Category Archives: Business

Don’t Step On My Long Tail

Posted on April 9, 2007 by | 13 comments

Digital distribution and eCommerce are at the heart of what I do for a living. And nowhere is the Long Tail more at home than at the junction point of digital distribution and eCommerce. Someday, when greater volumes of content are featured on XBLA, it should turn into a perfect Long Tail paradise, right?

Well, that’s what I’m hoping for. But there are a few potential issues that muddy the waters. Some of them are issues facing all community-centric online systems. Some of them are specific to video game services. I’ll give you a couple of examples, and hopefully you can give me some ideas in return!

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Posted in Business

Gray Market

Posted on February 4, 2007 by | 2 comments

While in Beijing, I visited the “gray market” in order to learn more about video game piracy in China. I’m not sure what I expected… something between an official street market in New York and those guys near Times Square who try to sell you DVD ripoffs (and who pack up their stuff the instant they spot a cop.) I couldn’t have been farther off the mark.

The gray market in Beijing is nothing less than a clean, very commercial, very visible shopping complex. It’s brimming with small stores (one might call them fancy “stalls”), each staffed by several people. The stores have no visible brand, advertising, or sales strategy to differentiate themselves from one another. They don’t need to — there are more than enough customers to go around.

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Posted in Business

Grokking Corporate Culture

Posted on November 1, 2006 by | Comments Off on Grokking Corporate Culture

My friend Ben Mattes, a very talented producer for Ubisoft, made a great comment on my previous blog article which I’d like to unceremoniously lift out of context:

When I worked at Gameloft I invested significant energy into creative motivational ‘events’. When I left, the guy who replaced me continued this tradition and came up with (what I thought was) a great idea to help beat the heat in the summer. Instead of a traditional 5-7 with beer and chips, he brought in an ice-cream ‘team’ from the local ‘Ben And Jerry’s’ to serve cones and sundaes to the team after an important meeting. I liked the idea and tried it with my team shortly after starting at Ubisoft.

At the time no one said anything negative. They all had slightly bemused smiles on their faces and got in line to dutifully collect their ice-cream. Some even went back for seconds.

Months later, though, I learned that I had made an awful impression with this act. The team immediately questioned whether I “belonged” if I would favor ice-cream over beer (the stable for such events).

To this day whenever I bring the team together for beers the ice-cream fiasco comes up (all in good fun, I hope).

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Posted in Business, Design / Production

Scheduled Bonuses vs. Other Morale Boosters

Posted on October 30, 2006 by | 6 comments

I’m subscribed to a producers’ mail list that recently hosted a discussion about the pros and cons of milestone-related monetary bonuses for employees. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were a broad variety of opinions. I thought it might be interesting to share some quotes (plus my own thoughts, of course!)

There appeared to be consensus on the long-term ineffectivness of this type of bonus. A number of well-known research studies [example] have had similar conclusions. All the more interesting, then, that this form of compensation remains widely in-use (not just in the video game industry, but many others as well.) Comments from the list:

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Posted in Business, Design / Production

AGC – Casual Games and Community

Posted on September 10, 2006 by | Comments Off on AGC – Casual Games and Community

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

Snakes on a Plane

Posted on August 21, 2006 by | 1 comment

A big debate has been brewing for months now, and this weekend marked the event that will finally blow the lid off that debate. I’m not talking about “PS3 vs. Xbox 360” — partisans in that fight won’t rest anytime soon. I’m talking about the debut of Snakes on a Plane, the movie that bloggers (and a few media scholars) love to talk about, and cynics love to trash. There are lessons here for the game industry.

Intro to Snakes on a Plane

A brief recap, for those of you who aren’t familiar with this. Snakes on a Plane features Samuel L. Jackson, in a story so silly that as soon as bloggers got wind of it, they began gleefully making parodies and hailing the movie as the upcoming camp hit of the year. Makers of the movie (including Jackson) were probably not initially intending to create a camp hit, but when they realized what was happening, they did something relatively unusual in Hollywood: they adapted their marketing efforts (and even the movie itself) to conform to the camp expectations of the blogosphere.

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Posted in Business, Design / Production, Marketing / PR

Organizational Processes

Posted on August 17, 2006 by | 1 comment

One thing that seems to be neglected at a fair number of game companies is the tuning of organizational processes (OP for short). OP relates to a wide variety of issues, including but not limited to: organizational structure, decision-making, corporate politics and culture, incentives and goal-setting, hierarchy, hiring, etc. Tuning OP isn’t simply a question of implementing, monitoring, or enforcing policies. and it is relevant to all managers, not merely HR professionals.

Unfortunately, I could write a few more paragraphs and you still might wonder what I was yammering about. So instead, I’ve decided to list some of my favorite readings from my old OP bschool course and summarize them for you. Hopefully, it will be immediately apparent why this stuff is useful! (Unfortunately, none of the readings are available for free — some are books, and some have to be purchased from Harvard for a few bucks.)

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Posted in Business, Design / Production

Debating the Long Tail

Posted on August 14, 2006 by | 1 comment

As some of you may be aware, a rather heated debate over the significance and validity of Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory has erupted over the past couple of months. (For those of you unfamiliar with it, the Long Tail theory dictates that “our culture and economy is shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of ‘hits’ at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail.”)

The debate started with an article by Lee Gomes in the Wall Street Journal, which vigorously questions some of Anderson’s assertions. I’d characterize myself as a believer in the Long Tail (especially as it relates to digital content) but not necessarily a supporter of everything Anderson has to say on the subject. As such, I appreciated Gomes’ article. Some highlights:

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Posted in Business, Marketing / PR, Social / Cultural, User-Generated Content

In Defense of Episodic Content, Again

Posted on July 17, 2006 by | 10 comments

Last week, the ever-outspoken Mark Rein (VP, Epic Games) publicly attacked the viability of episodic gaming. His arguments, while somewhat emotional, were nevertheless a bit different from those I’ve heard in the past, which leads me to write yet another defense of this emerging business model. The first of Rein’s arguments:

Customers are supposed to buy half a game for $20, then wait six months for an episode? When I put a game down, I want to try a new one. Episodic games that offer faster turnaround will inevitably be using a lot of recycled content, walking through the same environments and shooting the same enemies with the same weapons.

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Posted in Business

The Cost of Turnover

Posted on June 29, 2006 by | 1 comment

When it comes to turnover, game companies tend to look extremely good or extremely bad — there’s not much middle ground. This speaks to both the passionate nature of game developers, and the merciless development schedules (and/or questionable employment practices) of some companies. So, for those struggling with high turnover, I thought I’d write a little story. What’s it cost you when an unhappy employee (who could have been happy with better compensation, hours, and/or working environment) leaves your company?

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Posted in Business