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The Media is Reporting the Game Industry is Over: Why are They Such Babies Edition

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My posting continues to move at a glacial pace. For a while, there was nothing new to say. Then, all of sudden, the world exploded with new ideas and I had no time to write. I attribute the plethora of new ideas - things other than marketing gaffes, publishers' hosing of developers, the need for independent finance and the folks who are saying they have it or xBox becoming cable - as a reflection of increased sensitivity attributable to too much travel and too little sleep. But bubbles are growing, companies are reacting, and CEOs seem to be turning into either Chicken Little or ostriches with heads in the sand. Some of the new stuff floating around in my head is: - The abandonment of seasoned game designers in favor of metric driven design - catering to metrics let you keep more players, but are those players worth keeping? - The complete lack of game sales data for XBL and PSN - Do the platforms really think they are helping us by cloaking sales in a shroud of mystery? - Th
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The Game Business Is A Year From Irrelevance:Where are Our Easy Riders and Raging Bulls Edition

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Every time I told people in suits and ties - or my parents - I was in the game business, they started to talk about kids. They viewed our business as the toy business. Games are for children. This was when I pulled out my silver bullet. I had The ESA's (then IDSA) latest report showing the average age of gamers. I started when it was 27. The "average age" went up a year each year, but was still a neat statistic when I could say 30 or 31. Whether it was directed at a school parent or an audience at a conference, It inevitably led to a dropped jaw and a "wow, I didn't know that." The industry instantly became relevant to their business. I haven't really paid much attention to this number because my proselytizing for the business was taken over by outlets like the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and USA Today, which all have a larger reach than this blog or my speaking engagements. But this past week I saw some slides for an ESA speech indicatin
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Game Marketing: The Proctologists are Doing Brain Surgery Edition

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[ Let me apologize in advance for the length of the large gaseous stream of consciousness belch which follows, it's been a while since I wrote anything and I guess some pent up stuff started flow .] Another Q4 is behind us and the publishers are locked down in the deep, dark, musty bowels of their fortress like edifices surveying the seasonal lucre. The piles are not quite as high as year’s past and when they reemerge into the sunlight from their Morlock existence in the counting and analysis rooms, they will not be happy. Contrary to the mainstream media reports, sales for most publishers were less than stellar. Gamasutra’s story highlighting what they characterized as low numbers for Mirror's Edge and Dead Space (for the sake of argument let's not mention they did not apply the NPD multiplier to determine real US sales, nor did they add in PC sales or sales in foreign territories which are not reflected in NPD) reflects the norm rather than the exception. The point
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