29 business models for computer games

Saturday, February 21st, 2009

David Perry enumerates 29 business models for computer games:

  1. Retail (bricks & mortar)
  2. Digital Distribution
  3. In-Game Advertising
  4. Around-Game Advertising
  5. Pay Finder’s Fee from First Dollar
  6. Advertgames
  7. Try Before you Buy
  8. Episodic Entertainment
  9. Skill-Based Progressive Jackpots
  10. Velvet Rope
  11. Subscription Model
  12. Micro-Transactions
  13. Sponsored Games
  14. Pay per play
  15. Player to Player trading
  16. Foreign distribution deals
  17. Sell Access to your Players
  18. Freeware 
  19. Loss Leader
  20. Peripheral Enticement
  21. Player to Player Wagering
  22. User Generated Content
  23. Pay for Storage Space
  24. Pay for Private Game Server
  25. Rental 
  26. Licensing Access
  27. Selling Branded Items
  28. Pre-Sell the Game to the Players
  29. Buy Something, get the game for Free

Posted in Business, Games | No Comments »

Hamas lied about Gaza fatalities

Saturday, February 21st, 2009

Apparently Hamas lied about Gaza fatalities — shocking, I know:

According to the widely cited figures of the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights — which NGO Monitor describes as “pressing [an] anti-Israel agenda in media and international organizations” with its “reports condemning Israel policy often lack[ing] credibility” — some 895 Gaza civilians were killed in the war, or about two-thirds of the total Palestinian death count. But according to the IDF’s Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA), the truth is the reverse: about two-thirds of the dead were fighters from Hamas and other groups.

Out of the 1,338 Palestinian fatalities, the CLA has now identified over 1,200. The Post notes that “its 200-page report lists their names, their official Palestinian Authority identity numbers, the circumstances in which they were killed and, where appropriate, the terrorist group with which they were affiliated.”

Of these, the CLA has conclusively established that 580 were members of Hamas and other terror organizations. Another 300 were noncombatants — women, children younger than 15, men over 65. Another 320 names are yet to be classified; all were men and the IDF estimates that about two-thirds were terrorists.

Col. Moshe Levi, head of the CLA, says Hamas’ “false reporting” was behind the distortions and gives an example: on January 6, about halfway through Operation Cast Lead, Hamas claimed IDF shells had hit a UN school in Jabalya and killed over 40 including many civilians. The claim was widely disseminated and further stoked already mounting diplomatic pressure on Israel, with the UN Security Council calling two nights later for an immediate ceasefire by a 14-0 vote on which the United States — despite Israeli expectations of a veto — abstained.

It turns out, though, that the actual number of Palestinians killed at the school was 12 — nine of them Hamas gunmen, three civilians. The UN itself has since admitted that the IDF was returning fire and that none of its shells hit the school itself.

This is a propaganda war, of course, and the media, as always, are in control.

Posted in War | No Comments »

BART holdup victim grabs knife, kills robber

Saturday, February 21st, 2009

BART holdup victim grabs knife, kills robber — and gets surprisingly sympathetic news coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle:

A 23-year-old visitor from the East Coast had just gotten money from an ATM when he told his friend on a cell phone that he had a bad feeling about two men approaching him at the Fruitvale BART Station in Oakland.

His worst fears were realized when one suspect, Victor Veliz, 18, held a folding knife with a 5-inch blade to his neck and the other, Christopher Gonzalez, 18, threatened to shoot him Thursday night, authorities said.

In a blind panic, he lashed out at his attackers, grabbing the knife from one of them and punching the other as his friend listened in horror on the phone.

Without realizing it, authorities say, the man stabbed Gonzalez in the chest. Gonzalez stumbled to his family’s home around the corner, collapsed into his father’s arms and died.

Veliz, who is affiliated with a gang, was arrested at Gonzalez’s home after police allegedly found him with the East Coast visitor’s cell phone. He will be charged with murder in the death of his accomplice, along with a robbery count, prosecutors said.

The robbery victim suffered only cuts in fighting off his assailants. He ran from the station, flagged down an Oakland police officer on Fruitvale Avenue and turned over the bloody knife. His name was not released.

The man was “scared senseless” when he was attacked about 9:30 p.m. Thursday, said Allison Danzig, an Alameda County deputy district attorney. He acted in self-defense and will not be charged, she said.

When police told him that Gonzalez had died, “he was very saddened and very upset,” Danzig said.

Naturally Gonzalez’s father proclaimed, “I want somebody to pay for this.”

Posted in Martial Arts | No Comments »

Special Forces’ Gigapixel Flying Spy Sees All

Friday, February 20th, 2009

Special Forces’ Gigapixel Flying Spy Sees All — even if human observers can’t watch it all:

You may think your new ten-megapixel camera is pretty hot — but not when you compare it to the 1.8 Gigapixel beast built for the Pentagon. The camera is designed as a payload for the A-160T Hummingbird robot helicopter now being quietly delivered to Special Forces. It will give them an unprecedented ability to track everything on the ground in real time. The camera is scheduled for flight testing at the start of next year.

Developed under the auspices of Darpa, the camera is the sensor part of Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance – Imaging System or ARGUS-IS. The camera is composed of four arrays, each containing 92 five-megapixel imagers. The other parts of ARGUS are the airborne processing system, which has to deal with a phenomenal torrent of data, and the ground-based element. The airborne part fits into a 500-pound pod.

The Hummingbird is unique in its ability to hover at high altitude (over 15,000 feet) and its endurance of over 20 hours. This means it can park high in the sky and scan a wide area. Robo-chopper camera-maker BAE Systems says that its imager will be able to cover an area of over a hundred square miles. The refresh rate is fifteen frames per second and a “ground sample distance” of 15 centimeters — this means that each pixel represents six inches on the ground. (The Darpa diagram, above, suggests a smaller area of coverage, 40 square kilometers or 15 square miles, at that resolution.)

The volume of data is too great to be completely transmitted, but users will be able to define at least sixty-five independent video windows within the image and zoom in or out at will. The windows can be set to automatically track items of interest such as moving vehicles. In fact, the resolution is good enough for it to offer “dismount tracking” or following individual people on foot.

In addition to the windows, ARGUS will provide “a real-time moving target indicator for vehicles throughout the entire field of view in real-time.” Basically, nothing can move in the entire area without being spotted. Unlike radar, ARGUS can zoom in and provide a high-resolution image.

The camera is pretty impressive, but it’s the processing and the software behind it that will make this such a capable system. It would take a human a very long time to scan the whole area under surveillance if they were looking for something — but this is exactly the type of task which the swarming software we looked at last week excels at. Luckily enough, that just happens to be a Darpa program too. The technique of looking at small windows of interest also means that it may be possible to speed the frame rate up considerably — we previously looked at a windowing system so fast it could follow speeding bullets.

In case the name Argus doesn’t ring any bells, here’s the mythological footnote:

Argus or Argos Panoptes was a giant, unsleeping watchman with a hundred eyes all over his body. Unfortunately he was killed by Hermes; according to the myth, his eyes were placed on the tail of the peacock.

Posted in Technology, War | No Comments »

Geography professor claims to have found Osama bin Laden

Friday, February 20th, 2009

A UCLA Geography professor claims to have found Osama bin Laden — or, rather, to have narrowed down the list of places he might be staying:

Using patterns of how animal species spread, the world’s most wanted terrorist can be tracked down to a town in the tribal region of North West Pakistan it is claimed.

By factoring in his need for security, electricity, high ceilings to accommodate his 6ft 4in frame and spare rooms for his bodyguards, the search can be further narrowed to three walled compounds.

According to a team led by Thomas Gillespie, at the University of California in Los Angeles, bin Laden’s location is “one of the most important political questions of our time”.

Mathematical models used to explain how animal species spread out say he should be close to where he was last spotted.

Their research published in MIT International Review also concluded he should also be in a large town with a similar culture to Afghanistan where he can remain largely anonymous.

The most likely candidate is in Parachinar, 12 miles inside Pakistan, which housed many mujahideen during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Finally after looking at his need for electricity for dialysis, high walls, spare rooms for his entourage, and trees to hide from prying eyes, satellite pictures show just three suitable houses.

Posted in Science, War | No Comments »

I Dream of Denver

Friday, February 20th, 2009

In I Dream of Denver, David Brooks teases urban planners who won’t accept that Americans like suburbs:

The time has finally come, some writers are predicting, when Americans will finally repent. They’ll move back to the urban core. They will ride more bicycles, have smaller homes and tinier fridges and rediscover the joys of dense community — and maybe even superior beer.

America will, in short, finally begin to look a little more like Amsterdam.

Well, Amsterdam is a wonderful city, but Americans never seem to want to live there. And even now, in this moment of chastening pain, they don’t seem to want the Dutch option.

He shares some results from a recent Pew survey:

Only 52 percent of urbanites rate their communities “excellent” or “very good,” compared with 68 percent of suburbanites and 71 percent of the people who live in rural America.
[...]
Forty-five percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 would like to live in New York City. But cities are profoundly unattractive to people with families and to the elderly. Only 14 percent of Americans 35 and older are interested in living in New York City. Only 8 percent of people over 65 are drawn to Los Angeles.
[...]
If you jumble together the five most popular American metro areas — Denver, San Diego, Seattle, Orlando and Tampa — you get an image of the American Dream circa 2009. These are places where you can imagine yourself with a stuffed garage — filled with skis, kayaks, soccer equipment, hiking boots and boating equipment. These are places you can imagine yourself leading an active outdoor lifestyle.

These are places (except for Orlando) where spectacular natural scenery is visible from medium-density residential neighborhoods, where the boundary between suburb and city is hard to detect. These are places with loose social structures and relative social equality, without the Ivy League status system of the Northeast or the star structure of L.A. These places are car-dependent and spread out, but they also have strong cultural identities and pedestrian meeting places. They offer at least the promise of friendlier neighborhoods, slower lifestyles and service-sector employment. They are neither traditional urban centers nor atomized suburban sprawl. They are not, except for Seattle, especially ideological, blue or red.

They offer the dream, so characteristic on this continent, of having it all: the machine and the garden. The wide-open space and the casual wardrobes.

Posted in Urbanism | No Comments »

Comparative Anatomy of Chimpanzee and Human

Friday, February 20th, 2009

The recent chimpanzee attack has raised the issue of how strong chimpanzees really are — a question that lacks a solid answer, since chimps rarely compete in either Olympic-style weightlifting or powerlifting.

The Human Evolution Coloring Book provides a useful illustration of the Comparative Anatomy of Chimpanzees and Humans:

Notice that the chimp has roughly twice the relative arm mass of a human. That alone would imply that chimps are stronger but less than twice as strong as similarly sized humans — 22/3 as strong — but their arms aren’t simply bigger human arms. How close tendons attach to the joint, for instance, can dramatically affect the mechanical advantage of a muscle — whether it’s naturally in low gear or high gear, so to speak.

Our illustration has other limitations, too. First, it shows a gracile chimpanzee, the Bonobo or Pan paniscus, rather than its more robust cousin, the Common Chimpanzee or Pan troglodytes. Second, it shows a human female, which arguably exaggerates the difference in upper-body and lower-body mass between species. Adult human males have dramatically more upper-body mass than females.

Posted in Animals, Fitness, Science | No Comments »

A More Efficient Flex-Fuel Engine

Friday, February 20th, 2009

Engineers at Ricardo have produced a more efficient flex-fuel engine that doesn’t pay the usual 30-percent efficiency penalty for using E85, because it isn’t optimized strictly for gasoline:

Ricardo’s new Ethanol Boosted Direct Injection (EBDI) engine is designed to take full advantage of the favorable properties of ethanol to improve performance and reduce consumption. “[Ethanol] has a very high octane rating compared to other fuels, and a higher heat of vaporization,” says Luke Cruff, chief engineer for the EBDI program at Ricardo.

A higher octane rating means that a fuel is less prone to unwanted detonation, or “knocking.” A higher latent heat of vaporization means that ethanol can help control gas conditions in the combustion chamber by lowering temperatures. By modifyingthe pressure and temperature, fuel injected into the engine will burn more efficiently and reduce the formation of nitrous-oxide gases.

Regular flex-fuel engines are unable to exploit these properties because they are optimized for gasoline and run at lower cylinder pressures, says Cruff. The EBDI engine continually monitors the fuel blend using sensors. It then modifies cylinder pressure, fuel injection, valve timing, and other factors to ensure that the conditions get the most out of the fuel mix. One way that the engine modifies cylinder pressure is by using turbocharging.

Posted in Technology | No Comments »

Vitamin C hampers adaptation to endurance training

Friday, February 20th, 2009

Dennis Mangan points to a fascinating study that shows that vitamin C hampers adaptation to endurance training:

Briefly, the authors took a group of young men and had them train on stationary bicycles. One group took one gram of vitamin C daily, the other did not. A parallel study was done on rats using the same general idea – only with rats, one can exercise them to exhaustion. The result: vitamin C put a major dent in the training effect due to exercise.

The figure above shows gene expression of two of the most important internal antioxidant-enhancing enzymes, superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidase. The first bar shows levels without training, the second with training, and the third with training plus vitamin C, which shows that the vitamin practically abolished the training effect. The reason seems to be that reactive oxygen species (ROS) formed during exercise are important signals for the synthesis of more mitochondria, the cell’s energy factories. Vitamin C quenches the ROS and thus the signals.

Posted in Fitness, Science | No Comments »

Why would a chimpanzee attack a human?

Friday, February 20th, 2009

Scientific American asks primate-expert Frans de Waal, Why would a chimpanzee attack a human?

Are captive chimpanzee attacks on humans common?
Yeah, definitely common. Most of the time they attack through cage bars. They bite off fingers. It happens more often with people they don’t know very well and people who aren’t familiar with chimpanzees. But it has happened to many of the best scientists and researchers, who are now missing digits. The reason we have them behind bars in zoos and research settings is because chimpanzees can be very dangerous — it’s to protect ourselves. This was a sort of free-ranging chimp, which is much more dangerous.

But chimps in the wild are not used to people — they’re afraid of them. That’s why Jane Goodall had to habituate them. So, really wild chimps don’t attack people. But in captivity, they have learned in the meantime that they are stronger than humans.

How strong are they?
The chimpanzee has strength for a human that is utterly incomprehensible. People watch pro wrestlers on TV and think they are strong. But a pro wrestler would not be able to hold a chimpanzee still if they wanted to. Chimpanzee males have been measured as having five times the arm strength as a human male. Even a young chimpanzee of four or five years, you could not hold it still if you wanted to. Pound-for-pound, their muscles are much stronger. And the adult males, like Travis — unless his were filed down — have big canine teeth. So you have a very dangerous creature in front of you that is impossible to control.

Do chimps in captivity show more aggressive behavior than those in the wild?
In the wild they’re pretty aggressive. They have warfare among groups, where males kill other males, and they have been known to commit infanticide. Aggression is a common part of the chimpanzee behavior, whether it’s between or within groups.

They can show tremendous mutilation. They go for the face; they go for the hands and feet; they go for the testicles. To outsiders, they have very nasty behaviors.

Are male chimpanzees more aggressive than females?
Yes, that’s for sure.

What might cause a chimp to attack someone it knows?
They’re very complex creatures. People must not assume that with someone they already know there’s not some underlying tension. It’s often impossible to figure out what reason they have for attacking.

Having a chimp in your home is like having a tiger in your home. It’s not really very different. They are both very dangerous.

Do you think Lyme disease or the Xanax might have been a factor in the attack?
It’s all possible. It’s possible it was the Xanax. In general, in chimpanzees — because they are so genetically close to us — they will react very similarly to drugs. It might be that the dosages are different, but it really should be pretty much the same.

A chimp in your home is like a time bomb. It may go off for a reason that we may never understand. I don’t know any chimp relationship that has been harmonious. Usually these animals end up in a cage. They cannot be controlled.

When a chimp is young, they’re very cute and affectionate and funny and playful. There’s a lot of appeal. But that’s like a tiger cub — they’re also a lot of fun to have.

I’m not sure why five times the arm strength of a (typical) human male is utterly incomprehensible. A pro wrestler should have four or five times the arm strength of a (typical) human male, after all — at a much higher body weight admittedly. Of course, a pro wrestler should have four or five times the leg strength of a typical human male, too, unlike a chimp.

Also, I’m not surprised that Professor de Waal and his colleagues consider it impossible to hold down a young chimp — but I don’t think they could hold down a lightweight wrestler either.

The real danger isn’t simply chimpanzees’ strength but their sharp teeth and their eagerness to maim. They go for the face; they go for the hands and feet; they go for the testicles.

Posted in Animals, Fitness, Martial Arts | No Comments »

Two Paradoxes of Singaporean Political Economy

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

Bryan Caplan presents Two Paradoxes of Singaporean Political Economy:

Puzzle #1: Singapore frequently adopts the kind of policies that economists would call “economically efficient, but politically unpopular.” For example, Singapore has (nearly) unilateral free trade, admits unusually large numbers of immigrants, supplies most medical care on a fee-for-service basis, means-tests most government assistance, imposes peak load pricing on roads, and fights recessions by cutting employers’ taxes. In most democracies, advocating any of these policies could easily cost a politician his job. In Singapore, policies like this have stood the test of time.

Puzzle #2: Even though it follows the forms of British parliamentary democracy, Singapore is effectively a one-party state. The People’s Action Party (PAP) has held uninterrupted power since the country gained Home Rule in 1959, and has never received less than 60% of the popular vote. Even more strikingly, the PAP has a near-monopoly in Singapore’s Parliament. In many electoral cycles, this party literally won 100% of the seats; it currently holds 82 out of 84.

Posted in Economics, Policy, Singapore | No Comments »

Staff Jobs vs. Line Jobs

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

Shannon Love believes the Chinese are going to kick our asses. I don’t know to what degree I agree with that, but David Foster’s comment caught my attention:

One more thing that’s kind of worrisome is the growing preference for “staff” jobs rather than “line” jobs among the highly educated. (I use “line” here to refer to a job in which an individual has decision-making authority and accountability for the results of those decision, and “staff” to refer to a job which is basically advisory in nature.)

There are a lot of people who are more thrilled by the chance to have proximity to some galactic decision (“should our company spend $10 billion on acquisition X”) than by the chance to have actual ownership of some less-galactic decision (“how many Gerbilator units should we produce this quarter, and what should we price them at?”) To some extent, this represents an attempt to extend the habits of school into the workplace; it also has a component of sheer cowardice.

This phenomenon is at its peak in the “non-profit” world, but also exists in business (as in the example above) and in government… where many “elite” college graduates would be excited about writing a paper on “transportation alternatives for the nation in 2020?” but would be most uninterested in being the Atlanta tower manager for the FAA.

Posted in Business, Policy | No Comments »

Did World War II end the Great Depression?

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

Did World War II end the Great Depression?, Megan McArdle asks. Yancey Ward responds:

The success of a private economy is measured by its ability to produce the goods and services desired by the population. WWII, during its interval, does not measure well on this scale. This is the problem with saying the onset of the war ended the depression.

Government can — by borrowing, printing, conscripting, and rationing — produce any level of employment and output it desires, but that is no guarantee of true wealth generation. The meagerness of the citizenry’s consumption during the war years is the true measure of the economy’s output. The depression ended after the war due to the fact that the private sector had finished clearing its debt problems, the worst aspects of Roosevelt’s policies were allowed to lapse along with the additional price controls of the war, and the fact (pointed out by Rob Lyman last night) that uncertainty about future government intervention cleared considerably because the war had a discernible endpoint.

If one believes WWII ended the depression, then we can certainly raise the defense budget to 5 trillion dollars/year for the rest of Obama’s 1st term, ration all other goods and services strictly, conscript 40 million men and women, and pay them to sit on army bases all over the country. Prosperity is just around the bend, and we don’t even have to fight a world wide war.

Posted in Economics, Policy | No Comments »

Free Market Bank Nationalization

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

The term nationalization clouds judgment on both sides of the debate, Alex Tabarrok argues:

It’s better to think of what we want to do as bankruptcy. Many of the major banks are insolvent. When the liabilities of an ordinary firm exceed its assets the firm enters one of a variety of types of bankruptcy procedure during which management is often removed, the firm is sold or reorganized and liability holders take ownership or are paid off at a discount. Notice that we do not call a bankruptcy procedure, nationalization, even though it typically occurs under the auspices of a government employed judge.

When it comes to the banks the issue is more complicated than with an ordinary firm because the major liability holders are depositors whom the government has guaranteed. As a result, the ultimate liability holder is the government. But now, as a thought experiment, imagine that we had private deposit insurance. What would a private insurance firm do in this situation? Would it pander to the current bank management and carry the zombie banks on its books, hoping and waiting for a miracle? Or would it step in, remove current management, pay off the depositors, reorganize and then sell the banks to recoup its losses? I believe a private insurer would follow the second path, the fact that the government is not yet ready to do this indicates how powerful bankers are in Washington. Thus, given deposit insurance the procedure most consistent with free market principles is bankruptcy, preferably a speed bankruptcy procedure under the auspices of the FDIC which has significant expertise in this field.

A speed bankruptcy; 1) punishes current management reducing moral hazard, 2) will be less politicized if done under the auspices of the FDIC than if done piecemeal with congressional involvement and 3) will get the banks working again as soon as possible.

Notice how the term nationalization confuses the issue. First, it suggests government ownership of the banks which would indeed be a disaster. People in favor of free markets will rightly want to avoid any such outcome but ironically it’s the current situation of “wait and see,” and “protect the banker,” which is likely to lead to an anemic recovery and eventual government ownership. Second, it confuses people on the left who think that nationalization is a way to insure that taxpayers get something on the upside. That idea is a joke – there is no upside. Taxpayers are going to have to pay through the nose but the critical point is that the taxpayers must pay the depositors whom they have guaranteed not the banks.

The debate so far has been framed between a “bailout” and “nationalization.” But the public rightly sees the bailout as a way to protect bankers and thus we get pressure for government ownership, which has already happened in part through government control over banker wages. Bankruptcy in contrast is a normal free market procedure, it emphasizes that the firm has failed and current management should be removed. Framing the issue in this way, for example, makes it clear that only the depositors should be protected and under reorganization there should be no control over wages on future management (wages are going to have to be high to get anyone to take on the task). Finally the idea of bankruptcy makes it clear that the goal is to get banks solvent, under new management, and back under private control as quickly as possible.

Posted in Economics, Policy | No Comments »

Recession? No, It’s a D-process, and It Will Be Long

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

Recession? No, it’s a D-process, Ray Dalio says, and the depression and deflation will take a long time to work themselves out:

The D-process is a disease of sorts that is going to run its course.

When I first started seeing the D-process and describing it, it was before it actually started to play out this way. But now you can ask yourself, OK, when was the last time bank stocks went down so much? When was the last time the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve, or any central bank, exploded like it has? When was the last time interest rates went to zero, essentially, making monetary policy as we know it ineffective? When was the last time we had deflation?

The answers to those questions all point to times other than the U.S. post-World War II experience. This was the dynamic that occurred in Japan in the ’90s, that occurred in Latin America in the ’80s, and that occurred in the Great Depression in the ’30s.

Basically what happens is that after a period of time, economies go through a long-term debt cycle — a dynamic that is self-reinforcing, in which people finance their spending by borrowing and debts rise relative to incomes and, more accurately, debt-service payments rise relative to incomes. At cycle peaks, assets are bought on leverage at high-enough prices that the cash flows they produce aren’t adequate to service the debt. The incomes aren’t adequate to service the debt. Then begins the reversal process, and that becomes self-reinforcing, too. In the simplest sense, the country reaches the point when it needs a debt restructuring. General Motors is a metaphor for the United States.

Posted in Economics, Policy | No Comments »

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