Archive for IA

Things I learnt this week from researching around

// April 22nd, 2009 // No Comments » // IA, awesomeness, e-learning, rambling

- Developing in Linux is so bloody difficult, it is now is referred to as “Ghetto Linux”
- Dual core systems are the future, so I must learn more about multi-threading
- I have no idea what “vectorization” really means
- Maybe I should think about buying Apple stock, oh wait I need that money to make my game
- Chris Crawford thinks about stuff that make my brain wish is was having a beer
- Interactive story telling is such a weird wild concept that I *fate intervenes and the narrator’s brain explodes*
- *destiny intervenes and some how the narrator’s brain was saved from exploding using a lame plot gimmick involving a time machine and coke bottle*
- Casual games will be a $2 billion industry by 2009
- Top 10 Causal Game developers:
…spend $50,000 to $150,000
…Have 1 to 3 programmers
…Have 1 or 2 artists
…Develop a game in about 6 months
- Royalties are a fuzzy science:
… Developers get 20% to 40%
… Publisher get 10% to 25%
… Distribution services get 10% to 20%
… Portals get 40% to 60%
… Money appears and disappears between 80% to 145% (Attention, that was humor)
- Causal Games are sold at $19.95 to $24.95
- Some games sell better at $24.95 than at $19.95
- Causal Games sell 5000 to 20,000 units
- Try Media loves Torque
- There are (can be) 11 milestones for a Casual Game Title
… Pre-Production
… Prototype
… Code Complete
… Content Complete
… Alpha
… Friends and family beta
… Beta
… Soft Launch (putting a game out on a small portal and testing different changes effect on conversion rate)
… Launch
… Post-Launch Updates (some portals like Yahoo will take months to put up a patched version of your game if ever)
- Portals are dieing for games and it makes their life easier if you have 12-24 Prototypes to show them (I was kinda of confused on this point but what is meant is that Portal’s don’t have the staff to deal with lots of developers and would prefer a handful of developers with a lot of games)
- There is a great book out there called “Refactoring”
- There is a great testing company called “Testing Testing 123″ and they arent over priced
- Get feedback using “Survey Monkey” it is free
- A self-funded games royalty rates are considered low at 15% and high at 42%, average is 30-35%
- Tools Ive gotta check-out: Jira, JotSpot and Ning

Where are all the IA’s in this world gone?

// January 30th, 2009 // No Comments » // IA, rambling

I have a theory, and I wonder if it can be proven. As I am looking for an IA job, I’ve talked with a lot of people who feel that there are fewer information architects today than there were during the dot com peak. And in terms of visibility outside the field, that perception is quite understandable.Back in 2000 and early 2001, there were scads of design firms and agencies with the budget to prime their publicity pumps. Naturally this benefited the information architects who worked for those companies, who, like their colleagues, received some attention in the industry media. And back in those days there still was budget to attend plenty of conferences.I think that information architects back then were primarily outside consultants.