QUOTE | “Making games is hard and tedious work, so you should be sure you enjoy it before devoting the time and money to school.” – John Murphy, designer for Young Horses (Octodad), along with other developers on the value of education in the game industry
Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week …
QUOTE | “Within the next 3-5 years, the biggest names in Chinese publishing will play an increasingly larger role in what we’ve come to believe is ‘our’ games industry.” – Eutechnyx CEO Darren Jobling, giving advice to developers about bringing games to China
QUOTE | “I would like to see more emphasis on pure design, particularly how to think in an innovative way that generates new ideas that are powerful.” – John Romero, veteran game designer and Creative Director at UC Santa Cruz, along with other game educators talking about what’s needed in game education.
STAT | 48% – Percentage of US gamers that are female, according to the Entertainment Software Association; this is a big jump from 2007, when women were 38% of the US gamer population
STAT | 1.2 million – Number of Xbox One units sold to retailers in the first quarter of this year, from Microsoft’s latest earnings report; Microsoft says Xbox One owners have been averaging 5 hours per day on their consoles
QUOTE | “For the first time in two years, our teams delivered sequential growth across our key performance metrics.” – Zynga CEO Don Mattrick, commenting on the company’s first quarter earnings, putting the best spin on the company losing $61 million last quarter
STAT | $470 million – Amount of revenue expected in 2014 from the free-to-play PC game market in Brazil, according to research firm Interpret; last year some 17.2 million Brazilian gamers enjoyed F2P games
QUOTE | “We’ve all become accustomed to these fantastic things that we do every day.” – Eutechnyx’s Jason Collins, talking about the race car sim developer’s efforts to sell their virtual showroom technology outside of the game industry
STAT | 73 million – Number of copies of all Assassin’s Creed games sold to date since the franchise debuted in 2007, according to Ubisoft; their second most successful game franchise is Just Dance, with 48 million copies sold
