Game Trials, Rentals, Re-sales: Good or Bad?

The debate never ends. Some argue that all of these allow gamers to get 'free goods' without buying and thus negatively impact sales (the 'Why give away the cow?' crew). The proponents argue that these things ease people into purchases, attract more gamers to the fold, and let gamers spend more dollars because they feel their dollar go further (the "Spread the love" crew).

The argument comes up in discussion of rental or subscription to retail games as well as in discussion of free web-based casual games and other casual games distribution mechanisms.

I've blogged about this debate before, and how other industries might give us pointers.

On that note, two related pieces of research popped onto the radar today:

For the Nays: This piece of research on radio's effect on music sales, concluding that radio play does NOT boost sales of recorded music, and in fact may do the opposite. (As a side note, I am personally VERY skeptical of this peice of research. It seems to jump very quickly to support an argument for music licensors charging license fees to radio stations for airplay. I do wonder whether it has some bias behind it.)

And in the other corner: This post from Freakonomics on Libraries. While it doesn't argue that libraries are good for book sales, it does point out that books still sell despite them. It also asks out the provocative question "If libraries didn't exist, could you start one today?", concluding that the publishing industry would likely attempt to quash such an effort or at least shackle it with a license fee structure. I think most would agree that libraries are good for society and good for culture, and that they haven't yet killed the publishing industry. (Oh, and be sure to read the comment thread. There are some links to a number of cool things including some examples of people that ARE in fact starting libraries today, on the web)

Anyhow, there you have it. Arguments to back up whichever side of the debate you are on. Please ignore the other one.

Line Rider Runner Ad

via Adventure in Digital Marketing comes this nifty advertising banner/overlay, which is an Adidas ad play on Line Rider. Unfortunately it falls a little flat due to the lack of physics, which is what made Line Rider the sensational toy that it is. If the runner had jumped, rolled, etc, this could have been as good. Still a nifty try Adidas!

Activision taking the low road with Guitar Hero III

Arg! It's not enough that Sony's peeing in the pool, but Activision has to add to the melange?

This from Joystiq (via Raph):

They fully updated the graphics, including doing motion capture for the avatars, and the NPCs in the background, like the go-go girls in the stage that’s set in a strip club. Neversoft has a full-sized motion capture studio at their facility in California, so why not make good use of it? Especially if you have to mocap some strippers. Tough work, this rock stuff. Based on what we saw, the dancers will be giving Soul Calibur a run for the money. Jiggle factor five, Mr. Sulu.

Thanks, Activision! At least I know have my decision made easier for me. Rock Band it is!

Social Networking for Dummies

This video *brilliantly* explains social networking in laymans terms, in an entertaining fashion, in under two minutes.



[update: The authors of that video at CommonCraft have a number of others - brilliant]

Duelling Guitar (games)

I just blogged some more Rock Band footage, this time out of the E3 MS press conference.

Among the various bits of news leading up to and coming from E3, are a bunch of factoids released about the 2 duelling guitar games: The Activision-acquired Guitar Hero sequel Guitar Hero 3 and the MTV/EA published Rock Band from the creators of GH, Harmonix.

I'm starting to worry a little about the escalating arms race of spend going into both these titles to pick up various music licenses, band/musician signups, etc.

Rock band has an advisory board.
Rock Band gets Metallica, plus has entire albums as DLC.
Slash to be the Boss in GHIII, plus do an original track for the game

etc, etc.

It's great for consumers, but I hope that (a) they remember that it's about the GAME, and (b) they both make money so we see more of the same.

To be clear, I'm sure they'll both see an assload of units, I'm just wondering whether the budget growth is outpacing the likely sales.

Facebook factoid

So I hooked up with some former Matrox co-workers last night in Toronto for dinner, and amongst other topics, the subject of Facebook came up. Some of that conversation became relevant to a thread over on Raph's blog, so I commented there and am reposting here.

I signed up for Facebook to check it out after several friends far more in-the-know about these things said that it was going to be dominant based on it’s prowess as an extensible platform (Marc Andreesen has a great blog post about this here).

Anyhow, I was surprised to see (a) how many people I knew were already on it, and (b) how they came out of the woodwork to find me, sans my searching for them. After perhaps 10 days of usage, it’s already my 3rd most useful SN service after linkedin and flickr. (I guess I have to add that Xbox Live is a SN service in many ways, and would come in #1 as most used, and perhaps #2 in most useful).

One trivial Facebook factoid that might skew the data: I’m a montrealer and have many friends in Toronto. Toronto has the largest population of facebook users of any city in the world, with over 700k users!

My own hypothesis on this is that it’s a combination of (a) higher BBand penetration in Canada than in US, (b) Facebook being relatively unknown in Europe/Asia (asserted by one of the dinner attendees, a Brit), and (c) Toronto being fairly affluent compared to the rest of Canada and certainly a bigger city than any other in Canada.

Note to Sony: Please quit peeing in the pool

Metaphorically speaking that is. They are really F***ing things up for the rest of us.

Thanks to N'gai Crole (via Alice) for the pointer to this ad for PS2 that Sony recently took out in India (rant to follow):

Here we have such a wonderful opportunity, with a growing, tech savvy, increasingly affluent, group of consumers in India, where gaming has been relatively small in the past, but is growing by leaps and bounds. Do we need to screw it up by importing our biased, misogynist, ass-backward marketing practices with us? We have enough trouble with our baggage of existing content, we don't need the marketing folks to push us further over the edge.

Thank you Sony! Thank goodness Indian women won't make the mistake of thinking they are welcome to purchase and play games. Good thing we'll make it clear from the get-go that games are for introverted pimply-faced boys. Wouldn't want anyone thinking otherwise.

Sheesh. As Alice asked, "Honestly. What kind of cavemen do they employ in Sony's marketing dept?"

E3 predictions

It's been a while since I've talked about the E3 Supernova and the resultant "Dwarf Star E3".

Since E3's kicking off this week while I rock the great white north, I guess now's the time to get predictions in. I think it's going to flop. Someone will claim victory by some standard of measure, but I think it's going to flop, and next years will either not exist, or be even smaller.

Perhaps rather than 'dwarf star', 'old yeller E3' would be a better name?

Sticks and stones...

..."and falling off the swings" perhaps should have been added to that kids rhyme. :-(

Healthy gaming

Dropping by the local mall here in Mississauga, I noticed the following sign

So I went in to check it out, and saw that it was a fitness club for kids all geared around interactive machines & games. PS2's hooked up to stationary bikes (stop pedalling and they switch off), DDR-style dance pad games, 3 motion sensing kung fu game, etc.

Here's a cell phone pick of the stations inside:

Very cool!

Ouch

IMAGE_046, originally uploaded by Kim Pallister.

Jenny falling asleep with an icepack on her shoulder after falling off the swings.

This was before we realized it was a broken clavicle! Poor thing!

The fun continues...

So first day of "semi-working semi-vacation", my laptop goes belly up and I spend the day trying to get MS canada to get me a replacement.

On day two, my 3-yr old daughter Jennifer took a flying leap off the swing set trying to save a carebear from certain death and busted her clavicle in the process. Poor little thing.

So half of day one spent in the MS Canada IT department, half of day two spent in the emergency room.

Fun.

Does not compute...

...at least my laptop didn't after it went belly up hours after I landed in Toronto.

Arghh!

Was able to get someone at the MS office here replace it, but I lost a day and change of productivity in doing so.... >:-(

Video Clip of Harmonix's Rockband gameplay

Posted over on my other blog.

As the guys at Kotaku put it, it's like staring into the face of God.

The iPhone tipping point

OK, clearly my previous post was wrong and burning tablets have been popping out of bushes, as the hype behind the JesusPhone (aka the iPhone) seems to be justified. I have quite a number of friends that picked one up this weekend and the flurry of mail I've received is heavily laden with things like "sexy", "its like holding the future", "rules changing", "requiring pants-changing", etc.

I haven't looked too closely at the device (already seen a couple floating around the MS cafe this morning, before 8am even!) nor at the service & sign up. However, for all the stuff I read yesterday, one thing stood out:

Signup happens through Apple.

That is the single biggest thing about this entire launch. It fundamentally changes the rules of the game between device vendors and carriers - nay - between the tech industry (new guard) and the telco industry (old guard). Similarly to how iTunes, over time, changed the rules between the big music labels and the online services, only overnight, and more dramatically.

It took a pretty sexy device and a religious user base to get the telcos to sell their soul, but AT&T has done so. And after making a deal with the devil, I'm not sure there's any going back for them.

Obligatory (sparse) WiiWare commentary

If you heard something un-applish within this past week's din of prelaunch iPhone religious euphoria (seriously folks, it's not like burning tablets are scheduled to fly out of shrubs this week or something), that noise might have been Nintendo's beloved son, Reggie Fils Aime, announcing WiiWare, Nintendo's XBLA-like program for 3rd party downloadable games on the Wii.


Plenty of commentary so far (Dave and Ian both have good posts on the subject). Like both of them, I have a lot of questions and would go a step further to say that I think they either havent' thought things through entirely, or are being disingenuous in their promises.

I frankly do not beleive they can approach it in a way that titles are not vetted by Nintendo. They have stated that titles will need to be rated, and AO ratings would not fly, but I don't think that's enough.

Echoing and adding to the list of unanswered questions that David and Ian raised:

• What of content that might get an M or T rating, but that some groups would find offensive (e.g. Nazis), or for that matter, that some corporate groups would find offensive (would The McDonald Game fly?)
• If they aren't vetting concepts, then how are they prioritizing dev kits? From what I understand, there's a pent up demand for them, so how is this allocated if they have no idea what a dev is working on (or is this the real gating factor)
• If they aren't vetting concepts, but have the right to refuse games based on the above factors or other reasons, then might developers sink a couple hundred thousand into a game only to be turned away when showing up to Wiiware wanting to hang out their shingle?

I guess details will become clearer as we near the first release of titles, but I am skeptical to say the least.

Cool wedding story

PB060056, originally uploaded by Baron Von Zoobenstein.

Not the type of thing you'd normally find in my blog, but this is pretty cool. I learned today that Chris Mowrer, as graphic design lead in the casual games group here at MS, got married a few years back and did so... on the Pirates of the Carribean ride at Disneyland!

They didn't have permission either. They just got their whole wedding party in line, including minister, all got on the ride together, and then had the whole ceremony, vows and all, scripted and timed to fit into the rides timing between noisy bits.

Awesome.

Easy Rider

IMAGE_039, originally uploaded by Kim Pallister.

I forgot to mention... NEW BIKES!

Jenny's is pink with streamers off the handlebars, Tom's has a shark on it. Stereotypical but they got to pick.

Results of the Generic Defense Game experiment

Jim Greer of Kongregate points us to this great post from 'PsychoGoldfish', creator of Generic Defense Game. As the game's creator puts it, GDG "was built and distributed as an experiment to get some insight on the current state of the independent web-based gaming community"

It's a fantastic read, though I wish he'd actually disclosed figures behind comments like "The ads in the game were a real surprise to me. I did not expect the high level of performance the would ultimately yield".

Anyhow, here's the money quote from the whole article:

Now, a lot of commercialized sites have made it possible to earn a pretty good living in this industry without having to build your own income generating websites. These commercialized sites kicked off a whole new generation of talent, and really helped to raise the bar in quality…at least.. that was how it started.

Today, everyone from high-school kids to seasoned vetrans, are whipping off generic games (not just in the defense genre) because the big commercial sites will dish out $500 or so, for pretty much anything that works (and even some things that don’t). The casual players tend to stick to these commercialized sites, because they brand all the games they sponsor to the degree that the players feel these sites are where all the games are coming from. For many casual players… these are the only sites they check for new games.

This is great for these sites, as they build strong user bases, and stronger revenue streams. This is good for the developers because they can earn sponsorships without having to put fourth a great deal of effort. This is bad for the industry because the quality content is being buried by the quantity content.

Hollywood and Games summit panel

Joystiq has a summary of what sounds like a great panel from Hollywood and Games. (Gamasutra coverage here)

My fave quote comes from Ben Mattes (link to his blog on the right) who I bumped into back at MIGS, and who I hadn't seen since I knew him 15 years ago when I was friends with his sister in school. Anyhow, Ben says:

"There's not really room for "writers" in the video game world. We have game and story designers, not writers." Flint backed him up saying, "Your job is to give meaning to the gameplay."

Well put!