[casual_games] Top Download List

[Gregg Seelhoff]

Lennard,

> I'm not sure how it hurts and I've had those thoughts before and
> even voiced them on this forum.

Some of my basic concerns:

- If such a list served to consolidate power in the hands of a few game 
portals and set them up as the defacto gatekeepers to casual games (as with 
the broken retail system many of us left), then that would be bad for truly 
independent game developers/publishers.

- If such a list showed a huge amount of money flowing into just a few game 
portals, that might encourage certain industry behemoths to descend and try 
to lock up this segment, which would be bad for the game portals.

- If such a list advertised how large this market really is, then we 
attract loads of parasites into the industry, overwhelming our quality 
offerings with masses of garbage causing our users to abandon casual games 
and this segment to crash, which would be bad for everybody.

I just want to make sure that everybody has considered the potential 
downside.  In practical terms, chances are quite good that this would 
neither help nor hurt the industry.  Honestly, I think that Ron's original 
list was as good as it is likely to get without sales figures, and I do not 
see a compelling reason for the game portals to release those.

> If you are doing what you do for love then, well, you can keep on
> doing so and I'm not sure how such a compilation would affect you.

The distinction is subtle, but let me make this clear:  I love what I do 
for a living, but I do it for a *living*, not for love.  This is a business 
and my job, not a hobby.  Anything that adversely impacts my company 
affects my family and my quality of life, so I take that quite seriously.

As I have said elsewhere, the goals of independent game developers and 
those of game portals are aligned in some cases and opposed in others.  
Frankly, I am only really interested in representing the concerns of the 
former group, and in that, I do not see how such a list would benefit us, 
though I can see a few ways that it could (potentially) harm the industry.

Bottom line: I think that developers should weigh the benefits and risks 
before getting carried away.  This proposal is not all "up side".


Gregg Seelhoff
IGDA Member #1995-0307
-- 
Digital Gamecraft (tm)
"Nothing short of a Masterpiece."
http://www.sophsoft.com
http://blog.gamecraft.com