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Archive for Videogames

Unnecessary Apology

October 20, 2015 future, Videogames, Writing Comments Off on Unnecessary Apology

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/10/15/amid-the-adblockalypse-advertisers-apologize-for-messing-up-the-web/

I think this may not be apology-worthy.  I mean, I can appreciate that the advertisers seem to have, essentially, shot themselves in the foot.  Sucking up bandwidth, chewing through the battery on mobile devices, ensuring that users are so darned sick of video ads that they are now willing to pay EXTRA for pop-up blockers, as opposed to having their browsing experience infringed upon.

Okay, yes, they may be apologizing to EACH OTHER, or maybe to new and upstart ad companies out there, but this overreach on their part is going to have broader ramifications.

More than a few science-fiction writers have given us a vision of the future in which branding and advertising pay for everything, where the primary currency becomes, in effect, the user’s attention-span.  Which has, ultimately, been the progression we have seen here on the internet (I happily pay of all kinds of things by letting ads play through).

But what this may herald is a shift in the way advertising handles things and that might mean that, in the future, our eyeballs might not be worth quite so much.

 

Veiled Alliances Release Day

September 24, 2015 Videogames, Writing Comments Off on Veiled Alliances Release Day

Screenshot08

 

A little bit of studio-pluggery here.  As you may or may not know, I am the CEO of Bushi-go, a mobile game startup.  For some time now, we’ve been plugging away on building a mobile app based around “Veiled Alliances”, Kevin J. Anderson’s prequel novella to his bestselling “Saga of the Seven Suns” novels.

This first release is a little more app than game right now for a couple of reasons.  Bestselling books don’t always translate into bestselling games.  Now, historically you’re looking at really big games.  Stuff like LOTR online was what everyone envisioned when you tried to make a book into a game.  They focused on the world-building, it focused on BIG BUDGETS and BIG GAMES.  We think we have a solution that will give the readers the kind of re-imaginings they will love.

But just because you like a book doesn’t mean you’re going to change your entertainment preferences and suddenly become a gamer.  If you loved “Wheel of Time”, no matter how much you loved it, you’re probably not going to go out and drop the cash on a new XBoxOne just so you can play in that world (heck, you could probably buy a full set of those books in a hardcover archival format for the same price).

So Bushi-go decided to try something different.  We went small.  Tight focus, stay close to the book, make the product truly accessible to almost every fan. When the game-play comes in later it’s going to be slower, more thinky, not completely twitchy and shooty (but there may be some of that too). We built this app using the leading edge magic of the Unreal Engine, then took that and modified it so that the app can run on almost every mobile device we could test it against, across all platforms.  If you have a mobile phone, you can enjoy our app.

Because we get it, if you’re a reader, that’s your thing.  You might watch a TV show based on your favorite books (Bones, Game of Thrones) but games require a bigger commitment, both time and money-wise.

 

The “Veiled Alliances” App drops tomorrow.  Head to http://bushi-go.com/games/veiled-alliances and we’ll send you a direct email link when it’s live.  Tomorrow should be Android first (GooglePlay and Amazon) followed by Apple (phone and tablets) and WindowsPhone.

This first release is small, pretty and free.  Because we want to see how many of you like this format.  IF the download numbers look good, if we’ve chosen wisely, then we can move on to making the rest.

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