Category Archives: Articles of Interest

Articles of Interest

Posted on March 4, 2008 by | 1 comment

Too much “big news” broke over the past week. I can’t keep up:

Sony announced its own internal in-game ad unit, but says that PlayStation Network will remain open to other ad firms.

Phil Harrison, president of Sony Computer Entertainment worldwide studios, resigned from Sony and joined Atari.

EA seeks to acquire Take-Two for $2.0 billion. And Take-Two’s board of directors has rejected the offer, seeking more cash. Is it petty to keep quoting John “no longer ripe for mergers” Riccitiello at times like this? It is, I know.

Nintendo has announced Wi-Fi Connection Pay & Play. Players will use Wii points to pay for undisclosed Wi-Fi services (such as paying for online multiplayer time in certain games?) I’ll reserve comment until I know more about this, but it seems quite strange to me.

It seems that the number of active monthly Second Life users has not grown significantly since July 2007. That’s going to put one hell of a dent in the SL hype engine. Time to fix that crappy SL UI…

The Sims Online is reborn as EA-Land, a free-to-play game with virtual object sales (natch.)

Every year, one of my friends inevitably leads me to Berkshire Hathaway’s annual report and letter to investors. This year, it was Kim. As always, reading the letter makes me want to give Warren Buffet a giant hug. If there was ever a more intelligent, honest, charitable, and humble person, I don’t know of him. Good lord, do I have a crush on Warren Buffet??

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Articles of Interest

Posted on February 26, 2008 by | 3 comments

As always, GDC was a great experience. I highly encourage those of you who have never attended the conference to do so next year. This is especially true for students who are looking to break into the game industry — the educational (as well as networking) opportunities at GDC cannot be overstated. And with that, here are just a few examples of the great stuff that GDC had to offer:

The IGF winners were announced, and — no surprises here — Crayon Physics scored the grand prize. Petri Purho, the guy behind Crayon Physics, writes about it (and more) on his blog, Kloonigames. Keep an eye on Petri. As I’ve noted on this blog in the past, he’s always cooking up interesting ideas. The man is going places.

The annual Rant is always fun. Clint Hocking wins my vote for best quote: “Why isn’t Medal of Honor about honor? Imagine what it would be worth to you if you could put honor in a box and sell it. What if you package the experience of what it means to be honorable?”

I missed David Jones’ session, and I’m sorry I did. He presented one of the few upcoming “big budget” MMOs that I’m actually (semi-)excited about.

Plenty of Microsoft-related news. Community-created XNA games will, sometime in the future, be made available to all Xbox Live users. Games will be processed via peer review, not a managed portfolio process. Very, very exciting stuff — I’m glad the news is finally out! Other interesting revelations: XNA Game Studio can now be used to build games for the Zune. And last but not least, Fable 2 is blazing trails on XBLA — earn virtual gold in a related XBLA game, and you’ll be able to spend that gold within Fable 2 itself. For the record, I think there are so many cool ways that XBLA and retail games can be linked — this is just the start. It probably doesn’t make sense for the vast majority of XBLA games, but for a select few, there’s great potential.

Another session I wish I hadn’t missed: Game Studies Download 3.0, liveblogged by Raph Koster and revealing “the ten most interesting research findings of the year.” Some real gems in there.

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Articles of Interest

Posted on February 9, 2008 by | 1 comment

LeapFrog has unveiled the $50 “Tag”, a plastic stylus that turns paper books into interactive playthings. It will be available this summer with an 18-volume library of children’s classics. Seems to me like a really neat learning tool for kids! And hopefully, more successful than its predecessor — the $100 “Fly.”

Valve has introduced Steamworks, a suite of (free) publishing and development tools. It includes real-time sales tracking, an encryption system, auto-updating, territory control, voice chat, multiplayer matchmaking, social networking, and development tools. Notably, it can even be used with games released through digital distribution services other than Steam.

Kim writes about the DRM-free tactics of Stardock Games, which recently published Sins of a Solar Empire, and Galactic Civilizations II before that. Both are big-budget retail titles, the latter of which apparently sold quite well. Key quote: “if you provide reasonable after-release support in the form of free updates that add new content and features that are painless for customers to get, you create a real incentive to be a customer.” Speaking of piracy, check out this interesting debate. Piracy may be rampant in Asia, but Nexon Director Min Kim is right to point out that used game sales in the US play a similar role in the market.

Three cheers for Seattle, my current home and, apparently, the new Silicon Valley. Maybe this will prevent my house’s value from dropping 25%+…

I like occasionally playing the part of Second Life cynic. I also like pointing out when something really cool pops up in there… like a detailed replication of Yosemite Valley in 1883. Or a giant, floating 1790 World Globe.

Moviestorm is a free machinima development tool that will generate revenue by offering $10 asset packs. It will focus on offering better camera controls and significantly more character animations than found in typical game engines.

Brenda Brathwaite takes a hatchet to the H&R block advergames on Facebook. In particular, I agree with her criticisms of “The Financial Match Quiz.” Who could think that a “compatibility quiz” based on questions like “how do you feel about debt” and “do you know what tax deductions you qualify for” would be fun? One lesson for advertisers: get a reasonable number of people to test your game before launching it… preferably in a context that encourages them to behave naturally, not tell you what you want to hear.

I just discovered I’mInLikeWithYou.com, a vaguely game-like online dating site that enables you to potentially meet people by answering their random questions, which you can only do if you’re willing to bid more points than the previous person who answered the same question.

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Articles of Interest

Posted on January 27, 2008 by | Comments Off on Articles of Interest

Via Henry, a study comparing the online behavior of US and Chinese teens. Some of the results: almost five times as many Chinese as American respondents said they have a parallel life online (61% vs. 13%). More than half the Chinese sample (51%) said they have adopted a completely different persona in some of their online interactions, compared with only 17 percent of Americans. Lots more interesting stuff in there.

Interesting article advocating for greater use of social media within corporations. Crux of the argument: the top talent of the future will be repelled by potential employers that don’t make significant use of the same media technologies that potential employees use in their daily lives. Quote: “You’re at home…you’re Twittering, posting to your family’s blog and using Google Apps to set up your family’s annual vacation. You go into the office and you’re liberated by…email?” Yet again, this makes me think about the use of video games as employee attractors. (Why should advergames be targeted at consumers alone?)

Steve Meretzky is priceless. Who else could depress you for six minutes and fifty seconds, then make it all worthwhile in less than ten remaining? This video is worth watching. (And Steve, you’re so right.)

Here’s a milestone in the evolution of free video games: EA has announced that an upcoming title in the Battlefield franchise will be part of the company’s new “Play 4 Free” series of games. Revenue to be derived from advertising and microtransactions.

Tom Buscaglia offers some advice to independent developers when negotiating with publishers. His bottom line: don’t forget to ask for your share of ancillary revenue.

Nabeel Hyatt notices an interesting (if unsurprising) statistic: of the top 100 most active Facebook applications, games do not perform statistically better than the average application, but multiplayer games such as Warbook and Scrabulous average 11.4% active daily users, a good 30% higher than the average top Facebook app (8.01%). Given that the very purpose of Facebook is to connect you with others, this makes perfect sense.

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Articles of Interest

Posted on January 6, 2008 by | 3 comments

Call of Duty 4 has apparently struck such a cord with consumers that retail chains (such as Circuit City) are selling it for $40 (i.e. loss leader) to attract foot traffic. Activision must be pleased.

Warner Bros. is going exclusive with Blu-Ray. As I’ve written previously (well before joining Microsoft, in fact), I see this as big news in the DVD format war, but small news in the console war. The jump from DVD to Blu-Ray is far less significant than VHS to DVD. Back then, DVD offered greater functionality, greater quality (to anyone with a TV+VHS), and greater ease of storage. Blu-Ray only offers greater quality to a select few consumers with HDTVs larger than a certain size. And many of the consumers in that category (with an interest in gaming) already own a PS3 and/or 360. Blu-ray wasn’t and isn’t going to save the Playstation. Whether anything else can… I suppose only time will tell.

The Wii is on the verge of selling 20m units. Gonna see a lot of headlines when they officially crack that ceiling. Happily (for me!) the 360 has sold roughly twice as many units as the PS3.

The Electric Sheep Company laid off about one-third (22) of its employees three weeks ago. It also canceled several projects, including the creation of an ad network within Second Life. The CEO noted, “We felt that large scale advertising to the current Second Life user base by real world companies is not a big opportunity in the short term.”

Duels.com, a simple online RPG that enables players to “duel” asynchronously, has reached one million duels per day. Bear in mind that from what I can tell, an obsessive player could rack up 100+ duels in a single day, so this doesn’t mean anything near a million users. What it does mean is that tens and maybe hundreds of thousands of users are willing to grind for “cool” items in a world almost completely devoid of meaningful plot development, entertaining quests, thoughtful strategy or action, etc… as long as the game is free. That sounds more cynical than I intended… sort of. It’s also fairly obvious, but perhaps that’s a cynical statement, too. 😉

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Articles of Interest

Posted on December 16, 2007 by | Comments Off on Articles of Interest

Looks like a major publisher finally took notice of the tremendous popularity of Travian; the Heroes of Might and Magic franchise will be spinning out Kingdoms, a persistent, web-based strategy game. Speaking of Travian, those of you who appreciated my review of that game might enjoy a similar account from Rock, Paper, Shotgun. It’s a fun retelling of a long gameplay experience that petered out as abruptly as mine did. I like the clever way that Kieron describes the game, concluding with: “ultimately… I knew there were no Lions in Travian. It’s a game for Jackals.”

Nice post by Chris Anderson about how discount airlines are using alternate revenue mechanisms (the same way free games use alternate revenue mechanisms) to drive ticket costs way down.

Nexon is integrating retail outlets like Best Buy and 7-Eleven into Maplestory. Not just integrating them from a distribution perspective — I mean actually making virtual 7-Eleven stores part of the game, with “appropriately themed quests.” Huh? Allow me to redirect your attention to the Maplestory info page, the first sentence of which reads: “You can explore a totally new and unknown world you have never been to.” Irony is not dead; it’s just depressing. Every time a game company does something like this, it sets the entire industry back because advertisers are learning the wrong lessons about our medium.

Valve recently began selling Weighted Companion Cube plush toys, and they’re already sold out. I want one. 🙁

Every once in a while I’m really tickled by an ARG (in this case, one promoting the upcoming movie Dark Knight.) They sent players on a quest to find cakes in bakeries around the country; the cakes had phone numbers written on them in icing. When players called those phone numbers, the cakes themselves rang — cell phones were hidden inside them. 🙂

XNA 2.0 has shipped. Biggest improvement: multiplayer matchmaking.

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Articles of Interest

Posted on December 9, 2007 by | 1 comment

Ever read something like “the average American consumer is exposed to 5,000 ads a day?” I certainly have. Ilya has done a great job of digging up sources behind this popular (if debatable) number.

Henry has written two blog posts strongly encouraging everyone to see Moral Kombat, despite accusations that the documentary’s trailer appears to be skewed against the video game industry.

Article about Blitz Games’ TruSim division, which makes serious games. (Blitz developed the Burger King Xbox games.) I’m highlighting this article because it mentions a medical triage game that I think is a decent example of a non-consumer serious game that could evolve into a successful consumer (M-rated) title, given the number of people who watch “serious” medical TV shows! This was one of the many themes in my recent GDC Lyon lecture, “How to Compete With Free.”

And speaking of serious games, the long-in-coming GlucoBoy blood tester for Nintendo DS-owning diabetic children has finally hit the market. If any of you have seen or used this, I’d love to know what your experience was.

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Articles of Interest

Posted on November 19, 2007 by | Comments Off on Articles of Interest

Via Ilya, the answer to the question: what happens when you fuse Pac-Man with Zork?

Some information about EA’s revenues by platform and by retailer. Short version: Gamestop ekes out Walmart, and the 360 generates (by far) the most revenue of any console platform — old or new. By next year, I expect that EA will be generating large sums of revenue from the Wii as well.

Rumors abound that, thanks to a private stock sale, Linden Lab (Second Life) is now valued at “significantly more” than five billion dollars.

Ray & Greg of Bioware discuss their views on leadership, humility, and integrity. As always, they sound like great people to work for.

Lawrence Lessig’s TED presentation on copyright, culture, democracy, and user-generated content. A must-see.

Research firm EEDAR claims that a next-gen game’s revenue can jump by 69% if the game offers both a downloadable demo and a trailer. 360 games perform 129% better, while PS3 games perform just 16% better. Impressive (on multiple levels.)

Fischer Price has unveiled a $100 “Smart Cycle” for young children. It includes a game cartridge that features “several fun and educational adventures” such as “Math Mountain.” (Ugh… I haven’t even seen the thing, and I can already say with 95% certainty that Math Mountain won’t be fun.) Notably, there are additional games available for the Cycle featuring the likes of Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob, etc.

Guitar Hero III has already sold 1.4m units across all platforms. So much for speculation that Rock Band would cripple the franchise this year…

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Articles of Interest

Posted on November 5, 2007 by | 3 comments

Kim Pallister and Vlad Cole, two friends and colleagues here at Microsoft, have launched the Video Game Venture Capital (VGVC) blog. It tracks capital flows into the game industry, and is already chock full of goodies.

Article about dating games (or “dating simulations”, as the author puts it) in Japan. What I want to know is: why aren’t there more “career simulations” in the US, given our cultural fixation on money? There are the various Tycoon games and whatnot, but notably the “legal sims” (i.e. Phoenix Wright) and “medical sims” (i.e. Trauma Center) are coming from Japanese developers (and of course, I use the term “sim” very loosely here.) I’ve yet to play a great CEO sim, or sales sim, or biz dev sim, or marketing sim, etc…

A Nielsen research study finds that only 14% of TV-owning households in the US have fully-equipped HD TVs. That figure is much lower than those cited by the CEA (which claims 32%). If true, good news for Nintendo, not such good news for Microsoft and Sony.

A relatively shallow article about the importance of pre-orders. I only cite it because it made me recall an interesting conversation with a friend of mine at a top five publisher, who claimed they can predict the lifetime sales of a retail game with 90% accuracy, based mainly on pre-orders.

In this research study, kids equipped with Nintendo’s Brain Age were found to become better at math, faster in exams, and most interestingly, better behaved in class.

For my readers who are new to this industry: Raph Koster has posted a nice summary of every role in a game development team. You might be surprised by its length.

Via Kim, a game called Swypeout that ships with a USB bar code reader. Collectable Swypeout cards can be purchased, processed by the reader, and imported into an online racing game (i.e. car on card == car in game). This kind of thing is very popular in Japanese arcades; in the US, where arcades are a dying breed, Swypeout is a sensible translation.

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The Cake is a Lie

Posted on November 1, 2007 by | Comments Off on The Cake is a Lie

Portal (one of the many fine games included in “The Orange Box”) is just fantastic; a nearly perfect 3-4 hour gameplay experience. And I’m still laughing about the song at the end of the game. Do yourself a favor and play it, if you haven’t already.

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