Selling Games using Social Media

In the video game industry, it can be difficult to determine whether a game will actually return a profit. Game enthusiasts tend to believe that one of the key factors to a game's success is how high it scores in online reviews, and yet some of the most highly praised works still manage to get relatively unsatisfying sales figures.

One interesting story about this is the game Ōkami. The game was published by Capcom in 2006 for the PlayStation 2 system, and two years later a Wii version of the same game was released.

This game had almost everything going for it: very high reviews, several awards from leading publications, compatibility with two consoles, and an almost worldwide distribution. And yet the game just didn't sell very well for some reason. Guinness World Records found Ōkami to be the least commercially successful game to have ever won a Game of the Year award from a major publication.

Around the same time that Capcom released the Wii version of Ōkami, the company began working on the game's sequel, known as Ōkamiden. This time they decided to make the game for the Nintendo DS handheld system, probably anticipating that by moving to a system with lower production costs, they may increase their chances of profiting from the title. There was still, however, the challenge of marketing the game, and to make it worse, the team had a relatively low marketing budget.

This is where Facebook comes in.

First Impressions on Class

I just may be the youngest guy in the class, but other than that, this is turning out to be a much more interesting course than I had hoped for.

I signed up for this class because I thought it would be great to take it alongside with ISTA 230: Web Development. I have always been an amateur when it comes to making and running websites, so I figured that it's time I finally get a formal education on the subject. Plus, I imagine the skills that I learn in this class will also help me advertise my club better.