Categories
Business & Economics Technology

Video Game middleware – the big opportunity

In this post we explore the notable and current business opportunities for Video Games middleware, and provide a teaser for what we are working on here at Fragwire.

Summary:

  • There are emerging opportunities in producing middleware due to a paradigm shift in how games are made and played, resulting predominantly from the rise of cloud gaming as a credible alternative to traditional platforms.
  • Going forward, with games moving into the cloud, developers will face a new unique set of challenges in reducing latency (‘lag’) for the players, and also making best use of cloud technology to realise their creative ambitions.
  • We recognise cloud infrastructure is not quite there yet, but that there is a space in the market for middleware to take it to the next level.
  • We are creating a hybrid framework, which utilises the power of a local computer (or device) alongside the cloud, to allow game developers to take on larger workloads and better achieve their creative ambitions. We are also researching the capability to intelligently predict latency (‘lag’) spikes and adjust the games’ outputs to ensure a seamless experience for the end user.

This post will describe middleware, what it means in game development, and some examples of popular and niche middleware currently in the market. We will then explain the business opportunity before teasing what Fragwire is working on.

Categories
Game Reviews

Epic Game Review: Lawn Mowing Simulator

The Epic Series: this series covers the free games released on the Epic Games Store.

Cost: £0.00 in August 2022, £15.99 RRP

Platform: Epic, Steam, PS, Xbox

Reviews: 1,195 reviews with overall rating ‘Mostly Positive’

Time to complete: No end game

Similar Games: Truck Simulator, Farming Simulator, Train Simulator

Summary

Lawn Mowing Simulator pays homage to the real life act of mowing one’s lawn. Both ridiculous and exceptional. We suggest improvements and provide insight – perhaps too much into the authors own childhood – for one of the most popular Simulator games of 2022.

Categories
Game Reviews

Epic Game Review: MotherGunShip (MGS)

The Epic Series: this series covers the free games released on the Epic Games Store.

Cost: £0.00 in July 2021, £19.99 RRP

Platform: Epic, Steam, PS4, Xbox

Reviews: 901 reviews with overall rating ‘Mostly Positive’

Time to complete: 4.5-5hrs campaign, then challenge mode

Similar Games: Tower of Guns (same game developer)

Summary

I got myself into the festive feeling this Christmas by playing the MOAG (Mother of all Guns) game – Mothergunship ‘MGS’. Premise of the game? Building increasingly ridiculous weapons, collect cash, blow up evil robots. Rinse and repeat. Ideal.

Categories
Game Reviews

Indie Game Review: Kind Words

The Indie Series: short game reviews of the highest rated indie developed games under £10.

Cost: £3.99

Platform: Steam, PC

Reviews: 5,163 reviews with overall rating ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’

Time to complete: No end. I played for an hour.

Similar Games:

Kind Words is a culmination of the ‘nice side’ of Reddit, and a pen pal simulator. All you need to do is imagine a comfy room, pen, paper, music, and good vibes.

Categories
Game Reviews

Epic Game Review: Obduction

The Epic Series: this series covers the free games released on the Epic Games Store

Cost: £0.00 (when free), £23.99 RRP

Platform: PC / Mac , Playstation

Reviews: 2,381 reviews with overall ‘Mostly Positive’ rating

Time to complete: 12 hours

Similar Games: Myst, Riven, Firewatch, Oxenfree

Obduction is the spiritual successor to the game Myst, which was the bestselling PC game from 1993 till the mid-2000s. However, today’s demographic might find it falls short in a number of areas, riding the tailcoats of a genre that has been well executed over the years – a genre which may have been left behind in favour of simpler games.

As always – game trailer at the bottom of the post.

Categories
Game Reviews

Indie Game Review: Doki Doki Literature Club!

The Indie Series: reviews of the highest rated indie developed games under £10

Cost: Free

Platform: Steam, PC

Reviews: 5,122 reviews with overall rating ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’

Time to complete: 5 hours

Aided originally, no doubt, by its free price tag, Doki Doki Literature Club! has since become a cult phenomenon and introduced thousands of people to the anime-narrative genre of gaming.

Categories
Game Reviews

Indie Game Review: Tukoni

The Indie Series: reviews of the highest rated indie developed games under £10

Cost: Free

Platform: Steam, PC

Reviews: 1,835 reviews with overall rating ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’

Time to complete: 36 minutes

A handdrawn Point&Click puzzle adventure, Tukoni is made on Unity and is a very short game. No doubt this is the reason it is free.

Categories
Game Reviews

Indie Game Review: There Is No Game: Jam Edition 2015

The Indie Series: reviews of the highest rated indie developed games under £10

Cost: Free

Platform: Steam, PC

Reviews: 3,868 reviews with overall rating ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’

Time to complete: 26 minutes

Similar Games: The Stanley Parable, Pony Island

Despite the name, this is most definitely a game (sorry, should I have put a spoiler alert? To be fair, the game doesn’t do this either. Blame them).

Categories
Business & Economics Technology

Entertainment mediums are looking to Video Games for future growth

There is a subtle but seismic shift happening in the media and entertainment world…

  • Music, Art, Film/TV, Sport, and Celebrity Culture are all increasingly looking to Video games for growth opportunities.
  • On the other side, game developers are branching out of game design and using their cutting edge technology to influence areas of design and engineering.
  • Potential is for Video games to lock-in complete entertainment dominance.
  • Future is bright
Categories
Business & Economics

The future of Google Stadia – an advertising platform?

Summary

  • Stadia was officially announced at GDC in 2019 and released at the end of the year. It has become a well-known Cloud Gaming platform.
  • Google did not have the best of launches for Stadia, games library and infrastructure being key reasons.
  • We were surprised to find no mention of video games or Stadia in Google’s annual accounts. However, by delving into the accounts we were offered an insight into the future direction for Stadia.
  • At the end of the day Google has one core purpose, to sell advertising. Stadia will need to move beyond being just a branding and intellectual challenge for Google, and demonstrate an ability to engage with advertising to remain strategic to the business.

At GDC 2019 Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, announced Stadia. The keynote presentation lasted an hour and detailed how they expected to use their cloud technology and engineering prowess to solve one of gaming’s long-standing issues – streaming a game to a player via the cloud.