Archive for May, 2008

1. Residual rights for actors in games

   May 30, 2008

   Michael Hollick, the voice of Niko Bellic in Grand Theft Auto IV, has kicked up a fuss about not being paid royalties or residuals for his work on the game. He was paid $100,000 for his work, which he thinks is nowhere near enough given that the game has grossed over $600 million and rising.

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   Posted in: Featured, Opinion

   Tagged with: film, freelance, royalties, starred

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2. All the good stuff rises to the top

   May 28, 2008

   An article of mine on what 2008 holds for Sony is currently on the homepage of www.helium.com. Helium is a great concept, but I feel it is flawed.

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   Posted in: Featured, Opinion

   Tagged with: casual games, games industry, starred

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3. $140 CPM for ad-sponsored games. That’s pretty aggressive.

   May 28, 2008

   Wild Tangent CEO Alex St. John declared at a recent conference that in-game advertising is dead. Long live in-game advertising.

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   Posted in: Sales

   Tagged with: advertising, casual games, cpm, games industry, wild tangent

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4. Offroad Velociraptor Safari – is this the future of games?

   May 27, 2008

   I’ve spent the weekend playing Off-Road Velociraptor Safari. It’s a little like the SCi classic Carmageddon: you drive a fully-destroyable 4×4 around a 3D world, performing stunts, running over dinosaurs and collecting points. The ostensible purpose is to collect meat from the dead dinosaurs and send them forward it to time to feed the humans [...]

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   Posted in: Sandbox

   Tagged with: browsers, casual games, unity, video

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5. Music industry sees CD revenues fall; games next?

   May 23, 2008

   According to the Financial Times yesterday, songwriters and publishers for the first time earned more from broadcasts and legal downloads of their music in 2007 than from the copyright from sales of CDs. I believe that this is extremely significant. The MCPS-PRS Alliance, which collects royalties on behalf of musicians and record companies, collected £562.1m [...]

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   Posted in: Analysis

   Tagged with: games business, games industry, music, music business, starred

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6. Endemol appoints new CEO – is Codemasters a target?

   May 20, 2008

   Ynon Kreisz has just been appointed Chief Executive of Endemol, the TV production company that makes Big Brother and Deal or No Deal. The production company was acquired for €3.1 billion last year by Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, Mediaset and Cyrte Investments and has €2.6 billion of debt that needs refinancing.

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   Posted in: Sandbox

   Tagged with: codemasters, endemol, m&a, people, speculation, ynon kreisz

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7. Do we need more laws to protect minors from video games?

   May 18, 2008

   David Ruffley MP has recently been drawn into a bit of hoohah after a number of papers tied his Parliamentary questions to about how many retailers had been prosecuted for selling 18-rated video games with a report on rising violence about teenage girls. To be fair to Mr Ruffley, he didn’t make the link. (Would [...]

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   Posted in: Opinion

   Tagged with: censorship, daily mail, over-reaction, politics, starred

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