Plan for David Myers
by Dave Myers · 02/05/2005 (2:02 pm) · 3 comments
I think there's a real opportunity to do something very interesting by building in some of this RSS/blogging technology into our games. Any game where you wanted to tell a story seems like a likely candidate. A limited example might be a journal in your game. As you play the game it updates the journal automatically based on a given set of events, which might be player-configurable. In addition, you could put your own notes and possibly pictures into the journal. Give them an option in the game to automatically post an update periodically and an option to publish it now. The journal gets posted to a community website that you establish, and then the entry gets syndicated as a blog for others to subscribe to. The key is to make it easy for the players to set up and use.
You might only have a few people out of 100 or 1000 really doing something interesting with such a journal, but it still sounds cool. And useful to you as a marketing tool, most importantly. Potential customers could view the journals and hopefully get a glimmer of just how cool your game is. You could use it during development to show people how the game is evolving and during open or closed beta testing to help grow your future customer base. If you have a newsletter, you could put an entry of the month on it. Contests could be hosted. All sorts of possibilities here it seems.
This is just one example that I could come up with off the top of my head. I will definitely be thinking about how to use this type of tech.
About the author
Considerable experience developing with Torque-based technologies and produced the first third-party game using any Torque technology (Orbz). Game designer, programmer, and producer, and credits include the innovative title Orbz and the colorful BuggOut.
#2
02/06/2005 (8:47 am)
That's a perfect example. The Sims has it's albums, which might be another example of a way to use it, although they don't.
#3
His response prompted a couple of thoughts on how to use this tech to update your game, versus my other thoughts of sending a feed FROM your game. For instance, we're already seeing advertising companies sprouting up that would allow you to put their ads in your games, and then pay you per impression. You could put a Coke or Nike ad on a billboard in your racing game, as one example. The ads would rotate based on a set of criteria you select from their master list, so basically your game has a new element in it that makes your game world a little more "alive".
Now, that sounds sort of interesting as an extra revenue source if it makes sense in your game. Sort of. Anyways, that is similar to what you could do with the rss/atom feeds-type tech. So, for instance, if you wanted to advertise some sort of free promotion, contest, or sale price on one of your other games, this would be a nice and tidy way of handling those updates. Obviously, we already have similar tech to do such things, so there's nothing stopping us right now really from doing such things, but it's still interesting to note.
You could also have your game subscribe to players feeds from within your game. So, if your game had some sort of persistence in it you could basically let other players create content for your game as they play. Like American said, all sorts of possibilities here for sure - nearly endless. The more I think about this, the more interested I become.
02/06/2005 (10:40 am)
Although he didn't respond to my blog as a comment, American McGee pinged me by e-mail with some ideas that sound interesting, also. Hopefully he doesn't mind me repeating it here:Quote:i really want to see stuff like this done across the board, with music, ads, text content, even having the ability to script in new "scenes" with virtual actors via external editors. the possibilities are really endless... with something like this, in a city like was built for the gta series of games (say gta3) you could keep a viable world alive for quite a long time.
His response prompted a couple of thoughts on how to use this tech to update your game, versus my other thoughts of sending a feed FROM your game. For instance, we're already seeing advertising companies sprouting up that would allow you to put their ads in your games, and then pay you per impression. You could put a Coke or Nike ad on a billboard in your racing game, as one example. The ads would rotate based on a set of criteria you select from their master list, so basically your game has a new element in it that makes your game world a little more "alive".
Now, that sounds sort of interesting as an extra revenue source if it makes sense in your game. Sort of. Anyways, that is similar to what you could do with the rss/atom feeds-type tech. So, for instance, if you wanted to advertise some sort of free promotion, contest, or sale price on one of your other games, this would be a nice and tidy way of handling those updates. Obviously, we already have similar tech to do such things, so there's nothing stopping us right now really from doing such things, but it's still interesting to note.
You could also have your game subscribe to players feeds from within your game. So, if your game had some sort of persistence in it you could basically let other players create content for your game as they play. Like American said, all sorts of possibilities here for sure - nearly endless. The more I think about this, the more interested I become.
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