QUOTE | “These days it is impossible to ‘buy’ endorsements from influencers in a way that makes any economic sense. The videos where someone is paid to promote a game they aren’t passionate about don’t deliver the performance needed to justify repeat spend, and the influencer loses subs, so in the end everybody loses.” — Space Ape CEO Simon Hade says streamers and developers benefit most from greater collaboration.
QUOTE | “In 2016, we roughly saw 3.6m streamers going live in gaming, across all major networks, but less than 1% of this group have real access to monetisation. The networks’ partner programs often require significant viewer numbers, sponsorships are available only for the top one per cent of the one per cent.” — Loots co-founder and CEO Marc Fuehnen says the influencer ecosystem has grown too large to function properly as is.
QUOTE | “Today, we get retro games off of eBay or via used game stores. What are you going to do when the eShop or PSN or Xbox Live is shut down, and you want to play an old game? I have no idea.” — Yacht Club programmer David D’Angelo explains the Shovel Knight studio’s interest in the archival quality of physical games.
QUOTE | “Coming to the modern day, although we love that classic stuff, if you want to make a serious horror game, you need to have a natural dialogue.” — Resident Evil 7 director Koshi Nakanishi explains why the developers left a beloved staple of the series — dodgy English translations — on the sidelines for the latest instalment.
QUOTE | “We thought that if we did it in the right way, if we could convert even a tiny fraction of the billions of hours that we spend with games, that would mean a virtually limitless human computation engine for science.” — Massively Multiplayer Online Science founder Attila Szantner on the origins of a plan to crowdsource some scientific grunt work to players within EVE Online.
QUOTE | “People living with dementia are often confused and distressed. Rather than trying to bring them back to what we consider to be reality, it is better to live with them in the reality that they are in. A virtual experience is a way of taking them to a nice place from wherever they feel they currently are in a way that is actually far less stressful than taking them there in reality.” — TribeMix’s Alex Smale explains why he’s exploring the potential palliative effects VR can have on dementia sufferers.
QUOTE | “We believe that universally available healthcare is not only critical for the well-being of individual game developers, but also for the overall creative health of our industry.” — The IGDA asks its US members to contact their legislators and express support for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
STAT | $US30.3 ($40) billion — Total value of mergers and acquisitions in the games industry for 2016, according to Digi-Capital. That total was 77 per cent higher than the previous record, set in 2014.
STAT | 2.5 million – Lifetime sales total of Starbound. Developer Chucklefish began selling early access to the sci-fi adventure game in 2013, and officially launched it on Steam last July.
QUOTE | “The industry is fighting for market shares with rapidly increasing marketing budgets, the success of new games is increasingly difficult to predict.” — A statement from Goodgame Studios released after the casual developer laid off 200 workers. That followed a round of 400 job cuts Goodgame made last summer.
QUOTE | “We are excited to once again be working with the Avalanche team, who have a deep understanding of the Disney Pixar DNA, and a history of translating our stories into great gaming experiences.” — Disney senior VP of games Kyle Laughlin offers praise to a team Disney owned but shut down last year. Warner Bros. has since revived the studio and put it to work on an adaptation of Disney’s upcoming film Cars 3.
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