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The big pass allows skiers and snowboarders access to six mountains around montreal. This is a custom map with all the locations and web addresses.

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This visualization was created based on some data from the Guardian Data blog. It shows UK drinking habits by geographical location.

I sat down with Matthieu Blouin, a game developer and project manager at Ubisoft Montreal to talk about the state of the industry from an inside perspective, the effects of the recession and the emerging market of casual gamers. Click below to have a listen.

Script

(ambient sound of music fades in and then back down)
Welcome to the first edition of the One of Many podcast, this time around we’ll be speaking to Matthieu Blouin, a game developer and project manager at Ubisoft Montreal to talk about the state of the industry from an inside perspective, the effects of the recession and the emerging market of casual gamers.

In a few weeks we’ll be publishing a multimedia package exploring the recession proof qualities of the video game industry, and with that in mind we began by asking Matt whether the recession has had any effect on the day to day operations at Ubisoft.

In: 45 seconds
Out: 1 min 17 seconds
Runs: 32 seconds

(Natural sound captured from the Wii’s main menu In at 1min 18sec)
We also talked about the emerging market of casual gamers that the Nintendo Wii has created and the effects it might have on the direction of the industry.

In: 1min 30sec
Out: 1 min 45sec
Runs:15 seconds

It seems that Ubisoft Montreal is growing despite the recession, but we’ll take a look at the bigger picture in a few weeks.

Fade out ambient sound.

Runtime 1min 59seconds

I first tried to listen to the deportation soundslide from the Washington Post but the audio was taking a really long time to load, so I decided to listen to the New York Times soundslide first.  The first thing I noticed about the Kabul soundslide was that the user was immediately offered a choice of playing the soundslide in the current window or entering full screen mode.  I think this is a really good feature because it can be really frustrating when we’re not given an option.  I believe the Washington post soundslide must be viewed in a pop up window, which can be annoying.

Also the format of the NYT soundslide was very familiar as the web player reminded me of youtube’s player.  Also it started streaming instantly with zero load time which was nice.  Another thing I liked about the NYT soundslide was that nothing unrelated to the slide was thrown at me while I was watching, the background is grey and the photography is black and white.  This set a serious tone for me and allowed me to focus on the photos and sound.  This “greying out” of the background is something I see more and more on the Internet these days, and I love it.  I first noticed on apple trailers, the trailer will pop out and the rest of the screen will grey out so that you’re not distracted.

As a contrast, I had to click “skip this ad” in order to even see the Washington Post soundslide.  After that there was still and Exxon mobile ad underneath the entire time, which can be distracting on a subtle level and take away from the content.  The audio track never loaded for me so i clicked through the gallery and read the captions.  I found some of the photos were blurred and many of them seemed sensationalized especially the low angle shot with the handcuffs all over the ground.  It seemed almost staged.

I would definitely like to aim for a similar approach as the NYT did on the Kabul piece when doing my own soundslide.

Next week millions of viewers around the world will tune in to watch hundreds of celebrities vying for a thirteen and a half inch statue of a golden man along with the prestige that comes along with him.  I’m talking of course about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards or the Oscars!  But is there really anything to celebrate?  Hollywood may be deader than ever at the hands of a newcomer in the entertainment industry.

After all the biggest entertainment release of all time no longer belongs to Hollywood, but a video game.  According to Yahoo News (and the Guinness book of world records) Grand Theft Auto IV sold 3.6 million copies on the day it was released and earned an astonishing $310 million dollars in its first day.  This dwarfs the previous film release record held by Spider-man 3 at a mere $60 million at release.  Even the final Harry Potter book’s record sales of $220 million were no were close competing with the popular and controversial gangster themed game.

The reasons for this sudden and quiet dethroning of the film industry as the world’s most profitable entertainment vehicle are nebulous to say the least.  Many fall back on the world’s newest shared scapegoat and simply blame the Internet.  The Internet is doing to the film industry today what it did to the music industry yesterday and we’re all familiar with those results.

Luckily, the film industry can learn from the music industries mistakes.  The lesson to learn there is that reform of traditional business models is paramount to the industry’s survival.  What helped the music industry regain it footing after scrambling for a way to stop widespread music piracy was the entrance of the iTunes music store.  This business model embraced rather than rejected the power of the Internet to deliver music to anyone regardless of the presence of a physical store and used it to an advantage.

The film industry indeed has learned from those mistakes and the living proof is the enormous growth of the American company Netflix. Forbes recently reported that Netflix reached over 6.4 million subscribers and forecast earnings of over 1 billion USD.  Even iTunes allows for movie renting through its store as well.

However what the film industry is starting to finally get right now, the video game industry was doing a decade ago.  The reason for that is the inherent relationship that video games have to do with computers and the Internet.  The video game industry and the Internet have always been allies and because of this the industry is home to the most progressive and Internet based business models around.

World of Warcraft is an excellent example of a game with a relatively new business model that has been widely successful and profitable.  According to their parent company’s 2007 annual report, the subscription based online game has over 10 million subscribers and has reported over 1.2 billion dollars in profit.  That’s from a single game.

This year has filled industries around the world with panic and most companies are proud to report a medium loss of profits rather than a huge one.  However, the economist predicts that global sales of consoles and games are expected to hit a record 49.9 billion this year, hardly any sign of a recession.  Game sales in America grew by as much as 35% as compared to the year before and many economists have claimed that the video game industry is recession proof.

The theory is that to the average consumer the purchase of a video game yield much longer hours of entertainment value as compared to a movie or a music album.  Some believe this will translate to the video game industry not only weathering the recession unharmed but actually benefitting from a recession.

This is a bold claim that requires some real thought and research to uncover.  Montreal has established itself as a hub for the video game industry in Canada, so the performance of montreal based companies can act as a barometer for the industry in Canada as a whole.  Coming soon will be a multimedia package exploring this question through video interviews, podcasts with a developer at Ubisoft, the gamers themselves and much much more.

Sources

http://www.vivendi.com/vivendi/IMG/pdf/090212_PressRelease-2.pdf
http://videogames.yahoo.com/news-1212520
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12815694
http://www.forbes.com/2006/04/25/netflix-earnings-0425markets13.html

I’m really not into broadcast journalism in general for myself. However I’m a huge fan of NPR and I subscribe to two of their podcasts, foreign dispatch and it’s all politics. So the course was able to hook me with the NPR examples for telling stories and it kept the attention of even a non believer like me. I particularly thought that the tips in the prep strategies section were good, even though I had already learned most of these through experience. Particularly the “don’t ruin your audio” tip I remember doing an interview for intro to broadcast and I had responded too much to what the person was saying so it was very difficult to splice out the subjects voice only during the editing process.

This a post comparing a Las Vegas Sun piece on water shortage to a Dallas Morning News piece on a Mexican girls ordeal.

I have to say that I found both the multimedia packages stunning and engaging but for completely different reasons. The Las Vegas Sun package was obviously privy to much higher production values than the Dallas Morning news package. The initial page is visually stimulating and the web design is sleek. The digital clock is counting down the time until Las Vegas runs out of water is a great way to put the facts into context right away and deliver a sense of urgency. The video stream is very high quality also and the editing is well done. However, to be fair it is a water shortage story about a state in a country that I don’t live in, so the story does lose something for me there.

What the Dallas morning news story lacks in production values, it makes up through the human drama and the gripping story it tells. The first line the user sees is “God why won’t you kill him?”. It doesn’t get much more dramatic. The video and photography is also quite visually engaging although the layout is much less impressive. The web design is much more basic then they Las Vegas Sun package.

Interview Sources

Industry Insider
1. Mathieu Blouin from Ubisoft Montreal has been contacted through my cousin who also works there. My cousin is character animator and Mathieu is a senior developer who will be able to give an inside look at the industry regarding the financial and marketing aspects of video games. I plan to do a short interview with him and record the audio for use in the final package.

Consumer
2. Carl P. Lefrink is a gamer who plays over 20 hours a week. His interview will give us the consumer perspective of the story. I’ve already contacted him as well. This will likely be a video interview like we had discussed in the pitch to give some colour to the story.

Media
3. Gamers with jobs journalists have been contacted regarding the use of some clips from their podcast which discussed the recession’s impact on the gaming industry. This will be an audio contribution to the package, along with the ubisoft interview.

Finance
4. Grant Bishop – An economist at TD. I haven’t yet contacted him but I have phoned him in the past regarding a finance story. His job is to forecast the market and he could add some hard numbers to the package.

5. Someone from a games store like Electronics Boutique or Game Buzz. An employee from one of these stores could add some color and possibly shed some like on consumer trends.

6. Someone from VMC Game labs montreal. A video game tester is on the forefront of the industry and usually quite knowledgeable of consumer trends as a whole.

Secondary Sources

1. CNET news piece by Daniel Terdiman.

2. Play on from the Economist.

3. John Shmuel’s piece for the national post.

Secondary Sources

1. Gamesutra

2. Second Story Gamer

3. Nerdage

It should be noted that I haven’t included direct contact information like phone numbers if that is what you were looking for. I really doubt that my interview subjects would like the contact information they’ve given me put out on the internet. I can email you the numbers if you like.

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