Commentary and reviews on games and gaming of all types.
It's not a huge stretch to posit Amazon as the reverse-Valve of the ebook world, constantly pushing the envelope in unexpected ways, aggressively experimenting with pricing, developing a core of popular franchises, while staying focused on delivering and optimizing the best consumer experience.
As anyone who's actually worked within a "vertical" knows, whether from a niche consumer or business-to-business angle (or, heaven help them, for a non-profit organization or political campaign), just because a subset of people share a common passion doesn't mean they're a single-minded group that can be engaged in one templated way. Every vertical that presents a viable business opportunity is going to have its own sub-communities and overlapping layers, with some often in direct opposition to others.
In less than a week, I've already spent more money on PoxNora—the "free-to-play" virtual card game I raved about earlier this week—than I have on ebooks all year long. If you include all of my Steam purchases (effectively the Kindle of computer gaming) over the past six months, it's more than I've spent on ebooks ever!
I never got into Magic: The Gathering, but I did play a lot of Pokemon and VS., so the appeal of collectible card games (aka, social gaming!) isn't new to me, and Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is one of my all-time favorite games, so turn-based tactics is right up my alley, too. Combine them with an impressively deep setting, beautiful artwork, and a slick (if not totally intuitive) deck virtual management system, and you have a winner.
It will be interesting to see what other publisher can successfully go the Marvel route; with a $2B+ worldwide box office already in for the Avengers' on-screen storyworld (one that still bizarrely lives in total isolation from the comics), I'm guessing several will make the attempt within the next 2-3 years. Two gaming franchises I think have some serious transmedia potential are Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls and Activision's Skylanders, though you might be surprised by which one I think has the most potential.
While Epic Mickey can certainly be used as an example of transmedia development, I'd argue that the process only got it half right since there doesn't appear to be an integrated marketing plan in effect.
With the cynical lawsuit to stop casino workers from caucusing on the Strip tomorrow having been rightly dismissed, the LA Times has an interesting article entitled “Clinton plays gaming card against Obama“, pointing out her latest attempt to muddy the waters in what is looking more and more like a campaign against Barack Obama instead of the campaign for Hillary Clinton she was running most of last year when she was still the “presumptive nominee”:
The issue has come into focus primarily due to the Clinton campaign, which has distributed a document to local reporters, headlined, “Obama Blasted Gambling as Socially Destructive and Economically Irresponsible,” listing several of his past quotes.
Among them are a 2003 comment in the Chicago Defender, a black newspaper, in which Obama argued that the “moral and social cost of gambling, particularly in low-income communities, could be devastating.”
In 2001, the Clinton memo states, Obama described himself as “generally skeptical” of gambling as an economic development tool and likened the expansion of slot machines to the state lottery, in which, he said, “you’ll have a whole bunch of people who can’t afford gambling their money away, yet they’re going to do it.”
As part of its efforts to publicize those statements, the Clinton campaign has secured the help of top industry players — several of whom participated in a campaign-sponsored conference call with the media last week designed to chastise Obama.
Southern California-based Latinopoliticsblog.com zeroes in on an interesting point that’s buried towards the end of the article:
The other ironic thing about this issue is that Hillary Clinton is a follower of the Social Principles of the Methodist Church, which calls on Christians to obstain [sic] from gambling. How does she reconcile her church’s beliefs with her heavy ties to the gambling industry? I would expect this sort of dilemma from Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani, but not Hillary Clinton. Why did she even need to go there with the religion?