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Shalinor posted:2.) core gamers have zero interest in their entire world becoming f2p. It's not just the monetization per user that makes it work either, it also staves off population collapse. It's much harder to get to the point of users questioning whether they want to risk dumping money on game that nobody else is playing when they don't have to dump the money to find out and the playerbase is inflated by free players. Single player is a different story of course, it doesn't offer much over demo versions and DLC there.
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Nov 14, 2012 17:03
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Sigma-X posted:The big publishers that have stuck around have been able to successfully find tent-poles the big-money games shift to Games as a Service, and Midway/THQ have not. Except that the AAA industry isn't anywhere near shifting to "games as a service". The current generation platforms simply don't support it, and all bets are still off on next gen. There's precious few non-multiplayer freemium games showing up on Steam, and it's still too early to tell how many of those will work out or will sink. In any event, it's pretty obvious to see that the current freemium models simply aren't applicable to single player games. Although a clever entrepreneur might show them wrong, current AAA publishers just don't want to venture down that avenue when their current big budget single player game approach is already risky enough as it is. THQ isn't sinking because of "service" games, it's sinking because of a series of dubious decisions following the sudden decline of the licensed IP goldmine. The worst of it being the 360/PS3 release of uDraw, by far and large. There's just so much negative momentum that it's going to take a while to reverse it, even given the new focus on core franchises. And this is is just my optimistic opinion, but I somehow doubt Jason Rubin would've joined if the company was truly as hopeless as the media makes it sound. But then, maybe he underestimated the negative momentum and the impact of stockholders bailing out. 
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Nov 14, 2012 17:05
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Monster w21 Faces posted:
I applied on Monday after being directed there by Smegbot.  folio
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Nov 14, 2012 18:15
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JOB TIME
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devilmouse posted:The revenue models are rough for F2P, but certainly way better than trying to do for-pay games. Let's make a fake company (or a real one in my case... HA!!) and look at some back of the napkin numbers! I will go ahead and make a bold claim that I believe any game under ~.20/DAU will not survive unless they get extraordinarily lucky with word of mouth or Apple/Google features. CPI is rising dramatically and you need roughly that amount to offset paid acquisition.
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Nov 14, 2012 19:26
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Aliginge posted:I applied on Monday after being directed there by Smegbot. Awesome. Don't know if out lead artist Graham has seen your profile yet or not, but I'll send him an email in the morning.
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Nov 14, 2012 19:43
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devilmouse posted:The revenue models are rough for F2P, but certainly way better than trying to do for-pay games. Let's make a fake company (or a real one in my case... HA!!) and look at some back of the napkin numbers! This is a fantastic write-up and breakdown. I think this should be added to the OP.
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Nov 14, 2012 20:04
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Relevant to the F2P discussion: Punch Quest failed bad enough that they put it to 99c
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Nov 14, 2012 20:11
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Comrade Flynn posted:I will go ahead and make a bold claim that I believe any game under ~.20/DAU will not survive unless they get extraordinarily lucky .... BOLD! We have this discussion a lot about which is easier, growth (and by extension, retention) or revenue. Both sides have strong arguments and things change depending on where you are on the spectrum, who your audience is, your available channels and so forth, and you can see good examples of both doing extremely well for themselves. Now to chase that impossible unicorn of doing both.... Pocketgamer article posted:Offering advice to would-be indie game makers, [Kepa] Auwae cautions: "don't make a free game that's too generous. You will make no money." In one of my consulting gigs, I told them straight up on my first day as we were establishing rates and expectations and goals and whatnot, "Listen, I am going to make your game less fun. You will not like this and you will complain. You will, however, make money."
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Nov 14, 2012 20:18
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I am literally in awe that this actually exists:quote:According to a source familiar with the matter, the house that built FarmVille will hire one associate game designer that participates in the upcoming game show to work in its San Francisco office. Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel. (For publicity, we mean.) http://blog.games.com/2012/11/12/zynga-the-job-cbs/ A loving reality show, to hire an associate designer. I seriously hope this isn't real, but jesus, this is going to be a trainwreck if it is. But I guess anything for some publicity.
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Nov 14, 2012 21:29
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The Glumslinger posted:I am literally in awe that this actually exists:
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Nov 14, 2012 21:41
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The Glumslinger posted:I am literally in awe that this actually exists: Hey, remember The Tester? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tester I want this show to involve the applicants racing through an obstacle course only for Olmec to tell them they didn't get the job at the end of each episode.
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Nov 14, 2012 21:44
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It feels a bit predatory of Sony and Zynga to dangle these really low level fake jobs (no offense to publisher-side game testers or associate designers, whatever those are) in front of naive gamers, who wind up embarrassing themselves and reducing their chances of having a real career while the game show makes ad money off them.
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Nov 14, 2012 23:33
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x
anime was right fucked around with this message at 07:08 on Apr 18, 2017 |
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Nov 15, 2012 00:58
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Jan posted:Except that the AAA industry isn't anywhere near shifting to "games as a service".  Let's chat this time next year. Jan posted:And this is is just my optimistic opinion, but I somehow doubt Jason Rubin would've joined if the company was truly as hopeless as the media makes it sound. But then, maybe he underestimated the negative momentum and the impact of stockholders bailing out. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsav..._medium=twitter They are dead, and will be cut up for pieces - the and whatever worthwhile IP they own will be sold off. There is no other end game for them. There is no other way out of this situation.
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Nov 15, 2012 03:08
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The whole thing about it is how do you define "games as a service"? Is it freemium? Is it a game that you pay a subscription fee? A game that you pay retail that then continues to have free DLC or updates? Retail price games with micro-transactions? All of these could conceivably be described as "games as a service", but all mean very different things in reality.
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Nov 15, 2012 04:26
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Comrade Flynn posted:I will go ahead and make a bold claim that I believe any game under ~.20/DAU will not survive unless they get extraordinarily lucky with word of mouth or Apple/Google features. CPI is rising dramatically and you need roughly that amount to offset paid acquisition. Yeah I was just about to post the same thing. CPI is out of control and getting worse. It's bad on the web and horrific on iOS. It's turning into yet another market where only the big corps can play because they can leverage referral networks if they have lots of games. I think if you're indy your best bet is still making an alpha demo of something that catches the eye of core pc gamers and building enough buzz to get on to Steam with a $10 download. I suppose at the end of the day it doesn't matter what market you choose. You need a bunch of luck and press to be profitable.
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Nov 15, 2012 06:00
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Shalinor posted:I would be inclined to agree. The collapse of the wii, combined with the continued stability of Steam/downloadables pricing, would seem to indicate two things. I wouldn't really say that the Wii crashed, it did pretty respectably for a last-gen console during the incredibly over-extended current generation. quote:EDIT: I suppose you could also compare it to Flash games. A space where people once made handsome livings, now reduced to a space only hobbyists can afford to bother with. I've heard a number of people say that mobile casual games are going to go the same way as Flash and Facebook games, but I'd argue that all three of those are actually the exact same market. Facebook had interconnectivity that Flash games lacked so the audience moved there, and mobile games have the portability that Facebook games didn't have so the audience moved again. I don't see them moving from mobile games for quite some time. Until there's a medium more convenient than something that you already carry with you everywhere, anyway. edit: Also for freemium games, I don't think they're really going to go anywhere. I mean sure, they'll probably change their form a couple of times over the years as they find their footing, but the idea of a game that has high throughput and allows you to continue putting money in for as long as you play the game just makes far more sense than a game where the actual amount of time you spend playing it is in no way proportional to the price. I'm just hoping that people start coming up with better solutions to monetize their games rather than the exploitative practices of Zynga et al or the 'Pay $5 to skip the actual game part of the game' methods that we're using at the moment. That poo poo's terrible and it's astonishingly destructive to the industry. AntiPseudonym fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Nov 15, 2012 |
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Nov 15, 2012 06:38
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devilmouse posted:assuming your NURR/CURR/RURR are good
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Nov 15, 2012 07:55
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Sooooooo the first game I've been doing design work for at Outplay Entertainment is now live globally. It's a cross between bust-a-move and peggle and it has awesome art. It's free and out now on iTunes for all iOS devices: https://itunes.apple.com/app/bubble-blaze/id560462487?ls=1&mt=8   
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Nov 15, 2012 12:15
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I started at Outplay about a month and a half ago as an engineer and it's been really good and everyone is nice and all that jazz, it's really nice that execution quality is placed so highly too as the games the company have put out all have a very high quality feel. I didn't work on Bubble Blaze but it's an awesome game, looks really good in motion and has pretty great difficulty ramping and variations.
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Nov 15, 2012 12:46
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WHO ARE YOU?
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Nov 15, 2012 12:59
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I find the campaign map too difficult to follow - the dots don't pop enough against the background and the distances between them can be quite large. That's my only feedback from 1 minute of play 
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Nov 15, 2012 13:06
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Monster w21 Faces posted:WHO ARE YOU? "brian", obviously.
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Nov 15, 2012 13:24
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mutata posted:"brian", obviously.  my real name isn't Brian
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Nov 15, 2012 13:28
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FreakyZoid posted:I find the campaign map too difficult to follow - the dots don't pop enough against the background and the distances between them can be quite large. That's my only feedback from 1 minute of play Yeah we're changing the map in the first big update. We don't like it much either any more. DEADLINES!
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Nov 15, 2012 13:32
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wasabimilkshake posted:Those acronyms are hilariously difficult to Google, but what they mean doesn't interest me nearly as much as how you'd pronounce them when you're talking about this stuff out loud. Does anyone ever walk into a conference room and say, "good news, team, our nurrkurrrurr is looking up this month?" New user return rate, current user return rate, and returning/reactivating user return rate. Basically retention numbers. And yes, you say "nurr", "rurr", and "kurr" if you say them out loud. The number of acronyms is hilarious. Also pretty good writeup by Daniel Cook on the F2P/paid discussion: https://plus.google.com/105363132599081141035/posts/Lce7wEJApEr
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Nov 15, 2012 14:01
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Monster w21 Faces posted:WHO ARE YOU? Goon studio.  How is Dundee by the way? I could tell you all sorts about England and the towns to go to (York) and the places to avoid (London) but Scotland is one huge sodding mystery to me. GeeCee fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Nov 15, 2012 |
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Nov 15, 2012 14:30
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Dundee is the Hollywood of the games industry. I'm sure that was a line in some Dare fluff piece or other.devilmouse posted:New user return rate, current user return rate, and returning/reactivating user return rate.
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Nov 15, 2012 16:35
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Dundee's been pretty great for me, lots of friendly people, lots of studios and there's weekly game dev people pub get togethers and stuff, great fighting game scene if you're into that. It's all built on a hill so some stuff is up hill but it's pretty flat in the centre. Pretty reasonable flat renting prices and lots of places to eat and go out at night to and so on. It's a lot better than Middlesbrough i'm sure you'll be glad to hear, we were actually at Uni at the same uni at the same time Aliginge, I think I ended up playing unreal tournament in a lab with you at one point.
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Nov 15, 2012 16:37
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Stop posting on forums during work hours! I'm allowed. I'm a CM. At least for a little bit longer.
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Nov 15, 2012 16:39
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FreakyZoid posted:How long do you class someone as a new user in that breakdown? Or are you talking about sessions rather than daily retention? Generally it refers to d1 retention, unless otherwise specified, but sometimes people will use it to mean second session instead. There's no real standard when you talk to people at different companies, so it's always helpful to clarify when it comes to this stuff. edit: Is the TouchArcade "dev-only" forum worth it or is it mostly tumbleweeds? I'm coming to terms with the fact that I might have to wade in to the TA forums at some point and if there's any knowledge to be had/shared there, I might as well consider hopping in! devilmouse fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Nov 15, 2012 |
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Nov 15, 2012 16:43
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I've found mobile game site forums to be awful.
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Nov 15, 2012 17:01
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To Unity users: If you had to recommend a single resource/site/book/whatever for learning UnityScript to someone who only has some basic knowledge of ActionScript 2, what would you pick?
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Nov 15, 2012 17:09
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I quite enjoy Dundee. It gets a bad rep from some places but I've been here 4.5 years and have no desire to leave any time soon. I heard an interesting explanation as to why Dundee's so big for games developers. Back in the 80s the ZX Spectrum was £150 to buy (about £600 in today's money) unless you were in Dundee where it was £20 and 2 packs of Lambert & Butler round the back of the Timex factory...
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Nov 15, 2012 18:11
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FreakyZoid posted:Dundee is the Hollywood of the games industry. And Montreal! Not many shutdowns that I've heard about, compared to the US.
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Nov 15, 2012 18:17
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brian posted:It's a lot better than Middlesbrough i'm sure you'll be glad to hear, we were actually at Uni at the same uni at the same time Aliginge, I think I ended up playing unreal tournament in a lab with you at one point.  Here's hoping we can work together with perhaps fewer shock rifles in the way this time.In other news I started modelling a Gundam today, eat that Turbosmooth modifier EAT IT. GeeCee fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Nov 15, 2012 |
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Nov 15, 2012 19:28
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So Bubble Blaze is now the NO.1 bubble popper in the UK and US!
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Nov 15, 2012 20:11
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So I had not really used LinkedIn, but I was told to get it setup and running so I can write recommendations for people. This is a really noisy website, and I'm kind of lost trying to figure it out. Anyone have any links to guides for LinkedIn?
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Nov 15, 2012 20:15
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Chainclaw posted:So I had not really used LinkedIn, but I was told to get it setup and running so I can write recommendations for people. This is a really noisy website, and I'm kind of lost trying to figure it out. Anyone have any links to guides for LinkedIn? Fill out your profile. Set yourself to open to everything. Leave the site. Wait for headhunters.
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Nov 15, 2012 20:17
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Chainclaw posted:So I had not really used LinkedIn, but I was told to get it setup and running so I can write recommendations for people. This is a really noisy website, and I'm kind of lost trying to figure it out. Anyone have any links to guides for LinkedIn? Yeah, fill out your profile as much as you're comfortable with then forget about it. You'll get an email when someone sends you a message (usually recruiters).
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Nov 15, 2012 21:25
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