Whyos

Superfluid has been my obsession for the past year, as we’ve been working on creating a system that can enable an elegant liquidity for business and creative initiatives. To this, my partner Branimir who was previously a physicist and remains a master of the 8-bit, brings a cold assessment of how an economy can work most legitimately and honestly. I bring a knowledge of what people find compelling in games, and how business, large and small, works.

It seems to us that in the current economy, most entities and individuals are straightjacketed by either a lack of clients, a lack of available investment dollars, or a lack of credit. And while all of these are real issues, they’re a bit pathetic in hobbling worthwhile efforts. So, we came together with an idea for a project that could bypass these problems, and help businesses to thrive and better enjoy what they do have. Read More »

I was asked the other day by an interviewer about the past and future of manifesto games, with which I have been glad to have been involved. As I was telling him, though, that a portal dedicated to indie games is redundant by definition in the current environment, where a thousand flowers are definitely blooming, it occurred to me that what is needed now isn’t a distribution channel, but cooperative representation for marketing and business development. Read More »

Bijan Sabet followed up a tweet pondering the future of libraries with a post including the feedback he had received. Some of the responses were interesting visions, while  some simply crowed the death of the printed word as the end of libraries. A fair amount of what I’ve been called upon to do since 2001 is evaluation of how physical retail can continue to have value in a world of digital distribution. -I dealt with this specifically as VP of Business at Electronics Boutique, and since then in a consulting role for various initiatives. Amusingly, the redundancy of libraries and of video game retail stores ends up being sort of the same issue at this point in history: Read More »

I’ve seen this coming for a bit; game trade-in machines in Walmart. I think this could be more significant than plays like Amazon and TRU getting into used titles, and even than Best Buy (as they’re unlikely to be too wholehearted in such initiatives); because what this does is potentially provide visibility into pricing, and availability in a high traffic location that will be competitive with GameStop’s broad footprint. Neither the NCR machines nor the e-play technology that runs on them seem to work all that well, but perhaps NCR, which owns a big chunk of e-play may put some money into getting it all together. I think that the broader concept of trade-ins at Walmart is more interesting and important than the kiosk bit, but the kiosk probably makes it worthwhile for them to indulge in an activity outside of their core interest.

The shortcoming of not being integrated into the Walmart system for credits is likely a short term concession to publisher sensitivities, until Walmart can see if the project is worth the bother; they’re likely also looking at whether they want to get involved in this and/or other sorts of pawn-broker-y activities. The name frustratingly eludes me, but I know there’s a small chain of big boxes down south that focuses on re-selling small consumer electronics and media (games and music, I believe); they also have a cafe involved in the model. I really like that sort of combination, and it seems well suited to these times.

It was nice to get out to SF and meet with friends at the Game Developers Conference, but there were no really compelling tech stories, in terms of either vision or product, and that’s what I show up for. This may well come largely from the state of the economy and its near term effect on innovation. It seems to me that GDC now serves two primary purposes; training for big conventional PC and console games (for which it really does make sense to have a centralized function like this), and a massive game industry career-fest. Read More »

Today, Dean Takahashi wrote up a new game distribution technology, called OnLive, that’s announcing at the Game Developers Conference this evening. He feels that it has the potential to destroy retail, with a new technical model of games executed on the server side, enabling gameplay (video) instantly streamed back to the player. This may be a valid threat to retailers, and it’s a danger I’ve warned retailers about for years. Specifically, I first warned of it because PS3’s cell technology seemed focused on the fast video decompression necessary to this sort of system. But, despite the breathless adoration of Venturebeat, I would point out three things: Read More »

I remain a big fan of EA. They have a lot of smart and forward-looking people, but it’s hard to stay as flexible as this industry demands with that large a company, and that has been an ongoing challenge for them. They recently announced Q3 results showing unfortunate results, apparently as a result of three elements: Read More »

I remember in the early ’90s relying on dedicated and proprietary “black box” digital technology hardware, like the Synclavier, for post-production. That was also the beginning of the transition to desktop solutions, so it was a pretty exciting time for technology, but still not so far advanced that we couldn’t justify shooting film and mutilating it with alternative processing. -The first Avid setups we used were so low-res that we had to refer back to tape to check eyeline. Coincidentally, it also was about that time that I heard Strauss Zelnick give a speech about how interactive entertainment would change the world that convinced me that it wasn’t worthwhile to use this great non-linear tech in service of linear end-product. Read More »

I have been pondering today the question of why it so bothers me that Gabo!, by Yoot Saito (of Seaman fame), was rejected by Apple for iPhone.  The obvious issue is that it’s a curious and problematic situation when corporate entities own the tools of creative expression, and can stop distribution of an individual’s work. And this case is pivotal, as I don’t believe you can argue that his work isn’t art on some level, which could make it the Lady Chatterly’s Lover of the digital/hardware-approved content era. But, for me, it’s also more subtle, as I have long argued with more indie friends that the game console model of content control is fair because a) the hardware is subsidized, and hence the manufacturer is giving you better hardware than you’d buy for yourself for this use, in support of software sales and b) it’s focused primarily on commercial games, and not really a common carrier, as the PC serves as such an appropriate and parallel vehicle for content transmission. From a functional perspective, it never seemed to me that a non-commercial developer would bother putting in the time to learn the tools to put out a product onto a platform so customized to expensive development, and having an installed base so focused on gamers. This situation has changed slightly with xna and digital distribution, but still, developing for the console remains something that is logically targeted at gamers, under firm existing expectations on the part of creator and end-user. Read More »

Hellforge has an interesting post up now about the causes of several subscription MMOs tanking in the past year. The author posits poor execution as the cause, and while I don’t disagree that that was an element in sales numbers, I’d suggest that even if these efforts had been supported by adequate execution it would have been a pyrrhic victory. These games simply could not have succeeded on the business model under which they were conceived. Read More »

Dan DeMatteo is certainly correct in his assessment of used game buybacks supporting new games sales, and if every (or any) publisher were only a publisher, with no developer component, that would definitely get more traction with them. There are a couple of psychological issues that somewhat negate the value of his argument for publishers: Read More »

Techcrunch is highlighting a startup called Baseshield that’s created a marketplace for software that downloads into a virtual environment, protecting the user experience and keeping them safe from malware, etc, and ensuring compatibility. It does look like a well executed initiative, and I hope that it ends up being significant, but Techcrunch seems unaware that that there have been similar technologies around for about ten years. Exent, Yummy, and Into Networks all have/had their own versions, and I’m sure there are a few others that escape me at the moment.

A friend read my article proposing a standardized feed of downloadable games, and suggested that I jumpstart that concept with creation of a database feed highlighting all available online games, with links to transactions for each of them. He proposed that that could serve as a proof-of-concept allowing the full range of Twitter/Steam/xfire-like applications and customized web functionality. -Lacking, however, the embedded transaction model that’s central to the business concept, so it’d be very much limited to proof. He’s a pretty smart guy, maybe the sharpest in looking at just this sort of content, so I was actively regretting that I’m already a bit too overloaded with projects to start on that one immediately. Read More »

As more diverse boxes come into the living room, not least those supporting Netflix streaming service (of which 360 is but one), and PC content creators show themselves significantly more agile in adopting new models for game content,  the question of what next generation game consoles will look like only gets more interesting. Some recent optimism about the current PC gamer marketplace is probably overstated, but it’s a curious time right now. -Especially compelling to ponder after the latest add-on to games’ subscription model leviathan. Read More »

Andrew Chen posted some generally useful information the other day on how to assess ad campaigns driving to game content. I don’t disagree with any of his statements, and largely think his is an excellent primer, but it’s important to emphasize that conventional online advertising has somewhat limited use for those promoting games. And, while the conversion numbers in his grid may have been simply for demonstration purposes, they were overoptimistic for most conditions, and this is worth noting. Read More »

I don’t know a lot about Macrovision, aside from the fact that most games and movies distributed on physical media use their DRM protection, and that this technology is at the core of their value. –they’ve been doing this since VHS, and last year, they acquired the DRM technology used on Blu-ray disks. This puts them at the very center of a business that will likely plateau sometime in the next few years. Read More »

Silly new Brazilian console sounds like old silly American Console, but not quite as hopeless. -Cheaper to build, cheaper to buy, and probably didn’t manage to waste $73 million on the way to (not) releasing it. Interesting that, historically, Phantom did go through a semi-but-not-really credible stage, where actual game industry folks commissioned creation of a sorta neat lapboard/keyboard and perhaps (although I doubt it) streaming technology, and now Phantom seems to be sort of releasing these as products. A problem with Phantom from the start was that it wanted to be a premium device, but always consisted of elements that had already been better enabled by other entities. Hence, the threat was that if Phantom actually launched, and succeeded, a competitor could be put together with an afternoon of phone calls to vendors (Exent, Alienware, Alphagrip, hmm, what else…)

Everyone in tech journalism seems jazzed about it; and, at least the poker actually is reasonably good, especially compared with the rest of their product, which tends to be reskinnings of the same weak gameplay with differing weak creative. Just look at the competition in their (primarily FaceBook/MySpace) space: Youplus has better creative and execution than Zynga, SGN is more inventive. And Playfish has more interesting approaches to social play (which still doesn’t come close to the cleverness of iminlikewithyou).

This is very interesting to me, because Capps is saying that in response to used sales, not piracy, Epic will be looking at code activations. -And used sales means the console side of things, because it doesn’t exist for PC titles. I know that developers have stronger feelings on used product than publishers (although publishers aren’t that big on it either), and users never seem to love activations, so this may go nowhere. But it’s interesting to hear as major a player as Epic propose it.

Second Life is a brilliant sandbox, and there are some real opportunities that Linden could have taken to make it something beyond a fairly limited community. They may be too late now, but they have little to lose in trying:

SL has always been a lousy game environment, but that’s largely because Linden refuse to focus on the opportunity and optimize a set of servers for it (enabling some level of pre-caching). If they did do so, it could be an intriguing platform for free-to-play games. And, not only would it work for conventionally developed games. It could include an integrated marketplace for user-generated content that would leverage the most accessible tools for 3D creation, and a significant existing developer base. Questions of game balance and style always come up when discussing expansive approaches to in-game content, but this can be resolved either with structurally or societally enforced rules within each game environment. [I co-founded Gameflood to do something like this, but left it as it became something modder-centric, as a result of just this debate.] Read More »

Interesting to see that EA doesn’t care for casual as a category so much these days, and are rolling that initiative into their more meaningful non-core titles. I think creators are beginning to understand online play, and that casual, as we understand it today (free demos with 2% conversion to paid, or simple ads), is a transitional category. Everyone who wants games, wants to play games that are actually worth paying for (by free-to-play or whatever), or at least worth trading attention in a meaningful advertiser interaction (i.e. Neoedge).

Three obvious truths about frontline downloadable game sales are generally ignored by the existing industry players:

1. Inventory Means Nothing –Limitations on retail availability unnaturally hinders sales of digital product. It may help a lousy retailer, but does nothing for the creator or publisher (even if the retailer is the publisher).
2. The Store Metaphor is Played Out -There are no limits to how you attract and keep customers of digital product except the limits of your imagination.
3. Great Games are Currently Sold on Lame Websites-The elegant implementation of interactive entertainment in games is in stark contrast with the archaic implementation of retail download/commerce sites. Read More »