[casual_games] moving the casual game industry out of the stone age?

[James Gwertzman]

I'm happy to announce that the Data Reporting Initiative has just made a
few big steps forward:

 

First, we've now set up a new home page for the initiative on the Casual
Game Wiki at
http://www.igda.org/wiki/index.php/Casual_Games_SIG/DataReportingInitiat
ive
<http://www.igda.org/wiki/index.php/Casual_Games_SIG/DataReportingInitia
tive> . This is meant to be a living document which anyone can visit to
get the latest version of the standard or other information to help with
implementing the standard.

Secondly, we have now published version 0.1 of the standard on the above
homepage. The standard is now far enough along to enable companies to
actually start implementing the standard on both the data publishing
side or the data import side. We have defined a schema and published
several sample reports illustrating what sample reports might look like.
It's designed to be a flexible format - there are many fields that you
might choose to report, but many of them are optional.

We are actively working with some of the major resellers in the space to
begin providing reports using this format, so if you're a developer now
is the time to start rolling support for this spec into your sales
database! The day when you can stop manually typing sales data into your
database may soon be at hand! (What? Don't have a database? No fear -
we've even provided a sample Access database as part of this V0.1
rollout!)

Third, there is now a new mailing list specifically for anyone involved
in actually implementing this standard. You can join the mailing list by
sending email to IGDA_DataReportingInitiative-subscribe at yahoogroups.com.
This mailing list will serve as a support group - ask questions, give
answers, suggest changes to the standard, etc. You can also get
information about this mailing list from the homepage above.

Thanks for your help making this initiative a reality, and collectively
moving out whole industry out of the stone age - or at least out of the
industrial age and into the information age.

 ---------------------------
James Gwertzman
Director of Business Development
PopCap Games, Inc.
+1-206-256-4210

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