This Week In The Business: Down On The Sickness

“Gaming disorder is characterised by a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behaviour, which may be online or offline, manifested by: 1) impaired control over gaming (e.g., onset, frequency, intensity, duration, termination, context); 2) increasing priority given to gaming to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other life interests and daily activities; and 3) continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.” — An excerpt from the World Health Organization’s newly added ICD-11 entry on gaming disorders.

Image: Bury Me, My Love

QUOTE | “The evidence for [gaming disorder’s inclusion in the ICD-11] remains highly contested and inconclusive. We hope that the WHO will reconsider the mounting evidence put before them before proposing inclusion of gaming disorder in the final version of ICD-11 to be endorsed next year.” — A joint statement released by eight regional game industry trade organisations in response to the WHO’s acknowledgement of gaming disorders.

QUOTE | “There’s this special relationship you have with this little piece of technology that is always with you, it’s the first thing you look at in the morning and the last thing before you go to bed.” — Florent Maurin, CEO of Bury Me, My Love studio Pixel Hunt, explains why the studio chose to frame its mobile phone game as an exploration of another person’s mobile phone.

QUOTE | “You have to look at it from the perspective of what’s fair. Fair is the number one thing. When you buy a product from us, you should get full value for the money you spend. There should be a fair game economy in the game so you can’t pay to win. We don’t want you to be able to pay your way to be better than others. That’s important to us.” — EA chief design officer Patrick Söderlund discusses EA’s current thinking around loot boxes.

QUOTE | “If there was a recipe for doing this without those intense working hours, we would love to do that. But if you go around E3 and ask the biggest and best studios, if they tell you they are achieving it without additional working hours, it’s probably bullshit.” — CD Projekt CEO Marcin Iwiński clarifies his views on crunch after the Cyberpunk 2077 developer came under fire in reviews on recruitment site Glassdoor.

QUOTE | “The Westworld game is a blatant rip-off of Fallout Shelter.” — Bethesda Softworks, in a lawsuit against original Fallout Shelter developer Behaviour Interactive, which is currently making the Westworld game for Warner Bros.

STAT | 18.8 million — Number of YouTube views generated by Fallout 76 for the week of E3, more than any other game. The next most viewed game was Battlefield V, with 11 million views.

STAT | More than 2500 — Number of articles published about Fortnite during E3 2018 according to ICO Partners, more than any other game. The next most written about game was Fallout 76, with more than 2000.

QUOTE | “Better together” — The slogan of a new trailer for Minecraft on the Nintendo Switch, which allows players on Nintendo’s platform to play with those on Microsoft’s. It has been widely interpreted as a jab at Sony’s refusal to allow PS4 Fortnite accounts to work on Xbox One or Switch.

QUOTE | “Seems like everyone in US trying to censor us, whilst not explaining what exactly we are violating.” — Acid Software’s Ata Berdyev is upset that businesses like PayPal and Valve want nothing to do with the studio’s upcoming school shooting game Active Shooter.

QUOTE | “Everyone’s been saying that!” — A translator for Spike Chunsoft CEO Mitsutoshi Sakurai, when it was suggested Fire Pro Wrestling World would work well on the Nintendo Switch. She then translated Sakurai’s own response, “Switch? I’m sure we’ll consider it.”