Entries from September 2007 ↓

According to Google Analytics we have had 8,018 unique visitors,  coming from 93 different sources and mediums and spending an average of 9 minutes 33 seconds on the site (plus an increasing number of users who are using the RSS feed).  A Google search for Bruceongames gives 1,600 results. This is the 48th article and there have been 97 comments.

From tuesday I am in Spain for a week so have written the following articles in advance:

• Monday 10 September: Are Social Networking and MMORPGs the same thing?
• Tuesday 11 September: Death of a brand
• Wednesday 12 September: Is the game industry mismanaged?
• Thursday 13 September: The future of independent game development
• Friday 14 September: A few press release tips #3
• Monday 17 September: Gaming desperately needs celebrities
• Tuesday 18 September: Will Sony ever make Playstation 4?
• Wednesday 19 September: So who are you trying to reach with your marketing?

Thank you everyone who has visited and read the content here. A special thank you to those who have contributed with comments, expanding the discussion and understanding for everyone. If you know anyone who might be interested in the content here then please tell them, word of mouth is an extremely potent marketing tool.

btw The politicians are keeping their eyes on us, we have had 48 visits from Conservativehome!!!

I have written about this on here before and Steve Jobs set out to prove me right when he launched the sixth generation iPods. This was an occasion of massive significance to the computer gaming industry and we really do need to see the light.

Even the little iPod nano now comes with a 2 inch high pixel screen, it is pre loaded with three games with more available for download from iTunes.

More astonishing is the new iPod classic touch. Eat your heart out Nintendo and Sony (and Nokia). This is what a portable gaming machine should be like. Apple really have got it so right with this amazing device. I want one.

Apple have now sold over 110 million iPods and with the new features and ever lower price points they will continue to dominate this marketplace. The device has evolved rapidly, to be on it’s sixth generation so quickly. It would be nice, from a gaming perspective, if it evolved to have more processing power and a better gaming interface, maybe shoulder buttons.

Of great interest from the presentation was the fact that 32% of music is now only available in downloadable form. This is bad news for the big traditional music publishers and might be a sign that computer games publishing will not go to the small number of global publishers model.

So have you any comments on this? Please post if you have.

This is a pretty good picture of what computer gaming will look like after consolidation. There will be a small number of global publishers and a much larger number of production companies (developers) who largely own their own IP.

In fact there is a very strong probability that all the global games publishers will be the major film studios. The synergies are just so great. The film studios have masses of IP that the gaming side can use. And concurrent development (of game and film) gives huge cost, marketing and distribution advantages. Not only that, the film studios have to be in games to survive. Before too long gaming will be many times bigger than the movie industry.

So who are these major film studios?

• Fox Entertainment, part of the $25.3 billion turnover News Corporation. No games publishing.
• Paramount, part of the $9.6 billion turnover Viacom, which is majority owned by the massive private National Amusements. As are Midway Games.
• Sony Pictures. Part of the $68.4 billion turnover Sony Corporation. Owner of Sony Computer Entertainment.
• NBC Universal, 80% owned by the $163.4 billion turnover General Electric and 20% owned by the 20 billion Euro turnover Vivendi. Owner of Vivendi Games.
• Warner Brother. Part of the $44.7 billion turnover Time Warner. Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment want to have $1 billion game revenues within 5 years.
• Buena Vista. The umbrella name for the $35.3 billion turnover Walt Disney Corporation. Owner of game publisher Disney Interactive Studios.

For comparison Microsoft has a $51 billion turnover (but more than a third of that is profit!) and Electronic Arts $3 billion.

So 5 of the majors already have a game publishing presence. Which leaves News Corporation woefully exposed for the future of exploiting IPs, they really must be in the market to buy EA, Activision, Take Two or another big game publisher. If they don’t they will be dead in the water.

You can see that Sony don’t really take the advantage they could from the game and film synergies. This must be bad corporate politics at the highest level. It must also be costing them billions.

So where does this leave Nintendo and Microsoft? Obviously publishers need platform holders and vice versa. But the power balance will shift when these huge media companies are in control of publishing. Also the platform holders will be at a huge competetive disadvantage when they publish their own games because they will lack the development and marketing synergies.

So I can see Microsoft getting into the film industry, maybe Nintendo too. They both have lots and lots of money to play with.

Well, what did you think of that one? Please use the comments to tell everyone that I am mad, or a genius, or both! Seriously your comments are greatly appreciated and really expand the value of the debate.

I spoke too soon about the dour Scotsman who is now out to prove that he, like David Cameron, reads the Daily Mail and is stupid enough to believe it. Our hallowed leader has decided to waste tax payers money and has asked the Department for Culture Media and Sport to review children’s access to video games. This echoes the United States where successive individual states introduce draconian legislation to suppress video games only for the federal authorities to throw the legislation out as unconstitutional, all at great taxpayer cost.

What I want to know is what are they going to do about so called children’s cartoons on the television. These are packed full of unending scenes of graphic violence and suffering and it is apalling that the government allows our children to be exposed to them. They should be much more strictly controlled and only broadcast after the 9pm watershed, if at all.

Then there is that purveyor of violence combined with evil and witchcraft, J K Rowling, she should be arrested at once and put on trial for corrupting the minds of the children of the world. In fact most childrens fiction is stuffed full of violence so it is better if we just burn all their books.

Worldwide research on this very topic has proven that there isn’t a problem. On the contrary computer games have proven to be very good for children on many levels. And the crime rate is going down. If there is a problem it is the stupidity of parents who go into game stores and buy their children games that are clearly marked as adult in big letters on the front of the packaging. Presumably these same parents are perfectly happy to then go and buy their kids a copy of Hustler, some whisky and a carton of cigarettes.

The good news out of this is that for all the credibility that David Cameron lost by putting his foot in his mouth at least Gordon has done the same. So we have a balance of sorts in that both the main parties look, and are, stupid.

So, do you buy hardcore porn for your kids and take them out for friday night pub crawls, were you scarred for life by reading Enid Blyton? Post your thoughts by clicking the comments button.

Once again a little reminder that these are just random tips and in no way constitute any complete reference on the subject.

Currently, due to the growth of broadband, the fastest growing area of the internet is video. That’s right, social networking is number two. Video is everywhere, new sites are popping up every day and old sites are taking it on board. It is taking over.

This is really very good news for us because, unlike, say, washing powder, our products are superb candidates for the medium. The combination of sound and moving image is heaven sent. We can actually show the real product working in all it’s glory.

So never, ever send a press release out without a video. Even if it is just to announce a new senior staff member. Then, on press release day, give the video to the community manager for that game for him to get it on to every video site, game blog etc that he possibly can. You should also email a link to your end user and buyer mailing lists, feature it on your own website, blog, forums, social networking etc. You will be doing this simultaneously in every territory, in every applicable language.

Obviously your video, like your press release, should be news, so people want to watch it. Unlike your press release you can use viral techniques, such as humour, to make your message reach totally new audiences. Use this and this and this for inspiration.

An extra cool bonus is that your video can also be used by old fashioned media such as Television programmes and the DVDs often distributed with paper media such as magazines.

If you have everything right a global press release video will be seen by tens of millions of people in a week. Very cheap marketing.

So are you religious about always making a video or is what I am suggesting OTT? Use the comments to make you point.

Tony Blair was a truly awful prime minister on so many levels but at least he said nice things about computer gaming and left the industry pretty much alone, that is except for huge increases in red tape and taxes. Perhaps having children of computer gaming age gave him enough insight to realise that the Daily Mail is wrong and that games are, largely, a good thing.

The jury is out on his dour Scottish successor when it comes to games, but Brown’s cabinet is a lot younger than Blair’s was so are more likely to be in touch with reality. Which is more than can be said for David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative opposition. In what he obviously thinks will be a vote winner he has taken to having a very misguided go at video games. Despite all the evidence that proves him to be totally wrong. Now we have become used to Prince Charles saying silly things like this, but Prince Charles doesn’t need votes.

Mass computer gaming really took off in the UK round about 1983, thanks to Clive Sinclair. So someone who was 18 then will be 42 now. This means that the only people who could possible give David Cameron any credence whatsoever are those who are older than this. He really is narrowing down the demographic that he wants to vote for him!

When John Lennon (the most important Beatle) was murdered in New York it was a news story, but only that. When George Harrison (a less important Beatle) smoked himself to death 21 years later it was a major national event with all the newspapers running multi page features about him. The difference was that John Lennon died before the Beatles generation reached positions of power in the media. The same will happen in gaming. The current generation in charge at the BBC, Daily Mail etc haven’t the faintest idea what it is about so they fumble about in the dark making fools of themselves. The BBC even report it as technology!

But soon our day will come. Right now the 40ish gaming generation are rising to positions of power. Soon we will be in control. Soon the Daily Mail will be covermounting Wii games instead of Frank Sinatra hits.

In the meantime David Cameron has obviously lost it, which is a pity because we need to find something to replace this terrible Labour government.

So are you in a position of power in the national media or politics and are you younger than 42? If so tell us your comments. Whatever your age and position you can still comment. Please do, it is adding a lot to the discussions here.

Following on from my article on game censorship we have some common sense at last.

It is good to see that the review panel at Virginia Tech have concluded (obviously) that video games were not a factor in the tragedy there. Contrary to what the idiots in the popular press were saying at the time. Don’t expect them to apologise any time soon for misleading the public so badly.

All the masses of research on gaming shows that gamers have superior social skills. This mass murderer was obviously a sociopath and playing games would probably have made him less likely to do what he did. Try telling the Daily Mail that.

So do you think video games lead people to commit great crimes? Or do you think the opposite, that they can be a catharsis and a socialising force? Use the comments button to let us know.