Games
-
Background: The financial model of the video game industry now makes heavy use of in-game purchases (“microtransactions” / “DLC” (downloadable content) / “loot boxes”). These supplementary purchases frequently bring in more revenue than traditional sales. Most transactions fall into these categories: Pay for additional content: the “expansion pack” model. This is old-fashioned, but still exists.…
-
Background: Closed captioning (e.g. [Wind howling] or [Ominous footsteps] in a movie) supplements traditional subtitles with information beyond just dialogue. For a movie, this information is usually sufficient: a viewer doesn’t usually need to know exactly how loud the wind was howling, or which direction the footsteps are coming from. The issue: Unfortunately, in video…
-
Background: Certain mountains require that climbers obtain a permit before embarking. Sometimes these can be expensive, but rarely is any mountaineering competency required. Everest permits, which are issued by the government of Nepal, cost approximately $10,000 (Wikipedia link). The issue: If too many people are crowded onto a narrow high-altitude route, disaster can result from…
-
Background: Sometimes, a game will have a political statement to make, which you might disagree with. For example, in the game “Papers Please,” you must perform bureaucratic duties in a stifling faux-Eastern Bloc nation, and there is a strong negative message about the oppressive regime. But what if you think that totalitarianism is actually a…
-
Background: Baseball is one of the few [1] sports where the playing field is not standardized: The outfield can vary substantially in size and shape from ballpark to ballpark. The presence / absence of fences can change the possibility of an out-of-the-park home run. This adds up to the strange situation where a home run…
-
The issue: Gathering data for scientific studies can be difficult. So why not tap into the world of VIDEO GAMES to conduct experiments on willing participants for no additional monetary cost! Normal scenario: Researcher: “I wonder what factors lead to a person trusting Person A instead of Person B?” or: Researcher: “I suspect that—all else…
-
Background, part 1: Clothing catalogues occasionally provide a summary of the clothes that a model in an advertisement is wearing; usually this will be a piece of text that looks something like “Get this Look: Jeans $100, Shirt $40, Weird Socks $10.” This is a good system: the company can sell you more clothing this…
-
Background: There are a few cell phone games that use real-world GPS data to control your in-game character. The most well-known are probably the two games by Niantic, Pokemon Go and Ingress, in which you physically walk around in order to move your in-game character. However, no one has yet implemented a smaller-scale version of…
-
Background: 3D glasses provide the ability to put two totally separate images on a screen at once. Normally, the technology this is used to provide a stereo-3D effect (Figure 1). But we could use this same technology to show subtly (or entirely!) different films to different groups of people in an audience. Fig. 1: Each…
-
Background: One common method that video game developers use to make additional money beyond the initial sale of a game is to sell additional downloadable content (“DLC”) online. This typically includes things like: New missions and areas. Ridiculous hats or costumes for your character. Additional absurd guns / swords / etc. Additional in-game currency Various…
WorstPlans: updated every Monday since July 2014! 
You must be logged in to post a comment.