Oh no. We’ve been working on lots of new and exciting stuff that will be coming out over the next few months. A lot of that effort is all about keeping PKR fresh, as well as developing ‘new stuff’ – I mean, we’ve been kicking about for 3 years now and it’s my job to come up with new and exciting ways to keep our players engaged. And it’s not just a case of pushing a few more polygons, adding a few rude-boy T-shirts, developing a few mini games. There are a lot of things I’ve learned from casual games and from MMOs (that’s Massively Multiplayer Online) throughout PKR’s life and I always try to approach new features as a player engagement/retention design challenge.
To me, since I’m not a marketing type, engagement (which I can affect through sound design decisions) is just as valuable as retention (which is more of a marketing challenge). This basically translates to wanting to design an end user experience in which people will be entertained (it’s fun!), engaged (socially and intellectually) and valued (PKR shouldn’t take its customers for granted!).
OK, that’s enough esoteric design philosophy. What have we actually been doing? Well, there are a few secret projects coming up which are being worked on by top men, which I can’t talk about just yet. Yep, top men. But our main focus is (and long shall it remain!) improving the core Poker experience:
- A few tweaks to the front end that will push information a bit more effectively.
- A whole new look (as in more like the Portal/Front End) is coming to the lobby. We’ve kept it clean, simple, and familiar but way more user friendly with more filtering, options and statistics. It remembers what you’ve been up to, helps you find your favourite games and so on.
- A whole new re-designed in-game interface. Yes, I know, it scares the life out of me too, but again it’s been approached with a ‘don’t fix what ain’t broken’ attitude for the most part. It’s just a revamp to make it slicker and more user friendly. The revamp also allows the PKR development team to add new game variants as and when we want to. Probably best of all, it means we’re re-thinking how we do multi-tabling. If you are an MTT nut you going to love it.
- A Mac version! Yep, it’s done and out there for download. Once we set our mind on doing it, we found the right development partner and it’s only taken us a few months and minimal effort to get it done. I’m really pleased with it, even though there are some limitations and issues with MAC OS we’re having to live with.
As for when, it’ll be ready when it’s good enough – there’s a while to go yet, but the future is more definitely bright.
TTFN
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>