E3

E3 Expo(Electronic Entertainment Expo) is world's largest computer and video game expo. E3 2010 will start on June 15 at Los Angeles convention center. Most major game companies such as Nintendo and Sony will show their newest and upcomming products during E3 exhibition.

Game fans are very exciting in these days because they know many blockbuster games will come out! E3 expo really is game fans' show. They can attend E3 expo and see each exhibiotr's booth. Also, they can attend exhibitor's event as well. Event is usually game battle and winners are take gifts from exhibitors.

I will attend E3 expo 2010 as well. I am very excting that how many games will catch my sight this year.

Game regulation

In my old post, I talked about game addiction.

Game addiction problem is really serious in Korea, so government decided to make regulation to solve this problem. For example, if this regulation go through, then players cannot play their game no more than 3 to 4 hours per day even they pay for game.

Many game users disagree this regulation. In Korea, most online games are not free. Therefore, game users continues to assert that they have a right to play as long as they want to.

No one nows this regulation will go through or not, but I hope this will go through.

Jailbreak

One of my post from yesterday describes about iPhone hacking. I will talk about this situation more in detail today. iPhone hacking, which is called jailbreak, is illegally downloading programs without paying for the software.

Why does not Apple do anything about this problem when iPhone hacking decreases profits? The company could update to prevent hackings more often; however, there are always new methods to hack the iPhone again.

iPhone hacking sometimes does help the company in the reality, though. The easy access to hack the software to buy for free attracts non-iPhone users to buy iPhone. In addition, the big number of Apple applications people use will definitely increase, bringing the company look good when they report to stockholders or others. There are many predictable results while only the game developers would know the best.

U.S. Game Trend and Apple’s Challenge

There are two types of game that can be categorized: Console and Portable. Today the U.S. game market mostly produce console games because they make the highest profit from it. Among many console games, Nintendo Wii, Play Station 3, and Xbox 360 are the most popular types. There are several reasons why people love console games. From those reasons, high definition graphics and their interfaces attract so many consumers to purchase the product. Therefore, there is a continuous increase of profit in console game markets.


However, according to the chart by Flurry, console games’ revenue in 2009 decreased by 8% compared to 2008’s. On the other hand, both portable and iPhone games' revenue in 2009 increased by 4%. The graph above also indicates that the U.S. game trend is now slightly changing.

Technology develops and rapidly grows every second. Therefore there is a higher expectation that consumers expect because they want better products and better quality. They also expect smaller sizes of game products so it does not take too much space at home. This is one of the reasons why the companies started to produce portable games with similar quality and specifications. In addition, the cheap price of portable games attracts the users even more.

The most well-known portable devices are Nintendo DS and Play Station Portable. Since portable games mainly allow people to play games outside home and easy to carry around since they are light-weighted. iPhone games can also be considered as portable.




Flurry’s chart shows how portable games’ revenue for iPhones has increased. While iPhone’s game revenue increased by 14%, Play Station Portables decreased by 9%, and Nintendo DS decreased by 5%. Why?

First of all, the cheap price of the software is very important factor. The iPhone application store provides most games for only 99 cents. Therefore, many people can easily purchase software without paying expensive price. On the other hand, both Play Station Portable and Nintendo DS games are usually 25 dollars. It is 25 times more expensive than iPhone games.

Secondly, it is more convenient to purchase and play iPhone games than other portable devices. iPhone is a cell phone, which can connect to internet anywhere. In addition to its numerous utilities, the internet connection enables iPhone users to download various kinds of applications from Apple application store. It only takes approximately 2 minutes; therefore, many people can easily download games and a lot of them prefer to use the iPhone. On the other hand, Play Station Portable or Nintendo DS requires the users to go to the game stores to buy games or order them from online. As it takes more time to purchase games, people start to hesitate to use those devices and it reduces their revenue.

Currently, game market is mostly controlled by Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. Although iPhones have significantly increased its market in a year; however, as the graph indicates, the total game market revenue of iPhone is still only 5%. However, Apple keeps trying to increase its market, and it actually announced that it will start focusing more on game markets more seriously.



Few days ago, the iPhone OS 4.0 was released. It was widely welcomed for its ability to multi-task and other great fuctions. Especially, the game center service shocked other game developers. It seemed to be obvious that this new iPhone OS 4.0 with the game center service will have a huge effect on the global economy.

Apple’s newly published game center provides communities for many games at AppStore. As a result, iPhone users will be able to share their experiences and knowledge with other users now. Game center service is similar concept as PSN by Sony’s PS 3 or XBOX Live by MS’s XBOX 360. This service will allow the game players to invite each other to play games together and rank the players. Therefore, the game players can enjoy different games not only by just playing themselves but also making close relationships with other people who have similar interests.

The game center service may not be a big deal for those who are not interested in games; however, the global game market is expecting a huge impact from Apple’s new product. Sony, MS, and Nintendo are facing serious problems in the game market because the iPhone and the iPad are becoming more popular among consumers and many of them prefer their products because Apple provides a great and convenient services to consumers in both cell phone markets and portable game markets.


It is not always guaranteed for Apple’s game center to be the best in the market. However, its powerful influence in the market cannot be ignored. Using the graph shown above, Steve Jobs compared the number of games sold by Soy and Nintendo, Apple seems to be more aggressive to be the best in the game market in terms of number of titles. Sony and Nintendo may have interviews regarding this matter while they will find solutions against Apple’s development.

As mentioned previously, Apple’s game center may not perfectly dominate Sony, MS, and Nintendo. However, it is true that Apple is definitely interested in the game market where other companies are currently dominant. Additionally, the Apple store started to provide various types of games, including those with great graphics and game systems. Since then, Sony, MS, and Nintendo seem to hate Apple’s aggressive management. The resulting competition has a great effect on both the game developers to make better games with easier access, and the game users, who are able to enjoy the large variation of great games.

It was unpredictable that actually portable device market would influence console market to decrease their profits. But as technology develops, portable devices started to include more features in their products such as music and movie player, and a program that connects to WI-FI. As there are more features adding on to these portable players, more consumers are fascinated to these new features which make their lives more convenient and ultimately increase the product profit at the end. From consumers’ perspective, they enjoy and purchase these products as companies sell new generations with new features. But from company’s perspective, it is important to come up with better ideas and more convenient and “catchy” features that would attract consumers and encourage them to purchase more products. So now the competition begins among the companies and they all should recognize what consumers really need and want and quickly find out their taste in today’s society, which will help them to make the best product in the market competing with other companies’ products, and it will maximize the company’s profit after all.

Play Mario Games with iPhone?

Mario games, one of the most popular games, can only be played by Nintendo's console. Nintendo released Mario games from 1990 and Mario game series are always became Nintendo's best game. Mario has appeared lots of Nintendo games such as Sumer Mario and Super Smash Brothers.

Until now, we could play Mario games only by Nintendo's console because Nintendo never allowed to use their characters to other game companies.

But, take a look at the picture above. Someone made a illegal program that allows to play Mario game with iPhone. It might be a good news to iPhone users, but Nintendo will suffer because it can decrease sales. I know there are many people who purchases Nintendo's console just because they want to play Mario series. But, if people can play Mario with their cell phone, then part of them would not buy Nintendo's consoles to play Mario games.

Trading Game Money

Contiuning from yesterday's blog, I will describe how much game money values today.

In the picture above, you can see a sword. Can you imagine how much the only few bytes graphic image is? Unbelievably, it is thrity thousand dollars. Yes it is thrity thousand dollars.
As I mentioned in few days ago's post, MMORPG system allows the users to develop their characters. Since the game players want their characters stronger than others' they spend more time, effort, and money. A Korean game trading website, www.itemmania.co.kr, indicates millions of advertisement to sell various types of items.

It is obvious that much money is being used for trading items. Therefore, more people started to use games commercially. Selling items is not illegal yet as a result, game developers face serious problems.

It is very important to solve this problem, so that more people can purely enjoy the games without spending much money

Game cash = $$$$

Yesterday, I talked about people who play games for profit rather than happiness. Today, I will talk about who they are and how they make profit by playing game.



Take a look at the picture above. You can see a person who playing game with 4 monitors. Do you think that is normal? No. This picture shows us that Chinese plays a game for make profit. He use a program called BOT to handle his four character automatically. He is there just because to observe whether his characters are working well or not.

Most people play games for fun during their spare time, but they play game for profit. I understand that not many people will understand why this problem is serious. This problem is serious because it can ruin the game and stop game service. Game company usually adjust game cash ( cash that uses in game) by number of characters or other factors as well. Thus, if they sell game cash to other people, then it can be break game environment that game company maintained. If there are too much game cash, then game company must update their games to solve this problem. There are some games that stopped service because of people who sell game cash to other people. Therefore, many game company blocked foreign IP to block foreign users.

However, this problem is getting worse. In my next post, I will find how much money that people can earn by selling game cash!

Playing game for money?

The most globally famous game is MMORPG style. Among the several reasons, it allows the game users to continuously develop their characters by completing various types of missions or killing other monsters.

Putting much effort and spending more time to develop their characters, the game users become eager to make their characters stronger than others’ as they are very attached to their characters.

As a result, people have started to trade items and cash to make profits. In order to make more profits, a number of people run man computers for 24 hours as longer playing times enable them to obtain more items and game cash. There are even websites which help sellers and buyers make deals.

This problem may not be fully understood by many people; however, there are too many people involved in this serious situation. Using the games for profits must be stopped, but the number of people looking forward to make profits in games is too big

U.S. game market trend

There are different ways to enjoy games in these days. One of the most popular methods is to use console; however, the developed technology has enabled various types of games such as PC games, portable devices, and cell phone games.

10 years ago, console games in U.S. game market had the biggest profits because of their much better graphics and game qualities comparing to other games. However, the high technology has allowed cell phones or Nintendo DS run good games; as a result, console market revenue has been significantly decreasing while cell phones and portable device market revenue has been increasing.

Can Apple make much more profit again by iPad with Apple Store?

iPhone Apple store sells the games the most among various types of applications. The main reason is the cheap price, which help many people easily purchase the games.

Since then, the new released iPad seems to use Apple Store more often as it allows people to play games on bigger screens. Therefore, it can make this new item be more profitable.

However, I do not think ipad will be as profitable as iphone just because of games. iPhone is easy to carry around for people who want to spend only few moments to play games. However, I highly doubt that there will be many people who want to carry the big iPad to play games. It will be the game developers who will figure out how they will make more profits with many advantages of iPad.

Final Fantasy XIII released

People do not wait on lines till midnight only for movies anymore. In these days, a number of people desperately wait till the moment when new games come out. For example, on the day when Final Fantasy 13 came out, most local game stores were open at midnight for those who wanted the games so bad.

There were not that many people who were eager to purchase games as soon as possible before; however, in these days, people were waiting in front of the stores hours before the game was released. In addition, they had continuous conversations regarding the new games although they just met there. Regardless of the age and sex, the excited people showed me how a game could contribute to happiness among new people.

Game piracy

In these days, game developers are more focused on protecting their games from many hackers than making perfect games.

Most people might not be aware of the fact that games are actually being hacked just like songs and movies. For example of video games, consoles are reorganized to read illegally copied CDs. In addition, USB flash drives are sometimes used as copied CDs for PC.

According to Australians News Story, 24 years-old James Burt sold illegally copied games online. As a result, the Federal Court sentenced him to pay 1.5 million dollars. In reality, it must be very difficult to perfectly prevent illegally copying games. Therefore, game developers cannot make much profit although they put more effort into making better games. Since then, there are less number of creative games now.

Game Addiction

In my previous post “What is Game,” I indicated that game is the honest method to provide people happiness while it also has its own pros and cons.

Among many pros about games, games can basically make the users excited and happy while playing the games. In addition, a number of academic games are recently developed; as a result, games have begun to be used for students to joyfully study. The fact that games, such as Starcraft, can create communities from different regions for the users supports the merits of the games. As I mentioned above, there are various types of advantages; however, I will specifically discuss about the cons of the games in this blog.

In reality, games are not considered as “good factors” in this society. Since then, game users are misunderstood by many people that they are lazy and incompetent. Are games really harmful to play? Why do people think that games are unproductive and bad?

First of all, the seriousness of game addiction, which is constantly introduced by the media, has caused the bad realization of games. Game addiction has become one of the significant problems among game users since ten years ago when online games became available to the public. The online games enabled those people who spent most times for playing games by themselves at home to communicate with other people from different areas. It eventually made them too much excited; as a result, the game players became addicted to games. According to a number of data on game addicted people, most of game addiction problems were related to online games. As more games are being available for online systems, the game addiction problem is expected to be more serious.

According to Computer and Video Game Addiction, game addiction is applicable “when time spent on the computer, playing video games or cruising the internet reaches a point that it harms a child’s or adult’s family and social relationships, or disrupts school or work life, that person may be caught in a cycle of addiction.” Therefore, game addiction makes the users to spend most of their times playing games, and they begin to put more importance on imaginary game life than the reality. As a result, the game addicted people began to be unable to live normal life.

Then, what are the reasons for game addiction?

One of the main reasons is an escape from the reality. Most game addicted people are jobless. Therefore, they try to be respected in the imaginary world by spending much time on playing games. By doing so, the game addicted people want to have some confidence in themselves since the reality is too harsh for them to be confident human beings. Of course, there are also many game addicted people with jobs and respects from others; however, game addiction disables people to efficiently work. As a result, their lives eventually become unproductive.

As I mentioned above, game addiction problems are being more serious each time. Then, who is to be blamed for this situation? I believe both game developers and game users are responsible for game addiction.

Game developers are too much focused on profits; since then, they intentionally added possibilities of addiction to the games. For example, Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG) do not have the end. It makes the users to spend more time to develop their characters stronger; therefore, more playing time usually corresponds to better game characters. This type of system has been available since thirteen years ago, and it has indirectly forced the game users to be addicted to the game. Therefore, the game developers’ desire for more profits created game addiction.

I argue that good games are those that can provide joyful times without a danger of game addiction. In addition, good games should keep publishing sequels instead of servicing same games for years. For example, Mario series by Nintendo must be perfect games. I have not heard any case of game addiction regarding Mario series. Game addiction is not required to make much profit; however, too many game developers are more concerned about profits than great ideas.

It does not mean that the game users are not responsible for game addiction. They should be able to control themselves enough to avoid being negatively affected by playing games. However, game addicted users cannot get away from what the game developers created for profits, game addiction. No one is born to play games for his or her whole life because games are meant to help people be relaxed and unstressed. However, game addicted people usually spend most of their times on playing games, and they even become more stressful by playing games. According to Chinese man dies of gaming addiction, there is a Chinese man who died from playing games for too long period time. It indicates that game addiction can even draw people into the death. Therefore, every single person must be aware of the seriousness of game addiction and learn how to control themselves.

Then, can we cure game addiction?

Benjamin actually posted several solutions to take care of game addiction in his writings. Most of them indicate methods to get away from game addiction; however, I argue that each individual must change. Others’ concerns for the game addicted people must be helpful, but they must be aware of their serious situations and have fixed purpose to get away from game addiction in order to be perfectly free from game addiction. It is very important to understand that cyber world is just an imaginary world, which should never affect the reality. Meanwhile, it is also very significant to realize how to control their behaviors and thoughts to spend their time wisely.

Most people who could be cure game addiction always regret their mistakes in past. There are still a number of game addicted people at this moment. I definitely hope that they can cure game addiction before it is too late to regret their harmful mistakes.

Starcraft

I will introduce Starcraft to the blog today.

This game, which was released on March 31st, 1998, has been on of the most popular games without a sequel for twelve years. It does not have great graphic systems like other recently released games. Then, how can Starcraft still be so beloved for years?

The greatest part of Starcraft is the well-organized game systems. Although it does not have fancy graphic systems, the game systems enable the gamers to keep being interested in the game. For example, there are three different tribes to choose to play, and they are evenly balanced to each other. Since then, much better tactics to dominate the game or attack the others' weakness are required for the gamers to win. Therefore, the game users still love the old games because they always face various situations in each game.

In addition, there are a number of national and global tournaments and events for Starcraft, which make the game users to have interests in the game. For instance, there is even a Starcraft TV channel in South Korea where most people enjoy either playing or watching the games.

The news that Starcraft II will be released in 2010 has excited the Starcraft manias. In many blogs, the users discuss and debate about several videos and purchases that Blizzard has provided to advertise Starcraft II.

Just like this, one single game can give many poeple interesting topics to talk about. Especially, globally famous Starcraft has united various types of people from different countries by common interests.

The Interests between the User and the Developer

Any kind of game is made by developers. In the old days, the developers came up with great ideas as they put themselves in users' position. On the other hand, the recent games are based on various types of software programs, which mainly focus on commercial profit. In order to satisfy the users with lifelike graphics and perfect sound systems, the developers usually take years to create games.

For example, developing globally popular games such as Starcraft and Final Fantasy requires at least three years to be available to the public. Since then, there are some gamers who get tired of waiting for new games; however, a number of game users are still full of expectations and interests because the long time of developing usually corresponds to the higher level of execution.

In game stores, there are different types of many games, but only 1% to 5% of those games makes sequels. One of the reasons for this situation is that many developers are mainly focused on selling more games for more profit rather than improving brand awareness. As a result, most of games become ignored by the users and lose its commercial value. Since then, there will not be sequels of these failures.

Developing a highly developed game must satisfy several factors such as graphic and sound systems. Among those, understanding the users' tastes and wants if the most important. Therefore, the developers must keep doing their best to evaluate games from the users' points of view rather than only looking for pleasure from developing games.

In next post, I will discuss about highly developed games which are previously mentioned.

What is the “game”?

The word, "game," is used in various situations. For example, people call it a game when friends simply play together with an object such as a ball or a card. However, when thinking about the word, :game," most people in contemporary societies will universally imagine video games or computer games which are based on software with high technology.

In my opinion, game is the one that everyone in the world can freely enjoy regardless of sex and age. Because there are many types of games, each person may have his or her own favorable taste. However, it must be true that any perfectly well-made game still can make the players feel joyful.

Times have been changing, and the technology has been noticeably developing each year. Since then, games have also developed with better graphic and sound systems. However, the pursuit of happiness by playing games is never changed. Of course, there are some companies which make the games only too addictive; as a result, game has begun to be recognized as harmful media. However, the main purpose of game to seek for happiness still remains same.

In my opinion, game is one of the most honest and sincere methods to provide people the pleasure of life. However, even these games have pros and cons; therefore, I will be ferreting out all the facts of games in different case in next post.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog. This blog will focus on game. New posts will be review or preview of upcomming games! Also, I will post about game addiction problem.