Leafhopper
Banned
I agree with you Jim. Good video as usual.
Someone should tag him as FUCK KONAMI or something.
Someone should tag him as FUCK KONAMI or something.
Big-budget publishers blow my mind sometimes. You'd think they'd rather have 10 games selling 1 million than 1 game selling 5 million, but they won't dare do that.
Indies *are* the "b-tier" releases. Except, instead of publishing hiring people and paying them money to make them, developers are on their own. Good or bad thing? A little of both, I would say.
I'm pretty sure Bloodstained and Yookah will sell a lot more than 30 or 50 thousand copies.
Shovelknight was a more modest kickstarter (they got around 350k IIRC) and didn't have a name like IGA attached to it. But it sold 180k in its first month, 300K by December of last year and one can only asume that number is now even higher after being released on Ps4 and X1.
And stuff like Pillars of Eternity has also been selling great. I didn't find the sales numbers but based on comments from the devs and some earning they have talked about I think it's safe to say it sold 200K+ during the first month
https://www.segasammy.co.jp/english/pdf/release/201503_4q_tanshin_e_final.pdfIn the consumer business, the Group launched titles such as “Alien: Isolation” and “Ryu ga Gotoku 0: Chikai no Basho” in the packaged game software field. Although a year-on-year increase in total volume of packaged software sales of 12,300 thousand copies, which includes 4,950 thousand copies in the U.S., 5,200 thousand copies in Europe, and 2,140 thousand copies in Japan, performance in the field was weak due to the harsh market environment.
"Nobody wants Adventure Games".
We Kickstart Broken Age.
"Nobody wants Mega Man."
We Kickstart Mighty No. 9.
"Nobody wants Final Fantasy Tactics."
We Kickstart Unsung Story.
"Nobody wants Banjo-Kazooie."
We Kickstart Yooka-Laylee.
"Nobody wants traditional Castlevania."
We Kickstart Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.
Too be fair they are risk averse because they are playing with their own money. Kickstarter has very little risk for the devs that use it.
The other reason is that the market demands games with great voice acting, great graphics, etc. All of those things are not cheap to do in most counties. The point being gamers want it all and that cost a lot of money.
Quoting for the list..."Nobody wants Adventure Games".
We Kickstart Broken Age.
"Nobody wants Mega Man."
We Kickstart Mighty No. 9.
"Nobody wants Final Fantasy Tactics."
We Kickstart Unsung Story.
"Nobody wants Banjo-Kazooie."
We Kickstart Yooka-Laylee.
"Nobody wants traditional Castlevania."
We Kickstart Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.
It's cathartic, really, to see the things so many of us have clamored for, things big publishers told us were unpopular or not profitable, becoming successful despite their adherence to the contrary.
Ultimately, I have no idea why publishers continue to look at Call of Duty and League of Legends and Angry Birds and other titles and decide to chase after an audience that already has their obsessions instead of working with the audiences they already have.
Anyone remember when 2K games claimed that the FPS XCOM was coming because traditional old-school turn-based strategy wouldn't sell? And then, after massive backlash, decided to make a strategy XCOM as well, and it vastly outsold its FPS counterpart?
Remember when Dark Souls 1 was celebrated for crossing a million copies sold (unlike Tomb Raider being "disappointing" at not selling 4 million in one month)? Remember when Nintendo said they were proud of Xenoblade selling 500,000 copies?
Big-budget publishers blow my mind sometimes. You'd think they'd rather have 10 games selling 1 million than 1 game selling 5 million, but they won't dare do that.
I'd argue it not being quite that clear cut, yes the money is fronted in advance so there's financial security to enable them to create the vision they pitched, but they also have a responsibility of delivering and being transparent about it or their next kickstarter will be rough as hell.
Don't get me wrong I loves me some Claudia Black, Kevin goddamn Spacey and Samuel fucking Jack son in my games, but there is demand for games that don't reach that level, the Souls series sells in the millions without the fanfare, stuff like Payday the heist was doing so good digitally it saw a physical release and lol Minecraft the way that game has been selling is a joke.
I wasn't talking about paying A listers, just in general. Personally, rarely do A listers add anything of value to a game, except Sam L Jackson in GTA:SA.
Also the dark souls are made by a fairly small development studio, so 1-2 million might be good for them, but for a publisher powerhouse like Ubisoft that needs to generate 810 million during the third quarter just to avoid its stock prices dropping 1-2 million isn't that much. Like I said earlier in the thread, once a publisher reaches a certain size, they cannot compete in smaller markets because it will not generate enough revenue to allow them to keep their current level of growth. And if a CEO fails to create growth, what do you think happens?
Unfortunately, this is a common trend among companies in other markets.
"Nobody wants Adventure Games".
We Kickstart Broken Age.
It's up to 366k.And stuff like Pillars of Eternity has also been selling great. I didn't find the sales numbers but based on comments from the devs and some earning they have talked about I think it's safe to say it sold 200K+ during the first month
The problem in general is games like CoD or systems like the Wii breaking into the mainstream, aka people that weren't playing games originally. Suddenly publishers were the ones seeing how much MORE money they could make(by tapping into this new source of income) if they make their game just a little bit more like CoD, or make their systems just a little bit more like the Wii, and how can we apply that to IPs we own. Before you know it, BOOM Dead Space 3.
You're right though, it's not something that's unique to the game industry. Creative bankruptcy is rife with the movie and tv industry too(which leads to reality TV and superhero movies/remakes(why develop a whole new idea when you can "adapt" one that already exists!)). Problem is however that unlike the other industries, when the mainstream goes back to ignoring games again, the gaming landscape will already be decimated because the people that actually give two shits about the medium will be upset that they were ignored. But hey, here's Kickstarter to save the day, possibly.
Still say one of the smartest things Jim said in an earlier vid(which he again says here for the first time in a bit) is how publishers would rather make no money than ALL of the money.
You have to understand the eco-system which the big publishers have set up. It's an environment that is completely dominated by a few IP's they can release annually with low risk. Basically an oligopoly. People say that big budget means high risk, but nothing in the world is safer than 50 million dollar annual games advertised to hell and beyond and already established on the market. It's easy fucking money. People always eat it up. Just look here.
Why would big publishers break their oligopoly? They can just release a couple of games from established IP's, market to hell and beyond, and watch those earn Hollywood bucks. Why would big publishers dare to invest in a wide range of games when they got their safe easy bets to bank on instead? So long as the consumers choose to buy the same annual AAA games every year, big publishers won't change. And I won't blame them for that. Anything else would be financially naive.
I too want new IPs intended for niche audiences funded, but why bother when you can make money so much easier in this industry?
Love this video, if only because it echoes what I've been ranting about to friends for years.
Publishers are not a unified group of people that work together, if they did it would be illegal, so your last statement is meaningless. Secondly, the people buying habits kill the middle shelf games, publishers are going to make what sells not what a fringe fraction of the population buys. Thirdly, player expectation of games significantly increase, players want fancy graphics, high quality voice acting and all the bells and whistles, which acts like a barrier of entry to many middle shelf developers.
When a middle shelf developer fails to match the quality of provided by AAA reviewers end up destroying and trashing the game and nobody buys it.
Finally, not every game can be minecraft, just like not every game can be WOW. Minecraft is a very unique idea at its time that thanks to a combination of luck got bigger than its creator had imagined.
. Thirdly, player expectation of games significantly increase, players want fancy graphics, high quality voice acting and all the bells and whistles, which acts like a barrier of entry to many middle shelf developers.
Most people want a finished project or go in after word of mouth. Haven't many of the better Kickstarter games sold well afterwards via good press and word of mouth?Yeah, I don't get why Jim says he backs these projects to spite Microsoft and Konami.
If anything these Kickstarters completely validate Microsoft and Konami's position.
If there were only 30-50K people passionately interested in Banjo and Metroidvania, then yeah it probably would have been a bad idea to spend millions trying to revive those franchises.
How many adventure games have absolutely died on Kickstarter?
I wonder what is going to happen to this genre in particular, when most titles don't have Tim Schafer's good name to trade on and the nostalgia factor has worn off.
You are right but like I said earlier that is a short term mindset.
Companies should be focusing on pleasing customers in the long term and it will take care of growth etc.
Also its silly that companies are being expected to have crazy returns quarter over qtr or yoy. Investor culture is getting out of hand.
Eventually this house of cards will collapse on itself. Its not just a gaming thing either.
Hopefully other smaller companies that aren't bound to an exchange will start to step in and publish smaller games more often.
Maybe, but the consumers are the ones who ultimately choose to buy those games. So you are right publisher have a hand in it, but only because consumers are the ones who buy those products.Large publishers have had a very direct hand in stoking that particular flame for the last fifteen years
Yeah, I don't get why Jim says he backs these projects to spite Microsoft and Konami.
If anything these Kickstarters completely validate Microsoft and Konami's position.
If there were only 30-50K people passionately interested in Banjo and Metroidvania, then yeah it probably would have been a bad idea to spend millions trying to revive those franchises.
People keep saying pleasing customer, which customer are you referring to? The ones or gaf who complain about everything, the dudebros that buy anything with guns on the cover, the indie focused, the ones who buy all the AAA games. Which customer are you referring to? My point is there is no uniform customer, the games market is broken up into small subgroups and the fact that Assassin's Creed 8: Same stuff as last 7, for example keeps selling like hot cakes shows that some customers are happy it.
No. That would be doing all of his messaging a disservice to just focus on what's trending now. He's much deeper than that simple phrase and would probably insist "Member" is fine.I agree with you Jim. Good video as usual.
Someone should tag him as FUCK KONAMI or something.
I agree with you. As a business, I wouldn't want to sink a lot of money with only a few thousands of people buying it. Big publishers now a days are no longer making just A games. It's either AAA or nothing and nothing in-between.
A poster pointed out that AAA games may use up a ton of money, but the returns are just as big. It would be nice if publishers set aside a smaller budget for games and know that they will get a nominal return of 1 mil copies sold and consider that a worthwhile investment.
What this video fails to mention is that the "all in" and/or f2p strategies are giving publishers record revenues and profits.
A tiny percentage of them.What this video fails to mention is that the "all in" and/or f2p strategies are giving publishers record revenues and profits.
Though at a minimum I do imagine not going for a BK3 was likely dumb. Those games sold pretty well as I recall and in a sense isn't really that far off from open world games in design. But I guess they looked at the Blinx games as a reference point.
That's...sad.poor fit for the Xbox demographic.
That's...sad.
Yeah, I don't get why Jim says he backs these projects to spite Microsoft and Konami.
If anything these Kickstarters completely validate Microsoft and Konami's position.
If there were only 30-50K people passionately interested in Banjo and Metroidvania, then yeah it probably would have been a bad idea to spend millions trying to revive those franchises.
We always get these comparisons. Sure, game development was cheap once upon a time, it's true. But the idea that game development is now prohibitively expensive is not true. It can be, but it doesn't have to be. There are plenty of games in development that don't have those kinds of astronomical budgets. In fact, the majority of them don't.
Why compare Super Mario World to Halo 3? Why not compare it to New Super Mario Bros?
And why look at the most expensive games as examples? There's another extreme on that scale. Axiom Verge, which recently released to critical acclaim, was developed by one person. I don't know how much it cost, but I doubt it was millions of dollars.
There's something extremely sastifying in telling the same pubs that have helped to make AAA game development the sad state it is today to fuck off because they were wrong about what people wanted the whole time.
Publishers (like record executives in the music industry) don't have crystal balls to predict the future. They work with formulas. They stick to a formula because in the past it's been successful and refuse to deviate from it. Now back to my music comparison. No record label is going to sign a artist with a multi million dollar contract unless they fit a particular formula. Publishers don't wanna make small games or even fake the risk at making something that's niche.
It is the core gamers who keep comparing and talking about graphics and framerates all the time.
People are hyped about the next uncharted over any other indie game. People are asking for HD remaster of old games over mid tier games
It is the core gamers who keep comparing and talking about graphics and framerates all the time.
Of course they did. In the short-term it makes sense to cultivate a consumer base that demands things only you can afford to make. Now in the long-term those consumers will take those demands and run with them faster than you can keep up, but we're not quite there yet.Large publishers have had a very direct hand in stoking that particular flame for the last fifteen years