I've always wanted to try to analyse game sales data but unfortunately it's not generally publicly available. Until recently that is. I discovered that Wikipedia supposedly has data for all games that have sold over 1 million units. Assuming their data is correct or close to correct here is my analysis.
It makes NO FRIKKEN SENSE TO BUY A LICENSE!
My friend John showed me this page about getting taxed on virtual items in MMORPG games.
It's not yet the case but think about it. Even if you never intended to sell stuff for real world money the stuff in the game is worth real money. People are making a living buying and selling ingame items for real money so even if you personally just want to play, those items you earn, being worth real money, are possibly taxable.
My game was finally announced at TGS and I'm happy to see that many people seemed to like it.
The latest stupidity is this Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas controversy. For those that don't play video games, the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series are games where you play a criminal. In GTA : San Andreas you play a south central L.A. African American gang member stereotype. In the game you can walk and drive around 3 cities that are based on LA, SF and Las Vegas. In the game you kill people. You can punch them until they fall down and then stomp on them until they are dead and bleed all over the road. You can walk into a fast food restaurant, shoot your gun and all the other customers will cower including little old ladies. You can then walk up to them and blow their heads off. You can solicit prostitutes while driving a car, the girl will get in the car and when you park it somewhere she will proceed to have sex you. You don't get to see the sex but the car will bounce and you will hear sexual dialog between the main character and several different prostitutes including moans and sexual screams. You can have girlfriends in the game and you can buy vibrators and dildos for them. This is all in the shipping game which is rated "M" for Mature 17+ (ie, NOT FOR KIDS)
I've finally been playing Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas so here's some impressions
I recently finished playing Metroid Prime: Echoes for Gamecube. I got it back in November when it came out but at the time I put it in, played for about 20 minutes, decided it was mostly the same as Metroid Prime and put it away for awhile while I worked on Tanjunka. Recently though I decided I had some time so I went back to it. Here are my impressions
It's almost scary how long I've been making games. I first started programming in 8th grade in junior high school. My friend Greg Marquez showed me one of his first programs in BASIC and even though it was only about 40 lines long and just a list of questions I was hooked.
