I read a lot of articles. In the morning, in my breaks, and before sleeping. I also happen to love sharing and discussing. Every week, i’ll put together 5 articles that I find interesting. From workplace, to video games, to culture: all my passions will be covered. Note that some will be a bit old (backlog and bookmarks are actual things…). Here goes:

Article 1: The voice behind The Witcher by Robert Purchese (Eurogamer.net)

It’s kind of funny that my first article in here was about The Witcher 3 and that I focused on the voice acting… The article by Eurogamer is brilliant and gives lot of insights on the life of a video game superstar, who also happens to be a normal teacher “IRL”.

Cockle looks like a teacher, like every teacher you ever saw walking around a campus or school corridor. Nothing marks him as extraordinary. He’s middle-aged, a bit shorter than me and wears sensible glasses. He’s dressed comfortably rather than showily in plain, warm, everyday clothes. His hair is shaved and he has a slight beard. He does not have a mane of flowing white hair.

Article 2: What will gamers do when the eShop or PSN is shut down, and they want an old game? by Christoper Dring (Gamesindustry.biz) 

Interesting discussion between the editor and the guys at Yacht Club (the geniuses behind Shovel Knight). It tackles several topics around publishing, digital vs retail, experiments, origins and future of Shovel Knight etc.

We’ve talked about wanting to extend the Shovel Knight franchise,” D’Angelo concludes. “How about we make Shovel Knight 2, or Super Shovel Knight, or Shovel Knight 64? Maybe we could take Shovel Knight through the ages, that is something that is very appealing to us. But also, we are all very burned out on Shovel Knight for sure, so we thought: ‘What if we made a new IP? What would that look like

My personal thoughts on this: over the long term, publishers will stop having games on “discs” or “cartridges” and will focus on digital goods. However, Limited Editions (digital game + physical good) will grow tremendously in order to ensure a presence in retail. Despite a rise in digital games consumption, lot of persons still go to physical stores and want to “own/feel” a physical copy. I’m fine with this concept of “Limited Edition”, as long as I “truly” own the digital game and can have a copy stored in the cloud/my account to be downloaded 24/7, forever.

Article 3: Latest Trends for 2016 and 2017 in the Japanese mobile game industry by Motoi Okamoto.

Okamoto, an ex Nintendo EAD Planner/Director/Writer, writes about what has been confirmed in 2016, what was new and what will (most likely) be confirmed for 2017.

TL,DR:

• Nintendo and Sony push their way in mobile games landscape
• PvP is highly popular (Hi Clash Royale)
• RPG genre is saturated and requires more and more investments + Strong IPs
• TCG games are top of the basket (Hi, Hearthstone!)
• Asian publishers are bigger, stronger and grab more and more market shares. (Note: I work for one of them and I can confirm.)
• New monetizations. Pokemon GO in the F2P area, Super Mario Run in the Premium area.
• Service companies are getting bigger. Instead of developing games, they focus on one element of it, or offer to extend the game lifecycle.

Article 4: The Story of Battle.net by Wes Fenlon (PCGamer.com).

I am a video games history nerd…  This passion pushes me to spend hours reading or watching videos about how the industry was shaped. Some weeks ago, I stumbled upon this cool article about “Battle.net” (Blizzard’s online gaming service). Did you know that Westwood’s Monopoly inspired Blizz? No? Well, I didn’t either.

We think this internet thing is going to be really big,” recalls Rob Bridenbecker, Blizzard’s VP of technology strategy and planning. “In 1995 we had Warcraft 2, and we obviously had support for LAN plan, direct link modems and what have you, but there was this really cool service called Kali where people would participate online against one another … Equally at the time we were noticing other services, I think there was mPlayer, Ten, and there was another one which was Westwood Chat. I think it was games of Monopoly you could play over Westwood Chat at the time. We thought, ‘God, how cool would it be if we could create a network that was deeply integrated with our products such that people could connect up, play, it would be one click of a button, and they’d be online, able to communicate, chat, play with their friends?’

 

Article 5: A 3-step Plan for turning Wearknesses into Strenghts by Joseph Grenny (HBR.org)

Most of us asked ourselves this question one day: “How do I turn this negative/weakness into a positive/strenght?”. Joseph Grenny of VitalSmarts suggests that there is a 3 step plan to do it:

1. Identify Crucial Moments
2. Design Deliberate Practice
3. Develop Emotional Competence

In this article, he uses the example of Yan wang, a former CFO of his company and how she grew.

You can change your own career-limiting habit if you identify your own crucial moments, seek out brief and intentional opportunities for deliberate practice, and build skills in addressing emotional barriers to your progress. Don’t let fear or inertia hold you back.

 

That’s it for this first edition! Hope you like it.