Is this really what it has come to? Is social gaming the future of gaming, as many Facebook gamers claim? Is a single player experience in the form of ‘core games’ a brief aberration that will be relegated to the least social of creatures?

Social Domination

The games director for Facebook, Gareth Davis, says that solo gaming is an aberration, and that games have almost always been social and with Farmville and other Facebook games they’re just going back to their roots.

He claims that Facebook is the largest game platform in the world and that more people play Facebook games than on any other platform. While there’s no official metric, with 350 million users vs. 120 million Playstations sold I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Shit yeah ... you're right, that *does* look fun ...

What Davis’ statistics don’t take into consideration is that Facebook games are just awful, and barely qualify as games. Farmville is a monotonous money grab, where millions of players fork over money to Zynga to be able to harvest their raspberries faster.

In addition, Facebook gaming is hardly a social activity. Mafia Wars is considered social because your abilities in the game depend on the number of friends you have on your social network. There’s no interaction in the game between you and somebody else though, other than through a generic ‘X player has attacked you’ message that appears every so often.

Many ’social gamers’ would suggest that they’d rather pay $15 a month to harvest crops with their friends than pay it to monster game designer Blizzard who steals lives through the ungodly juggernaut known as World of Warcraft.

According to them, World of Warcraft players are loners who cry themselves to sleep in the dark, rather than social butterflies who love interacting with guildies and other server denizens but are held back in real life by their most likely terrifying personal appearance and crippled self confidence.

Yeah, you're making 'successories,' that really makes you better

Core gamers, unite

Go to any game convention and you’re going to see people dressed up to celebrate their favorite game characters. Nathan Drake, Master Chief, Gordon Freeman, the Left 4 Dead gang, Final Fantasy characters and Solid Snake are just a few of the icons that have brought so much joy to so many. When was the last time you saw somebody dressed up as a blueberry, or a tractor, to celebrate Farmville?

Farmville takes advantage of a simple human need for easily defined accomplishment, and while many games do the same thing, there are also stories told and experiences shared. I guess you could recant the tale of the last harvest in Farmville, but if the person you’re talking to cares (and has played the game) they likely know exactly what you’re going to say.

I take it back ... plant cosplay is great

Core games are the past and the future of gaming, and while Facebook games are going to exist in their own niche, there’s room for expansion and not exclusion.

Brick breaker on the Blackberry is played by millions of businessmen across the globe. They likely don’t consider themselves gamers. I hesitate to call Farmville players ‘gamers,’ as that term is reserved for a different experience.

Do games really need to be fun, though? Not all books are fun, and critics frequently ridicule ‘fun’ books like John Grisham novels or the Da Vinci Code. Nobody can really argue that The Hurt Locker was more fun than some of the other films released this year, but that doesn’t prevent it from winning the awards? Will games always just be fun?

Is fun exclusive from serious?

Think of the critically well received recent games? Grand Theft Auto IV was regarded as a landmark game due to the storytelling mechanisms, but that was still a ‘fun’ game. Bioshock was regarded as an innovative experience due to its narrative, and yet that game was still ‘fun.’

Games are unique in that you can’t entirely diverge from the fun aspects. At the end of the day, games aren’t that great at merely delivering a message. Instead, they’re only viable as an experience if the player is willing to continue.  Otherwise, it might as well be non-interactive.

Oh this? It's just my giant robot head. Oscar voters love that shit

It would be like if you had an Oscar bait film that had 10 minute Michael Bay interludes every 30 minutes or so just to keep you interested. Sure, there’s a message here, but there are also explosions! While Bioshock wasn’t really about killing the splicers but instead was about spinning a tale, there was a lot of splicer killing in there.

Games cannot survive, or at least nobody has figured out how to accomplish this yet, without being fun. Games don’t start with story. The best game designers generally have a concept but the early stages of game design are spent on finding a fun gameplay mechanic, not creating story.

While I think it would be great if the rest of the entertainment industry came inline with how videogames do things and started giving Best Picture awards to District 9 or Avatar, and literature awards to the most commercially entertaining books, I fear the opposite. As games mature, if they want to receive critical support from the greater community, they’re going to have to move away from fun.

Best Actor? Me? Is it my Cary Grant-esque good looks?

Even if you have a great message, if you wrap it up in a Bruckheimer package, people are going to view it differently from if it’s in a Scorsese package. Fun would seem to be antithetical to serious, and that is a shame.

Shigeru Miyamoto thinks games are all about fun, and that’s a great thing. He’s not going to be around forever, though, and I can only hope that the next generation of great game influence has the same world view.

Let’s talk about sex, baby. Let’s talk about you and me

Yes, this is a videogame sex line. You can choose what woman you want to play with, whether you want the encounter to be ‘flirty’ or ‘dirty,’ and what game you want to play. The current game choices include Halo 3, GTA IV, MW2 and Gears of War 2 as well as Yahoo Game classics such as chess and checkers etc.

This goes beyond the standard Lara Croft or Dead or Alive exploitation in games. This isn’t just a game that focuses on sex; this isn’t Leisure Suit Larry. Finally, somebody is using the communicative abilities of videogames for sex.

Dead or Alive: We thought this was as bad as it would ever get. We were wrong

While some of the women available for an encounter are of questionable quality at best, the reaction from the game community and general mass media community is confusing to me.

Why are most condemning gamers because of this? Sure, there are plenty of ‘oh my god, that’s so pathetic’ comments, but why is that the natural reaction? It’s not like people think the phone is a pathetic piece of technology despite the fact that there are tons of sex chat lines.

It’s not like people think the internet is embarrassing because of the way a number of people choose to use it. People have that reaction to gaming because they innately associate gaming with ‘loser.’

Scam alert! Russian trannies are trying to scam money out of you

Nearly 50% of US households have a videogame console, however. Pretty much everybody plays games in some way. It’s just like using a phone. I think the fact that game machines have finally graduated to ’sex chat hotline conduit’ suggests an increase in legitimacy.

Scam artists and sex fiends from Russia have finally realized that videogames are big, here to stay, and can be abused for money. We have hit the mainstream, ladies and gentlemen. Watch out.

A new game called Ribbon Hero attempts to turn learning and practicing Microsoft Office techniques into a game. This is just the first step: soon everything will use games to teach.

Games used to teach? Outrageous

Games used to teach in the past were fairly limited. We all probably used something to learn to type, either Mavis Beacon or Mario Teaches Typing or something along those lines. Sure, Mario Teaches Typing is far more of a game (and far less useful at teaching kids to type) but they were more useful than rote drills pressing various keys.

How many kids played Oregon Trail in lower school history? All I really took from that game is that dysentery is hilarious, never try to ford the river unless you have oxen to spare, and shooting buffalo is hilarious and the solution to every problem. I didn’t, however, learn much about US history.

Oregon Trail, like you've never seen it before. Bierstadt edition!

Games are used in the form of simulators to train the military and pilots. Games are used to teach learning disabled children exercises in focus. Games are used for many things, but for the most part they’re entertainment. Entertainment and work don’t traditionally mix.

Enter Ribbon Hero

Ribbon Hero aims to change all that. It’s a game that accumulates points when you do certain tasks in Microsoft Office. Did you just modify the formatting of that paragraph? 2 points! There are even challenges that you can perform specifically, most of which probably aren’t in your repertoire of skills. In this way, the game is teaching you what else the programs can accomplish.

Sure, this sounds kind of stupid at first. Who is going to play the Microsoft Office game when you can play Halo? This is obviously not for a leisure time situation. This is an extra boost when you’re doing work, or just need a second to focus on something other than the essay you’re writing.

Mario Teaches Typing ... poorly

Don’t underestimate the appeal of online leaderboards and competitiveness to encourage somebody to do something. A game like Farmville isn’t really all that different from learning Microsoft Word: you perform the same rote activities over and over, and your reward is a visual representation of progression, and competition with your friends.

80 million people play Farmville. Imagine how many are out there using Microsoft Word. You get higher points and a chance to compete against your friends through Ribbon Hero. Game designers know that they can tap into people’s natural desire for that feeling of achievement.

Is this man wearing a uniform to vacuum? Is he some sort of vacuuming cop? Or is this some weird sex game

Soon this could be implemented in many things. Maybe vacuuming turns into a game; I have to vacuum anyway, why not get some points out of it? Besides, you don’t want to be that guy that is made fun of all the time for having a disgusting apartment because his vacuuming score is the lowest.

It’s not something that’s going to happen this month, or this year. But it’s going to happen. Then we gamers will finally take over. So far we’re only taken over Korea.

PSN likes to push that it offers greater value because there’s no subscription fee. Is $5/month really that crippling? Is the worse functionality offered by PSN worth the savings? Hardly.

Missing the forest for the trees

Xbox charges a $5/month fee, or various packages if you sign up for longer periods of time such as $40/year, and there are also tiered subscription packages. Sony has long held that their PSN offering is much more valuable because it’s free.

Are you really going to care about paying the equivalent of 2/3 of a game for a better online experience for the year? Most gamers purchase 6-7 games per year for their console, so you’re talking about a required 10% increase in game experience quality on Xbox Live vs. PSN to repay that difference.

The real reason Xbox is better? Ground FX

PSN has come a long way from its early years. The store front is about comparable to Xbox Live. The internet functionality is about the same (although who really cares or uses a console for that?). The friends list is comparable.

PSN falls short in two specific areas: voice chat and developer support.

Nobody has a mic?

Cooperative has come into its own in the past 5 years with the expansion of online console functionality. While it’s possible to execute well in free for all deathmatch without voice chat, and even to do some team deathmatch without voice chat, it’s very difficult to coordinate with other players online without being able to speak to them.

On a computer you can type messages if you’re fast enough. On a console you merely have to sit silently. I was playing Borderlands for the first time online with a friend and we were using Skype to chat back and forth because neither of us had a PS3 mic. It was a revelation. I had given up on Borderlands other than in solo play because it was simply too hard to play with everybody when we were all silent. Being able to speak changed all that.

I know PS3 has their own proprietary mic although functionality is spotty at best and it’s horrifically uncomfortable. In addition, it’s ridiculous to have to listen to either a mic or the game sound. Turtle Beach is a hugely influential gaming headset manufacturer, and until recently they didn’t even offer a unified PS3 voice chat and sound headset. The demand simply wasn’t there, because voice chat functionality on the PS3 is laughable.

I'm jealous of all these Trials HD players. Sure, I can play it on the PC via Steam, but the controls are horse balls

PS3 simply falls short compared to Xbox in the voice chat department, and all the PSN store front changes or improvements in PS1 offerings online aren’t going to close the gap with Xbox Live. This is one of the few areas where I’m jealous of Xbox owners.

Developer support

The other difference where Xbox Live really wins vs. PSN is in developer support. Think back as recently as this past summer where the Summer of Arcade was happening on Xbox Live. Not only were there some great offerings like Trials HD, Splosion Man and even Shadow Complex, one of the most highly regarded games of the year.

I chose a PS3 over an Xbox because  I prefer the exclusives. I like Ratchet & Clank, God of War, Uncharted and InFamous over Gears of War and Halo. That being said, had I known the online functionality gap pre-purchase, I might have changed my mind.

Shadow Complex: Not just online game of the year, but contender for overall game of the year. Sadly Xbox only ...

PSN is making vast improvements, they’re just not in the areas that count. They need to step up their voice support and create some incentives to go into the store beyond Critter Crunch to really close the gap. They claim they have a value offering. Sure, it’s cheaper, but is cheap necessarily representative of value?

You know what’s also cheaper than PS3? Not buying a PS3.

Why are so many upset, then, when Ubisoft introduces DRM that requires you be online for game saves? Why are so many upset when there are delays to updates, or the Playstation Network goes down, or World of Warcraft server maintenance takes slightly longer than expected? Sure it’s inconvenient, but there are as many if not more benefits to having game services move online than there are drawbacks. Why fight it conceptually?

The outrage of being online

The reason so many are upset about the new Ubisoft DRM that requires online for game saves and authentication is two fold: what if your internet connection fails and you lose some progress in a game, and what happens in the future when they take down those servers and you can’t play a single player game?

My response: seriously? Some gamers were quoting power outages as their fear for their internet connection. I think you have bigger problems than your internet connection losing their servers when the power goes down such as your computer shutting down. I only know from my experience, but my internet fails maybe once every couple months, and if I lose 5-10 minutes of gaming since the last autosave I’m not going to be permanently traumatized.

In addition, there are very few games that couldn’t be played because the authentication or multiplayer servers were offline when people wanted to play them simply because years after a game’s release there is a very small community remaining. The only one that comes to mind is Halo 2 and that was because it was so stunningly popular. This is not going to be a common problem, but even if it is I’m sure there will be a patch to allow you to play without authentication servers. Very little revenue is generated by games years or decades after release so this wouldn’t be a huge profit hit for Ubisoft.

Want to know why your Xbox Live friends list can only go to 100 people? You now know who to blame

In addition, the reason these changes are being made on the PC is because there is so much piracy. I’m sure it will be a huge imposition on the user to download an authentication server crack when you want to play a decade after initial release.

The benefits of being online?

Removing the obvious benefits such as online multiplayer, game fixing updates and digital distribution, there are subtler updates to being online all the time. Services like Steam can be developed, which add massive convenience to the consumer.

I just switched to a new computer and wanted to continue to play Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2. I didn’t have to find my discs again, or find those authentication CD Key stickers on the DVD jewel cases. I just downloaded the free Steam client, logged into my account and went to a movie. When I returned, they were all downloaded and installed and ready to go.

The convenience Steam offers is incredible. Goodbye DVDs, we hardly knew ye

In addition, the prevalence of cross game chat has made finding games and discussing them with friends even easier. You can chat to any Steam user while in any Steam game without leaving. The same thing is being done for the new Battle.net for Starcraft. You can plan a game or chat with a friend extremely easily even while playing another game. This is incredible convenience that wasn’t available in the past.

Finally, being always online allows for out of game experiences such as World of Warcraft’s armory and auction house. You can now see your character when you’re not even at your computer. Not only that, but you can trade through the auction house from your mobile device. This is incredible functionality and the slight drawback from the occasional lost connection is more than worth it.

I understand being annoyed that a game is DX10 only and therefore doesn’t support Windows XP despite that being the OS of choice for over 40% of the gaming community. Don’t fight an obvious and well established trend though. Pretty soon it will be unusual for a developer to assume you might be playing without an internet connection. All computers capable of playing games have a constant connection. Mobile devices now primarily have wireless connections and soon that will be absolute.

DX10 only? Outrageous

A developer can improve the gaming experience with the information and easy access that online gives them in regard to their player community. It’s ok to complain about internet lapses much as it is ok to complain about flight delays. But don’t say that you’re never going to fly again because you sat on the runway for a couple hours. If Ubisoft makes good games, you’re going to play them, because this online only policy is merely them getting ahead of the curve.

While the home console changed the face of gaming forever in primarily positive ways, one negative side effect was the death of the arcade and the emergence of the fat loner slob videogame stereotype. Can new 3D games reinvigorate the arcade scene?

Too expensive for home consumption?

Films have had an issue for the past decade or so that home entertainment systems are replacing them as an event. Since the spread of large-size HD screens, consumers have increasingly decided that they can get the cinematic experience at home, and don’t bother with the theater.

Avatar changed all that in the mind of film producers. While you can replicate the standard experience at home, you can’t have the same 3D experience. It’s clear from the box office results of Avatar that consumers are willing to pay for this experience.

The next hot accessory from Calvin Klein

Gamers have embraced the home experience for far longer than film lovers. Console gaming is the norm in terms of gaming experiences, and with internet connectivity it’s no longer the isolated experience it was in the previous decade.

Gone are the days of 4 player split screen co-0p on the couch. It has been replaced by MW2 matches and even some epic MAG 256 player fights. With friend lists, gamers can even play with people they know. That being said, it’s not quite the same experience as the arcade.

If console gaming online with a couple friends is the equivalent to hanging out at your house with a couple friends, then going to an arcade is like going to a convention. You don’t know everybody there, but you have something in common.

In the past, that hasn’t been enough to keep gamers going out to the arcades. 3D film is working for theaters, might 3D games do it for arcades?

Hot: Split screen Goldeneye. Not: Sausage fest

3D gaming

Metal Gear Arcade is getting new 3D goggles and head tracking equipment. While you can get head tracking at home, there is still going to be a several year gap before the 3D technology is widespread in homes. Is this going to provide enough of an opening for arcades to flourish again?

The answer in the US is unfortunately no. There isn’t even the infrastructure available anymore and one of the big advantages that games have over other forms of entertainment is their cost advantage. Even if you’re going to only play MW2 and you don’t have a console, you can buy an Xbox and MW2 for $250 and play for thousands of hours.

Playing at an arcade on the other hand requires costly time based playing due to the need to repay the initial equipment investment. It’s just not feasible.

Next year's pro gamers or next year's pro KILLERS?!! CNN Reports on this shocking trend at nine ...

In Japan, on the other hand, where arcades are far more widespread, there might be a resurgence in popularity. As long as it’s just adding a few additional games that offer a completely unique experience, that might lure some traditional console gamers out of their homes and into the public.

It will be interesting to see if the old social gaming scene reemerges or if the ability to meet new players not through the internet is a lost art.

This is a fallacy that takes advantage of consumer inability to judge value at the very low end of the price scale. Relative to the price of a game, DLC offers terrible value, and gamers who want more from a franchise would be better served by encouraging developers to start on a sequel rather than by paying for subpar DLC. 

How did we get to where we are?

Gamers are notoriously impatient. Waiting 2-3 years for a sequel to a well loved game is extremely difficult and not the ideal solution. While some criticize annual franchises, and we’ve seen backlash towards Valve for releasing Left 4 Dead 2 so soon after the original, that’s only because gamers assume they can’t be offering a true sequel.

If developers were able to put out Uncharted 3 in a year, and it had all the improvements that we have come to expect in a sequel, I’m sure gamers would eat it up. This isn’t possible of course, so the compromise is DLC.

While developers made some poor decisions at first (Bethesda $5 horse armor, for example), they have since realized what gamers see as legitimate for $5. A map pack that includes 3-5 new multiplayer maps is acceptable DLC. A small mission pack or campaign segment is acceptable. Some DLC packs are must have items such as those that raise a level cap. Developers know what will stimulate demand.

WOOOooooOOOOoooo HORSE ARMOR!! It's a brave new world out there ... a better protected world

Red flags

Developers have relatively few potential missteps to avoid when releasing DLC. Gamers don’t like paying for elements already on the original game disc. When Resident Evil 5’s new DLC was only 2mb (an insignificant download), gamers concluded that it must simply be an unlock file for content already on the disc.

While I have argued in the past that there’s nothing wrong with this practice, that doesn’t mean it is received warmly. The bottom line is that almost anything is acceptable at $5.

Resident Evil 5 DLC: Bringing you more racist white cop slaughtering African zombies for the low low price of $2

Consumers cannot differentiate between value increments at the low end of the price scale. A gamer can judge whether something is worth $60 to them when making a game purchase decision; $5 is relatively trivial, however, so marginal quality differences relative to price are almost imperceptible.

Much like cash register impulse items, gamers will buy almost anything for $5, and that is their undoing.

Oh no, they knew my weakness! Some people impulse buy overpriced DLC. For me, it's mini rods. Once you pop ...

No value?

Take a recent game like Dragon Age: Notoriously epic in length, the regular campaign has 6 origin stories and numerous side-quests that make up its nearly 50 hour running time. All this can be had for the super low price of $60.

Some of the DLC, on the other hand, costs $5 and adds a single quest line that can be completed in under an hour. I’m not some sort of mathemagician but even I can tell that doesn’t quite add up. And yet, I own all the DLC packs. $60 of DLC at that rate would result in a game comprised of 10 hours of gameplay and 12 quests, which would be unacceptable to most consumers.

I think DLC is a good thing. I like new content for games I’ve completed and enjoyed, and it certainly increases the lifespan of existing products. That being said, they don’t increase game value across the board, especially given the relatively exorbitant price of some offerings when their content is taken into account.

Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening. Increasing Spectral Dragon content by 100% over the original. That's why I prefer expansions

Hopefully Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening, the new full expansion from Bioware, can usher in a return to the traditional expansion pack with a substantial amount of content, and move us away from paltry DLC.

Developers can’t possibly keep pace with the acceleration of technology given its current trend. What can be done to help them out?

Interminable development timelines

Games are taking longer and longer to make. In the halcyon days of id’s shareware distribution, game schedules were measured in months, not years. Developer teams were measured in single digits, not hundreds, and game budgets were measured in the thousands of dollars, not millions.

Since then we’ve seen Final Fantasy XIII taking hundreds of developers multiple years to complete. Even given that team size, their port to the Xbox 360 which comes on 3 DVDs is hugely compromised compared to the PS3 version given hardware limitations and code conversion difficulties.

Behond the result of 100 million man hours

We’ve seen Bayonetta released on the PS3 in a crippled form compared to the Xbox 360 as it wasn’t even ported by the game developers; the publisher had to take over as the developers didn’t know how to transfer the code efficiently (neither did the publisher, apparently, given the results).

We’ve seen the team for Assassins Creed 2 span three countries and number over 500, as that was the requirement for getting the game out in less than 2 years.

What will the next generation bring? Will a game like Duke Nukem Forever and Half Life 2: Episode 3, be the norm and not the exception, assuming development timelines that stretch towards a decade? This is clearly not a sustainable situation.

This remains the only thing from HL2: Episode 3 seen in the wild. I maintain Valve took their money and moved to Peru to live like kings

What are the hangups?

Development requirements have increased across the board. Map designers can no longer put one detail feature in a room, they need hundreds. Texture designers can’t get by with 256×256 textures, they now need high definition textures. AI subroutine complexity has increased exponentially.

While games don’t take longer to play (a criticism from gamers), the work required to create each feature is hugely increased. Imagine what it took to make the environment in a 2D side scrolling game vs. what it took to create some of the environments in Uncharted 2.

It's almost photorealistic

Not only does this added complexity make things much more difficult and expensive for developers, but it has destroyed the casual modding scene. I used to make maps for Half-Life, but once engines p rogressed to Doom 3 level and beyond, the detail required in each room was simply too much for a casual creator.

Is anybody trying to help?

The solution is clear to me: automated design. Take web design as the template: the simplest things are so standardized now that a program such as Dreamweaver can automate them. If you want a highly advanced website, of course you’re going to need to go into the raw code and tweak things, but window positioning etc. can be fully automated.

id Tech 5 is going in that direction with their megatextures. Their engine optimizes art elements for cross-platform development, so there are no adjustments / lead platform concerns involved in a game developed on id Tech 5. While this is just a starting point, technologies such as this and even a unified platform such as OnLive would go a long way towards cutting down on cross platform development concerns.

We're behind you id Tech 5 ... engines need new buzz words like megatextures. I miss voxels and mip mapping

I can envision a day when scripted sequences and artistic components could be dragged and dropped into game sections such as brushes in Photoshop. Modders could collaborate and resources could be reused. While a premiere AAA title is likely going to require the same personal touch seen in the best websites today, automated functions would vastly reduce requirements for games that aim for solid but not innovative gameplay content.

I don’t really care what it takes to make a compelling game. As a consumer, I make my purchase decision based on what package is offered and at what price. I understand, however, that developers are falling behind the curve, and the only outcome is that technology will focus on making development easier, development schedules will get longer, or prices will have to go up to support larger teams.

As a consumer, option A is clearly the optimal outcome, so everybody should be hoping id Tech 5 succeeds and catalyzes a trend.

Now that we know Dragon Age sold 3.2mm copies since its release date, putting it on pace for over 5 million, we have to ask whether there are any niche products anymore. I believe there’s no good product that won’t find an audience. If your game doesn’t sell well, it’s probably because it was crap, not because there’s some missing audience for your phenomenal game.    

Failed ‘niche products’ are just crap games

Developers frequently complain that they focused on an audience that doesn’t exist when their game fails. Take a game like Madworld, or House of the Dead: Overkill, 2009’s ‘mature games’ for the Wii. A frequent criticism of the Wii is that there is nothing for adults and it’s all Link and Mario. Along comes Sega with their mature offerings, ready to appease the masses.

How could nobody have wanted to play House of the Dead Overkill? Maybe because it looks like horseshit?

These games sold approximately 4 copies each (accounting for rounding error). They can only be described as abject failures. Sega complained after the fact that the audience simply wasn’t there and everybody was clamoring for mature games when in fact all they want is Wii Sports Resort.

I would argue that the marketing was shit, and the games themselves were total shit, and that’s why nobody bought them. Not only were they terrible games, but they had no visibility with which to trick people into day 1 sales before reviews come out. If these games were the second coming of Modern Warfare, they would have sold like hotcakes. News flash: they weren’t the second coming of Modern Warfare.

What defines a niche product?

I don’t understand what defines a niche product to the industry. Something like the Eye of Judgment is seen as a niche product. Come on: it’s a card game that uses the Playstation Eye; who is going to play that?

The Eye of Judgment is the future. It's the most incredible idea in the world. Damn you people for not buying it. Forget about bridges, there are products that need stimulus already

I could just as easily say that there is another card game called Magic: The Gathering that requires arguably an even greater financial investment that has 6 million players worldwide. There are a lot of nerds like me out there who are happy to interact with a product that activates the imagination, even if it doesn’t have the newest, flashiest graphics.

Everybody said DJ Hero was going to be a niche product because it was expensive, but so was Guitar Hero when it first came out. Why was Guitar Hero more successful? Maybe because it was far more fun.

There’s an audience for everything

Developers like to cater to an existing audience: they want to make a first person shooter game, or a real time strategy game. Innovation is risky, however, not because you’re potentially making a product for an audience that doesn’t exist, but because you’re trying something new. You have no guidance for what works and what doesn’t; you have to guess.

While this is a risky strategy, it also has the highest reward. A competent FPS isn’t going to sell well, but even a mediocre (in hindsight) product that introduces the consumer to a new genre or genre combination that they want will be rewarded.

6 million players out there. Richard Garfield is a goddamn genius

Who knew a role playing shooter was going to be so well received before its release? When we look back on it, Borderlands might be a mediocre first entrant into the FPShooter genre, but it was still rewarded for its creation of a product the consumer wanted. Guitar Hero games have come a long way since the first offering, but additional success has been small at best.

There was no ‘peripheral rhythm game’ indicator. The consumer doesn’t know what they want; you have to tell them. Much like everybody thought they wanted more power in consoles and then the Wii outsells the other offerings combined, consumers don’t know what’s good for them.

Developers need to realize that if one of their games failed, it’s not because they didn’t target the right audience, or an audience didn’t exist, but because they created a terrible POS game.