This Week in the Business_ Everybody’s Drinking The Kool-Aid

QUOTE | “Ultimately, everybody to some degree is sipping from the Kool-Aid because you don’t want to be the one that rains on the parade.” – Superdata CEO Joost van Dreunen explaining why all the market research around developing fields like eSports and VR tends to be relentlessly optimistic Elsewhere in the business of gaming this week… QUOTE | “We’re going to fight to preserve our independence.” – Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, responding to a potential hostile takeover of the company by Vivendicnx.cmd.push(function(){cnx({"playerId":"e3616d04-4972-4839-a63a-c6975e2e9731","settings":{"advertising":{"macros":{"AD_UNIT":"/23178111854/od.kotaku.com/article","CHILD_UNIT":"article","POST_ID":"1738425402","POST_TYPE":"post","CHANNEL":"culture","SECTION":"","SUBSECTION":"","CATEGORIES":"culture","TAGS":"","NOP":"0"},"timeBeforeFirstAd":0}}}).render("cnx-player-main")}); QUOTE | “People in 2017 will look back and say we had it easy.” – Machine Zone CEO Gabriel Leydon, on how the costs of distribution are only going to make success on mobile harder to achieve QUOTE | “It would be a bad business decision, let alone just dumb.” – Valve’s Erik Johnson, explaining why he doesn’t think Steam will ever sell ad space on the front page STAT | 10% – Amount that gaming revenues were down rummy mars in the US for September, according to the NPD Group. Annualized sports games and Metal Gear Solid V did well, but couldn’t compete with last year’s big launches for Super Smash Bros. for 3DS and Destiny QUOTE | “We were all such stupid people. We were all very young, and we all generally thought we were smarter than everyone else.” – Rajesh Rao, who in 1997 founded India’s very first game developer, Dhruva Interactive, reflecting on the studio’s first decade as a missed opportunity QUOTE | “I think it’s analogous (on a much smaller scale) to Facebook buying Oculus.” – Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter, responding to Activision Blizzard’s decision to set up its own eSports division within the company QUOTE | “Having a project cancelled in such a late state is a catastrophic event on so many different levels.” – Yager managing director Timo Ullmann, on the heartbreak of having Dead Island 2 development taken rummy master from the Spec Ops developer just months before its expected launch. QUOTE | “I think a lot of games can suffer from compromise. If the publisher and the developer are not on the same page rummy modern at all times it can cause issues.” – Fatshark CEO Martin Wahlund on the indie developer’s decision to self-publish Vermintide QUOTE | “As eSports reaches a tipping point of mainstream acceptance, the legitimacy of match results is more paramount than ever.” – Rahul Sood, CEO of betting service Unikrn, explaining why the company is setting up a “competitive integrity certification program” for eSports QUOTE | “It takes away interaction, it reduces the interaction that we’re used to having in video games for the past 20 years.” – ex-CCP dev and Solfar co-founder Thor Gunnarsson, explaining the difficulty of developing for VR QUOTE | “Opening an office in Louisiana made a lot of sense considering they have the strongest incentive program in the US and allows us to tap into the East Coast talent pool.” – InXile Entertainment’s Brian Fargo, explaining why the California developer’s first satellite office is on the other side of the country Top image via Shutterstock Photo