Gamasutra: Kenneth Liu's Blog – Kliuless? # 10: Epic Dreams and Fortnitemares

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Kliuless? ICYMI Game Industry # 10

Hi, I'm calling Kenny Liu and I'm working on Riot Games' revenue strategy. Every week, I write a newsletter about the gaming industry that I share with other Rioters, including Riot's top executives. This edition is the public version that I also publish every week. Opinions are mine.

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Epic Dreams & Fortnitemares

• Epic Games valued at $ 15 billion after getting $ 1.25 billion from multiple investors
• The new Halloween "Fortnitemares" event adds monsters similar to zombies
  • [KL: Several weeks ago I discussed Epic’s “Fort(nite)ifications” against Blackout from a publishing perspective. “Fortnitemares” is Epic’s method of flexing its developer prowess to show that it can match Activision’s zombie-infested battle royale in gameplay as well. One of the most powerful traits of the battle royale genre is that so much meaningful gameplay variation can be added by simply changing the rules or items of the virtual sandbox. To date, Epic has capitalized on this strength the most with their impressively rapid iterations and updates. Fortnite’s generally more playful aesthetic and gameplay also enable the game to easily experiment with more creative freedom. I wouldn’t be surprised to see pirate- or ninja-themed events one day in Fortnite, but it’s harder for me to imagine the same for Blackout or PUBG]
  • Related: "A week from Fortnite, it's like forever"
• Fortnite downloaded on "almost half" (~ 11mm) of all Switch consoles
• Fortnite Save The World: launch of the free game delayed until 2019

Revenue strategy

• An excellent game of 80 slides on the hacking of the growth of Andrew Chen, partner of A16Z
• The legal status of booty boxes around the world and further debate
• The growing need for game savers in mobile games freemium
• Ubisoft CEO: Cloud gaming can help AAA games grow beyond the PC and console
  • About the monetization, Guillemot said the company was considering a traditional model allowing it to sell streaming titles as full games, while buying them at full price on another platform, rather than selling them. other models that Google's platform could support or the pay-by-playtime cloud streaming model for the Nintendo switch in Japan has adopted until now "

Design

platforms

• Two new entries at this year's Platform Wars, as in Game of Thrones
  • EA unveils its "cloud-based gaming" technology called Project Atlas
    • "We are in the process of integrating all these new features directly into a revolutionary new gaming platform called Project Atlas Project Atlas is designed to transparently converge the Frostbite game engine and gaming services. 39, EA, as well as artificial intelligence – to give birth to a new game development platform optimized for a cloud-based world, a fully integrated platform, capable of creating scalable, social, and social experiences. So, in the past, features such as cloud hosting, matching, market, data, artificial intelligence, achievements and social networks were separated from the development tools of the cloud. engine, the Project Atlas platform will be able to implement all these services natively within a unified solution "
  • The Kongregate Kartridge app store opens with hundreds of independent PC games
    • "As an open platform, Kartridge now allows developers to download their downloadable computer games from today." Kartridge offers an effortless content download process, development tools, and easy-to-use tools. developed analytical tools, as well as previously announced developer-friendly revenue terms, which give right earnings of their first sales of $ 10,000.After that, Kartridge undergoes a standard 30% reduction "
• The international transformation of Roblox
  • "We do not do a lot of marketing," he said. "We are a very discreet company, but this has led us to become very big.In March, based on the commitment – the time spent on our platform – for children under 13, we we were # 1 and we were considerably taller than YouTube, and for kids ages 13 to 17, we were # 2, just behind YouTube, and the company really built a very important position in terms of engagement with young adults "
• Twitch partners with Harmonix to develop a streaming karaoke game

Mobile

• Bloomberg: in Samsung's bid to challenge Apple with 5G folding phones
  • Related: The new Xiaomi gaming smartphone comes with a Joy-Con
• A look at Google Play on the occasion of its 10th anniversary
• Takeoff: the costs to bring mobile users from the facility to the IPA are rising rapidly despite a high commitment
• Zynga Bags Game of Thrones, Harry Potter and Star Wars Mobile Game Licenses
• ASO Best Practices: Everything You Need to Know About Application Icon Testing

XR: VR / AR / MR

• Custom smart glasses are recovered where Google Glass has stopped
• Oculus Founder: "No existing or imminent VR hardware is enough to actually be integrated even at a price of $ 0.00"

China

• Minecraft reaches drives> 50mm and downloads> 150mm in China
• In China, where you live determines which technology you use [KL: interesting exhibit of lifestyle & taste divergences between different tiers of Chinese cities]
• How Jin Yong helped make Wuxia the biggest kind of fantasy in Chinese games

Overtime

• Up to now, Esports accounted for between 9 and 17% of Twitch's viewers
• Piper Jaffray Quarterly Survey of Adolescent Expenditures and Application Usage Patterns
  • Instagram overtook Snapchat for the first time as a social platform used monthly by the highest percentage of teenagers (85% vs. 84%); Facebook is significantly behind with only 36% of teenagers logging in each month
  • A little less teenagers are playing games on their phone or tablet (70%) compared to previous years, but spending has gone up: 28% of those playing are using real money to buy virtual goods (compared to 16% in 2013)
• The dark, ironic and surreal games of Central and Eastern Europe
• Red Dead Redemption 2: The Kotaku Review
• Assassin's Creed: Odyssey is incredibly faithful to what ancient Greece looked like during its golden age
  • Related: Bringing feudal Japan to life in Ghost of Tsushima
• Netflix released the first trailer for Minecraft: Story Mode, an interactive TV series in the "Choose Your Adventure" style developed in partnership with Telltale Games
• Ubisoft works on "Child of Light", "Werewolves Within", cinematographic adaptations
• 'Talking Tom' in development as animated film action

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