Happy New Year - here is whats up ...

2018 was a year full of travel. You will have access to most of my talks which were taped. I also published the ones online for download. So what's coming 2019?

I am busy with two large clients so I actually stopped taking new ones - but I do have partners I can recommend working for you. So don't worry.

I will also cut down my conference visits as I am starting my own mobile game project soon. Watch this space as soon as we can talk about it.

The next conference up is White Nights Berlin. I will talk about the "Lost Art of Immersion on Mobile". Something completely different but its a topic by heart.
The only other conference fixed so far is Devcom right before Gamescom. I do not know if I go to GiC or Digital Dragons in Poland yet - we will see. GDC USA isn't a place for me since years, although I have been on the first 10 since it started (yes, 1988 onwards) and triple-A and console aren't much for me these days although I am helping on a AAA f2p title at the moment. There is also the fact that the advisory board of GDC USA keeps ignoring my submissions, which is strange to experience when most other conferences fight about me but GDC isn't. Well, their loss.

So, if I visit other conferences which topic would you love to see? Let me know. I have covered so many that I might have lost track what you want to hear or learn about.

Coming up: Devcom/Gamescom

I will be attending Devcom and Gamescom next week, speaking about general rules of F2P games and pitching a game - for the first time since years. Schedule is filling up, nice.

If you want to attend my talk:

https://devcom2017.sched.com/event/BL8J

See you there!

The gaming industry and you

I am kinda famous in Germany, but not because I shipped top 10 hits, simply because I do this job since a long time and shipped 100+ games, some of them I won't even tell - those are my skeletons in the closet .

So therefore I got a lot of "friends" on Facebook who either read or ignore whatever troll post I publish. I know who my close friends in the industry are, and I also know that many don't like me simply because I polarize a lot. This is basically part of my self promotion: instead objectively publishing analyses about theories I do talks which are a little bit more - lets say - demagogue.

Why? Simply because it gets people to think than to get bored about numbers and careful statements. That's all I want.

Recently I went into fights with 2 industry colleges on Facebook on 2 different occasions. On one case he simply attacked the f2p business model aggressively in a way which I don't even know from him.

The other case I simply posted that the writers of magazines & blogs should at some point return the favor when they find newsworthy things on my wall (which happens more than I thought it was). One of them attacked that post in a way which I never have seen him - emotionally, aggressively - even damaging to both of us.

On Gamescom I met them both. The journalist surprised me as we simply talked about other hobbies and we both realized that we are pretty much nerds alike. He was building tank models like I did - something which I never thought of him doing. This somehow gave us common ground and a better understanding of each other.

The other one was totally changed and we talked about one of his upcoming titles which gets excellent previews so far and he simply said "email me, I send you one". Maybe a peace gift, but I see it simply as "maybe we both went too far - lets get over with it".

All I want to say is "I am sorry" - next time we should simply clarify things one on one instead publicly fighting about the small things. There are more important things than to fight each other.

Thanks to you two, you know who you are.

My GDC Europe 2013 talk is online

GDC 2013 vault opened today and my talk "Getting past pay to win" is among the free content. Check it out here:

http://www.gdcvault.com/free/gdc-europe-13 for a list of all talks

and

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1019236/Getting-Past-Pay-to

for mine. Enjoy!

Gamescom is behind us

Gamescom is exciting for me as I meet all industry friends easily within one location. I rarely go to that show to check out new games as websites do a much better job giving me all information I need (check out HD Titanfall trailers, or Watchdogs, even better, awesome!)

But some players need to wait for hours to peek at a new game for 5 minutes. Wtf. People. Why does Gamescom use that system to filter people (I know age rating). There were 340.000 visitors this year. Awesome record!

But less than 5000 can be jiggled through your lanes waiting for the games presentation, assuming you can get 50 people per 30 minute presentation all day long.

That is a huge price you pay for your booth to get only a fraction of the audience. 1.7%. One point seven! It is time to rethink the game show concept I believe.

Source: http://www.gamezone.de

Sony share value during XBox One presentation

Without words:

Full Steam Ahead

Steam is market leader on downloadable PC games. Without steam you only do a fraction on digital sales on PC. The problem was that you had to ask Valve for permission and their review process is a mystery. When they say no - it meant no. No chance of reversal.

So Valve changed the way products enter steam and put the power into the hands of the community. YOU can now decide which game comes on steam. Well, most of the time.

Steam rejected an erotica game from Greenlight and then put a $100 fee on games which want to get published to hinder crap entering the system.

That still reminds me how console development works. You need some sort of control over content, otherwise your platform turns into a dirtpile.

That sex is not ok on steam but ultra violence is - that is an entirely American tragedy comedy.

Sequelitis - bad or worse

Strange that Assassins Creed got criticized by having too many sequels. I have to agree 100% with Alex when he says that yearly sequels are ok, hell, I would even buy Assassins Creeds if they come every 6 months.

But what does make a sequel good for publishers? First it is a return of investment. If you got a blockbuster its easier and cheaper to develop the sequel as usually the tools and technology only needs upgrades - not a rewrite.

Also the risk is less as the sequel should sell nearly as well as the original right? Well from blockbuster data I have seen sequels actually outperform the originals - that happened to Call of Duty - Modern Warfare.

Speaking of CoD: they are milking the franchise even more by having alternativing teams on the IP. Not too bad either if they can deliver the experience and quality. I bought Black Ops and it was worse than the earlier ones. Did it hurt sales? Nope. So it seems that one title in a series with slightly less quality doesn't hurt your sequel plans - delivering multiple bad sequels does.

My question is wether a brand can be over saturated and destroyed. On this Gamescom Ubisoft anounced three Might & Magic titles at once. Customers might get confused but on the other hand each title adresses a different audience. While Might & Magic Heroes Online adresses the fans from the original the Champions card game is more casual (good for iPads?) and the dungeon runner adresses a slightly younger action RPG crowd. I am curious how those titles work out.

So: if you love a game series how much sequels would you manage to buy each year? One? Two? Or even more?

*Disclaimer: The above is Teut's personal opinion - none of this is official Ubisoft policy or statement

GC day two

I actually didn't go to GC on day two simply because the public area can be walked in two hours (which I did wednesday see previous post).

The business center  is as usual the most interesting part for industry progessionals but I preferred working on my mails and reports instead.

But I attended the wargaming.net party - which was a blast. I was home at 3:30am :)

Highlight: life performance by LMFAO. That act must have cost a fortune but the party was IMBA. As usual the best party in town, thanx Tom for the invitation!

The Anno and HMMO anouncements rippled through the internet and fueled a lot of discussions. Fans think that only because UBI does an Anno f2p game they stop developing retail versions. The fans might be wong right there.

Silly along those lines are statements from Electronic Arts where they claim that they will never give up retail and on the other hand claiming they will be 100% digital sometime soon.
This clearly shows that while some territories are moving to a digital markt fast (while others are already there like Asia), some territories want to stick to retail as long as possible.On the other hand maybe they release those statements only to calm down panicking retail chains.

My opinion: a flood can't be stopped by hoping the tide will change. 100% digital is strong (see iPhone app store) and has advantages for publishers and customers. Retail will be small in a few years.

GC Day one

GDC last day wednesday is problematic as Gamescom opens its doors as well. So some talks do not attract enough developers but the organizers made sure some highlights were scheduled on that day to fill the rooms.

So I walked GC as this was the only day I had time and I was shocked. A lot of room was left empty, some halls had wide highways free - so large was the distance between the booths. So what happened? Besides Nintendo & Microsoft not attending or having booths I guess the transition years shows its toll. The publishers have less revenue from the old console generation and the new one isn't here yet.
GC mirrors this. The show was clearly either online games or games with heavy community relations like League of Legends, World of Warcraft or Diablo.

On wednesday Ubisoft also had its press conference and finally anounced the projects I had the honor to work on with some of the best teams in Ubisoft Blue Byte in the free to play business. So here they are:

Anno Online - register for closed beta
Heroes of Might & Magic Online - register here for closed beta

So with these:
Silent Hunter Online
The Settlers Online

we will have 4 f2p browser games online
4 projects in 2 years. Growth  from 50 to 200 people. What can I say? Online games change the world.

GDC Day two

Day two had less exciting talks for me personally but the feedback from people I talked to showed that some really good speakers were around.

My goal was to network on that day and I met mostly old friends of the industry and some new ones. Rarely* did I encounter someone who was not working on a f2p title, be it browser, mobile or client. If developers jump ship from the "old retail" when will the world stop buying them?
*Regional differences apply.

The evening was plastered with parties and I followed the latest trend of GDC this year: party skipping. So I went home, played a bit Eve Online (50 kills, yes baby!) and watched Fringe with my wife.

GDC Europe - day one

So I walked into sessions which I thought are interesting. You never know: many sessions end up in rants how cool the speaker or his company are.

So I was surprised to end up in a talk - the first one by Jared Psigoda (Reality Squared Games) - which was very good. I learned a lot about the Chinese MMO market and also gained insights how westerners are looking at it and vice versa - as the presenter was American working in China since a decade. Details later. Best talk so far!

The next talks were exactly what I feared. DICE ceo had a talk how cool they are. Nothing learned - no knowledge transfer. But he was level designer in 1998 and now is CEO of Dice. See? You can have careers!

World of Tanks CEO was funny. For a Russian he did pretty awesome jokes on the industry but after 50% he lost it and of course said how cool World of Tanks is blah blah. Nevertheless he gets my sympathy bonus.

Then I ended up in a f2p companies talk which was 20% on topic and 80% "This is how f2p works". Not learned much here but it gave me enough reflection in my work that I had 2-3 ideas I emailed myself to put onto ToDo (I email myself ToDo's)

At least I ended up following a new trend on GDC's: skipping the parties. So I drove home and have a nice evening instead talking to the same people every year. I will see you all tomorrow guys!

GDC Europe and Gamescom

So it is this week again. Networking, meeting all friends in the industry, exchanging gossip and latest news (Business cards) and see where the industry is heading.

I try to post a summary as soon as the parties are done ;)

Cheers!