Panmedia loves players

Panmedia started designing games last year just for the fun of it. Our first attempts were crude and didn’t deserve the light of day. Up till early this year we explored opportunities and ideas but didn’t firmly commit to any one project.

Then someone suggested we create a promotional game for Easter. That’s how Grab Di Bunny came about. The development process, spearheaded by Alex Morrissey, Manager, Design and Online Media, was shaky initially, not because the work was inherently difficult or challenging, but we were simply new to the process so we came to many points circuitously.

Most of our staff involved in game development believe the idea generation is the fun part. Long before we think about mundane stuff like target audience, purpose and objective, Panmedia’s approach is to begin nurturing some vague idea.

“Brainstorming concepts to turn into a fun and interesting game for people to enjoy is what I like about this part of our work,” says Donnett Smith, Manager, Online Marketing. “We have to research existing games and this exposes us to what is already out there and the many different ways to implement and develop something successful.”

Not all ideas get selected, of course. When we do a group think someone always points to serious fault with this or that idea. Once an idea stands up to our critique, however, we know we have something worth developing. Then our next step is to begin the processing work of figuring out the parameters of the game, the interface, the backend and the logic that will let users play with ease and without problems.

Facebook games incorporate many different technologies to give an immersive game play to those who enjoy this kind of fun. Panmedia’s added value is to  deliver an intuitive, feature rich control panel for administrators.

The front-end of the game is typically produced in Flash & Actionscript for interactive graphics and sleek game play.  The flash front-end is designed to communicate with the business savvy backend that tracks and stores player contact and score information. This information helps us understand how players engage with our games so we know where and how to improve the experience.  We are also then able to communicate with winners directly to handout their rewards and track repeat winners.

“I enjoy this part of the task most,” says Senior Web Developer Paul Allen. “I get to apply my software programming skills in often novel and exciting ways that I don’t generally encounter developing websites or business applications.  It is definitely the most rewarding programming experience for me, just seeing the reaction from players.”

Then there's the rules and guidelines portion of the game that is necessary to prevent dishonest action. Writing such instructions clearly is critical so there is no room for misinterpretation.

We do internal testing at Panmedia to make sure the game is not too easy to win, nor is it so difficult that it might frustrate players. Once we launch, then everyone gets to see people play the game and have fun with it. And since share is so integral a part of Facebook, players often generate interest in the games to spread the excitement and motivate our team to come up with even more interesting ideas. Watch this space for games that we promise you will enjoy.