CODA A sideways look at the games industry
THE INDUSTRY
AN OPEN MIND
IN 140 CHARACTERS
Bobby Kotick
A month in tweets by the industry elite
Based on his E3 month
@therealcliffyb Spill it, Nintendo. You all know you’re going to buy whatever they show. It’s fucking Nintendo, guys. #miyamotoFTW (Cliff Bleszinski Epic Games) Tuesday, June 7th
@TimOfLegend Sorry, but nobody else can have a TRENCHED code until I get really, really good at it. This could take a while. (Tim Schafer, Double Fine) Tuesday, June 14th
@fourzerotwo Showing Modern Warfare 3 to Steven Spielberg at #E3 was definitely an awesome moment. A true fan of his work (Robert Bowling, Infinity Ward) Tuesday, June 7th
@MarkRein I’d rather hear about Angry Bird’s revenue than download numbers. I’m sure they’re making tons of money, but I’d love to know how much. (Mark Rein, Epic) Wednesday, June 15th
@wiggo If Twitter and Facebook have taught me one thing, it’s how much I dislike self promotors and bullshit. Value every friend and every follow. (Matthew Wiggins, Zynga UK) Thursday, June 9th
@oliversnoddy Has anyone hacked a Kinect to recognise cats? This would improve my life immeasurably, and probably double traffic to YouTube. #in (Oliver Snoddy, Doremus) Saturday, June 18th
@Kappische Playboy Mansion was ok, but I really miss Sweden now. (Daniel Kaplan, Mojang Specifications) Friday, June 10th
@repi @theCoDdaily dude, 99.9% of PS3 and Xbox 360 games are 720p. and a lot of them, including MW2 is way lower than that (Johan Andersson, DICE) Sunday, June 19th
@martinhollis $1,204,480,000,000 spent on wars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? $2,000,000,000,000 spent on wars. (Martin Hollis, Zoonami) Friday, June 10th
@LulzSec Clearly the UK police are so desperate to catch us that they’ve gone and arrested someone who is, at best, mildly associated with us. Lame. (LulzSec’s official feed) Tuesday, June 21st
IT FIGURES: E3 2011
50
%
40 %
B
Ba rad P ttl efi itt 10% CoD e Elite ld
3
Telling CNBC what he thinks of Modern Warfare 3’s closest rival: “So far I’ve only seen Battlefield 3 shown on a PC, so I haven’t seen it on a console which is where the bulk of our business is. If it’s just a PC title, as it looks like today, that’s a small audience to participate. We’re always interested to see what our competitors are doing. I think we’ve had a lot of success with Call of Duty as a franchise.” Acting opposite Brad Pitt in the forthcoming sports movie Moneyball: “We’re not in New York. Find players with the money that we do have.” Back with CNBC, this time on the merits of Call of Duty Elite: “Audiences will have to make the determination of whether that’s valuable or not.”
Rewind
A year in video games: 1989
The recent E3 2011 saw 46,800 people walk through its doors; a figure up 2 per cent on 2010’s 45,600, but significantly less than the 60,000 visitors at the 2006 show. Over 200 exhibitors set up shop in the two main expo halls, meaning a third less than the 300 with their wares on display in 2010. Attendees came to the 2011 expo from over 106 countries, in comparison to 90 in 2010. This year’s E3 also contributed $25m to the city of Los Angeles. E3 2012 will take place at the Los Angeles Convention Center from June 5th to 7th. 80 | JULY 2011
A look back at a time when things were a great deal simpler for those of us making video games
Maxis releases Will Wright’s iconic god game Sim City