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The Business Side of Video (Space) Games EXCLUSIVELY ON IDLE THUMBS

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Isn't Gearbox's entire deal now? Snatching up games from the brink of death and then make them shitty (see: Duke Nukem Forever, Aliens: Colonial Marines)? With all of the big properties that have been dying or being put up for sale lately it was bound to happen.

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Well, not exactly. Colonial Marines was their fuck-up entirely, from start to finish.

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I can't help but see Gearbox in positive light, because Opposing Force was so amazing (and to lesser extent Brothers In Arms trilogy). My faith in them is running on fumes though due to recent fuck ups. And I'm not a fan of Borderlands series.

 

Paradox or Stardock could probably do a better job with gameplay, but it's not like either of the Homeworld games had particularly good gameplay (edit: oops, forgot that there are actually 3 games - Cataclysm was a better game than 1 and 2 in almost every way except art/music/story sucked, so it almost doesn't exist in my mind).

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I can't help but see Gearbox in positive light, because Opposing Force was so amazing (and to lesser extent Brothers In Arms trilogy). My faith in them is running on fumes though due to recent fuck ups. And I'm not a fan of Borderlands series.

 

I'm kind of in the same place with Gearbox, though perhaps with still a more positive outlook, because i really enjoyed both of the Borderlands games.

 

Paradox or Stardock could probably do a better job with gameplay, but it's not like either of the Homeworld games had particularly good gameplay (edit: oops, forgot that there are actually 3 games - Cataclysm was a better game than 1 and 2 in almost every way except art/music/story sucked, so it almost doesn't exist in my mind).

While I remember Cataclysm quite fondly, it was a horrendously balanced game, and lost a lot of the more distinctive elements of Relic's own Homeworld games. (Cataclysm was developed by what would become Rockstar Vancouver.) Cataclysm actually took on a bit of a Starcraft vibe, it's certainly an interesting game in its own way.

As far as i'm concerned, Homeworld 2 had the deepest, best gameplay of the 3, though it's ultimately marred by an inexplicably awful singleplayer campaign.

So i would say the first game still holds up the best, and is a game i would certainly count among my favorites.

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ou know what Homeworld needs? GUNS AND BADASS MARINES.

I can't go into specifics, but blood and treasure has actually been spent pursuing this very idea. 

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Huh indeed! Are you, like me, wondering whether this means a Homeworld: Colonial Marines or a Borderhomeworlds? A crude distinction but Gearbox has now a rather chequered past.

At least with Homeworld they would be starting development from scratch unlike ACM or DNF.

An interesting development nonetheless.

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This was very weird. Via Joystiq.

Darksiders (Lot 4), Red Faction (Lot 1), MX vs ATV (Lot 3), Other Owned Software from Lot 5 (includes Destroy all Humans!, Summoner and more), and Other Licensed Software from Lot 6 (includes Marvel Super Hero Squad, Supreme Commander and more) (IP)
Winning bid: $4.9 million from Nordic Games Licensing AB

 

So my friends and I immediately ask, "What the hell is Nordic Games Licensing AB"? Google and Wikipedia do not offer straight answers but someone pulled up that it's JoWood Entertainment.

JoWooD Entertainment AG was an Austrian computer game publisher of video games, founded in 1995 by Andreas Tobler. In 2011 the company went into administration and was purchased by Nordic Games Holding. The JoWooD Entertainment brand is currently being used as a publishing label for Nordic Games GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of Nordic Games Holding

 

And I guess Nordic Games does have a site: http://www.nordicgames.at/

 

So uh... I guess those things aren't going to last long.

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Red Faction?! Damnit. I thought that went along with Volition. ):

 

Nordic Games is a thing that always has a booth at GDC as long as I've been going (which is, granted, only three years). I remember from my time at a Nintendo FAN SITE that JoWood published a lot of more niche titles, as well as a bunch of Junk.

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Nordic Games/JoWood really went for a grab bag of stuff, holy shit.

I feel like i just saw Supreme Commander get scattered to the wind.

It's probably a reasonable assumption that they're going to try and make sequels to Red Faction and Darksiders.

They picked up so many properties though, they can't realistically do something with all of them, can they?

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They picked up so many properties though, they can't realistically do something with all of them, can they?

Licensing or a similar type of deal where they give a young, hungry dev group an IP to work on.

 

Also, according to Game Informer, Pardox was one of the last three contenders for Homeworld. A shame that it wasn't them that got it.

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Hey so, there's a rumor right now that EA Partners is on the chopping block. This seems like a really bad idea. Via RPS:


 

EA Partners is to close down, it seems. Which seems fairly huge news if it proves to be accurate. The publisher, a portion of EA that was designed to publish games with a more hands-off approach than the mothercorp from developers not owned by themselves, is reported by some American magazine to be done.

 

This was the label that brought us Crysis, The Secret World, and Valve’s games in boxes, and also the rather calamitous failure of Kingdoms Of Amalur, despite the game being really brilliant. That, and other recent issues with disappointing performances, alongside EA’s own recent poor performance, seem to have put that all-too familiar writing on the wall for the publisher.

However, the two games currently in development to be released on the label – Fuse from Insomniac and an unrevealed FPS from Respawn Entertainment – should still get a release. Clearly this is all still at the “rumours” stage, with the information getting to some magazine or other via a number of unrevealed sources. It seems likely more will be learned at the always-interesting-if-you-don’t-actually-listen-to-it EA financial call on the 7th May.

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Interesting. EA's social arms look like they might be up for a reshuffle as well, with almost all of the Playfish games due to close on either May 14th or June 14th and any job openings focused on China and Japan rather than its Irish office.

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Robert Kotick, president and chief executive officer of Activision Blizzard Inc. (ATVI), increased his compensation almost eightfold to $64.9 million last year, becoming one of the highest-paid CEOs in the U.S.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-26/activision-ceo-s-64-9-million-puts-him-in-top-ranks-of-pay-1-.html

Budget for Modern Warfare 2 development was somewhere between $40m and $50m.

Makes you think... or vomit.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-26/activision-ceo-s-64-9-million-puts-him-in-top-ranks-of-pay-1-.html

Budget for Modern Warfare 2 development was somewhere between $40m and $50m.

Makes you think... or vomit.

Yeah, this all plays on my political sensitivity of executive pay being outrageous and not some god-given right. It's the modern day monarchy system. Ask anyone who defends it and they eventually wind down to "because" as the answer.

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CEOs are in someways like sports stars. They'll have a few years of great talent in them, and then they burn out. Both require dedication, long hours, and saying one wrong thing can get you canned. I support paying both groups higher than the average dollar to compensate them.

 

65 million a year is absolutely outrageous though. Anything over 7 digits is crazy.

 

Edit: Ah, he got 3 years worth of stock at once, that accounts for some of the descrepancy. Still crazy numbers though.

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EA canceled the Madden release for the WiiU, and it's one of two things going on. Either it's another casualty of the console not selling well, or it's EA continuing its dumb fight with Nintendo.

 

EA has been really obsessed with controlling its own servers and I don't imagine Nintendo is allowing any publisher or developer to really do that over the WiiU. Normally that'd be a dumb thing on Nintendo's part, but when it comes to EA their only interest in it is power. They want content control and regulation, not actual benefit to the consumer. This sounds real dumb and tinfoil hatty, but honestly look at EA's operations since Origin became a thing, how it got all picky about distribution partners online and how it further empowers EA's ability to shut down servers and promote the newer software in your face. They're interested in having a digital platform for all the wrong reasons.

 

God I hope Microsoft and Sony tell EA to shove it when it comes to having a separate-but-equal space next to Live and the PSN.

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So Denis Dyack continues to be Denis Dyack. I'm sure everyone here is familiar with his Kickstarter, which states it will be a spiritual successor to Eternal Darkness but also has a bunch of language about how the game may not be done and no refunds, etc.

 

All that aside, Polygon has a news story up about Silicon Knights. The short of it is that

- Silicon Knights' office has closed, but the company still exists somehow with the skeleton crew (Dyack included) after last year's layoffs.

- Silicon Knights sold off some of its art assets, equipment, and furniture to Precursor, Dyack's new company.

- Epic Games does NOT LIKE THAT AT ALL and is filing injunctions.

- Dyack, of course, will not elaborate on anything to the press.

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At this point he'd be stupid to say anything that might be used in court. I expect that Epic will rip him to shreds.

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I really don't understand the point of this move, but Nintendo is claiming ownership of YouTube videos that contain gameplay of their games, specifically Let's Plays.  It pretty much gains them nothing and takes away from the people who create such videos.  I've watched a few LPs of some WiiU games, and those have made me want a WiiU more than any Nintendo ad I've ever seen.

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I really don't understand the point of this move, but Nintendo is claiming ownership of YouTube videos that contain gameplay of their games, specifically Let's Plays.  It pretty much gains them nothing and takes away from the people who create such videos.  I've watched a few LPs of some WiiU games, and those have made me want a WiiU more than any Nintendo ad I've ever seen.

 

That is pretty fucking boneheaded.

 

So I don't fully understand the little details of how the law works with copyright infringement but if, say, a television news station decided to start doing a daily video game segment where they showed some footage of a game and offered some kind of social commentary would that be considered copyright infringement? I guess in a nutshell I wonder where freedom of the press ends and copyright infringement begins. Is the key issue that these people are making money off of their videos and thus are violating copyright laws? Would Nintendo be able to claim ownership if people weren't making money off of them? Am I asking stupid questions?

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The problem in this case isn't so much that LPs violate copyright so much as Nintendo wants the money.  Basically, what they're doing is taking all the revenue generated by ads during the videos, and saying "we want it because we made the game" instead of letting that money go to the people who made the video.  Obviously, they're legally allowed to do so (since they are) but money generated by ads is nothing compared to the revenue generated by hardware/game sales.  Really, a lot of LPs function as free advertisement since the people making the videos don't claim to have made or own the games and are usually just showing how much fun it is.  I was convinced to buy Minecraft because of LPs.

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