“We’re looking at it as kind of the Navy SEALs of game development training.” — Veteran game designer and director Warren Spector, talking about the new academic program he’s creating at the University of Texas in Austin.
Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week …
QUOTE | “It’s a good lesson for the indies out there — when the business is hard, trust the players.” – David Chomard of Little Worlds Studios, talking about their “Kickfailer” effort to save their studio by getting fans to contribute.
QUOTE | “There’s been such a gold rush for free-to-play right now that is driving… developers like us to focus on money instead of making great game content.” — Ted Morris, executive producer at Petroglyph, talking about why game publishing should be driven by fun and not sales.
QUOTE | “Without creating healthy independent game companies, then we’re going to constantly be in the same rut… seeing the same stuff over and over again.” — Versus Evil general manager Steve Escalante, talking about what it’s like to publish indies in the self-publishing era.
STAT | 2.2 per cent — Percentage of free-to-play mobile game users who ever pay anything for the games, according to Swrve; some 46 per cent of the revenue came from only 0.22 per cent of the players and 53 per cent of spending happened in the first 7 days.
QUOTE | “We also have a number of other franchises that people may not typically think about as eSports opportunities.” — EA CEO Andrew Wilson, talking about the continuing growth in eSports and how some of EA’s non-sports titles have an opportunity there.
STAT | 70 per cent — Amount of connected Grand Theft Auto V players that use Grand Theft Auto Online, according to TakeTwo CEO Strauss Zelnick; GTA Online continues to generate revenue, and Zelnick calls it “the gift that keeps on giving.”
QUOTE | “It’s a double-edged sword. If you upset them or turn them off, you’re just not going to get anywhere.” — Bob Holtzman of Squad, talking about the importance of community to their game Kerbal Space Program.
QUOTE | “I don’t know if people really know exactly what they want. I guess that’s true of a lot of industries, but I mean this one in particular.” — IGDA head Kate Edwards, talking about what she’s trying to do with IGDA and some of the difficulties involved.
STAT | 5 to 10 million — Number of Oculus Rift sales that Wargaming CEO Victor Kislyi wants to see before supporting the platform; Kislyi also notes that 75 per cent of Wargaming’s 75 million players “will never, ever pay us a penny.”
QUOTE | “We don’t believe in virtual currency for kids.” — Sagi Schliesser, CEO of TabTale, talking about their approach to kid’s games and how they turn out 20 apps a month.
STAT | 425 million — Number of paid mobile downloads for Tetris; that doesn’t include the game’s free-to-play versions or the 70 million-plus boxed versions.
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