The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer
This article is significant, in that World of Tanks is considered the premier ‘pay to win’ success story in the North American market.
The core basis of “free-to-win” is to remove all payable options that could be viewed as giving a player an advantage in battle. Revenue will come from sales of non-advantageous content, such as premium vehicles, personalization options and the like.
It’s now been about a week since XBox announced The One, including obliquely hinting that games will be locked to one console, and the entire Internet responded with rage not seen the Matrix: Reloaded turned out to be an exercise in Wachowski wankery. This caused Microsoft to backpedal, albeit in a vague, nondescript sort of way that suggests they are either changing their plans or pummelling their PR department into figuring out how to spin the move as being a good one for consumers. Which is a shame, because it probably is. Continue reading
If you are not in the games industry yet but hope to be, I beg of you one thing: If you read this article and find yourself agreeing with the author, then for the love of god, please don’t try to join. (Also, thanks Kotaku for continuing on their ongoing quest to write articles designed to grab clicks more than to actually be fair or informative).
There are a lot of places in the industry where QA sucks. The games industry continues to be insane. I have no idea how good or bad a studio Certain Affinity is as an employer. For all I know, their upper management could all have Hitler mustaches. That being said, what he describes in his call-to-arms sounds like… well, a fairly typical-to-good experience in the games industry. Continue reading
From Kotaku: a couple of top iPhone developers discuss their experiences developing for the platform. Their conclusions are interesting (and also touch upon web games and user-created content platforms, such as Metaplace and Whirled).
“I think quality is largely irrelevant,” said Saltsman, whose newest iPhone game is about popping zits. “I think the defining thing is how quickly you can describe your product to someone else.”
The example they used was Galcon versus Mood Touch. Mood Touch is “a crappy mood ring for your iPhone. . There, I’m done, that’s it,” said Saltsman. Galcon, on the other hand, took him 15 seconds to describe as essentially an in-depth, one-on-one real time strategy game. It’s obvious which one had the better quality — but Mood Touch made the top 10 in the App Store while Galcon didn’t even break into the top 100 (that Saltsman knew of).
The economic downturn has started to hit the social networking sites.
The bubble in social networking has burst, decisively. LiveJournal, the San Francisco-based arm of Sup, a Russian Internet startup, has cut 12 of 28 U.S. employees — and offered them no severance, we’re told…. The company’s product managers and engineers were laid off, leaving only a handful of finance and operations workers — which speaks to a website to be left on life support.
Developer spends 10 years taking publisher money for a game. Developer spends said money on something else, perhaps hookers and blow. Publisher comes calling. Developer throws together art from half a dozen of highly recognizable games and shovels it out the door.
You must read this amazing thread. This is a good summary here. Finding art for Limbo of the Lost is now its own bizarre metagame, fueled by geek outrage everywhere. Continue reading
Eric wants to give you some clues as to when your game might be in trouble.
Personally, I prefer the funny version. And yes, I’ve lived to see many of them.
That being said, to echo a sentiment that Eric mentioned, if you recognize too many of these at your own company, why aren’t you doing anything about it?
It takes how many years to make an MMO. How much resume space are you willing to let it poison? Even if you can’t go anywhere, try to fix something. Even if you’re not successful, you’d be shocked at how people remember the go-getters after the Jenga towers collapse.
The Scriptwriter’s strike kicked off this week, with the primary bone of contention being the Scriptwriters getting more money from DVD sales and/or Internet work (especially relevant, now that many television shows are shown for free on the Internet). By contract, show runners can only run scripts they have in the can, and in an interesting twist, may only shoot scripts as they are written (which terrifies everyone concerned).
So far, public opinion seems to lean in the scriptwriter’s direction, as they’ve done a better job at creating a grassroots campaign for their cause, as well as getting the stars to come to speak on their behalf to the press. The studios, in a response that can only be described as the stupidest possible response this side of the RIAA, appear to be considering responded by cancelling shows (mostly marginal, but some hits such as 24 are already reportedly being pushed off a year – if they come back at all). Continue reading
One wonders if ‘Ultima Worlds Online: Origin’ would have made the list if we’d shipped it.
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