PUBLIC OR PRIVATE OWNERSHIP WHICH ONE BRINGS BETTER RESULTS FOR A GAME COMPANY?

This is actually very simple question, because the answer is obvious and a fact that can't be disputed. Privately owned companies are doing better when you take the long approach and follow them through decades. The reason for this is that they can focus on improving their business without the constant pressure of stock owners who only care about money. Private companies also care about their surroundings and make better propellants of good in society and community where they operate. This in turn means that they get better goodwill and therefore better workers. It might not be true what comes to CEO as private companies tend to pay less than public companies. But CEO is not really all that important instead they are more often than not the catalyst of destruction in a company they lead.

WHAT THIS HAS TO DO WITH GAME COMPANIES?

Well, right now there is very interesting pair of mobile game companies fighting for the crown of highest crossing game of App Store and Google Play. Supercell is doing it with their Hay Day and Clash of Clans and King Digital with their Candy Crush Saga.

SO WHICH ONE IS PRIVATE AND WHICH IS PUBLIC?

Japanese Softbank bough majority of Supercell and can be considered private company because Softbank has amazing take on long term operations and doesn't care much about quarterly success. King Digital is taking different road and running for IPO. Lots of regulatory stuff in the works for King and playful conditions for Supercell. What do you think, which is nicer?

WHERE THE PROFITS GO?

Supercell says they are happy to pay taxes and amazingly enough they DO PAY out massive cut of their earnings as taxes. What comes to King I am not sure - and I'm just speculating here - but since their headquarters is in Ireland, a country know for ample opportunities for tax planning (avoiding taxes at any cost), I believe that King Digital will not turn out to be a model member of society. Instead the money that company earns goes to people who already have quite a bit of money - now where's the good in that?

People who look at the world solely through the dollar binoculars quickly move on if they get more money from somewhere else. There is next to nothing in terms of long-term relationship building or any feeling of gratitude. On the other side of the coin - Supercell side that is - we have lots of support and projects designed to involve company's local communities. To me it looks like workers in Supercell just might code that extra mile.

IS IT STUPID TO CARRY STOCKS OF A BIG GAME COMPANY?

LEAN AND FINE COMPANY

Supercell is famous because of their Clash of Clans title. The company itself is very young but it has catapulted itself among game industry greats. Year 2013 turnover was 672 million euro and profit totaled whopping 349 million euro. They have two titles and third one coming out March 2014. It has taken only about 140 people to produce these amazing results as that is the amount of people who work for the company. Softbank bought 51% slice of the company and by doing it set the valuation up to 2,2 billion euro (thats about 3 billion USD). Insane, right? Company was founded 2010 even more insane, right?

FAT AND BLOATED COMPANY

Now let's take a look at the other side of the coin. There lurks the industry behemoth Electronic Arts once touted to be the best game company there is. Such a sorry state they are in now. Almost makes me sad but not really. If you take a look on my already fossilized articles I have been writing about Electronic Arts on this blog already almost ten years ago. I have always had some dislike towards their business practices just buying titles and market share almost as if they are a pure marketing company, which doesn't care about the games themselves, as if they just happened to be games they are in could very well be toiletries for all they care about. Anyway, this big juggernaut finds it increasingly difficult to make money it must be all those management, marketing, merger and acquisition people who load the EA boat with heavy costs and all the brand name game titles have not been enough to maintain the profitability.

PUBLISHING IS OVER IN GAME INDUSTRY FOCUS ON GAME DEVELOPMENT

The old way of bringing games to the market has changed. App Store, Google Play and Steam have all the audience you could possibly ever want. Since publishing is easy the focus must be the actual product and the story why people should pay attention and play it.

If you need marketing campaign just let Youtube gaming celebrities do their work and you instantaneously reach an audience of millions of viewers. Couldn't be better times for game development companies.

SELL THE STOCK OF YOUR BIG NAME GAME COMPANIES

Don't bet your pension funds on this advice but take it seriously anyhow. You need to unload the big juggernauts since they are bloated, rigid and generating losses, which will show in the valuation quite badly.

BEGINNERS OPPORTUNISTIC CLASH OF CLANS STRATEGY FOR PICKING GEMS EARLY IN THE GAME

Ok, let's keep this short and sweet. The biggest bottle neck in Clash of Clans is the number of builder's huts. If you can't build or upgrade you are dead in the water so the goal in the game is to have as many huts as possible. You can buy two right off the bat but it gets more and more difficult as you need to pay them with gems.

You can get gems from tidying up the neighborhood and completing achievements. Unfortunately it is all very low key and time consuming except one item and that is Sweet Victory! achievement. Even as a new player this achievement is fairly easy to accomplish. You just need some archers and money to pick up just the good fights.

Quite a few players build their base so that their town hall is completely out in the open and by taking that one building down you win the fight. So basically drop couple of archers to a right position and wait your way into victory. Repeat until you get 1250 trophies. Afterwards you'll get hammered, but so what now you have three huts and can develop your setting much faster. Here are some examples and if you find your base among the lot, please let me know and I have a special thank you package for you...

Notice how gold keeps on going up while elixir fluctuates. Reasoning behind this is obvious, I don't use any gold and raids always give some gold while I occasionally spend quite a lot of elixir to build new troops to destroy the ones lost in previous raid.

Oh, one more thing, I didn't win them all, sometimes there are dragons lurking in the clan fortress...

THE BEST BENEFIT OF A KICKSTARTER FOR AN INDIE GAME DEVELOPER

Yes the money is always good we all need bread and water but what Kickstarter can really do towards making the project reality is the exposure to gaming enthusiasts who frolic the pages of Kickstarter. There are gamers who really can give some extra exposure for their specific gaming community if your project fits into their gaming niche and imagination.

WHAT NICHES ARE POPULAR ON KICKSTARTER?

MMORPGs have seen lots of success although market might be reaching saturation point at the moment and it is the same case with all sorts of RPGs, usually fantasy world driven Ultima copies. iPhone and Android games are also something that many want to shove their money into.

KICKSTART YOUR INDIE GAME FINANCING WITH PUBLICITY

Anyhow the key for you desire to start a project in Kickstarter is that you have an idea for a game. If your game idea doesn't fall into popular niches you are at disadvantage from the get go. Usually people behind the idea are not too good in pushing it forward so Kickstarter is the best place to let people know about you and your project. If you fail to expose the project to many probability for failure rockets. I say that it is small price to pay if you tune your original idea to make it a better fit for popular game categories. This way you are able to nail your project up on the wall for all hungry eyes.

HOW YOU REALLY GET SUCCESS FOR YOU INDIE GAME PROJECT?

Hard truth is that Kickstarter alone will not make your project. Actually Kickstarter is probably one of the last steps before you complete the project. The reason for this is that successful projects build following around them over long period of time. In the beginning it is the famous elbow grease, which will take care of pulling the project forward.

Only after you have build up following and development marches on comes time to MEGAblast the project skeleton on Kickstarter. At that point - because of your ready following - you will gain momentum fast, which will balloon into speedy completion of the funding run.

SO YOU GOT THE AUDIENCE, NOW WHAT?

You need to get the visibility among influential genre gamers for your title. This will ensure that the word gets out and people will come in troves. Then you better have something more to show them than just the idea and the best way to do this is to show impressive graphics. Impress enthusiasts and they will drum up even more visibility for your project.

BUT IT IS SO LITTLE MONEY...

I know that most indie game developers turn into crowdfunding as the last resource and rightly so. It tends to rake in sums in low five figures and that is not enough to pay through game development cycle unless it is something simple on iOS or Android. It's really difficult to say if it is better to slug it on as an indie developer at night and employed software developer zombie during the office hours OR throw away pension plans and dive into the rocky stream of indie developer and entrepreneur. The reason why I say this is that if you jump out and grab the helm of your own project you are going to see it through relatively fast AND you can either get it out of your system or alternatively you are going to be successful enough to keep pushing updates and new games and make a living doing it.

But remember Kickstarter is more of a catwalk, which gets you some desperately needed visibility. During your first 15 minutes your performance has to be top notch otherwise you'll sink.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A VIDEO GAME TURNS INTO A GRIND?

We all have had those days when playing a game feels like eating nails. Those days we throw controllers to corner or take different approach to gaming. Zombie shooter can also be a dance hall. Party on!



What should we call this? Flash mob in gaming... As it happens as some kind of a boundary breaker and a valve to blow out some steam inside a game there probably is nothing a game developer can take home from it. Or maybe this sort of videos could be used to do some viral marketing. Not many watches on this video though.

PSYCHOLOGICAL SPENDING TRIGGERS IN MEGAPOLIS A SMART PHONE GAME

FRIENDLY SETTING AND EASY START

Promise of glorious future welcomes the hopeful mayor-to-be in the loading screen. Nice use of colors with plenty of contrast. Extremely friendly, so if you want to set the player into the right kind of buying mood then relaxed and happy people are easier to sell to than nervous and angry people. You can't sell even angry birds to angry people because they need something stronger.

Anyway at this stage the player needs to feel secure and they absolutely must have the feeling of fast development so make the start of the game as comfy and funny as possible. That is the key to make them stay for a longer time. That time will work for your application as the player will grow mental roots to the game setting. This is especially important in simulation games. Keep the rules as simple as possible and limit choices to minimum.  

SYMPATHY FOR THE GREATER GOOD

We have this hot doctress who presents the case. Those poor dolphins and other cuties are going to have it tough and dry without some player help. Everybody and my downstairs neighbor love dolphins and other cuties especially cuties like Samanth Ruth or Jennifer Lawrence - so, of course we want to save them. That would really make us feel nice and Jim (don't tell me you don't know Jim Dandy).

You need to present a noble purpose for the player to turn them into devotees. Have you noticed how long this mission in the image is? You lure the player in with an idea and seemingly easy fulfillment. However, when the idea is sold and the player jumps in it is time to turn the screw and increase difficulty. Nobody wants to be a looser nor failure so in order to reach the goal real money is used. Nicely done Megapolis!

Let's just go through the steps of tightening the screw. First of all you have an adorable doctress explaining the situation and showing the steps. Then you get the actual requirements in every separate stage. And those requirements grow every step of the way. They become so complex that obtaining needed materials becomes impossible. Finally the task expands with several upgrades. The most stressing fact is the timer that runs down like a zombie snail on steroids and we all know what is the faith of those poor lil dolphins if the snail hits the frying pan.  

An important part of this squeeze is the involuntary nature how this task is presented. Essentially it is a scripted mission, which touches that special part in our heart. If you are a developer you should use this kind of psychological triggers to focus on specific gamer groups like dog owners, cat owners, bird watchers, scuba divers etc. 

What Megapolis misses here is a huge opportunity. If the player steadies her chest and waits until silicone fillings stop bouncing... wait... wait... nothing happens, no drama, no mourning, no indication of devastation of any kind. What happened to those marine mammals? Are they now in my fridge as cans? How will it influence to later activities in the game? If you really want to make this work then you need to apply some bad consciousness on the player. How about some footage of chemical carnage or demonstrating crowds that need calming with some tax cuts etc.

SOCIAL MEDIA GAMES GIVE THE FEELING OF UNITY, ACCEPTANCE AND ACCOMPLISHMENT

Finally we have the pressure of the crowd. Everybody wants to do well when compared to other people. Different kind of standings and lists give us perfect conditions to set arbitrary goals for standings like for example I'm set to reach 500 000 mark in experience. After that checkpoint I'll probably set some new goals for myself.

Playing these games with friends or other people you know do generate that extra need for competition. No wonder all these smart phone games want to link you to Facebook or Google Play or similar networks. Wonderful way to attract new flesh and extra motivation for doing well in the game.

LIST OF GAMER GIRLS ON YOUTUBE

This list will update the first of every month. My TOP three in preferred order the rest not so much.

THE FIRST - Raychul Moore - Gravity defying! She just has to be on top!

THE SECOND - Tara Babcock - this is for the cleavage and strong language

THE THIRD - EmmaExegames - She really puts out nice videos and she has the looks and you know what they say about women with sizeable noses...

THE REST - Melonie Mac - vivid and comes with lots of make up

THE REST - Amelia Talon - very hot but talks so slow that I forget what she was saying

THE REST - Kelly MrsViolence Kelley - deadly player

THE REST - LethalXPrincess - uh... have to get back to this

THE REST - I'll put her on top as soon as she posts more

THE REST - Spaaamantha - Spamming Samantha?

ADDICTIVE CLASH OF CLANS: WHY WE PLAY IT?

CLASH OF CLANS LOOKS CUTE

Yet is is a game of war... In my previous piece on MEGAPOLIS (just looks more mega when bolded and on caps) I listed friendliness as one of the gateways into player interest retention. Those first few minutes are pretty important when using hand held gear be it a smart phone or a fleshlight. If it is smooth, soft and rounded there is big chances of being a cross-over game ranging from young to old and from gamers to squares. Clash of Clans doesn't fall short in cuteness instead it is all over the board starting from the loading screen.

This is how it starts an onslaught of friendly yet determined
looking creatures flooding from your screen.

SIMPLICITY SUITS FOR SHORT BURSTS OF PLAYING

Smart phones are especially nice for ruining our eyes with those small ass screens. It has to be a super narc game to keep people playing. Clash of Clans revolves around long term base building and short term battle sequences. What a wonderful game for the masses. Most of the time you can stay idle and when you come back to visit your home village there is always something little to do, maybe upgrade that piece of wall or cut down some trees and yes, rearm traps and fix damages done by evil attacker...

Lovely creatures minding their own business.

IT COMES IN SLOW AND FAST MOTION

Game tempo is very slow on the village side of the game and you don't get lots of action. However the tempo picks up when you jump to the battle side of the game. This dynamics will keep on attracting wide mix of players. Some will enjoy the farming side of the game and some will be attracted to the blood and mayhem. Too bad they don't have real clan warfare implemented yet.

What a serene view, suddenly there is a crack in the sky
 and the enemy village is in sights. Let's see what
kind of and adversary we'll be served this time. 

DO THE WAR CHAP

Then it is time to do WAR (yeah, this also looks more commanding this way). You choose single player campaign or multiplayer free for all. Once again nice set up for different types of players. I believe that quite a chunk of gamers will quit the game soon after they have played through the single player campaign. On the other hand majority will dive in and enjoy battling against other players.

A battle coming to an end. I the attacker have not been
successful in totally demolishing the resistance.
The victory is mine though as I have
inflicted over 50% damage
to the village.

TACTICAL FIGHTING

The most fantastic part of the fighting is that player doesn't have complete control over the troops. One can choose the place outside enemy village as well as the type of troops and the sequence together with number of troops. After that the attack takes its own path and all hell breaks loose. Defending village does the same just according those diabolical defense lines, which defender in turn has developed.

So I won but at what cost. Very little loot and lots of
expenditure on troops. This was a bad attack in the end.
Next time I'll do better so... one more game and then I'll stop.

REPEAT REPEAT REPEAT

Simple formula but so narc that you go and play some more and then some more. As your village slugs on and produces some raw materials it is easy to take few days breaks from the game and then swing on like nothing happened. I believe Clash of Clans is being played by occasional gamers and heavy users.

EA and Take-Two

LOOK IT'S YEAR 2008 AND EA IS BUYING
It's yesteryear and more when I last updated this blog, but it sure looks like yesterday. Electronic Arts is at it again - buying smaller game industry rivals. Some might think that I have something personal against EA, why else this is the news that makes me write after such a long silence...

WELL MANAGED COMPANY
On the contrary, I cannot but admire their business management and strategic skills. EA is a company that does it better than any other company in game industry. They buy assets to increase turnover and streamline cost structure by booting redundant workers (marketing, distribution, finance, office and non-performing developers...). This generates profits, which in turn can be used to buy more assets, which generate even more profits. No end at sight for this company. Well, maybe News Corporation will place EA as one step on their road map of world domination.

FOCUS ON GAMES AND GENRES
Unlike many professional analysts I don't think (not anymore anyway) that Electronic Arts minds about countries or market areas when they make their acquisition plans. Instead, I believe that they focus on on market share of post-deal combined product slate. You see them having two separate approaches - cement their current genre dominating position OR pushing boundaries of their present game genre reach.

IMPACT ON GAME MARKET?
In their genre conquering strategy they flirt with classic monopoly setting. Marketing and distribution dominance make competitors to shy away from these genres. If this doesn't increase genre specific profits... So all that anticipated financial muscle can be used to garner more market share in other genres.

SO WHAT WAS THE IMPACT ON GAME MARKET?
We will have less companies and developers will have less choice what comes to publishing and distribution channels. Let's say EA is totally happy with their success in genre of "watch the paint to dry" -games. Now if I have the killer idea of adding more colours to my upcoming WTPTD title and I already have a working demo, it very well might be that EA doesn't want to finance it and everybody else are afraid of the huge financial push (rendering drying paint can be horrendously demanding on engine department).

EA's motive would be their cash cow that doesn't need anything but cosmetic changes like new shade of white paint. It will go on for years to the point that developers start to have mental problems for coding the same game over and over. Also there is no need to educate gamers about new title in this genre, there's just that one household name, which purchase even mom can't fuck up if you ask her to go and buy it for you.

So, yet more difficult to get your game published and quite possibly less choice of games, the turnover growth will instead come from increasing game prices.

MY ADVICE
GO BUY GTA IV, BETTER YET, BUY THE WHOLE SERIES. If you still have some money left, use it to buy Take-Two stocks... if some day it is bought, it is good that you have something that somebody else wants.

Electronic Arts’ Jamdat purchase

Even Electronic Arts paid a big money to get Jamdat, they seem to have made a good deal. We all remember Jamdat from long and winding shopping spree, in which it kept acquiring smaller mobile game companies to gain that critical mass. That mass wasn’t enough to ward off from Electronic Arts, or could it be that this was exactly Jamdat’s planned exit strategy? Anyway, now Electronic Arts seems to have finished the primary fusing operations and it should be just continuous flow of published mobile games ala Electronic Arts.

Small can still beat big

Under is my post from my mobile phone games blog.

Many have been asking why a relatively small publisher and distributor, PlayerX, got Miami Vice into their stables. Because they care their partners, that’s why. They offer excellent service that can overtake bigger competitors who have degenerated back to corporatism. Now all they need to do is to produce a great game, easier said than done... Original news source The Inquirer has a picture of Miami Vice detectives. Do they look like Sonny and partners, what do you think?

Anyway that got me thinking. Will it always stay the same? Small and hungry players come to the market. These can be found in some industrial complexes running away from high rents. They do everything to strech that last mile and they create something wonderful, therefore they manage to beat the big girls and boys.

After the success slow decay starts. More people join the company and they are more interested the benefit package than working somewhere at skid... Company grows and leans towards management and total shift from innovation to evolution happens. It is time for some small player to come along and challenge the biggies.

Activision hit by employee lawsuit

Does this mean that workers in every single U.S. game company will raise hell? How this will affect to game development investments? Asia is already strong contender in game development, and this sort of lawsuitism that is getting more common will trash the economics of U.S. game development.

Sony Computer Entertainment

Sony’s division is also in trouble as similar class action lawsuit is sneaking on its doorsteps. Really troubling, I wonder how rigid this will turn game industry in general?

Game industry shakedown

Interesting news from Gameindustry.com they ran an article that among other things writes:

Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities, who has pinpointed the struggle between Toshiba and Sony in the high definition movie space as crucial to how the games market will move in the coming years.

It all comes down to different DVD standards that the game consoles support. Far bigger customer to decide the future development of storage standards is the movie industry. This industry’s choice will thrust the market to either direction and that promises difficulties on other game console block. Fascinating.

Empire acquisition gets closer

More names are associated with possible Empire buyout. SCi is emerging as the most likely candidate. Grabbing dominant market share by buying out competition is the oldest trick in the CEO book of “Ways to make money”. Let’s hope that further game industry consolidation in U.K. will eventually lead into continuous game industry evolution and not just inefficient monopoly stagnation.

One more thing, it really pisses me off to read about how SCi managed to turn around the faltering Eidos. Eidos had good product slate and they just needed money to monetize their titles - SCi brought money to the mix and magical potion was ready to be served for investors.

Game industry integration

The other day I was minding my own business and shuffling through the pages of local newspaper. I haven’t been paying attention on games market for a while, as my day job has become an activity that incorporates most of my time. Anyway, it stroke me... game publishing is really a very centralized industry. On one page there were tens of different games on display but they were divided between four different publishers. What is the meaning of this? Just that those big players have the contacts and financial means to promote their games for thousands and thousands of curious eyes.

This is of course something I have known for a long time, but only just now it HIT me. I suppose that time outside game industry has done some good for me. Now I understand outsiders’ point of view much better. Only games related information that one gets from mainstream media are paid advertises that are stuffed between economy and sports pages.

Chinese Online Game Companies Sinking

Online game companies in China are yesterday’s news. Recent financials from Chinese online game companies show that the frenzy is over and seemingly endless growth has receded. The9 dropped 12 percents in Friday’s trading. Despite their massive marketing efforts and stellar game selection, they only managed moderate growth. They are the best on the market and if they produce just ok results, then what is the point of going into Chinese online game market anyway?

Cinemaware acquired by eGames

This is yet another life for Cinemaware, a game company that did well during 80’s and closed down 1991. Lars Fuhrken-Batista bought Cinemaware assets and restarted the company in 2000, now he is selling present Cinemaware assets to eGames. Seems like the business logic runs to the direction in which eGames turns classic Cinemaware game assets into casual games. From Gamasutra.

Electronic Arts settles overtime dispute

Electronic Arts buried the hatchet and agreed to pay 15,6 million dollars in overtime dispute with workers. Furthermore company agreed to change terms for entry-level artists so that they are also eligible for overtime pay.

I think that EA once again made best of poor situation and now they have black on white, in case there are further complaints form workers. It means peaceful working conditions as game companies are heading into new generation game production. Article at Orlando Sentinel.

Carmageddon development halted?

SCI/Eidos is rumored to have halted the development of mega hit Carmageddon. Read more about the news over here.

COMMENTARY
I think that this puts the merger into rather dubious light, because major part of the logic was in the arrangement that Eidos gets some desperately needed extra funding to complete the development cycle of their hits like Lara Croft and Carmageddon. Now big part of that business logic has been amputated. Well, some downsizing will do the trick, just hope that they don’t downsize back to zero.