SPECIAL REPORT: On April 19, the San Francisco Marriott played host to “Mastering the Craft of Online Gaming”, a conference dedicated to the business of building MMOs. Overall, the event was underwhelming and unattended, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t some interesting tidbits to be gleaned from attendees. The biggest take-aways:
American development companies underestimate the power of the Asia markets, and middleware is the path to success.

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The next generation of game consoles will see oodles of intellectual properties prettied up and danced around the high definition stage. Good old stand-bys, like Solid Snake, Master Chief, and Link will be all over the next gen, and all over the marketing materials. But the winner of this generation may not be determined by the biggest names in the business. In fact, it may just be that some of the lesser known and lesser praised properties will become the real break-out hits. Perhaps this wouldn’t be possible were the next gen entirely populated with 360’s and PS3’s.

But it isn’t. The Wii gives even the lamest of properties the chance to innovate. Indeed, in order to make a game for the Wii, innovation is almost required, just to figure out a good control scheme. And thus, in an attempt to guess the future, here is my list of the eight most undervalued intellectual properties for the next generation of consoles.

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Eli Tomlinson makes money off of the work of others. He packages up GPL-licensed Linux games, and sells them on his Web site for $19.95. But the free software wonks who made these games aren’t complaining. In fact, they’re cheering his efforts. That’s because he’s made them easier to play. Tomlinson’s contribution to the package makes GNU games more accessible to the end user. End user-focused Linux gaming, you ask? Where’s the money in that?
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After all of Microsoft’s attempts to lock people out, six years later, the Xbox is still the number one console for hackers. Considered a lame also-ran when it first debuted, hardcore gamers have slowly come to embrace the Xbox as the coolest console out there, and ironically, its popularity as a hackable system is an underground source for that brand revision. Just take a look at Xbox Scene, or hop on Craigslist, or Talk to Matt Hargett. The popularity of the Xbox as a hacking platform is obvious to anyone who’s seen the ads all over Xbox hacks for $200 a pop. Drop in a mod chip, add a bigger hard drive, and games suddenly find themselves in possession of a game console that can suck games off their discs and store them indefinitely. Maybe Sony should give up on its marketing campaigns, and just give the public details on the technical specs for the Playstation 3: hackers still have to buy the hardware, after all. (When was the last time anyone talked about hacking the Playstation?)

Matt Hargett spends most of his days teaching corporations how to implement agile development practices. But at night, Hargett’s an avid gamer with more than a little bit of reverse-engineering know how. That came in handy when he decided to upgrade some of his Xbox games to display in 480p instead of 480i. How did he manage this? More

There is one singular building block that all game publishers view as tantamount to success. It is not good Q/A practices, it is not good version control, nor is it proper coding standards. It is publicity, marketing, and hype. As we all know, hype has almost nothing to do with the actual work needed to create a good game. But it can make the difference between shipping junk and shipping junk that sells 400,000 copies in the first week.

Thus, I present my list of the games that are far too overhyped for their own good.

#1
Spore

While likely to become a seminal game, and one of the most original experiences yet seen in videogaming, it’s unlikely that Spore will offer gameplay that is compelling and long-lived enough to capture people the same way that The Sims did. My colleague agrees. With initial estimates of evolution gameplay weighing in at around 10 hours, it looks like flying around the galaxy is the heart of the game. Sure, that’ll be fun, but will it keep you addicted? I’d bet against that. Spore will not be another SimCity.
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Computer Games Magazine and the recently launched Massive Magazine may both cease publication immediately, due to an apparently costly dispute over email spam. CGM subscribers will never see the magazine’s 197th issue, which was reportedly complete and ready for mailing at the time of this news. The culprit of this demise, however, is not the inherent difficulties of competing with Ziff Davis’ Games for Windows and Future Network USA’s PC Gamer, however. The real reason for the folding of MM and CGM may be the CAN-SPAM Act.

CGM and MM are both owned by TheGlobe.com, a media conglomerate that decided to evangelize MySpace users. That included sending out unrequested messages via the social networking service, for which MySpace.com sued TheGlobe.com on June 1 of last year under the CAN-SPAM Act, as well as under a similar anti-Spam law in California. Since that time, litigation has slowly whittled down the options for TheGlobe.com, to the point where the company can apparently no longer sustain itself.

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The world of independent game development is one of rocky shores and frightening peaks. But when a company finds a path to true profitability, those hills and valleys can sometimes be far above the ground, suspending an indy game house in the clouds of success.

Such success has found Three Rings, the Indy developer in San Francisco that created that MMO puzzle hit Puzzle Pirates. That game launched in 2004, and has since formed the foundation for a wildly successful and original development house. At the Game Developers Conference, this week, Daniel james, Three Rings’ CEO, gave us the skinny on just how profitable the indy MMO business can be. Of course, profits are relative: Three Rings has been dumping all of its dough into rapid expansion and on a shwanky new downtown SF office that features a bar, exquisite wooden molding, and secret passages.

Three Rings has mastered the virtual purchases market in Puzzle Pirates, and its most recently published title, Bang! Howdy (pictured), has begun to pull in dough as well. By July 2006, Three Rings was receiving $300,000 a month in revenues from a combination of monthly fees and in-game purchases of virtual currency and items. According to James, Puzzle Pirates has over 90,000 paying accounts. Of those players, 2500 to 3000 a month will spend money to buy in-game currency. Of those players, most will spend $30 a month on game items, while the more hardcore players will spend $50.
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Last August, Sony Online Entertainment made a quiet purchase that didn’t get a lot of press. And that quiet little purchase has become the underpinning of Sony’s online strategy for its PlayStation3.

In August 2006, Sony snatched up Worlds Apart, a Denver-based company best known for making online trading card games, like Star Chamber. Sony’s decision to jump into the online trading card game market marked a drastic shift for its plans. Prior to August, Sony’s online arm had focused entirely on 3D MMO’s, most of them featuring goblins and swords.

With the Worlds Apart acquisition, the company moved into a realm that has, historically, been far less profitable, and far more niche. But previous attempts at launching online trading card games have never included a gaming console. Thanks to Sony’s newly announced online plans for the PS3, it looks like Worlds Apart will be a major factor in the console’s initial push into virtual transactions. Surely, Sony sees dollar signs on all of those $3 booster packs of digital cards.

A source familiar with the company’s (SOE) plans cleared up the mystery for us. Rather than build new IP or adapt existing card games to the digital world, SOE’s plan is to mash as many different properties as possible into the trading card game format. This will be particularly apparent as the company’s PS3 Home service launches this fall. What sort of IP would that be, you ask?

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Two weeks ago, while I was at Electronic Arts seeing the abomination that is Wing Commander Arena, I heard peep that Microsoft was about to increase the size restrictions on its Xbox Live Arcade service. Turns out the rumors were true. Monday, Microsoft announced that it would triple the size cap, raising it to 150 MBs. However, there’s a catch. The 50 MB limit that’s been in place since XBLA launched is still very much in effect. In fact, if developers currently working on games for XBLA suddenly decide to increase their size beyond 50 MBs, Microsoft says that they’ll have to resubmit their proposals and paperwork.
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The Game Developers Conference is all about big money games, but indy developers aren’t out in the cold: they’re getting a crash course in monetization today. At the low-key and neophyte Independent Games Summit, indy devs heard about distribution models, and found that online isn’t the only way to go. Hosted and coordinated by the inimitable and indefatigable Simon Carless, the event proved an excellent foil to the Serious Games Summit and the GDC Mobile event. While the event wasn’t highly publicized, there were a number of discussions that served to enlighten outsiders to the concerns relevant to developers trying to go it alone. More