SCAD Hong Kong Game Design and Development

AnyoneGame raises $1 million for Just Sing It By Matthew Handrahan
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-04-25-anyonegame-raises-USD1-million-for-just-sing-it

“In an interview with TechCrunch at the time of the game’s launch, Anyone Game’s CEO Alec Andronikov outlined his plan to surpass the success of existing Karaoke apps by introducing mechanics from social gaming. Just Sing It’s structure is similar to that of Draw Something, with competing players attempting to guess the song the other is singing.”

High Heavens Board Game Pits Norse Gods vs. Greek Gods

by Ryan Carlson
http://geekdad.com/2013/04/high-heavens/

“Want to play a strategy board game that lets you pit the classic Greek pantheon versus the Norse pantheon for control of earth? For the love of Odin and Zeus, get yourself over to the High Heavens board game Kickstarter page and make sure that it gets funded and printed. (It only has one week left on the Kickstarter at the time of this post and is not yet funded.)”

Obviously, games are more than just “3D fighting”…

Ronald Grover and Malathi Nayak wrote:

“Walt Disney Co plans to shut the 30-year-old LucasArts studio it inherited with the acquisition of George Lucas’ film company last year, and focus on licensing its “Star Wars” brand externally, a spokesman said on Wednesday.”

“ The decision to shutter LucasArts comes as the developer and publisher, once known for humor-tinged adventure games like ‘Secret of Monkey Island’, has struggled in recent years to produce a hit in an industry increasingly dominated by action-oriented games.”

See the article at:

http://music.yahoo.com/news/disney-shut-lucasarts-games-studio-lay-off-workers-183037451–finance.html

From our perspective: Once more, the lessons learned from 1983 apply, focus on quality of the user experience and the market.  This is easier written than done.  Game design is about psychology, behaviour economics, and business strategy as fundamental disciplines to deliver a user experience of value, not about character design, story development, or even gameplay in isolation.

Video Games Careers in Hong Kong?

By J.A. Rueda

December 2012

Why would highly-educated intelligent people choose to spent their careers making video games?

Video games are supposed to be a distraction, a waste of time, bad for you.  In the colloquial lingo, a video game is automatically associated with a negative force that compels people to be irresponsible, lazy, perhaps violent, and video games and the associated corporations are responsible for many of today’s global problems.  So some say.

While having such thoughts, people still play.  People play for passing the time alone (horse betting, card games such as solitaire) or in a group (Mahjong, basketball, poker), or as a personal challenge (golf), or for camaraderie at work (softball, touch rugby), or for competitive reasons (amateur or professional sports), or to stay sharp (crossword puzzles, Sudoku), or learning a new language (many young people in Hong Kong learn Japanese through video games), or for the love of art (playing the violin), or to try to earn money (casino style gambling), or to belong to a cool group (Halo on the Xbox), or because everyone else is playing (Minecraft), teasing friends, being playful during courtship (young and new couples are silly playful), or to teach skills to a child, or because they have a smart phone (Angry Birds), or because their Facebook friends are playing (Farmville), or to earn a price (promotion games in convenience stores), etcetera.  The list goes on and on.  There are hundreds of reasons to play. Even if we deny it know in front of our peers or children because games are supposed to be wasteful, at one point in our lives, we all played with cards, toys, stones, balls, and our friends. Albert Einstein once said that great things come from the necessary “waste of time”.  In other words, play is part of human development and a necessary activity.

If play is in big demand, there must be an opportunity to supply play professionally.  The core component of a game is play.  So, there should be an opportunity to make and sell games.  How compelling is the opportunity? How relevant it is to Hong Kong youth?

Continue on the PDF VideoGamesDec2012 (download)

This invited article follows the talk by Dr. Rueda on August 29 in which he introduced the medium of the video game from a business case perspective and as an academic subject leading to viable careers.  He provided an overview of the industry, history, key figures and drivers, government strategic initiatives from around the world, and case studies.

http://cancham.wordpress.com/2012/09/22/the-business-case-for-video-game-development-in-hong-kong-by-dr-jose-a-rueda/

http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/13/nexon-revenues-q4/

by KIM-MAI CUTLER
“Nexon, the freemium gaming company that went public around the time that Zynga did, saw its fourth-quarter revenues jump 39 percent to 30.9 billion Japanese yen ($331.4 million).”