Video Gaming – Page 49 – Steven Savage

Fandom, Geeks, Jobs, and the Japanese Economy

November 12, 2009 by Steven Savage

On and off I encounter speculation that Japan's economy is going to get worse. I'm sure you've seen much the same news over and over.

I'm not able to speculate in detail, but I can see that Japan has had its trouble since its own economic meltdown, doesn't seem to have solved it's issues, and is having problems with its workforce. In my own opinion as a non-economist, I can at least see why people are concerned.

Geekonomically and fannish-job-wise, I wonder what will happen to the major geeky industries of video games, anime, and manga if Japan's economy does take a serious dive (again).

(This is why following economics is important to any career. Period.)

Go Farther: MMO’s as caracters

November 7, 2009 by Steven Savage

Why do some MMO's work and some don't? I've been kicking this around based on my last post about properties that'd work. I think I've come up with a philosophy on that.

In a good MMO, a successful one, the world itself is a character or has character.

Downloadable Content Thought Experiment

November 4, 2009 by Steven Savage

I was speculating recently on what Downloadable Content in the video game industry means. So I wanted to do a bit of a though experiment.

What does DLC mean in the game world?

The first thing everyone thinks of is that stores will take hits – especially GameStop and to a lesser event Best Buy. They'll have to make less money, perform other services, find ways to leverage DLC, and so on.

Now let's go farther.