29th July 2010 by julien
Games as services – What can we learn from Guinness?
Thomas recently went to the LOGIN and Develop conferences to give a talk about “Games as Services” (you can find the slides here), and one of the core messages of this presentation is that the games themselves are not the only thing that matter, and that good services around a bad game can still create success. A great example of this concept can be found just accross the corner from where I live: in the world-famous Guinness brewery in Dublin.
Tags: Dublin, Game as a Service, Guinness, Pub, steam
Posted in Events, ICO Partners
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)9th June 2009 by Diane
Sequels and branching
When you promote a service model, well, fans become disappointed if you stray away from that model. Splitting the community and support is the real issue here, not refusing to pay for additional content. It’s true for any multiplayer game, and it’s why sequels are such a problem in MMOs, where many sequels have struggled to surpass their predecessor. Generally you just divide and weaken when you think you’ll bring new blood.
Graphical updates, like Runescape or EVE Online did, or Ankama is preparing for Dofus, seem much wiser to make a game look younger. Whatever is done, the persistent elements are crucial – database and communityhave more value to the players than improved graphics, new maps, or new features, and if you branch in a separate sequel, you’ll have to rebuild all that from scratch, no easy task even with the strength of the IP you’ve built.
Posted in Events, ICO Partners
(3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)16th December 2008 by Diane
News roundup – 16/12/08
Various bits from different sources – some of them are a bit old, but then we just opened the blog 
:
- November Steam Hardware Survey (which is skewed towards “gamers” system in comparison to general PC user base)- shows DX10 system (DX10 capable GPU + Vista) accounts for 21% of Steam user base – in progress, but DX8, 9 and older GPU systems are still the majority (54%). On the other hand, multi-core is now majoritary (60%, with 10% quad-core).
- Speaking of Steam, the new beta version is integrating an in-game web browser. It’s good to see that multi-tasking is now embraced more and more. It looks better than Rogue, but less adavanced than PlayXpert (but they have all the other Steam features they can integrate with).
- Is the VC model broken? (It’s been published a while ago, but still interesting to watch. Can it mean an opportunity for the few cash-rich publishers to play a bigger role in funding?). Also, don’t miss Jussi’s and Adam’s article about online-game related VC investment defying dowturn in October.
- Street Fighter HD designer reveals console patch frustration. He states that it’s ok because SF is an old game and very little testing was required, but otherwise he would have been forced to test it on PC…
Posted in Events, ICO Partners
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