Metaboston Media

Boston Games from the Global Game Jam

 
This month's Boston Post Mortem will be featuring games created by Boston teams for the Global Game Jam where teams around the world competed to create video games over a weekend.  It's a good example of how quickly projects can move from start to finish and could be an inspiration for organizations hesitating about dipping a toe into new media.

This month's meeting of the Boston Post Mortem will be next Wednesday, the 11th, at 7pm at the Skellig in Waltham. Instead of a single speaker, we're going to be doing a showcase and post mortem of the games created last weekend at the Boston site of the Global Game Jam. For those of you who don't know, the GGJ was organized by the IGDA as a game jam happening simultaneously around the world, with over 1600 participants creating over 300+ games in 48 hours. Our Boston site was hosted by the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. All 300 games are on the official website, but you might particularly want to check out the six games that were made in Boston

They're all open-source, too, so feel free to take a crack at the code!

The event will take place on Wednesday, Feb. 11 starting at 7:00pm at the Skellig in Waltham.

A Theory of Piracy?

 

Why do people pirate?  The main reason:  the pirates don't think the price reflects a fair value.  That's according to this interesting post by Kevin Kelly who looks at a game designer who asked pirates why they downloaded free pirated copies of his games instead of paying for them.

"He found patterns in the replies that surprised him. Chief among them was the common feeling that his games (and games in general) were overpriced for what buyers got -- even at $20. Secondly, anything that made purchasing and starting to play difficult -- like copy protection, DRM, two-step online purchasing routines  -- anything at all standing between the impulse to play and playing in the game itself was seen as a legitimate signal to take the free route.  Harris also noted that ideological reasons (rants against capitalism, intellectual property, the man, or wanting to be outlaw) were a decided minority.

I think there is probably some of the same thing going on in legitimate library borrowing as well.  They're plenty of graphic novels that I would borrow from the library rather than pay $15 - $20 for books that will be a quick, one-time read.  If the library didn't have them I would do without.  There are plenty of entertainment options available. 

It will be instructive to see if Harris' strategies to respond to the pirates (lowering costs, removing DRM, etc.) will prove to have any effect.  Some commenters on Kelly's post don't think so.

Gamer Social Network Presentation: Sept. 10

Jon Radoff of GamerDNA, the Cambridge-based gamer social network, will be speaking in Waltham on Wednesday at Boston Postmortem, the local video game developer meeting.

"I'll be talking about market trends in the game market that we've,been able to observe by integrating data about gameplay across multiple game networks. Example discussion topics will include:

- Rock Band versus Guitar Hero 3 — which is being played more, and why?
- Braid vs. other XBLA titles — real evidence of the word-of-mouth long-tail at work
- What happens to former World of Warcraft players when they try other MMORPGs? (Hint: it's not what you expect)"

Info:
Time: 7pm, Wednesday, September 10
Location: The Skellig, Waltham, MA
Cost: Free (Including free food and drink courtesy of Gamer DNA)

(via Metaboston)

Scrabulous RIP

Facebook users are mourning the death of Scrabulous on the social networking site.  At least in North America where access to the game has been shut off.  The legal conclusion to the dispute between game developer Hasbro, the owner of Scrabble, and the Indian brothers who developed Scrabulous is not surprising.  But Hasbro is coming across as the villain to addicted Scrabulous fans.

One interested party blames a complicated rights structure for the inability to move forward with a deal between the two parties.

"The rights for Scrabble are complicated: Hasbro owns the rights to Scrabble in North America, and Mattel in the rest of the world. RealNetworks has a digital deal with both companies, but Electronic Arts also has a digital deal with Hasbro.

[Real Networks CEO Rob] Glaser said that the split IP for Scrabble was a clear example of old-fashioned boxed product firms unprepared for the global online marketplace, reports CasualGaming.biz. The "silly" split rights issue, Glaser explained, is currently what prevents a potential officially-sanctioned Scrabulous from existing as it prohibits global multiplayer gamers. He said: "The problem is that because of the rights, between Hasbro and Mattel, they don't let people from America play against people from England. There are these silly rules." He said Real is pushing for them to work this out and realize that the same rules don't apply in the physical space."

Hasbro waited until they had their own service launched but so far it doesn't seem popular.  Its important to think of ways your assets can be used online but it is also important to make the implementation work.  Otherwise the hating will continue.

The conflict points to a lot of issues:  the importance of maximizing your content, the important role that pirates play in encouraging innovation (Hasbro just came out with their inferior version now), and the significance of user interface.