Cataclysm: First Month Report Card
It’s been a month now, so how’s Warcraft’s newest expansion turned out so far? Good, bad and ugly. Not necessarily in that order. So far, I’ve leveled two characters to 85 from 80, my Deathknight and Hunter. Both were in full ICC25 raid gear to start, so definitely a leg up (though not as much of one as I thought – more on that later). I’ve also leveled a troll druid 1-45 through the new outdoor zones and low-level dungeon changes. I’m probably a little bit harder on the grading than I should be, but when I see a 5 level, 5 dungeon, 7-8 outdoor zone expansion done in 20 months with a 130 person team… I don’t give much of a curve.
Microtransactions – We’re Doing It Wrong
For years, the game industry has talked about microtransactions. How it might be the savior of PC gaming. How it can “monetize” customers to the full potential. How it will widen the installed user base.
All these things might be true, if only it would be implemented properly.
What I’m Working On
Posted by Ilucide in Uncategorized on April 28th, 2010
Hey. We quasi-announced what I’m working on the other day. Hooray! More information in the months ahead, but for now, the information is right here: Trion Worlds announces SyFy action MMO.
On Film
Posted by Lyndro in Uncategorized on April 21st, 2010
It has always amazed me how similar the birth and growth of the video game industry is to the the birth and growth of film. For example I think there is a pretty solid parallel between the growth and consolidation of some of the bigger development houses and the introduction of the Studio System. Some of the more heated discussions about video games, violence and ratings in particular, resonate this relationship better than others. This is why I find Ebert’s Games Can Never Be Art article to be fairly ironic.
Taxation and Incentives
Posted by Ilucide in Uncategorized on April 13th, 2010
In a recent blog post on Freakonomics, Justin Wolfers talks about cherry-picking income distribution statistics, and the relative distribution of wealth in the US. Later in the article, he goes on to say that the top 0.5% (those above $632k annual income) earn 19.3% of all income. What I’m curious about are the incentives here.
Apple is Smart
Advertising these days is damned costly. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 blew 5x its production budget on advertising. Avatar spent $150 million on advertising. Apple themselves spend north of 450 million a year on advertising. But Apple gets a lot more advertising than they pay for. Every major news source is covering the iPad launch. They all covered the iPhone launch as well. The reviews are favorable, though somewhat without a target for the device’s role. So how does Apple get this much coverage on a product that no one has figured out exactly what use it’s going to fill?