Hurray for Bollywood, Ont.
The private sector and government have worked long and hard together to develop a media and entertainment industry in Toronto. Today we have world-class creative talent, first-class studio facilities, TIFF, extensive post-production services and competitive tax advantages, which together have earned us the unoriginal nickname of Hollywood North.
XMG’s Ray Sharma on why for Steve Jobs, innovation was evolution
In his 2005 Stanford commencement address Steve Jobs told an audience of students who had just spent a small fortune on their Ivy league education that he didn’t see the value in getting a degree. He joked that his commencement address that day was the closest he had ever come to graduating. He then gave [...]
We Don’t Need No Stinking Platform (or Just Make The Game)
by Joey Lapegna The indie game development community is larger than ever, and every day new coders and creatives are living their childhood dream of making video games and joining the community. Although I’ve made little games my whole life and have followed the industry for years, I only recently was able to officially call [...]
XMG’s Ray Sharma on why mobile is the remote control for transmedia success
You may have heard of transmedia storytelling: a story that’s told across several different sorts of media.Transmedia doesn’t just have to be limited to a storyline though; the integration can extend to other mechanics, interactions and business models.It’s my contention that since smartphones are the most personal of computing devices, they are uniquely suited to [...]
XMG’s Ray Sharma on the dynamics of freemium: one million installs and 50k players
Virtual goods are taking over the pocket gaming experience. Here at XMG, approximately two-thirds of our revenue now comes from virtual goods, up from only 10 percent a year ago. For the app industry as a whole, virtual goods easily represent half or more of the multi billion dollar annual industry revenues. The reason is [...]
XMG Studio’s Ray Sharma points to the power of 48 hours hackathons
From internal scrums to the Great Canadian Appathon One of the many things I love about the mobile gaming industry is its democratic nature. Anybody can join in. For example, XMG Studio has just finished running the Great Canadian Appathon. Based on the hackathon model, it’s an event that challenges contestants to start from scratch and [...]
Game Design Everywhere
by Michael Brown, Producer and Artist One of the wonderful things about working as a Game Designer here is the excuse I have to look at the world through a game design lens. What I’ve learned over time from peering through it is that we are constantly surrounded by potential new wonderful game ideas. We [...]
Emergent Game Design
by Adam Telfer, VP Game Development When was the last time you sat down and played your game and it was fun? Like REALLY fun. Like “This is the best thing since slice bread” fun? And not just coming from you, but from random users. In essence, that you had real confidence that your game [...]
Outsource THIS
What keeps you from having your job outsourced? That’s a question that many people are asking themselves these days. Seth Godin’s book Linchpin deals with this subject in its entirety – but we want to focus on one thing that unifies all of us – is Canadian talent competitive? We know that world-class organizations from Disney, Google, Microsoft, [...]
Ray Talks About App Store Confusion
To listen to Ray’s memo on App Store Confusion, please click the play button below.
What would you do with $51.1 billion?
As of September 25, 2010 Apple reported the following in its balance sheet disclosure: $11.3 billion in cash & equivalents, $14.4 billion in short term marketable securities, $25.4 billion in long term marketable securities for a total of $51.1 BILLION dollars in cold, hard cash. So first of all where is all this cash sitting? [...]
Virtual Goods bigger than Ads
Here is the XMG experience and thoughts thus far on making money on virtual goods. First lets look a chart from analytics firm Flurry who recently broke down sales of ads versus virtual goods.
Don’t discount Microsoft Phone 7
Recently at CTIA San Francisco there was a debate on the merits of MSP7. The bear story is that Microsoft has really disappointed us in mobile in the past and that they are so way behind that its basically game over. I strongly disagree and believe in fact that MSP7 has all the right pieces [...]
Ray’s talk at the CTIA Mobile Web and Apps WorldForum
Ray Sharma – The Evolution of a Mobile Games Company from XMG Studio on Vimeo.
Scrumban
A game’s original vision is often far different from the final execution. Game designs always start off simple, abstract, fun, but always seem to evolve into beasts that can’t be controlled. Mobile games have the benefit of being constrained by the capacity of the device, which forces games to remain relatively small and simple, but [...]
If THEY Build It, THEY Will Come…
The popularity of Customization in games has soared since the early days of the video game console. Customization is no longer simply a secondary option in games but almost a requirement to play certain games. Previously users could customize only basic character attributes (i.e. name, dimensions, permanent skill levels). Yet today XMG’s Customization Engine enables [...]
AR is but the beginning
The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium – that is, of any extension of ourselves – result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology. ~ Marshall Mcluhan The self reflective [...]
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