Puppygames co-founder: customers "are worthless to us"
Times have been tough over at Puppygames, leading to the developer switching from development of free-to-play Battledroid to an arcade roguelike called Basingstoke. The developer has four months of money left, but Battledroid still had a year of development ahead of it.
Perhaps that was the impetus for co-founder Caspian Prince’s blog post, today, where he laments the supposed de-valuation of games. “You are worthless to us,” he says in regards to customers. Specifically, he means that a sale has become so insignificant, netting the developer so little, that it barely has any value.
EA "haven't always been great listeners" but are "getting better"
It’s become community management 101 for the major publishers: tell the players that you’re listening; that you’re a pure conduit of feedback prepared to reshape games in accordance with comments on the internet.
EA in particular have committed themselves to the idea. They’ve said more than once that beta feedback for Battlefield Hardline was responsible for pushing the game back into next year. And CEO Andrew Wilson says the company is “getting better at listening”.
Notch is back aboard the VR train: "I'm over being upset about Facebook buying Oculus"
Mojang were in talks with Oculus to build a version of Minecraft for the Rift - right up until the VR company announced their acquisition by Facebook, and Notch publicly pulled the plug.
“I definitely want to be a part of VR, but I will not work with Facebook,” explained the Mojang founder. “Their motives are too unclear and shifting, and they haven’t historically been a stable platform. There’s nothing about their history that makes me trust them, and that makes them seem creepy to me.”
Given a few months’ distance and an unending stream of brilliant VR demos, however, Notch has started to come around.
Oculus VR "could" become a Sony or Microsoft, but "don't want to"
Oculus have found themselves in a curious position. With the backing of Facebook, they’re not only able to produce the hardware to push VR into the mainstream, but the platform to sell its games.
They’re not interested in locking down VR development, though. Oculus might have the tools to become a Sony or Microsoft - but “that’s not what we’re gonna do”.
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