Birdmen and the Casual Fallacy - The Diigo Meta page

• 11 Feb 09
  

  Joshua Macy
  • The game industry was, and still is,
    distinctively hardcore. They generate their profits from
    sequels and big blockbuster games. The developers are all
    hardcore. The publishers are generally hardcore as well.
    
    
    
    When a hardcore gamer looks at a
    hardcore game, he sees sophistication, magnificence,
    and, most important, art as if it were a mirror image
    facing him. When a hardcore gamer looks as a casual game, he
    sees simplicity, non-art, easiness, and, in
    sum, a retardation of gaming. Hardcore view casual
    games not as progress in gaming but as games tailor made for
    gaming retards.
    
• 23 Jul 08
  

  Ricky Yean

  ALP Social Gaming Research

  • which is
    why Blizzard puts on any business contract that its
    developers will be free to make the games they want
  • ”People buy Nintendo and Blizzard games because of their
    franchise worlds.” But other third party games have as rich
    of a franchise world. “Nintendo and Blizzard have the money
    to delay their games and perfect them. Most third parties do
    not have that luxury.” While this is true, it raises the
    question as to how Nintendo and Blizzard got to where they
    are. They started small like everyone else and, at a time,
    also didn’t have the money.
  • 6 more annotations...
  • • Nintendo and companies like Blizzard use the Spiral where
      customer satisfaction is King. This leads to delays in
      production, projects pulled entirely, and constant testing.
      The result is a product that creates passionate users.
    • The third one, the question mark, is where the User is King.
      Many companies know their current ‘waterfall’ production
      based method has a future of rising costs and declining
      passion so they are turning to the Internet to make the User
      as King. These include episodic gaming as well as
      downloadable content. Will Wright is moving in this
      direction. The idea is that development cycles begin moving
      extremely fast as now the user is directly or indirectly
      involved. Companies are confusing the User as King to mean
      Customer Satisfaction is King.
    • The difference between Customer Satisfaction and letting the
      User in control is the matter of surprise which is critical
      in entertainment. It is ridiculous to ask your customers
      what surprises them.
    • High definition games are just pushing development more in
      the ‘waterfall’ model more due to the rising cost of art
      assets. With more emphasis on the production model, this
      will create less interesting games (and explains why the
      Industry got into a rut as development costs went up over
      the generations).
    • It should be noted that Nintendo
      focused their market research on non-active gamers including
      non-gamers and former gamers. Nintendo never aimed at
      capturing ‘casual gamers’ in the same context that birdmen
      speak today.
    • And these new gamers then swam
      upmarket
• 31 May 08
  

  Tony Westfall

  vgsales

Page Comments

• 
  Ricky Yean on 2008-07-23
  No, THIS IS...DISRUPTION!!!!

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