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Matt Harris is my cousin. This is his Acapella version of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know”. It’s really worth listening to and watching the video because, apart from a single egg shaker, it’s all his voice and body-percussion. Go on, hit him up with a few more “likes”. Related posts: The Broadband Blueprint … Continue reading “Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know””
Matt Harris is my cousin. This is his Acapella version of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know”. It’s really worth listening to and watching the video because, apart from a single egg shaker, it’s all his voice and body-percussion.
Go on, hit him up with a few more “likes”.
Though, to date, we’ve had one inquiry. So rather than hide it all behind a wall, here’s what we’ve written. As my theory is that telling no-one was getting us nowhere, I’m now telling everyone. About Matt 1990-1994 BSc Hons Genetics 1994-1996 PgCert Computers and IT 1996 Joined Nortel 1996 Published first game: The 23rd … Continue reading “We’re on Seedups.com”
Though, to date, we’ve had one inquiry. So rather than hide it all behind a wall, here’s what we’ve written. As my theory is that telling no-one was getting us nowhere, I’m now telling everyone.
About Matt
1990-1994 BSc Hons Genetics
1994-1996 PgCert Computers and IT
1996 Joined Nortel
1996 Published first game: The 23rd Letter
1998 Published second game: SpaceNinjaCyberCrisis XDO
2001 Published third game: Zombi: the earth won’t hold the head
2003 Started own IT company, MacSys Ltd
2006 Started Infurious software
2008 Started developing Digital Circle in Northern Ireland
2011 Put together the team for Conquest Dynamics
Business Opportunity
We will need an initial £200,000 of funding to produce the first game and the development of the initial IP for the second and third. We are not aiming for the 69p market, but rather delivering some new ideas in social and multiplayer games which will drive payer recruitment and engagement.
Our initial game has a basic game design document but this also needs enhancement and we are keen to find additional advice as well as funding to assist in the delivery of this.
The opportunity in a global, networked marketplace is immense thoughwill only be realised through appropriate marketing, use of social media and development of a die-hard player community.
We aim to sell more than a million copies of each game each year and establish four important new properties over the next five years.
Product/Service
We will make games and sell them. A lot.
We have one developed idea and three further games on the slate and a dozen more in the distance.
Market Information
We are aiming for a market segment that is at the intersection of 11M subscribers to World of Warcraft and 65 million iPads.
We will be targeting a sector we know well. Gamers who have limited time, some money to spend and a desire to play games which have more depth than casual games. We’re targeting gamer dads.
Financial Information
To be decided. Come and talk to us.
We’re looking for a committed partner who will provide more than just funding. We’re in for a roller coaster; we have big plans so come and talk to us.
Intellectual Property Information
We will be developing new content-based intellectual peoperty based on original ideas and tell engaging stories.
Last month I had the pleasure of visiting the CAL (Culture, Arts and Leisure) committee. This is an oversight committee which, as far as I can tell, exists to make sure that the department (DCAL) is doing what it is meant to be doing. Our report was originally submitted as a response to the CAL … Continue reading “The CAL Committee Inquiry into the Creative Industries”
Last month I had the pleasure of visiting the CAL (Culture, Arts and Leisure) committee. This is an oversight committee which, as far as I can tell, exists to make sure that the department (DCAL) is doing what it is meant to be doing.
Our report was originally submitted as a response to the CAL Committee Inquiry into the Creative Industries. (600K, PDF)
While I think that DCAL is doing everything it can do serve the varied and fragmented responsibility that falls under its satrapy, our session of giving evidence concentrated on more pressing issues. You can read the transcripts of all of the session at the NIAssembly Web Site here (and our specific transcript here)
Some selections:
Is the curriculum in post-primary schools aligned to the type of developments that have taken place in the industry and market?
Absolutely not.
We cannot express how bad the situation is. We may take some responsibility in that it happened on our watch, but the information and communication technology (ICT) qualification is utterly unsuitable for a digital economy. Essentially, we have given people GCSEs and A levels in the 21st century equivalent of typing.
…
People in the industry do not understand the maximum student number (MaSN) cap, and I do not understand it. We are artificially restricting the number of people that we need for the industry.
Read more. It’s incredibly relevant to our industry, as are the other transcripts on that page.
Device Years Active Units Sold (millions) Sony PlayStation/PSOne 1994-2000 102 Sony PlayStation 2 2000-2011 150 Sony PlayStation 3 2006-2012 62 Total for Sony over 18 years 312 17m/yr MicrosoftXBOX 2001-2006 24 Microsoft XBOX 360 2005-2012 65 Total for Microsoft over 11 years 89 8m/yr Nintendo NES 1983-2003 61 Nintendo SNES 1990-2003 49 Nintendo 64 1996-2002 … Continue reading “Fanboi”
| Device | Years Active | Units Sold (millions) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sony PlayStation/PSOne | 1994-2000 | 102 | |
| Sony PlayStation 2 | 2000-2011 | 150 | |
| Sony PlayStation 3 | 2006-2012 | 62 | |
| Total for Sony over 18 years | 312 | 17m/yr | |
| MicrosoftXBOX | 2001-2006 | 24 | |
| Microsoft XBOX 360 | 2005-2012 | 65 | |
| Total for Microsoft over 11 years | 89 | 8m/yr | |
| Nintendo NES | 1983-2003 | 61 | |
| Nintendo SNES | 1990-2003 | 49 | |
| Nintendo 64 | 1996-2002 | 32 | |
| Nintendo GameCube | 2001-2007 | 21 | |
| Nintendo Wii | 2006-2012 | 150 | |
| Total for Nintendo over 29 years | 303 | 10m/yr | |
Apple has sold over 300m iOS devices over 5 years. That’s 60 million a year sold.
Every single one bought by a “fanboy” apparently.
Heather Brooke on BBC News Channel, talking about proposed legislation that would allow the British government to legally monitor the phone calls, emails, texts and website visits of members of the public. Why are we surprised? Considering the millions that have been spent on surveillance and biometrics by the Security Services via the Technology Strategy … Continue reading “Digital Surveillance: why are we surprised?”
Heather Brooke on BBC News Channel, talking about proposed legislation that would allow the British government to legally monitor the phone calls, emails, texts and website visits of members of the public.
Why are we surprised? Considering the millions that have been spent on surveillance and biometrics by the Security Services via the Technology Strategy Board, it’s a matter of public procurement “value for money” that we actually start to use this stuff.
A quick search on the TSB web site brought up these SBRIs:
And, really, what do you think the Internet of Things is about other than the normalisation of data collection in everyday objects?
“If all objects of daily life were equipped with radio tags, they could be identified and inventoried by computers.”
“Mislaid and stolen items would be easily tracked and located, as would the people who use them.”
Notable that it doesn’t mention the privacy implications?
My Opinion: They’re Watching. Get Over It.
There’s a huge amount of data for them to sift through and they’re going to be spying on millions of Britons as well as millions of foreign nationals (regular, plain ol’ tourists). So, try not to do anything that causes them to turn their baleful eye your way. Try not to be “interesting” to them.
sftp> put IMG_1163.MOV Uploading IMG_1163.MOV to /home/public_html/IMG_1163.MOV IMG_1163.MOV 20% 39MB 43.0KB/s 1:01:11 ETA I suppose it’s better than dial-up. Bah. Starting tomorrow, gonna see about switching to BT Infinity. Uploading a 202 MB movie file is just excruciating on our outstanding “digital platform”. Related posts: Northern Ireland has excellent broadband. Onlive: Gaming in the Cloud … Continue reading “43 KBps”
sftp> put IMG_1163.MOV
Uploading IMG_1163.MOV to /home/public_html/IMG_1163.MOV
IMG_1163.MOV 20% 39MB 43.0KB/s 1:01:11 ETA
I suppose it’s better than dial-up. Bah.
Starting tomorrow, gonna see about switching to BT Infinity. Uploading a 202 MB movie file is just excruciating on our outstanding “digital platform”.
I do a little bit of public speaking and I’m always asked for my job title and a short bio. The bio is usually something funny that I’ve cribbed together in the minutes before they give up on me. The job title I struggle with. My official title is “Network Facilitator” which is such a … Continue reading “Job Titles Are For Wimps”
I do a little bit of public speaking and I’m always asked for my job title and a short bio.
The bio is usually something funny that I’ve cribbed together in the minutes before they give up on me.
The job title I struggle with. My official title is “Network Facilitator” which is such a mealy-mouthed non-description that it leaves me cold.
So, as of today, bios are no more. And my job title officially changes to:
It’s what I do.
In the vein of telling everyone* in an attempt to try and raise the funds for this game, here’s a lo-fi trailer that Aidan, my friend (and close collaborator in all things important to me), put together to help us visualise the story and content. This is a 3 MB M4V. What do you think? … Continue reading “Lo-Fi”
In the vein of telling everyone* in an attempt to try and raise the funds for this game, here’s a lo-fi trailer that Aidan, my friend (and close collaborator in all things important to me), put together to help us visualise the story and content. This is a 3 MB M4V.
What do you think?
*telling no-one wasn’t working very well.
NHS trust to use iPads for real-time access to patient records. The trust hopes to use other mobile functions such as online mapping, so district nurses can plan the best route for their rounds. … By June, SWFT hopes to have installed a document management system from supplier Kainos, which will help the trust to … Continue reading “NI Firm Kainos in NHS iPad Deployment”
NHS trust to use iPads for real-time access to patient records.
The trust hopes to use other mobile functions such as online mapping, so district nurses can plan the best route for their rounds.
…
By June, SWFT hopes to have installed a document management system from supplier Kainos, which will help the trust to scan its paper-based records into a database of electronic records. Kainos was chosen partly because it could demonstrate its mobile access to its software through an iPad, said Robinson.
This was an interesting story because it represents a health trust doing something independently of the multiply-failed monolithic NHS IT projects.
This is a doubly interesting story because it involved Kainos, one of Northern Ireland’s premiere software houses.
David Braben: if you look at just core gamer games, pre-owned has really killed core games. In some cases, it’s killed them dead. Braben’s thesis is that single player games are being killed by the second hand market. A player might buy a game on Monday, sell it on Tuesday and it might be bought … Continue reading “The Games Market is about to have a significant and violent rebalancing. Look out.”
if you look at just core gamer games, pre-owned has really killed core games. In some cases, it’s killed them dead.
Braben’s thesis is that single player games are being killed by the second hand market. A player might buy a game on Monday, sell it on Tuesday and it might be bought again, pre-owned, on Wednesday for a high fraction of the cover price.
Multiplayer games usually require some sort of server access, a license to play and only one can be used at a time. So a game that comes with a network access key is less likely to be sold on if the multiplayer aspect is any good.
Braben’s own studio project is “in limbo” because it’s a story-based single player game. Considering that there have been several successful story-based single player games (Tomb Raider and sequels, inFamous and sequel, Prototype and sequel, Uncharted and sequels), I’m not entirely convinced that the problem is that single-player games are at threat. There’s also a role for the publisher to provide the market access and that’s an issue in itself. With Braben’s track record, you’d think that it would be a no-brainer (to develop, to get funding, to get a market) so if it is on hiatus, it must be something else.
The developer/publisher doesn’t get any share of this second sale and, well, they want it. The pre-owned games are marketed alongside the brand new games and it’s obvious that sales assistants are incentivised to sell the pre-owned copies due to better margins.
Games retailers who have made the bulk of their money in the pre-owned market over the last few years (such as GameStop (fucked) and Game (fucked) and feeling the pinch as publishers are moving more and more to digital distribution and refusing to allow this grey market of used plastic disks to continue. (I must admit a total lack of empathy for games retail companies – they saw it coming – heck, everyone saw it coming – and they did nothing). And, let’s face it, while we appreciate being able to buy a game that did poorly for a couple of quid, when the pre-owned version is less than a fiver cheaper than the brand new copy, you have to think there’s something shitty going on.
The publishers latest trick is to prevent their latest releases from being sold through the retailers and that, certainly in the case of Game, is proving to be the nail in the coffin. Even if their creditors can agree to some sort of sale, the publishers are unlikely to be interested.
Explaining to my son that it’s not really sad or bad that games retail stores are closing is an intriguing debate. He maintains it’s unfortunate that gamers won’t have stores to buy games from. I maintain they weren’t buying them anyway, so it’s a non-issue.
This is why Game is fucked and Gabe Newell is a billionaire. While he may not have realised his assets, the fact that he’s worth ten times the amount of money that Game currently owes to creditors has to be taken into context.
Even with horribly draconian DRM, the online digital distribution games tsunami known as “Steam”, a product of the Valve Corporation, is doing well. With considerably less draconian DRM, the Apple-owned AppStore is also thriving. And with google recently changing the name of their application store from Android Market (entirely descriptive) to Google Play (entirely confusing and aimed at the entertainment market), there is a move to seeing games as our primary download. Valve, Apple and Google are very well placed.
Obviously, people will put up with horrific DRM if you’re selling them stuff they want to buy and you make it cheap and easy to do it. Steam and the AppStore deliver this in spades.
The only people who will do badly in this scenario are the purveyors of second-hand plastic disks. Publishers realise that they not only can stem the tide of losing revenue from the pre-owned market but also save money on distribution (packaging, shipping, storage) and they may not need to give as much of a cut to retailers who have, for the last few years, been working against them.
But the question then is – if it’s digital and non-transferable, am I really buying it? And if so, why isn’t it cheaper?
One thing is plain; the current model of video game shops is at an end. It only took thirty years for the model to be created and killed. Considering what is achieved by Steam, it’s not unreasonable to assume that later consoles (such as XBOX 720 or Sony PS4?) might not even come with optical disk drives. The market for selling plastic disks, brand new or pre-owned, is coming to an end. (Which in IT-speak means it will be around for a decade or more).
Digital Download Stores will consolidate but while Apple will always maintain their own ghetto of apps, I can see other platforms having a cornucopia of App Stores, each with their own clones, malware and copyright issues. And you’ll be able to pay for the games in a multitude of ways, from real money to CPU/network/storage/location on your mobile device.
And finally I’ll not have to worry if the pre-owned disk my son has bought from the latest dodgy retailer will actually work. I’ll just make sure to send him the game as a gift. And if you’re still working for a high street video games retailer, I’d seriously consider looking elsewhere.