Archive for April, 2010

1. Game Over, Britain

   April 20, 2010

   The news last week that Indian company Reliance had purchased a 50% stake in Codemasters got me thinking. My conclusion: Britain no longer matters for games publishing. And then there were none Once upon a time, Britain was a global leader. Ultimate Play the Game, Ocean, Psygnosis, Gremlin, Virgin Interactive, Eidos, Codemasters – these were [...]

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   Posted in: Featured, Opinion

   Tagged with: publishing, starred, united kingdom

   6 Comments

2. Why it’s time to stop wondering “where should we go from here?”

   April 14, 2010

   Why are start-up strategy sessions so myopic? I spend a lot of time with companies thinking about the long-term strategy. And in every case, they start with the wrong question. They ask “Where should we go from here?”. I always answer: “I don’t know.” Why? Because I don’t know where you want to go. It’s [...]

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   Posted in: Opinion

   Tagged with: advice, starred

   No Comments

3. Free doesn’t work? Try telling that to Jagex making £38m from one free game, RuneScape…

   April 14, 2010

   I’ve just been digging through the past five years of Jagex’s financial results. Being English, the company has to file its accounts at Companies House, which means that we get a great insight into their numbers. (American private companies: shudder at the idea that being private doesn’t free you from public scrutiny of your profit [...]

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   Posted in: Analysis, Featured

   Tagged with: browser games, free games, freegames, jagex, runescape, starred, statistics

   7 Comments

4. Rule #1 of game design: Don’t listen to your customers

   April 12, 2010

   A video has been going round YouTube called “A message to Infinity Ward”. It’s six minutes long from a gamer who says he is an experienced, comitted player who has “played for 17 days”. He points out a broken perk (I think he has a point on this one, based purely on the video) and [...]

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   Posted in: Opinion

   Tagged with: analytics, modern warfare 2

   10 Comments

5. Slant Six makes temporary layoffs

   April 10, 2010

   Another one I missed. It’s from 8th April, 2010 Canadian developer Slant Six, which has made three SOCOM titles for Sony, has announced “temporary layoffs”, according to GamaSpot. Call me cynical,but redundancies being “temporary” doesn’t sound very likely in this current environment. Added to the Job Loss Tracker.

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   Posted in: Game Over Zone

   Tagged with: job loss tracker, layoffs, redundancies, slant six

   No Comments

6. 80s games take over New York

   April 9, 2010

   I’m showing my age here, but this is a really fantastic (and short) video. Beware the pixels. PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN. Uploaded by onemoreprod. – Arts and animation videos.

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   Posted in: Sandbox

   Tagged with: off topic

   No Comments

7. Playfish’s advice for building social games: “Development really starts with launch”

   April 8, 2010

   I’m at the State of Independence conference in York today, organised by Codeworks GameHorizon. Here are my quick thoughts on Jeferson Valadares’ talk. He’s a Playfish designer talking about making social games. Playfish focuses on Viral distribution, Engagament and Microtransactions. (I call that FARM-ing your customers: Focus on Acquisition, Retention, Monetization) Distribution should be about [...]

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   Posted in: Distribution

   Tagged with: conferences, playfish, social games

   2 Comments