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The Scribblenauts franchise alone has generated close to $100,000,000 in gross revenue, so down the line it’s totally possible for a company like us to do really big numbers.

while this is interesting there are a lot of golden quotes from this interview:

At what point do you envision we’ll have all-digital consoles and handhelds? It seems like the popular prediction is that the next console cycle will be the last with physical media.

I share the same view that the next console cycle will be the last to rely heavily on physical media. I’ve been on the digital bandwagon for years. It makes too much sense from a monetary perspective not to do it; especially cloud publishing. For publishers, they have such a huge incentive to end things like used-game sales, retailer middlemen, paying for manufacturing of goods, fighting over limited shelf space and piracy.

If you follow the trends of other similar industries, it's easy to see why people predict this. Music went digital, who buys CDs anymore? iTunes alone is a multi-billion dollar industry. Movies and TV shows are now following music through services like Netflix and Hulu. I doubt physical copies will ever go away completely, but for the vast majority they will become irrelevant. I think the infrastructure for making it happen fully is at least 2 console generations away.

Are developers as obsessed with Metacritic as publishers? Or do you look at each review individually?

Think about it for a second, you just made something you’re very proud of, worked so hard on and poured your soul in to for years! Of course you want to see people’s reactions and of course you want to read reviews that will either excite or enrage you. But in today’s ADHD society we just want the instant discourse of “the number”. I think developers put too much emphasis on Metacritic, it’s great to get the general quality feeling of a game, but that’s about it.

Ultimately, do you think review scores can affect how a game sells? Or are sales largely dependent on marketing budget nowadays?

Neither, game sales are mainly dependant on one thing: word of mouth. This is true for all products; friends influence each other more than anything else.

Review scores are good for easily quantifying the quality of a game in a distilled form. If you say a game has a 90 Metacritic then that means that as a product it’s probably very well made. If it has a 60 Metacritic, it’s probably rather sloppily made. What it doesn’t tell you is if this game is for the mass market or some niche audience. And that’s what determines sales. There are examples of great games that don’t sell and sloppy ones that do sell.

What marketing actually does is get the product in front of as many eyeballs as possible before the game is out. So people are aware that the product exists for them to purchase. However, at the end of the day if the game isn’t compelling to a large number of people then it has a sales ceiling. The day one and week one purchasers will tell their friends not to buy the game and the sales will dry up quickly.

What would you say worries you the most?

It doesn't worry me as much as bothers me that a lot of people on the executive and decision making side of publishers doesn’t actually play games, nor have they ever developed a game. This wouldn't be a problem normally, but a lot of the time those people start telling you how to make games. Now, this isn’t a blanket statement, of course some execs did come from dev backgrounds and some love playing video games.

Anyway this kind of boggles my mind, why are you in this industry if you don’t love games? Think of it like the military, every general went through training. It might have been through officer candidate school or boot camp, but they all know the basics of fighting. How to shoot and field strip a firearm, how to dig a foxhole, how to work as a team: the basics! Thus when they are at a high level and give orders they at least have an understanding of what it’s like to be in the trenches. In game development a lot of misunderstanding happens with what’s feasible in a proper schedule and not insane crunch or what’s fun so you’re not just reacting and saying, “Well, Call of Duty does it, so throw it in our RPG!”

Is the current business model for traditional video games – the $60 boxed game – a broken model?

Yes, the $60 boxed game is a broken model. It was always broken, it's just more broken now because games cost so much to develop, produce and market. Before the model was tolerable, because the cost was reasonable enough to allow mediocre selling games to make money. Now it's just insane. If you aren't going to be a mega hit at $60, you might as well give up before you even try, because it’s tens of millions down the hole.

Think of it this way: Homefront was an okay FPS – not great, not terrible, just okay. But as a consumer, why would I want to play an okay FPS when I can play a bunch of great FPS titles for the same price? And that's what the consumers did. While over 13 million people bought Black Ops last year in the US alone, smashing records, less than just 1 million people bought Homefront in the US. The consumer voted with their wallet, right?

But what if you could rent Homefront for $4.99 for 24 hours from your console? What if Homefront was only $30 dollars upfront for the single player and if you liked it you could buy the multiplayer for an additional $30?

All of the sudden it's not a binary purchase option anymore. Where before you had two options as a consumer, pay $60 or pay $0 for the AAA experience or the okay experience. The market proved that gamers were not willing to pay $60 for Homefront the same way they were willing to for Black Ops, so that is out of the equation.

there is more through the link - http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/...ell-is-changing-the-game.aspx?PostPageIndex=1

 

[Angry Fork]

What if Homefront was only $30 dollars upfront for the single player and if you liked it you could buy the multiplayer for an additional $30?

I want this to catch on already. For me Uncharted 3 is worth 30$ right now because I don't care about the multi player at all. I think publishers would make more money by giving people more options rather than forcing large purchases.

 

[Mr. Sam]

"The Scribblenauts"? Just sounds wrong.

As someone who recently paid £6.99 for Super Scribblenauts, I'm glad to have added to this supposed king's ransom.

I don't think splitting games would necessarily make more money, though. There are too many people that will pay full price and play just half the game for that to work. How many people would buy a Call of Duty that's just campaign? And why would Activision sell a half price multiplayer pack to people who are happy to pay full price anyway?

 

[stilgar]

I want this to catch on already. For me Uncharted 3 is worth 30$ right now because I don't care about the multi player at all. I think publishers would make more money by giving people more options rather than forcing large purchases.

But then it won't be 30$. Oh non, cher ami.

 

[Larsen B]

I want this to catch on already. For me Uncharted 3 is worth 30$ right now because I don't care about the multi player at all. I think publishers would make more money by giving people more options rather than forcing large purchases.

Not to derail this topic, but isn't this the equivalent of buying pre-owned plus an online pass?

Anyway, amazing numbers for Scribblenauts. I've bought both Super and Remix yet not put any substantial time into either of them. I'll rectify that at some point.

 

[obonicus]

I want this to catch on already. For me Uncharted 3 is worth 30$ right now because I don't care about the multi player at all. I think publishers would make more money by giving people more options rather than forcing large purchases.

That begs the question that 'half' of Uncharted's value is the multiplayer. For a game like Uncharted, that ratio seems way off. A game like Homefront with a supposed MP focus would skew the other way.

 

[-PXG-]

A lot of great folks at 5th Cell. I'm happy for them.

Now where the hell is Hybrid?

 

[Yagharek]

What's feep's cut?

 

[batbeg]

Not to derail this topic, but isn't this the equivalent of buying pre-owned plus an online pass?

Anyway, amazing numbers for Scribblenauts. I've bought both Super and Remix yet not put any substantial time into either of them. I'll rectify that at some point.

No, because the developer won't see any of the initial purchase... from a consumer pov though, yeah

 

[Kraftwerk]

What's feep's cut?

He gets a pet T-Rex.

 

[Angry Fork]

That begs the question that 'half' of Uncharted's value is the multiplayer. For a game like Uncharted, that ratio seems way off. A game like Homefront with a supposed MP focus would skew the other way.

I think 30 only because it's in the middle and for some people they get more enjoyment out of multi player than single player. So if they paid 20$ for MP and I paid 40 for SP, they're getting the better deal for no reason other than the consensus being Uncharted is a single player IP. At least if it's 30 on both sides it's fair and there's no unjustified bias/consensus forcing a segment of people to pay more.

 

[jax (old)]

uncharted 3 is worth $60 or whatever it is you pay for it in the US. plus you really could have gotten it for cheap via the blackfriday sales anyhow; what with when they time the release.

 

[LCfiner]

Pretty good interview. I think he's spot on about digital distribution and the time it'll take before it becomes standard for all consoles.

 

[Kifimbo]

One of the few Western studios that benefited from the massive DS success.

However, I'm not sure Hybrid is a good move since XBLA seems to be on a downward trend.

 

[The Technomancer]

This is after the iOS release, right?
Jackson, any chance you could give us rough proportions for the DS/iOS breakdown?

 

[Yagharek]

He gets a pet T-Rex.

This is a fair recompense.

 

[Stumpokapow]

However, I'm not sure Hybrid is a good move since XBLA seems to be on a downward trend.

I don't doubt their capabilities, but yeah the business case seems a little stacked against them. Online Multiplayer-only games have not done all that well on XBLA besides BF1943, T-rated shooters tend to face a lot of demographic challenges, and XBLA does seem to be in a fatigue period in general (at least partially because the existing catalogue is so good there's little territory not covered by existing games), and because of the game's persistent features, if it doesn't hit big right out of the gate, the quality of the game itself will be lowered which makes it less likely to enjoy good legs.

 

[Starwolf_UK]

I don't think splitting games would necessarily make more money, though. There are too many people that will pay full price and play just half the game for that to work. How many people would buy a Call of Duty that's just campaign? And why would Activision sell a half price multiplayer pack to people who are happy to pay full price anyway?

I think the comment was more about what the middle ground non-AAA game needs to do to its business model in order to survive. If Homefront generated a lot more interest/revenue by being cut up into pieces rather than flopping and being sold for less than what those pieces were 12 months down the line that would be a more workable model.

Unless of course THQs business model was bulit around selling it at $30 or less (like SEGAs seems to be in Europe, nearly everything they put out will be half price in 3 months, if even that).

He gets a pet T-Rex.

Not a time machine? With that he could have unlimited T-Rexes.

 

[SentientStone]

I contributed $0.99 to that (well, subtract Apple's share of that) profit.
I just discovered the game a few weeks ago and I think it is now my second favourite iOS game (Game Dev Story is the other favourite). I am not much of a mobile gamer by the way, but still love the creativity of the game. I just tend to add "giant" for everything I make though.

 

[Angry Fork]

uncharted 3 is worth $60 or whatever it is you pay for it in the US. plus you really could have gotten it for cheap via the blackfriday sales anyhow; what with when they time the release.

Times have changed. I bought UC1 and 2 day one because I had the money but now I don't and people (including me) have caught on to the fact that many 60$ games drop in price only weeks after release. If publishers stopped being stubborn and play with pricing options I would've gotten the game much earlier.

I love Uncharted but I can't justify 60$ on a 10 hour game anymore. Portal 2 felt like I'd been gently robbed even though I really enjoyed it a lot, I vowed never to do that again. Beat it in 10 hours, don't have any friends to play the co-op with so that's useless to me. The commentaries are the only reason I replayed it, rushing through all the set piece/talking stuff to get to the commentary nodes.

 

[Somnid]

He echoes what I feel might be a problem going forward, a sort of killing of mid-level development. The blockbusters can sell at $60 but it's too much for mid-level, consumers don't want to pay it especially with better options. At the same time the desire for dirt cheap DD means that level is 99cents, which is too little to support content heavy games. With handheld prices going up someone really needs to think of a good mid-tier model or else it's going to be very painful for lot of studios.

 

[GaimeGuy]

And they were starting to say Object-Oriented programming was a failure.

 

[The Technomancer]

He echoes what I feel might be a problem going forward, a sort of killing of mid-level development. The blockbusters can sell at $60 but it's too much for mid-level, consumers don't want to pay it especially with better options. At the same time the desire for dirt cheap DD means that level is 99cents, which is too little to support content heavy games. With handheld prices going up someone really needs to think of a good mid-tier model or else it's going to be very painful for lot of studios.

Going forward? *laughs*
This has been a problem for the last two years, at least on the HD twins. Handhelds, Wii, and PC have been alright so far.

 

[Jintor]

I like this interview! IIt is full of interesting things that are interesting.

 

[Hot Coldman]

I buy CDs.

 

[disappeared]

I buy CDs.

Same here, my good man. Vinyl too.

 

[Rlan]

I don't doubt their capabilities, but yeah the business case seems a little stacked against them. Online Multiplayer-only games have not done all that well on XBLA besides BF1943, T-rated shooters tend to face a lot of demographic challenges, and XBLA does seem to be in a fatigue period in general (at least partially because the existing catalogue is so good there's little territory not covered by existing games), and because of the game's persistent features, if it doesn't hit big right out of the gate, the quality of the game itself will be lowered which makes it less likely to enjoy good legs.

There's still definitely room for it, but it has to actually be good and something different from the norm. Monday Night Combat did really well (I think better on XBLA than Steam for a change) and Dungeon Defenders is doing quite well at the moment. Trenched did 100K (and isn't released everywhere yet) and Blacklight did well too.

The issue is making games that already have a game filling that market -- making "downloadable COD-lite" is not going to work. You need character, you need something entirely unique that makes your game completely different from the rest. Scribblenauts filled this because nothing like it existed before. I'm not sure if Hybrid's apparently crazy control schema is that, though.

 

[sixteen-bit]

That's pretty good considering the development costs.

 

[Gomu Gomu]

Awesome. Innovation does pay sometimes, I guess.

But what if you could rent Homefront for $4.99 for 24 hours from your console? What if Homefront was only $30 dollars upfront for the single player and if you liked it you could buy the multiplayer for an additional $30?

I hope this becomes the future of gaming.

 

[rpmurphy]

How exactly is the $60 model broken if mediocre games don't sell? Isn't that the problem of the developer and publisher that they make a game out of a budget that is too large for the quality of the output and then trying to put it out at top dollar amongst other games that are truly the top games in the industry? Someone please explain because I don't get the argument.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

And they were starting to say Object-Oriented programming was a failure.

Clever.


As for the article though: I thought both games went pretty much bomba? I'm not saying that for fun, but I wonder where this revenue comes from, exactly. (as for my copy of Super Scribbelnaughts: it's still in the plastic.. damn backlog)

 

[Neuromancer]

I did my part. I bought my nephew Super Scribblenauts for DS and bought myself Scribblenauts Remix for iOS.

 

[enzo_gt]

There is far too much sense in that article for it to be from someone in the industry, I say!

But really he hit on every point there. If you think about it, two of the breakout successes of this gen, Minecraft and Call of Duty, owe a lot of their success to word of mouth (including social media). It's true for any game's success, really.

 

[Angry Fork]

How exactly is the $60 model broken if mediocre games don't sell? Isn't that the problem of the developer and publisher that they make a game out of a budget that is too large for the quality of the output and then trying to put it out at top dollar amongst other games that are truly the top games in the industry? Someone please explain because I don't get the argument.

Great games also don't sell sometimes. And bad/vapid games sell well.

Besides even if THQ priced it at 40$ most people wouldn't know that except forum dwellers. It would have to be labeled all over the cover so kiddies and parents at gamestop could see it and say oh an FPS that looks okay for less than 60 and then might get it. It's automatically assumed though that all new PS3/360 games are 60$.

 

[BalrogTheMaster]

I bought the iOS version recently and I love it! Only $5 and has all the fun of the DS games.

FUN FACT: Did you know the creator of Scribblenauts was a high-school dropout?

 

[Foffy]

The only thing I worry about is the cloud-publishing bit. I still live in an environment where the internet can poof out on me, and I would be livid if that meant I could only play the game with an internet connection.

A good solution to that is potentially offering an option to download the title from their servers and have it authorized for your console/PC for offline use. I don't see that happening from many companies with cloud-publishing, though, and that's why I embrace physical copy...

 

[The Technomancer]

As for the article though: I thought both games went pretty much bomba? I'm not saying that for fun, but I wonder where this revenue comes from, exactly. (as for my copy of Super Scribbelnaughts: it's still in the plastic.. damn backlog)

Hm? I'm fairly certain both games broke a million.

 

[Deadbeat]

What if Homefront was only $30 dollars upfront for the single player and if you liked it you could buy the multiplayer for an additional $30?

5th Cell wasnt thinking here. This would fail because the singleplayer is garbage. Its 4 hours long its got a shitty plot line, it ends on a stupid cliffhanger before the game even resembles any fun.

Basically, it would have made THQ less money because anyone that would have to buy the sp first would see how bad the game is and not even give THQ another 30 bucks (even though the mp is good).

 

[rpmurphy]

Great games also don't sell sometimes. And bad/vapid games sell well.

Besides even if THQ priced it at 40$ most people wouldn't know that except forum dwellers. It would have to be labeled all over the cover so kiddies and parents at gamestop could see it and say oh an FPS that looks okay for less than 60 and then might get it. It's automatically assumed though that all new PS3/360 games are 60$.

That's the case for every generation that came before this and it's true in the digital space too. Sometimes the game doesn't match the audience and it's doomed to lower sales. In the case of Homefront, like many other game this generation, it tried to ride the wave of first-person shooters and made by a fairly fresh studio. That faced its own slew of risks, and it was an especially big risk releasing at top dollar for its expected range of quality, developer pedigree, and the publisher's ability to market an original first-person shooter, all of which the target demographic for the game is sensitive to.

 

[mclem]

What if Homefront was only $30 dollars upfront for the single player and if you liked it you could buy the multiplayer for an additional $30?

The problem with that is it really *can't* be a 50/50 split; the vast majority of games cost significantly more to develop the single player experience than they do the multiplayer content. Single player will generally require significantly more unique assets, specialist code, setpieces.

Barring netcode - a pure programming exercise - generally multiplayer components are strictly a subset of the content that's already been built for the single-player experience.

 

[obonicus]

Times have changed. I bought UC1 and 2 day one because I had the money but now I don't and people (including me) have caught on to the fact that many 60$ games drop in price only weeks after release. If publishers stopped being stubborn and play with pricing options I would've gotten the game much earlier.

Well, again, for Uncharted, most people perceive the game's value as being in the SP, so I doubt they'd ever sell the game at a half and half split. Also, I was under the impression that SCEA does not price-drop its games. And since the sales numbers seem pretty positive for UC3, it seems that Uncharted's value (as in what people are willing to pay for) at this moment is, indeed, $60.

 

[Reversed]

Hopefully the franchise stays healthy for a long, long period. Since its release on iOS, I was wondering what they could do with a S̶c̶r̶i̶b̶b̶l̶e̶ Typenauts on Wii U or the PC. Go for it, 5th Cell!

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

Hm? I'm fairly certain both games broke a million.

I honestly had no idea.

 

[jesusraz]

I honestly had no idea.

From the article:

The Scribblenauts franchise has sold over 2.5 million copies to date.

So that incorporates two DS games and one Wii game, maybe counting some iOS sales? It's a shame Locke's Quest never gets a mention nowadays.

 

[kobashi100]

So where will they go in the future.

Will they go with 3DS at $30 or $5 IOS?

 

[Takao]

Now I know how duckroll feels whenever there is a story about Level-5's success.

 

[Syph Medwes]

Wow, good for them.

 

[Jackson]

I don't doubt their capabilities, but yeah the business case seems a little stacked against them. Online Multiplayer-only games have not done all that well on XBLA besides BF1943, T-rated shooters tend to face a lot of demographic challenges, and XBLA does seem to be in a fatigue period in general (at least partially because the existing catalogue is so good there's little territory not covered by existing games), and because of the game's persistent features, if it doesn't hit big right out of the gate, the quality of the game itself will be lowered which makes it less likely to enjoy good legs.

This year was a weak year for XBLA in terms of sales. There were no mass market "must-have" titles out there. Lack of titles that sell well doesn't mean lack of quality titles. There were some awesome new ideas (I loved Bastion, it was so good...) But for the XBLA crowd nothing stood out as "I *must* buy this title like they did with Limbo last year. From what I've see this upcoming year looks to have a few *must* have titles, pending they come out this year.

It's always all about the titles; look at the new Mario 3DS! Suddenly it's a must-have title and copies are flying off the shelves. According to Nintendo "Super Mario 3D Land is the fastest selling portable Mario game ever in the US." So XBLA will pick itself back up if people have titles they want to play. Simple as that.

The issue is making games that already have a game filling that market -- making "downloadable COD-lite" is not going to work. You need character, you need something entirely unique that makes your game completely different from the rest. Scribblenauts filled this because nothing like it existed before. I'm not sure if Hybrid's apparently crazy control schema is that, though.

I promise you Hybrid will be anything but "CoD-lite". It's a completely new shooter experience. Because Hybrid is self-funded we could afford to spend an extra year polishing Hybrid because we know quality is critical to a title like this. Now whether or not people will want a completely new experience as a shooter is a better question. I'm obviously betting on that they will.

However for us there is no downside. We've built up so much knowledge as a company on this title -- our development process, our new team members, everything was brought to the next level on Hybrid. So even if Hybrid fails to earn out (which I'm pretty certain that will not happen) we still will have gained so much.

FUN FACT: Did you know the creator of Scribblenauts was a high-school dropout?

Yes I am, though I don't recommend going that route in life. lol

This is after the iOS release, right?
Jackson, any chance you could give us rough proportions for the DS/iOS breakdown?

The iOS version is still too new to make any kind of significant impact towards the gross revenue.

As for the article though: I thought both games went pretty much bomba? I'm not saying that for fun, but I wonder where this revenue comes from, exactly.

Actually according to NPD it was the #1 selling 3rd party DS game 2 years in a row.

So that incorporates two DS games and one Wii game, maybe counting some iOS sales? It's a shame Locke's Quest never gets a mention nowadays.

There's no Scribblenauts for Wii.

 

[rpmurphy]

Now I know how duckroll feels whenever there is a story about Level-5's success.

Really? 5th Cell's games may have mediocre or sloppy core gameplay (such as platforming or puzzle designs), but they do build unique gameplay elements that makes them arguably interesting to play. Level 5's games... well I have no clue what are special to them. Okay, they are nice to look at.

By the way, Jackson, are you still planning on continuing the Drawn to Life series? Any chance we're going to see it continued on iOS, handheld, or console?

 

[GhaleonQ]

Now I know how duckroll feels whenever there is a story about Level-5's success.

*laughs*

If I can be slightly douchey, their success shows that you need only be very creative with business, marketing, and game design to have substantial success. You don't need to be artistic geniuses, make phenomenal games, or have a cash pipeline.

Good for them.