An interesting industry picture

 Posted by (Visited 6869 times)  Game talk  Tagged with:
Jul 222009
 

At present, Newell explained, games [AAA ones, anyway! – Raph] require an investment of between USD 10 million and USD 30 million before development can even begin. “There’s a huge amount of risk associated with those dollars and decisions have to be incredibly conservative,” he said.

Valve: Gamers should fund development // News.

Meanwhile on the other side of town…

yep, there are 300 games  a day coming on the iphone.

@deantak, aka Dean Takahashi, journalist

and

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Today’s post on gaming’s cultural influence

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Jul 222009
 

The soldiers call it the ‘Pacman challenge’ — dodging the scores of booby traps, trip wires and charges laid by the Taliban in the fertile soil of Afghanistan’s Sangin valley. The reference, to an arcade compujter game, is one of the ways the soldiers make light of the deadly gauntlet they run every day in the district.

— Daily Telegraph, July 11, 2009

Spotted in Time Magazine… one could quibble over whether it is the most appropriate retro game reference, but whatever.

Casual Connect

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Jul 212009
 

I will be at Casual Connect on Thursday, on a panel:

David HELGASON CEO Unity
Sibley VERBECK CEO The Electric Sheep Company
Robin CHAN Founder & CEO XPD Media
Raph KOSTER Co-founder and President Metaplace

Discussion led by
Mark FRIEDLER Founder GameDaily

The World of Warcraft gets all the press and attention, but the truth is millions of gamers are logging on to casual MMO’s and virtual worlds every month. Over the last 18 months, more investment capital has been poured into this segment than any other in the games industry. Come and learn which companies will be winners of this growing category.