Foreign game companies have been prohibited from investing in Chinese game operators as sole owners, joint venture partners or cooperative partners.

The U.S. virtual goods market is estimated to exceed $1B in 2009, more than doubling from 2008.
For comparison, the virtual goods market in Asia is currently estimated at $7B. (I haven’t had time to personally drill into this… if you think these are gross overestimates, feel free to chime in!)

Yet another prominent iPhone developer has spoken up about piracy; this time, it’s Ngmoco complaining about 50%-90% piracy rates in the first week a game is released. As I’ve said myself, Ngmoco now speculates that free (presumably cross-platform) games supported by microtransactions may be the best way for established developers to succeed on the iPhone. The latter was only permitted by Apple very recently.

Kudos to the IGDA for doing something unambiguously helpful and positive for its members: providing access to group health insurance.

Retailer Game Crazy shares that, for those between the ages of 10 and 19, the four most desired games this holiday are: Guitar Hero 5 (48%), Wii Sports Resort (44%), New Super Mario Bros Wii (41%) and Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games (33%). Looks like rumors of the Wii’s death are greatly exaggerated…

Apple grew its PC market share to a 15-year high last quarter; macs made up somewhere between 8.8% and 9.4% of PC shipments. iPhone sales climbed 7% to a record 7.4m.

Nabeel Hyatt suggests that for social games, the ratio of “daily active users” to “monthly active users” (DAU/MAU) is often sufficient to predict the success of a game (higher is better.) In other words, and unsurprisingly, games that keep players coming back frequently tend to grow bigger.

Interesting anecdote about indie developer Unknown Worlds Entertainment, which has directly pre-sold $220k units-worth of its game to consumers (vs $500k raised via investors.) More interestingly, Unknown Worlds offers a $20 standard version, and a $40 version with nothing more than cosmetic in-game additions, but 95% of preorders have been for the $40 version. If you’re loyal enough to pre-order, it seems that you’re loyal enough to pay double (as long as you’re offered something small in return.)

For those who appreciated my recent post on Lucidity, check out this useful Gamasutra article which broadly address the subject of how to make games less unforgiving and frustrating.

A Chinese developer’s perspective on success in the F2P space. Lots of interesting, blunt quotes in there:

• “Keep the gamers for at least two weeks, they will stay, and if they’ll stay, they’ll stay for years.”
• “It’s impossible to create content for a year or two years of gameplay; you have to create an environment or a setting in which a lot of people can interact with each other. Ultimately it’s not the content that keeps the people playing, but the people.”
• “A lot of game designers believe fairness is not a goal, just a means — the goal is to create a highly dynamic environment and community where a lot of conflict and drama can happen; if it helps to create conflict, fairness and unfairness can be used as tools to create those conflicts and add tension to the game world.”
• “If you think about who [rich players] were in the real world, they were business owners, used to managing hundreds of people… we let rich people fight with rich people with the help of poor people.”
• “There’s an item in one social game that is a gift — of flowers. No simple bouquet, when the item is given, flowers fall from the sky and everyone can see them. Just as importantly, the game rewards the girl who gets the most flowers with a unique dress that can’t be bought, and it will give her a special user title for chat. [Girls] want to feel important, and being spoiled.”

There’s more to life than games:

In New York City, it takes years of legal maneuvering and costs nearly half a million dollars to dismiss a teacher for incompetence. Consequently, out of the city’s 80,000 teachers, only two have been dismissed in the past couple years. That’s 0.0025% of the total.

Research shows that praising children for their intelligence can make them less likely to persist in the face of challenges, while praising children for their effort has the opposite effect.

Advertising via the common fly. Whoever came up with this is incredibly creative and incredibly bizarre. :-)

I have been actively maintaining this blog for four years, as of today. There are very few things that I have remained actively committed to for such a length of time… my lovely wife, my garden, and of course, games. So it feels like a real milestone to me!

Anyway, I just wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you for reading along. Whether you started recently or in the distant past, your interest in this blog means a lot to me. And to those who have taken the time to comment on posts or send me private notes, an especially big thank you. I had always hoped this blog would evolve into a dialogue, but I’ve learned more from you all than I could have imagined way back in 2005. I’ve truly appreciated your words of support when you’ve liked what I’ve written, and (especially!) your counter-arguments when you’ve disagreed with my opinions.

It’s funny to look back on my oldest posts… this was a very different blog back when. Oh, and I’m still waiting for someone to make an RPG that I enjoy as much as Planescape: Torment, dammit. :-)

Anyone developing an original IP for XBLA, PSN or Wiiware should take note of LucasArts’ Lucidity. Why should you take note? Because Lucidity is a truly delightful game that unfortunately showcases two of the most common “big mistakes” made by developers and publishers on XBLA. If the leaderboards are any indication, Lucidity’s sales are suffering as a result.

First, it’s worth recognizing how many things Lucidity gets right. It is beautiful, distinctive, and offers an original gameplay mechanic that actually works. Many game developers will never manage to create something that meets all three of those criteria in their entire careers. And many developers, with such a game on their hands, might assume that their success is all but assured.

There’s just two problems. If you’ve been reading this blog for any significant period of time, you already know one of those problems: insufficient marketing. Lucidity was unveiled mere weeks before it was released. No time to build consumer awareness. No time to woo the press. Nothin’.

The other problem is the game’s unforgiving design. (I won’t say the game’s “difficulty”, as something can be difficult without being unforgiving.) Lucidity lacks a checkpoint system, and that combined with a few other design issues causes the game to quickly become a punishing experience. This is apparent to players even in the demo.

It’s no accident that most modern platformers are more forgiving than their ancestors. While many XBLA and PSN users enjoy a stiff challenge, their patience is ultimately limited. Don’t let the success of a few insanely challenging retro titles fool you — those games have generally succeeded because of nostalgia, not because today’s gamer longs for the relentless butt-whooping of old.

1) Come up with a meaningful value proposition for your game. 2) Craft a gameplay experience that emphasizes that value proposition and that accommodates as many players in your target demo as possible. The latter can almost always be accomplished without noticeably diluting the gameplay experience. 3) *Repeatedly* communicate the value proposition far in advance of your game’s launch. –> These are the fundamental tricks of our trade.

PS. A year ago I wrote an article on game difficulty that is relevant to this post. The comments on that post were solid, too.

I had a long conversation today with a person responsible for biz dev at a major publisher. He regaled me with a remarkable story about a hot indie developer who he had reached out to with a simple email: “Hey there, I’d like to introduce myself and learn more about your company.” There was more to the publisher’s email, but that is how it started out.

The developer wrote back, “A little advice — you should insert my name and my company’s name in your email. It will make it more effective.”

Can you guess how the publisher responded? Predictably: “Thanks for the advice. I wish your company the best of luck in its future endeavors.” Still no name in there. ;-)

I don’t care how great you think you are. I don’t care how many companies are knocking down your door. This is a very small industry, and people talk. Never forget that. It simply doesn’t pay to be an asshole. What good does it get you, except a brief feeling of smug superiority?

Your next game or two might flop. It has happened to the best of developers, for reasons both within and not within their control. If you find yourself in that unfortunate position, all you’ll have left is your reputation — how people feel about you as a person, what you’re like to work with, etc. And even if you’re lucky enough to enjoy an endless string of successful titles, do you really want to be known as a jerk?

There’s a reason why guys like Will Wright, Ray Muzyka, Bob Bates and Chris Avellone are so widely respected in the game industry. It’s partly because they’re successful and talented… but it’s also because they’re genuinely nice guys. Aspire to be like them, not some douchebag celebrity.

Film Victoria was kind enough to publicly share the video of my keynote at the Digital Distribution Summit in Melbourne. You can find it here.

Quick summary: I focus mainly on what it takes to successfully pitch your XBLA/PSN/Wiiware/Steam game to a publisher or platform-holder. If you haven’t already endured too many talks on this subject, I think you’ll enjoy the video. I’ve gotten an unusually large amount of good feedback about it!

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, when I ask “are you all right?” in the first few minutes of the talk, it’s because some poor guy fell on his face at the back of the auditorium. I, ummm, probably should have let someone else — someone NOT delivering a keynote at the time — ask after him.  :-}

I’ve just returned from a lovely three week trip to Australia, thus the downtime for Game Tycoon. Melbourne has earned my vote for “nicest botanical garden” and Sydney for “best large-animal aquarium exhibit,” while Cairns nets “loveliest man-made pseudo-lagoon.” :-) Now, onto some long delayed links!

Excellent overview of the social RPG space, by Steve Meretzky and Dave Rohrl, with insights into monetization, game design, and more. Must-read for anyone not already well-versed in social gaming trends.

PhotoSketch is not positioned as a game, but it easily could be one. It automatically transforms stick-figure drawings into a richly-detailed photograph. Watch the video — it’s amazing and wonderful!

Basic but useful reminders about proper marketing and positioning for iPhone games, specifically. And here are some more general community marketing tips.

An explosion of news from the social gaming market:

• It’s now believed that Zynga is earning $500k revenue per day, and spends approximately $50m annually on Facebook advertising.
• By comparison, Playdom is generating just $50m in annual revenue but is managing to do so with 1/5th the number of Facebook users. How? More MySpace users (who apparently tend to be more lucrative than Facebook users, owing to a greater proportion living in the US.)
• Zynga’s FarmVille now has over 50m monthly active users. The enormity of this achievement cannot be understated. Also interesting to note that Chinese developers are becoming some of the most prominent faces on the Facebook Top-20 games chart.
• Zynga’s Restaurant City clone, Café World, grew from zero to 9m users in a single week! Another example of Zynga’s brutally efficient methodology — let other companies prove out a concept, copy it almost verbatim (save for minor improvements) then out-market the competition with intense ad spending and cross-promotion.
• Sign of the times: PopCap, which has always been boot-strapped, just raised $22.5m… why? To enable it to compete in the social gaming space. Guess they (wisely) don’t want to turn into Playfish, aka “Zynga’s unofficial R&D department.”
• …and the big, traditional publishers are where exactly?

Insight into how Twisted Pixel was able to develop the very polished XBLA hit ‘Splosion Man in just half a year. The key: rapid iteration and focusing on the core of the gameplay experience.

From AGDC: interesting insights into important customer support tools for online games.

Later this year, Adobe will enable developers to cross-compile Flash applications directly into iPhone-compatible stand-alone apps. As Raph aptly puts it: “This s a huge game-changer. Expect the App Store to get overwhelmed with Flash apps within days of this becoming available as every good Flash app is ported over. It’s another solid step on Adobe’s part towards making Flash a common rendering and development platform across multiple devices.”

There’s more to life than games:

Andrew Chen with some good advice on hiring the first few employees for your startup.

Seth Godin on business development: “The thing that makes business development fascinating is that the best deals have never been done before. There’s no template, no cookie cutter grind it out approach to making it work. This is why most organizations are so astonishingly bad at it. They don’t have the confidence to make decisions or believe they have the ability to make mistakes.” Some good tips in there on “how to make it work” despite the assertion quoted above. :-)