• New boss, old boss?

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 17 Comments

    The wild frontier of the Web for game and app distribution is rapidly looking a lot like the old landscape. The biggest challenge is distribution: the power to get your game in front of users. A lot of folks look to the centralized distribution available on things like the iPhone’s App Store or using Facebook’s apps infrastructure. But as noise rises, you need clout to get seen in the midst of an endless sea of apps.

    And the answer to that? A powerful distribution network in the hands of an aggregator. In short, a company that has the funds to commission games and spend heavily to advertise them, to cross-promote them with their other titles (and get economies of scale on that marketing dollar), and to make their titles rise above the noise. In other words, a publisher. Take Zynga, for example:

    “We do spend a lot of money on advertising when we want to, like when we launched Farmville,” Pincus said. “We spent a couple million dollars advertising it and we’re not shy about that.”

    via Social Game Developers Spending Millions on Facebook Advertising.

    That’s more in marketing alone than most apps have in development budget. Possibly more than their makers have in total funding.

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  • WoW addiction therapy guild!

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 18 Comments

    An addiction therapist is forming a WoW guild so that he can reach the addicted where they live: on raids.

    He has called on Blizzard Entertainment, the company that makes World of Warcraft, to waive or discount the costs associated with joining the game so that therapists can more easily communicate with at-risk players in their preferred environment.

    “We will be launching this project by the end of the year. I think it’s already clear that psychiatrists will have to stay within the parameters of the game. They certainly wouldn’t be wandering around the game in white coats and would have to use the same characters available to other players,” said Dr Graham.

    “Of course one problem we’re going to have to overcome is that while a psychiatrist may excel in what they do in the real world, they’re probably not going to be very good at playing World of Warcraft.

    “We may have to work at that if we are going to get through to those who play this game for hours at end.”

    via Addiction therapists signing up to World of Warcraft – Telegraph.

    Gosh, I hope they don’t get addicted.

  • More on vSide

    Hours Categories Game talk

    Virtual Worlds News has been following the story. Apparently ExitReality bought the assets (meaning, the vSide tech and IP, so they are the new operators). Then Doppelganger disbanded as an entity. Then a bit later, some the people from Doppelganger resurfaced at a new company called Real Life Plus.

    There’s some screenshots (looks like prerendered concept art) from this new project on their Facebook page.

    No word from ExitReality on what exactly they are going to be doing with the vSide assets. They have their own client and server tech based on X3D, so presumably they are mostly interested in the assets and the vSide userbase.

  • Imitating life TOO closely

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 6 Comments

    Spotted via New World Notes: Ryker Beck’sTutorial For Photoshopping Avatar Skin Imperfections.

    Yes, that is right, we are now to the point where we not only have to cover over the imperfections in real people, but also in non-real people.

    This is a good example of what I mean when I talk about the fact that we have imported a bit more of real life into virtual worlds than may be strictly healthy. On the Internet now, people now know you’re a dog thanks to voice, increased realism, etc — but at least you’re an airbrushed dog.

  • Windows Mobile games you can’t have

    Hours Categories Game talk
    Comments 18 Comments

    At least, according to their new “app store” style marketplace (coming this fall) policies, laid out in this file: MarketplaceContentPolicies.pdf (application/pdf Object).

    • Any content with prolonged and/or excessive use of firearms or weapons or other content that facilitates the use of firearms or weapons
    • Any content that depicts decapitation, blood splatter, killing, gore or cruelty
    • Any content that depicts excessive violence
    • Requests or instructions to injure or otherwise harm a specific person or group of people
    • Repeated blows or shots inflicted upon people/creatures, violent blows to the head, guns/weapons pointed at head, impaling, exploding body parts, guns/weapons pointed towards reader/audience, depictions of fatal injuries, strangulation/choking, inflicting wounds with swords/knives
    • Excessive and gratuitous amounts of blood and/or fleshy body parts, blood spurting from wounds
    • Cruelty to animals
    • People/creatures on fire

    Gotta love the specificity. How do you get gratuitous blood– or any, for that matter — without depicting guns, knives, blows, choking, swords… Guess we won’t see Plants vs Zombies, N+, Prince of Persia or any Tom Clancy games on here…  I also like the “guns pointed at reader” which seems explicitly created to prevent the James Bond title sequence from making an appearance. 🙂

    Hmm, so Space Invaders… do they count as creatures, I wonder?