Henroid

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

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All of the people who have sensible discourse to provide are gun-shy once the group gets to a certain size I think.

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I have a lot of empathy for devs and their online interactions.  I own a small business, and am almost solely responsible for communicating with our customers.  I also wrote a regular editorial column for a small newspaper for awhile.  Both of those experiences have taught me that there is a small percentage of people who will drain almost all of the energy and time you have to engage in communication if you let them.  And it can be very, very, very difficult to ignore or disengage from some of these people. 

 

It's also not just about having thick skin, though that's part of it.  Like darthbator mentioned, the mentally ill can be the most draining.  Early in my business, I had a man contact me and accuse me of being some other business that had previously ripped him off.  I, naively, replied as politely and professionally as I could that he was mistaken, provided some evidence and called it good.  For the next 2 years I received semi-regular messages from this person.  Telling me about his life, the neurological damage he had from Agent Orange from being in Vietnam, his struggles to find stability while on disability, etc and on and on.  I never once replied after my first response to him.  He just kept sending them every month or two.  Reading his messages was both disturbing and fascinating.  Sometimes a little frightening.  He has been by far the weirdest one I've dealt with, but there are others as well.  Just receiving messages like that is draining, and it can be really hard to just delete them unread, at least for me.

 

From talking with other small business owners, many of them have had experiences like this, but are hesitant to talk about them publicly.  It seems highly likely that it is the same for a lot of devs as well. 

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Not sure if this is the thread for it, but apparently Steam has tags now! I can't say I've ever found tags nearly as useful as a decent search or related items feature, but hey, this is probably a step up from a static list of genres. It's maybe one small step closer to the type of curated storefront that's been mentioned on a few recent casts.

Also, I approve of the fact that one of my top recommended tags is "Procedural Death Labyrinth".

Ooh, and I just realised this is the perfect opportunity to get Lords Management (LoMa) recognised as the official genre of games like Dota 2. Everyone get tagging!

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I have a lot of empathy for devs and their online interactions.  I own a small business, and am almost solely responsible for communicating with our customers.  I also wrote a regular editorial column for a small newspaper for awhile.  Both of those experiences have taught me that there is a small percentage of people who will drain almost all of the energy and time you have to engage in communication if you let them.  And it can be very, very, very difficult to ignore or disengage from some of these people.

 

Somewhat related: I've been involved in drafting safe spaces policies for several different organisations recently. I've made each of those a closed process carried out by a small group of people, because an attempt at doing one with the entire membership of an organisation last year was disastrous. From men's rights assholes to the severely paranoid, it attracted really time-wasting, energy sapping debates until everyone gave up. Discussing it afterward, I pointed out that one in five people in the UK suffer mental illness at some point in their lives, and above a certain number of people we're bound to deal with some of them. Someone else quite rightly pointed out that this particular organisation attracts people who are a bit higher up the spectrum toward asperger's syndrome.

 

Sadly, it's the small percentage of awkward, noisy, demanding people who will take the lions share of your time. I never feel bad setting up mail rules to exclude people from my inbox now. I used to, but when people have actually served up metaphorical plates of shit to you, they have no right to ask anything more (That Vietnam vet's story sounds tragic though, I can totally understand how you wouldn't be able to ignore that).

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Not sure if this is the thread for it, but apparently Steam has tags now! I can't say I've ever found tags nearly as useful as a decent search or related items feature, but hey, this is probably a step up from a static list of genres. It's maybe one small step closer to the type of curated storefront that's been mentioned on a few recent casts.

Also, I approve of the fact that one of my top recommended tags is "Procedural Death Labyrinth".

Ooh, and I just realised this is the perfect opportunity to get Lords Management (LoMa) recognised as the official genre of games like Dota 2. Everyone get tagging!

 

Someone pointed out that Dark Souls is tagged as 'Casual' and Gone Home is tagged as 'Not a game'.

 

And then I realised what arseholes are probably tagging Depression Quest with and suddenly the last two posts in this thread are linked.

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"Normal Dad Simulator" is a suggested genre for me right now.

Oh, Octodad.

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I hate to bring up King and the candy trademark bullshit again, but this is terrible.

 

http://candyswipe.com/king

 

Basically, Albert Ransom made a match 3 game called CandySwipe in memory of his late mother.  The game was released in 2010, before Candy Crush.  Ransom opposed King's trademark on grounds of confusion, but didn't make it a big public affair.  Since his trademark predates King's, King bought the rights to a game called Candy Crusher that was made in 2004, well before either game.  Since King now owns this name, they have filed to get the CandySwipe trademark cancelled because Candy Crusher has precedence.

 

That is some pretty underhanded shit.

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I was sort of, not on their side, because I thought it was all dumb? But I at least understood why they felt the need to do what they were doing with the whole candy and saga thing. This makes me feel ill.

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So two things.

 

First, uh, Ken Levine decided he was bored and is shutting down Irrational Games. Rather than just leave, he decided to fire everyone too.

http://www.irrationalgames.com/

 

Second, King is announcing an IPO. They make one mobile app and decide to have stock. THIS SEEMS LIKE A GOOD IDEA.

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I looked at the reaction to the Irrational news on Twitter, then backed away slowly.

 

Second, King is announcing an IPO. They make one mobile app and decide to have stock. THIS SEEMS LIKE A GOOD IDEA.

 

If I worked for King (which I wouldn't), I'd feel pretty uncomfortable looking at this graph:

http://www.businessinsider.com/candy-crush-popularity-chart-decline-2014-2

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Great deal for executives and optioned employees.  Go public, cash out, retire.

That's pretty much what it'll boil down to. Look at what happened with Zynga.

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I'd like to think that investors won't fall for the same trick twice, but it's already happened like 4 times right?

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I'd like to think that investors won't fall for the same trick twice, but it's already happened like 4 times right?

Oh man, this shit happens outside the video game industry too.

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Looks like King is abandoning it's 'Candy' trademark

 

I wonder if it has anything to do with their IPO.

 

Probably not, there were going to be mounting costs to trying to secure that trademark, as more and more interest was drawn to it (and we don't even know if Hasbro had done anything quietly in the background).  Ultimately their legal team probably realized that there was a very slim chance of securing it, and drawing out the process was only going to cost them more in legal fees and bad PR. 

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Nintendo Wi-Fi connection is going to be discontinued on May 20th of this year, which means that Wii and DS online features will stop working, although stuff like the Wii and DSi shops will remain available. I guess it's to be expected, but it's going to be a clusterfuck when the online functionality for two entire generations of Pokémon games finally goes down.

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The Pokemon bank supports those games, doesn't it?

 

You can upload from Gen V into Bank, and from Gen IV into Gen V, so none of the Pokémon themselves will be lost, but it means that people who want to play with Gen IV or V rules online will now be forced to use battle simulators instead of the real deal.

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