The Megatrends of Game Design – Article (1) Multiplayer Gaming to the Rescue

Pascal Luban, vetran games designer, outlines the trends that he sees emerging in Game Design and the Games Industry over the next few years.  This post, and other posts continuing this exploration have been based on the articles The Megatrends of Game Design Part 1, and Part 2.

The first megatrend that Luban raises is the necessity of increasing the commercial life span of games. 

The lifespan of games can be surprisingly short, developers are committing to hundreds of thousands, sometime millions of pounds on game development, on a long investment period of around 18-14 months.   And the window of opportunity sale the game, and recover the costs and make a profit can be incredibly short, sometimes only a matter of a few months.  And along with this the publishers run the risk that their competitors are simultaneously working on a similar product, which may well beat them to till.

This retail environment is not one that encourages the large amounts of time and cost needed in R&D.  So what are the ways to extend the commercial lifespan of games.

(1) Multiplayer Gaming to the Rescue.

Multiplayer games, commonly known as MMOG (massively multiplayer online games) are seen as a way of engaging the player in a longer term environment.  One where the player has to not only acheive their targets, but also to do so in an everchanging environment and against a real, live and unpredictable competition.  Some recent games including Call of Duty 4 have made definite decisions to develop MMOG into their platforms.

With Fantasy Couriers we perceive the Multiplayer element as being a key part to the enjoyment of the game.  Some games are all about you versus a situation, or an opponent, but this is never a situation that could ever apply to a business environment.  In business there is always competition, always a cheaper product, a better service, or an alternative option.  Even you are lucky enough to be the single supplier of a product you still have to compete with all the other products and services that consumers have the option of spending their money on instead.

The courier market was chosen for the Fantasy Couriers business simulation game because it is one of the most competitve markets out there.  Small errors in pricing can mean catestrophic results to a company.  It’s also a market that suits multiplaying, because there are so many different pricing and business strategies that can be adopted.  There are very few industries where the impact choice of high price low volume, and low price high volume is better demonstrated.

Truck Orders Plummet

Volvo and Scandia, two of the largest suppliers of trucks, have seen orders plummet from over 40,000 to just over 115 in Europe.  Despite there being nearly 20,000 orders, cancellations and adjustments to previous orders have effectively wiped this out to only a small gain.

Volvo cited a number of reasons, including the economic slowdown, increased costs of raw materials, and new environmental legislation.

“In Europe, customers are continuing to adopt a wait-and-see attitude to the ordering of new vehicles and equipment,” Johansson said. “Moreover, they have increasingly opted to cancel already placed orders. For our part, we have made sure to diligently go through and cleanse out orders in order to secure the quality in our order books.”

The early months of this summer saw record diesel prices, with prices reaching £1.50 per litre.  The HGV trucks cover between 8 and 10 miles per gallon, therefore price increases of up to 50% mean that operators have to question every choice that they make with regard to their vehicle base.

This is a very real example of how changes in fuel prices can totally influence companies decisions to expand, grow and capital expenditure spend.  In Fantasy Couriers, players will need to take account of the these real and frequently changing fuel prices.  When the price of oil goes up, players margins are going to get squeezed, so it is vital that players are going to need to pay particular attention to their pricing, monitor closely their costs, and consider carefully plans to purchase new vehicles in the current ecominc climate.

A break from Reality

If you’re fancying a wee bit of break from the stresses and trials of normal life, then pop over here;

http://www.fantasycouriers.com/vgame/supervanman.swf

 

And have a bit of a go on our arcade style platform game.

 

Web advertising to the fastest growing market!

Now that we seem deep set in recession, and the credit crunch is biting hard, it’s time for advertisers to think about new ways of targeting high potential customers.  Traditional forms of advertising are becoming less attractive as your advert simply becomes another “special offer” in a list of many others.

One of the fast growing forms of advertising is in-game advertising, in either sponsorship forms, and even better, product placement.   And not only is in-game advertising the fast growing, it is also one of the most targeted and most effective.

 

Some of the key reasons that in-game advertising works so well include;

•             Huge Global audience of 43 million unique users   (source, Google Analytics December, 2007.)

•             Gamers are networked and vocal about what they like…(” ¬ Comscore Media Metrix, 5-06)

•             Very “chatty” audience who regularly use IM, texting, blogs, forums and will chat about your brand/products.

•             100% organically grown audience through word of mouth marketing.

•             98% of users on high bandwidth connections.

•             A great opportunity to advertise your brand or product whilst people are enjoying themselves and are having fun!

•             Higher than average CTR.

•             Double the average exposure and branding time per ad over Yahoo and MSN, (- source Comscore Media Metrix, 12-05.)

•             Creative range of advertising solutions.

 

Fantasy Couriers brings a whole new element to in-game advertising, Giving not only the obvious companies the opportunity to advertise their products within the game, but also all of the other online retailers looking for an exciting and different form of advertising.   The retailer’s products are integral to the game, they are the parcels that make the world go round.

 

If you would like to advertise in Fantasy Couriers then contact us at advertising@fantasycouriers.com

 

Source; comScore Media Metrix, May, 2006.

 

Other Advertising & Products Sales

Opportunities are pretty much unlimited for other forms of advertising on the website, and also for sales of associated products. For example Fantasy Couriers is already a reseller for a routing software program which enables players to use this software as a cheat or a sneak, to work out the mileage of their delivery runs, or times & costs etc. If you think that your products could be incorporated into the game please contact us to discuss this opportunity further.