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Ubisoft publishes indie dev Outerlight, lifts best ideas for AC:B, leaves them to die
- Thread starter ghst
- Start date
FoxSpirit said:
For the same reason all creative industries are ass. The suits get paid a ton of money to be risk adverse. What if you do champion one of these projects? Stick your neck out? Do everything right? And it bombs? You're ass is canned and you carry a taint with you. And if it is a "success"? So what. It's penny change nobody cares about. There's huge risk and no upside for personal careers.
If you're a suit at these places, you follow all the AAA blockbuster templates and if it fails? Well, it wasn't your fault. You had all the bullet-points checked. Blame the consumer, or Nintendo, or something. There's always something. The bullet-points were met.
charlequin
Banned
Teetris said:
My hope is that in the next 3-5 years someone clever with a decent bankroll is going to make a lot of money off of incubating microloans to indie game startups.
SpaceDrake said:
Errr, some people seem to have misread the information we have to draw that conclusion, but that's not happening. The PSP2 is going to have retail games.
FoxSpirit said:
Being nice as a publisher will earn you, at best, a steady income with a strong brand value from your regular consumers year in year out -- which sounds great to most people but is far-less short-term profitable than selling out to a bigger entity, and is completely incompatible with the business realities of a publicly-owned corporation.
badcrumble
Member
The publisher-developer model is supposed to be one in which the publisher shields the developer from risk and in turn acquires the bulk of the profit; however, this has turned into a model in which the publisher acquires the bulk of the profit and displaces as much risk as possible back onto the developer, closing them or enacting mass layoffs if their game doesn't do well. This has happened pretty naturally because, well, they can get away with it, and nobody's stopping them.
Ironically, first-party publishing seems to hew closer to that mark than third-party publishing.
Ironically, first-party publishing seems to hew closer to that mark than third-party publishing.
This too.charlequin said:
Haunted
Member
Don't be naive. Megapublishers don't get into the positions they're in by being nice.FoxSpirit said:
There are a lot of mid-tier publishers who are (sometimes) more pleasant to work with as developers, but the marketing/promotion/distribution you'll get from them can not - understandably - be on par with those of the megapublishers. So, you might get a bigger cut, but it'll be from a smaller total.
Again, DD is changing this, making it more viable for some smaller/mid-tier publishers to carve out their niche and support their developers, as well as cutting some of them out entirely by encouraging developers to self-publish.
Rlan said:
That failed for a variety of reasons. The $20 price not being one.
1) GT5 (originally) was supposed to come out a week or two after it. Why spend $20 on a sub-par indie game when you can pay $60 and have an (at the time before crushing disappointment) AAA racing game?
2) No demo. GT5 had demos throughout it's development.
3) US release was a year (or two) after the EU retail release. By that time, no one cared.
Sure, Sony's doing Price-drops... now. But I remember a year or two ago they didn't price drop shit.
Anyway, sad for the developers. Good for Ubisoft to lift the ideas and polish them. Brotherhood's multiplayer looks really good, but I'm waiting until the game is $30 before I buy it.
3-5 years seems like a good time frame yeah. As long as bigger publishers aren't going to all suddenly jump on it (and ruin it by trying to monopolize with their own rules) when they see an investor take great success it should be a good branch of the gaming market.charlequin said:
If you have 1.000.000. You could easily finance 15-30 indie games. If you make terms that the dev pays back the initial investment and pays about 10% of further profit you could make very good money (basically the whole microloan concept applied to games). In gaming business terms that might seem low, but if you tell someone you made 100.000 euros in a year just organizing shit you can bet it sounds impressive.
Of course the investor would need to have severe gaming knowledge in what could succeed and what could not, and even then it might be a 50/50 guess when you sign someone but it should bring you at least even and then bring profit eventually continuing the franchises that are successes.
How many new startups (not people like Respawn) did they sign? I think THQ is doing the same thing and even Sony has a similar plan (tho you have to advance the money yourself). Joe Danger is a good exampleFirestorm said:
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
charlequin said:
you know the world of goo guys and jonathan braid and a few other rich indies pooled together to do this, right?
godhandiscen
There are millions of whiny 5-year olds on Earth, and I AM THEIR KING.
Yeah, is there any proof that Ubisoft lifted those mechanics from these developers, or is this just an assumption?monkeyhat said:
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
godhandiscen said:
Well short of Bob Woodward reporting on it, there's obviously not going to be any proof, but here's what we do know.
The following games have used mechanics even remotely similar to AC:B
1) The Ship
2) Bloody Good Time (published / "owned" by Ubisoft)
3) Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
So the best case scenario for Ubisoft is that they happened to agree to publish 2, treat the developer like shit, leave the game to die, and totally coincidentally implement the mechanics in their biggest game of the year. The worst case scenario adds intent.
I would honestly be surprised if there was intent in this. Yeah, treating them like crap, Ubisoft needs to answer for that. But like I said earlier, the design is similar to a larp game called Killer. They even made a movie about it (Gotcha?) and I've seen similar gameplay mechanics in single player games. Also, you forgot the AC iPhone game that prototyped the experience in your list.Stumpokapow said:
As someone who has had a game design literally stolen 100% and am thus rather sensitive to the issue, this does not seem to be a case of Ubisoft purposely stealing a game idea. I really doubt the ACB developers knew what Ubisoft corporate was doing with some barely recognizable Scottish small time developer.
I AM JOHN!
Banned
And even if Brotherhood's multiplayer evolved organically out of the mechanics of the games and the similarities to The Ship are merely coincidental, it's kind of odd that Ubisoft picks up an incredibly similar game by a team that had pioneered the idea beforehand, forces them in a contract that ensures that unless the game is a hit said developer will be financially decimated, and then proceeds to put the game out with no fanfare and sends it to die.Stumpokapow said:
If they didn't rob outright, they at least did everything in their power to make sure nothing stole Brotherhood's thunder.
Are indie games profitable? What's the average ROI from indie game, what's the median value, and what's the deviation. It's difficult to claim that indie games are such an awesome venture unless you know how they statistically perform, and in current environment it's nigh impossible to collect such data.charlequin said:
Some indy games are incredibly profitable (Joe Danger's ROI was 1000% a week after release IIRC), but the business reality might not be that bright for majority of indie devs - they might barely make their money back or lose all the money altogether. If you don't become a community darling, you might be stuck with a decent product with zero means of marketing and zero word of mouth. Many good titles on XBLA sell like ~10k.
If you're an indie dev whose game bombed, you probably blew all your savings and probably need to go back to working on AAA games for big publishers (or some other job), it's not end of the world. If you're an investor who hands out a lot of money to indie devs, you might lose a lot of capital that might have brought much more money elsewhere.
szaromir said:
it's easy to count. Indie devs are quite transparent in their financials, there're some posts on the web, but I'm too sleepy to hunt for them.
in a nutshell they're really profitable for small teams but not able to sustain AAA-gaming budgets. and that's all that matters.
It's not easy to count at all. Some devs are transparent, some aren't because of obligations etc. You might have Joe Dangers, Limbos and VVVVVVs of the world that you can be sure made a ton of money, but what about those who sold in the range of 20k, who are probably majority of indie dev scene? (looking at the comments how 100k is a huge and unexpected success)subversus said:
szaromir said:
Amnesia had to sold 37 000 copies for Frictional games to secure a budget for another game which they plan to develop for 2 years. Frictional is a five man team, they live in Sweden. They self-publish, so they get from 70 to 100% of profits. The game costs 20$ on Steam, 25% of copies sold were sold at that price. Also they were selling it directly from their site. Majority of 37 000 copies sold were sold at preorder price (14$ or something like that). They're close to 200 000 copies now. Now you can do some math.
Also search for Minecraft, Recceater posts and so on.
SketchTheArtist
Member
I think I read somewhere that Ubisoft Annecy had been working on an Assassin' Creed Multiplayer mode for quite some time now. It was during the development of AC2 I think. I might have to dig up the article/interview I read it in.
You'd sacrifice a lot of potentially good games in the process, but so be it.Sqorgar said:
It's hardly ever a question of if, but always a question of how much. How much IP should they own? How much should their cut be? How much control over the project should they have? So on and so forth.
The answer is to pick wisely. Large publishers work for some - very, very, VERY advantageously for some - but not all, and typically when they don't work, the dev chose poorly. You want to play in the big leagues, then you better get a big league number of units sold. Otherwise the contracts are not advantageous and you're much better choosing a small publisher or self-publishing.
szaromir said:
You can't say top 5 or 6 or 7 because in indie development the success of your game isn't based on number of copies sold but on expenses/profits ratio. You can be a one man studio, sell like 10 000 copies of your game on Steam duing a year for 10$ not even hitting top 10 or top 20 and that would be a success for you. 70 000 $ for one person per year is quite a good salary.
Sqorgar said:
Imaginary.
Or, indie. There's no other option really if you actually want to control what you're working on. Problem is, many devs still choose indentured servitude because they want the big development money and resume padding. Those who are indie and stay indie, I respect immensely, 'cause that's not easy to do.
Hmmmm well games steal ideas from other games all the time and it's not like AC:B didn't change the formula enough to fit in. Also it fits in with the story which is kinda awesome, templars with the same abilities as the assassins is kinda cool. So I'm fine with AC:B taking ideas since every game seems to do that these days.
Not fine with Ubisoft leaving an indie dev to die though. Still, making a downloadable multiplayer game is never a good idea these days. We don't know how much Ubisoft is to blame or whether it's also just a lack of appeal for this game. Even with the lack of marketing, sad to say I did know about the game but even for $5 had no desire to buy it.
Not fine with Ubisoft leaving an indie dev to die though. Still, making a downloadable multiplayer game is never a good idea these days. We don't know how much Ubisoft is to blame or whether it's also just a lack of appeal for this game. Even with the lack of marketing, sad to say I did know about the game but even for $5 had no desire to buy it.
TouchMyBox
Member
1-D_FTW said:
I loved the ship, so this story quite pisses me off. Now if Ubisoft does anything terrible to Nadeo, they're officially going on my shit list.
Amir0x said:
The only real problem with the ship is the community, as people got lazy and everyone begun to just all gather at the stairs for one stupid kill-fest.
I'd imagine that if you found a community of people who were actually interested in playing the game as intended, you'd have a fantastic time with it.
I'd sacrifice a thousand good games if it meant more great games. After all, the good games I'd be sacrificing would just be sequels to last year's good games, while great games would be their own unique thing, injecting new ideas into the ever growing stale videogame gene pool.Yasae said:
I've worked for Activision. I've seen how large publishers work first hand, and let me say this: if good games are getting made, it is in spite of the system, not because of it.
So I just wanted to jump in here and veer a bit off topic and say that the game is really good. Impulsed bought it because of the thread and it's utterly fantastic.
The industry is disheartening sometimes with the way things work right now.
The industry is disheartening sometimes with the way things work right now.
i guess it's worth stating that there only needs to be half a dozen simultaneous players worldwide to get a fairly complete experience, so despite the anemic community, new buyers will atleast get their money's worth.Jangaroo said:
in other general ubisoft cuntery, they removed the anno 1404 venice expansion from steam prior to the xmas sale, replacing it with the full price "anno 1404 gold". since retail copies don't play nice, anyone (like me) who owns the original on steam and just wants to buy the expansion is shit out of luck.
charlequin
Banned
Stumpokapow said:
Actually no I didn't know that (link?) but also part of what I was thinking there was that someone was going to start laying the groundwork for doing that very soon and the making a lot of money part of it was going to follow within 3-5 years.
szaromir said:
That's actually an entirely irrelevant question to the business I just described. The only question someone looking to get into that business should be asking is "how accurately can I identify which indie game teams coming to me for funding will bring in enough revenue that they can keep the lights on for a year while paying back their startup loan at ~X% interest?"
If we're talking PC releases at a $20 pricepoint, under presumed Steam terms of 70/30, a single 20k release per year would bring in $280,000 in revenue -- enough to pay a team of three and rent a small office in many places without being at risk of closing up shop.
SpaceDrake
Member
charlequin said:
Just as a reminder, 10k in six months was Carpe Fulgur's original goal for Recettear, and the game would have been considered a legitimate success at that point and would've been able to pay everyone involved a decent amount of money. 10k-20k for a small team means they get a lot of money and can afford to finance their next game, which will also hopefully do well. Jeff Vogel has been operating like this for as long as I've been PC gaming (and ever since our younger users, at this point, have been in diapers). It's even easier with DD now, so it does work as a business model.
The real barrier to entry is getting that initial starting cash to pay for, well, living while you develop that first title. After that, success breeds success, really. So long as you keep breaking even at least, you can stay in the business. And even if the pay isn't great, doing something you love is worth a whole lot of money otherwise.
You know what? I worked for a former marketing head of Arista, and yet I still say the system needs to exist for the time being.Sqorgar said:
The music industry is much further along the exact road you've described anyway. The major labels have dropped support to many smaller acts and have become overwhelmingly obtuse; they generally sign risk-averse performers to maximize profit; they've instituted 360 deals which take an even larger cut of the pie from a larger amount of revenue streams, etc etc etc. Sounds a bit familiar, I think.
We would up with a glut of competition and no quality control ANYWHERE to be found. And salaries are at an all time low. They've gone down, then up, then way the fuck down over the course of 30 or 40 years in case anyone's forgotten. It's always been hard to make a living doing it, sure, but now it's borderline impossible.
I already know deals with major players aren't that great. It's the name of the game. But the exposure and exploitation of channels provided by that not-so-great deal can be advantageous to the right developer - an advantage tilted in a studio's favor by digital distribution, but not entirely slanted towards them. And what's the difference anyway? I said to choose wisely. If the benefits don't appear to outweigh the disadvantages, say no. Outerlight was too desperate, too quick to sign.
I sincerely wonder if there's any legal recourse for them since most publishers end up owning a large portion of the IP created. Ubisoft could lift whatever they wanted if they owned that property.
charlequin
Banned
SpaceDrake said:
Yep. This is definitely a reason I'm very excited (now that it's been brought to my attention) to see people who've had bona-fide hits give back to the next generation of developers in the form of the Indie Fund up there.
SpaceDrake said:
The main thing is to keep things manageable. Big-time devs and publishers are incredibly foolish, developing titles where a million-plus is the break-even point, and they end up losing more money than they started with. This leads to good devs closing down, or at the least having a huge blemish of a game that didn't sell well on their record. A game that fails to sell is like a scarlet letter, it causes devs to have to prove themselves a worthwhile investment again before being trusted for anything that isn't a licensed work or a sequel to an already established franchise. Sort of like how Raven were relegated to CoD map-pack duty after Singularity didn't light up the charts.
The key is to have common sense and work within your means, rather than thoughtlessly splurging on a huge project and hoping for the best. Say you have a game that would have broken even at 10k, but it ends up being a huge surprise and does 300k, why are the expectations for the next project by the same developer almost always astronomically higher instead of being ratcheted up just a reasonable amount?
Take Bionic Commando for example. It did extremely well as a re-release on the DD services in its 2D form, but up the budget God knows how many times, throw some retail muscle into it and it sells...30k on both consoles combined its first month? The obvious thing to do after Rearmed was such a hit, to me anyway, would have been to jump right into Rearmed 2, but they had to find out the hard way that people weren't looking for a $60 version. There's just too much carelessness going on in the industry, and the whole risk-averse approach they try to take ends up being faulty way too often for how smart these people are supposed to be.
scitek said:
In the case of Bionic Commando, I believe both the retail version and Rearmed were greenlit at the same time (Rearmed may have actually be later) and developed in parallel, with the intention of Rearmed priming the market for a "modern" Bionic Commando game at retail.
However, I agree with the general premise that a lot of devs bite off more than they can chew after an initial success, whereas ambitions should be tempered by reasonable assumptions about their ability to scale and improve. This is understandable given developers sometimes want to follow a great game with something more ambitious, but obviously it is not always good business.
shaowebb
Member
Damn. This really cleared up some things for me though. I will probably rethink my pitching of certain important titles that I work on during college in favor of simply steam releasing them after reading this. It's too risky having my product on certain titles conformed by market research on "hip things" that I am not going to pander to.
I'll just pitch my safe titles and self develop the rest.
I'll just pitch my safe titles and self develop the rest.