OGDC write-ups

 Posted by (Visited 5964 times)  Game talk
May 152007
 

I missed OGDC, but Brandon Reinhart has write-ups.

Among the tidbits in there is a wealth of great info about Asian development and business practices in the gaming world.

He provided a case study of the power of pushing a standard game in Korea into the online market. EA was selling FIFA soccor in Korea for several years as an off the shelf boxed product…the kind of thing you’d pick up at Gamestop. Throughout the title’s pre-online lifespan, it garnered an estimated 2 million exposures…90% of which were piracy. Yo fucking ho ho ho. A mere $15 million in revenue…probably making back a fraction if any of the marketing and localization costs for the FIFA titles.

EA contracted Neowiz to adapt the game into “FIFA Online.” This was apparently something like a six month development process. Since launch, FIFA Online has had 40 million exposures with no piracy (you can’t pirate it in the traditional sense…it isn’t a boxed product). It has generated $100 million in a very short amount of time. And it’s free to play!!! You might think monetizing soccer would be hard, but Neowiz is providing all sorts of customizations options for your characters to sell you as you play.

Sounds pretty much like “single-player gaming is doomed” huh? Interesting to contrast this with the negative reaction that Hellgate:London is getting in some quarters with its pricing model.

Here come the bankers

 Posted by (Visited 5550 times)  Game talk
May 142007
 

Reuters/Second Life » UK panel urges real-life treatment for virtual cash

He recommended treating virtual currencies like the Linden dollar as “real money”, including a requirement for virtual world operators like Linden Lab to report suspicious financial transactions, just as for real-world banks and financial institutions.

Well, some of us have been warning of this for a long time. The article concludes with a quote about how once the virtual worlds are set up in Belize or the like, it will all get much messier…

Google files patent on analyzing your gameplay

 Posted by (Visited 6071 times)  Game talk
May 142007
 

Interesting article on the Guardian about a patent filing from Google based around watching how you play, what you chat about, how you tend to communicate, etc, then building psych profiles of you in order to better target ads. In addition, there’s mention of targeting ads based on game save state — crash a car in a racing game, then have a car pitch made to you with stuff like “this one has better handling!”

I suppose it’s inevitable — given that ads companies already aggressively mine psychographic data from us, extending that into gamespace seems like a natural next step. And of course, virtual worlds in particular are essentially panopticons. And yet, the implications are troubling.

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