Archive for September, 2009

1. Where videogames meet the law – in 140 characters – Part 2

   September 29, 2009

   The afternoon’s tweets from IBC’s “Protecting & Exploiting Content in Video Games”. Many of these (but not all of them) were tweeted, as I suddenly got access to the web. Games industry gets 35% of revenues from digital downloads, compared with 20% for music industry. Surprising.   Ambulance-chasing "forensic investigators" exist who get a %age [...]

   Go to the post

   Posted in: Events

   Tagged with: conferences, legal

   No Comments

2. Where videogames meet the law – in 140 characters

   September 29, 2009

   Lawyers like to keep things close to their chest, and a recent IBC conference on videogames and law was no exception. We were in a subterranean chamber with no access to Twitter. So here are the key tweets I noted down during the day. Dragon Force (from Guitar Hero III): Song had 55k downloads before [...]

   Go to the post

   Posted in: Events

   Tagged with: conferences, legal

   No Comments

3. Free to play gamers will pay for power-ups and self-expression, but not for new content

   September 25, 2009

   A recent report from PlaySpan looks at purchases of virtual goods in the last 12 months. The key conclusion is that building a business that aims to sell extra levels just ain’t going to work. The survey of 2,425 respondents identified that free-to-play web games generated the highest revenue ($75 on average) and that virtual [...]

   Go to the post

   Posted in: Featured, Sales

   Tagged with: microtransactions, playspan, statistics, virtual goods

   6 Comments

4. How many units does a succesful XBLA game sell?

   September 24, 2009

   Some recent and useful statistics (via GamaSutra): RedLynx’s motorcycle game Trial HD has been a great success “Barely a month since its launch, Trials HD has surpassed 300,000 sold units and the sales continue to ride on” – Red Lynx press release GamaSutra adds that XBLA exploration platforming game Shadow Complex sold 200,000 in its [...]

   Go to the post

   Posted in: Sales

   Tagged with: microsoft, red lynx, statistics, trials hd, xbla, xbox live

   5 Comments

5. Why suing your rivals makes good business sense

   September 24, 2009

   The social games space is full of lawsuits. Mob Wars creator David Maestri left SGN to launch the game himself, so they sued him. They settled and Maestri then sued Zynga (creator of Mafia Wars) and Playdom (creator of Mobsters). Zynga has filed 22 lawsuits itself so far this year. Even Playfish, which has generally [...]

   Go to the post

   Posted in: Featured, Opinion

   Tagged with: legal, playdom, playfish, sgn, social games, starred, zynga

   5 Comments

6. Alternate Reality Games in PlayStation Home – is the platform coming of age?

   September 23, 2009

   DISCLAIMER: I’m a non-executive director at nDreams. nDreams announced today that it had had 5 million visits to Xi, the Alternate Reality Game that launched in March 2009, The game, which combined puzzles and mini-games in Home with websites, youtube videos and even billboards in London and seven other major cities, showed that Home was [...]

   Go to the post

   Posted in: Sandbox

   Tagged with: ndreams, playstation home, sony, virtual worlds

   No Comments

7. Will games destroy the Facebook community?

   September 23, 2009

   As games become a more prevalent part of the Facebook experience, games are changing the way that users see Facebook. For many gamers, their “gaming” friends on Xbox Live, Xfire or WoW are not real-world friends: they are people who first and foremost have the game in common. This is beginning to emerge on Facebook [...]

   Go to the post

   Posted in: Opinion

   Tagged with: facebook, social games, social networks, starred

   No Comments