A long while back I was asked on my thoughts around gaming on the mobile phone. At the time I replied that there was no simple answer, that there were a number of scenarios that made being able to design strategies and methods for achieving success in these markets very difficult. Problems ranging from device compatibility through to user experience all contributed to make the platform unappealing. Compared to the familiar and well-used processes used to [...]

Right when the market seems to be saturated with “me too” fantasy MMO titles, another one emerges from the developmental primordial soup and starts gathering momentum. This time it’s the turn of Aion: The Tower of Eternity to emerge into the dual headbeams that are the MMO-playing population’s insatiable appetite for new content. But since we’ve had Lord of the Rings Online fail to gain a significant handhold on the cliff face of market share, [...]

Developers and publishers have for many years sought the holy grail of gaming: a reliable, recurring revenue stream. Traditional game development can be a high-risk business, with top class titles such as Halo 3 estimated to cost around $30 million. This cost can be shared and managed between the developer and publisher, with the balance of cost on each depending on the commercial agreements in place. Trouble is, there’s a large amount of risk involved [...]

Videogames throughout the years have set a challenge for those that play them. Whether it’s through a series of puzzles that get more ingenious and complex as the game advances, or through an increasingly concept sequence of moves that you guide a character through, it’s become an agreed mechanic that a game becomes more difficult as it progresses. The way a game becomes increasingly difficult, or the difficulty curve, is one of the key tools [...]

One of the things that I read recently was The Register’s guide to Warcraft in 2008. In it, Austin Modine essentially goes on about how World of Warcraft has consistently beaten other MMOs such as Age of Conan, Warhammer: Age of Reckoning and so on. In his opinion, the reason why WoW is so successful is because they’ve made the game too easy to take part in – that by systematically simplifying and reducing the [...]