My response to Ethan Levy's talk "Game Design is Business Design"

I recently checked out the Ethan Levy talk and found it absolutely fascinating. I was especially interested in his emotional motivations behind monetization. I noticed that very few of them were synonyms for fun or happiness. Exhilaration is misleading as it refers to luck rather than performance. Even more interesting is that the process, or act, of playing the game, is not mentioned.

Emotion is the Key to Monetization• Impatience “I want this now.”• Revenge “I want payback.”• Dominance “I want to be the best.”• Jealousy “I want what he has.”• Accomplishment “I want that medal.”• Exhilaration “I want to open another pack.”• Belonging “I want to be part of something.”

All of these key emotions are derived from the "meta" game mechanics. This leads to the inevitable conclusion that when designers focus on monetization they are very literally doing it at the expense (man hours in this case) of the actual game mechanics. 

To me, all of these emotions are more valuable when earned. If these emotions are more appealing being bought rather than earned, it is either a failure of the game mechanics to be captivating or an overwhelming success in metagame design. Probably both.

Now this is not to say I am opposed to making money. In fact, as I write this, I feel like an old man shaking his cane and those young whippersnappers saying, "Back in my day!" Am I a dinosaur of a very young medium complaining about new stuff because the (gaming) world used to revolve around my target demographic? Probably. Am I alone in thinking F2P social game monetization is the antithesis of what games should be about? Definitely not. So with that grain of salt, I propose the quandary of how to monetize gameplay is unsolved.

And unsolved problems are the best kind.

Weekly Wrap Up September 10-16: Wii U!

The big news this week is the price point and launch details of Nintendo’s HD console, the Wii U. Many are calling it an HD console rather than a “next gen” console because its hardware will will only be able to play the current HD console titles such as Assassins Creed 3, Batman: Arkham City and Mass Effect 3.

The Wii U will be released on November 18 in North America. There are two different versions: the Basic (8GB flash storage) $299.99 and the Deluxe (32GB flash storage and Nintendo Land) $349.99 .
For more nitty gritty details, Joystiq has a good wrap up page.

Should you pre-order?

Hold off until next year.

The biggest selling point for the Wii U is the GamePad itself. Having played on the GamePad at PAX prime this year, I can tell you it is even bigger and clunkier in real life than the images suggest. So why is it a selling point? Multi-screen lifestyles.

According to a poll conducted by Yahoo and Razorfish, 80 percent of respondents are now mobile multitasking while watching TV. The reality is that the living room TV is not the only screen in use in the modern american household and will never be again. Our hyperactive attention spans have enabled us to adapt our entertainment into something that resembles Tank’s chair from The Matrix, endless streams of data flowing towards us on a plethora of screens.

The Wii U is betting big on a single idea, Wii U can do it better. Nintendo is creating a closed system where the tablet’s screen is an integral part to all of its games and multimedia features. From the ability to play the game entirely from the gamepad (so someone else could use the TV) to fact that the GamePad can also be used as a universal television remote with a built in guide, even when the Wii U is off, Nintendo is making a strong argument to be the only hardware in the living room.

In my opinion, the success of the Wii U is dependent on 3 questions;

1. Does the GamePad work well enough to overcome it’s bulky design?
2. Do the games/apps utilize the GamePad better than the other consoles + an iPad?
3. What are the PS4 and Xbox 720 going to be able to do that the Wii U can’t.

If the answers are “Yes”, “Yes” and “Only appreciated by the hardcore”, I believe that Wii U will be a success. Probably not as much as the original Wii, but profitable.

My prediction is that you will see the same kind of launch that we saw from the 3DS. Low sales because of a lack of games, price drop in less than a year, then a moderate adoption driven by a high quality library of games and a price point that could be nearly half ($250-300) of the PS4  and Xbox 720 ($400-500).