This Week In The Business: Don’t Give The Market What It Wants

This Week In The Business: Don’t Give The Market What It Wants

“I would love to make a game that everyone loves, but at the same time I wouldn’t want to compromise and just give the market what it wants. We could all make first-person shooters, but we have a much more exciting industry with people exploring different routes.” — Quantic Dream’s David Cage accepts that his work will be polarising.

QUOTE | “At the time of writing this blog post, five days after the reveal, the Nintendo Switch reveal video on YouTube had 17m views; the Battlefield 1 reveal trailer had 22m views over the same time period.” — ICO Partners’ Thomas Bideaux tallies the press coverage from the Switch announcement and determines Nintendo’s new platform reveal was good, but not great.

QUOTE | “Someone died playing Pokémon Go because they walked off a cliff. If the developer cared about people’s lives, they would never have placed a location icon that you have to be within five meters to collect next to a cliff.” — Candy Labs CEO Andrew Couch says developers making location-based games need to consider real-world locations beyond what they see on Google Maps.

QUOTE | “Sometimes when the player sees something on the screen, they think it’s final. It has beautiful graphics. It’s done. But it’s not that simple. Game development means that you spend much more time polishing the product than actually creating the content.” — Tequila Works CEO Raúl Rubio admits the studio probably tipped its hand with Rime too soon by showing it at Gamescom 2013.

QUOTE | “Remember that this is a two-way street, a platform for engagement that goes both ways. To approach it as simply another communication vehicle for getting your message to your target audience is to miss the point altogether!” — XSplit program manager Victor “Spooky” Fontanez offers advice for developers on the best approaches to livestreaming.

QUOTE | “The payment allows us to ensure that we have dedicated staff manning the PlayStation VR pods who have been fully trained to adhere to best practice demo guidelines.” — UK retailer GAME explains why it has been charging customers £5 to £15 to demo PlayStation VR in its stores for up to half an hour.

STAT | 90 — The approximate number of developers laid off from German publisher Gameforge this week as it abandons mobile gaming.

STAT | 40 — The approximate number of developers laid off from German publisher Wooga this week as it abandons core gaming. The layoffs included the closure of its core-focused studio Black Anvil Games.

QUOTE | “At Bethesda, we value media reviews.” — The opening paragraph of a Bethesda blog post explaining why they will no longer be providing the media with early copies of games to review.

QUOTE | “It’s not about a lack of respect for these people. My committee loves these people and appreciates the work that they do. They’re incredibly talented. The problem we have is that their position doesn’t fit in with this industry.” — Scott Witlin, a lawyer representing a number of large publishers that are the target of a strike by SAG-AFTRA voice actors, argues why voice actors should not receive residual payments for their work.

QUOTE | “We are willing to stay out as long as it takes — not only the performers, but the union itself.” — SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris, speaking at the first of a series of planned picket lines at the offices of the publishers the union is on strike against.


The Cheapest NBN 1000 Plans

Looking to bump up your internet connection and save a few bucks? Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Kotaku, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments


One response to “This Week In The Business: Don’t Give The Market What It Wants”