Archive for March, 2010

Time to change our thinking: developers outsource to publishers, not the other way round

March 23, 2010

I’ve been helping a lot of developers with their self-publishing strategy and I’ve discovered that there is one thought process that can make a huge difference to how developers (of all levels) think. Conventional wisdom says that publishers outsource development to game studios. I think it’s time we flipped that on its head. “Developers outsource [...]

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Posted in: Featured, Opinion

Tagged with: permission, self-publishing, starred

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Is Spirit of Adventure the start of a new type of game?

March 18, 2010

[Disclaimer: I have a significant vested interest here. I am a non-executive director of nDreams, the creator of Spirit of Adventure and I have been involved in the development of the game] The era of film is over. Long live television. I am becoming increasingly convinced that AAA console games are analogous to films, and [...]

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Posted in: Sandbox

Tagged with: clients, narrative, ndreams, social games, spirit of adventure

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Why people pay for virtual goods

March 18, 2010

I was at the Games Gone Wild event in London yesterday (good attendees, format needs work). I heard a fundamental misconception about virtual goods and entertainment purchases repeated a couple of times. “Consumers who enjoy playing free to play games will purchase virtual goods because they are used to paying for entertainment. And that’s what [...]

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Posted in: Featured, Sales

Tagged with: self-publishing, starred, status, virtual goods

6 Comments
The end of publishing

March 17, 2010

This presentation was created by Penguin in the UK for an internal presentation and distributed in the wild when it got popular. It gets clever half way through, so make sure you watch that far. I don’t agree with all of it. In fact I don’t agree with the very last sentence, at least not [...]

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Posted in: Sandbox

Tagged with: books, publishing

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Americans are so narrow-minded – a #GDC report

March 17, 2010

Fresh back from GDC (I use “fresh” inadvisedly – having a small child appears to have made jetlag worse), I’ve been reflecting on what I learned at GDC. My #1 learning? Americans are very narrow minded. They seem to fixate on the “winner”, and pile in to follow the market leader, ignoring the other successful, [...]

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Posted in: Distribution, Featured

Tagged with: conferences, facebook, gdc, iphone, social games, starred

5 Comments
Nintendo Developer Cing goes bankrupt

March 8, 2010

GI.biz reports that Net-IB reports that (as translated by Web forum NeoGAF), Cing may have gone into bankruptcy on 1 March. GI.biz describes the company as “A small studio with less than 30 staff. Cing was founded in 1999. Its debut title was the Japan and Europe-only release Glass Rose for Capcom.” Added to the [...]

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Posted in: Game Over Zone

Tagged with: closures, job loss tracker, layoffs, redundancies

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Lara Croft goes digital only, drops Tomb Raider name

March 4, 2010

I’ve been waiting to see which publisher would be the first to drop retail entirely for a major release. Step forward, Square Enix. Square Enix has just announced that the next Tomb Raider game, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, will be a digital only product.

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Posted in: Distribution

Tagged with: digital distribution, eidos, lara croft, lara croft and the guardian of light, square enix, tomb raider

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