Archive for June, 2009

1. China Bans Gold Farming: Notoriously Controlling, Yet Forward Thinking?

   June 30, 2009

   The Chinese Ministries of Culture and Commerce announced on Monday that the trading of virtual currency for real world cash is to be banned outright, in the name of reducing illegal gambling and money laundering. From the press release: “The virtual currency, which is converted into real money at a certain exchange rate, will only [...]

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   Posted in: Analysis, Featured

   Tagged with: china, controversy, legal, online games, virtual economies, virtual worlds

   2 Comments

2. Midway saga coming to an end?

   June 29, 2009

   GI.biz reports that Warner is the only bidder for the assets of bankrupt Midway Games. The offer on the table is $33 million. This might bring the sorry tale of Midway Games to an end, although with Tigon Studios claiming $200,000 in unpaid fees for Wheelman and producer Larry Kasanoff claiming that the company can’t [...]

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   Posted in: Finance

   Tagged with: insolvency, m&a, midway, warner

   No Comments

3. New commenting system

   June 26, 2009

   I’ve finally implemented Disqus. The key reason is that lets you, the community, sign in and comment on Gamesbrief using your Facebook or Twitter accounts. That way you don’t have to register for Gamesbrief, or comment as a guest each time. Disqus has sworn blind on its mother’s grave that it will import all existing [...]

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   Posted in: Sandbox

   Tagged with: admin, gamesbrief

   2 Comments

4. Do developers even want to talk to their customers?

   June 25, 2009

   I’ve just returned from the GameHorizon Conference, which was very focused on online and self-publishing. (It was a great conference, thanks for asking, and congratulations to Carri and the team). But it threw up some interesting issues, and these were mostly driven by the behaviour of the delegates. Herb Kim of Think Digital expressed it [...]

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   Posted in: Featured, Opinion

   Tagged with: community, conferences, gamehorizon, starred

   8 Comments

5. Splash Damage: Ideas are cheap; therefore get top talent to execute excellently

   June 24, 2009

   Paul Wedgewood is delivering the keynote at the GameHorizon Conference in Gateshead. Splash Damage has achieved huge success with Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, and Paul has an interesting take on how to be a successful games developer. 1. Be AAA in what you do Ideas are cheap. There are probably more ideas than you can [...]

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   Posted in: Sandbox

   Tagged with: business advice, conferences, gamehorizon, gh09, splash damage

   No Comments

6. If you build your website in Flash, you might as well not exist on the Internet

   June 24, 2009

   As I focus increasingly on helping developers self-publish their games, the issue of marketing is going to come increasingly to the fore. I’ve just found this excellent guide to the main SEO mistakes companies make when trying to do search engine optimisation. The guide assumes you already know the principles of SEO (research your market, [...]

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   Posted in: Marketing

   Tagged with: search engine optimisation, seo, starred

   No Comments

7. Dave Jones APB: massive success or an epic fail

   June 23, 2009

   APB from Real Time Worlds is about to become either the games industry’s Titanic or its Heaven’s Gate. I’m at the GameHorizon Conference in Gateshead and Dave Jones has just been talking about APB. It’s an incredibly ambitious game and RTW has raised $80 million to make it happen. But is it going to work? [...]

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   Posted in: Analysis, Featured

   Tagged with: apb, gh09, realtime worlds, starred

   5 Comments