Back briefly

Well the ocean was fun... and a lot of work with 3 kids. The kids are stressing me out these days, but we're all cooped up at home together going nuts. Hopefully I can leave the unemployment rolls soon in a good way and life returns to sanity.

Though when I got back I learned that PAX 3 day passes had sold out before I got a chance to buy one!!!! ahhhh!! Anyone got one they're not using?

Post GenCon and pre-Pax gaming news seems to be rather slow. Doesn't seem like much in the way of big announcements came out of Gencon. Did I miss something?

Also, the head (outgoing? they're being absorbed into Square-Enix) of Eidos is an idiot. He hates the whole second-hand games market. Does he prefer people just pirate his games if they don't want to pay full retail price? Look, the reason people sell games is because of these:

1) they didn't like it - it sucked.
2) There wasn't enough game there - they played it out thoroughly in a short amount of time
3) Post release support for the game was lacking

People BUY games, they DON'T RENT GAMES. Ask the "U.S." (no, not Toyota and the companies which make their cars actually in the U.S.) auto companies, they don't like used cars either but there are benefits to it. Why do people trade in cars at auto dealers? the same reason people sell USED games... to buy new ones. When you're a game producer complaining about used games... it is because people are selling your game for one of the above reasons and buying new someone elses game.

The solution is simple MAKE QUALITY GAMES. Pick one of the above three reasons for game sales (problems for some designers) and work on it till people don't sell your games any more. So that instead they sell your competitors' games in order to buy yours.

Maybe notice that you'll never see a Stardock game for resale, but plenty of people ditching bad Eidos games to buy them. Stardock are the ones who introduced The Gamer's Bill of Rights pictured to the right. They're also one of the companies with top selling games who never use any DRM on their games. How can they do it? They're games are great, replayability is high, and you'd never pirate their games because you wouldn't get the wonderful post retail support Stardock offers.

It is why Elemental is the only MUST BUY game of the year.

Recessions are good for gamers ... in the long run

It sucks having been laid off twice in the last year. I'm wanting to buy up cheap expansions for Runebound right now, but just can't justify it.

Being in Seattle I'm seeing a lot of effects on local game industries. Because people have a lot less discretionary money, or are just too scared to spend their discretionary money it is impacting the game economy. But it is very far from impacting companies equally!

Some game companies are still growing and expanding at this time, some are laying off and shrinking massively and really scaling back in a major way. What do I see as a general trend behind who is doing what? Companies which pump out a lot of low quality games and charge standard prices for them are taking a major beating. Companies that always try to produce high quality games, and don't charge excessively for them are doing really well and even adding positions. Look into the reports of a dozen game companies and you'll see it right now. Quality and not trying to price gouge are huge marks of success right now. For Gamer's this means the low quality game companies are going out of business and will have less money to peddle garbage onto the market but the quality game houses putting out good titles are going to see a lot of growth which hopefully means even more good games in the future as they hire and produce more.

Here is my caveat though. During this recession everyone is trying to scalp bottom dollar on their employees because so many people are desperate for any wage. This doesn't mean you get a good employee, one who is dedicated or will work hard for you. Someone who is making half what he used to for the same job is going to resent his new employer for taking advantage of his situation. It is just human nature and why should employers be surprised at the high turnover of disgruntled new employees or their lack of performance equalling those who are paid twice as much or more?

Furthermore lets take a look at your typical game company pay scales. Game Developer magazine had some recent articles and looking through job postings will agree... QA people get paid the least in the game industry even though they probably have the most impact on a successful or non-successful game company right now. I know way too many game developers who work for companies who aren't worth their paychecks. They have lots of game experience... usually made up of lots of failed titles and it is far far less about performance as much as knowing the right people to get a developer position. The successful QA software engineer will probably still make a quarter as much in many cases as the uneducated game developer/designer without a high profit title to his name. But since fewer and fewer companies have profits they can just flush down the drain, maybe you should start to think about putting your money on the people who are going to really guarantee if you're successful or another high bankrolled flop?

In other news if you're an employer in the Seattle area, let me assure you that I'm worth much more than minimum wage.