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Q. I want to do games business development A. There are two broad categories of biz dev on the publisher side. One is content dev, where you sniff out new content for the publisher to invest in. The other is corporate dev, such as aquisitions of firms. In both, you tend to be under the legal or corporate planning arms of the publisher. Biz dev isn't hired out of school; you'll need an MBA and/or relevant biz dev experience, OR a good network in the industry, all of which requires years of work experience. I've also seen JDs involved in biz dev, as an alternative to MBA, but MBAs are more frequent for the corporate side. (Industry networks reign on the content side.) The nice thing about corporate biz dev is that you don't need to have industry experience to start down the path, and the industry is small enough to grow your network quickly once you enter. Biz dev at a studio or start up is a diffent beast. There, you are mainly pitching the business to others in order to attract clients or investment. Many times the position is instead filled by the CEO, COO, or GM.
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May 31, 2011 17:34
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Right, BD and Marketing are separate. It sounds like you don't have the experience for BD, so let's talk about marketing. First, decide whether you want to do marketing at a studio or at a publisher. On the studio you'll likely be working on one or two games, under the brand manager. At the publisher, you'll be responsible for a wider swathe of games but won't get as deeply involved in any single one. Each publisher does marketing different; for example, Activision's marketing departments are similar to a studio's in that they focus on game verticals (e.g. "the CoD marketing team"), while Square Enix Inc's are responsible for SQEX Japan, Taito, and Eidos games. Either way, at a publisher, you'd be part of a reporting line that moves something along the lines of: the VP of marketing, the marketing director, the senior product manager, product manager, and finally, you. As you might expect, you'd be doing a lot of the copy/paste work and dirty work for, example, a campaign with Gamestop. You would not be involved in game design or game making at a publisher. At a studio, the brand manager does tend to have some influence on game style, but a cog within his department wouldn't get to work on the games itself. Still, if you have other skills like programming and artwork it doesn't hurt to be a known quantity within a studio- but I think there are better people to answer that question in this thread. Studio marketing is a bit more fun since you get to develop marketing plans in tandem with the game's development. A lot of the marketing artwork and design will also come out of the studio. Carfax Report fucked around with this message at 08:07 on Jun 2, 2011 |
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Jun 2, 2011 01:46
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The hotels around GDC are crazy busy; knowing the guys there will help you. One GDC I went from hotel to hotel trying to find an empty conference room to use for a meeting. BD is about networking, and networking involves drinks. The amount of industry gossip you hear just wandering around hotel bars with your ears open during GDC is amazing. It's not coincidental that most of the BD guys tend to be MBAs or JDs, both of whom are known for their love of liquor. dylguy90 posted:Thank you very much for the reply, that is really encouraging to hear! I have actually been wondering about this for a while now. It sounds reasonable to me. Some of the guys here involved in development would be able to tell you better whether they've seen marketers transition into dev. In addition to programming/art there are positions like project manager, that's an area where it's easier for a non-industry person to enter. I have a friend who graduated from my MBA program and worked in finance beforehand. She was into game dev so she got a marketing job at one publisher and then, networking at GDC, landed a project manager position at a major studio. Incidentally, if you were serious about marketing as a career path, I would recommend a tech job in silicon valley transitioning to a marketing MBA, which would give you the toolset necessary to land a management position within marketing at a pub/dev. Carfax Report fucked around with this message at 08:09 on Jun 2, 2011 |
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Jun 2, 2011 08:06
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Aliginge posted:That's not relevant though. The game had strong sales either way for a time. Either the criteria for avoiding being shut down was to actually outsell CoD or the studio was going to be closed anyway so the company can save money relocating to Canada. Strong sales due to an overly high marketing spend and not quality or word of mouth often means the product's profit margins are low or loss. Most estimates are that the game has not broken even on combined development and marketing costs; though the overly high marketing spend is not the fault of the studio, its sales would likely have been considerably lower without that spend. The studio closure is a separate issue. It's possible Kaos could have been shut down even if the game was successful enough to breakeven. Though, while there are exceptions, shut downs of profitable studios with quality product are uncommon. I would be interested in hearing people's thoughts on what those exceptions are.
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Jun 14, 2011 02:30
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Naked guy ran around our building a few weeks ago. This industry brings out the crazies.
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Jun 14, 2011 12:24
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Life at Team Bondi http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/117/1179020p1.html Thought this was interesting enough to pass on here.
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Jun 27, 2011 15:14
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tyrelhill posted:If you can't get the job by yourself, without someone else giving you a boost, you don't deserve it. This is wrong. Shalinor posted:That means s/he is heads-down working on something unannounced, probably trying to make a milestone related to the initial PR push. Do not push too hard unless you want to burn that contact, they're already stressed as it is. This is the right advice. Until he responds that crunch is over, I would even switch to once every two weeks. Odddzy posted:The videogames industry is quite insular and hard to get in, especially when you have ten other guys behind you ready to take the job if you're not cut out for it (at entry level at least). Getting recommendations by people in the industry is a better way to get your resume on the top of the pile than just staying in your parents basement and nerding it out. Agreed, but networking is critical regardless of the industry. I graduated from a top ten MBA program where I took entire classes on how to network properly, both for job hunting, and for situations where networking is your job. (e.g. my job, business development.) To make things clear, you do not get a job because you "know" someone- that is nepotism. You get a job because you are the right candidate, and you inform people that you are the right candidate by getting to know them, and by letting them get to know you, which is the purpose of networking- to develop trust. Name dropping is a way to inform them that they have a contact which can act as a reference and who is familiar with you in a professional or personal context. When done in this manner, it's proper; if you simply name drop someone you met once at a party, that is incorrect, and offensive both to the person you are mentioning, and to the person you are trying to impress. edit- Amrosorma posted:I mean if that's true, then the entire marketing/high finance industry is full of people who don't deserv- My classmates are good people.  Well, most of them are.
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Aug 1, 2011 03:33
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WMain00 posted:I have my own thoughts about games journalism, having sort of worked in and out of it for the past 5 years, but I don't want to insult anyone who might be working within it. The short conclusion mainly is not to bother, because the ability to get anywhere within this area is very poor. If you're earning money from writing, consider yourself extremely lucky. If not look elsewhere immediately, because unless you have a sizeable amount of contacts and are willing to persevere for a considerable amount of time, it's just not worth the hassle. You'd be better spending your time learning to become a movie/arts critic. A big problem with games journalism is that it gathers zero respect whatsoever from the entertainment world. You are despised by developers/publishers and ridiculed by other entertainment critics. It's just not worth it anymore. Can you talk more about that last part, it sounds interesting.
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Aug 2, 2011 15:35
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On the subject of AAA development, let me toss out a big question. What's everyone's though on the sustainability of the current AAA industry? I'm coming at this from the management perspective, rather than developer, but my own belief is that the current rate of AAA console development is no where near sustainable and we've already seen the market stabilize toward a new equilibrium of significantly less AAA console game development. For signs of current difficulties, see the closing of various studios and recent losses experienced by the publishers. ROI on games that take 4+ years to develop is difficult in an environment where retailers and first party royalties tally up to 2/3 of the price of a game. From the consumer perspective, there are too many games out there for them to spend $60 a pop on, and so the quality bar drives higher. (I think in some recent focus testing, we found that consumers are willing to spend on a highly rated AAA game for $60, or a 99 cent app, but no where in between.) And even developers are admitting that games are too expensive (http://www.computerandvideogames.com/314236/games-are-too-expensive-but-skyrim-isnt-argues-lead/?cid=OTC-RSS&attr=CVG-General-RSS). But as retailers and console royalties can't be changed, I don't see console price flux being possible in this market. This means, though, that there will be a lot of great, experienced AAA developers who will be ride to build on new content and business models that will be coming out in the next few years as we move toward browser and cloud gaming which can support complex 3D graphics (rather than their development talent being locked to develop on the consoles.) As someone whose responsibility is to transition my firm toward this future, I am happy about that.
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Aug 11, 2011 03:35
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Shalinor posted:This, however, is hooey. $5 to $20 is doing famously on Steam, XBLA/PSN are on the rise (and set to explode next console generation), and so on. We're not finding the ROI on the XBLA/Steam/PSN titles that you're thinking about to be profitable enough. It might be great for small to medium studios and indies. Hughlander posted:I think you'd need to define AAA first. If I define AAA as being games that sell > 5M units across all platforms, I don't see that there is significantly less AAA console game development. You still have Halo, Madden, CoD, GTA, FF etc... I'm defining it from a budget perspective of $20MM and up. And you're naming franchises, which is fine, but we've seen a lot of new IP this generation bomb and it's been troubling. DancingMachine posted:I think the $60 shrink-wrapped AAA title market is definitely shrinking, but I'd hesitate to say that big-budget AAA titles in general are shrinking. There are a number of factors that will make 8 and 9-figure budget titles continue to be viable in my opinion. Cutting retailers out of the equation, eliminating used game sales, new/supplemental business models like PDLC, freemium, ad revenue, and subscriptions. You won't be able to cut retailers out of the equation unless you focus on PC. The console market is still tied to retail and will be as long as there is physical media involved. Our analysis has found that the only way to make a profit these days on console AAA is to focus on PDLC, which is crushing the ability to invest in AAA. hailthefish posted:It seems like thus far, the trend in the industry has been to respond to losses by hiking prices, which is by nature not sustainable. In my admittedly uninformed opinion, the question isn't so much "is it sustainable?" as much as "when will it reach the limit and what will happen when it does". That is the same question as whether it is sustainable.
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Aug 11, 2011 04:41
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Revenue = Quantity * Price. All companies have two methods of increasing revenues; quantity and price. (Note revenues are different than profits.) Prices in the big budget console space are effectively locked in the $50 to $60 range, unless you use bundling for low-cost add-ons and inflate the price via deluxe editions. These price locks are the result of three components: retailers requirements (retailers urge us to price high to increase their revenue share), first party requirements (first parties urge us to price high to increase their royalty), and creator's desires to not have price defined by the market. (There's a reason every movie is priced the same; as a customer, if you see one movie is $7 and another is $10, you will assume the content has less value.) We have seen a trend toward price deflation for titles that aren't hits; this is because many of the retailers are concerned over inventory control due to slow sales of many key titles in the last year. (The new games retail business is a business of packaged good turnover that hasn't changed in hundreds of years.) As a result, retailers have been slashing prices mere weeks after launch, which also hurts the publisher as they try to push second and third wave inventory. With price locked, the marketplace becomes a struggle for quantity. As publishers compete over gamers' wallets (which is actually a competition over their time), those customers in turn make decisions over content they are willing to spend money on. If you have four $60 titles in a month, a consumer may pick two at the most, making industry sales 50%. But if the big budget development shrank, you could start to see that ratio creep up as product becomes more limited. Product being limited is not a problem- it allows publishers to focus their resources on content and create a more polished product. I believe this trend is happening naturally, and the decline of big budget console titles will be a good thing overall. Once again, though, I am biased because I believe the console industry itself has about a decade left, and within a few years will begin to drop precipitously as smart televisions, smart phones, cloud and sandybridge/browser replace the need for an investment in gaming-only devices. The current ROI of game development will change drastically. We produce ROI on a game by discounting cash flows for games through a fixed development, marketing and overhead budget over time (4 years), release, and assume return based on expected sales and price of a title. Instead, I expect ROI to be the DCF over a variable game development time that is as long as the game's potential for play. Big budget games won't be released as final entities but grown, a sort of mix of how MMOs and social games operate, while development is persistent over the course of its lifetime. This doesn't mean the game has to be multiplayer or social, but rather that game creation itself will move toward a persistent development model. Episodic gaming and DLCs are the first steps toward this model within the limitations of the current ecosystem. The goal for publishers, particularly as relates to the cloud, is going to be using this model to get subscription revenues. We may be a decade away, but it's coming. Imagine turning on your television and seeing the EA channel, the same way that you get HBO. You pay to your cable provider or EA directly for it. You'll find the latest chapter of Dead Space out, but also have access to your back catalog of Dead Space chapters, Mass Effect Chapters, Madden matches, etc., which you'll be paying $10-20 a month for. Even though mass consumer application of this is a decade away, we'll start to movement to these new business models in half steps, because the current 4, 5, 6 year dev cycles of packaged content releases are choking the industry. Black Eagle posted:These quotes come from someone who founded a AAA studio whose console games defined an era, that everyone loves and looks up to, and is still operating today and winning many prestigious awards. Black Eagle posted:Carfax and others define AAA as a game project whose budget is greater than some amount of money, but that's a very loose definition and, strictly speaking, budget-defined "AAA" loses its meaning when applied to, for example, technologically advanced games that reuse assets or which are otherwise conservatively and effectively managed. The word AAA was vague in my original post and a poor choice. I should have written "Big Budget Title for console." Responding to your comments, though, reusing assets means what? If you mean something like a Dead Rising Case 0, which turned a profit, I would class that game as profit-padding DLC, because it's categorized within the ROI of Dead Rising 2's asset base. Conservative management of a console title's development may help bring it closer to the black, but other industry trends fight against its desire for profitability. For example, let's say we use Unreal instead of building a custom engine. Now the profit margin is shaved from 30% to 25%. That 25% needs to cover not only development, but marketing and overhead. It's not enough, hence the string of publisher losses in the last two years. Carfax Report fucked around with this message at 09:50 on Aug 11, 2011 |
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Aug 11, 2011 07:17
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Black Eagle posted:
It's great that you want to share other's insights. I'm not trying to insult you and you make a fair point, and I do apologize for any misunderstanding. Black Eagle posted:What is asset-and-technology reuse is illustrated by the difference between Fallout: New Vegas and Alpha Protocol. With the understanding that Bethesda Softworks isn't open with its financials and so making the comparison hypothetical, Fallout: New Vegas most likely cost less to produce than Fallout 3 because Obsidian Entertainment had the advantage of using prebuilt assets and technology. I agree that, in the case of Fallout 3 to New Vegas, sequels can have less dev time and cost if they reuse assets properly. We've become an industry of sequels, so this is coming true. Would you share my concern, then for the risks of new IP development? Black Eagle posted:The formula isn't that simple. Obsidian developed Alpha Protocol using Unreal Engine 3, but the studio didn't adequately account for the challenges of developing an RPG with that technology. Obsidian created levels, gameplay, and content before the systems were in place to use those assets. In Feargus Urquhart's words, "They could create levels that functioned, but they functioned for a game like Gears of War and not what we were ultimately trying to create." These setbacks obviously led to delays, higher costs, and more publisher interaction. Soon after release, Sega pulled the plug on any opportunity to extend Alpha Protocol or create a franchise. You're looking for a pattern in the overall picture, but you need to narrow in on the individual elements that affect the bottom line if you want to understand the why. I agree you need to understand individual elements, but does that disagree with the point about risk in game development being too high to sustain today's level of big budget console development? Carfax Report fucked around with this message at 09:36 on Aug 11, 2011 |
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Aug 11, 2011 08:55
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Black Eagle posted:I edited my post above yet again. Habits of a tweaker, sorry. No problem! quote:There was a short period during the early years where sequels and franchises were unheard of in the game industry; however, that was a very short period. This industry has been one of sequels and franchises since at least the early 1980s. Franchises are absolutely vital to the sustainability [i]and growth[/url] of developers and publishers alike. There are many "indie" developers who develop single-title games exclusively, and they're winning awards, but they're not growing beyond one- or two-man operations. It's true that this has been an industry of franchises and sequels for quite a long time. Let me clarify my point a bit better. You can reuse assets in sequels to drive down game cost and include those estimates in your business proposals for new IP; encouraging the growth of sequels to improve ROI. We both agree, you need original IP to keep your business sustainable. At the turn of the decade, you could develop a new IP at a lower profit margin and assume that the sequels would provide the fatter profits needed to pad margins. Starting a few years ago, and coming to crescendo in the last year or two, publishers are not looking at slimmer profit margins, they are actually taking losses on new IP on the hope that they would be successful in the future. Part of this risk was offset by subsidies from first parties; many have dissapeared for new IP. This risk has grown significantly. Lower or negative ROI turns into an aversion to risk, which in turn spurns more sequels and burn out of older IP, and overall worse conditions for publishers. quote:One topic that appears in many of my interviews is "technology vs. game design." In my opinion, technology drives budgets, not game design. If you're using the latest technology, you need to hire people that can make efficient use of that technology, or increase spending for training. Using the latest technology also means you need to spend more on hardware, software licenses, support, etc. I'm looking for a word, but it's on the tip-of-my-tongue. I'll use an analogy instead. I'll agree that sustainable technology drives budgets; what we commonly refer to as technological advancement in the games industry is a sustainable technology whereby faster cpus and gpus allowed for greater realism and thus need higher budgets. But I believe disruptive technology drives game design and creates innovation, allowing for new opportunities in market growth. The emergence of home consoles from arcades, then smartphones, then social networks was each a technological disruption that resulted in a new style of game design. Each one starts at a technological threshold below the other, but grows over time, the same way that console games looked worse than their arcade counterparts, and have now largely surpassed them. In turn, server-side (streaming) gaming, and 3D capable browser gaming that works cross-device are going to be new technological disruptions that allow for new styles of game design (e.g. the "television channel" example above.)
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Aug 11, 2011 11:39
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Black Eagle posted:I'm an entrepreneur. Risk is the air I breathe, so it's difficult for me to empathize with risk-averse managers. As you know, I talk with a lot of successful entrepreneurs and business leaders. With great success comes failure. If you're a reasonable person, you have to expect that you will fail one day, perhaps dismally. If you're better for it, then no other reasonable person will castigate you because they understand. They also understand that you have to spend money to make money, usually. If you avoid risk and avoid taking losses as a result of investing in new IP, I don't think you can reasonably say that you're doing your job. So, I see risk aversion as a leadership-management-communication problem more than anything else. (I'm going to assume you're not referring to me specifically, but rather are using a general 'you.') Of course, I'm sympathetic to your argument. That said, I think the arguments about risk aversion are difficult for large publishers because of the demands placed on them. I have responsibilities with the IR team for my company and follow the investor reports regularly (ironically, a former boss of mine from when I worked in equity research now covers our firm); we need to manage our risk otherwise be reamed by the short-term focused investor community. Smart entrepreneurs know to avoid these calls, but when you're in the thick of it, that's very difficult, and it leads otherwise sensible business models astray. One of the things I love about the Innovator's Dilemma book is that it explains that smart managers moving in the best interest of the company are often the ones who don't have the capability to take the risks and make the failures necessary for companies to transition properly at the points of disruptive technology, like we are at now. Shalinor posted:I think you're approaching this from the wrong angle, if that's your viewpoint. I'm not quite sure it's the wrong viewpoint; I would say it's an alternative viewpoint. But to be honest, I think we're in agreement. My original post was supposing that the current model of large publishers, with numerous investment in big budget titles, is not sustainable, and I think many of those developers are going to find themselves leaving those firms for new opportunities. (I don't think I've supported an opinion that the behemoth publishers need to stay together, though I have pointed out many of the issues that they are facing.) Admittedly, I chose the wrong word with saying AAA rather than "big budget console title" but if you reread my post from yesterday swapping that vocabulary, I think you'll see what I mean here. Now whether those new opportunities are a small to medium size studio focused on downloadable games, or into new studios that are going to focus around Google+ and the upcoming changes that HTML5 gaming is going to bring to the industry, is my question. I wonder whether we'll need games to be downloadable in 2 or 3 years; I think the changes are coming faster than most people anticipate. Carfax Report fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Aug 11, 2011 |
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Aug 11, 2011 16:23
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SpaceDrake posted:Just to inject a little something into the discussion here, smaller developers are having trouble with XBLA and PSN for reasons that have nothing to do with price point: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/36440/Interview_Jonathan_Blow__Xbox_Live_Arcade_A_Pain_In_The_Ass_For_Indies.php Hey there! How you been? We should do a catch up call sometime. I think you hit the nail on the head here, and you're right about the big publisher ROI issues; the problem of growth is that each time you grow you need to exceed it, and after three decades, a couple million in sales is not enough. Question for you, though; you say that ROI on PC digidistro is good, but how much of that would you attribute to luck? How many losers are there for every winner?
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Aug 11, 2011 16:41
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GetWellGamers posted:The only exception to this rule was somebody's 21st birthday, where we went out with this epic bar crawl in mind and the first alcoholic drink the guy gets in his entire life is a strawberry daiquiri. If he waited until he was 21 to have the first alcoholic drink of his entire life, it's to be expected. Not that I'm one to talk; I don't drink, and I work for a Japanese firm, which are famous for their drinking work cultures. It's never been a problem for me- as long as you go out, that's what matters. Even with the boss (our CEO), as long as he has one or two others drinking with him to keep him company, he doesn't care if I get a coke.
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Oct 17, 2011 04:13
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Monster w21 Faces posted:Getting people interested in playing a facebook word game is loving hard. *sigh* How are you differentiating the game from other: 1. Casual games on multiple platforms 2. Games on Facebook 3. Word games on Facebook ?
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Oct 20, 2011 06:51
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FreakyZoid posted:Lego Universe shutting in January Shalinor, condolences on the closure. The article says not enough users converted to paid, but was it an issue with the business model, the content design, or a mix of both that let to inefficient monetization?
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Nov 5, 2011 00:21
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https://twitter.com/#!/grumpygamer/status/180049762123390976 Check out the link in Gilbert's post. Definitely the best application for an adventure game this side of Tim Schafer's original. (Also at http://www.doublefine.com/news/comments/twenty_years_only_a_few_tears/ )
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Mar 15, 2012 01:51
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Job update: About two years ago I mentioned I was joining a large Japanese publisher's management team overseeing their Japanese office's online business development. About a year ago I switched to managing business development in the parent holdings company, responsible for worldwide business development. As of last week, I became director of business of development for the holdings company. So pretty cool overall.
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Mar 19, 2012 15:55
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gr0g posted:Was approached for a position in NY, any idea which studio it might be? My first guess is Avalanche's new NYC studio. http://www.joystiq.com/2011/06/15/avalanche-studios-to-open-new-york-city-studio-this-fall/
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Mar 23, 2012 05:23
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Chainclaw posted:I have to say, the games industry is really weird right now. I'm constantly seeing Facebook posts from people in "traditional" games development getting hit with layoffs, companies getting shut down. On the other hand, I'm seeing people at Zynga, Crowdstar, and other social/freemium places constantly posting about how much they are hiring and need more people. It's not weird; it's natural for an industry undergoing a transformation due to disruptive technology. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation)
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Mar 30, 2012 07:28
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It's not really a shift, it's an expansion. Console games will continue to exist, as arcades still exist (in Japan), but they'll be a smaller part of the overall market. The shrinking of the console game market was sorely needed; long dev times and inflated budgets for a market that was increasing spending its time and money on other products. Now many of those great designers can move toward browser, mobile and cloud games and start to raise the bar. These expansions have happened a couple times in the last few decades. From arcade to console, from console to multimedia device (basically when the Playstation became a DVD player), from console to smartphone, and now from smartphone to browser and eventally server-side streaming. Each time the investment on the part of the consumer is reduced, the market expands greatly. In each case, the technology was more limited than the other at first, but eventually overcame it. There was a great article yesterday with Ben Cousins of Ngmoco Sweden talking about how we'll see a F2P equivalent of Skyrim in two years. The capability of the browser is going to be amazing, and the roadmaps for hardware in the next few years are just as impressive. As an example, if you have a decent computer and Chrome, head over to the Chrome Web Store and try out a console game like Mini Ninjas running in your browser. Ubisoft is bring From Dust over to it soon, too. Carfax Report fucked around with this message at 10:16 on Mar 30, 2012 |
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Mar 30, 2012 08:20
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Mango Polo posted:It seems like Quebec has decided to terminate a variety of fiscal benefits for companies, the end result being that game studios will now receive 0 support. The benefits will continue until 2014 and then… there will be no reason to stay in Quebec when Ontario is right next door. I’m terribly disappointed by my province and worried about what’s going to happen there Do you have a link to more information on this? I wasn't able to find something searching via Google news.
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Apr 3, 2012 16:40
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I'm really enjoying Ben Cousins' talk from GDC and wanted to pass along the deck. http://www.slideshare.net/bcousins/when-the-consoles-die-what-comes-next
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Apr 5, 2012 05:42
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Shalinor posted:Do I count since I did until last year? Agreed. I wonder how much of the issue is the name "downloadable content." If we call it premium content, would players get so upset? In some ways it reminds me about outcries over crippling processors to sell them cheaper. In the history of CPUs, some processors were created at full strength because it was cheaper to manufacture them that way, then crippled so that they could be sold as a lower-tier item. Some people are willing to pay more, but you have to have entry-level content to ensure you can capture an optimal share of the market. On-disc DLC and crippled processors are both variations on the same concept of consumer stratification that has been historic to product marketing. It shares the strain logic behind a bottle of coke costing $5 at a movie theater behind the ticket collector, and $1 at a vending machine outside- value is relative to the context of the product. As long as some people will be willing to pay more, you cater to all strata to ensure that consumer can pay to their satisfaction. Part of the problem, which CliffyB hinted at, is that the current method of DLC is a half step in our industry's transtion from AAA games as product to games as a service. iOS and Browser games get away with this because everything is locked up on a server to begin with.
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Apr 10, 2012 18:12
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Hughlander posted:I've been an American my entire life, but from my understanding the reason why they aren't big here even among ex-pats is due to the current in America. 230V 50Hz and 240V 60Hz in the EU can heat a mean cup of water. But 120V 60Hz? Not so much. Japan is 110v and most people here in Tokyo have electric kettles. (We have plenty of the office.) That said, I've also been an American my entire life (still counts as an expat- ask the IRS) and I agree that Americans, in general, don't use those kettles- unless you consider the coffee machine. That's basically a one-purpose electric kettle and they're everywhere in the states. In the US, for noodles, etc., microwave or stovetop, just like you say. I can't think of many American friends who drink hot tea on a regular basis in their homes or places of work. devilmouse posted:I was just asked to do a talk/roundtable/workshop at PAX Dev on "designing with metrics" or some variation thereof, but I'm sort of drawing a blank on what to talk about that might be of interest to what I imagine will be predominantly traditional game developers. I'm interested in whether metrics can improve narrative content. A thought process like "How could metrics have helped Skyrim?" The problem is that in the current packaged-disc model, you could only use metrics during development, based on QA feedback, unless you keep tweaking the game after it's live. Looking forward to a new era of narrative-driven games that are "online" even if they're single player. Even in packaged, though, there are things we want to learn to do better. One game we released is sending us 1TB worth of data, because everyone who played it was connected on the backend to our stats services. We found that, of the around 10 chapters in the game, 50% of people stopped at chapter 1, 30% completed the game, and maybe 2-3% stopped during chapter 2, 3, 4, etc. Most people stop at chapter 1, a good number of dedicated people finish the game. But what happens in the middle? What's this tell us about how we can fix future iterations? Of course, we know we need to make sure we hook people better with chapter 1... Carfax Report fucked around with this message at 16:31 on May 13, 2012 |
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May 13, 2012 16:13
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Shindragon posted:Is the only way to get into internship is by being in school or being a graduate? Being emailed that there is a position available for Environmental Art Intern and seeing, student required pisses me off. : ( Depending on the area, the way a company gets away with an unpaid intern is to offer school credit. Thus the person has to be a student.
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May 18, 2012 03:26
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I'll be there. The most interesting part of the show will be seeing another step of our industry's expansion beyond consoles. Even Facebook is having a cocktail hour.
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May 28, 2012 07:21
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Reminds me of the plugin market for Joomla that I used to work with years ago. Getting all these needed features for cheap is awesome. The problem came a year later when the main software gotupdated and I couldn't update because the developer of the plugin hasn't prepared his new one yet. Then the quiltwork of plugins I had managing the website broke and ran into compatibility issues with each other...
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Jun 11, 2012 19:30
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Comrade Flynn posted:Officially booked for Casual Connect. One of the only game conferences I haven't been to before, but I hear good things. Anyone else going? I'll be there. It's a much calmer show than GDC or GDC Online, which I like. And definitely much calmer than E3. Only problem is I got swallowed by a lot of meetings in the Seattle area and I am not sure how much I will go into the show itself!
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Jul 10, 2012 06:25
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Having an opinion is an easy way to get attention. Having an outlandish opinion is the easiest way. When your product is marketed on the basis of your personality, it's somewhat natural.
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Aug 14, 2012 08:33
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Mr. Sunabouzu posted:Hey guys, I've got a few questions about the industry. You're 19 and have all of your life ahead of you. You have a solid head on your shoulders and can clearly think outside the box, which already puts you ahead of many others at your age. The amount of press you got for Elevator: Source is fantastic and is something to be proud of. I come from the business side of the industry rather than the development side, so I can't say whether staying at Digipen would be good for you as an entry level designer. However, in terms of your life and longterm career, I highly recommend that you complete your bachelors, whether at Digipen or somewhere else. A college degree is important. The industry has a handful of designers who beat the odds and shot to stardom based off a single amazing project. They are very talented people, but luck plays a role. The other 99.99% don't get to the top that way, and will take years to do so. Hedge your bets in your career and stay in school.
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Sep 3, 2012 10:41
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Just out of curiosity, how many of you believe that developing for the next gen consoles will be profitable? To what extent? Digital-only and packaged disc thoughts welcome. Bottom-line, post retailer and royalty cut, after the dev, overhead and marketing is subtracted, profitable.
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Apr 7, 2013 16:27
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When I saw this on Kotaku yesterday I thought it was cool, but when I saw the screenshots it looked like they ripped off Game Dev Story to begin with. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Dev_Story
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Apr 30, 2013 08:14
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KingKapalone posted:This was from 5 years ago, so does anyone have any comments on the current landscape regarding MBAs and the gaming industry? I went to an Ivy MBA and joined my firm (major game publisher) at the top of its ranks upon graduation because our head of HR was an alumni of my MBA program and he offered me a job after meeting at an alum event. I chose the games industry over finance and haven't looked back. MBAs aren't particularly useful for the games industry; very little of what I have learned in Business School has been useful in my job. But if you are smart, a top-tier MBA provides a pedigree and a network; the rest is up to you. That is the same for an MBA graduate regardless of their field of employment. (And, fyi, if you have not gotten your degree yet, I would not recommend getting an MBA outside the top-ten. The difference in job entry is staggering.) The one key piece of advice I have for MBAs entering the industry- and I have helped several other alumni of my b-school enter the games industry in the last few years- is "don't get cocky kid." There is little relevant advice an MBA can offer a world-class creator. Instead, what MBAs can do is facilitate the creative decisions with sound business context based on outside market knowledge, and relieve some of the burden of business decision making so that the developers can focus on the creativity that drives our business.
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Aug 19, 2013 17:34
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I am hiring in NY for people who work on the platform side of things. Account, Storefront, Community features. Searching for a product manager type rather than coder. Willing to relocate for experienced people.
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Oct 31, 2014 05:15
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Anyone in Seattle, please come by this week for some interesting tech talk: https://www.shinra.com/us/news/2015-1-20-shinra-in-seattle-an-invitation-for-developers
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Jan 23, 2015 19:09
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Hughlander posted:I'll go, how are you involved? Personal info involved so I sent you a PM.
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Jan 24, 2015 10:27
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KingKapalone posted:I'm looking for MBA internships for the summer coming out of a top program. Anyone have suggestions on places to look that might not have obviously occurred to me yet? Or any advice from people who might have gone through the same or worked alongside MBA interns? I have an MBA intern right now, from a Top 10. We are based in New York. Where are you looking for your summer?
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Feb 2, 2015 21:37
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