Visual Novels

I know you properly wonder why I am writing something about novels in a blog, which is about RPG and game industry. The truth is the other name of the visual novel is anime games.

Anime and game fans properly know what visual novel is but, they are many people out there never even heard about it. Visual game is an interactive fiction game using state anime art graphics. They are a lot like a RPG games with a lot of dialogue feature.

Most of the visual novels narrated as first person rather than third person like the printed version. It feels like you are in the story as the protagonist as many mainstream games do. Also, visual novel use days rather than chapter as primary structure unit.

Even though visual novels are also called as anime games, they offer minimal gameplay. Sometimes you can choose multiple options or interactive story driven actions like Da Capo which use the map of the school and surroundings in order to make you choose how do you plan to do in this time. In addition, many novels offer multiple endings which depends on your choices during the novels.

There are a lot of genres for this games but, most popular are science fictions, horrors and tragedies (which also mentioned as crying games.). It is hard to say which one is the most popular genre but, right now the eroge genre which also called erotic genre are more popular than other adult content products in the different industries. Most of these games were focused on story rather than the erotic content. They became so popular that some of the other genre visual novels starting to offer adult version or adult pictures as add-ons.

If a visual novel became successful than there will be a good chance that, the content of the novel will be adopted to manga and anime if they became popular as a visual novel like Da Capo, Fate/Stay Night, Clannad and School Days.

Because, most of the visual novels do not distributed in the West, visual novels have a small market in here. Although it seemed visual novel market in the West tart to growing as many visual novels translated to English, French and Russian.

By the way, you can find many information about visual novels in this website. They provide great database for the visual novels as well as information about their release platforms and language.

Screenshots:
1.http://s.vndb.org/sf/06/1306.jpg
2.http://s.vndb.org/cv/65/8565.jpg
3.http://s.vndb.org/sf/02/2302.jpg

Mods...what are they?

I know many of the hardcore gamers know what is a mod and how important it is for players. But, during my conversation with other players I realized that there are many gamers still don't know anything about mods and how mods can affect them.

Basically, mods are additions created by the players (they were called as modders.). They are made for especially role playing games, real time strategy games, turn based strategy games and rarely first person shooter games. Although as I mentioned many modders are players, many of them have programming and graphic design background and they were some cases that some mods created by the current developers and unemployed game developers.

However, downloadable contents (DLCs) and mods are a little bit different. DLCs are created by the official developer teams and that kind of addition are created for gaining another source of revenue. But, mods are created for sharing your work with the fans of the games and they are free for the players.

Some games offer toolset of the game in order the create mods. For example, games like Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout Last Vegas (although they use the same G.E.C.K toolset.) and Dragon Age Origins. These mods created by the modders usually shared with modding community websites or some social websites that created by the developer team. However, some games do not offer any mods and many modders change the code of these games and add their designs to make mods for them. Best examples are mods for Total War and Civilization series.

Why it is so important to download the mods? Actually if you like your game and satisfy with everything and do not want to change the original content of the game you do not need to (and possibly you do not want to) download mods. However, many mods adds additional varieties and more options to the games. For example, with the mods you can have more weapons, armor, items, enemies and quests in your game database. In addition, with the mods you can add more realism or more arcade overhauls to your games. They are definitely worthwhile to download especially you want to add more fun to the games and I can guarantee you that there are many good modders which offer you the mods that you do not want to miss this chance to download.

P.S I also want to thank all the modders who use a lot of times and work to create these wonderful mods.

I think Nexus websites are great for searching mods for your preference. If you search mods for your games here are the links for the nexus websites;

http://www.tesnexus.com/ (for Oblivion)
http://www.dragonagenexus.com/ (for Dragon Age: Origins)
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/ (for Fallout 3)
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/ (for Fallout New Vegas)


Screenshots:
1. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/38336-1-1304674120.jpg
2.http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/3374-1-1286773944.jpg
3.http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/images/2822-1-1305486739.jpg

Power of the Teens

Today I watched 3 podcast which are related to game industry. Each of the podcast discuss certain aspect of the game industry. Mostly, the liabilities which can be a huge problem to the relation between games and minors.

First podcast was about the Supreme Court case about selling mature games to the minors. In this podcast there were 2 guests which discussed the ban the games for minors is right or not. I had to admit, I liked this podcast because topic was discussed objectively which related how the mature games effect the minors. How minors can access the mature games and how these games affect minors daily lives. I agree with the host about this court is a serious matter for the game industry which will able to influence game industry seriously.

Second podcast was about the same issue, but this time host had 3 guest which overview the censorship of the game. In this discussion mainly focused rating system that if it is really working or not. Also, how the decision of the Supreme Court will affect the industry. Some of the guests were strongly disagreed with the idea of banning the games for the minors. However, they also discussed how rating and censorship is in the Europe in order to compromise the issue with alternative point of view.

Third podcast was about the same issue, but compare to the first two podcast, this podcast shoot by the non game related websites. This podcast was about the host's point of view about the issue and how important the game industry for the economy and most of the gamers. He was worried about the impact of the decision of the Supreme Court will destroy most of the important franchises like Activision's Call of Duty. He defended his issue with how violence and nudity is the reflection of the reality.

This issue is a very serious matter recently about the game industry. As all the podcasts discussed the decision of Supreme Court will have a huge impact to the game industry. Rating of the games or "maturity" of the games right now seems that the most important liability for the video games. We see more news about nudity and violence of the games. Moreover, some of these games already banned from other countries because of their maturity. Moreover, this time entire genre is going to aimed by the court. All of these issues will affect the developing of the mature games which are the backbone of the game industry.

Podcast links:
1. http://www.gameindustry.com/podcast/item.asp?id=95
2. http://www.gameindustry.com/podcast/item.asp?id=68
3. http://www.justin.tv/thegunnshop/b/281891068?utm_campaign=archive_export&utm_source=thegunnshop&utm_medium=youtube

Screenshots:
1.http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizations/ccfc/images/manhunt%20axe.jpg
2.http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1425/710361398_04a8ee59ca_o.jpg
3.http://jimmyjangles.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/miranda_breasts_sex_scene_mass_effect.jpg

Other side of the Coin

Everyone who is interested in the game industry or read news regarding the games probably read couple of sues regarding the game developer or distributor companies. It is like every major or minor company in the game industry that faced couple of courts since 2000.

Most of these courts focused on violence and nudity of the video games. With the advancement of technology and popularity of the mature games, many games today contain violence and nudity in their arsenal. Best examples are Dragon Age, Mass Effect and The Witcher franchises for the RPG games.

Because of that, many parents and media focused on the contents of the game. Recently, long awaited game Duke Nukem Forever accused as highly sexist by the media and Women's Media Center VP. Because of the status of the women in the game (every women in the game are strippers and you can kill them for fun), The Gearbox Software will likely face a case about this issue after the release.

Regarding of the mature game issue, there is another case about mature games in the Iowa Supreme Court. The case is about how to sell the mature games with or without parents. California State wanted to prohibit the sail of mature games to the minors who do not have parents with them. Video Software Dealers Association and Entertainment Software Association concerned by this law because they fear that this law may hurt their income tremendously and apparently both parties will face each other in Iowa.

However, the industry does not just face sex and violence regarding cases. Sometimes taxes and the other regulations are important case as well. For example, the best known Facebook games, FarmVille and CityVille developers Zynga considering the leave San Francisco because stock-option payroll tax.

Screenshots:

1.http://www.electricpig.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/fallout-gore.jpg
2.http://www.3drealms.com/duke-nukem-forever.jpg

Advertisement in Games?

In all around entertainment businesses, advertisement is the main income and marketing tools for the companies. Because of the large audience of the entertainment industries, many companies choose them for marketing their products or services. This type of business is common especially in the music and movie industry and we can see the sign of the branding and marketing of the products inside the game industry as well.

However, there is a big difference between other entertainment industries and the game industry in regard of advertising. Most of advertisement and marketing tools aren't fond by the audience. Most of the audience try to avoid the advertisement rather than listen or watch. On the other hand in game industry, advertisement adds realism into the game which is highly demanded by the audience.

Most of the in-game advertisements are brand names who are the sponsors of the sport teams like brand name of the sponsors on the jerseys. Because of that reason, most of the in-game advertisements are for sport genre. Madden, NHL and NBA2K franchises are the best example. However we can see other brands name in racing and simulations as well.

It's hard to say that we can encounter any advertisement in RPG games. Because most of the RPG game have a concept of medieval fantasy and this concept hardly open an environment of marketing.

Screenshot sources:
http://img810.imageshack.us/f/ajie.jpg/
http://www.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/ea-sports-game-gatorade.jpg
http://www.testdriveunlimited2z.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Test-Drive-Unlimited-2-tdu211.jpg

Power of the Sequels

One month ago I wrote a post about how the competition will rise in the game industry for 2011. There will be a lot of AAA games going to be release at the same time. Despite the news, the whole industry will wait till to the end of year because of the recent financial reports.

Also, there are some news going out in the internet about the games in the Game Development Center 2011(GDC 2011). In the GDC, there was a lot of games which made a huge impression to the press as well as to the auidence.

However, I realized that most of the anticipated games of the 2011 and recently released AAA games are sequels of the last or two years old games. For example "Dead Space 2", "Dragon Age 2" and "Witcher 2: The Assassins of Kings". At first, it may seemed that industry repeated itself by creating something already created 2 or 3 years ago. However, these sequels games are more improved than their predecessors.

These new games offer more graphics, gameplay, action and most importantly more fun than their predecessors. Although, most of these games are not yet released, the expectations of the industry and audience seems to be very high. Because the developer teams of each game tried to keep their strong points and improve their weakness as well as creating more contents for their games.

Actually, I don't really sure about why most developers tend to do sequels rather than creating a new game. I guess it may be because of the recent financial news or the popularity of the sequels games. With the discouraged news of financial reports, the developers and producers don't want to take huge risks anymore. Because one failure may lead to bankruptcy in these days. Moreover, sequel games have a loyal players because of the first game and the name of the product already became a brand which the auidence can trust.

At the end, I think these were the reasons why we see many sequel games in the shelves today. But I can't say that I have problem with this. Also I believe that, most of the audience agree with me right now.

Negotiation

Negotiation is something that we are doing every time during our daily lives. Like when we negotiate about the time when we will return at night, deciding a place for lunch with our friends and choosing a location for a summer journey with our lover.

Also, the negotiation is an important part of the game industry. Most game producers needs to negotiate the when they were planing the schedule, priorities,relationship between the teams and searching for the funding resources. So, negotiation is one of the vital points in the process of developing games.

That's why in this month I interviewed with Ergun Aydalga, one of the owners of Aybim the Software Development Company, about the preparations and the vital things during negotiations. Software Development Industry is very similar to the game industry so I thought that this interview will be useful for the game industry too.

According to the Ergun Aydalga,one of the important things in the negotiations is the preparation process. He advised that the best way to understand the other party and deciding on your objective criteria is visiting your opponents if you have a chance. In these visit, you have a chance to meet your opponent face to face before the negotiation starts. These visits also gave you a chance to understand both the personality and the objectives of your opponent.

Another way to prepare the negotiations is the build your self consciousnesses before the negotiation. Ergun Aydalga suggests that meditating or relaxing will be useful but it depends on the individual.

Also during the interview Ergun Aydalga mentions the importance of separating the people from the problem during the negotiation. Ergun Aydalga said that the best way the do this is focusing mutual benefits during the deal. He claimed that even though other parties may be become hostile at the beginning, you can solve the issue if you can offer the best beneficial offers for both parties. Because doing this will neutralize the behavior and you gained the respect of the other parties. Thus influence them to make a deal even though you had a small chance at the beginning.

So, according to the one of the expert in the software business these are the vital points for preparation and making a successful deal. I thanked again for his time and consideration for giving me a chance to wrote this interview in this blog.