Category Archives: Articles of Interest

• Bioware has announced vague but “big” plans for episodic extensions of some upcoming games. IMO, that qualifies as a significant (if exploratory) vote of confidence in the business model. Speaking of, I’d love to witness a no-holds-barred debate between Ray Muzyka and Mark Rein on this topic.  🙂
• Via Parmesh, some insight into the inevitably huge (but currently somewhat uninspired) Indian mobile game market. The entrepreneur in me just drools over the (eventual) possibilities…!
• Nintendo and Six Flags have joined forces to promote one another. Some will argue over the wisdom of this particular partnership, but I’ll sidestep that debate and simply express support for the general idea: i.e. advertising console gaming to a broader audience. Nintendo continues to lean in the right general direction.

PS. I just landed in China; will be here on business for about a week. Hopefully I’ll have some good stories to tell soon!

• Andre Vrignaud asked the Xbox community to tell him how Live should evolve. Tons of responses. Skimming them will give you some insight into the desires of Xbox’s most passionate customers.
• A detailed account of a virtual war that has erupted in Second Life.
• Ubisoft is attempting to crack the “very young / pseudo-edutainment” market with a game that lets kids create images, brush a monster’s teeth, play dress-up, etc.
• Via Edge, go make yourself a Parappa the Rapper-style 2d dancing image. You’ll waste ten minutes of your life and love it. I want this fleshed out and turned into a game!
• The development contract for Call Of Duty: Finest Hour has been published and picked apart by Gamasutra, for all the world to see. (Long article — I’m still working my way through it.)
• The top 15 selling games in Japan this past week were for Nintendo hardware; all but two were published by Nintendo. Wow. This helps illustrate two things:
  1. One more reason why Sony should be freaking out [they have always relied on the Japanese market to safeguard them against Microsoft] and,
  2. Why third party publishers are becoming worried about their prospects in Japan [Nintendo IP generally steals the show on Nintendo hardware, and Sony has a better reputation than Nintendo when it comes to working with third party publishers. Hopefully with the help of more titles like Blue Dragon, Xbox can finally begin to fill the void…]

  And speaking of Nintendo, check out this cute Wii-related weight loss testimonial (thanks, Ben).

• Worldwide wrap-up of notable happenings in video game academia this past Fall.
• Linden Lab has open-sourced the Second Life client. Given widespread recognition that the current client isn’t very user-friendly, the announcement has been greeted with enthusiasm by many bloggers. Linden Lab claims it will someday open-source the server code, but I’ll believe that when I see it.
• Everyone is talking about Slamdance (specifically, the festival’s decision to eject a controversial contestant, Super Columbine Massacre RPG, given pressure from sponsors.) Now three fellow contestants have withdrawn from Slamdance in protest; most industry bloggers appear to be cheering them on (primarily for rejecting double-standards, re: the treatment of controversial films vs. controversial games.)
• Lots of (good!) Microsoft-and-games-related news:
• From CES, 10.4M Xbox 360s shipped, 2.7M units of Gears of War shipped in 8 weeks, attach rate of 5.3 titles per Xbox 360, 5M+ members of Xbox Live, 20M+ XBLA games downloaded, and 2M text/voice/picture messages sent via Live per day. Estimate of 13-15M consoles shipped by fiscal year end.
• Also from CES, IPTV is coming to the Xbox 360 (by holiday season ’07). Personally very excited about this one.  🙂
• The New York Times has published a glowing review of Vista, as it pertains to games. The review focuses on the importance and usability of parental controls in the OS.
• Via FierceGameBiz a few days ago, news that movie downloads on Xbox are surpassing those of several major e-tailers (including Amazon), despite an obviously smaller customer base.

• Via Slashdot, word that the Milgram experiment was recreated in a virtual environment. I always thought that the video footage from Milgram’s original experiment was incredibly powerful stuff that every high school student should be required to watch. (PS. Best — if most twisted — Slashdot story comment I’ve read in a long time: “So when does this come out for the Wii?”)
• Also via Slashdot, a research team at Intel built a game that works entirely within Google Earth.
• One year ago, I would never have guessed that HDTVs would soon be in 33M US homes.
• Ian Bogost writes about the Burger King Xbox 360 games, noting that there’s more to these games than the brand loyalty they might generate. Quote: “Burger King used these games as a lure to draw Xbox owners into their stores… the same strategy fast food companies use in their kid’s meals every week… In the world of marketing, this strategy is called promotion.”
• In case you’re curious, Next Gen has posted a thorough list of Games of 2007 on Xbox 360.
• A web portal, designed with the Wii’s opera browser in mind, offering free flash games. I’m so curious to see how Nintendo responds to initiatives like this (assuming it responds at all.)

• A refresher from The Escapist on the cost/benefit of “boutique MMOGs”. Though by boutique, they really just mean “low budget.”
• Time Warner acquired a 10% stake in SCi Entertainment/Eidos, then inked a distribution deal with Codemasters. Oh big media, you do love your games.
• A Japanese economic website estimates that the Wii costs just $158 to produce. (I’m not aware of a fully-translated version of this article, sorry.)
• Burger King’s advergames have sold 2M copies. Given that they’re being sold for $4, that’s a pretty big win. Assuming a reasonable development cost, Burger King is advertising for free or even advertising at a profit.  🙂

• Interesting interview of Elan Lee, VP of well-known ARG maker 42 Entertainment.
• Fox teams up with Multiverse to turn Firefly into an MMORPG.
• A player-created virtual sport (“Repel Ball”) has appeared in City of Villains. This kind of thing is a dream come true for developers — monthly subscription revenue from customers entertaining themselves.
• XNA Game Studio Express and the Creators Club have officially been launched.
• Raph says “there is no spoon” (when you’re talking about developer-created virtual items and property rights.)
• Some elegant holiday casual gaming (thanks Ben.)

• The Washington Post writes about Madden’s tremendous impact on the NFL and its fans. No longer surprising, but always fun to see a concrete example of the power of games in full effect. Relatedly, a very funny (but fake) letter from Madden’s lowest-rated NFL player is getting lots of attention. (warning: letter full of profanity)
• I forgot to mention earlier: Pogo has implemented a new virtual currency called “Gems”, which can be used to buy virtual items, etc. A development worth watching given Pogo’s large audience.
• Also in the “old news” category: most game magazines continue to tread water or lose subscribers, but Game Informer actually experienced a huge spike in subscribers thanks to GameStop promotions. It’s now a top-40 magazine in the US.
• For fellow bloggers: in a completely unscientific study, I correlated yesterday’s traffic spike (1100 more visitors than usual) with unique visits to my feed (50 more than usual). One could therefore surmise that approximately 4.5% of that traffic will potentially “stick” (not including repeat visitors who don’t use RSS readers). Again: totally unscientific — there’s a thousand things I can’t know that affect this number.

• The IGDA Alternate Reality Games SIG has released its first whitepaper. And speaking of ARGs, it looks like Lost Planet will have one.
• The Harvard Business Review recently published an article of mine on the subject of reverse product placements (i.e. bringing fictional products into real-world marketplaces). I can’t reprint the article, but it basically fleshes out points that I’ve already raised here.
• Kaz Hirai was promoted to president of SCEI; Ken Kutaragi moves into the chairman role. The promotion is being interpreted by some as a shift away from hardware-centricity.
• Via Wonderland, survey finds 43% of US net-users felt “as strongly” about their web community as they did about their real-world friends.
• Pacific Crest Securities is getting a lot of attention, ever since their analyst declared EA’s brand “tarnished” due to consistently poor games. Citing GameRankings.com, he notes: “Reviews of all of EA’s annualized titles… have declined over the past two years.” Lower revenues are probably a better measure of brand damage; little sign of that as of today.

• US comic publishers are reaching out to female readers now that manga has helped prove (shocker of shockers!) that males aren’t the only audience. But in game-industry-land, there are still execs and analysts who insist that women will only play simple puzzle games. Why, God, why?
• The “YouTube for PC games” category continues to explode. My buddy Jim Greer (formerly of Pogo) has alpha-launched Kongregate, a website that shares advertising, game sales, and microtransaction revenues with creators. More news here.
• The first post-launch article (I’ve seen) about the obvious weight-loss potential of the Wii. I predict approximately ten billion more articles on this topic. Such a PR layup for Nintendo…
• Henry has written a good article about the need for clearer language when discussing games and the “wisdom of crowds” | “collective intelligence” | “crowd-sourcing”. (Actually, he doesn’t mention “crowd-sourcing”, but I wish he had, because the term is often confused with WoC. Example of crowd-sourcing here.)
• Universal Music is suing MySpace over “user-appropriated content”.
• Neat little example of viral marketing on XBLA.  🙂

• Lazard Capital predicts 6% growth for Gamestop, thanks to Wii and Xbox 360 sales that will more than compensate for a $50M PS3-related shortfall. Both Nintendo and Microsoft (Gears of War, Viva Piñata) are enjoying strong holiday buzz, unlike Sony.
• Stardock’s Brad Wardell talks about making an MMO with a queue to play business model — wait in line to join a busy game server, or pay and jump to the front of the line (ala FilePlanet). Interesting idea.
• Interesting article about designing and improving the “virtual sensation” of games — a favorite topic of mine given its relation to exergaming. This reads like a manual for Wii developers, i.e. “One pitfall in creating virtual sensation is relying on the infallibility of the platform on which it resides…”
• One thing I’ll say for Sony — it wisely keeps pushing user-generated content (though so far I’m sure it’s 99% vaporware). Since Sony has stated it wants the PS3 to be perceived as “more than a console”, it comes as no surprise that they are encouraging the use of a USB mouse and/or keyboard for UGC-on-console creation.
• Raph Koster writes a fun semi-rant about user perspectives on DRM when it’s their content that is being pirated. His article actually raises some great questions for the industry.