http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/digitalfoundry-new-ipad-evolution-of-ios
I just don't think this article goes nearly far enough; it's focused on a 12-20 month window and concerned just with a 2x-10x improvement in graphics power and CPU speed. I think that we should start to expect more... Especially if we can improve our mobile bandwidth problem, start performing power expensive computational tasks on servers and just streaming the results. If I can't fix the problem of battery life, let's move the battery intensive work elsewhere and supplant it with bandwidth, which seems to be an easier problem to solve.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Pricepoint2
It may not be that the bottom is falling out of the $60 market because of phones.
It may just be that phones and portable software hasn't yet started delivering compelling enough experiences to justify a $50 price point. How much would you pay for an upgrade for your AI assistant that made her 20 IQ points smarter?For the software that ran your car... And made you 2% less likely to be in an auto accident?
It may just be that phones and portable software hasn't yet started delivering compelling enough experiences to justify a $50 price point. How much would you pay for an upgrade for your AI assistant that made her 20 IQ points smarter?For the software that ran your car... And made you 2% less likely to be in an auto accident?
22 Cans
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-04-10-the-peter-molyneux-principle
Fun article from Peter Molyneux about why he started 22 Cans... One (of many interesting) sections here is the bit about how oldskool it is to keep ideas hidden. I've been thinking a lot about this lately, w/r/t to new digital marketplaces and Kickstarter and the rest. When the biggest problem is somehow breaking through the noise-to-signal ratio and standing out on the digital storefront, why on earth would I EVER keep quiet about what I was working on? That really only makes sense if you're part of a franchise so mighty that it will be a huge event on release no matter what. And there are fewer of those these days, because of the explosion of small products in different categories...
Fun article from Peter Molyneux about why he started 22 Cans... One (of many interesting) sections here is the bit about how oldskool it is to keep ideas hidden. I've been thinking a lot about this lately, w/r/t to new digital marketplaces and Kickstarter and the rest. When the biggest problem is somehow breaking through the noise-to-signal ratio and standing out on the digital storefront, why on earth would I EVER keep quiet about what I was working on? That really only makes sense if you're part of a franchise so mighty that it will be a huge event on release no matter what. And there are fewer of those these days, because of the explosion of small products in different categories...
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Zombies! Run!!
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/zombies-run!/id503519713?mt=8
This looks like a great use of gamification. As someone who regularly listens to "In the House in a Heartbeat" and imagines trying to save people from zombies as a way of motivating myself to keep running this seems perfect.
On the other hand, $8 for an app is high. Or is it? What is the right price for an application? In the past, they've been mostly cheap, because they've been (mostly) simple. But as they improve, driven by the rapid increase in hardware ability, they become more complex to build. Games like Hunters2 are very high quality. Should they still cost $2? What about when the Google Glasses start to become a reality? Should apps for them be stuck at the $1-5 price point, or worse, freemium? At what point do we agree that paying as much for expert engineering and UI design is worth more than the price of a beer?
-tf
This looks like a great use of gamification. As someone who regularly listens to "In the House in a Heartbeat" and imagines trying to save people from zombies as a way of motivating myself to keep running this seems perfect.
On the other hand, $8 for an app is high. Or is it? What is the right price for an application? In the past, they've been mostly cheap, because they've been (mostly) simple. But as they improve, driven by the rapid increase in hardware ability, they become more complex to build. Games like Hunters2 are very high quality. Should they still cost $2? What about when the Google Glasses start to become a reality? Should apps for them be stuck at the $1-5 price point, or worse, freemium? At what point do we agree that paying as much for expert engineering and UI design is worth more than the price of a beer?
-tf
OMGPop Rehires all laid off staff?
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-incredible-story-of-how-laid-off-omgpop-workers-got-hired-back-just-in-time-to-cash-in-on-the-big-sale-2012-4
Do we believe this? Dan sure got some bad PR over the Shay Twitter debacle. This sure is some timely good PR... One wonders.
Do we believe this? Dan sure got some bad PR over the Shay Twitter debacle. This sure is some timely good PR... One wonders.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
League of Legends
So yeah, I'm playing League of Legends every day. I'm starting to get decent with Sejuni and am passable with a few other champions. As a designer, I'm really interested in this game, not least of which is because I cannot intellectually rationalize WHY it is so addictive.
On the surface, the game seems to throw out almost everything we've learned about usability over the last decade. The community is unfriendly, the front end is obtuse, the learning curve is just plain brutal, and it seems to be highly intolerant of low bandwidth connections. It's not part of any social network, and it exists only on one platform. It doesn't seem a particularly fresh take on what DoTA had already done, and I can't off-hand tell you why it's better than Heroes of Newerth.
And yet, unless you've been living in a nuclear bunker somewhere, you may have noticed that League of Legends is terrifically successful. And, oh yeah, it's incredibly addictive. Why?
Discuss.
On the surface, the game seems to throw out almost everything we've learned about usability over the last decade. The community is unfriendly, the front end is obtuse, the learning curve is just plain brutal, and it seems to be highly intolerant of low bandwidth connections. It's not part of any social network, and it exists only on one platform. It doesn't seem a particularly fresh take on what DoTA had already done, and I can't off-hand tell you why it's better than Heroes of Newerth.
And yet, unless you've been living in a nuclear bunker somewhere, you may have noticed that League of Legends is terrifically successful. And, oh yeah, it's incredibly addictive. Why?
Discuss.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Gamifried.
I've been thinking about writing another book on the games industry... People keep suggesting I write on gamification.
For those of you who don't know, this is the popular trend of taking core game design mechanics and applying them to all sorts of things to provoke customer behavior that you want. The McDonald's Monopoly game is a very literal version of this, but so is the dashboard HUD on a Prius that shows how efficient your current fuel consumption is, as a way of training you to be a more efficient driver.
I'm not sure that I'm going to write another book on the games biz, but I do think I'll start jotting down thoughts on games and the biz here. I've long felt like I was neglecting the games I love by not giving them airtime alongside the book reviews.
For those of you who don't know, this is the popular trend of taking core game design mechanics and applying them to all sorts of things to provoke customer behavior that you want. The McDonald's Monopoly game is a very literal version of this, but so is the dashboard HUD on a Prius that shows how efficient your current fuel consumption is, as a way of training you to be a more efficient driver.
I'm not sure that I'm going to write another book on the games biz, but I do think I'll start jotting down thoughts on games and the biz here. I've long felt like I was neglecting the games I love by not giving them airtime alongside the book reviews.
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