Archive for September, 2010

Stupid, stupid, stupid. The Good Old Games publicity screw-up

September 23, 2010

This week, Good Old Games put its foot in its mouth and pulled the trigger. On Sunday, news spread across the web that the Good Old Games (or GoG) website was down. The site, which offers DRM-free digital downloads of many classic games, was popular with gamers for its open approach to digital distribution, and [...]

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Posted in: Featured, Opinion

Tagged with: digital distribution, good old games, mistakes, pr, publicity stunt

5 Comments
And you thought the advertising market was complicated

September 22, 2010

This chart from advertising “yield optimisation platform” Improve Digital shows the make-up of the online advertising industry. That’s a lot of business types. And a lot of companies. It’s a complicated world. If you want to make money from advertising, be prepared to be faced with a lot of jargon. (Thanks to Nic Brisbourne at [...]

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Posted in: Featured, Sales

Tagged with: advertising, improve digital

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Do whales exist in the digital distribution of product-style games too?

September 21, 2010

More on whales, I’m afraid. This week, a lot of hoohah has been made about NPD reporting that digital sales of PC games have overtaken boxed product sales in the US. At the same time, the fatfoogoo blog reports that between Q1 2009 and Q1 2010, 80% of gamers did not purchase ANY games digitally, [...]

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Posted in: Distribution, Featured

Tagged with: digital distribution, interpret, whales

9 Comments
Whales infest the iPhone: Pocket Frog proves that $29.99 works

September 21, 2010

I’m getting more and more evidence that my “Whales, power laws and the future of media” theory is correct. Put simply, if you are a media business that does not offer your true fans a chance to spend lots of money with you, you are going to go bust; if you do let them spend [...]

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Posted in: Analysis, Featured

Tagged with: in app purchases, iphone, nimbits, pocket frogs, power laws, whales

2 Comments
The Investec Digital Media Conference

September 20, 2010

I was delighted to be asked to host the gaming panel at the excellent Investec Digital Media Conference in May this year. I had hoped to host the video of the conference, but in an object lesson in how to prioritise wrongly, I’ve spent months procrastinating about .swf files and Flash. I’m going to stop. [...]

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Posted in: Featured, Finance

Tagged with: bigpoint, codemasters, frogster, index ventures, investec, investment, king.com, playfire

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Enter the Indie Game Challenge

September 20, 2010

Run by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, the Indie Game Challenge has total prizes of $300,000, supported by GameSpot. Deadline is 1st October 2010. It’s open to professionals and amateurs, the game must be less than 4 hours long and the team must be smaller than 16. Entries are allowed from anywhere in [...]

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Posted in: Featured, Past Events

Tagged with: academy of interactive arts and sciences, contests, gamespot, indie game challenge

1 Comment
The end of the game developer

September 20, 2010

I’m calling it today. The end of the game developer. It’s an anachronistic term, and I’m going to try to stop using it. (I’m bound to fail – I spent ten years trying to teach anyone who would listen the difference between a developer and a publisher. It used to annoy me so much when [...]

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Posted in: Featured, Opinion

Tagged with: development, game making, publishing

11 Comments