ShockingAlberto
Member
Seeing Capcom invest so much in Monster Hunter must have driven Inafune crazy. He probably thought they could be spending that time and money on making international games.
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Translation of Keiji Inafune's Capcom departure interview
- Thread starter Cheesemeister
- Start date
ShockingAlberto said:
If it wasn't for monster hunter and the RE milkage (I could never understand why RE fans feel the need to buy the same fucking game on every fucking platform), Inafune's ass would have been LONG GONE. He had some luck with Dead Rising and Lost Planet but those were hits because of great timing on the 360 but neither IP is all that compelling, Dark Void was a fucking flop, DmC can very well be a complete disaster.
DjangoReinhardt
Thinks he should have been the one to kill Batman's parents.
This is something I wish all publishers and developers would have drilled into their heads. Standards have risen for games and people have more entertainment options than ever now. I don't have the time or interest for merely competent games. The amount of mediocrity that is lavished with huge budgets blows my mind.Cheesemeister said:
Kittonwy said:
DMC4, Street Fighter 4, and Resident Evil 5 were all pretty big successes. From what we know so far, Dead Rising 2 seems like it's going to work out fairly well. The Case Zero experiment was a success. So it's not all bad by any means.
This was a very interesting interview, revealing a lot of things about Inafune's views of Japanese and Western development that I didn't really know before. He's taking a big risk by going out on his own, but it seems like he wants to know if that's something he can do. I wish him luck.
It'll be interesting to see both what he does and how Capcom changes after his departure.
gundamkyoukai
Member
Nirolak said:
I find that really funny since Level 5 seem to care about there Japanese sales the most .
They also seem to make most of there games for portables which also in line with the Japanese market .
I don't think Inafune is bad person but he is also very naive in allot of ways.
He saying hey it's so great over there but not seeing any of the problems.
DjangoReinhardt said:
There isn't a lot of room for new franchises, especially with Capcom fans, when basically they're willing to REBUY AN ALREADY RELEASED RE GAME ON MULTIPLE PLATFORMs over even a new critically acclaimed IP, you have many people ENTRENCHED in franchises like RE and Call of Duty, they KNOW what they're going to get, sometimes they've PLAYED what they're going to get, it's a brutal market out there.
The risk is very high in the market right now for new IPs, it's not that you're lavishing huge budgets on mediocre products, it's that your best teams are already working on known franchises and you NEED that kind of money to make a blockbuster, but the dev teams you have working on it are just fucking work-for-hire third-tier, that's the reality you have to deal with.
abstract alien
Member
Holy shit! That is quite a bit of work you did, thanks a ton. The community really appreciates the efforts you put forth.
shaowebb
Member
I just read every last word of this, and then saved all 33 pages of it.
I'm aspiring towards a very ambitious list of goals in the game industry as an animation student. Inafune is bringing up, and touching on a LOT of the things I feel are wrong in this industry. He's leaving his company to change it...I'm entering the field to change it. Hopefully more people who read this will enter the industry with intentions of changing these issues as well.
Games need to be mainly about quality being produced , and not nearly so much about meeting a set target. Keep it above a 0 loss and a good game will be a good game as Inafune says. Pushing games like salarymen meeting deadlines only serves to stagnate the creativity, and efforts toward quality that your studios will put into them. This will result in a slow decline in brand value.
You should also make it or fail on your own talent. The lifetime employee mentality of Japan is stupid, and does not encourage nearly enough ambition in studio employees to do their best since if they do well the company gets the credit, but if they do bad they are to blame. This only keeps someone working just hard enough not to get fired.
I also like how Inafune speaks out that game publishers should produce more than just games. Movies, and cartoons are great ideas. How many animated spin-offs have we seen made off of videogame franchises make it? Next to none. If a publisher has there own dedicated in house animation studio developing in tandem to the game development a tie in series it will most likely end up worlds more accurate than outsourcing a franchise. It also has potential to influence game development, and brand values to an enormous degree.
Inafune is not just bright, he's bold. Not many would dare to risk what he is in order to try to keep a company he loves from continuing down the wrong path. He wants to prove by example to Capcom that there is a better way in hopes that he can come back someday and lead them in the things he learns about how our side of the industry works. Know your enemy, overcome, improve, and win.
This is gonna be good.
I'm aspiring towards a very ambitious list of goals in the game industry as an animation student. Inafune is bringing up, and touching on a LOT of the things I feel are wrong in this industry. He's leaving his company to change it...I'm entering the field to change it. Hopefully more people who read this will enter the industry with intentions of changing these issues as well.
Games need to be mainly about quality being produced , and not nearly so much about meeting a set target. Keep it above a 0 loss and a good game will be a good game as Inafune says. Pushing games like salarymen meeting deadlines only serves to stagnate the creativity, and efforts toward quality that your studios will put into them. This will result in a slow decline in brand value.
You should also make it or fail on your own talent. The lifetime employee mentality of Japan is stupid, and does not encourage nearly enough ambition in studio employees to do their best since if they do well the company gets the credit, but if they do bad they are to blame. This only keeps someone working just hard enough not to get fired.
I also like how Inafune speaks out that game publishers should produce more than just games. Movies, and cartoons are great ideas. How many animated spin-offs have we seen made off of videogame franchises make it? Next to none. If a publisher has there own dedicated in house animation studio developing in tandem to the game development a tie in series it will most likely end up worlds more accurate than outsourcing a franchise. It also has potential to influence game development, and brand values to an enormous degree.
Inafune is not just bright, he's bold. Not many would dare to risk what he is in order to try to keep a company he loves from continuing down the wrong path. He wants to prove by example to Capcom that there is a better way in hopes that he can come back someday and lead them in the things he learns about how our side of the industry works. Know your enemy, overcome, improve, and win.
This is gonna be good.
Pinko Marx
Banned
Y2Kev said:
I don't think that quote applies very well here.
Castor Krieg
Banned
shaowebb said:
You are very naive if you think everyone should sit and wait for you to create your artistic masterpiece. Games are a business, they are a product to be created. Every product requires deadlines, good rate of return, planning, etc. We are no longer in 1980s, when it took 1 guy in the basement to make a game. I hope you understand that, otherwise you will be very disappointed with the industry.
To put it other way: Games should be about quality WITHIN A CERTAIN TIMEFRAME. Not everyone is S-E and can afford to make a game for 5 years.
kitzkozan said:Lifetime employees are probably eating alive several companies right now.Konami,Square-Enix and NamcoBandai have seen better days.Capcom has one foot in the grave as well.
I knew management was the first and foremost problem since it's always is.
It seems like Japanese game industry is living in a bubble. Lifetime employment after 20 years of zero growth? Damn, they must be one of last remaining industries like that in Japan.
Triple Da G.O.D!
Member
I have a new found respect for Inafune as a man after reading that. It takes a lot of heart to step down from where he was for the reasons that he did. I can respect someone who wants to better himself and others through his actions. I have no doubt that he'll succeed in what he wants to accomplish.
gundamkyoukai
Member
Japanese industry has problems just like every where else.
There few simple things that would help them allot .
1 .Having small core team about eg. 70 people and hire more for when projects needed it.
2. Stop taking so long to make your best selling IP and sequels it should take 2 or 3 years.
3. They need to stop thinking that if westernised there games there are going to sell millions.
Just those 3 things would help allot .
There few simple things that would help them allot .
1 .Having small core team about eg. 70 people and hire more for when projects needed it.
2. Stop taking so long to make your best selling IP and sequels it should take 2 or 3 years.
3. They need to stop thinking that if westernised there games there are going to sell millions.
Just those 3 things would help allot .
I'm still not even halfway done with this read and there's like a staggering amount of "holy shit" in this interview. It's like we're all Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, except we're calling our wizard Capgod. Then Inafune pulled the curtains back... Cheesemeister, you seriously deserve some applause for translating this at length.
I must say though, Inafune has some very frank ways with his metaphors. :lol
I must say though, Inafune has some very frank ways with his metaphors. :lol
teruterubozu
Member
DeVeAn said:
Suzuki, Naka, Itagaki, Inafune. It all comes down to respect for these guys, but in the end corporate Japan doesn't care. They see them as "talents" not assets.
Technosteve
Banned
Thanks for the translation. Gaf will still hate but I have a lot of respect for inafune.
charlequin
Banned
By the way, I know people have lots of strongly-felt opinions about Inafune and his beliefs about development, but please keep this thread to discussing the content of this interview and the ways he tries to clarify his positions here directly. Back and forth about Westernization that isn't related to the interview shouldn't happen here, and the rules about reading the OP remain in full effect even though the OP is super-long. :lol
OK, finished reading everything here, and I must say:
=== Game ideas are very valuable, completely different from taking a loan ===
Everything in this section of the translated interview is pure class.
I seriously feel bad for thinking along those lines myself, when it seems as though Inafune was actually trying to do what I always agreed with in regards to current game design trends and make things for a global/universal market. It probably would have been better received by all parties if he stated that his strategy was more about this than simply saying "westernize" and leaving it at that.
=== Game ideas are very valuable, completely different from taking a loan ===
Everything in this section of the translated interview is pure class.
hamchan said:
I seriously feel bad for thinking along those lines myself, when it seems as though Inafune was actually trying to do what I always agreed with in regards to current game design trends and make things for a global/universal market. It probably would have been better received by all parties if he stated that his strategy was more about this than simply saying "westernize" and leaving it at that.
charlequin
Banned
By the way, I wanted to pull out this quote:
as being of particular interest. If there's anything I've noticed about the Japanese industry, it's that the majority of development there is happening at the same companies as ten or even twenty years ago, often with the same 40-year old producers managing teams and directing titles. I don't think the Western model of completely disposable teams is great (the amount of "body memory" lost over the decades by having great teams dissolve with no one to carry on what they'd learned is immense and deeply tragic) but developing and forefronting new talent is absolutely necessary to staying competitive and innovative. Many of the Japanese companies that used to have this skill (like Capcom and Square-Enix) no longer do, and new upstart developers seem to have more trouble building a good name and brand for themselves in Japan than in the West.
I think there's a lot that Inafune says and recognizes in this interview that's very accurate and at times uniquely insightful. The problems I have with his views as he espouses them here are more to do with two particular blind spots.
The first is that he correctly identifies the problems with $50m budgets and AAA production values but he never seems to grapple with the existence of alternatives to the upwards budget spiral. The second is that he correctly identifies the ways that working with Western outsource studios can be successful (see: Dead Rising) but doesn't seem to grapple nearly as much with the problems with this approach.
as being of particular interest. If there's anything I've noticed about the Japanese industry, it's that the majority of development there is happening at the same companies as ten or even twenty years ago, often with the same 40-year old producers managing teams and directing titles. I don't think the Western model of completely disposable teams is great (the amount of "body memory" lost over the decades by having great teams dissolve with no one to carry on what they'd learned is immense and deeply tragic) but developing and forefronting new talent is absolutely necessary to staying competitive and innovative. Many of the Japanese companies that used to have this skill (like Capcom and Square-Enix) no longer do, and new upstart developers seem to have more trouble building a good name and brand for themselves in Japan than in the West.
AzureJericho said:
I think there's a lot that Inafune says and recognizes in this interview that's very accurate and at times uniquely insightful. The problems I have with his views as he espouses them here are more to do with two particular blind spots.
The first is that he correctly identifies the problems with $50m budgets and AAA production values but he never seems to grapple with the existence of alternatives to the upwards budget spiral. The second is that he correctly identifies the ways that working with Western outsource studios can be successful (see: Dead Rising) but doesn't seem to grapple nearly as much with the problems with this approach.
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
If you read between the lines of this and a few other Inafune interviews, I believe it definitely sounds as if Inafune separates companies in his mind when he bemoans Japanese development. Companies like Nintendo are not included (or indicted, let's say) by default.
He's talking about the Namcos; companies that churn out product with no ambition and no awareness of what the world thinks.
A good example would be the Tekken series and compare it to Street Fighter's revival. When Capcom oversaw SFIV, they didn't make what was simply a westerized game. SFIV is very much a Japanese mentality game from top to bottom. However it isn't thoughtless. Its art style is carefully open enough to both look meticulously Japanese crafted (they have a reputation for it) and appeal to global sensibilities. Its presentation and content takes cues from what western arcade fans grew up with in the 90s.
But Namco just keeps mindlessly churning out Tekken with no real awareness of what else is happening anywhere (even in Japan evidently). They have the same overly stereotypical cheesy Japanese b-movie character designs. They use the same recycled, awkward game modes such as Tekken Force and its successors, with their early Playstation 1 game mechanics. Same shoddy attempts at storytelling and bad cut scenes.
Inafune has room to talk because of Dead Rising finding a nearly perfect balance between east and west. It has the sticky, refined play mechanics of a Japanese game, and the detail-oriented world building and carefully refined, hyperreal artistic sensibilities people havecome to associate with Japan. It also has, perhaps intentionally, a little dash of traditionally goofy Japanese storytelling and characterization. But it's also more naturalistic. It has characters more down to earth and international, and grounded. It's locals aren't entirely full of Japanese weirdness and perverse, obscure in-jokes - just enough to give them spice and set it apart. It handles the scope and scale that western games have come to specialize in and that the global audience likes.
That's what most Japanese developers don't understand and Inafune is right about. And yes, people such as Team Ico are excluded in the same way Nintendo is; not just because they "make good games" but because their games are not aimed at merely a niche Japanese audience. The Ueda games have what is actually a very western art direction and world design with just a hint of Japanese feyness about them; enough to lend them an exotic, but not stereotypical, flavor.
And you know, when Inafune says "western games are more fun" in some cases, that's true. It does depend on what part of "Fun" you're looking at. Japanese games are still generally good with refining mechanics. But western games have gotten very good at being broadly entertaining. They're often better at spectacle and taking the player on a rollercoaster ride.
He's talking about the Namcos; companies that churn out product with no ambition and no awareness of what the world thinks.
A good example would be the Tekken series and compare it to Street Fighter's revival. When Capcom oversaw SFIV, they didn't make what was simply a westerized game. SFIV is very much a Japanese mentality game from top to bottom. However it isn't thoughtless. Its art style is carefully open enough to both look meticulously Japanese crafted (they have a reputation for it) and appeal to global sensibilities. Its presentation and content takes cues from what western arcade fans grew up with in the 90s.
But Namco just keeps mindlessly churning out Tekken with no real awareness of what else is happening anywhere (even in Japan evidently). They have the same overly stereotypical cheesy Japanese b-movie character designs. They use the same recycled, awkward game modes such as Tekken Force and its successors, with their early Playstation 1 game mechanics. Same shoddy attempts at storytelling and bad cut scenes.
Inafune has room to talk because of Dead Rising finding a nearly perfect balance between east and west. It has the sticky, refined play mechanics of a Japanese game, and the detail-oriented world building and carefully refined, hyperreal artistic sensibilities people havecome to associate with Japan. It also has, perhaps intentionally, a little dash of traditionally goofy Japanese storytelling and characterization. But it's also more naturalistic. It has characters more down to earth and international, and grounded. It's locals aren't entirely full of Japanese weirdness and perverse, obscure in-jokes - just enough to give them spice and set it apart. It handles the scope and scale that western games have come to specialize in and that the global audience likes.
That's what most Japanese developers don't understand and Inafune is right about. And yes, people such as Team Ico are excluded in the same way Nintendo is; not just because they "make good games" but because their games are not aimed at merely a niche Japanese audience. The Ueda games have what is actually a very western art direction and world design with just a hint of Japanese feyness about them; enough to lend them an exotic, but not stereotypical, flavor.
And you know, when Inafune says "western games are more fun" in some cases, that's true. It does depend on what part of "Fun" you're looking at. Japanese games are still generally good with refining mechanics. But western games have gotten very good at being broadly entertaining. They're often better at spectacle and taking the player on a rollercoaster ride.
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
charlequin said:
This is a great point. If you think about it, it seems every year in the west we see a new breakout developer come onto the scene out of nowhere, or at least see a developer who wasn't on the radar suddenly become big news as they bring their A game and show they can play with the big dogs. I mean, a couple of years ago, Gearbox wasn't a household name even though they'd been around for a long time. Then Borderlands happened. Or hell, one guy from the land of swiss cheese named Notch pops out of nowhere and Minecraft is /everywhere/.
In the west I believe there is practically the ambient expectation that a new face with a new hit is lurking just around the corner somewhere, each year.
The business philosophy Inafune is decrying isn't specific to games: that's the common ethos in virtually all Japanese industry, from what I've seen.
He's correct that the downside of this ethos is that employees tend to view their jobs as so secure that it can discourage them from working hard. However, the upside is supposed to be that you value the company you work for. That is, because the company you work for is genuinely loyal to you and will aggressively work to keep you on staff -- and will not fire you the second they restructure or financial winds are no longer blowing favorably -- that you, in turn, feel loyalty and appreciation for the company you work for.
So it goes both ways: the business culture in Japan has upsides and downsides. Sometimes, that culture may seem to work poorly (as Inafune suggests it does in Capcom), while in other cases the culture clearly does work (Nintendo, Level 5), where the companies are very profitable and turnover is quite low.
What Inafune views as bad I view as simply different, with upsides and downsides in comparison to typical western business culture.
The problem Inafune identifies that I agree with is the age issue: I think most of the prosperous teams in Japan are led by men who are now older. That isn't universally bad (experience is good), but the relative lack of new talent in the Japanese gaming industry is glaring, in my opinion.
He's correct that the downside of this ethos is that employees tend to view their jobs as so secure that it can discourage them from working hard. However, the upside is supposed to be that you value the company you work for. That is, because the company you work for is genuinely loyal to you and will aggressively work to keep you on staff -- and will not fire you the second they restructure or financial winds are no longer blowing favorably -- that you, in turn, feel loyalty and appreciation for the company you work for.
So it goes both ways: the business culture in Japan has upsides and downsides. Sometimes, that culture may seem to work poorly (as Inafune suggests it does in Capcom), while in other cases the culture clearly does work (Nintendo, Level 5), where the companies are very profitable and turnover is quite low.
What Inafune views as bad I view as simply different, with upsides and downsides in comparison to typical western business culture.
The problem Inafune identifies that I agree with is the age issue: I think most of the prosperous teams in Japan are led by men who are now older. That isn't universally bad (experience is good), but the relative lack of new talent in the Japanese gaming industry is glaring, in my opinion.
about his opinion on size of development team:
1) making an HD game with a 10 person team? really? Dead Rising 1 was not made by 10 people going by the credits.
2) What's so shocking about a 150 person team? It's not like it's any different for western studios. AC2 for example had a very large team, ~100 looking to be the norm for current gen games. Efficiency of those people is another subject of course.
1) making an HD game with a 10 person team? really? Dead Rising 1 was not made by 10 people going by the credits.
2) What's so shocking about a 150 person team? It's not like it's any different for western studios. AC2 for example had a very large team, ~100 looking to be the norm for current gen games. Efficiency of those people is another subject of course.
D
Deleted member 30609
Unconfirmed Member
read two thirds of the first post, will read the rest later. thanks! very interesting.
Pretty sure what he's getting at here is that he feels Capcom (and other large publishers) should make more of an effort to produce projects like Dead Rising 2 or Street Fighter 4, where there's a core of internal producers/project leads at Capcom working together with an outside developer to produce the game. So it's not "we only need 10 people to make an HD game," it's "10 people from Capcom."miladesn said:
D
Deleted member 30609
Unconfirmed Member
wow, really good conversation in this thread as well.
Castor Krieg
Banned
Kodiak said:
There was that competition...:lol
charlequin
Banned
Opiate said:
This is part of what I was hoping to get at with comments about talent development, as well as rejecting the narrative of inevitably-rising AAA development costs. Nintendo and Level-5 are both extremely Japanese companies in terms of their organizational style, but they've nonetheless seen huge success both at home and in the West and created a huge number of successful new IPs in a period where Capcom and other similar Japanese mega-publishers are struggling.
To me, many of the lessons here aren't region-specific. I think this has a lot to do with seizing opportunities to deliver smaller, cheaper games (on handhelds especially; the Western equivalent is mostly to move into console DD and/or semi-independent PC release) and aggressively developing young talent (which is harder within the Japanese system, but still entirely possible with good corporate leadership.)
Kodiak said:
He says right in the interview (which you read, right?) that he wanted to stay specifically for that reason but he just loathed his job too much to continue.
charlequin said:
One wonders if this ties in with the age of those at the top. Shane Bettenhausen and others have mentioned before about how hard it is to get Japanese companies interested in downloadable content. There's a lot of reasons why this may be the case, but one might be that the heads of these companies are traditionalists. Inafune's description of the heads of Capcom makes me feel that this could be the case.
In the west a lot of the companies embracing digital downloads are young startups that have to do it out of necessity. There are many companies like Hello Games (Joe Danger) in the west which have been created due to experienced pro developers wanting to make smaller projects and be independent. We just aren't really seeing that in Japan, at least not in the mainstream console area. Perhaps there is more action in mobile?
The constant pressure of the weak Japanese economy may have made it more difficult to be an outgoing entrepreneur. I wonder culturally[1], in large part due to the long lasting economic issues, could there be less of a drive to be adventurous than there is in the west?
edit for clarity: [1] as in business culture or video game industry culture.
Seems they need to find a way to make the game industry closer to the film industry.
The older more experienced directors who were there 20 years ago, are still making big movies because they've been doing it for so long they are good at it.
Meanwhile new directors keep making their way up and becoming big deals capable of handling large budget films.
What you get is a more product and a good mix of "fresh style" and "tried & true". To a degree the gaming industry has that with indie titles giving new guys their start, but most of them are held back from ever having the budget to even attempt a normal budget game, let alone a 25 million blockbuster.
The older more experienced directors who were there 20 years ago, are still making big movies because they've been doing it for so long they are good at it.
Meanwhile new directors keep making their way up and becoming big deals capable of handling large budget films.
What you get is a more product and a good mix of "fresh style" and "tried & true". To a degree the gaming industry has that with indie titles giving new guys their start, but most of them are held back from ever having the budget to even attempt a normal budget game, let alone a 25 million blockbuster.
GillianSeed79
Member
We're No.1...wait? What? I guess Western developers do like to fire a lot of people. It's a wonder anyone even wants to work in the video game business.
I think there's a middle ground there, though, where you can keep the same employees in a company but still make them feel like they're not just a cog in the company machine, like they have more ownership of the product. We've seen it a lot, in fact.Opiate said:
Look at Sega's output when they were letting their devs fly under the banners of Hitmaker, Smilebit, WOW, UGA, and Overworks. Look at Capcom's output from Clover. Suddenly there was a big uptick in ambitious and imaginative new IPs. The games weren't immediate smash hits though, so the sub-studios were deemed a failure and cut off at the knees, reabsorbed as faceless parts of the larger company. And, shock and awe, ever since then, the creative spark and willingness to experiment at those companies' internal teams has been greatly lessened.
As for similar approaches that have actually been given time to become established, there's Kojima Productions, Intelligent Systems, Team ICO... Similar results can be seen from Western studios that are afforded similar identity despite their ownership, such as Naughty Dog, Bioware, DICE...
The results seem pretty clear. Just give these groups a decent chance to gain a reputation for fans to latch onto, they'll make something of themselves that they otherwise wouldn't under the uninspiring guise of "Sega R&D2" or what have you. Or they may not! But give them a fair chance, rather than destroying them as soon as the first earnings statement comes back and doesn't blow socks off.
Capcom perfectly illustrated Inafune's accusations of management incompetence when they purchased Blue Castle and then immediately renamed them Capcom Games Vancouver.
He's completely right, consumer demands always bring average product with almost zero creativity to the table, clones after clones, in short, consumer demands are worth nothing, Miyamoto also express this same thing, saying that he prefers "surprise" people through creator viewpoint instead give them what they want. I think he used the word "surprise" to replace "people's ideas sucks most the time" :lol
What a great interview! Thank you so much Cheesemeister for your trouble. The journalist did a superb work too. If he really was caught off guard with Inafune revealing he was quitting Capcom right on the start of the interview he did an excellent job redirecting the conversation.
This sounded a little bitter. If he wants to prove that Inafune's work sells, then he must prove it with his future projects, not with the failing of Capcom titles now that he is gone.
Loved to read also his thoughts on Japanese work ethic, and corporation philosophy vs. the Western ones. Really interesting. Thank you very much once again Cheesemeister.
This sounded a little bitter. If he wants to prove that Inafune's work sells, then he must prove it with his future projects, not with the failing of Capcom titles now that he is gone.
Loved to read also his thoughts on Japanese work ethic, and corporation philosophy vs. the Western ones. Really interesting. Thank you very much once again Cheesemeister.
Warm Machine
Member
miladesn said:
Trials HD and Shadow Complex are a dozen people development teams. They are HD games and both incredibly profitable. Changing the view to a freeform 3d one would not have really changed the people or budget in any serious matter as the art needed to be created anyway and they would just be filling in the 4th wall as it were.
The value of the games and delivery of them to the customer is beside the point. Cost has no relevance to the quality of a game.