Friday, August 31, 2012

The Green light Experience Thus Far

So it slipped in during the quiet of yesterday afternoon. No official press release, nothing forewarning its arrival. Mike just saw a tweet and all of a sudden Steam Greenlight was live.

For those of you who may not know, Steam is an online distribution platform for PC games. Every day, literally millions of players log on to purchase and play games in their library, which means that getting your game onto Steam is like finding the Holy Grail. With that much traffic you are bound to get a healthy number of sales. Not to mention the fact that Steam also spontaneously throws games up for sale, which increases sales almost exponentially.

Steam Greenlight allows anyone to submit a game, it hits the public and gets voted upon. When the game gets enough votes it can launch on Steam.

So yesterday we submitted and here is what happened.

We were on the ball and submitted our game with the first half hour of the launch for Greenlight. At that time there were only 60 other games, as of this writing there are now over 500.

We got more traffic to that page then we had ever seen before. 300 pages views in 20 minutes… We have now had over 5,000 people look at our game since then.

And the initial comments we got were overwhelming negative. People accused us of cloning Cogs, of having a ridicules storyline, of being a mobile game ported to PC, and a variety of other things. It was so unbelievably harsh that we had to respond. Added below our games definition we threw down our own response to these comments, trying to defend ourselves.

Which for the most part actually seemed to work. The negative comments didn’t go away, people still love to just put others down, but it did lessen them substantially.

We will see what happens as we move forward, as of now we are still just sitting at 0% of 100% needed, which we believe is based on number of favorites. Every 1,000 favorites == 1% increase.

But if you do have a Steam account, you can check out the page for yourself:http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=92915850&searchtext

Thursday, August 30, 2012

The Pax 10

Pax, the Penney Arcade Expo, begins tomorrow in Seattle Washington. I spoke briefly about this event in an earlier post, and as I said this is one of the largest conventions in the game industry. Its popularity has skyrocketed since its inception 2004 and every year after, it has broken the previous year’s attendance rate.

The big thing about Pax is that is one of the only times the public gets to meet and mingle with the developers who actually create their favorite games. When we attended Pax East, a slightly smaller event held in Boston during the Spring, that was an amazing experience. We shared a both with Champlain college and had random people walk over and play our game. It’s a source of validation for development teams which is really important.

Most games are created in this studio vacuum, day in and day out the developers are working on the same thing and can lose faith in it sometimes. But all it takes is for that one random player to lose themselves in playing your game and everything falls back into place.

Some number of years after Pax started, the first Pax 10 was selected. The Pax 10 are 10 independent developers who are showcased for their unique and inspiring designs.

You can head on over to the Pax website to see them all, but here is one that for me personally made my jaw drop.

Puzzlejuice

Even the trailer will make your head hurt, but It’s a great brain exercise with words. Puzzlejuice is a great mix of the old and new with its tetris like base and the scrabblish way of creating words.

 

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Guild Wars 2 – cont.

So the game is pretty incredible.

But here is where we get to the part about what the game loses in order to be so.

Role fulfillment

There is no dedicated healer/tank classes in GW2, which has been a staple of the genre since its inception. All classes do damage in different ways, your first five skills are dependent on your weapon, the sixth skill is some sort of healing ability and the last three get to be chosen by the player.

This changes everything. All players are actually on an equal playing field, no classes are “worth” more than others because of the role they would normally take. This allows players to just play the game based on their interest and not worry about having to role a particular build.

And while this is a ground breaking moment, what is lost?

I feel as if a huge element of strategy has been sacrificed in order to appeal to a broader audience. One of the greatest parts about GW1 was planning what combination of skills, used across eight members of a team, will be the most effective in this particular scenario. You would have to plan meticulously sometimes in those later hard mode dungeons, which force player cooperation.

Every time you added a skill to your bar, you only have 8 slots back in GW1, you had to weight the choice against the 200+ others that could have been available.

From a design perspective that many skills is a nightmare. Each had to monitored to ensure that they are balanced against every other skill. Not to mention that with over 1000 skills, there would be favorites among the community, resulting in some skills not even being used.

But again as a player, I wanted to feel that crazy rush of sheer choice available to me. The weapons switching mechanic does this to a degree, allowing for the first five skills to be instantly switched out on the fly so that the player can react to the changing world, but I do miss those long minutes sitting in a town planning out not only my skill set, but my heroes.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Guild Wars 2 - reinventing an aging genre.

Its Tuesday and Guild Wars 2 just officially launched. Its kind of all that I have been playing for the past 3 days during the head start event. So let me pretend to be a reviewer and put on my writing hat.

Five years in the making, an untold number of hours spent by the development team and now their little boy gets to start his first day of school. So hold on to your seatbelts ladies and gentlemen the future of the MMO genre has arrived.

The first thing that I feel that I need to make perfectly clear is that I am a huge fan of Guild Wars 1. It was what I played in highschool and was my first MMO, for all you who don’t know MMO == Massively Multiplayer Online Game. I don’t want to wax and wane over why GW1 was brilliant, that conversation could take a very long time, but I want you to know where I am coming from. Not only from a design perspective, but also from a super dedicated fan who achieved 30 points and the title of Closer to the Stars on the Hall of Monuments calc.

I, unlike the rest of the gaming world, somehow did not get a beta invite. I know sad day for me, but what that did mean was that I came to it completely fresh on Saturday when I joined the slew of people in the three day head start.

First and Foremost, the Art

The team at Arena Net, has been known to be a really good at concept art. They have been showcased in every instance of Into the Pixel, an industry wide recognition of amazing concept art, and if you just look at some of the screen shots people have been posting, you can see how talented they all are. Nothing else in the MMO space feels the way GW2 does with its environments.

Josh Buck used to tell us that to make an art style all your own you need to stretch it until it breaks, push the limits of what you think is possible. That is exactly what they did. Proportions have been bent to make the world seem terrifyingly large, cities are built on sheer cliffs, islands float in the sky, and giant carved statues hold back the mountains to create a passageway. Every sight is just jaw dropping, and the best part is the game rewards players for reaching these overlook points and look at what they created.

Second, Subscription Fee

I am from the mentality; I should never have to buy a game more than once in order to enjoy it. That was what drove me to GW1 in the first place and GW2 honors the same amazing promise of never having to pay a subscription fee.

What’s New?

Dynamic combat, before you and your party would just kind of rush into a battle, crash up against the enemy and someone was left standing. Not in GW2, combat is frenetic and furious. Everything hits hard so no more standing still. Nearly all combat actions are done while moving and its important to do so. Those who stay still are soon dead or dying.

Events

It took me a while before the whole concept actually sunk in. There are no side quests in GW2. No one asking you to collect five rocks, no slaying 15 of these creatures, no delivering X item to random person Y in the town of Z.

Instead things just happen. I know, it’s crazy. So here is an example, I was walking along and I heard the sounds of battle, my screen flashes with the word New Event, and I rush over to find this logging town being attacked by these little creatures. I step in and spontaneously join the fifteen other people who decided to also help out.

We push them back and as we are collecting the loot we had gained the NPC’s, non-player characters, start complaining about all the attacks by these creatures. The next thing you know off they go, bombs in hand to go destroy the creatures hideout! An event just happens! I could help escort the bomb carriers, or just walk off.

- Part 2 tomorrow.

Monday, August 27, 2012

Now 100% Certified!

Loc has been certified! So our final release data is officially September the 13th!

Let the marketing push begin! No time to blog today, need to start getting the word out. Good thing we completed our press kit right on time, got it all squared away and shiny on Friday afternoon thanks to Matt & his super awesome webskills.

So for anyone interested in what our full press kit looks like, click here.

Friday, August 24, 2012

And they’re off

Ok, here we go!

Loc Lite, aka our demo, just got approved through apple certification! Which is so cool, always had the little thought in the back of our heads that we would get rejected for another bizarre reason. The cool part is that we sent in the full game of Loc only one week ago. Generally it takes ten days for Apple to get to reviewing it, but because the Demo was already in the works and submitted to certification they seemed to have matched the two together.

Which means that the moment Loc Lite went into review, so did Loc! The full game is literally 10 times larger than the demo, which means it will take longer, but we can hope that by next Monday we have a certified build!

Once certified we get 50 promotional codes, which is basically the game for free. So in preparation we have dug into the internet and pulled together all of the contacts we need.

Yesterday I wrote the email we will be sending along which introduces us, the game, gives them the promo code, screenshots, etc. Next up is a full official press release, which we need to learn how to make.

Lastly, we need to play through the PC/Mac build one more time, all the way. Oh boy, more fun with tiles… Last week alone we played through the game, starting from scratch, a total of 3 times.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

If a tree falls in a forest…

Ok, so now we have a feature complete, bug free, 100+ level puzzle game that is currently in certification with apple. The next hurdle is going to be how to make it into something that could actually bring in money. The question becomes, How do you stand out in the forest of apples marketplace with the thousands of other games all vying for the same thing?

Exposure is the first big step, letting people know that your game is out there. Facebook and especially twitter are good for that, but social media only has a relative reach. What we need to do is go further.

Reviews are key in my opinion and if they are not reviews than at least the are little stories that say, “Hey go check this out.”

Yesterday I  compiled our list of media outlets we want to send to, but we did this last time. We made the same list of all the major industry news hubs, joystiq, IGN, G4, GameInformer, and you know what happened?

First it was a nightmare to even try to find contact information for any of these places. And second of all, what I did end up finding was a generic, webmaster@whateversite.com. Which means that our presskit, which basically amounts to a polite/professional plead, was most likely lost in the shuffle.All of those websites get thousands of hits everyday, which accumulates into hundreds (or more) of emails.

So at the end of the day of the fifteen or so media outlets we sent a press kit too, not a single one responded.

But we did get coverage. Other smaller websites found our game and we actually got a review from one of them, Video Games Interactive. These guys were awesome and fully supported us, but unfortunately making games is a business and we need to find a way to get more eyes on our product.

So here is the plan: We are going to hit those same major players again, but this time with a header in our press kit that might actually get someone’s attention. We are also going to give these people a free copy of the iPad game Before it comes out, apparently that is major factor in deciding if to review something. Twitter, I think we are going to try to push the game at individual reviewers who tend to favor independent games, mixing ourselves up in the general email pool just feels like its doomed for failure.

And finally, it’s all about who you know. And finally we kind of know some people who know some people and maybe that will pan out.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

An early look

Not much of a post today. Instead struggled to figure out how to embed flash and have it appear on all browsers, Firefox was being a pain. Yay for Matt and the chunk of code which made it possible.

So what you see below is a feeling, a mood and ultimately close to what we want to achieve in our next game. I made this in flash, prototyped it after getting back from California and walking along the sand. Thanks to Matt we have converted this over into C#, not an easy task.

Its amazing what you can simulate with just basic shapes.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Please wait while we process your request…

A little more than a week ago we sent in our first build for certification. It was a demo build, just to kind of test the waters and see what the process was like before we actually submitted our game.

Turns out that you cannot have anything with the name “demo” in your code or game. It results in an instant rejection. I feel like that should be a big pop up window when you submit, “Does your application have the word demo, technical demo, prototype, or any such language in it?”

We think that they don’t want their marketplace to feel as though it had incomplete projects on it. So what the heck, we can play with those rules. We ripped out the word demo and now it’s called Loc Lite.

Hopefully we will hear back on that one today, tomorrow, or sometime this week. Gives us something to look forward too until we hear about the full game which we sent in for certification at the tail end of Friday.

I said it before in a post, about “this being the last version of Loc”, and that turned out to be utterly wrong. But, here we go again, after this we are done. No more, stop the film, cut, and that’s a wrap. Loc is an incredible game that helped us learn so much, but it is time to move on.

Our second game has moved on my flash prototype stage to beginning to have a structure in Unity. Some of the major decisions have been made, like what engine, we were flirting with the idea of XNA, but ultimately wanted to keep and build off the code base we head already had.

At the moment we are building the code side of the animation pipeline, trying to get that into place before we move ahead into large scale art generation. And oh man, there are going to be a lot of small pieces with moving parts.

Matt discovered a code set called Futile, which draws objects cheaply to the screen all through code. It bypasses game objects in Unity and basically makes it work like XNA or Flash.

 

Monday, August 20, 2012

Gamescom Wrap Up

Last week was a whirlwind of news coming out of Gamescom, here are some of the highlights

  • Remember Me – New IP

  • uPlay Online Store

  • Puppeteer – New IP

  • Rain – New IP

  • Dead Space 3 Release date: Feb 5th 2013

  • Lego Lord of the Rings

  • Onlive is purchased by an unknown source

  • Until Dawn – New IP

  • Castle Crashers comes to Steam

  • Mysts of Pandaria opening trailers

  • Mann vs Machine – TF2 update

  • The beta launch of game communities on Steam

  • Tearaway – New IP from the creators of Little Big Planet

  • Darksiders II released

  • Command and Conquer Generals II goes free to play


While Remember Me feels as if its trying to catch up the Deus Ex and the Last of Us in the way its attempting to setup its mood and feel, it has some interesting new twists. Out of the list of new IP, Rain and Puppeteer were by the the great standouts though, both having a unique art direction and push what games can be in a new direction.

The outright purchase of Onlive stole the news at the end of the week. An unnamed company reportedly acquired the live-game streaming service and let go the staff. As of this morning it seems half of them have been rehired by the company.

For those who don't now Onlive is a digital game streaming service. Think netflicks instant, but with games. Some server far away is hosting the game and you are just interacting with it. It doesnt matter if you have a laptop from five years ago or a brand new machine, your computer is not hosting the game, only streaming.

It was revolutionary when it was first announced and heralded as the future of PC gaming. However since its launch the service has steadily faded away from public interest due to its small library and usability issues.

 

Friday, August 17, 2012

Last Mile.

That’s it. Loc iPad is content complete and code locked. Nothing goes in or out unless it’s a bug, which we started squashing yesterday. 105 levels total now, slogged through 102 and we found a problem…

Going through a second time now and smoothing all the wrinkles out. By next week, maybe even later today we are going to send it into certification!

Wow, we have been working on this project a long time, and three months ago I thought we were done when we put out version 1.1.

We have officially entered it into the IGF student competition again this year, hopefully we will see what comes out of it, and we have yet to hear back from indiecade, but should soon.

Update soon on what exactly 1.2 looks like and does, but for now it’s back to bug hunting.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Kickstarter! Again!

It has been a little less than three months since graduation and many of the Electronic Games Development (EGD) majors have been able to find jobs in the industry. Several have gone to work for Hit Point Studios, in Mass, we had a programmer get picked up by Microsoft, a designer now works full time for High-Res, an artist is working with Raven,  and one of our good friends is working for Torn Banner Studios.

Torn Banner just released their Kickstarter campaign to help fund the wrap up of their development cycle. The game looks great and should be hitting the digital shelves on Steam within the month.

Check out their campaign on here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1711512107/chivalry-medieval-warfare

And help get the word out.

 

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Max Payne 3 - All the Rest

Max Payne 3

I hadn’t see Fabiana in a worrying about of time, but at least I wasn’t following a trail of her fingers.

- Max

I am a big narrative person when it comes to games. I play to experience a story, and Max Payne was wonderfully written in the distinct style of a hard boiled crime show.

To help give breathing room to the intense rush of the primary storyline, every once in a while the environment fades from the sunny streets of San Paulo to the past. These memory segments, not only give context to Max as a character, but help explain how he got into the mess in the first place.

Throughout the game Max’s dark, almost disturbing, perception of the world is self narrated. He lets you know exactly what he is thinking about the people, the place, and the situation. The small one liners, like the one above, keep the player engaged and help draw out the color of the character.

But what makes up the bulk of gameplay in Max Payne, is its signature gunplay.

The original Max Payne, published in the early 2001, brought the popular bullet time sequence from the film The Matrix to life, and it is showcased incredibly well in this third installment.

All Max has to do is dive, in any direction, and the world slows to a crawl. There is some pretty amazing work going on behind the scenes, because Max twists in the air, depending on the direction the player wants him to face. The animation system is super dynamic and looks incredible. You can also enter bullet time at any time, as long as he has “energy”, which is fueled by number of kills Max has racked up.

The guns feel good, each shot has a visceral punch when it hits somebody, and the last kill slow motion always brings a grin. The weapon sound effects are nailed just right, and reload animations look pretty good. Each gun as a unique feel and use, which allows for limited player choice.

The game is fantastic, but I felt like there were a few things that bogged it down.

The Rock Star Social Club is one of those. We were always been told in school that you should make your game as accessible as possible. The faster you get the player to start the game the better the chance they will stick with it. Larger companies, like RockStar, don’t adhere to this. They can get away with the saying, “Build it and they will come” No matter what hoops, we as players, need to jump through, they know we will in order to play their game.

Which is too bad.

When I first launched Max Payne, the first thing that popped up was this Rock Star Social Club. I needed to create and account and sign in before ever even playing the actual game! There was no way around this, and thus my first five to ten minutes of Max Payne consisted of login screens…

And then there are the collectables…

Collectables is a classic game design tool. Strewn throughout the game of Max Payne are golden parts of the guns you wield. Collect all the parts of a particular weapon and you get a golden version of it.

And while yes, its there for replay value and to give the player just one more thing to do, but really it not necessary. Every other element in the game is so strong that the player doesn’t need collectables to keep them coming back. The collectables also break immersion for the player. All of a sudden I find myself running around the corners of the map, trying to find more of these pieces. And while it does force the player to explore all of the superb art that makes up the Max Payne world, it does so at a cost. I, as the player, have been pulled out of the unique cinematic experience that the game is made of.

But, thats it. Max Payne 3 is a great game, easily of the best of year and I cannot stop recommending it.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Max Payne 3 - Death to Loading Screens

I have never been a fan of Rockstar, the creators of the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series. The open world game premise is just too much for me. Too many things to experience, I need a bit more direction in order to fully enjoy something.

But then they turn around and deliver Max Payne 3.

I had heard tremendous things and was able to pick it up cheap on Steam, during their summer sale. Thanks Valve. And oh my gosh, Max Payne is one of the best games I have played in a long time.

So many things work together perfectly that you get sucked into the experience. I finished the game about a week or two ago and now with that buffer I can finally turn around and try to analyze what makes it so good and what is mares the experience.

Cinematic design - the freaking great.

Wow, these guys, whoever they are, deserve a raise. The transition between cinematic and gameplay is seamless. The cuts scenes feel fluid and natural between the heart pounding insanity of the gunplay, which compromises the meat of the game. Animations are excellently choreographed, the voice acting is top notch. Camera work is active and engaging and the text that slides into the drug hazed world that Max lives in adds a slick presentation to the works.

The best part is, not once did I ever see a loading screen.

Loading screens have always been a necessary evil, but it’s a price we pay in order to play these games. But as soon as it happens it’s basically a giant sign that says, “Guess what, this is all still a game and your sitting in your chair. This is going to take a while, so why not go get a snack.”

I play games because it’s another medium to explore, another way to dive into a world. Literature and film don’t have these problems of loading screens; no-one comes over to you while reading a book and tells you, “Oh by the way, what you’re reading is just ink on a page.” Ask anyone who has read a really good book; to them it’s a living breathing thing that they became lost in.

Ok rant over. To wrap it up, loading screens are bad.

So instead of loading screens, Max Payne does something brilliant. RockStar masks it by having the player watch an expertly directed video setting up the new chapter, while the content somehow, by magic, streams and loads in the background.

 

So the blog post ran a bit long. Need to get to work. More Max Payne commentary tomorrow.

Monday, August 13, 2012

The Big Four

Wednesday, in faraway Germany Gamescom will begin.

Out of the calendar year there are four major conventions that shape the industry. During the month of March is GDC, an annual summit held in San Francisco. Developers from all over the world gather to learn from one another. Talks are given on every major “track”, from programming, to audio design, to game design. The conference lasts a full week and includes the International Game Festival Winners (IGF).

Following on the heels of GDC is the Electronic Entertainment Expose, or better known as E3. Probably the premier event for the game industry all major console releases have been announced there as well as the debuts of some of the largest franchises. E3 grew out from the Consumer Electronic Show, CES, which takes place during January in Las Vegas.  Like GDC this is an industry only event. The public are not allowed in.

Gamescom, which runs Wednesday to Wednesday, is a strange mixture of the two. The largest European conference it corresponds with GDC Europe. While all of the dev’s attend conferences, the publishers are in a venue across the street showing off more of their work that they had held back with during E3. Usually several large announcements are given as the major publishers all have their own keynotes. This year, most will be streaming live. If you’re interested in watching, check it out here.

The last large conference of the year is the Penny Arcade Exposition, PAX. Held in Seattle Washington it is open and available to the public. Fans get to meet the people behind the creation of their favorite titles, play the games with others, and potentially get hands on with some of the newer games that will be coming out next year. At this event are the PAX 10, ten independent developers who have created something wholly unique and deserving of attention.

Friday, August 10, 2012

What is Gamification?

That is one of the questions we have been getting a lot, from many people in industries far different than our own. Some have a small idea, while others come at it with no background knowledge whatsoever.

So here it is, as simple a definition as I can create: Gamification is the use of game mechanics to add interactivity and retention to any system.

Gamification, I believe, has been around for a long while. The name, “Gamification” is just a buzz word now, something to get excited over. But really it’s pretty simple.

For example: You go to your local coffee shop and you receive a punch card. For every coffee you buy they punch another hole into the card. Once you get ten punches, you get a free coffee. That’s it! That’s Gamification working right there.

Now why is that? Because, there is a system (a punch card) in place that encourages its users to take part in it, to “interact” with it (by purchasing a coffee), and it “retains” them by offering a reward (a free coffee).

But that example I have given, while simple to understand, does not showcase how we add Gamification to digital goods. And that is our current project. We are taking on the task of tackling four different, prototypes/examples of what digital Gamification would look like in four major areas: Product Promotion, HR/Training, Social Campaign, and Community.

The first three are being constructed in Flash, which is a standard web plugin, which everyone has. We unfortunately are avoiding Unity as the Unity Web Player is such a pain to install on the user side of things and we want these examples to be as accessible as possible.

In the following weeks I will post them on this blog and break down the elements behind each example. Here is the title of our product example.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Making $ with Free-to-Play

I touched on this earlier in the post about why SWTOR went free-to-play, but its an important topic, at least for us. It’s because the second title we have begun to work on will be our first foray into this model of design.

And there are a couple of reasons for this.

One, is the obvious advantage of pure numbers. Anyone can download the game, they don’t need to get over that initial barrier of entry of cost. This means that generally more people will be playing your game. And right now, that is more important. Money is a great benefit to making games, but it is incredibly difficult. By paying for our company with the contract work we bring in, it’s more important that we become a known source in the industry.

We don’t have to do a demo. Which is a nice side benefit. As we tweeted about earlier, we just sent the demo of Loc for the iPad out to Apple to be certified. As awesome as demos are for the player, on the development side they are a risk. You have to basically copy paste your entire project and start hacking away at it, sliming it down, to create a stand-alone product that quickly and easily shows all of the interesting mechanics of your game. We created one for the original launch and every time we update, to version 1.1, or now 1.2, we have to go back into that alternate project and port our own changes over.

But how do you make money off a free game?

The answer is micro-transactions. In the game, we setup a little digital economy of items and content that we allow the player to purchase. Here is an example: Through playing, the player collects gold coins. At the main menu is a shop which sells “running shoes” for their character. These costs 300 gold coins. The player can keep playing the game, collecting their gold coins in order to get enough to buy the shoes, or they can pay 99 cents and get 1000 gold coins.

These shoes allow the players character to permanently run faster, which in turn allows them to collect more gold coins faster, which they then spend on other items that help them gain gold coins faster.

This economy loop is what drives in-game sales, known as micro-transactions. In short, the player is paying to unlock content faster. The best part is it’s just an option. The player doesn’t need to do this; they can achieve/get everything in the game, without spending a single cent. However, it is guaranteed that it will take them a longer time.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

15 hours and counting down

Ouya has made it, 30 days after it launched today it will close on 7.7 million dollars. That is an incredible amount of money raised through crowd sourcing, though it is very far from that crazy estimate i gave in my original post. We have all been watching the Ouya's progress and over the past month a ton of updates about the console have been made available.

Here is a breakdown of some of the major ones.

  1. Size: last week or so we actually got a size comparison for how large the device actually is. And as you can see, the thing is small. The Ouya is ridiculously portable.Image-145099-full

  2. The console now has four controller support. Originally it only had two, which now make it a real contender for multiplayer games.

  3. The device is a media box, thus far two major platforms for music/video/photos, XBMC and PLEX have signed on to add their software.

  4. And lastly, the games. Final Fantasy 3 will launch on the device, proving that Square Enix is willing to go out on a limb, Namco Bandai, the owners of Pac-man, Galaga, and other classic games are interested in porting over their collection as well.


The impact this device could have on the industry is unknown. With Microsoft gearing up for the new generation of consoles, it could leave the Ouya behind in the dust, yet 57,000 games/developers/fans have backed this project. With the enormous letdown that the WiiU is, I believe that this open source console will find a niche and grow to become a major player in the industry. Only time will tell and we are all watching to see its effect.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

How the MMO Tables have turned

I’ve been gone for the past five day on vacation, but that doesn’t stop the game industry from turning. And right as I did, one of the largest announcements happened. Star Wars the Old Republic, (SWTOR) has gone free to play.

For those who don’t know SWTOR is a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) set in the star wars universe. Thousands of players play with and against one another in this huge digital space.  To put things into perspective, most high quality (known as AAA) games cost around $300,000. SWTOR was estimated to cost between $150 million and $200 million. Within the first month alone they had nearly a million subscribers. But since that successful launch the game has been slowly bleeding subscribers. This is the reason for the switch.

So why is this free to play model so popular? Why is everyone switching over to it?

It’s all about the money. These games, more than almost any other, are built to take in revenue because they take a a serious investment in capital and time. At Champlain we had a visit from the president of Turbine who explained it all with a single set of graphs.

The first, is the subscription based model. As you can see the target market is ultimately restricted to a select audience who is willing to invest in paying a subscription fee. Many gamers, myself included, refuse to pay for a game more than once. We are represented in the white section on the left. On the right is a more casual audience, who might be interested in playing, but would do irregularity and not enough to justify the subscription cost. So as the graph illustrates, the game only services a particular audience.

The graph below illustrates a free-to-play model, which obviously hits a larger audience. Not only does the game target those who are interested in playing an MMO, but the other two who didn't want to pay the subscription fee.

This ultimately leads to more revenue, the more people playing your game, the higher the potential someone is willing to spend money on it. In a free to play model, all sales are made either through purchasing the game in the first place, that initial $60 or through in-game purchases that unlock content. This way of revenue generation is known as a freemium model.

 

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

In other business news

Six months ago THQ, a rather large game publisher who has backed such titles as the Warhammer franchise, Darksiders, Company of Heroes, and the Metro series, nearly fell apart. Their listed stock at NASDAQ fell below the $1 amount.

Faced with the threat of being delisted, THQ had 180 days to try to raise their stock back above the minimum amount. Last week, the time limit expired and THQ was found in the clear. But in order to do so, they went some radical changes.

Taking a critical look at their market, THQ severed the casual arms of their business. The uDraw tablet was a complete failure and was one of the leading causes of their stock falling so low. Other properties centered around the children and teen demographic have been halted in favor of transferring that talent onto more adult/mature titles.

As a business move, THQ consolidated its shares in a 10-1 split, greatly reducing the number. The company had gone public back in 1991.

The final change was bringing Ron Morveck as a new VP. Ron Morveck, co founder of Relic Entertainment, was also the COO and VP of EA. He brings a heck of a lot of experience to the table.

All three of these actions raised the THQ stock back up to $5 mark. Which is awesome for all us in the industry. THQ has been a huge publishing powerhouse for decades; the loss of such a studio would be catastrophic in scope. The properties mentioned above are all critically acclaimed work that have tens of thousands of fans.

Unfortunately, making games is just another business, which means it can fail like any other business, regardless of how good its products are. However, that was not the case last week!