This Week in the Business: Staring Into the Uncanny Valley

What’s happened in the business of video games this past week …

QUOTE | “If improved graphics aren’t combined with better animation, all these games are going to dive into the uncanny valley.”—Julien Merceron, worldwide tech director for Square Enix, talking about escaping from the uncanny valley with next-gen games

QUOTE | “It takes women working on games for games to change.”—Media Molecule studio director Siobhan Reddy, talking about the need for more women to work in the game industry as the audience is expanding

QUOTE | “We won’t even start if we don’t think we can build a franchise out of it.”—Tony Key, SVP of sales and marketing for Ubisoft, talking about why Ubisoft wants every game to be a major hit

QUOTE | “You don’t really want to know how the sausage is made; you just want to know it tastes good.”—Mitch Gitelman, executive producer for Shadowrun Returns, talking about the Kickstarter process

QUOTE | “Now you essentially need to form a marriage with gamers.”—Sergey Titov, CEO of investment company Arktos Entertainment Group, talking about how game development has changed over the last ten years

QUOTE | “eSports is the fastest growing media area in games.”—David Rice, SVP of CBS Interactive’s games division, talking about why they are pushing strongly into video programming

QUOTE | “Steam just might be using some psychological tricks to get you to buy and play more games.”—Jamie Madigan, psychologist and expert on video games, talking about how Steam is hacking our brains to boost sales

QUOTE | “We don’t really work with design documents in Candy Crush Saga.”—Tobias Nyblom, designer for King’s hit mobile game, talking about how their team is so small they just brainstorm, implement and polish

STAT | 15%—Drop in June’s US retail sales of video game hardware, software and accessories compared to June 2012; hardware sales plunged 30% compared to June of last year

QUOTE | “When we make games we really want people to surprise us.”—Ubisoft creative director Michel Ancel, talking about how he wants games to let people have their own experience rather than a scripted one

STAT | 42%—Drop in Ubisoft’s revenue for the quarter ended June 30 compared to last year’s quarter; Ubisoft noted last year’s quarter saw the launch of Ghost Recon: Future Soldier and this year had no comparable release

QUOTE | “Legislative and political winning is about preventing them from putting you out of business.”—Richard J. Feldman, former NRA political director, along with others talking about how the ESA outspends the NRA on lobbying

This Week in the Business courtesy of GamesIndustry International

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