Monthly Archives: September 2006

AGC – Casual Games and Community

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

This is a partial transcript of the “Casual Games and Community” session. I’ve only included the quotes I considered interesting and/or amusing.

Moderator: Adeo Ressi, Founder and CEO for Game Trust
Panelists: Greg Mills, Director of Premium Games for AOL; Chris Early, Studio Manager for Microsoft Casual Games Group; Andrew Pedersen, Vice President and Executive Producer for Pogo (EA)

On knowing what the customer wants:

Andrew: Customers often don’t actually know what they really want when first exposed to a new experience. Pogo badges didn’t focus test well at all. Now, badges are so popular that we rolled out “premium badge albums” that you can purchase. Users are snapping them up like crazy. We’ve sold over 750K premium badge albums.

Chris: Everybody thought that the “gamer score” in Xbox Live would be a good thing, but nobody thought it would be a strong driver. But we’ve seen that people live by that score — they look to buy games that will significantly increase it.

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Posted in Business (in general)

AGC – How To Write The Best Game Ever

Posted on September 10, 2006 by David J Edery| 3 Comments

This breakout session was led by Chris Avellone (the brain behind Planescape Torment, which remains my favorite game ever.) Chris encouraged attendees to speak openly about their successes, failures, and concerns; the result was an interesting survey of the demons troubling many game writers. Producers, take note.

For starters, not a single person spoke up when Chris asked them to describe a success. But plenty of people were willing to toss out failures and frustrations.

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Posted in Design / Production

AGC – Writing Comedy for Games

Posted on September 10, 2006 by David J Edery| 1 Comment

I’m only now getting the chance to process the notes that I wrote at AGC. Here’s a partial transcript of the “Writing Comedy” session (there’s another, also incomplete report at Gamasutra.) I’ve highlighted in red a few quotes that I found interesting and/or amusing.

Moderator: Rich Bryant, writer for Spin City (the TV show)
Panelists: Matt Soell, writer for Stubbs the Zombie; Tom Abernathy, writer for Destroy All Humans!.

Tom: Over the last 15 years, game humor went from the “one guy in a garage” kind of humor to, for better and worse. more sophisticated humor, as we in games have begun to compare our medium to film and TV. I.e. we’re not just writing fart jokes now, although farting was the basis of an entire design mechanic in Stubbs.

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Posted in Design / Production

I really enjoyed the Austin Game Conference this year. There’s something hugely satisfying about attending a conference with absolutely no job responsibilities hanging over your head.  :-) Many thanks to those of you who turned out for the digital distribution … Continue reading →

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Posted on September 10, 2006 by David J Edery

Rockstar has changed the name of Bully to Canis Canem Edit (Latin for “Dog Eat Dog”). It will be interesting to see what this accomplishes… higher sales (due to lower negative parental awareness) or lower sales (due to lower positive … Continue reading →

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Posted on September 5, 2006 by David J Edery

Using Games to Tap Collective Intelligence

Posted on September 4, 2006 by David J Edery| 4 Comments

I’ve been mulling over an idea for several months now. It goes something like this:

Nowadays, everyone is talking about the broad potential applications of video games. Combating obesity. Managing chronic disease. General education. Employee training. Military preparedness and recruiting. The list seems endless. But one unique and important aspect of games has yet to be tapped: I believe they can effectively aggregate individual players’ actions into a form of collective intelligence.

Basis of the Idea: Wisdom of Crowds

First, a bit of background. Few things have become conventional wisdom so quickly as the Wisdom of Crowds, an idea that has captivated savvy businesses seeking to improve their internal prediction and decision-making processes. There’s great reason to believe the hype — just ask HP, which has used idea markets to generate more accurate sales predictions, or read about the Iowa Electronic Markets, which have predicted presidential election outcomes more accurately than the polls in 75% of cases.

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Posted in Serious Games

Due to some scheduling confusion, it’s still unclear which panel I’ll be moderating, but meanwhile I’ve been asked to be a panelist for the “Digital Distribution Revolution” session at 3pm on Friday. Hope to see some of you there!

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Posted on September 1, 2006 by David J Edery

Game Consumer Market Segmentation Study

Posted on September 1, 2006 by David J Edery| 1 Comment

Parks Associates has unveiled a study that seeks to eliminate the meaningless terms “hardcore gamer” and “casual gamer”. Kudos to Parks; I’ve always felt that the game industry’s limited vocabulary for describing customers has hobbled design and marketing creativity. (It’s like trying to describe the natural world with just three words: “plant”, “animal”, and “mineral”. You could do it, but you’ll definitely lose something in the process.)

The Parks study revealed six segments:

  • Power gamers: 11% of the market, but account for 30% of current spending.
  • Social gamers: 13% of the market; enjoy gaming as a way to interact with friends.
  • Leisure gamers: 14% of the market; spend 58 hours per month playing mainly casual titles. However, they prefer challenging games and show high interest in new gaming services.
  • Dormant gamers: 26% of the market; love gaming but spend little time because of family, work, or school. They like to play with friends and family and prefer challenging games.
  • Incidental gamers: 12% of the market; play mostly online games for 20 hours a month, mainly out of boredom.
  • Occasional gamers: 24% of the market; play puzzle, word, and board games almost exclusively.

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Posted in Design / Production, Marketing / PR