I’m someone who has watched “Bones” on TV, on and off, since it started. I don’t have any great love for the series, but it was a suitable filler. For a while. I recognise that “Bones” runs into the dual problems of 1) trying to remain original given the ground it has already covered and … Continue reading
A Brief Discussion On Explaining Transgender Issues to Children, cite: Birdo
It’s damn hard to convince children that Birdo was (or is still) a male character. “Birdo is a boy.” “But she looks like a girl.” “But he isn’t.” “But she’s wearing a bow and is pink. She’s a girl.” “Listen to the voice in Mario Kart. That’s a throaty whisper a woman can’t make.” “But … Continue reading
Say It Like You Meme It: Hitler Reacts to Kevin Rudd’s Challenge Against Julia Gillard
This is my first attempt at a meme – first time really fooling around with a video file, first “Hitler Reacts…” video, first upload to YouTube, etc. – and all on an issue that will be out of date in about 10 hours. For those in other countries, there’s a challenge for the position of … Continue reading
How Many Players Did City of Heroes / Villains Have After Launching Freedom?
Converting from a pure subscription-based title to a hybrid free-to-play (F2P) is something than more than one MMO title has seen happen. And generally the indication from the studio is that such a move makes mad bank. When Cryptic Studios converted Champions Online to F2P, they said revenue went up 1000%; when Turbine Studios converted … Continue reading
An Update That Promises Further Updates
So NCsoft’s Q4 2012 earning results are out now and although City of Heroes / Villains saw an increase in revenue after going F2P, it isn’t the huge jump you might expect to see. This could be one of the reasons why Paragon Studios has made the move of introducing variable ratio randomised rewards you … Continue reading
Double Fine & Kickstarter: Everyone Is Still Going To Their Day Jobs Tomorrow
One of the hot topics at the moment is Double Fine’s Kickstarter project, with the mere words “a Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert point-and-click adventure” was enough to send some gamers into a donating frenzy – at this point a shade over 47 500 people have donated over US$1.6m towards the project. And there is … Continue reading
Star Wars: The Old Republic – SWTOR vs. WAR!
… and Age of Conan, for that matter. EA announced during their earnings call that Star Wars: The Old Republic had sold over 2 million boxes and had 1.7 million subscribed players, beating EA’s internal projections. A lot of sources took that at face value as a great result, but was it? Let’s look at … Continue reading
An Online Platform User Statistic For Comparison
Valve’s Steam has 40 million users (up from 35 million in 2010). It made Valve almost US$1 billion in games sales in 2010. Microsoft has 40 million users on Xbox Live (up from 30 million in 2011). This earned an an estimate of over US$1 billion revenue from game, movie and TV show-related content in … Continue reading
How Many Players Did City of Heroes / Villains Have Before Launching Freedom?
In the rush before Xmas, I missed NCsoft’s investor relations release for the Q3 2011 period. NCsoft is unique among MMO developers in that its quarterly earnings releases include a breakdown of revenue collected from each of their key titles in that period, making it very easy to track how a title is performing. Although … Continue reading
Star Wars – The Old Republic: And The Final Price Is…
In my previous examination of Star Wars: The Old Republic, the development budget from various sources ranged from the probably too-low US$80m (plus US$20 for advertising) through to US$300m. The LA Times has indicated that SWOR’s development cost sits at US$200m, while analyst Doug Creutz of Cowen & Co. suggested that EA’s “total all-in investment … Continue reading
World Class Villains 