uVme prediction

I'm going on record today. uVme will not be operating this time next year. I hope to have a couple of posts detailing my reasons for this in the next couple weeks, but quite honestly, I think things will be coming to an end.

Actually, I might be being very generous about the 1-year figure, it will probably be more like 6 months.

New and Old: Royal Cups at King.com

King has brought out two new Royal Cups.

The larger cup is in Magic Spinball, with a total prize pot of $19660.80.

The second cup is in BB Bathtub, with a total prize pot of $2457.60.

I had a feeling some new Royal Cups were coming as the Freecell Royal Cup just recently filled and the Deal or No Deal:The Bankers Quiz finally filled for all those US players that had a chance to play in it. That Royal Cup had probably been open for well over a year, but it's been such a long time ago, I can't remember. With the completion of the Deal or No Deal:The Bankers Quiz, that only leaves the American Idol Royal Cup to continue to languish, waiting to be filled now for around 16 months now. It has to be getting close as it's still available to US players, and was also originally open to German players, although it appears that the game is no longer offered to German players.

I'd honestly have to say American Idol has to be the biggest flop, at least obviously, for King in it's TV Show licensing kick it got on in 2007. King spent over $250,000 developing and licensing the game (reference), yet it was so unpopular that they've yet to fill the 16384 spots of the Royal Cup that began over 16 months ago. If you're unfamiliar with King.com, a typical Royal Cup of this size would take a month, at most, to fill in a popular game available to all players. It obviously takes longer for US only, or some other geographical limits, but still, this is just too long. Two other Royal Cups of the same size have completed in much less time. They are: the DOND: The Bankers Quiz is US only and has completed, as well as the 1 vs 100 Royal that was US only and was completed in less than a year. If that's not a flop, I don't know what is.

uVme Update for June

So, It's been a while since I've given an update on uVme. That's basically because not much in the gaming region has changed since my last update. Updates have been primarily confined to business side. The Payplan has been introduced, with the full documentation still to come. Black Diamond is said to be just around the corner. The monthly fee is gone.

In the games arena, it is said that tournaments could appear the week of June 16th (so much for the end of April, or May, or June...oh wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.) There was also an announcement that some retro games like Pong, Tetris, and the Snake game would be forthcoming. I'm interested in the Tetris game. I think Pong would be pretty boring, unless we're talking about a game with more features than two paddles, a court, and a ball. My question is, where's Blob/Bubble Factory? End of April? Also, the company is now seeking input about what game the company should first hold tournaments in. I know what you're thinking..."Tournaments were supposed to coincide with the release of Blob/Bubble Factory and would run for 2 weeks in the new game." Seems like that is out the window. The game developers sure seem to be having alot of issues with Blob Factory. I mean seriously, it now seems like tournaments are finally about to be ready, but no mention of Blob Factory. There's a video of Blob Factory being played as a demo that was released in April. I would think you could work out all the kinks in a working Beta of the game in nearly 2 months time??? But that's just my opinion, I'm sure the game is very complex.

King.com Royal Cup Shenanigans

So, about a month ago, I talked about the most recent Carnival Shootout Royal Cup at King.com here. Well, with a hat tip to Studs100, here comes an interesting review of the recently completed Memo Matcher Royal Cup.

To begin, the Royal Cup finals page is here. You'll notice three users posting scores of zero at various points the final rounds.

Lets start with nieniemals. nieniemals made it to the Quarter-Final round before posting a score of 0. A quick look at this users profile page shows they were active for 5 days only 3/13/08 - 3/18/08. In that time, 138 games were played, with just under 25% being played in Memo Matcher (42 games). Seems like you would continue to play in the Royal Cup if you had done so well after playing only 42 games. Looks like King locked this account, but, of course, that's just speculation.

Next, we'll move on to Pinetik. Pinetik made it to the Semi-Final round before posting a score of 0. We're quickly confronted with "User Not Found." Interesting, I'm pretty sure that you wouldn't voluntarily ask King to remove your account when you're doing so well in a Royal Cup, but again, that's just speculation on my part.

Now, let's look at blubabubba. blubabubba made it all the way to the final round before posting a score of 0. blubabubba joined 2/23/08 and has a last login of 5/23/08. You'll note that from the Royal Cup results page, the Cup ended 5/21/08. Coincidence that this user logged in 2 days afterwards, and hasn't logged in again for 10 days. I imagine they logged in to see that King had locked the account and posted a 0 score in the final round. Now it is possible that this was simply a Walk-over, but lets' first look at number of games played. A total of 75 games were played, with over half being in Memo Matcher (39 games).

Seems like a pretty one-dimensional showing. Again, this is all speculation, but it seems more than coincidence to see so many 0 scores in the final rounds, from users with very few games played, or the user accounts missing entirely.

In my opinion, King seems to be struggling mightily with game security and preventing cheating. I would guess that there's quite the debate at King about how to better secure the games. I imagine that when King came about in 2003/2004, they didn't consider this problem and didn't build any sort of security into the game scores. Many of us have seen and read about the King.com Tamper method where people demonstrate posting outrageous scores in Jewel games. While I've never personally seen it done with a cash game, I imagine it's possible. King seems to rely on manual examination of questionable players and the info gleaned from those users from King's ActiveX browser plug-in.

Then again, Memo Matcher is made for exploitation by screen-reading software. Simply grab the tiles as the fall and create a matching lay-up with all tiles shown in you screen-reading software, and then just click away without worrying about making a mistake.

Who knows, but it seems that the latest Memo-Matcher cup is tainted as well. At least a legitimate user finally came out on top, so I guess King's making progress in that respect.

Dukesbox.com New Website/Tower Defense Launch

The day is here and Dukesbox.com has a new look. Here's some of the great, new features you can expect with the new layout:

1. Replay: A first of it's kind Skill Gaming feature. This allows you to play a previous cash or free competition with the exact same board/layout/etc.. Wondering how in the world someone scored 11000 to you 2500 in Space Solitaire, well, just hit the Replay button and look for ways to get past the first level that you didn't find on the original play. This adda a tremendous amount of creditability to Dukesbox. Think a score was "impossible" based on the layouts, well, it can now be proven that such a score was possible from your opponent.
2. Chat: That's right, Dukesbox has added it's own Instant Messenger dubbed "DukeChat." Chat with fellow players and friends on Dukesbox in real-time.
3. Customization: Tired of seeing the "How's this work" text for every game page, well, just minimize it. That's right, you can now "minimize" things you don't want to see on every page, and these are saved and remembered every time you visit Dukesbox. (as long as you don't religiously delete you cookies)
4. World War Tower Defense: The first Tower Defense game in Skill Gaming history. Play Dukesbox's own Tower Defense game during the final testing period for Dukebucks. Win cash when it goes Live!
   

And so much more. Check it out.

uVme updates

So, uVme is finally making some positive strides forward. Speed Pool was released May 16. The game is OK. The reason I say this is because there doesn't appear to be any randomization in the break routine. I just played three game, making a Break that was highly repeatable in terms of location of the cue ball, break geometry and power. All three times, I pocketed the same ball, the same 4 balls remained in the original location after break, the cue ball was in the same spot after break, and the remaining 4 balls were generally in the same locations (within a small tolerance to account for the fact that you can't precisely duplicate the same shot.) Herein lies the problem, in my mind. The scoring is done such that a bonus meter counts down from the start of the game for about 90 seconds. If you can pot a ball (or balls) on the break, each ball will be worth around 1000 points, depending upon how fast you can set-up and shoot. I've seen reports of scores up around 8000-9000. With 8 red balls to score with, (black ball is worthless at the end) it seems to me you almost have to drop every ball on the break to score over 8000. There is a small time bonus at the end, but it's just the number of second remaining. So at 3:00 minutes a game, I think the time bonus would be 180 or less.

Basically, the game isn't so much about skill, but finding the break power, location, and angle to drop the vast majority of the balls on the break.

Also, Bob Bobble's Sea of Troubles (Formerly Bubble Trouble) was uploaded May 23. This is vast improvement over the old version. The addition of check points, which allow you to start from a position further along in the game if you die after reaching them, helps make the game more fun since you can actually get to the end and complete a game. I was actually able to reach to top and score 80000+ on my first attempt at the new game. I never came close to the surface in the old version.

Good to see new/updated games coming in, but Speed Pool has it's "skill" problems IMHO.

Dukesbox.com Website and Games update.

The Dukesblog was updated yesterday about the current developments of World War Tower Defense and the slick, new, website design. I've personally seen the working mock-up of the new website and it's awesome. The general visual concept of the site is just as shown in the exclusive preview. It appears that the switch-over to the new site is only a couple days away. All the minor details of the new web design are being taken care of currently. I wouldn't be surprised to visit Dukesbox.com on Sunday or Monday and see the new web design.