:: Presentation :: Pillow Fight ::

Awesome manz, this whole facebook seminar, I actually enjoyed it. Some of the presentation styles are rather unique like Joshua's video and most of them presents some really interesting points admist laughter. Rumour has it that Henry wants to bring someone to bed tonight is so going to be stuck in my head for quite a while. I rather like the pace of the whole seminar presentation, 7 mins really does have it credits, it makes presentation more or less concise and the general flow is rather nice. That aside, it's my time to start to evaluation on pillow fight.


Review

Pillow Fight - just when was the last time I actually have a pillow fight, perhaps when i was around 8 with my sister? I still hold those fold memories close and loved how we use to just whack each other with pillows and my favourite: bolster. The trill was there and it just feels nice to let go and literally whack! That was years ago, actually I can say decade ago. It really does bring back fond memories. Nowadays, as I observe that while I still find enjoyment and fun in other activities, I miss the child-like trill and fun in letting everything go and just do something silly just for the fun of it. It’s been a long time. That was what I thought of when I registered the words pillow fight. It was a representation of letting oneself go and have fun. It represents childhood and something, just pure of us.I believe that that's what the app's trying to achieve and bring across so that people can still put aside time for these small pleasures (though i do admit the clicking of the buttons can be a rather waste of time). I went to look at some of the post and it warms my heart to see stuff like this:

This pillow fight thing really does have its appeal. One of the points I still remember from the seminar more than 24 hours ago is that it is free, easy to use(even grandmas can use them) and though it's similar to super poke, it differs since it's competitive. I shan't go into those aspects as I'm sure you know those factors as it is. I guess the more important learning point in this is how does those features draws players in. As a matter of fact, pillow fight, first impression before this seminar was that it's similar to superpoke, just that the icon's a little different and it's competitive. when I come out of it, i still see roughly the same things but perhaps when i step one step back and review it again, i can perhaps, pick out why it succeeded.

It's free. I have nothing to say over this, it's in my impression that apps on fb are mostly free, even though super popular ones. Hence, I am still rather puzzled over the emphasis that it's free. On the flip side, this brings me to a point that i still strongly remember since it disturbs me a bit and when I went to the app it's so blatantly staring at my face. It's rather disturbing. Multiple rather inappropriate advertisement. Like that:

Im a 19 going to 20 lady and I'm highly disturbed by that. I believe the app is directly at all age groups, for friends and family, children, adults, grandmas.. To see similar contents with different pictures, no it's not even pictures, it's moving clips. it's rather disturbing i admit. It makes me wonder, are they that desperate for money to have those plastered all over the app? It just makes me wonder, are you doing the app for money or for the app, so that others can enjoy it. It's rather sad to see such a, how to call it, purely fun and innocent intention app to have these kinda advertisements all over. Though i do understand that it's nice to earn some money out of it, i personally do recommend to clean it up a little, at least put it at reasonable place, not in between your app and perhaps, spend a little more thought and time into selecting the appropriate types of advertisement. As the group mentioned, perhpas pillow advertisement may seem not as out of place and definitely decent.

Moving back to track, it's easy to use and also have the element of competitiveness in this as compared to superpoke, just like how it's counterpart in reality works. easy to use. really, if even grandmas can use them, i must say they're rather simple to use and that's the draw points. The learning curve is smooth, anyone can play, even your grandmothers. This pulls in the family factor and also the fact that adults can have virtual pillow fights though they may be a little on the old side to really play them. easy to use really do demolish the barrier of entry and attracts people into the game. A point i'd make sure to always keep in mind for our apps, to make it simple, easy to understand or like fameleauge, my seminar group's app, very elaborate and fanciful but it's sooooo complex after dunno how many days i still dun really quite comprehend how it works. If a group that's suppose to study it thinks like that, what about those players, i doubt they'd last 2 mins. One of the major drawpoints of pillow fight is its simplicity in concept and of course, you get to pillow fight with your friends and also your family - it's been a long time since i last whacked my sis with a pillow hmmm.... back to point.

competitiveness, which human doesn't have, though some a small degree but they still do have competitiveness. This creates a stickyness for the game and encourages players to come back. A rather smart move, esp if you're in a "serious" pillow fight and aboslutely won't want to lose. This works rather nicely. Though playing on the competitiveness part, the app can actually use some extra ideas that adds the fun elements. For example, certain features such as pillow enhancer can be added during the match using the credits or coins in this case to perhaps, shorten opponents' "reaction time" or lengthen yours. Not a complusory feature but do help enhance the game and make more interesting. Such brings me back to this observation, I don't really see much fundamental changes or enhancement for the app. Well, for my group, as im sure for others in 3216, the app's like our baby and we'll nurture it. We've spend a lot of effort, sleepless nights in the basement to bring our apps to life, for me, i'd always seek on ways to improve it. Improvement and enhancement, a VERY important element i believe in making an app not only successfull in the short term but also the long term is to literally keep it on its toes. Even Caleb's improving his farm wars~~

Talking about improvements, i see that pillow fights' updates mainly on the type of pillow you can throw. You've seen the pictures where there're like 50 odd page tabs of pillows, each only have 6 pillows. I think the really bad part of it is that some people'd get tired of looking through all the tabs, they stop at around 10 or so and worse thing of all, there's no indicator on which tab you are, good luck to those who forgot which ones they do click. While i think it's nice to have so many variety and introduce some level concepts where some pillow's still lock, a better presentation could have been imployed like, more specific tags, or perhaps a serach bar? Though i do believe that the picture quality of the pillow do have to improve and more though spent on this because some pillows are really just any random picture anyone can paste.

This one actually looks like those game models out there

and this is firstly, out of place due to the different template but oso it's rather obvious that's it's a pasted picture from somewhere else





While i like the concept and idea and considering that this app is successfull, i do believe that more effort can be spent on this app. Im not sure if you can really see it but through these small stuff like this and those spam advertisement that can be a little inapporpriate at times,makes one feel that this app is not really that much cared for,

Though talking about new pillows and stuff, i find this concept rather interesting and a little sad that pillow fight didn't really exploit it. the personalisation of pillows. Flipping through numerious pillows, i realise that a lot of those pillows are basically a background standard black pillow overlapped with a picture on top of that and viola, a new pillow~.This can prove to be a rather strong feature that pillow fight can exploit. I find this to be very true:

You can send a message without saying anything. In fact pillow fight do have these alr like seasons greetings, help raise awareness for certain issues like the given examples:

Notice the pillow's the same just that the picture that overlayed it is different? I believe this is a rather cool idea if you can expand it to allow user the power to customise. I believe this can be a huge attraction point if people can have a certain amount of control, such as over how your pillows looks like. You can have a few different pillow base and with players adding their own pictures, there'd be so much more pillows. I realise that player'd like control over these kinda stuff and customisation allows them that. Most importantly, people can pass messages through this, it makes it more meaningful rather then just a "waste of time" as some said. I believe this can be implemented in my group's app, in fact, it's already designed to do so but we're looking at ways how this can really help enhance while maintaining a balance of control between players and developers.

and oh woah, look at that, that's a rather long entry with my pictures alr so without further ado, i'd like to point out certain points that aren't exactly favourable in this application and while i learn from it, hopefully to not repeat those mistakes in my app. Pop ups.

This is very true. I went to the application myself and basically, if you want to throw a pillow, this infinite loop appears, and trust me, the infinite word is used correctly.

The don't Allow button is a fake trap, it's just go from 1 of 3 to 2 of 3 to 3 of 3 and back to 1 of 3 and the process goes over and over again in an infinite loop. I'm not sure if this's a bug, i hope it is. Because if it's not, i think it's rather irritiating. Not only irritating but you aren't really respecting user's privacy and decisions. Just because of this, I've not throwed a pillow and I don't think i'd be throwing one anytime soon. This loop is a rather serious problem and if it's a bug, i do hope it can be removed soon and i seek to make sure that such things won't happen to my app. It repulses users and can be a huge drawback from the game. My own seminar app proves it, I hate it, the pop up and spam invites, Cedric hates it, John Lew(his review on it) hates it too and I'm sure many others as well. Though certain pop ups are necessary, it have a huge potential at irritating people through it so i'd be caution at using it. One thing I don't mind about popups in farmville though i still don't really like it is that their pop up window are rather special, the first one anyway, before moving on to the default facebook ones. It can soften the edges a little and is definitely something that i can use in my app.

With all those said, i believe pillow fight do have a potential to do even better. Cleaning up with the advertisements, pop ups, add in a customisable feature, attack or defense bonuses e.t.c. are just ways to improve them. I guess, back to the foundamentals, it's there for entertainment, to let people have fun, involve friends and family, play with them and engage them through simple means that everyone have real life experience in, or at least know about it.

I've learnt a lot, not only from pillow fights but from the other applications presented in the seminar as well as other applications such as farmville (and here i thought someone would critique on it), farm wars, mafia wars and its variant. Truth to be told, a lotta features(those that we think make those app great) are picked from all over the place to complement our game. Look around, research (i mean comon, laurence played mafia war just for this app lol, LAURENCE PLAYED MAFIA WARS for a few days!!!) learn from them, adapt and innovate. We all start out as babies and i think what we do best is to learn from observing. I've learnt a lot from this and have thought of various stuff to make sure my app'll be better, have you?