This Week In The Business: A Vigorous Brainwashing

QUOTE | “We do all the things we can to essentially brainwash people into liking it before it actually comes out.” – Former Call of Duty director Dave Anthony, addressing a Washington think-tank about how Call of Duty is marketed and why it’s applicable to unpopular national security measures

Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week …

STAT | 15% – The amount that Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare is expected to decline in sales from Call of Duty: Ghosts, according to analyst firm Sterne Agee; the company expects Activision to sell 17 million units, down from 20 million copies of Call of Duty: Ghosts

QUOTE | “I remain totally convinced that some company, someday soon, is going to create a virtual world that grows larger than Facebook.” – nDreams CEO Patrick O’Luanaigh, talking about the closing of PlayStation Home and how the game foreshadowed the future

QUOTE | “I do feel like we’re in this kind of historic, golden moment that’s never really existed before.” – Nexon’s Min Kim, talking about the global market that now exists for games, on so many different platforms

QUOTE | “You must be able to continue to play as long as you want, whenever you want, for as long as you want without paying.” – COO Kristian Segerstrale of Super Evil Megacorp, talking about how free-to-play games should work, and how they are doing just that with their tablet MOBA Vainglory

QUOTE | “Yes, our partners at @intel were flooded with complaints over a recent opinion piece, and they did pull an ad campaign.” – Game developer website Gamasutra, explaining that Intel pulled an ad campaign from the site after a #GamerGate campaign complaining about Leigh Alexander’s op-ed

QUOTE | “A decline certainly, but not a terrible collapse.” – ICO Partners analyst Thomas Bidaux, talking about the drop in both the number of game Kickstarters and the amount of money pledged this year compared to last year

QUOTE | “I also really, really love writing big checks to people who are living hand to mouth.” – Kongregate CEO Emily Greer, talking about why she’s excited about Kongregate’s foray into mobile game publishing

QUOTE | “They just were offensively bad to a game developer, they were basically unacceptable.” – League of Geeks’ Trent Kusters, talking about the usual board game you’ll find on a tablet, which is why they started work on Armello.

STAT | 44% – The percentage of broadband households that use a game console to stream video; that’s the most common device for streaming, far exceeding the 20% for Smart TVs or the 12% for DVRs

QUOTE | “We’re stoked about exploring new emergent usage patterns from having the additional screen real estate.” – Turbo’s Yohei Ishi, talking along with other game developers about supporting Apple’s new iPhones

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