This is the catch-all category for stuff about games and game design. It easily makes up the vast majority of the site’s content. If you are looking for something specific, I highly recommend looking into the tags used on the site instead. They can narrow down the hunt immensely.
So Game|Wire mentions this game concept of Sherlock Holmes vs Cthulhu, and apparently it even exists already in a French version. But all I can think of is Neil’s Gamain’s award-winning short story “A Study in Emerald,” which you can download the PDF of, if you want to read it. I guess there’s no connection, and it’s just a case of peanut butter and chocolate seeming obvious.
So Forbes has an article on why games cost so much breaking down where your $60 goes when you buy a game. (Be sure to click on the graph at the bottom of the article). But there’s a lot of stuff off with this analysis.
To start with, you don’t take 20% on every box sold for the programming cost. Once you have made the game, the costs are known and fixed; you recoup, and then this chunk turns into publisher and developer profit (mostly publisher). Same goes for the art costs and so on. In fact, in general, this graph tends to mix the categories of costs in this way.
It also ignores the fact that this isn’t really how the business works. There’s a portfolio of titles; not all will have the same mix. You rely on tentpole titles to carry the losers — which are most games made, really. And major tentpole titles often have far higher programming and art costs.
It’s also curious that this doesn’t actually give the story as regards how developers get paid…
There’s an interesting in-depth interview of Anshe Chung by Dan Terdiman on CNet’s site.
I am unsurprised that the interview was griefed:
Unfortunately, as the interview was commencing, the event was attacked by a “griefer,” someone intent on disrupting the proceedings. The griefer managed to assault the CNET theater for 15 minutes with–well, there’s no way to say this delicately–animated flying penises.
Between this and the recent Joel Stein assessment of Second Life in TIME, there’s a risk that the penis will become its public face. Uh. Strange image. Scratch that.
Aside from that, however, the interview is worth checking out.
One thing’s for sure: lots of folks noticed the Areae announcement. Herewith, a small roundup of sorts.
Susan Wu cheated. She actually works at one of our investors, which means that she actually knows what we’re doing. She was very good about not actually saying what it is, though.
Though Areae is still very stealthy, Areae sits at the intersection between Web 2.0 and MMOGs. If you think about it, the Web 2.0 and the Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming communities have largely been pretty siloed – gamer developers go to game industry conferences and Web 2.0 folks go to Web 2.0 conferences, and there has not been enough intermingling between the two communities.
But both industries have been inching closer and closer together. I predict that the successful online communities in the future will continue to more strongly resemble MMOGs. And MMOGs will continue to extend their reach and exposing their data to other Web applications.
Given the announcement of Areae, of course, it’s no real surprise that my GDC lecture this year is entitled Where Game Meets the Web.
In fact, we spent Friday all worried that someone would notice that news of this session was posted, because it gave away the company name. 🙂
I’m also on a panel called “MMOs, Past, Present and Future” with Gordon Walton (co-Studio Director, BioWare), Daniel James (CEO, Three Rings), Mark Jacobs (VP EA, Studio GM EA Mythic, EA Mythic), and Mark Kern (President & CEO, Red 5 Studios). That one should be a lot of fun.
Lastly, I’m on a panel moderated by David Edery (Worldwide Games Portfolio Planner, Xbox Live Arcade) with Ray Muzyka (Joint CEO, BioWare Corp.) called “Sharing Control.”
Description of my lecture:
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