“The Oculus Rift has come a long way from a Kickstarter concept piece to billion dollar acquisition by Facebook.”

Oculus VR are not breaking new ground for the integration of VR technology and innovative motion controls into video games.  It has been attempt before in various different guises, from Nintendo’s Power Glove to Victormaxx’s ridiculously expensive Cybermaxx headset. Peripherals for video games have never really improved on the overall gaming experience, at least not enough to make gamers shell out cash on the high priced products. The Oculus Rift is really a refinement of the technology laid down by Jaron Lanier, Thomas G. Zimmerman and others alike. The wide field of view, HD display and head tracking the key selling points of the new device and may well be the final piece of the puzzle that was missing previously. The other issue that held back many devices prior to the current day equivalents was a simple matter of size. One of the first virtual reality head mounted displays was so heavy and cumbersome it had to be suspended from the ceiling, users nicknaming the device the “The Sword of Damocles”. Even Nintendo’s Virtual Boy seems bulky and unwieldy by today’s standards. There is no doubting that Oculus VR have put their work in trying to make their device slip seamlessly into the gaming experience and make the interactivity as intuitive as possible.

“Virtual Reality has come and gone in the past can the current trend maintain prolonged interest and more importantly sell in sustainable numbers.”

However it is not as if the company has a monopoly on the VR market as both Sony and Valve are looking to enter the arena with their own interpretations. At this year’s Games Developers Conference in San Francisco Sony came out swinging with their own version of a VR headset dubbed Project Morpheus. The Japanese tech giants have been working on VR prototype headsets for a number of years, integrating their own Move controllers into the system. Sony has the slight advantage of having a long history in the tech industry and all the experience that comes with it. However the Oculus team can boost about the veteran developers that have joined the company, with id Software founder John Carmack the chief technology officer at Oculus VR. Even Valve’s own VR specialist Michael Abrash has switched sides and joined the Oculus Rift team. It would seem that at any rate gamers will be spoilt for choice when these devices make it market, when that will be is still up in the air. Some hints point towards a late 2014 early 2015 launch for the Oculus Rift, but another important question arises in response to that is the devices proposed price point. Again no official pricing structure has been announced only guesstimates can be made at this time, the most recent Dev kit version of the device going for $350 (€254). $250(€180) to $300(€220) the price range been floated around by some market analysts. Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey has stated that he may adopt a similar model used by the console manufactures, dropping the price and making up the money on licencing deals with game publishers. This is integral to the success of any of the current VR headsets in development, the support of the video game developers to integrate the technology into their games. At the end of the day if there isn’t an extensive catalogue of titles that will support VR then the Rift, Morpheus, Gameface or any of the other VR headsets will ultimately fail.

“The Oculus Team have had VR market all to themselves the last two years but now competition is heating up with others jumping on the VR bandwagon.”

The decision by “Notch” to pull his official support for Oculus Rift integration with Minecraft doesn’t help with publicity for the VR company. Not that ‘Minecrafters’ desperate to see their blocky creations up close and personal are out of luck, as there are mods that support Oculus Rift input. However an official release of a VR compatible version of Minecraft could have been a big boon for the Oculus Rift over it soon to be competitors. The Rift is definitely carving itself out as a PC peripheral as opposed to Sony’s VR which obviously will be supported by their PlayStation console. Sony already demonstrating their eye tracking technology working with the current PS4 release Infamous: Second Son. So just like the console wars that take place between Sony and Microsoft it is the exclusive titles that can often sway customers moreover than hardware specs. There is even now a host of tech companies that want to take VR even further, not happy with just tracking movement of the player’s vision they want get them on the move. Companies like Virtuix with their Omni motion tracking device want to have Oculus Rift users get of their seats and start moving. The demonstration of Valves new VR headset at Steam Dev Days also incorporated spatial awareness and the capturing of full body movement. This entire aside the current generation of VR is still in its infancy with projects still in development and release dates still TBA. It would seem that there is enough momentum behind the VR push this time that it is unlikely to be a flash in the pan. Whether or not it will be a revolution in video game interaction is still out to tender. A quick review of interactive peripherals of video games past doesn’t paint a great picture. Even the evolution of the video game controller has been fairly stagnant for the last decade, although Valve might have something to say about that. The coming years and eventual product launches will offer a clearer idea for the future of Virtual Reality.

By Colm O’Sullivan

The post The State of the Industry: Virtual Reality The Future or Fad? appeared first on Game Design Ireland.

“Will anyone really miss The Ville it’s players could just spend the day watching paint dry”

Zynga has taken an extreme approach to building a company in the video game industry instead of focusing on making new and innovative games they have looked to copy what others have done before them and rebrand it with their own art style. Zynga’s founder and CEO Mark Pincus has been reported by a former employee as saying “I don’t f**king want innovation, you’re not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers.”, this attitude coupled with long hours and little in the way of employee gratitude will start to breed an environment of resentment and has many former employees revealing the truth of what goes on behind the closed doors of the Zynga offices. The company is rotten at the core which won’t help when they are losing money and need their staff to rally together to create new games that will rebuild their fortunes and why is the once Facebook darlings losing so much money, there is a simple answer they have spent outrageous amounts of money establishing new offices and buying out other game developers with little in the way of financial return.

“Are the talented developers working at Zynga being suppressed in order to boost the profit margins?”

Zynga’s case is not all that unique just earlier this year THQ publishing went under due to a similar habit of buying financially unsuccessful game studios, however Zynga has taken this common industry model and taken it to new heights or should that be new lows. Since the beginning of 2010 Zynga has barely gone 3 months without acquiring or starting a new development studio, as it currently stands they have twelve studios with several already shut down not more than a year or two after they were established. This pace of acquisition is unheard off in the industry and begs the question, do the corporate heads at Zynga know anything about financial planning or business strategy as from reading comments from any Wall Street analysts most agree that this model is not one that breeds success but will in fact lead to a quick demise. The real problem with their approach is the curse that Zynga seems to carry with them, the idea is too buyout a development studio that has had a hit game and then rebrand it under the Zynga banner and rerelease the same game with very few additions or anything in the way of innovation. Not surprisingly this model is a complete failure and is no more evident then with the case of OMGPOP’s popular iOS game Draw Something.

“Zynga’s downfall is based on one simple factor, don’t spend more than you make”

The game was based on the popular board game Pictionary and saw massive growth in popularity which brought it to the attention of Zynga who bought the game and the development studio in March of 2012 for $180 million. The follow up game was then released a year later and was a complete flop which has lead Zynga to closing the office and laying off nearly 20% of its staff. Within one year Zynga invested a massive amount of money in a company that would be shut down the next, this is not a sustainable model for any business whether it be in the video game industry or not. It also doesn’t help develop new talent with game studios like OMGPOP failing to succeed under Zynga’s guidance. The company thankfully has missed out on acquiring other successful casual gaming studios such as PopCap and Rovio with the latter being offered over $2 billion in cash and stock in buyout talks, so we can hopefully continue to play new Angry Birds and Plants V’s Zombies games without the fear of Zynga’s fatal curse.

“An analogue version of Draw Something, Zynga are scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one”

Honestly the Zynga approach to video game design is nothing new as developers have being copying each other’s work and re-skinning them with their own art style and design, with video game publishers having always seen the acquisition of smaller development studios as a way to grow their business. The problem is that Zynga has tried to do this at an alarming pace without time to plan for the future, Zynga in some ways is akin to their bulldog mascot hyperactively and hastily making decisions without thinking of the consequences and only realising their mistakes when it’s too late. Mark Pincus’s company has seen success but it soon might be a fleeting memory as they look certain for financial collapse. Zynga like Icarus have flown too close to the sun and are plummeting towards an ocean of debt at an ever increasing rate with no parachute to rescue them.

By Colm O’Sullivan

The post Zynga Review appeared first on Game Design Ireland.

“Mid 90’s mobile gaming at it’s best”

The game that set this industry on its path to widespread recognition was Snake which was available on the Nokia brand of phones in the late 90’s. It is estimated that 350 million people have played the game based on the number of phones sold. Although still a 2D monochromatic version of the game it gave other developers the idea that the ever technologically advancing mobile phone could be used as a platform for gaming working in much the same way as the already established handheld market did, a variant of the game had appeared on Nintendo Gameboy under the title of Serpent. At the time there was no market for mobile games as most came pre-loaded onto the phones and was hampered by the hardware and graphical limitations of the phones themselves. The other major hurdle was the access to these games with no proper mobile networking infrastructure in place at the time, most games were sold through the network carriers with download speeds hampering the development of more advanced games or successful games being able to reach a wider audience. It wouldn’t be until the advent of smart phones with powerful processers and larger memory storage that mobile games would look to compete with the console and pc markets, now with Wi-Fi and 3G enabled phones the mobile software developers such as Apple and Google could now establish digital marketplaces like the iTunes App Store and Google Play to deliver the digital content. In the intervening years the industry included some failures with the N-Gage been the most well-known of these. Nokia had looked to capitalize on the success they had with selling phones that would allow its customers to play games. Among many hardware and technical faults that plagued the device the main issue was the lack of support by third party developers to make games for the device, at the time not many video game companies were solely established to develop for the mobile market, most games where made by those who worked on handheld games or were simply ports of other companies popular titles. The game that could be argued to be the catalyst for the mobile industries growth is of course Angry Birds made by Finnish game developers Rovio, the company was established in 2003 as Relude and aimed to develop specifically for mobile platforms. The company has also made recent moves into the publishing sector of mobile gaming, with their new initiative Rovio Stars helping developers Nitrome and 5 Ants get their games to market.

“Many other ragdoll demolition games have come and gone, but Angry Birds pleasing visuals have seen Rovio rise to the top”

Angry Birds was released onto iOS platforms in December of 2009 and instantly became one of the bestselling games on the mobile market. It currently sits third in the list of bestselling mobile games with 12 million downloads just behind Tetris and Pac-Man. Aside from the games appealing aesthetics it is it’s unique touchscreen mechanics that helped boost its popularity and sales, the development of smart phones with touchscreen features and gyroscopic sensors allowed game developers to explore new and unique gameplay mechanics that just aren’t possible on other devices. Other games that utilized this technology include the likes of Doodle Jump, Fruit Ninja or Temple Run. Due to its success Rovio has been able to port the game to several other devices including a move to consoles and pc’s and has led to the subsequent release of multiple sequels and follow up games in the series. One of these ports is the Angry Birds Friends which is a Facebook version of the game and was released last year. The rise in popularity of Social networks and the developments in web based gaming has led to developers now shifting focus over to this new platform for development with Zynga being one of the key players in this area of the industry.

“Farmville seems to teach people to become organized hoarders, how many horses or elephant’s does’ one person need”

Facebook has seen itself become the dominant leader in the social networking scene and has a user base exceeding 800 million and daily activity on the site reaching over 400 million. Undoubtedly many of those users log on every day to play one of the many games now available on the site, Zynga’s Farmville being one of the most popular games with a monthly active user base of over 250 million. The game is based on the freemium business model that permeates much of the gaming industry today. The model was proposed by venture capitalist Fred Wilson in a 2006 blog post “Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc., then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base.”, today only two of the top 50 gaming apps in the iTunes store don’t fit into this model. The mechanic used by Farmville and many other like it is the limitation of actions that can be carried out over a certain time period, where traditionally with video game development a player can spend as many hours as they wish playing a game, with the likes of Farmville there is only a certain amount of task that can be completed until the user has to wait a period of time for their actions tally to refill. Incentives are offered to those who invite friends to play the game, subscribe to certain in-game advertisement or pay with real money to refill their actions tally. The model that is used by Zynga has come under many criticisms for manipulating it players most of whom are young as is their target audience in forcing them to spend money to simply continue to play the game without waiting, they have also being subject to multiple lawsuits for promoting advertisements in its games that don’t conform to the proper regulatory bodies and guidelines set by Facebook. The concept of free-to-play games is currently a contentious issue in the industry as there are many arguments both for and against its use, although not officially confirmed it is highly likely that free-to-play games and the freemium model could be coming to the next-generation of consoles with Epic Games Mark Rein speaking at the UK’s Game Horizon conference “The next-gen consoles are going to be fully embracing the free-to-play and these IAP-type business models”. The issue that has many gamers worried is what is going to be both Sony and Microsoft’s approach to the freemium model, Valve’s Team Fortress 2 and Zombie Studios Blacklight: Retribution (announced to launch on the PS4) have paved the way for a successful freemium model that balances the price of additional content and the effects that the content has on those who choose not to spend any money.

 “Valve’s endless obsession with hats, has proved to be a profitable business model”

The mobile and social networking gaming markets have seen a massive rise in popularity thanks primarily to the technology and devices that run these games. Unlike in other sectors of the industry where it is the games themselves that help grow the consumer numbers for a particular device, the casual gaming market relies on manufactures like Samsung and Apple to develop better phones and tablets that our able to advance the graphics and mechanics of the games and companies like Zynga relying on Facebook’s growing popularity to maintain their own user base. Largely the causal gaming market relies on small independent game developers creating games that help to gain recognition for the industry as the vast majority of AAA developers have yet to come to grips with the limitations of mobile devices and prefer to work with more technologically advanced consoles and pc’s. Devices such as the Ouya look to bridge that gap by basing their consoles off the existing android technology that powers a large majority of phones and tablets on the market. It would seem that a move towards a cross platform development is something that might be in the near future but it will still take the major developers wanting to work with the limited technology and the manufactures offering more advanced devices for a blend of the two industry sectors to happen.

By Colm O’Sullivan

The post The State of the Industry: Tap, Flick or Click appeared first on Game Design Ireland.