By Tom Ohle on Aug 31, 2010 in Marketing, Public Relations, Video Games
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Pitching a journalist may seem like a daunting task, even for seasoned public relations (PR) professionals. However, it’s an essential skill to learn. While press releases may be a vital weapon in a PR rep’s arsenal, they’re ultimately a rather passive way to secure media coverage, since you’re really just carpet-bombing media with a subject you hope that they’ll find interesting. To really improve chances of securing coverage for your...
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By Kyle Orland on Aug 31, 2010 in Business, Downloadable Content (DLC), Publishing
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Here at Game Theory, we’ve already discussed the topic of used games and their effect on the industry several times. But with a recent Penny Arcade cartoon and news post bringing the issue to the forefront of discussion yet again, we felt it was worth exploring some of the misconceptions about the market effects of used game sales.
Wednesday’s Penny Arcade comic refers to the used game market as “a kind of parallel economy.” This implies...
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By Trip Hawkins on Aug 30, 2010 in Apple, Digital Distribution, Mobile Games
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Western fascination with the iPhone has invigorated the mobile games and content market, but here are ten things that must happen for mobile to fulfill its enormous destiny:
1. It’s About the Mobile Web
The principles that have made the World Wide Web such a huge success have to be enabled on mobile networks and devices. This includes innovative and healthy content supply chains, social value, viral spread, viral discovery, free trial, and having a variety of...
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By Adrian Crook on Aug 30, 2010 in Game Design, Game Development, MMO Games
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Whether you’re making a casual massively multiplayer online (MMO) game like Maple Story or a virtual world like Habbo Hotel, here are 10 ways to remove game-killing barriers to entry and create the largest possible addressable market.
1. Free to Play
The Free to Play business model is here to stay – and growing every day. In an entertainment world filled with endless choices, asking someone to pony up $50 before they can play a game is rapidly...
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By Kyle Orland on Aug 30, 2010 in Business, Console, Microsoft
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In recent years, there has been no shortage of game developers leaving PC exclusivity behind because of the threat of piracy. It’s not hard to see why, with overall PC game piracy rates north of 70% according to some estimates (and running even higher for some individual games), making it hard for even the biggest games to make money on the platform. Consider that Modern Warfare 2 was both the best-selling game of 2009 on consoles (pushing 11.86 million units...
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By Doug Dyer on Aug 30, 2010 in Business, Free Games, iPhone and iPad
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Last week a friend and well-respected recruiter in the gaming industry asked me to send over an updated resume for his files. Immediately I received a reply which counseled me that, if I’m ever back out into the job market, I’d need to remove the mention of “mobile” from my CV and find suitable replacement terminology. “Use terms like ‘apps’, ‘casual games’ ‘DLC’ and ‘social’ wherever possible,” he recommended.
Having been a fixture...
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By Blake Snow on Aug 27, 2010 in Game Design, Game Development, Kinect
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You don’t have to own a Wii to appreciate the fact that traditional controllers have become unnecessarily complex. Both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 gamepads have 17 depressible buttons. Yes, you read that right – 17 buttons.* Having been a gamer for 23 years now, even yours truly has to momentarily pause sometimes to keep them all straight. As a result of the controller clutter, unseasoned players are thrown to the wolves, something many...
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By Chris Ulm on Aug 27, 2010 in Apple, Convergence, Disruptive Tech
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Part 1 – App TV: The Everything Box
The living room right now is a no man’s land of standards and cables, universally poor and inconsistent user interfaces, huge numbers of channels, multiple boxes of hardware, hated cable companies, and multiple video game systems, each with its own proprietary hardware and expensive software. TV needs a revolution, exactly the same way that smartphones did — and it’s going to happen beginning this year. But...
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By Chris Ulm on Aug 27, 2010 in Apple, Convergence, Digital Distribution
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Click Here for Part 1 of How and Why App TV Will Disrupt the Console Game Industry
As an industry, video games are at an inflection point as economic, technological and social trends are coming together to disrupt the way we develop, sell and build games. These trends will remake the console business in ways both expected and unexpected.
Movies vs. TV
The underlying force that is driving all of this change is convenience and low cost.
In fact, the tsunami...
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By Tom Ohle on Aug 26, 2010 in Marketing, Public Relations
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Frustration is a natural byproduct of modern life — for a lot of us, human existence in the 21st century is just an endless, stressful race to the top, and we’re bound to slip over the edge into complete insanity once in a while. One of the first lessons we learn in business, though, is to not let one’s emotions take control; frustrated as you may be, you should be taking time to think about the long-term implications of any outburst. “Will this come...
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