In 2015, Danielle Udogaranya had a realisation while playing The Sims: There were no cosmetic options to make characters who looked like her. “There was a lack of Afrocentric hairstyles and clothing,” she says. “This is meant to be a...
Surely there is only one rational response to hearing a neighbour playing the trombone loudly and badly for hours on end: seethe silently until you can stand it no more, then go over there and give them a piece of...
I’m spending some time getting back up to speed on the major players in the games sector as part of my increased involvement in Hiro Capital, and this chart in the Activision Blizzard annual report leaped out at me: Microsoft...
I’ve recently been asked to think about what rising inflation (8.2% in the UK in June; 9.1% over the last 12 months in the US) means for the video game industry. There are three areas to think about: the impact...
By Nicholas Lovell on August 5, 2022 I just saw a chart from Martin Nerurkar about the sales of his game Nowhere Prophet by platform. He followed up with this tweet: And if you’re wondering why the Microsoft Store isn’t...
Sony’s recent corporate presentation was heavily focused on F2P and live-service games. Piers Harding-Rolls has an excellent analysis thread on Twitter, and these 2 charts leaped out at me. That chart shows that more a quarter of PS4 revenue is...
Cryptocurrencies, the blockchain, NFTs and pay-to-earn: 4 separate growth areas that promoters and shysters conflate, to the detriment of us all. The crypto/blockchain/NFT bubble continues apace. Compared to the dot com bubble that burst in 2000, it seems as if...
By Nicholas Lovell on November 26, 2021 I am continuing my quest to understand this third major transition in the technology / games markets in my career (first: the Internet; second: free-to-play; now: the blockchain). I feared that I didn’t...
Twice in my career, I have been at the forefront of massive change. In 2000, I was an Internet analyst at Deutsche Bank advising middle-aged men (and they were all men) on how this new nerdy Internet thing was going...
Many games companies struggle with how to use their metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) effectively. They are conflicted because game metrics have two different purposes: Comparison and Improvement. Improvement I use metrics to help games companies make better games....
