Disqus - Latest Comments for simonhk

Re: Amazon Web Services generating an estimated $500M in revenue, thanks in part to growth of social games

simonhk — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:57:30 -0000

Nice post. Amazon do a great job with their service. Being able to turn instances on and off for testing, scaling up with demand is invaluable for startups like us.

Re: Telstra responds to questions on Second Life withdrawal

simonhk — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:09:40 -0000

They probably see growth of other new platforms - Facebook, Wii, iPhone and want to hope onto the bandwagon. Though I have a feeling that as SL gets more mainstream over the next 12 months they may want to revisit their decision.

Re: DEMOfall 08: Sims Ops Studios debuts cute social game creation tool

simonhk — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 03:58:07 -0000

Demos look pretty impressive on the site.. Interesting idea for multiplayer game/level building.. sounds a big like Halo 3 Forge. I wonder how the mechanics would work, and how much art can be imported?

Re: Can Novamente’s virtual dogs make a Nintendog look dumb?

simonhk — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 00:20:10 -0000

Thanks Dan.. will look out for it.

Re: Can Novamente’s virtual dogs make a Nintendog look dumb?

simonhk — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 23:30:19 -0000

I'm thinking about Pokey on Facebook, which is a super simple dog "simulator" has over 1.5 million active monthly users. And a friend of mine in Japan who gets her mum to walk her Nintendogs when she is away from home..pets are just addictive, and this idea could take off..

Dan, does this company have an app already released on iPhone or other platform?

Re: MyGameMug categorizes and matches gamers

simonhk — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 23:22:25 -0000

Nice concept, if they can execute and integrate it into existing network it sounds like great service. Especially for international or 20/30 something gamers who don't want to be paired up with teenagers..

Re: Poll results for user acquisition: Viral, SEO, word-of-mouth, or other?

simonhk — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:22:53 -0000

Agree with you Scott. Blog marketing doesn't mean just TC of the world. Would be good if there was an option for "community engagement" (or maybe it's covered within WOM), because in our case it's where most of our user activity in early days will be - forums especially (forums are huge in Asia)

Re: Elance introduces new system to manage outsourced work

simonhk — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 22:29:16 -0000

It's a good move, and would be useful for ongoing collaboration. We use elance along with rentacoder.com and getafreelancer .. some of the interfaces on these sites are limited or confusing, any improvements are welcome.

Re: Q&A: Microsoft game exec John Schappert talks about Xbox Live, Netflix deal, and Blu-ray

simonhk — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:42:41 -0000

Great post, thanks. It would be great if there was a better way to link up Facebook and Xbox Live friends - if you play co-op with an Xbox Live friend it would be great to have a way to choose to add them as a Facebook friend directly.. I don't know why there needs to be a separation between social network on the TV / console vs the net?

Re: Google testing “AdSense for Games” in bid to shake up in-game advertising

simonhk — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:09:52 -0000

hi Kuatofkuat, I agree with you, it's really hard to have "realistic" product advertising if the genre is so apart from reality. I spoke to some guys before who ran fantasy themed online games in online China and had some product promotions with furniture company for in-game 3D assets, and the user feedback wasn't so hot.

Urban, fun, city style games where advertising can just plug in will work a lot better..

I'm really interested also in how Battlefield Hero (free to play cartoon shooter) will turn out and how ads will end up integrated into that platform?

Re: Google testing “AdSense for Games” in bid to shake up in-game advertising

simonhk — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:11:13 -0000

Dean - nice post. Any idea whether this will be limited to 2D ads like video / flash or also extend to 3D product placement in games as well in future?

@ Andrew, agree - hope this move is mainly taken up for F2P games, if it's inlcuded in paid games or subscription MMOs it's going to be really annoying and face backlash.

Re: omg I'm just a startup, I can't do those fancy analytics!

simonhk — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:19:56 -0000

Great post ! It's always a tough one - as an overloaded startup, spending time on things that don't seem to directly affect user experience seems like a bad idea when you have a million things to code.

Yet agree it's foolhardy to not have a good understanding about _how_ people are using your service - why spend time developing a feature that people don't or don't know how to use, or know what things you need to fix / or even change direction.

So at the end of the day, have to view analytics development not as a tax, but as an investment..

Re: Google unveils its long-awaited virtual world technology

simonhk — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:04:40 -0000

I think this is gearing up to be a big threat to IMVU as well as Meez, which are also fairly mass market offerings, once Google unlocks more of the content creation to the masses. With sketch up experience surely that will come in a big way eventually. For now the IMVU content eco-system is very strong and as a user the experience is very good.

The opportunity for focused web 3D apps is looking good, whether it be pets, casual mmo (some interesting things coming out of korea), education, fashion (what we're building with frenzoo) or action games (instantaction)...

Lively I think is going to big impact on existing 2D avatar communities on the web like Habbo, although those with their own flavour or niche will continue to do well, eg- Stardoll and maybe Gaia.

It will certainly help mainstream acceptance and the acceleration from 2D to 3D offerings...