“We’ve [games] been a niche medium that over-charges for its product and therefore generates a lot of revenue which makes us a little bigger than Hollywood, which is crazy. … If I’ve got a 20 dollar bill in my pocket I can go buy a book, go to a movie, but I can’t buy a game. I can buy a CD, I can do so much even now, but you cannot buy a game.”
– Deus Ex designer Warren Spector speaking to GamesIndustry.biz
Filed under Rambling Man
I didn’t take advantage of my Kodak Zi6 nearly as much as I should have during the Game Developers Conference, but I did nab video of the mobile version of BioShock being produced at IG Fun. Enjoy.
Oh, and the HD version is available here (I can’t seem to embed it).
Filed under Direct Feed, GDC 2009
We now have the first tangible evidence of whether Community Games, Microsoft’s independent-centric downloadable games service powered by their freely available XNA Game Studio toolset, has been a success or not.
The first set of sales data arrived to developers last week, in the midst of the Game Developers Conference (more on that soon, by the way). It’s up to developers to share their successes and failures. Mommy’s Best Games, the studio behind the well-received Weapon of Choice, isn’t sharing specifics, but have clearly stated disappointment on their development blog.
Weapon of Choice has so far sold less than 10,000 copies, falling into a sales category Mommy’s Best Games describes as “that hurts.”
“We want to make kick ass games, full-time. I left one of the best video game employers to strike out and make my own games,” explained co-founder and ex-Insomniac Games developer Nathan Fouts on his blog. “This is my full time job, I am not a hobbyist and Weapon of Choice shows that. It is a full-fledged game, which took a full year to make. Not only did we hope sales would recoup the savings we spent during the year of development, we hoped it would provide enough financing to support the development of our next game.”
It’s currently unknown what impact this will have on the future direction of small companies like Mommy’s Best Games, or if they’ll try to “ride it out” with another game and see if the market for independent games over Xbox Live expands.
Others will likely share their sales data in the coming days. I’m already in contact with several developers to talk about their responses to the sales so far — that article will appear somewhere that isn’t here. 
Filed under Jobless
Here’s all you need to know.
Joining Electronic Art’s iPhone lineup in 2009 are FIFA 10, Madden 10, NBA Live 10, American Idol, Spore Creatures, SSX, Wolfenstein RPG, Red Alert, Clue, Risk, Mystery Mania, Connect 4, Battleship and Monopoly.
More to come from GDC soon.
Filed under Uncategorized
BioShock looks better than it should on a cell phone.
It’s coming to various mobile devices in both 2D and 3D forms, depending on the device’s capabilities, and there’s also a good chance it’s also coming to iPhone, based on some teasing IG Fun CEO Sean Malatesta did at a Game Developer Conference session this morning.
Malatesta’s presentation outlined his company’s successes and failures in bringing BioShock to the mobile format. He discussed the iPhone’s current impact on the mobile market, calling it a “bridging” device between handhelds and mobile phones.
As for BioShock coming to the iPhone..?
“Honestly, I can’t comment on BioShock on iPhone right now,” he said. “It’s top secret.”
Enough said.
[Graphic grabbed from OSX Reality]
Filed under GDC 2009
A constantly shrinking economy means that going independent isn’t as easy as it used to be, admitted 2D Boy (they made World of Goo) co-founder Ron Carmel at the Game Developers Conference today.
“My thinking at the time was: what’s the worst that could happen?” he said. “I quit my job, I go through some of my savings for a year and if it doesn’t work out, I’ll just get another job. I realize today that maybe the same argument wouldn’t apply as much. [laughs]“
Still, Carmel doesn’t think that’s a reason to not pursue independent game development, even if the leap of faith is slightly scarier these days. If making games is your dream, Carmel’s advice was simple.
“You only live once,” he said.
Good point.
Ngmoco head Neil Young, formerly of Electronic Arts, addressed fears of downloadable content exploitation during his opening keynote at the Game Developers Conference.
Gamers became a little easy when Apple introduced the ability for developers to incorporate downloadable content into their iPhone games with the upcoming operating system update, currently dubbed iPhone 3.0.
Young showed a demo of LiveFire, their upcoming iPhone first-person-shooter, which famously featured a moment where a player purchased a 99-cent rocket launcher. That’s not indicative of where they’re going with iPhone downloadable content, Young told the audience.
“That’s not gonna happen,” said Young. “We’re not gonna prioritize greed over gameplay.”
The rocket launcher was just a proof-of-concept, he said.
Downloadable content is coming to the iPhone this year, though, and LiveFire will be one of the games taking advantage of it out of the gate. If we’re not buying rocket launchers, what will we be buying? So far, Young isn’t saying.
Filed under Jobless
WordPress blog won’t let me embed the latest episode of Co-Op, a new show from Area 5, the same guys who produced The 1UP Show. They’ve had me on before, discussing the Fallout 3 downloadable content Operation Anchorage, but I’m on this week’s episode talking about Halo Wars.
Filed under Where Am I
The view from the 39th floor of the Four Seasons Hotel in Vegas
I’m currently sitting in a Las Vegas hotel room to see a game I can’t talk about yet. You’ll hear my thoughts when the embargo lifts later this week. It’s a bizarre trip, my least favorite kind: the publisher-paid press junket. It’s a little talked about but otherwise staple element of the enthusiast press.
No, I don’t know why we’re in Las Vegas, considering most of our time with the game will take place in otherwise standard hotel rooms. But anyway.
I do not like being a journalist on a publisher dime. It makes me uncomfortable. Typically, this kind of event involves publishers flying writers to some location, usually close to a developer or publisher, to play “X” game, conduct interviews about “X” game, participate in some crazy promotional activity loosely related to the game (i.e. fire guns), etc. Some are flown out by their own company, but sometimes, the publisher is footing the bill. That’s me this week. I’m here on behalf of a well-known publication, but the publisher covered travel expenses.
MTV had strict rules against this, with very few exceptions. Some publications alleviate their conscience by allowing writers to fly courtesy of a publisher only if they’re freelance and not in-house. I’ve never quite understood that one, but the reason is usually what you’d expect: “It’s better than nothing.” The pressure to attend because other outlets will be there is too much. It’s not much different than the BioShock 2 situation from last week, actually.
I’m confident my work out of here will be genuine, but I felt a desire to express my concerns. If nothing else, this obligates me to do better work.
Please hold me to it.
[There's some good discussion happening in the comments section about the BioShock 2 incident last week around the blogosphere. Check it out.]
Filed under journalism, Rambling Man
