2013/08/31

The gaming industry and you

I am kinda famous in Germany, but not because I shipped top 10 hits, simply because I do this job since a long time and shipped 100+ games, some of them I won't even tell - those are my skeletons in the closet .

So therefore I got a lot of "friends" on Facebook who either read or ignore whatever troll post I publish. I know who my close friends in the industry are, and I also know that many don't like me simply because I polarize a lot. This is basically part of my self promotion: instead objectively publishing analyses about theories I do talks which are a little bit more - lets say - demagogue.

Why? Simply because it gets people to think than to get bored about numbers and careful statements. That's all I want.

Recently I went into fights with 2 industry colleges on Facebook on 2 different occasions. On one case he simply attacked the f2p business model aggressively in a way which I don't even know from him.

The other case I simply posted that the writers of magazines & blogs should at some point return the favor when they find newsworthy things on my wall (which happens more than I thought it was). One of them attacked that post in a way which I never have seen him - emotionally, aggressively - even damaging to both of us.

On Gamescom I met them both. The journalist surprised me as we simply talked about other hobbies and we both realized that we are pretty much nerds alike. He was building tank models like I did - something which I never thought of him doing. This somehow gave us common ground and a better understanding of each other.

The other one was totally changed and we talked about one of his upcoming titles which gets excellent previews so far and he simply said "email me, I send you one". Maybe a peace gift, but I see it simply as "maybe we both went too far - lets get over with it".

All I want to say is "I am sorry" - next time we should simply clarify things one on one instead publicly fighting about the small things. There are more important things than to fight each other.

Thanks to you two, you know who you are.


2013/08/29

My GDC Europe 2013 talk is online

GDC 2013 vault opened today and my talk "Getting past pay to win" is among the free content. Check it out here:

http://www.gdcvault.com/free/gdc-europe-13 for a list of all talks

and

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1019236/Getting-Past-Pay-to

for mine. Enjoy!

Gamescom is behind us

Gamescom is exciting for me as I meet all industry friends easily within one location. I rarely go to that show to check out new games as websites do a much better job giving me all information I need (check out HD Titanfall trailers, or Watchdogs, even better, awesome!)

But some players need to wait for hours to peek at a new game for 5 minutes. Wtf. People. Why does Gamescom use that system to filter people (I know age rating). There were 340.000 visitors this year. Awesome record!

But less than 5000 can be jiggled through your lanes waiting for the games presentation, assuming you can get 50 people per 30 minute presentation all day long.

That is a huge price you pay for your booth to get only a fraction of the audience. 1.7%. One point seven! It is time to rethink the game show concept I believe.

Source: http://www.gamezone.de