This Week In The Business: It’s Anybody’s Game

This Week In The Business: It’s Anybody’s Game

QUOTE | “If we need games for 10-year olds do we need to hire 10-year olds to make games? If I can’t make a game for someone else I’m a shitty designer.” – Laralyn McWilliams, veteran game designer, explaining why hearing ‘If we want more games for women we need more women in game development’ annoys her.

Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week …

STAT | $US7.85 million — Amount that Activision CEO Bobby Kotick received as a bonus for 2013, which is added to his base salary of $US2.1 million; he also received $US55.92 million in stock spread over five years starting in 2012.

QUOTE | “I think it’s opening a curtain on what maybe people don’t realise they’re doing when they’re making games.” — Meggan Scavio, GM of GDC, talking about the Advocacy track at GDC and how it’s dealing with many serious issues.

STAT | 42 per cent — Amount that hardware sales at US retail stores in February exceeded those in February 2013; software sales (including PC games) declined 11%, and the Xbox One sold around 90% of what the PS4 sold.

QUOTE | “To get that kind of feedback is what pushes you through those last crazy, hectic months.” – Respawn community manager Abbie Heppe, talking about how the company was “a bit overwhelmed” by Titanfall‘s reception.

STAT | $US7.6 billion — Valuation put on Candy Crush Saga maker King by the target of $US21 to $US24 per share the company has placed on its IPO shares; when King was expecting to make its IPO in September the valuation would have been $US5 billion.

QUOTE | “Our strategy is now to make more focused online games with budgets of around $US3-5 million initial investment.” — Funcom CEO Ole Schreiner, talking about how the company is trying to bounce back from a police investigation into stock market manipulation.

QUOTE | “We have 40 or 50 thousand applications from users to become content contributors.” – Thor Fridriksson, Plain Vanilla CEO, talking about the massive success of the mobile game QuizUp.

STAT | Six million — Number of copies sold so far of Sony’s The Last of Us for the PlayStation 3; there are strong hints of a sequel under way and developer Naughty Dog is working on a movie with Sam Raimi and Ghost House Pictures.

QUOTE | “Running a successful independent mobile games studio has become an increasingly complex challenge during the past two years.” — Limbic CEO Arash Keshmirian, talking about leveraging the new rewards-based loyalty program for mobile games, founded by former GameStop executive Steve Nix.

This Week in the Business courtesy of GamesIndustry International
Image by Kiselev Andrey Valerevich [Shutterstock]


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