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634 days ago
Ate a great meal tonight at Cafe Juanita, went to sleep with my 6-yr old because she asked, then woken up by my wife at 2 a.m. on her way to bed after playing WOW. So of course I'm up, can't sleep, and feeling somewhat introspective. I would best describe my mood tonight as very murakami. i'm neither here nor not here, comfortably numb and scared shitless, nostalgic and bursting with a desire to capture this in words. random web surfing while i write this - listening to a local band The Liquid Now which has a very Oasis feel but goes down a tad smoother with little droplets of japan lost inside. Very much recommend the song "Gone Away" by the way. Also simultaneously reading some of my poetry on lit.org. which is the equivalent of rereading entries in one's diary. If that doesn't make you nostalgic then nothing can. This year, I am determined to publish a collection, I need to just will it and hopefully my friend can help me in getting it organized. I also ...
668 days ago
If it be now, ’t is not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. ... w.shakespeare The season is fast coming upon us. The season where all of us publisher folk hear pitches from the dev community. In 2 weeks it will be D.I.C.E. in vegas followed by Game Connection and then Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco. All you devs now finished with your Holiday 07 games and related downloadable content, all you guys with your Spring releases about to go to cert, all of you noobs and first-time devs with nothing but a dream and 5 pieces of paper. So here are a few things to think about if you are getting your pitches together for us publisher folk. 1. 10,000 Feet : Please give me the top level info when you start your pitch. What's the genre and sub-genre of the game? How long will it take you to make? How much will it cost? I hate pitches where I don't know the first thing about what ...
714 days ago
Anyone who knows much about me knows that I used to run the video game rental business for Hollywood Video nationwide. I'll say this outright, when it comes to the niche of understanding video game rental as a business, I'm probably one of the few people you could call for advice. Old habits die hard so today I found myself wandering in to a Hollywood video store out of morbid curiousity as to what they were merchandising lately. I found 10 bays dedicated to Xbox 360, 6 bays dedicated to wii, and 2 bays dedicated to PS3. Doesn't that tell you all you need to know right there? PS3 is in a deep deep hole. Even the 2 bays of PS3 that I saw had both their bottom rows blocked off because they didn't have enough inventory to fill it up completely. It was sad really. The store was also clearly in the middle of selling off nearly half of its PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube inventory as used. Pricing was a mess and all over the place. The accessories endcap business I ...
727 days ago
When I was down in Georgia after my mother's accident, I was given the terrible task of going to the car yard where my mother's totalled car lay waiting for the scrap heap. On the way there I stopped by the lcoal post office to put a hold on my mother's mail. The post office was a single clerk affair, the clerk was also the postmaster. She was a very nice older woman with young grandchildren. We got to talking about what I do for Microsoft and about video games. She explained that she would never buy a video game ordinarily but the wii seems fun because it is simple and looks like it gets you off the couch. Then no later than an hour later, I went to the car yard where the owner was a man in his mid-thirties wearing cowboy boots and a baseball cap. He was as it turns out a hard core gamer. The guy that loves Halo for the story, the guy that buys the flightstick peripheral to go along with Ace Combat, and who loves to play Project Gotham Racing. Neither one of them were rich, ...
740 days ago
Lately there is so much on the plate at work that everything is work in progress and nothing is getting finished at the rate I would like. This week saw a lot of progress and I am hopeful that what we have of next week will see me catching up on the workload substaintially. Working on 3 or 4 deals that may or may not happen. A couple of pieces of "strategery" that may or may not have value. One deal that must happen quickly. And lots of P&L modeling work on a very cool prototype project in Japan that is near and dear to my heart. I have at least 3 messages of "sorry there are no next steps" to deliver. Possibly a due diligence or even two. And somewhere in there I got committed into writing up a powerpoint slide for someone about something. On the positive side, SceneIt? Lights Camera Action came out to very good reviews for the genre. I finished the 2 deals that enabled this game literally while sitting on the floor this year at D.I.C.E. in ...
