashimi and go all-in at the same time. Attached to HKPH, it is the same scene, but greatly enhances your taste buds. I love it!

Visit: 3/F, 49 Hollywood Road, Central, Call: 2850 8833

Ready for some traditional kind of poker in Hong Kong? Well, here you have to deal yourself if you want to play, but the ambience is splattered at times with deafening karaoke, great Cantonese crowd and a highly informal atmosphere with low stakes, then Miusik is the place for you. I like to combine my karaoke and poker together and I enjoy this place a lot. This is what they advertise, verbatim: ♥Every Thursday is... Poker LADIES NIGHT!♥ - all Ladies drink + play poker for FREE! Bring your girly friends and party! ;-) (lol)
I try to make it on Thursdays when I get free entry into some tourneys. Fun!

Rush: 13/F,Ying Kong Mansion,2 Yee Wo St. CWB. (opposite SOGO,above i-ONE internet cafe), Call: 9198 4005

For the discerning players of poker in Hong Kong you now have the recently launched Blue Room. Well, here you have regular 5/10, 10/20, 25/50, and 50/100 blind games at any given time and the tables are classy and remind you of the best of the best in Las Vegas. Every Wednesday, we have a 100/200 game to fulfill the higher stake player's needs. The menu is is also very good. Giant TV screens, a professional atmosphere and fabulous ambience, poker in Hong Kong will never be the same again! They have a HK $250 entrance fee and two free drinks, and they’re there to listen to what poker players want, and they really do their best to fulfill everyone's needs. The Blue Room is also a great place to host a private party/event to gather a group of friends to sit back, relax, and play some poker at the same time. It is located in the prime area in Central. And yes, they have professional dealers and well trained staff. Games played include texas hold ‘em, omaha, omaha hi/lo, five card stud, and mix games.

Visit: 2/F, 60 Stanley St, Central, Call: 2537 3260

Poker in Hong Kong is also kept alive by a few expats who do hold weekly or weekend games in a few hotels and clubs splattered across Hong Kong. I enjoy the clattering chip sound whenever I enter a poker room and the pensive to jovial faces of the fairly newbie poker players that play here, chasing their dreams of becoming pros or playing for the pure joy of it!
Yes, poker in Hong Kong, this gambling crazy place, is just beginning to get better and better, and I am going to be a part of it and will enjoy myself to the maximum! Also will update you guys too through my blog :)

More Cyber Less Cafe

From small, dingy rooms to plush, glitzy locales, I have visited cybercafés across Asia – from China to Korea to Japan to even India. I can say that in over 50 per cent of the cafes that I’ve visited I have seen MMOG games being played fervently by an audience ranging from 12 years old to 60. Each regional cybercafé has its own special mmog flavor. With Fantasy Westward being replaced as the top contender in China by World of Warcraft and also in Korea, things are looking up. We’re talking here of millions upon millions of fans who throng cybercafés to play their favorite mmo games. From riverfront exotic locales to the base of Mount Everest, cybercafés are littered across Asia, and they’re specifically geared for online gaming activities of different kinds.

It goes to the extent that in July of 2009, Culture Ministry officials in Thailand were contemplating putting a curfew on youth from visiting cybercafés, that there would be a three hour limit for children to play games in cybercafés. Top online games are now being test launched in cybercafés first. Cybercafes are also now distribution points and in distribution networks as channel sales outlets for a number of top MMOG and MMORPG games. With pc’s or laptops available to the common man at the drop of a hat, why would people throng to cybercafés is a question that has boggled quite a few. Well, the answer is that not all games that are offered in cybercafés are perfectly legal. A lot of cybercafés especially in Asia are owned by folks who offer gambling online or on an intranet. Another answer is that the variety of games offered in cybercafés is huge, and the costs for a multitude of these games can be quite prohibitive.

Laminated flooring, designer lightning, neon sign boards flashing and inviting you to come inside and take a look, surf, play – some are complete with snacks, drinks, libraries, vcd’s, dvds, movies; the works! In Asia, even the smallest towns will have a cybercafé and it will invariably offer games to play. People can play online games or network games. People will come in groups too so they can play network games and compete with each other or someone located 10000 miles away to find out who is the best. There are cybercafés with specific themes, not just merely plush interiors, but a specific theme catering to the public, from movies and cartoon themes, to the theme at Six Flag mountain to dinosaurs. From 50-100 PC’s in a Korean PC Baang to the 3-10 machines in a Cafés de Internet in Ecuador or the 4-5 machines per Cabinas Publicas in Peru, they are all splattered across the globe, taking in the casual visitors and the most discerning gaming enthusiasts, in some millions of visitor footfalls a day. Games ranging from World of Warcraft to online mahjong are played here.

For example, according to some estimates, there were over 4,000 cybercafes in Taiwan by 2002, most of them focused on providing gaming, over 5000 in Indonesia. In South Korea, the PC Baang (the South Korean name for internet gaming cafes) industry first came into existence in the mid 1990s, it is estimated that there are over 22,000 PC Baangs in South Korea. India, for example, has over 50,000 Internet cafes with over 1,000,000 customers each month, according to some estimates. One Indian company alone, Sify Limited, which operates the iWay Internet cafe franchises, is said to have over 3,100 cybercafes in 149 Indian cities. As per Wiki: according to "Survey of China Internet Café Industry" by the Ministry of Culture, in 2005: China has 110,000 Internet cafés, with more than 1,000,000 people working in this area, contributing 18,500,000,000 yuan to China's GDP. More than 70% Internet café visitors are from 18 to 30 years old. 90% are male, 65% unmarried, and 54% hold a college degree. More than 70% of visitors play computer games. 20% of China's Internet users go to InternetCafe. I’m sure this figure must have risen by at least 50% since then!
I have visited over 60 cybercafes in over 11 countries so far – it pays to see the end user in action! :)

The Poker Software Challenge

Developing poker software is a tough challenge each step of the way, from project launch to close, it is a complete process unto itself and you require highly motivated individuals to see it through. At the outset, any project plan tries to incorporate strategic, market, operational, and financial information into a single document. The Project Team and Executive team will use this document to evaluate the attractiveness of the project and to establish benchmarks, milestones, and metrics if the project is approved. Creating good software requirement specifications involves creating the infrastructure for the requirements process and then following it for each specification.

Now, imagine that you are responsible for managing a software project that has an estimated cost in excess of $9 million and requires approximately 3 million man-hours to complete! Add to it the expertise required to handle something like gaming, casino or poker software. Does this sound familiar? Not to many, I’m sure. That is what it takes to build a good one. Minimum!

I recently read that a competitor poker software developer spent $45 million in just revamping their current poker software to interact more with social media; are you kidding me one would ask, but these costs are probably a norm in this fascinating world of massively multiplayer online gaming monoliths. When the costs are this high, the people involved with it would have to be among the cream of the software developing community, and they would have to be ably supported by a battery of line managers and experts in fields ranging from business analysis to marketing. Service-oriented coders simply won’t cut ice in this industry, you’d require hard-core gaming developers, who love coding with that passion when they discovered it at a very young age, mostly. SDLC models from waterfall models to fountain models are exhaustively used by managers trying to meet deadlines with the ruthless efficiency that is seldom seen in the business world, but that’s a minimum norm too. (System Development Life Cycle SDLC models help in the complete development of a system, right from the conceptual stage to the delivery stage)

My programmers time and again show me requests for poker software plans at sites like getafreelancer and some other sites where vendors post requirements for software developers to develop poker software for amounts ranging from $1000 to $3000 budgets – we all have a good laugh at such weird requests, and I’d like to tell these vendors looking for poker software at such prices that their money is going to go down the drain, guaranteed. If anyone can make a poker software or a casino software in $3000, we would all be out of a job. Try fitting in 3 million man-hours for 3000 USD, and you get the picture!

Also, look at it this way: many of the top 5 poker sites with the most state-of-the-art poker software out there, supporting hundreds of thousands of players, still crash once in a while – one reason being the software was built with changed architectures now and then and as players kept on being added, patches and fixes were actively supplied. The result becomes sometimes a horror show from the coder’s point of view. In terms of stability and robustness, poker software plans are still inadequate in several aspects. New technology and gaming platforms and architecture is being built time and again to manage this inadequacy and it will be some time before it is fixed properly. Where then, do these 3000 USD a software people stand? On the other hand, there are some folks who offer to sell poker and casino software for anything between USD 30000 to 50000. I recently inquired at such a supplier, quite well-known with their name cropping up on quite a few searches on search engines. Great SEO, that! But I found that their software was a low-end java client version which is totally outdated technology in the 21^st century’s 2^nd decade and that it couldn’t support more than 600 players. Why, then, would I spend my hard-earned moolah on it?

While on poker software project management, I love Pete’s estimating laws, they go something like this:

1. Everything takes longer than you think (sometimes a lot longer).

2. Thinking about everything takes longer than you think.

3. Project Managing and leading a project team is a FULL TIME job, and then some.

4. Software Engineers are always optimistic (generally REALLY optimistic).

5. Schedules are (almost) always wrong.

Well, life is always looking up and there is a learning curve that defines the best within each of us. In ending this post, let me demonstrate the formula for “learning curve” as developed by managers:

Tn=time required for nth item produced

C=constant, which is equal to the time to produce the 1st unit

s=slope constant, always negative

Take it whichever way you’d like, casino or poker software isn’t something that you would be looking at to buy for a few thousand USD – it’s not a small video game or flash game that you play on your consoles or xbox or browsers. It is something much more advanced and developed at the cost of millions of dollars for it to be worth its salt.