Category: Big Corps Are Evil (Page 2 of 14)

Goodbye, Diablo 3 Auction House

September 17, 2013 / Damion Schubert

The trick with playing with real money is when you start letting that real money drive game design decisions – or even give the appearance of doing so. When Diablo III launched last summer, most people (myself included) felt like the game just wasn’t as sticky as it was in the old days. Since the one thing that was significantly changed in the design was the introduction of the Auction House (for either real money or in-game gold), this was pointed to as a culprit- clearly, said the players, loot rates were driven down to make people used the auction house (this link is a very good read, btw). Continue reading

“The Loss of an Online Home”

August 26, 2013 / Damion Schubert

Remember yesterday, when I suggested that the person who thought that WoW should be shut down anytime soon was smoking a big ol’ bag of crack? It turns out that it could also result in front-page CNN news (well, it was front page before Miley Cyrus taught the world what ‘twerk’ means).

After 10 years and a significant drop in user numbers, Disney has decided to instead focus its resources on the more popular “Club Penguin” virtual world, which has about 200 million registered users. “Toontown” will be shuttered September 19….and many long-time player…are dealing with the loss of an online home.

XBox One Announces Self-Publishing Program

August 20, 2013 / Damion Schubert

Color me cautiously optimistic:

Microsoft said there are no application fees, no certification fees and no title update fees…. Registered developers will receive two Xbox One development kits at no cost, and access to the console’s full features, including the “full power of the console,” cloud, Kinect and Xbox Live toolsets and more…. Revenue splits will be “industry standard” Charla told us. (Digital deals often give the platform holder 30 percent, and the developer 70 percent.)

Oh, wait, are Microsoft still evil because they want developers to make money? I lose track.

XBox One Regaining Momentum, Contemplating Price Drop?

July 24, 2013 / Damion Schubert

It’s always hard to know how much stock to put into market analysis of the games industry, especially because so many of the usual suspects are very, very bad at it. Still, this prediction that the XBox One will outship the Playstation 4 by a 3 to 1 margin is pretty eyebrow raising.

Despite losing the headline battle at E3, Microsoft‘s Xbox One appears to be regaining some momentum, in part due to the used and online policy tweaks. Importantly, our supply chain checks suggest Microsoft may have the benefit of a 2-3x unit advantage at launch compared to Sony’s PS4.

On the flip side, the same article suggests that Microsoft is contemplating reducing their price point of $500 bucks, seeing as Sony has announced a price point of $400. Not exactly the hallmark of a confident leader, but given that I honestly believe that the winner of the console wars will be the one that comes out of the gate the strongest, and therefore becomes the ‘default’ household console for all of the non-exclusive titles, probably a good call nonetheless.

As an aside, I’ve been replaying my Playstation 3 lately in order to play The Last Of Us, and I can say that the net experience with the console affirmed my XBox love. I’m now an XBox One preorderer. I don’t know if I got a bad PS3, but I still hate that machine.

WoW Considers Joining the Modern Age of Gaming

July 12, 2013 / Damion Schubert

Congratulations to Rock Paper Scissors for uncovering and confirming that Blizzard may be looking at dipping their toe into the microtransactions pool in some territories. As someone who has gone through the transition myself, I am completely welcoming and want to tell them from the outset that the water is fine. That being said, it would be nice if we could get observers and the press to stop equating with evil (‘dark… alchemy’) and ‘panic’. Continue reading

Why Shut Down OMGPOP?

June 5, 2013 / Damion Schubert

Buried in the article describing how, rather than being sad about being laid off, most of Zynga New York (formerly OMGPOP) descended into deliriously happy bacchanalia, is this stray observation:

It was hard for the New York office not to take Zynga’s layoffs personally. Mark Pincus said in a company-wide memo that the cuts would aid Zynga’s mobile-first strategy… But hardly any of the desktop-first Farmville 2 team, comprised of former Facebookers, had been let go. “We thought, ‘You just laid off your most talented mobile team,'” the former employee says. “We were totally under-utilized.”

OMGPOP is, of course, the company most famous for perhaps Zynga’s most famous mobile game, Draw Something. That being said, scuttlebutt is that OMGPOP did the web version and contracted out the mobile version to a contract studio, and then refused to let that team advertise that fact. Which, if true, is interesting in the karma department.

An Explanation for Activision’s Success

September 22, 2009 / Damion Schubert

Why does activision make great games? Apparently because the guys up top keep them all in a constant state of fear and depression. Don’t take my word for it, here’s Activision CEO Bobby Kotick.

“The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games.”

The CEO’s long-term vision, in his own words, is to instill the corporate culture with “skepticism, pessimism, and fear…We are very good at keeping people focused on the deep depression.” You’d think the man might’ve learned his lesson when individuals and press organizations decried his plan to strictly focus on games that “have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises.” Evidently not. In Bobby’s world, the best games are produced when every employee is in a constate state of fear, projects are always on the brink of being killed, the ability to generate profit is the only yardstick by which an employee’s value is measured, and—let’s not forget—making video games is not fun.

So there’s that!

Original comments thread is here.

Bad Sony Mojo

June 23, 2009 / Damion Schubert

The world’s largest game publisher is asking publically why they’re making games for the Playstation 3.

Of course, this just gives me an excuse to link this Sony-related Onion video.