Monthly Archives: July 2006

Via Morgan Ramsay, a Magid research study has revealed the following: Half of game buyers, including hardcore game buyers, focus mainly on price (yet again, reason to consider mechanisms such as episodic content and micropayments to reduce initial purchase pain.) … Continue reading →

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Posted on July 11, 2006 by David J Edery

Back in Town

Posted on July 10, 2006 by David J Edery| Leave a comment

Well, I’m back in Boston. Time to dig myself out from under an avalanche of email, postal mail, voice mail, and dirty laundry. I expect the latter to be the highlight of my day…

Meanwhile, let me entertain you with the following photo, taken on the steets of Athens near the center of town. This is the entrance to one of many strip clubs in the city, and in case you don’t recognize it, that’s Grand Theft Auto cover art embedded in the street sign. This is a nice example of convergence culture in action, and it begs the question: does this serve Rockstar’s interests, or not? I’d argue that it does, but then, I don’t know what exactly is going on behind the doors of that club. Then again, maybe that’s irrelevant.  ;)

PS. For those of you seeking tamer, more personal fare, I’ve uploaded a small number of pictures from the trip.

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Posted in Personal Stuff

Interview with Todd Kerpelman (EA, Pogo)

Posted on July 6, 2006 by David J Edery| 1 Comment

Todd Kerpelman is Creative Director for EA’s Pogo division, as well as one of Pogo’s most talented game designers. I’ve spent way too many hours playing his brainchild, Phlinx. Anyway, on to the interview:

In your experience, what are the most important elements of a fun *and* popular casual game?

Well, obviously, I think one the most important aspects to having a popular game _is_ that it’s fun. Honestly, if you’ve got a game that’s fun enough, a lot of the conventional wisdom around what players want and what kinds of games they like tend to go out the window.

But with that being said, I think accessibility is certainly one of the keys towards making a casual game successful. This is especially true in the downloadable space, where you only have an hour to get people to like your game, and there’s dozens of other games just waiting to be downloaded if the user gets frustrated with yours. In general, you want people to be able to pick up and play your game and feel like they’re doing something correct within the first minute. This doesn’t mean that games have to be simplistic, though. There’s a lot of really complex games out there, but the successful ones do a good job of easing the player into it.

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Posted in Interviews

Micro-Celebrities

Posted on July 3, 2006 by David J Edery| 1 Comment

I stumbled across an interesting article by Robert Young that introduces the concept of “micro-celebrities”; i.e. popular individuals within social networks, whose natural enthusiasm for a product or brand can be supported, amplified, and ultimately projected outwards. The basic idea: instead of (or in addition to) paying a famous celebrity millions of dollars to hawk your wares, why not identify and reward several thousand of your most popular fans, such that they are encouraged to spread word of your product (explicitly or implicitly) to others?

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Posted in Marketing / PR