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  The Video Game Industry is Officially Evil

Posted by: db_cooper
Nov 24, 2009, 12:59 AM
Forum: General Chat
- Replies (7)

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ma...igh-scores

Quote:Research by EEDAR has shown that a high marketing spend increases gross revenue three times more than high review scores.

The perception that high scores are crucial to sales is a myth, said EEDAR's Jesse Divnich speaking at the Montreal International Games Summit today, and developers should realise the cold fact that a poor quality game shipped with a big marketing spend will sell much better than a great game with little financial support behind it.

"You can make the greatest game and it won't even matter. I know that's discouraging to developers at first but it's very true," Divnich told the audience.

"Marketing influences game revenue three times more than quality scores. There's a giant myth out there that reviews scores are the most crucial to a videogame. The reason why that is is the information is readily available – we can go to Metacritic – and we see games like Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty succeed and we see they have a high quality score and we make that correlation. But the truth is, marketing actually has much more of an influence to game sales than high scores."

Looking at all games released between 2007 and the end of 2008, and comparing as many different configurations as possible – single format exclusives, handheld releases, Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii only – the research came to the same conclusion; marketing is more important than game quality.

Nintendo DS titles came out the worst, "this basically means that review scores for the Nintendo DS don't matter. If you're making a DS game don't even bother on quality, just ask for a bunch of marketing dollars," he said. "This actually suggests to developers that if you can, sacrifice quality to get a higher marketing budget."

For its first three months on sale, BioShock, which had $5.5 million in US marketing behind it, sold twice as many copies of EA's Dead Space, which had a budget of $2 million. The same results were found for EA Sports Active, which sold around 720,000 copies with a marketing budget of $5.6 million, compared to My Fitness Coach, which shifted an estimated 250,000 units backed with a $50,000 budget.

Divnich said that the research took in all variable costs and looked at whether the games drove more profits simply because they had more marketing spent on them.

"Looking at the gross margin, BioShock made $15 million more in the first three months than Dead Space, even when you take into consideration that Take-Two spent more money on marketing," he detailed. "EA Sports Active made $22 million more."
etc etc


At the end of the article he says something strange regarding marketing though. He (they) think that programmers or anyone directly involved with the game should be marketing it and not large companies disconnected from the game because they're clueless about games as a whole.

This speech with some recent comments by the president of activision has left me wanting to spend even less money on games.


  Why Do Stats go Backwards?

Posted by: Merkaba311
Nov 23, 2009, 11:06 PM
Forum: Flame Bucket
- Replies (23)

I'm not a stat whore by any means...but why is it that the more KPD I get and the better I score, the more points I lose. On every other server, the better you do the HIGHER your points go.

Do points go backwards on sourceop servers or what? I'm just trying to understand.

[Image: wtfx.jpg]


  just started playing dragon age

Posted by: Zeitgeist
Nov 23, 2009, 09:32 PM
Forum: General Chat
- Replies (15)

hey guys, I thought there was a thread about talking about general game strategy and experiences, but I must be becoming rattled in the head because I can't find it.

anyway, I started off as a Human Noble Rogue and im a few hours in so far. I generally like alistar, and hes started to like me after a few gift ales. Morrigans a different story.. she really can't stand me running off to help peasents. I really only use her for CC and buffs - is there another mage I can recruit later? Possibly someone with a heal from the chantry that will get along with alistar? I thought that hoe at the beginning with the chantry robes would be but she was just a rogue =/

anyway yeah. are you guys still playing this?


  Administration Control Panel

Posted by: Hovercat
Nov 22, 2009, 09:46 PM
Forum: Bugs/Problems
- Replies (24)

Hello. I'm trying to use the administration control panel, but connection is rejected for all of my CS:S servers. Any help would be greatly appreciated.


  Great tf2 servers

Posted by: Watsyurdeal
Nov 22, 2009, 11:51 AM
Forum: General Chat
- Replies (9)

I've been playing on them every now and then and I gotta say I'm impressed. I usually play on Texas Team players for the teamwork, but I got a good amount of that here too. Good show guys, I'll visit frequently if I need a good place to play.


  HLstatsX

Posted by: andy
Nov 21, 2009, 05:09 AM
Forum: General Chat
- Replies (5)

Hi, this is kind of random first post, but I've been enjoying playing on your servers lately and thought this might be of interest to you guys.

I made a TF2 theme for the HLstatsX pages that makes stats look more TF2-ish. I took the existing CSS file and added a bunch of stuff to try and match the TF2 theme. It's just a simple CSS modification, so the only change is replacing one file (hlstats.css file) with a modified version.

If you'd like to see what it looks like, here is a mirrored a copy of my Player Details page (don't laugh) with the new CSS file.

And here's a lousy low-res screenshot:
[Image: screen.jpg]

If this is not something you're interested in, if you think it looks like crap, or if you just don't like it, that's cool. I thought I'd extend the offer just in case.

Anyways, if you're interested here's a direct link to the new hlstats.css file.

Cheers.


  damnit damnit damnit

Posted by: Protection
Nov 20, 2009, 09:53 PM
Forum: Flame Bucket
- Replies (5)

i forgot i was permabanned from sourceop because my mic wasnt working damnit fuck tits


  Accidental Ban?

Posted by: Fernandita
Nov 20, 2009, 06:18 PM
Forum: Problems/Help
- Replies (3)

Last Night I was playing on the SourceOP servers approx. 10:30 est.
The map had just changed to steel when the MoTD loaded I didn't notice my arm was leaning against the numpad so when the MotD screen was on it flashed quick then i got a "temp ban for join class spam" any way i can be playing on the SourceOP servers today? :?


  smashed turtle

Posted by: crackodile
Nov 20, 2009, 02:32 PM
Forum: General Chat
- Replies (11)

my friends made a vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJHq7MIqRJM

smashed turtles ftw Tongue


  Look at me, I'm not what society wants and you can't do SHIT

Posted by: OmegaZero_Alpha
Nov 20, 2009, 01:28 PM
Forum: Flame Bucket
- Replies (22)

So I guess I have been dubbed by a professional psychiatrist (getting ready to lie on a military psych exam), and here are the summary of my 250$ worth of phone calls (do note that the thing I was told they look for the most nowadays is anti-social behavior and paranoia):

"Although you show obvious no signs of above-average paranoia, or anti-socialism you could still be easily classified as a heavy-to-moderate Schizoid-Type personality with an affinity for obsessive compulsion.

The only thing I would be worried about from a psychological standpoint is a forced-sense of narcissism, albeit far from malignancy."

The worst part of this I can think of is the Schizoid-type personality 'disorder'.

Its fun that I'm not crazy, but apparently not giving a shit about sex or what other people think of you is like the worst affliction to befall my poor soul. I should get this looked at so I can be taken advantage of as easily as the rest of you normal smoes, right?

And having a high standard of society is bad, too, I guess. Wouldn't want me to have a moral stance when I am deciding the fates of tens, hundreds, maybe thousands of people (depending on what rank they pull out of their rank-hat). That would be inconvenient for my superiors.

Any body else have any 'disorders' that you think are more useful than harmful?