Archive for the ‘Opinion’ Category

1. How to stifle Innovation, the Microsoft Way

   May 21, 2012

   Here is the process you need to go through to get your game onto XBLA. Can you imagine a process more designed to stifle innovation?

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   Posted in: Opinion

   Tagged with: innovation, self-publishing, stifling, xbla

   4 Comments

2. The three things I want to ensure a healthy UK games industry

   May 17, 2012

   This is a lightly edited transcript of a talk I gave at the Westminster eForum on the future of games last month.

   Thank you and obviously well done to TIGA and UKIE for the tax breaks.

   I’m here to talk about business models, I want to talk about three things: I want to talk about change, I want to talk about adaptability, and I want to talk about resistance.

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   Posted in: Opinion

   Tagged with: change, copyright, crowdfunding, digital, tax breaks

   No Comments

3. A debate on free-to-play

   May 16, 2012

   Cliff Harris and I exchange views on free-to-play gaming, and then share the conversation with you.

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   Posted in: Guest Post, Opinion

   Tagged with: 1-10-100, cliff harris, ethics, free-to-play, games design, positech

   8 Comments

4. Kickstarter and the Gartner Hype cycle

   May 9, 2012

   Yesterday, I wrote about the inevitable bursting of the Kickstarter bubble. (The post was originally made on Gamasutra).

   I had meant to check out the Gartner Hype Cycle and a link from Tadhg Kelly reminded me to do so. Here it is:

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   Posted in: Opinion

   Tagged with: gartner, hype cycle, kickstarter, peak of inflated expectations, trough of disillusionment

   2 Comments

5. How long before the Kickstarter bubble bursts?

   May 8, 2012

   There are currently 314 projects live on the Video Games Channel on Kickstarter. Several are fully-funded already (like YogVentures). Others never will be (I’ve seen at least two massive open-world sandbox games proposed by people who have never made any games before). The ones I worry about are the ones that combine the two: fully funded projects by wildly-optimistic promoters. That is where the trouble will start.

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   Posted in: Finance, Opinion

   Tagged with: bubble, crowdfunding, doublefine, funding, kickstarter

   2 Comments

6. The age of interaction: the rule of 1/9/90 doesn’t work any more

   May 8, 2012

   Do you remember the rule of 1/9/90. It was rule of thumb for web designers that 1% created, 9% commented and 90% consumed. If your business depended on the 1%, you were typically in trouble.

   New research from the BBC suggests that interactivity has broken through apathy and thanks to new technologies that make participation easier than ever before, the rule of 1/9/90 may be outdated.

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   Posted in: Opinion

   Tagged with: 1/9/90, 20/60/20, bbc, interaction, participation

   1 Comment

7. Why economic gloom could be good for business in virtual worlds

   May 4, 2012

   In my GDC talk, I explained how the fictional economies of Final Fantasy in the 1990s games got young people spending money on gaming when their finances were low, by reflecting the loss of stability of the real world economy while eliminating the possibility of poverty. After the talk, Nicholas asked whether the success of Final Fantasy games during Japan’s lost decade parallels the success of the freemium model during our current recession. In this post I’m going to suggest one reason why fictional economies are so compelling in a recession – real-world financial gloom makes virtual wealth feel like an epic win.

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   Posted in: Marketing, Opinion

   Tagged with: epic win, Fictional economics, freemium, recession, virtual currency, virtual economies

   1 Comment