magerette
Hedgewitch
- Joined
- October 18, 2006
- Messages
- 7,834
As you may have read in some of my posts, I've had a few gripes with THQ over the abandonment of Titan Quest: Immortal Throne (no post release patch support, pretty much leaving a promising new studio to fend for itself rather than promote it in a new expansion, gag-orders on the devs to stonewall any discussion about further plans, etc, etc) so I 've developed a bit of a bias against them. This has only increased now that I've found out what they're spending their money on instead of that post-release support.
I thought this little article on their latest marketing ploy was kind of chilling.
You may want to read the whole article to get the full dose of commercialism but here are some snips:
Here's my interpretation of this new plan for game development: Have a R & D set-up that spends thousands of dollars on trying to read people's minds, then only release games that can be assured of a major success by manipulating the presentation of the game elements to maximize an attraction in people's subconscious minds.
I can understand that profits are always a consideration, but this type of market research gets a little too close to thought control for me. What's the next stage--not just analyze a response, but artificially induce one?
Am I just being paranoid? to me a lot of good game ideas and smaller projects could wither on the vine through this approach.
I thought this little article on their latest marketing ploy was kind of chilling.
You may want to read the whole article to get the full dose of commercialism but here are some snips:
"Consumer advertising largely doesn't shape your subconscious behavior," said Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley. "Part of the problem is that we haven't figured out how to study the quick, unconscious emotional responses to the advertisements, and this kind of technology may give us a clue....
With data from... sensors, EmSense can detect whether or when the wearer blinks, blushes, or sweats. "Combing all these measurements together, you get a model of how someone's responding to an ad or a game," said Hans Lee, chief technology officer of EmSense. "We can get a second-by-second emotional and cognitive response of the audience.".....
.....Developing a game, for example, can run into the tens of millions of dollars. What's worse is that relatively few games turn a profit, and even fewer achieve mass popularity. The advertising industry also suffers from consumers' resistance to commercial pitches. Most ad campaigns fall flat because they fail to push the right emotional buttons.
Here's my interpretation of this new plan for game development: Have a R & D set-up that spends thousands of dollars on trying to read people's minds, then only release games that can be assured of a major success by manipulating the presentation of the game elements to maximize an attraction in people's subconscious minds.
I can understand that profits are always a consideration, but this type of market research gets a little too close to thought control for me. What's the next stage--not just analyze a response, but artificially induce one?
Am I just being paranoid? to me a lot of good game ideas and smaller projects could wither on the vine through this approach.
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2006
- Messages
- 7,834