Despite being the headline speaker at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival 2012, Seamus Blackley, president of Innovative Leisure and co-instigator of the Xbox couldn't make the event.
He did, however, dial in with a pre-recorded video presentation - on The Future of Fun.
"You can analyse yourself into a hole about what's happening to Zynga or the drop of subscribers for World of Warcraft," Blackley said.
"But it's impossible to consider the dynamics of a business if you only consider it as a business."
The heart of the matter
Continuing his theme, Blackley argued a key advantage of the games industry is the creative experience it provides players.
"They are incredibly passionate about what we do. We spend a lot of time complaining about what they say about us on forums, but the reason it's hard to satisfy our audience is it's so passionate."
Indeed, despite the growth of digital distribution, he said the fact people will still drive to a store and pay $60 for console games demonstrates this.
"We are almost the only packaged goods business left, because we have a such as passionate audience," Blackley commented.
"The future of fun is to harness that passion and not get distracted by the latest billing mechanisms."
Fun in everything
In this way, Blackley proposed a thought experience in which we should think about successful games companies, as well as those which have failed, through the prism of how they engage with their players.
"It's easy to be distracted by the new excitement of having a direct business relationships with these fans," he said, harking back to our focus on business models and payment methods.
"But this makes it more important for us to keep in our minds whether the audience loves our game. If you have a game people want to play, it doesn't really matter what your business model is."
Focus on fun
Of course, when a game is successful, many other aspects of business - sales, marketing, HR, business development etc - 'all that mush' - comes into play.
"Every interaction you have with your customers has to be fun," he argued.
"Is everything you put in front of your customers fun? Is is fun to be your customer?"
Blackley hoped that the new wave of game designers and makers are more aligned to this because they have so recently been game customers themselves.
But he said, he thought maintaining this focus is hard.
"The loss of focus on the fundamentals is endemic to all human endeavour from the pyramids to the space program," he pondered.
But in terms of a conclusion, Blackley was forthright.
"I don't think we spend enough time talking about how much our audience loves games," he said.
News
Contributing Editor
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.
Related Articles
Top Stories
Feature
3 hours, 22 minutes ago
Mobile Mavens: What do developers think of the Epic Games Store coming to mobile?
Feature
Mar 25th, 2024
5 takeaways from GDC 2024: The games industry reckons with key challenges, Godot competes with Unity, and AI was the big trend without the big announcements
Events
Mobidictum Network Lisbon April 2024 | Europe | Apr 16th |
HIT Games Conference Istanbul 2024 | Apr 18th | |
App Promotion Summit London | Europe | Apr 25th |
Dubai GameExpo Summit 2024 | Middle East | May 1st |
Mobidictum Meetup Berlin May 2024 | Europe | May 7th |
Mobidictum Meetup Tallinn May 2024 | Europe | May 21st |
Israel Mobile Summit 2024 | Middle East | Jun 6th |
Mobidictum Meetup Barcelona September 2024 | Europe | Sep 1st |
Popular Stories
Feature
Mar 25th, 2024