Techniques | The VidZone Network Blog

May 23, 2011

Something for Nothing: Premium Editions Didn’t Always Charge a Premium

Now that I’ve indulged in Amazon Prime’s everything-ships-free plan instead of having to find filler to reach the $25 mark for free shipping, I get a lot of individual movies or games in the mail–small, light boxes instead of larger, denser boxes with three or more things packed inside. On Friday, I received one such large, heavy box and couldn’t remember what I could have possibly ordered that would result in a package of this heft. Once I opened it, I realized it was my copy of The Witcher 2.

At the time of pre-order for the game, there was no “standard” edition; there was the choice of “premium” at the normal PC game price of $50 or the “collector’s edition” at a much pricier $130. Even this “base-level” package was packed with the sort of things we’d normally pay a price-premium for to upgrade to a collector’s edition: behind-the-scenes DVD, soundtrack CD, strategy guide, map, coin. Atari and CDProjekt spoiled their fans for $10 less than the price that even the PC versions of popular console games charge. Heck, even the PC-only Starcraft II retailed for $60. (more…)

Carl @ 12:33 am
Filed under: Film,Games,Techniques — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , —

March 11, 2011

Jammed If You Do, Jammed If You Don’t

Oh, hey, a writing prompt I can knock out real quickly! Let’s do this.

(Important note: I write this not as a representative of EA Sports (past, present, or future) but rather as *just* a game producer.)

While browsing Kotaku and the sea of fan whining, I saw this article about EA officially saying there would be no post-ship support (read: patches/updates; ie, roster updates) for NBA Jam. I saw a few solid points I thought I could argue against. (more…)

Carl @ 4:02 pm
Filed under: Games,Techniques — Tags: , , , , , —

October 14, 2010

Me, My Car, and LA

Last week I went with some buddies to attend a friend’s wedding. We were flying in and out of LAX, the wedding was in Santa Ana, and there was a party downtown. We needed to rent a car.

Early in my undergrad, I’d joined a group of students on a trip to LA to see Bob Barker on The Price is Right before he retired. We rented cars and after witnessing the chaos and havoc of the LA freeway, I swore I never wanted to drive there.

But…for this trip last week, I’d volunteered to drive anyway. No one else actually enjoyed the act of driving as I do, so I seemed like the only real candidate.

This experience left me with a few thoughts:
(more…)

Carl @ 12:37 am
Filed under: Personal,Techniques — Tags: , , , , , , , , , —

August 21, 2009

“Squircle” is not the sound it makes when you touch it


Image credit: RussellHeimlich.com

I recently upgraded from my original Zune 30 to a Zune 80 thanks to a phenomenal sale price online. I love its smaller body, longer battery life, and of course the more than doubled capacity.

Aside from non-tactile feedback, I also dislike touch-based controls on portable devices due the the additional battery drain the technology introduces.

After trying out the new touch-sensitive, swipable squircle for a while, I ultimately turned it off in favor of sticking with traditional 5-way d-pad control. I operate the MP3 player blindly in the car, tracking forward and backwards in songs and skipping tracks. I didn’t want to inadvertently jump around or alter the volume level just by keeping my thumb on the squircle.

I was experiencing some unresponsiveness and unintentional (often opposite) behavior sometimes. Why won’t it read my clicks? Why is the volume raising instead of skipping a track? Why’s the track restarting instead of skipping forward?

I’ve since figured out the mystery. It turns out the Zune Pad’s touch setting only deactivates swipe gestures. Otherwise the touch-sensitivity is still active, and in fact determines the action taken when the squircle is depressed. In fact, I don’t it’s a traditional 5-way d-pad at all; I believe there’s a single microswitch under the big button. The Zune uses it’s touch sensor to determine whether your finger is in the up/down/left/right/center zone when the button is depressed. If you press any direction with a fingernail, nothing happens since there’s no skin contact to send electrical signals. And if you put a finger on one direction but press the opposite direction with a fingernail, the action activated is the one where your skin is making contact with the pad.

Clever implementation…but sometimes annoying. Fortunately, my battery life is phenomenal, though I haven’t put the unit through a multi-day endurance trial yet.

Carl @ 5:42 pm
Filed under: Gadgets,Techniques — Tags: , , —

June 23, 2009

The Queen’s decree on pop music

Conveniently, Maxim’s interview with Lady GaGa in their July 2009 issue comments on pop art and the active aim of being shallow.

The Lady GaGa experience is a tough one to wrap one’s head around. Is it high art? Cap? Straight-up cheese?

Warhol said art should be meaningful in the most shallow way. He was able to make commercial art that was taken seriously as fine art, to use something simple and shallow to take you to another planet. That’s what I’m doing, too. When you listen to a song like “LoveGame,” is it communicating my soul to you? No. My music isn’t me jerking my dick off all over a piano trying to feel something. I make soulless electronic pop. But when you’re on Ecstasy in a nightclub grinding up against someone and my music comes on, you’ll feel soul.

Not every piece of work has to be cerebral or challenging. Often times the primary goal is to be fun and evoke simple joy. Doing anything more on top of that will just weigh down the experience, forcing the audience to work when all they ever wanted was a quick fix.

Think about punk music. Though many bands have some sort of political agenda the music itself is a raw expression of passion.  The instrumentation is generally pedestrian and more or less sounds the same between songs.  It’s banging and thrashing, screaming and shouting.  But regardless of the particulars, you get the sense that whatever the band is singing about, they feel very strongly about it and want you to get riled up with them.

Songs boil down to being delivery mechanisms for emotions, feelings, and moods.  What’s so wrong about “shallow” games that act in the same way?

Carl @ 3:03 pm
Filed under: Music,Techniques — Tags: , , , , , , , —

June 11, 2009

The secret to “good” pop music

A few of my friends look at me weird when I say I listen to pop music, recommending that they check out the new Britney Spears album. Possibly my favorite era in music during my young life is during the late ’90s to early ’00s between when grunge rock faded away and rap became Top 40 radio mainstream.

Let me explain how I listen to music. When I first hear a song, I listen to “the big picture,” the overall feeling of the song and not yet analyzing the little details like lyrics and composition.  In later passes I dissect the components of a song and analyze each individually.  It will take at least four playthroughs before I’ve actually really “listened” to a song.

For me, a “good” pop song is one that I will let play through without wanting to switch to another song.  In other words: inoffensive.  It doesn’t have to actually be good or great, just not bad, just “good enough.”

After all, getting past “no” is often the hardest, most important part.   Everything past that is gravy.  That’s the lesson.  In order to reach the widest possible audience, you don’t necessarily have to figure out how to appeal to every kind of person, just offend as few as possible.

Carl @ 1:39 am
Filed under: Music,Personal,Techniques — Tags: , , , —

May 26, 2009

Bundles vs. price-drop: value is in the eye of the beholder

Joystiq posted a leak that Sony’s sending out a new 80GB PS3 bundle exclusively to Best Buy, priced at the same $399.99 and scheduled for availability on June 9, the week following E3. Two years ago, the news of a $100 price drop made waves, but–assuming two relatively recent, non-Greatest Hits games–this bundle effectively the same savings: $100 or so.

The problem why this isn’t gaining any excitement (at least from the snarky, jaded gaming forum-goers) is that, while adding value to the current box, the actual out of pocket cost isn’t decreasing.

Is a penny saved, in this case, a penny earned?

The obvious argument against a bundle strategy is that it won’t be universally appealing because not everyone likes the same kinds of games.

It makes sense for Sony.  Though they’ve been able to streamline manufacturing and drive down costs, they’re still losing money on every box of hardware that leaves the factory.  However, software (especially if it’s Sony-published) is more or less “free.  They’ll “not make” money instead of “lose more” by using the software bundle strategy.

However, all Joe Consumer wants is that leading digit of the price to tick down to a 2. The first digit of an item’s price is a very powerful psychological force and why $299.99 is irrationally more attractive than $300.00, despite a penny’s difference.  Say it out loud. Two-hundred, ninety-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents. Three-hundred dollars.  All you can hear is “two-hundred” versus “three-hundred.”

However, the existence of this new bundle doesn’t preclude the announcement of a price-drop of a non-bundle package.  But if that existed, wouldn’t it have been uploaded to Best Buy’s computers at the same time?  Was it held back to prevent the same leaks that happened at Circuit City? If that’s the case, again, why wasn’t this listing held back as well?

(image credit: AP)

Carl @ 10:03 pm
Filed under: Games,Techniques — Tags: , , , , , —

May 13, 2009

Driving first-day sales

One of the primary driving forces for attracting customers to purchase pre-orders is the promise of some promotional tchochke, often t-shirts, keychains, or in-game item.  That’s a great value add, but it often only attracts those already interested in the characters or franchise–fans who desire collectibles.  What attracts random passer-bys, though, is the promise of savings.  Think of the impulse purchase items by cash registers…just up-scaled.

GameStop is the last retailer out there that needs help selling video games.  Unfortunately, their reselling of used games is detrimental to the industry-supporting sale of new games, but they’re the prime candidate for who can support what I’m about to propose: meaningful discounts off the price of a new game.  But I’ll get to why GameStop later.

In most cases, when a brand new release is discounted, it’s a joint effort between the publisher and the retailer.  Both of them wind up eating some of the loss from the discount in order to simply drive the customer into the store or the product into the customer’s home.  A “loss leader” or subsidization.

Traditionally business says that you can charge early adopters whatever price you want, and they’ll willingly pay it.  Continue this pricing until sales slump, then cut the price.

I ask, why not offer substantial savings to attract additional early adopters? (more…)

Carl @ 2:34 am
Filed under: Games,Techniques — Tags: , , , —

May 7, 2009

Better to sell some for nothing than not sell any at full price

In next week’s shopping circular, the UbiSoft published Wheelman is on sale for $30.  After only just over a month!  Last week, the equally fresh-on-the-shelf HAWX was also listed for $30.  That’s half-off!

If you’re a gamer on a tight budget, UbiSoft seems to reliably cut their prices within three months of release.  It seems to happen with all their major releases regardless of if it’s in the hyper-competitive Christmas season or in the summer dry spells.  See: Assassin’s Creed,Prince of Persia, Shaun White, No More Heroes, Far Cry 2,  Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, the Imagine/Petz/Coach series.

These weren’t token “save $5″ sales.  Prices were slashed usually between 25%-33%.  That’s new release $60 console games marked down to $40 or $45.  $30 DS games either 2 for $40 when purchased together or $20 each,  straight-up.

There’s sometimes a sense in retail that it’s better to sell shelf-stagnant item at a discount than to not sell it at all.  Is this UbiSoft’s thinking?  In many cases, these price drops are temporary for a week or two, sometimes at specific retailers.  But more often than not, within a month or two of that first drop, it’ll stick permanently.  

Perhaps because of their large output of SKUs, they have agreements with retail partners that product needs to move off the shelves to make way for new titles?  Who ultimately eats the cost?  The retailer?  Or does UbiSoft give them a kick-back for taking such a dramatic loss?  I used to work at Best Buy, and our employee discount was to pay what the store paid to receive the merchandise plus an extra 5%.  Trust me, there wasn’t much worthwhile savings on media items, be it video games, DVDs, or music.  Most often, Target’s flat 10%-off everything employee discount would have netted a better deal.

And why so soon after release?  It’s probably best while advertising is still fresh in people’s mind.

Whatever their reason for this seemingly hair-trigger liquidation reflex, gamers in the know who track these sorts of things now have little faith in the initial asking value for UbiSoft’s new releases, having been shown time and time again that a price drop is reliably right around the corner.

Carl @ 1:34 am
Filed under: Games,Techniques — Tags: , , , —

May 3, 2009

Good parts of “bad” games: Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude

As you may have seen in a previous post, I’m playing through Codemasters/Team17′s take on Leisure Suit Larry, Box Office Bust.  I’m about 5 hours in and encountered more irritatingly executed mechanics than what I’d seen when I first wrote my impressions.  However, much like Magna Cum Laude, though the “gameplay” itself is kinda lame, the overall experience, writing, and humor pretty much make up for those shortcomings to where I’m totally willing to turn a blind eye to them.  I still prefer MCL‘s art style and innovative dialogue system, but in BOB (if you know the right response), you can listen to all the wrong answers before moving to the next level of the dialogue tree.  Unfortunately, if you do get the right answer earlier than you’d hope, loading an earlier save will almost certainly set you back quite a long ways from your current point, both in playtime and in distance.  I hope that whoever writes the (hopefully) inevitable FAQ with all spoken dialogue writes in the ad-libbed VO versions rather than just transcribe the subtitles.

Anyway…

I thought I’d kick off the first in this “good parts of bad games” series with one of my favorite examples, the aforementioned dialogue system from Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude. (more…)

Carl @ 5:17 am
Filed under: Games,Techniques — Tags: , , , , , —


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