Month: August 2005 (Page 2 of 3)

Parks and Casinos

August 19, 2005 / Damion Schubert

I generally haven’t been watching the blog because work’s been keeping me busy – Wolfpack’s preparing a dog and pony show of our new project for the Ubi brass. Also, when I’ve had time to poke my head out to look for my shadow, I’ve been too busy casting stones in this Terranova thread, which covers design of social spaces vs enforcement of them. A poster there insists that designers worry too much about enforcement, and not enough about designing compelling social spaces. Nonsense, I retorted. Central Park was considered a deathtrap until they stepped up enforcement, and now it’s one of the safest urban parks in the world. Somewhere along the way, Scott brought the snark.

Ironically, the Austin Game Conference has accepted my lecture proposal regarding what MMOs can learn about Casino design, and how more designers should take lessons from other fields when designing social spaces. It’s a lecture idea, I might add, I’ve been letting stew in my head for more than a year. I would have posted it as an article here but then none of you would have been able to get a response past Spam Karma. =)

We’ll Always Have Spore

August 16, 2005 / Damion Schubert

Scott Miller is going on again about the importance of owning your Intellectual Property. A key snippet

If you look at the top 40 console games (lifetime sales) since 1995, 31 of them, or 77 percent, are original brands (including sequels within these brands). That leaves just nine out of 40 as licensed game brands. That’s near total dominance in favor of original IP. Some of these top selling brands include: GTA, Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Halo, Crash Bandicoot, Tekken, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid and Driver…

So, if original brands control nearly 80% percent of the chart every year, why aren’t we seeing a LOT more original games in development? It’s clear that the real gold mine in our industry is with original IP (and their sequels and spin-offs). Publishers would be so much better off in the long-run by creating original IP versus licensed games. Owning an arm’s length list of home grown IP should be the goal of every publisher, because it gives them ultimate control of their own destiny and revenues.

Yet we have a large publisher like THQ being out-IP’ed by a little game studio like Id Software, who’ve created three blockbuster IPs, Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake.

Your Monday Morning Hot Coffee

August 15, 2005 / Damion Schubert

J of Damned Vulpine was at the Hot Coffee panel I did last week, and wrote up a very thorough summary. The debate continues onward on the Austin Game Developers boards.

In other news, Jack Thompson has tried to get the people who run Game Revolution arrested, because someone who works on one of their affiliate sites made this AIM icon. This, combined with the VGCats exchange from last week, pretty much confirms that Jack is about three Doritos short of a salsa bowl.

How To Make In-Game Ads Work

August 12, 2005 / Damion Schubert

Here’s a free idea for Massive Inc, the people putting ads in games like SWAT 4 and Planetside.

Encourage your partners to make the ads destructable. Continue reading

Hot Coffee is Not Just About Sex

August 11, 2005 / Damion Schubert

I’ve been saying for weeks that the the thing most industry people don’t get about the Hot Coffee mod is that it’s not about sex. I know it’s hip to fliply say “There’s sex in my violence!” and talk about how we have a double-standard and we’re puritans about sex but love our violence. Continue reading

In-Game Advertisements

August 11, 2005 / Damion Schubert

In-game advertisements, courtesy of Massive Incorporated, have begun showing up in Planetside. SOE’s small Tribes-like cult favorite isn’t the first MMO to drink the Kool-Aid, but the previous game that did so, Anarchy Online, preceded the move with an option to play certain parts of the game for free. As of yet, no such price decrease has occurred in Planetside. A quote from SOE:

Louis Figueroa, Director, Business Development, Sony Online Entertainment, commenting: “Realizing another revenue stream in PlanetSide will ultimately be good for the entire PlanetSide community. The additional income will allow us to support the game with continued development and new features that the community has been asking for. Working with Massive’s network helps make this possible.”

The Costs of CS for NCSoft Titles

August 8, 2005 / Damion Schubert

Will Leverett and Rob Simpson of NCSoft recently did a lecture to our local community college about the ins and outs of running the service side of MMOs (customer service, account management, etc). J. over at Damned Vulpine went and took copious notes, and the result is a good primer on this oft-forgotten and underestimated aspect of running an online business. Included is a breakdown of how calls get routed through an outsourced India office, and the difference between supporting a PVE game like City of Heroes and a PVP game like Lineage 2. Come to think of it, I wonder how the introduction of City of Villians will change that equation.

One interesting nugget: according to Will and Rob, the customer service costs of running Guild Wars is considerably easier than for CoH and Lineage 2. They attribute that to lower expectations due to the lack of a monthly fee.

An interesting read. And I’m not just saying that because he p1mp3d my upcoming panel.

Just How Far Down Do You Want To Go?

August 8, 2005 / Damion Schubert

We worry so much about the children playing too many games. This Smoking Gun arrest report shows that perhaps some ADULTS need to be reeled into reality.

McClain retreated to his basement, where he donned a chainmail armored vest and leather gauntlets to protect his arms. He also added a giant wooden mallet to his arsenal and beckoned officers to come downstairs and get him. “I’m gonna crush your fucking skulls,” McClain warned. Then, in a nice rhetorical flourish (for a lunatic, at least), he added, “I have a thousand years of power.” That omnipotence, however, was no match for a police Taser

If the Internet has a moral, it’s Scott’s maxim that people are broken.