captain-obvious
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GDC Online 2012: CCP on keeping players cheaply
Sandboxes get a lot of flak in today's themepark-dominated MMO industry. That said, sandbox developers who do it right will be laughing all the way to bank, according to CCP senior designer Matthew Woodward. Woodward recently gave a talk at GDC Online titled The Other White Meat: Design Architecture for Sandbox Games. The presentation focused on the three pillars used by the firm to power its long-running EVE Online MMORPG. Woodward stressed social aspects, goals and goal-driven players, and most importantly, emergent gameplay. "The big win is that emergence is cheap. A lot of emergent gameplay discussion is about the One Big Moment. In EVE, the big heist that happened six years ago, in Ultima Online, the assassination of Lord British," Woodward explained. "If you do this well, people will play your game forever. People will pay for it forever." Massively sent two plucky game journalists -- Beau Hindman and Karen Bryan -- to Austin, Texas, for this year's GDC Online, where they'll be reporting back on MMO trends, community theory, old favorites, and new classics. Stay tuned for even more highlights from the show!
Stop the press: Gaming grows up with demographic
Reuters informs that gamers born before the first Bush administration aren't all suffering from Peter Pan syndrome -- game systems are growing up with them. 37 percent of adults own a gaming console and 16 percent own a portable gaming device according to Nielson/NetRatings. Of those, 71 percent are married and 66 percent have at least one child.According to Reuters, analysts predicted the Wii did well because adult gamers wanted to introduce their children to gaming. These "Nintendads" helped sell a lot of units. Oh please, "Nintendads" wanted the Wii for themselves. The kid was just the add-on peripheral excuse that allowed the wife to let them purchase the console.Beyond Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are clearly fighting it out for an adult focused media hub. Although neither is succeeding in making that all-in-one unit, we don't really care, as long as they focus on the games. All we know is as this "Nintendad" generation takes control, we'll see a significant decline in silly game legislation.
Captain Obvious: UMD price drop brings huge sales
After taking a few weeks off, Captain Obvious is back with some news on the recent Warner Bros. UMD movie price drop in Japan -- you see they dropped their little movies to 980 yen or about $8.50 for us Yanks -- and listen, it's positive. Well, it depends on how you define positive. After UMD movie sales seemed to suffer over the past few months, the peeps at Warner Bros. decided to run a promotion where for a "limited time," their movies would be available for that low price your 'Cap mentioned above. Apparently, in Japan, limited time means forever, as Warner Bros. decided to make that price drop permanent. The result? An increase in sales that boomed to ten times past previous sales numbers. Now, what does the Captain have to do to get the U.S. some UMD price drop love? We'd like to call out to other studios and demand a price drop ASAP! What do you have to lose?
