Archive for July, 2010

1. The death of single-A titles will challenge retail more than the rise of casual

   July 30, 2010

   I wrote a post yesterday about the liquidation of Chipsworld, bemoaning the fact that the official announcement seemed to blame the recession, rather than structural issues in the games industry. Commenters on the original story on MCV (including Develop editor Michael French) disagreed with me, but Chris Bateman of International Hobo put forward some strong [...]

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   Posted in: Featured, Opinion

   Tagged with: chips, chris bateman, guest post, retailing, starred

   1 Comment

2. The CHIPS are down: UK independent games retailer Chipsworld enters liquidation

   July 29, 2010

   MCV today reports that CHIPS has gone bust, with the loss of 29 jobs at head office and at its wholly owned stores. The company is at pains to point out that its franchise stores are not affected. I My heart goes out to management and employees. I have seen businesses die and I have [...]

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   Posted in: Analysis, Featured

   Tagged with: chips, closures, job loss tracker, online games, redundancies, retailing, starred

   9 Comments

3. Self-publishing lessons learned from Daniel Jones (aka Deejay) of Binary Tweed

   July 29, 2010

   Welcome to the tenth in a series of 12 posts from games developers who have taken the brave step into self-publishing. They have all contributed to How to Publish a Game, and you can get the

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   Posted in: Lessons Learned

   Tagged with: binary tweed, self-publishing, xbox, xbox live indie games

   No Comments

4. Has the acquisition of Playdom created a disgruntled workforce for Disney?

   July 28, 2010

   I was reading the TechCrunch report of Disney’s acquisition of Playdom and this comment leaped out at me: “The sad truth is that 90% of employees got nothing immediately from this deal. 90% of Playdom employees joined the company less than a year ago. Typically what happens in a giant acquisition like this is that [...]

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   Posted in: Opinion

   Tagged with: acquisition, disney, m&a, playdom, staff, starred

   1 Comment

5. Disney buys Playdom, but will its IPs work in social games?

   July 28, 2010

   The acquisition of Playdom by Disney is all about exploiting Disney’s IP on social plafforms. But will it work? Disney has paid $563.2 million, mainly in cash, plus a $200 million earnout for Playdom. that’s a total value of $763.2 million if the targets are met. I don’t have insight into the financials of Playdom, [...]

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   Posted in: Analysis, Featured

   Tagged with: acquisition, disney, m&a, playdom, starred, valuation

   3 Comments

6. The death of the portal

   July 28, 2010

   With the news that GameSpot has acquired Kongregate, I thought it was time to put forward my thoughts on why portals are vastly less relevant than they were four years ago. It’s a brief extract from How to Publish a Game and it’s included in the two sample chapters I give away for free. Apologies [...]

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   Posted in: Distribution, Featured

   Tagged with: kongregate, portals, revenue, starred, statistics

   6 Comments

7. How to make money from social games: Become an employee

   July 28, 2010

   The goldrush is still on for social games, and employees seem to be the biggest beneficiaries. That’s the message from Vonchurch, a specialized recruited that has placed 120 candidates in social games companies since September 2009, in an interview with Inside Social Games. There is some inherent bias in this story. Vonchurch says “it’s a [...]

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   Posted in: Featured, Opinion

   Tagged with: salaries, social games, staff, starred, zynga

   1 Comment