Devin Wilson asks on Slide to Play: what’s a game really worth? He initially, rightly, argues that people will bitch about spending a few bucks on an iOS game, yet will happily pay the same for a sandwich. And he complains about developers “bellyaching” about the race to the bottom, fighting for 99-cent scraps along with myriad other developers, before idly wondering if microtransactions/freemium or “any other pricing model” might be better.

The article dramatically smacks into a wall when Wilson mentions an essay by Jason Rohrer about the

absurdity of selling digital copies, which is—of course—exactly what game publishers have done for as long as most of us can remember

Well, not quite as long as most of us can remember, whipper-snapper. I remember when videogames came on cassette tapes, but anyway:

Rohrer’s writing thankfully isn’t a call for piracy, but it’s definitely enough to make you question the nature of the games business. What is it that we’re really paying for?

There’s a clear problem for some people in understanding that things that don’t have a tactile product that you can hold and, when necessary, hurl at next door’s cat when it’s taking a shit in your garden, have value. The value—what you’re paying for—is in the consumption and the experience. A game is still a game, regardless of whether it comes inside a piece of plastic or as a collection of ones and zeroes fired at your electronic device over the magic of the internet.

There’s already been some debate about this in light of the used game market, but we can almost certainly agree that a digital copy (which itself can be copied at no detriment to the original and practically zero cost) has—if nothing else—a slippery value.

From my statement above, you’ll note that I disagree with this. If anything, I’d argue a digital copy’s value is—when DRM is non-existent or applied in a non-hateful manner—far from slippery. That I can play my copy of Exciting iOS Game on my iPad, iPod and iPhone without paying any extra money to do so is fantastic. With iCloud, progress can seamlessly shift between devices, too. This is beneficial; this is added value. It’s not ‘slippery’ value. Still, it’s clear that quite a few people these days really don’t see any value in non-tangible products, and that’s a pity. The assumption that everything online is—or at least should be—’free’ is a big problem.

If I buy an app for $2.99 on my MacBook Pro, then put it on both my iPod Touch and iPad, these individual instances of the app don’t seem like they’re now worth just one dollar each just because it’s 3 dollars spread across 3 devices. At the same time, I don’t now have $9 worth of content, because then I’d just be printing money in a sense.

The value is in the ability to freely duplicate. Likewise, when I buy a downloadable album, the fact I can play that on any musical device I own increases its value. It’s impossible to put a set figure on this value (and to do so misses the point), but it’s an odd argument to suggest digital copies somehow make anyone question value, or that you need to somehow divide up the cost of a fixed-value purchase between the items you install it on.

It seems, then, that the entire business of games is quite possibly a sham! Even Apple’s overhead doesn’t make sense in terms of valuation: they can afford to distribute free apps for no cost to the developer.

If games have no inherent monetary value, then it must be the case that it is only by the generosity of those who don’t want to circumvent the normal channels of distribution that any developers make any money at all!

There are some serious leaps of logic here. “If games have no inherent monetary value”? From whose claims? Wilson’s, by making the argument without anything much to back it up? And to suggest that it’s “generosity” to not bootleg content is reprehensible. It might be easy to break the law these days when it comes to copying games, music and movies, but you’re not being “generous” in paying for these things—you’re simply acting within the law and, to some extent, supporting the people who made them. Kill the revenue stream and you wave goodbye to all these things.

Recently, Adam Saltsman wrote a blog in which he described microtransactions as “contrived” and “unethical”. This coming from the man who refuses to drop the $2.99 price of Canabalt for iOS, a repetitive, two-year-old game that’s absolutely free to play as long as you’re on a device that runs Flash.

Wow, what an absolute git Saltsman is. Imagine: he made a game and set a price for it, and he’s refused to drop that price! Man, I want to kick his face off, because— No, actually, it’s his game, right? It’s his decision what to price it at? And is the insinuation in the quote that Saltsman is being a hypocrite for calling microtransactions “unethical”, because he refuses to drop the price of his “repetitive, two-year-old game”? Because it sure sounds like it.

The source code is free to download as well! I don’t think Canabalt is bad (quite the opposite), nor do I mean to merely attack Saltsman (whom I respect), but his pricing model is no more logical than the practices he describes as “extortion”.

The problem is that a whole ton of freemium games are dodgy as hell when it comes to pricing. That’s not to say standard pricing doesn’t lead to questionable value propositions at times, but freemium is very often bait-and-switch. For every game that’s a demo (a few levels for free, and then a price to unlock the rest of the game), there are dozens of games that effectively force you to buy in-game currency to get anywhere in the lifetime of this universe. Sure, you can technically churn your way through without dipping into your bank balance, but only if you’re some kind of masochist.

It’s also worth noting that this is the kind of game Saltsman was rallying against in his post. He said:

Games that […] abuse [achievement] checklists and include In-App Purchases, are deliberately contriving their designs in the worst way in order to extort money from players, which is unethical and unacceptable design practice.

Wilson sums up his article as follows:

I like good games, and I think game developers would probably tend to make better games if they didn’t have to worry about their empty stomachs and overdue rent. Game makers undoubtedly need to get paid, but putting an absolute monetary value on a digital game doesn’t seem possible.

I really don’t see why not. Why is gaming so fundamentally different from everything else you buy? It’s extraordinarily rare beyond a PR stunt to have record artists let people pay whatever they want for an album. And I don’t pay my supermarket what I want to for my shopping. The enjoyment of a game might well often be subjective, but a single up-front price (or a free game with a single IAP) at least provides no scope for confusion nor is there any contrivance to get you to buy your way through the game instead of grinding. You’re paying a fixed fee for a certain amount of entertainment—and that’s it.

I’m late to the party, but I just watched the HP Envy design video. Oh my. It’s a really stunning piece of work that makes me wonder if HP’s designers are suffering from some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, or whether they’re just delusional.

If you’ve not seen the HP Envy, it’s like a MacBook Pro knock-off made by some dodgy Chinese company, with a horrible volume knob glued to the side and that your kid’s drawn on (carefully, mind) in felt-tip pen. (HP calls these elements ‘colour accents’, rather than ‘a really shit idea that looks horribly out of place and distracts from the otherwise somewhat clean design’ or ‘a desperate attempt to try and make people think we haven’t actually ripped off Apple’).

Some choice quotes from the video:

The first goal was to create a super-clean high-end design, and we did that in the geometry we chose

Presumably by popping to the nearest Apple Store and going “we’ll rip off… that one” and pointing to a MacBook Pro.

The second one was a level of honesty. That was really a key goal.

Honesty that doesn’t extend quite so far as to admit that the design is a total rip-off of something that already exists, natch.

The materials that we used were really true to this core attribute of honesty.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean the materials include “we ripped off Apple and we’re really sorry” being burned into the base of every model.

The last one was really key as we brought Beats Audio into the Envy landscape.

It’s always a good idea when you bring another company into the mix, because that never compromises your design aesthetic.

We wanted to […] visualise the audio and go beyond the sense or the audible sound of the Beats with Envy

“We were told that we had to somehow integrate the Beats Audio branding.”

You’ll notice with the product that we integrated a volume wheel that has what I call interaction gravity

And what I call a large volume knob oddly and intrusively shoved on to the side of a notebook. Still, I guess HP’s research must have shown that volume control was something people needed to mess with all of the time, and that existing media keys for doing so were just too hard for people to understand. Either that or it’s a stupid gimmick, in part demanded as part of the co-branding with Beats…

That is what pulls people into the product to interact with it

Unlike, say, the keyboard and the screen. Or perhaps they have ‘interaction gravity’ too. Man, my pen, which I just used to scribble a note, also has interaction gravity! As does the notepad! And my desk! And my chair! INTERACTION GRAVITY IS EVERYWHERE!

It allows the user a finite control of audio

As opposed to an infinite control of audio, which would be bad.

It feels a lot like a high-end stereo knob […] and it’s something we prototyped time and time again […] so we got this sense of quality

This bit’s at 1:45 and there’s a palpable sense of depression coming from the designer as he says “time and time again”. It’s like he’s trying to scream: “They forced us to improve the knob. Time and time again! THEY WOULDN’T LET US LEAVE UNTIL THE KNOB WAS PERFECT!”

Envy is about the beauty of the details

Details mostly designed several years ago by Apple. Well, bar the numeric keyboard that forces the trackpad to be oddly left-of-centre. That’s detail.

Has that next layer of design when you start to engage it

I have engaged you, notebook! Show me your next level of design!

When you open it up, it’s a little like Christmas

What, in that you thought you were getting something great, but when you open the box you see your aunt’s bought you a fucking Gobot instead of a Transformer?

In that there’s quite a few things inside the product that really draw your attention

Oh, OK. That’s just what I think of when someone mentions Christmas: things inside a product that really draw your attention. Man, Christmas round designer bloke’s house must be a laugh riot.

Colour accents that tie us into Beats Audio

Ah, the next layer of design: a horrible red stripe inside the keyboard. Mmm.

It’s a product that creates envy

Mostly on the part of the design team, who wish they were working for Apple.

Regular readers know what I think of the Apple rumour mill. I’m sick of sites that latch on to any Apple rumour, spewing out far-fetched guesswork from analysts and inevitably unnamed sources, in the mad desperation for hits. The iPhone 5’s going to be slightly longer, you say, despite having no proof? QUICK! THE WORLD MUST HEAR OF THIS!

But I am also occasionally sucked into the guesswork game for publications I contribute to. For .net magazine, I used to write an end-of-year ‘trends’ piece, trying to figure out what would happen in the industry over the coming year. Unlike most Mac/iOS rumour articles, the hit-rate was high, because I spoke to professionals who were grounded and reasonable. It’s the ‘grounded and reasonable’ approach that I took into last year’s ‘Apple in 2011’ piece for TechRadar, and I thought now would be a good time to see how I fared.

1. Mac App Store The Mac App Store is likely to be the first of Apple’s major products to appear in 2011. Announced during Apple’s unveiling of Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), but also compatible with 10.6 (Snow Leopard), it will bring a streamlined app-purchase, download and update model to the Mac, much like the one for iOS devices.

A no-brainer, but a hit nonetheless. And I ‘m also a huge fan of the MAS now, because it makes installation and app management way easier. That said, I do hope Apple relaxes a bit regarding its upcoming sandboxing requirements, or the MAS could rapidly become a place solely for dumbed-down apps.

There will be restrictions, too, but standard Mac installation will still be permitted; therefore, we expect the Mac App Store to be a great system for kick-starting a thriving ecosystem of smaller apps and games on the Mac, with industry giants – initially, at least – sticking with traditional distribution methods.

I pretty much hit the nail on the head with this. Although some big names are making the odd MAS foray (notably Adobe, with Photoshop Elements), many of the biggest apps are absent, including the CS suite and Office.

2. iPad 2 Apple’s tight-lipped about what iPad 2 will or won’t include, but it’s a safe bet it’ll incorporate FaceTime, and Jobs’s dismissal of the 7-inch form factor of rival tablets suggests iPad 2 will differ from the original little in that regard. Elsewhere, more RAM and storage are likely, and a USB port and a Retina display have been mooted as other new features. Whatever we end up with, expect iPad 2 to land a year after the original’s debut, in April 2011.

Bar some streamlining, the form-factor was essentially the same (i.e. a ten-inch screen). The ‘other new features’ thing was a requirement to link to an existing article, and I didn’t believe either would happen. Again, though, this wasn’t rocket science. The iPad 2 arriving in 2011 was obvious, but note I didn’t argue the iPad 3 would also appear, unlike plenty of other writers. I was, though, wrong about a storage bump (more’s the pity).

3. iOS magazine rack Rumoured to be imminent for months, along with the Rupert Murdoch-backed iPad-only newspaper The Daily, iOS 4.3 is said to include functionality that will enable Apple to provide a digital magazine rack, including subscriptions. This is surely a cert for 2011, complementing iBooks nicely, and enabling publishers to free themselves from relying on apps with in-app purchases or services like Zinio for digital magazine distribution for iOS.

Newsstand showed up in iOS 5 and has been a pretty successful platform for many publishers. I’m hoping 2012 will see more apps along the lines of those by Tap! and The Guardian, directly designing for the tablet rather than aping existing print pages.

4. iPhone 5 Apple’s iPhone release schedule is reassuringly regular, and you can expect the iPhone 5 to appear by early July. Unless Apple’s been at the crazy juice, you can guarantee that the antennae will work flawlessly, regardless of how you jam the device into your hands, and you can also expect bumps to speed, storage and performance.

In terms of functionality, a few rumours have surfaced, and Apple’s reportedly been experimenting with Near Field Communication, potentially enabling a device to be used for making payments. Elsewhere, it’s possible US customers will finally be able to escape AT&T, with the iPhone 5 becoming available on Verizon.

A swing and a miss. Some of the details are correct, but the device name wasn’t, and, if I’m being honest, I did expect NFC to show up, because, clearly, I went slightly mad the moment I wrote that bit.

5. Mac OS X 10.7 In October, Apple gave everyone a sneak peak of Mac OS X 10.7, also known as Lion. The eighth major version of Mac OS X was part of a ‘back to the Mac’ event, showcasing how iOS devices are now influencing Apple’s desktop and laptop products. Lion includes the iOS homescreen-style Launchpad, full-screen apps, auto-save and auto-resume, auto-hiding scrollbars, and more fully utilises multitouch gestures.

Given that this had already been demoed, this wasn’t exactly a tough guess.

During his presentation, Steve Jobs noted that these features were just a taste of what the finished software (due ‘summer’ 2011) will contain; other rumoured features include a resolution-independent and/or unified interface and an upgraded QuickTime X.

Again, these were required round-ups of what people had suggested would be included. I should probably have added that anyone truly believing Apple would ever unify the OS X interface hasn’t been paying attention since OS X first arrived. iCal, presumably, was to punch that approach into people’s faces until they give up with the unified idea.

6. Increased focus on iOS With Lion’s release, expect Apple to again switch its attention to iOS, perhaps starting to preview aspects of the next major revision to the mobile operating system. It’s also fairly likely that a shift will take place in 2011, with Apple very obviously considering iOS the ‘default’ operating system for Apple products, with Mac OS X repositioned as something more for professionals and anyone else with demanding requirements. Don’t be shocked if you hear nothing at all about Mac OS X 10.8 in 2011, but plenty about iOS 4.x and perhaps even iOS 5.

Mac users might argue otherwise, but I think all of this came to pass in 2011. The Mac remains important to Apple, but not nearly as important as iOS. And with ‘back to the Mac’, Apple is prepping its Mac users for making the shift to a more iOS-like environment.

7. Opening up AirPlay AirPlay is a potentially revolutionary technology for the media obsessed, but it’s currently hugely constrained. At present, you can live-stream video and audio from an iOS device to an Apple TV, but only from a very limited number of Apple’s own apps. Developers have shown this limitation has been imposed by Apple itself, for reasons unknown; happily, when responding to a MacRumors reader’s query regarding AirPlay video working in Safari and third-party apps, Steve Jobs reportedly said: “Yep, hope to add these features to Airplay in 2011”.

AirPlay’s now available for all apps, although some idiots continue to block it (hello, iPlayer in the UK, where we pay the licence fee—thanks, BBC!)

8. Improvements to MobileMe MobileMe hasn’t exactly set the world on fire. Many users cite that it’s unstable and unreliable, often bettered by free solutions available from Apple’s competitors. In iOS 4.2, Apple surprisingly freed Find My iPhone from the paid MobileMe (at least for owners of 2010 iOS devices- cynically, anyone with an older device was blocked from creating the required free account), and in response to another MacRumors reader’s email about MobileMe products, Steve Jobs reportedly replied: “Yes, it will get a lot better in 2011”.

Given that Apple’s building a massive data centre, there’s hope MobileMe might become an integrated part of its operating systems, becoming the backbone for enabling you access to your content from any Apple device or computer.

It’s called iCloud rather than MobileMe, but this all happened. Support issues mean iCloud’s not quite as open and flexible as I’d hoped (i.e. it’s not an Apple version of Dropbox), but that’ll come.

9. iTunes streaming It’s the rumour that never dies, but perhaps 2011 will finally be the year Apple augments its existing iTunes Store music purchase options with some kind of streaming service. This could come in the form of Spotify-like streaming, but that would potentially eat into Apple’s iTunes Store sales; therefore, we could see an alternative service, such as enabling you to stream your own collection to a device, using the Lala technology Apple acquired, in combination with the in-progress giant data centre.

I nearly screwed this one up while writing, before realising Apple would not follow Spotify, and so I entirely rewrote the section, imagining what Apple would most likely do. The above pretty much describes iTunes Match, so I’m happy with this.

10. Doomsayers rebuffed Despite all of these things and, perhaps, the odd surprise or two, doomsayers will continue to predict Apple’s imminent death, ignoring the massive profits the company’s generating, the boost in headcount and store outlets, and the innovative products it’s producing.

Well, obviously.

Unless Steve Jobs goes crazy and turns Macs into Windows boxes or has the iPhone 5 made out of puppies, this cycle will continue into 2011 and beyond, with Apple offering modest expectations, analysts providing bizarre predictions that bear little relation to what Apple stated, Apple revealing new and huge piles of cash every quarter, Wall Street going berserk at Apple having not revealed a pile of cash 50 times bigger than the moon, hacks saying Apple is doomed for some spurious reason, and Apple stockholders and board members happily watching Apple shares continue their upward trajectory.

I have a feeling I might as well copy and paste this last point into any similar article this year.

So, I’m quite happy with my list. There are a few wobbles lurking, but only one out-and-out blunder. And the way I got such a high hit-rate was simple: researching what had already officially been announced and not relying on stupid rumours. Many would argue that meant playing it safe, but this also resulted in a pretty accurate run-down of Apple in 2011, only missing a couple of points that almost no-one was talking about in 2010 (such as Siri). Such measured writing doesn’t necessarily get people giddy with anticipation, but I’d rather provide this kind of insight than become an analyst spraying bullshit all over the internet.

I recently wrote an article on press releases, with my tips on increasing the likelihood of coverage for your apps and games. This was, naturally, biased somewhat towards my own requirements as a writer, but I know a number of journos agreed with what I wrote, and so I wasn’t smashing my keyboard while wearing my crazy hat. Or if I was, the end result of said smashage still made sense and went down well with writers and devs alike.

Anyway.

When compiling the list of games to be featured in Tap! every month, I use various sources, including a new-games feed from AppShopper. I drag browser shortcuts of interesting titles to a folder and work my way through them, deciding which are ‘definites’ and which might be interesting.

Time is short. There are many hundreds of releases every week, and so anything that can make things easier for me is a massive bonus. Of late, videos are becoming increasingly useful in enabling me to confirm a game for probable coverage. But, as with press releases, websites and App Store pages, a lot of devs really do themselves no favours when it comes to iOS trailers and videos, so here are some tips.

1. Make a video. OK, so this one’s pretty obvious, and yet many games devs don’t bother. But here’s the thing: video shows off your graphics. Video enables you to display how a game works and plays. A short video is so much better than any description you can offer, so spend a short while making one and bung it on YouTube, then link to it from your website/App Store page, as appropriate.
2. Do not use Flash. Far too many iOS game videos require Flash to watch the video. Given that iOS doesn’t support Flash, this is idiotic. If you upload a video, make sure it works on the iPhone and iPad, and in browsers that don’t have the Flash plug-in installed.
3. Show some gameplay. Seriously. You wouldn’t believe how many iOS gameplay videos barely show any gameplay, instead choosing to show title screens, options screens, Game Center screens, or cute videos featuring the developer dressed as an octopus with a hat. What I care about: your gameplay. That’s it. (Note: I’m not suggesting you launch right into gameplay—feel free to fling up a logo and provide some context via title cards; but don’t create the iOS gameplay video equivalent of a DVD/Blu-ray menu system.)
4. Get to the bloody point. Related to the previous entry: if you do show some gameplay, don’t spend five minutes messing about before you get to it. Your gameplay is the meat of your video. All the other stuff is gloss. Add some sprinkles, if you must, but don’t force-feed me tinsel until my stomach explodes.
5. Don’t use fast cuts. Got something to hide? No? Think you’re Michael Bay? No? Then stop with the fast cuts. 15 shots of your game, each of which lasts about half a second, doesn’t tell me anything. I don’t want long, lingering fifteen-hour documentaries either, but I at least want to see what’s going on in your game, rather than getting repeatedly punched in the eyeballs with your attempt to turn a trailer into a new entry in the Transformers series.
6. Don’t be afraid of making a more in-depth video. If your game concept is complex, or there’s more you want to show, don’t stop at a single video. Use one as your trailer—your hook—but then create another. With, say, a strategy game, you might consider a full-game walkthrough. This probably won’t be much use for me, but it will assist the general public in getting acquainted with your game.

John Gruber responding to Siegler’s piece on the death of the spec:

As our technology becomes more humanely designed, subjective factors outweigh objective ones. Subjective factors can’t be assigned neat little numbers ranging from 1–10.

I hate ratings systems. I use them in magazines I write for because I have no choice. But the rating is something that never satisfies me, and of any review I do, it’s the one thing that I ever regret later, even if the rating was, in hindsight, only very slightly wrong. That this happens very rarely and I still hate ratings systems says a lot.

The thing is, readers love ratings. Quite often, they’ll ‘skip to the end’ and check a rating before they read a review. A rating becomes a quick filter, to weed out the mediocre. Therefore, some kind of recommendation system is required, and one that preferably deals better with subjectivity than a numerical score.

Back in the mid-1990s, I used to read Melody Maker, and, unless my memory’s gone squiffy, I recall that it ditched numerical scores for record reviews at the time. Instead, it offered two badges: ‘recommended’ and ‘bloody essential’. That’s all I needed to know: if something was being recommended, or if I should go and buy something right now. Numerical scores sort of do the same, but they vary by publication, and they also lack flexibility. They can also be quite arbitrarily applied, depending on the mood of the reviewer, or the range can be crushed by publications with weak editors. It’s not uncommon, for example, to see gaming publications rarely use any ratings outside of the 6/10-to-9/10 range, for fear of pissing off publishers. We need something better.

Still, while Gruber argues that subjective factors “can’t be assigned neat little numbers ranging from 1–10”, publications should attempt to do so within their own ratings systems if they’re rating other factors. And that’s because quite a lot of scoring in reviews comes down to subjectivity anyway—how much the reviewer likes something; their inherent biases; any emotional attachment they have to the reviewed object. If you have a ton of categories where you rate things out of ten, why not include the experience in that? Better: bin your numbers and simplify: just tell me whether I should consider or immediately buy something, because that’s all I want to know.