Business

Everything video games business related (are there any other kind? ;))

And if you actually got that, we should totally meet. I have no idea what the Tank or Healer is, but I am probably both those guys?
In addition to my intended post this week, I wanted to throw in an important note. I will be going to San Fransisco (which, as a note, is literally half a world away) to talk about, show and play Cloudbuilt. So, let’s babble a bit to justify this as a “Life Note”. It’s the first time to the Americas, I’ve been looking forward to going to GDC for years now and… yeah. It’ll be great. But I don’t run a blog to talk about my life (I’ll save that for my retirement, if the world cares… hah, who am I kidding, this is the Internet!), and I don’t post this just to express happiness. I want to reach out for finding meetings. I would love chatting with press, of course: Being a small indie studio, making news is our best option. We make news only by having a cool game. And do we have a cool game! Which of course is super-subjective, and I of anybody have some kind of self-interest to claim so; but, honestly, having played the game for months I still find it fun to try new challenges and revised levels. But, hey, don’t take my word for it […]

Life-note: Going to GDC, looking for meetings

 in Business / Life-note / Note  tagged Cloudbuilt / game play / gaming / GDC13 / san fransisco by
Rawr!
In the wake of the release of Aliens: Colonial Marines, the debate about previews re-surfaced. Total Halibut made a 20-minite case for why previews are anti-consumer and generally hurts the industry. Jim Sterling of the Jimquisition made a very verbal case, as well, calling profilic developers “liars”. A colleague linked the latter, whereon I decided to write a post about it. Not having thought as much about this topic in advance as I did for last week’s Violence in Video Games, I had to do some research. And I found this is kind of a thorny topic, but one well worth investigating. After these two videos, surely we can claim lock-in previewing a bad game on false premises is a problem. Let’s begin by finding the source of  and, rather than focus on what the gaming press or consumers can do to solve it, which Halibut and Jim seems to have done so well, let’s focus on what the games business can do itself. Disclaimer: All opinions in this article are my own, and not necessarily those of Coilworks as a whole. I may have a voice, but I’m just one voice. I will not dictate what we think, but […]

On Pre-orders

 in Business / On Things in Games  tagged aliens colonial marines / business model / gaming / lean / long-term value / positioning / preorders / videogames by
Wow, what a week! Last weekend, we at Coilworks uploaded an announcement trailer for our game Cloudbuilt. A colleague expressed an expectaton of at least 500 views, which I found optimistic. We had worked hard on the promotion for Ovelia: The Wake, reaching just a few hundred, so how would we reach that when most videos on youtube reach next to no-one? Oh, how wrong we turned out to be.

Finally, Breakthrough

 in Business / Life-note / On Things in Games by
The European Court was recently requested by the German federal court to answer the following questions (shortened for readability, full quotes can be found through sources liked at the bottom): 1.      Is the person who can rely on exhaustion of the right to distribute a copy of a computer program a “lawful acquirer”? 2.      If ‘yes’: is the right to distribute a copy of a computer program exhausted […] when the acquirer has made the copy with the rightholder’s consent by downloading the program from the internet onto a data carrier? 3.      If 2 is “yes”: can a person who has acquired a “used” software licence for generating a program copy as “lawful acquirer” […] also rely on exhaustion of the right to distribute the copy of the computer program made by the first acquirer with the rightholder’s consent by downloading the program from the internet onto a data carrier if the first acquirer has erased his program copy or no longer uses it? In which the reply was (again, in shortened form): 1.     … the right of distribution of a copy of a computer program is exhausted if the copyright holder who has authorised … a right to use that copy for […]

Initial Thoughts on Second-hand Sales Rulings

 in Business / Opinion by
My old university pal, and newly-become level designer at Coilworks, had prepared. With a pal, he’d bought energy drinks, pop corn and potato chips to survive a long night of E3 pre-conference briefings. They were both very prepped up for it – their excitement was notable – as they awaited the first conference… At the university game dev club, a few-year-old tradition of gathering for the briefings was about to take place. Like how Swedes gathered (and, to some degree, still gather) around the television at 3 PM every Christmas Eve for Disney cartoons, these 20-odd gamers gathered to follow their Cristmas… They were expecting cool new games. Sequels to long-hibernated series of old and a lot of entertaining quotes to shake things up. They were excited about this like kids are excited about Christmas. When I left said level designer today, after the media briefings were over, they were very dissapointed. Almost a bit crushed. The briefings hadn’t been like they expected at all. Rather than getting the presents they wished for, they got all of those things you know you should thank for but really didn’t want in the first place. Like games that weren’t for them. Or […]

E3 – what it is, and what gamers want it ...

 in Business by
When doing these “thinking”-posts, it’s usually about a thought that just arrived in my head and which I have to print down quickly. This one has gnawed on my head for awhile – education kind of does that to you. For those finding this via Google, this won’t be a definition rather than an exploration. This piece will cover what the game, in itself, is, and sometimes touch what the medium is, but I don’t intend to cover what play is or what gaming is. A video game, as far as I’ve been thinking, is in a position in the middle of a Venn-diagram of four areas: Games, Culture, Technology and Business. I’ll explain them in that order, even though they all affect each another.

Thinking: What is a video game?

 in Business / Culture / On Things in Games by
It was way too long since last time I wrote, so it’s getting time to write again. I’m in the middle of something like four parallel school-projects at the time, so that’s one important reason I haven’t written as much as I should have to consider this thing “active”. Anyway, I thought I’d bang my head a bit on a really hard nut to crack: File-sharing, specifically the illegal branch of it, and how it can be dealt with. Note that I’m making a stand saying “deal with”, and another by not using the word “Piracy”. I’ll come to why later on. So, File-sharing, or – as this text will focus on – the illegal file-sharing not followed by payment to the creator. It is very accepted among those I know of, and seems to be fairly accepted on the ‘net, as well. So it will probably, in some twisted way, be controversial of me to argue against it. And I risk breaking the radio-silence I’ve preferred to move around in with this blog (to keep expectations and problems away). But, as I want to do this for a living in the future, it will be vital you can make […]

Thinking: File-sharing and selling

 in Business / Opinion by