CaptainCanada

Like I said, I’m clueless with regards to video game developer salaries, and I just threw out some figures to use as an average wage of all employees.. And keep in mind, they didn’t employee 379 developers. Of the 379 employees, they would have had an HR department, Accounting, Admin etc. All departments will have a mix of higher earning experienced employees and lower earning entry level positions.

I’ll use some math to illustrate your point. I have no clue what wages are like in game development, but here is a list of total payroll liability for various average annual wages of 379 employees and assuming payroll costs of 35%:

$55,000: $28,140,750
$60,000: $30,699,000
$65,000: $33,257,250
$70,000: $35,815,500
$75,000: $38,373,750

So nearly half of the loan guarantee would have been used to pay salaries for just one year. Then, consider the studio relocated, so you have relocation costs for employees to cover as well.

Making a poor assumption that every copy of Amular sold for $60, that is $72 million in revenue. A lot of people have a piece of that pie (retailer, MSFT/Sony, publisher), so I don’t imagine a ton of revenue made its way to the developer. Certainly not enough to support 379 employees.

Tax incentives are very common. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it turns out like Solyndra and 38 Studios.

In other words, it cost 10,800 jobs.

Tim Carmody!
When I saw the name I thought- the bearded ginger guy. I used to read you on Wired, but I’ve kind of stopped reading them lately. Good stuff seeing you on The Verge.

How much did they pay for Palm?

This reminds me of the second most popular group game we played in college next to Halo- some snowboarding game that came bundled with my Xbox that I can’t even remember the name of. When we were taking a break from Halo or our girlfriends were over, we would pass the controllers around taking turns on the slopes. I have no clue how it was reviewed, but we had a lot of fun playing it.

I find the adventure – the journey – to be more important than the eventual payoff

I agree, and I’ve found that when I incorporate more noise into my gaming- reviews and game guides etc- it sometimes negatively impacts the journey. Sometimes reviews are helpful though.

As for not including a score with a review, I think Kotaku toyed with not giving scores a while ago. You can tell when a game reviewer puts a lot of work into a review, and it’s a shame that many people will just look at the number at the bottom of the review and disregard everything that went into that number.

I edited the post with some of my thoughts. This is the first video game history book I’ve ever read, so all these stories were new to me. I was pretty surprised to learn how much of a gamer Spielberg was, and how apathetic Lucas is toward video games.

Red Dead Redemption
Entering Mexico for the first time in Red Dead Redemption. Incredible.

Halo
When Chief and Cortana are reunited in Halo 3.

“Negative. I have the gun.” From the level Pillar of Autumn in Halo Reach perfectly sums up the theme/mood of the game- that is, Halo Reach isn’t a story about defeating the Covenant, it’s a story about the sacrifice of individuals.

Gear of War 3
Dom- Mad World

Given the article, I’m sticking with Click Vegetable.

I can still remember the achievements that got me hooked on achievement hunting- Half Life 2 Achievements like Keep Off the Sand! and The One Free Bullet encouraged me to play the game again, but approach it in a unique, more challenging way. I think Halo Anniversary did a nice job with achievements in that they encouraged replay value, but didn’t include the typical mundane “collect 100 of X” tasks.

Generally I’ll play a game how I want, and if I enjoyed it enough I’ll play it again, this time using the Achievement guide. This way I get the full impact of the game the way it was meant to be received.

Me three

This isn’t a half hour article.

There is a story to be told. The point of a feature is going beyond the basic facts of a news item and telling that story. If you dislike the story so much, then don’t read it! Anything tagged FEATURE, you can just ignore from now on.

Okay, that makes sense. I thought it was odd that they covered just the main body, but not the neck label.

Anybody know why the hot sauce signs are covered?

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That’s an interesting way of looking at it. Back when I only bought learned of games through viral means, I was either a kid or a single guy in college. Those are times in our lives, especially college, where we are mingling with our peers constantly. Now that I think about it, my content discovery transitioned to the Internet when I graduated and got married. That’s probably not a coincidence, as I was no longer spending several nights a week at friends apartments on a college campus being exposed to new games etc.

I buy a lot more games nowadays than I used to. Sometimes I would read a few reviews, buy the game, read the achievement guide, and then start the game. It became like a chore where I was merely validating the opinion I had previously formed about the game. I’ve now cut out the achievement hunting part of that, only checking for missable achievements before I start a game. I generally avoid guides now, and just try to enjoy the game.

Now as a father, my favorite games to play are Kinect titles with my daughter. The Star Wars Kinect reviews were pretty terrible, but considering the target audience for a game like that vs the demographic of the reviewers, I think it got an unfair shake. We’re never going to get a Kinect title that puts us into Luke’s shoes. But maybe Star Wars Kinect can be a nice bonding moment where a nerdy father introduces his young daughter to the world of Star Wars. From my daughter’s persepctive, she doesn’t care if a game is crap or has a terrible story. All that matters to her is that she’s spending time with her dad.

Don’t be such a click vegetable. Just take a break and appreciate the article in its entirety.

Adam Carolla and the guy from Rotten Tomatoes discussed reviews and how they can skew the movie going experience a few months ago, which got me thinking about how it relates to video games.

I’ll have to try out Oblivion, but I just bought Fallout 3, which I understand is a major timesink.