Playdom/Disney Interactive: Best UX Practices
View: Flash Game Canvas.pdf
When Playdom started to make the shift from static text based Role Playing Games (RPGs) to interactive animated Flash based games, it became clear to me that we needed to have new Game Canvas Specifications and Dimensions due to the Facebook iframe and their user's interior browser display resolutions. We didn't want users to have to click and scroll multiple times in order to view the canvas and play the game -- a huge user frustration point and cause of user drop off. We also wanted to make sure the most important CTAs were above the fold. So I undertook a study of the top games on Facebook, blended that with actual Facebook user browser display data and balanced that with upcoming device specs (ex: iPad's native resolution was 1024 x 768) from that study came the Flash Game Canvas Specs.
These guidelines were used by the 14 UI/UX Designers that I managed to create many of Playdom's Top Titles such as: Social City, City of Wonder, Wild Ones, Gardens of Time, Gnome Town, Blackwood and Bell Mysteries, Armies of Magic and Marvel: Avengers Alliance.
Playdom was acquired by The Walt Disney Company for $763 million ,and is now the social games product group of Disney Interactive. Playdom makes some of the most popular online Flash games around - from the hidden object game Gardens of Time, the winner of GDC Online's Best Social network Game Award, to Wild Ones the best arcade style Flash game on Facebook, and the critically acclaimed Marvel: Avengers Alliance.
