The (Real) Truth on Advertising

Coming from RightMedia, and then working at Yahoo and now the video game industry, I am still consistently amazed as to how much effort people take in order to avoid advertising or vocally complain about advertising in-general.

Let me clear it up.

Advertising gives you stuff for free

TV does this. The internet does this. Without advertising, you would have to subscribe to every service to enjoy it.

And if you really enjoy a site or service that is providing you something for free, then help them out. Leave your cookies alone. Seriously. Nobody can identify you from a cookie and honestly, you think too highly of yourself if you think that's true. All it does is allow ads to be served to be more expensive, and that means more money for the people who are giving you stuff.

On the flip side, keep the pop-up blockers and stuff. Sending a clear message to site owners and advertisers that this is not effective will just mean you'll get the advertisements on your own terms, not theirs.

Advertising subsidizes things that would be more expensive.

This is the murky grey area that seems to set people off. The mentality is "hey, I paid for this, why am I getting advertising?".

This short sighted statement is the result of users who have accepted that advertising is for free products, but the second is products that allow you to pay to remove advertising.

The reality is, advertising isn't always used in this way. This is how magazines and newspaper work. This is why you'll see dynamic ads on Burnout Paradise and UFC 2009 Undisputed.

In the case of newspapers and magazines, this allows them to provide you the product as a highly reduced rate, or else you'd be paying a ton more than 50 cents for the daily or 4.99 for a magazine. In the case of video games, the cost of running servers for you, even though you paid for the game is expensive. They are just trying to reduce some of the costs. And if they make money off of it, you should be happy, because once an idea becomes profitable, it just means more goods and services of that quality level will be provided.

Blizzard delivers killing blow in new Battle.net

I've always had a ton of respect for Blizzard. They are one of the few companies that really care about their gamers. They took it up a notch today when they unveiled a new Battle.net.

What's new? Single account login for all of your Blizzard games. Just register your World of Warcraft accounts, dig out those old StarCraft and Diablo 2 cd keys, and when you finish, toss all those crummy old world compact disks away.

After registering, you will be able to download the clients for BOTH PC and MAC operating systems whenever you please. This news is particular exciting for recent Macbook converts like me. It allows me to play my favorite Blizzard games without having to purchase the Mac versions again.

This framework raises some interesting questions about the future. Now that Blizzard is merged with Activision, will we be seeing Activiation PC games pop into battle.net?

The Kotaku article posted above has comments saying that achievements will be available in games, so the single login makes sense there (like Xbox Live).

Curious as to what this means in terms of DLC and microtransactions. There has already been talks that StarCraft 2 is going to be a trilogy of games. Does this now mean that SC2 will be one boxed game with multiple DLC packs for the different races single player campaigns?

Does this mean Diablo 3 will have DLC for new acts or even customized skins?

I'm not going to speculate any more than this. I'm very comfortable in just sitting back and being surprised by Blizzard's next move.

We're in good hands.

Have a good game? Release a demo.

A couple lessons for anyone interested in becoming an indy developer or going to work for a small shop. If you create a game that you believe in, let other people get a taste of it. Demos are a recipe for success if your game is inherently good.

I am an avid fan of Steam, as many of you already know. Grid Defense: The Awakening was released on December 8 in Valve's store and was dismissed as a tower defense game with pretty graphics. On January 13, they released a demo. Gamerbytes picked it up, since Grid Defense is making it's way to XBLA. I decided to give it a try as well.

My verdict is that the game is going to be a great success for developer Hidden Path Entertainment. It's well polished and the gameplay is excellent. If you are a tower defense fan, you can't go wrong. My favorite feature? A fast forward button for the boring bits of downtime between waves or when finishing off stragglers.

My second example involves an iPhone app called iShoot. Besides having a terrible name, the Scorched Earth/Worms style game debut last October at $4.99 and had no traction in the app store. As described in TouchArcade, the developer, instead of giving up, released a demo version of the game and dropped the game to a more reasonable $2.99. The game has skyrocketed to the #1 chart position in both free and paid applications.

Let's face it, the developer is rich averaging over 10,000 sales a day at 3 dollars a pop. All he did was give people a reason to try out his game.

To summarize, a great game idea with a demo will drive sales. In the case of iShoot, it's a proven success. For Grid Defense, it remains to be seen, though I believe that people are at least talking about it.

I must stress though, the demo itself must be a true representation of the game. Gamers are not stupid, they aren't going to bite on any game where the demo seems set up.

Key Learnings for Video Gamer Makers in 2008

This year was a great year for video games. Lots of big titles came out, Apple's iTunes appstore has been established and is pretty successful, and the mobile/handheld game industry continues to thrive.

Here are the things I learned this year and anyone who is in the industry or wishes to be in the industry should keep these items in mind.

Having overly strict DRM will increase piracy rates: Call it an overhyped title that didn't live up to it's expectations or just call it purely the worst PR move ever, but EA's Spore topped the piracy list this year. The lesson learned here is that DRM needs to be very elegant. EA did not help matters by putting such limitations like a three install limit on Spore.

Having no DRM will increase piracy rates: On the other hand, 2dBoy's World of Goo had a 90% piracy rate. It is completely DRM free. This is absolutely heart breaking as it is an excellent unique title that is very well done. If I could just step on my soapbox a moment: Please consider purchasing this game if you pirated it. If you appreciate games like this and would like to see more, it does nothing but help encourage the developer and other potential developers to continue to create new and innovative games if you do your part.

Sequels > New IP: Gamespy's Top 10 overall list for 2008 had four original IP games compared to six sequals/expansions. In terms of sales (and review scores), games like Mirror's Edge, Tom Clancy's EndWar, Spore, No More Heroes, and Braid--though extremely innovative and introduces new game mechanics and concepts to us gamers--still lost out to games like Fable 2, FarCry 2, Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto 4, and Call of Duty: World at War. I don't see 2009 looking any different with games like Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, and Halo 3: ODST, Resident Evil 5, Street Fight 4 competing against Halo Wars, Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X., and Velvet Assassin. Can pretty much declare 2009 a year for sequels as well.

Big Publishers still rule: There were some pretty significant independent titles that came out this year that were critically acclaimed, but from the numbers, it seems like games from big publishers still overthrew them. Going back to Gamespy's top ten list, nine of the ten overall games were made by big named publishers. Also, here are two categories for you to think about. In the XBLA world, Braid and Castle Crashers lost out to Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix and Mega Man 9 by Capcom. In the iPhone World, Fieldrunners was unseated by Sim City (EA Mobile) and Aurora Feint 2: The Arena has not gained any traction with a ton of Gameloft (A Ubisoft mobile division) titles packing the charts.

Keeping it simple wins: The Nintendo Wii still continues to dominate console sales and for the most part houses fairly simple games for consumption. On the PS3 front, LittleBigPlanet cleaned up house with it's attractive create-your-own-levels concept, wrapped in what can be summarized as a semi-2d jumping puzzle platformer game in its simplest form. Also, 2008 saw XBLA/PSN (and iTunes) really showing the world that gamers don't mind buying games that aren't AAA titles. All of these markets have cheap, simple games that draw a significant amount of sales while having short development cycles and cheaper development costs.

Digital Distribution is here to stay: iTunes, XBLA, PSN, and Steam all gained significant momentum this year. I won't mention all the titles since I have already in the bullets above, but the most encouraging point to note is that EA finally joined Steam. Even though EA was already doing digital distribution and other companies are also selling full game downloads, this move just shows an acknowledgment that gamers are willing to go digital if it's all centralized in one place. Now if only Stardock would give up on Impulse and join Steam as well, PC gaming would seriously have a chance against the consoles.

iTunes apps going to zero? Not likely.

In terms of free market, there are arguments that pricing will eventually go to zero. As more competitors enter the market, each can only charge so much for the same commodity. This was said of the iTunes app store.

I don't hold this to be true, and the app store is definitely not trending in that direction, especially not for games.

Current there are six games in the top 10 paid apps. The lowest price game is $1.99 and the highest priced game is $5.99. The median price between the six apps is $3.99.

In December, there has been a heavy influx of higher priced apps with market players like Gameloft and EA releasing numerous $9.99 applications. These apps have climbed the charts and held their ground against competitors that have price cut their applications as much as 80% in order to maintain chart position.

The most relevant data, and most telling is the information that is not available yet. Since these chart positions are before the holidays, there is a high chance of influx of new customers and spending money as iPhones, iTouches and iTunes gift cards are given as gifts.

All in all, in just five months since the app store officially launched, the marketplace is settling. In terms of games, I'm excited to see that $0.99 applications are not defining the market. The next step is to see if game companies are willing to break the $9.99 ceiling with applications that have potential to rival those on the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP.

Pennsylavania makes some sense

A task force in Penn. just concluded that the state should not create legislation against video games, but rather, it should fund programs that educate consumers about video game issues.

This task force was formed in November 2007. I extremely pleased at the conclusion that was reached. I am however, deeply disturbed that it took them more than a year to reach this "common sense" conclusion.

Of course, it took a Doctor from Villanova to state that it was common sense before people would believe it.

Colorful commentary from Kotaku also available here.

Paradise: The Beginning out on iTunes

Just want to call out a pretty interesting iPhone game that was just released. It's called Paradise: The Beginning (Not sure if they're intentionally poking fun at Aurora Feint or not). (Paradise: The Beginning phobos link to iTunes)

Paradise is a shooter that uses dual analog controls. The controls in this game are GOOD. The visuals match well and give good feedback on what's happening, especially since the iPhone has no tactile feedback from the touch screen. The left corner moves and the right corner shoots. Your avatar moves very fluidly. It's a joy to roam around.

The controls are very similar to SmashTV/Geometry Wars/any game that uses a left stick to move and a right stick to shoot.

Increasingly difficult waves of enemies spawn and attack, and you must evade and kill them. Power ups, shields and health spawn intermittently to keep the game interesting.

The game cost 99 cents. That's the price of a bottle of water or a hot dog. Hell, I don't even know if you can get a hot dog for 99 cents anymore. I do know that supporting developers like this only makes it more encouraging for them and others to continuing developing unique games.

Go get it. (Link again).