video games

How Borderlands 2 Illustrates Changing Content and Involvement

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As you may have guessed, some of us here are seriously digging Borderlands 2.  I’m enjoying it and am currently on the first DLC campaign AND running a second game with a DLC character.  Jose penned his own love letter to it when it first came out (where did he get the time?).  All things aside, it’s a great game, filled with references, and has a crazy cute robot named Claptrap who at one point threatens to violate a villain’s corpse.

Really, it’s great.  Also, the Commando class rules and you can’t prove me wrong.

But what’s interesting on a pro geek level, is that the game has several great lessons for those of us working in gaming and content.  Beyond the whole angry-cute-robot angle.

One of the great lessons?  Mindshare.  A lesson that shows how we need to rethink content.

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We’ll Be Hearing About Zynga Long After It’s Relevant – So Keep It Relevant

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Well, Zynga’s COO is stripped of game duties.  We can imagine those people who can cash out their stock aren’t happy.  We’ve all heard about the possible insider trading scandal.

So my rough take on Zynga is A) No don’t take any job offers there, and B) They’re in for some tough times and a probable buyout, massive downscale, or both.  But there’s more.

So anyway, as I expect a tough time at the big Z, here’s something I think we need to be prepared for: the impact on the gaming part of the geekonomy.  In this case, I want to focus on the cultural impacts.

Zynga is a company that people have alternately praised and hated over the last few years.  I think in the end everyone knew it was too good to be true, but the real question was what we could learn, make, and take from them.  There’s an odd sense of inevitability in their fall, as if so many of us were waiting.

However now that it’s happening, I’m pretty sure we’re going to hear about this for the next few years until we’re sick of it.  Zynga is on it’s way to become a bad example, and soon only a bad example as history grinds on.  Remember how people talk about dot-bomb companies?  Yeah, that’ll be Zynga.

Our media is used to cartoon villains and heroes in the tech sphere, so I’m sure we’ll get plenty of that.

The problem with this is then we miss the lessons.  For those of us working in tech, or gaming, and in media, it’s important we don’t forget.

The insider training, the questionable monetization, the dependence on Facebook, we need to extract lessons from Zynga.  This was big, this was important, this was formative, even if you now have a fear of any game with the word “-ville” in the title.  So before Zynga becomes a cardboard villain, make the effort to learn the lessons of their fall.

Because in a few more years, they’ll just be a shadow of their former failure.  Think how many good lessons of the dot-bomb are lost because it’s a buzzword . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach for professional and potentially professional geeks, fans, and otaku. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/

 

Watch The Prices Change

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The president of THQ thinks we’re going to see console games get distributed like PC games (and goodbye $60 box).  Ea is going Freemium.  Even with the massive Zynga downturn, it seems that the days of the $60-box-game-in-a-store is fading away.

Of course none of us are surprised, we probably saw it coming.  My guess is that the “fade” will pick up after this Christmas, and we’ll even see some titles start going pure DLC, dropping the box they were planned for.  We’ll also see more Freemium, more “try before you buy,” and all the general confusion that follows a shift in pricing plans.

Now I expect the changes are inevitable.  Gaming is a changing industry, technology is a changing industry, the world economy is staggering like a drunken sailor of the non-fuku variety, and people want to make money.

However, these changes, despite building on existing trends, are still going to seem a bit alien and are going to have some odd effects.  So here’s Steve’s takeaways:

  • Gamestop is clearly aware of this to judge by their promotion of the Nexus 7.  They’ll have to stay on top of gaming and on top of deals, probably becoming a kind of micro-Best Buy focused on gaming and entertainment.  I think they can make it, but they’ll have to change.  Career-wise, GameStop may need some savvy business people – and if they integrate with other companies, tech people as well.
  • Best Buy is pretty much hosed anyway, but I think that a move like this will make it tougher on them IF they’re even around long enough to be affected.
  • Though downloadable is fine and acceptable to people, the entire Freemium thing is going to be weird and hard to implement.  Frankly I’m expecting another round of pricing experiments in 2013, many of which will be stupid or fail.  This is an opportunity for you econogeeks to advise companies.
  • At some point the weird Freemium pricing is going to annoy people and there will be some “scandalettes” bouncing around the gaming industry about weird charges, ripoffs, exploitation, etc.  We have that now, but this will be more public because the gaming world is getting more public.
  • Eventually gaming is going go go away from physical media, and have to really blaze new trails in pricing.  These trails will be weird enough that establishing norms will be hard, and will take time (I think Freemium and it’s ilk have about 3-5 more years to get culturally normal without becoming an Intermittent Story In Gaming).

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach for professional and potentially professional geeks, fans, and otaku. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/