Another Castle Episode 12 –
Greg Costikyan
Greg Costikyan dropped by the bar to discuss his long career in games and what he sees as the future of the industry. In the first part we talk about his start as a board war game designer at the tender age of sixteen up to his founding of the independent digital distribution channel Manifesto Games. Moving on fro the we talk about the state of the independent game scene and its relationship to the larger industry. We close with the things that give him hope for the future, including the resurgence of PC gaming.
The episode is up on iTunes but you can also download it here:
Another Castle Episode 12 – A Conversation with Greg Costikyan
The episode has also been added to our Podcast page, where you can download older episodes of Another Castle.
We’re always looking for feedback on how to improve the podcast so if you have any thoughts feel free to comment on this post or email me here.
Matching customers with what they want is “a solved technical problem?” That is not true—if these things were really what they want, they’d have searched and found them right away, no?—and even if it were true, the techniques that Amazon and Netflix use to “match customers with what they want” aren’t necessarily applicable to games.
(There’s no easy metadata or indexable data that can be used to relate games. The audiences, like it or not, are significantly different; the product less tangible, customers’ expectations less well established. etc.)
I feel that Costikyan isn’t giving enough value to the social aspects of the Xbox, PSN, and Steam. These services list bestsellers and have sales, but they sell through peers. Currently-playing notifications are a form of implicit word of mouth that every player provides without effort (cf. written reviews and others-also-bought)—and these recommendations are coming from friends, not strangers. Guest passes, invitations, and free weekends sell games.
Good episode, by the way. Thanks for posting.
You should do an episode with Alex Kierkegaard.
If he’s ever in New York I’d be happy to!
I loved the music in the intermission in the interview at the 29 minute mark. Could I find out who did that music and the name of the track?
Enjoying the interview, thanks for doing this!
The music is True from the album Special Rumble, by our friend Chris Graves (aka colongib).
Lots of his music is available on http://www.kracfive.com, but not that record, unfortunately..
Thank you for the info, Noah. And thank you again for a great interview.