Just loose your job? Totally stressed about how to spend your last $50?
Well, I noticed the Golden Gate bridge here in San Francisco has had the safety nets removed, but you’ll still need to negotiate the 9 foot barbed chain-fence, added after the 2001 dot com bust.
WAIT, I’M JUST KIDDING, DON’T JUMP! Take that $50 and stick it somewhere safe, (not there, ew), because retro-modern and never-can-die-sequels-as-long-as-the-last-title-made-money are in this year! Take a look at hugely popular titles that will be reborn in 2009, and we’re dying to play.
Blizzard’s StarCraft2 - These guys have been sketchy, at best, about the game’s release date, but pre-orders are on sale and June 2009 seems to be the month, based on this MTV blog post.
Guitar Hero 5 - This is not the actual image of the game - apparently nobody has any pre-release info, other than it will be named, “Van Halen”. From what we understand, the new release in the series will leverage an in-game advertising deal with Microsoft, and your own avatar that looks much like “Mii” characters from the Wii.
First, I have to give a shout-out to Dean Takahashi, writer at Venture Beat, who pointed me to Quake Live in his latest article today. Dean, IMHO, offers the latest and most comprehensive online game industry coverage, and I follow his and Andrew Chen’s posts religiously. Andrew is arguably the most fact knowledgeable entrepreneur, VC, and angel investor. Jeremy Lieu is another to follow for his good insight, although his entries span more than game topics if that is your only interest.
Now let’s get down to my experience playing on Quake Live. I have already tried the beta, and the live site is a huge improvement.
After you sign up, you’re put in a queue of other users waiting to play the game, mostly to balance server load. My position in the game playing queue was # 46,457, and 20 minutes later, it was only # 41,757. It’s safe to say that at this rate, I’d get to play sometime tomorrow morning. Unless of course current players realized that I am god’s gift to first person shooters, and made room by leaving. (Doubt it.)
Then something strange happened. Either I cut the line through some fluke, or more likely, the queue is a fictional tool used to deter players from trying to play when they’re already at capacity. They might be trying to impress someone with the high number of fake/realistic players, who’s not really into gaming enough to wait to play. Who knows, but I was sent to another web page to download and install their required browser plug-in, which must be updated from the beta version I already installed.
The installation took no time at all, and after logging back in, I tried to play a game. I was told that I had to first have my skill level assessed through a placement match. It’s basically training mode, where you jump through some hoops and go head-to-head in a deathmatch with a bot that adjusts her skill level to your performance. I think they do this by increasing her skill level each time you are up 1 or 2 kills, so you’re constantly going up and then returning to a draw score. While waiting for the game to begin, you can select one from a bunch of character styles.
Bored and out of my day’s allotment of “playtime” after reaching a draw of around 4 kills, I quit the placement match and tried joining a game, to no avail. I was greeted with the following message, “you must complete the 10 minute placement match.”
At first, this annoyed me. I mean, it’s not my first time playing. I’m the self-entitled god of Quake, or “the Harbinger of Death” as my fallen opponents gurgle at me from their death throes. Actually, my alias is “ragMF1″ in most shoot’em ups, if you ever want to find and play against me.
I’m not going to break down the Quake-playing basics. You’ve played before, and they’re all there. What I will tell you is that they’ve done an incredible job, well-documented everything, and are paving the way for the future of multiplayer gaming.
Last and precautionary, you should make sure you have the minimum system requirements well met, because game play is demanding on my laptop, and I can tell that my graphics card is heating up my machine, slowly and noticeably after 5 minutes of play.
What are the system requirements?
Minimum Requirements
Recommended
Operating System
XP or Vista
XP or Vista
Browser
Internet Explorer 7 or higher,
FireFox 2.0 or higher
Internet Explorer 8,
FireFox 3.0
Computer Processor
800 MHz Pentium III or Athlon, or better
2 GHz Intel Processor or better
Screen Resolution
1024×768
1650×1080 or higher
Graphics Card
NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX or better,
ATI Radeon 8500 or better,
Intel 945 chipset
NVIDIA GeForce 7 Series or better,
ATI Radeon X1800 series or better
Internet Connection
ISDN or IDSL Narrowband
Cable or DSL Broadband
As the computer works harder to cope with it, there is not game lag from my internet connection, but game lag caused by holding down forward, shoot, and a host of other commands that just get backed up somewhere in my machine’s ether-world. Enough backup so that I lose control of my character’s movement and he keeps walking forward. Interestingly, the mouse aim and shoot function stays flawless, so although I’m doomed to walk toward a wall I can still aim and shoot accurately. My machine is a Dell Latitude D620 for your benchmark.
Here are 4 excellent multiplayer titles available for the thinker in all of us. Well, maybe just some of us. I felt like a vegetable compared to my competition. The system even includes witty remarks, like when I got fed up with how badly I was getting beaten in Music Trivia Quiz and entered guesses randomly, the system aptly responded with -“what the hell are you talking about?”
DorkBots.com, San Francisco Bay Area flash game makers, have a new single player game title, Fishing Champion, and it’s a lot of fun. The introduction and game controls are especially well done, and their attention to small details is evident with sounds, graphics, and point scoring for different fish sizes. I could suggest a few other features, but it is a fun game.
Well, I’d say the Virtual Goods Summit 2008 was a huge success. There were tons of smart people representing a host of game companies, and of course, I was over-dressed.
Being such a “noob” industry, there are many issues that need to be dealt with concerning the sale of virtual goods. The major issues that I caught, included:
Fraud & Security
Cashouts & Increased Risk
Elitist Games & Stickiness
Statistics Tracking & Product Development
Time Vs Money & Valuating Currency
Primary & Secondary Markets
I really enjoyed the Session A: “Metrics for Virtual Goods Businesses: The Whirled Case Study” presentation by Andrew Chen & Daniel James. They had their $hit together, and presented some very interesting statistics they track. I learned that children that played “Puzzle Pirates” made an average of $0.20-$0.25 cents per hour. That’s $40.00 per month. Funny how it seems just low enough to disinterest the formation of sweatshops abroad, who may work to create virtual currencies if the time value of money is high enough for that game.
Some of those smart people were panelists, and some of them sure did bring their egos to the conference. It was kind of funny at one point, because I don’t think the panel moderator had much idea of what they should be talking about, so panelists started asking the audience, “what do you people want to know?”
Actually, it sounded like everyone faced the exact same issues.
One fascinating part of the conference for me was talking to an attending PayPal representative, Renata. You see, PayPal charges a minimum of $1.00 for micro transactions, and were losing big in this market and many others to newly founded micro transaction leaders rushing to fill the market gap. Imagine getting charged $1.00 to send $1.00 to a friend. That’s pretty bad pricing analysis, and I expect to see a big change come form them soon.
I won a guitar hero game and plastic guitar for the Wii on my way out of the conference. God, I love the conference organizers! Special thanks to Charles Hudson, VP of Business Development for Serious Business.
I took the gift to Best Buy yesterday, with gift receipt, and exchanged it for Mario Kart and wheels.
I have to say that I’m not so impressed. I mean, its like the same old game with worse controls.
Anyhow, I digress. If I talked to you and never got back to you, shoot me an email!
Nintendo’s Ad Campaign = Creativity + Web Technology + Biz Dev
Nintendo is amazing. Click on Wario’s image, (below), to see Nintendo’s new YouTube advertisement they’ve made for Wario Land. What a genius ad campaign. Watch the video through to the end. Trust me… Follow through to the Wario Land website to be uber-impressed.
BuyPlayWin will enter private beta in the middle of September. We’ll have the stuff you want, and all the fun. If you have not requested an invitation yet, please do so by sending an email to info [at] BuyPlayWin [dot] com.
Ok, so video game consoles won’t be replaced for at least 5-10 years, as Gerhard Florin, EA, said incompatible consoles made life harder for developers and consumers in a recent BBC article, but there are some killer games in development and early release that you can already play in your browser. Whether you’re a casual gamer who enjoys a 5 minute break during the day to play Bejeweled, or a hardcore clan gamer who lights his opponents up in first person shooter (fps) mayhem, you’re going to love the new generation of online gaming.
There are three game companies in particular that have beta games in various testing phases that you can sign up for right now, but spots are limited so you better move fast.
Good luck gaming!
1. Two Fish Inc, EDGERACERS
From the Quick Start Guide: Edgeracers - the community-based online racing experience! Edgeracers is all about having fun with friends old and new, growing your collection of highly-customizable cars, and competing with the community to become the best racer with the hottest set of wheels!
This is how parent company, Eximion, describes Kalydo as The brand new Kalydo technology allows gamers to play stunning 3D games in their browser. After installation of the Kalydo player people can play all Kalydo Powered games online. Players can continue playing, any time and anywhere in the world. Your game progress and achievements are automatically saved online (persistent webgaming).
3. Id Software Inc, QUAKE LIVE
Joystiq has a great write-up on Quake Live: As much as years of consuming have taught us to love purchasing goods and services, we have to admit that we still love free stuff just a skosh more. If you share in our gratis glee, you may be interested to hear that id, developer of web-based Quake III port Quake Live(formerly known as Quake Zero) is currently accepting sign-ups for the beta program.
