HeroEngine’s own Neil Harris just wrapped up his presentation at Casual Connect Hamburg on the future of game design and business models. Devs, there is good stuff in here! Please feel free to pass on to folks you know who are interested in the business side of game dev!
Are we going about making online games the wrong way? Neil Harris considers the medium’s future They are doing it wrong again. Every time that a new medium emerges the old guard’s first move is to retrofit. They look at the new medium as a new distribution channel for the same old stuff. I’m talking about cloud gaming. When moving pictures were invented the first wave of product were stage…
by: Neil Harris, President & COO of HeroEngine Steve Jobs has passed away and everyone is talking about the man, his life, and his legacy. Some cynics are already asking what his long-term impact could be compared to some of the greats who came before. One thing I can say is that thanks to Steve Jobs we’ll all have high-powered network-connected game machines in our pockets. The power of the…
by: Neil Harris, President & COO of HeroEngine What is the Price of Failure? In the James Bond movies, if you work for SPECTRE and fail, the boss pushes the button and you fall into the shark tank or get electrocuted. The price of failure is death. I once worked for a very large company that shared that culture. Everything you did had to be perfect, or else; because after…
by: Neil Harris, President and COO of HeroEngine Taking On WoW In the market for MMO games, World of Warcraft has dominated for years. There are still opportunities but you have to be careful. If you are a major game publisher you can try to beat WoW directly. That seems to be what Rift and Warhammer and Age of Conan and Lord of the Rings Online did. It’s really hard. To…
by Neil Harris, COO of Idea Fabrik and President of HeroEngine The Games Business Is Risky As the games business gets bigger it also gets riskier. Our very first HeroEngine licensee, EA’s BioWare team, is rumored to have a 5 year, $200 million budget for Star Wars: The Old Republic. With that much time and money the studio can work hard to polish the game, to make adjustments to game…