velociraptor
Junior Member
Yep, Gears and Uncharted had low budgets. Their budgets were <$20 million.
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An Industry Out of Touch
- Thread starter 8byte
- Start date
This is the whole idea of digital though, no? I'll leave off shovelware, ports, or mobile, and focus on the biggest publishers with upcoming or recently released titles that are either digital or lower price retail.
Digital:
Ubisoft: Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, Child of Light, Valiant Hearts
Microsoft: Super Time Force, Below
Sony: Rime, All Gone To Rapture, Resogun
EA: Peggle 2
Capcom: Strider, Duck Tales
Sega: Castle of Illusion
Lower Price Retail:
Ubisoft: Just Dance
Sony: Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time
Microsoft: Zoo Tycoon
EA: Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare
Warner: Scribblenauts Unmasked, LEGO: Marvel
SEGA: Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F
Nintendo: Game & Wario
This is before we even get to things like the free 2 play model, which is effectively a way of delivering a product at a lower cost and then allowing consumers to price discriminate.
OP, I've pretty much had the same exact concerns for years now. I'm honestly not sure where things go from here on, but a lot of that - particularly microtransactions / DLC even before the game is freaking finished - worries and saddens me, more so in the fact that companies feel that its necessary to do those things to survive.
I am so very, very glad I discovered the indie scene in recent years. In the absence of true mid-level devs, I feel like that segment still speaks to me.
Huh? I'm pretty sure this has happened, a lot, has it not? "So-and-so director intervened", "big studio X got involved", "as soon as the suits got involved", etc.
I am so very, very glad I discovered the indie scene in recent years. In the absence of true mid-level devs, I feel like that segment still speaks to me.
Huh? I'm pretty sure this has happened, a lot, has it not? "So-and-so director intervened", "big studio X got involved", "as soon as the suits got involved", etc.
NeededSleep
Member
A perfect example of what is wrong with companies and publishers would be:
Dead space 1 -> Dead space 3
Dead space 1 had unique gameplay in a great scifi setting.
Dead space 3 took a majority of what made the 1st great and threw it out the window to to try and bring the game to a different audience while brushing aside its aldready established fan base.
too many companies trying to chase sales out of reach. While destroying IPs or companies by not addapting or learning how to budget correctly for non AAA games.
Dead space 1 -> Dead space 3
Dead space 1 had unique gameplay in a great scifi setting.
Dead space 3 took a majority of what made the 1st great and threw it out the window to to try and bring the game to a different audience while brushing aside its aldready established fan base.
too many companies trying to chase sales out of reach. While destroying IPs or companies by not addapting or learning how to budget correctly for non AAA games.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
I think this is pretty well written but ultimately a mish-mash of complaints, some of which are well taken, others of which I don't agree with personally, others of which seem more about projecting your perspective to the market as a whole.
I agree totally with your issues surrounding Youtube streaming monetization. I think the industry is reading that issue wrong by and large, when they choose to intervene.
I think this is a weird way to look at it. Call of Duty 1 would have been $50. Call of Duty today is $110 if you buy all the map packs. If you don't buy the map packs, it is $60. It's true that the move to lobbies has negatively impacted the base multiplayer experience, but at the same time multiplayer now is probably more important than ever. It has higher player uptake. The bulk of the people who opt for the $110 experience are playing hundreds or thousands of hours. I think in general you would find relatively high player satisfaction with map pack options. Not 100%, and obviously there's been griping about let-down season passes, but in general I think this new business model is welcomed among players of those games. You ask why companies don't try subscription models--these ARE subscription models. Would it really make a difference if CoD was $5 a month for a year versus having $60 in map packs over that year? There were games getting map packs in the 90s and certainly they didn't cost the money they do now, but I think hour-for-hour people paying full price are actually paying less than they did before.
The negative impact of Software-as-a-Service isn't low value for players playing those games, it's that the money that would have been spent on other software goes towards services. MMOs, Map Packs, Microtransactions all serve to consolidate consumer spending on fewer, larger targets. That's a worrying trend in the industry, but it's not worrying because people are unhappy with Battlefield Elite or whatever they call it, it's worrying because people aren't buying from other publishers.
In general, I think this is false. Network services are far more important now than ever. Sure, DLC typically doesn't stand up to old expansion packs. But old expansion packs were a lot less common than DLC is. Most games used to be one and done, even on PC. Most games are not today. With games like Demon's Souls, we're seeing alternative multiplayer modes. The Ship's core gameplay idea is now the basis for the AC multiplayer. Online co-op is more common, including drop-in drop-out co-op. Leaderboards are online and standard now, far more than before. Achievements and trophies have sprung up. I mean, if your judgment is that you don't care about those things and you'd rather the old emphasis, I think that's reasonable enough. It sucks that the industry is not in sync with you. But in general I think the scope of provided services is much broader and applies to far more games now than ever. Multiplayer games today get more balance patches than ever before. I have no interest in CoD, but it has been balanced and rebalanced over millions of player-years of analytics. You might feel, as I do, that CoD's game design is less interesting than Doom or Duke 3D multiplayer were, but you can't argue that CoD is getting less official support than those games were. It's not.
Tons of content on PS+ and other deals comes from major publishers. The whole sale ecosystem you're talking about comes from major publishers. Most publishers have done bundles at this juncture--first on Steam (complete publisher libraries for $50!), but also through bundle services like Humble. WB, THQ, and EA are notable major publishers that have done this. Sega frequently does game bundles too, as does Square Enix. Square Enix is about to start their own version of Kickstarter. Crowdfunding exists, and a lot of mid-to-large developers or smaller publishers are using it.
Every publisher is experimenting with different kinds of pricing models. Take 2 does pre-order and get our last game models. Almost everyone does GOTY editions this year, more than ever before. There are more F2P type games, and full price games drop in price faster than before. One of the few truly anti-consumer steps, the $10 Online Pass, was rejected and has been discarded because publishers now seek extra monetization through content.
I'll also add that Microtransactions are a point of contention. First, cosmetic stuff. When Bethesda release horse armour, people were pissed. Now, it's common-place. And it's actually agreed that it's not a bad sort of setup. People who want to pay for cosmetic stuff pay for it. People who don't, don't. It affects balance less than the alternative. Costumes are big sellers in fighter games, they're big sellers in shooters, they're big sellers in RPGs, one of the big MOBA business models is centered around it. I don't buy cosmetic crap. I am mildly frustrated that extra costumes which used to be free aren't now, but in many cases the variety available now far exceeds what used to be the case. Old games had colour swaps and alternate costumes, TF2 has what... 1000? 1500 items?
Microtransactions that affect game balance are more controversial. Clearly they can be poorly implemented, as we're seeing with some new release games. And I think in general with iOS games we've seen really gross game economies being built around them. Where's My Water 2 is an example of a great game formula being wrecked but a truly disgusting game economy. I'm not going to defend Farmville either. What I will mention is major publishers. EA has had microtransactions in basically every sports and driving game they've done since 2007 or so. There are plenty of complaints about EA sports games, but I very rarely hear that microtransactions are one of them. You can powerlevel your hockey manz for example. Yeah, this is something that used to be a cheat code. Yeah, closed systems suck and modding is great. But my point is that it is possible to design a game around people playing through naturally but also allow them to pay to skip or get ahead. And on iOS many games are fairly balanced. I just played through Joe Danger Touch, which has pretty extensive in-app currency options. I paid nothing and 100% completed the game with no grinding.
I don't know what this means, but there are more community personnel now than ever. Fans are more involved now than ever in discussing games pre-release. There are more outlets than ever, official and unofficial, to do so. Community managers exist at all because the role of community is more important now than ever.
This is just flatly wrong. Game development is more transparent now than ever. More assets are available pre-release, more questions can be asked to developers and more are answered by developers. Flashback 15 years and games were largely made in secret, released with little fanfare, and the only outlets for fan connection were from reviews in magazines which were often hands-off reviews. I agree that the move towards review embargoes until release day has been a regression from the early internet era, and I agree that the move away from demos is unfortunate, but in fact there are more outlets for pre-release stuff now than ever.
What has changed is the DEMAND. What 15 years ago would have been a handful of usenet posts, buying a magazine and talking for a little bit with friends... today is people who use internet forums and outlets 6+ hours a day dissecting every little thing. Fans are insatiable. There are people on GAF who use GAF 16-18+ hours a day. No matter how much media you release, people want more. Smash Bros released new media every single day for a year before release and the common sentiment in the thread about that was that they weren't releasing enough and the eventful media releases were too few and far between. How much more can you give?
Moreover, when a lack of transparency occurs (let's say release day review embargoes for Homefront; microtransactions in Forza 5), there are more unofficial outlets now than ever to spread that information. It is easier to be an informed consumer now than ever. The cost for waiting a few days before buying a game to let people rapidly figure out if something is afoot is very low. Companies shouldn't try to scam consumers, but consumers should also learn to be savvy. We have currently active threads right now where OPs have bought full price next gen new release hardware and are complaining because they didn't know basic facts before buying the hardware. It's not about whether they are to blame, it's about how easy it would be to fix those issues.
In addition, while CG trailers are common in commercials today, I'd argue that today's commercials are in general more representative than ever before. NES commercials consisted of a bunch of live action stuff that had nothing to do with the game and then a few second clip of decontextualized gameplay. BioShock Infinite's commercial is nonsense, but at least you knew it was about a guy, a girl, and shooting.
Almost no games were ever designed with the product in mind. Publishers used to routinely tell developers "Here's 6 weeks of salary, give us a game". Stuff was more commodity than anything else back then. Metacritic metrics, as much as you can complain about them, were introduced to make creative quality more important and sales less. It used to be that you got royalties and bonuses if your product sold well. Companies decided to try to implement quality metrics. What options do you have for quality metrics? Have an internal quality review? Pay a reviewer to come up with it? Focus groups? I'd argue that of the alternative options, the best way to ascertain quality--no matter how imperfect it is--is aggregate review reception. There are problems. Trying to influence scores while also using them as a measure is a problem. But the system they replaced, which was a sales-only metric, is inferior.
The primary case of Metacritic being harmful is purportedly one like Obsidian missing their bonus for F:NV which was assigned to a Metacritic score they missed by one. Yeah, that's a problem. Just like it'd be a problem if their bonus was assigned to sales and they missed by 100k. Just like it's a problem when a student earns a 49 on an exam instead of a 50. I believe it'd make more sense to have bonuses distributed on a sliding scale. I believe Bethesda is a shitty publisher that treats developers terribly. But the source of the problem is not that Metacritic was used as a quality indicator for bonuses, because any other quality-derived bonus that was all or nothing (say "Wins at least 5 GOTY awards", "Focus groups at at least 90% satisfaction", whatever) could have been just barely missed as well. Publisher exploitation of developers is to blame here.
None of this is to say there aren't examples of your points, or that there aren't problems, or that your particular taste might not be being catered to right now. It could be that you are very dissatisfied. But I'd warn against generalizing about the doom of the industry when many of the problems you identify appear to be cases where you don't like what consumer spending is driving, rather than that publishers aren't listening to consumers. Most of the problems you've identified appear to be problems where you are out of touch with the people buying the most mainstream games. It might seem jaded and cynical to call people idiots, but that might be the better option for you. This is like the difference between saying "The best-selling albums on the chart are all shitty" versus saying "Music publishers are putting out garbage and they're going bankrupt because there's no music like My Bloody Valentine anymore".
I think the industry has some challenges in terms of their business models. But I play more games than I ever have in my life, I am more satisfied with the games I play than I ever have been, and I pay less for those games than I ever have in my life. No matter what genre I like, there are options in indie, mid-tier, and high end. There are green shoots everywhere.
Obviously we can talk about the industry until the cows come home. But what might be a better option is looking into what choices you have under your control that can make you more satisfied. If you feel journalism isn't doing a good job, read less of it. If you feel AAA games suck, try buying different stuff. If you hate the chase of the day one dollar, sit back and buy games a few months later. This is not me calling you entitled, it's me saying that you have a great deal of control over your own happiness and if things are making you unhappy, you should avoid them. This comes with tradeoffs, sure. Indie games can't have the budget of an Uncharted game. But you need to decide, of the available options, which is the best for you and how you might consider being more flexible to find things that make you happy.
I agree totally with your issues surrounding Youtube streaming monetization. I think the industry is reading that issue wrong by and large, when they choose to intervene.
I think this is a weird way to look at it. Call of Duty 1 would have been $50. Call of Duty today is $110 if you buy all the map packs. If you don't buy the map packs, it is $60. It's true that the move to lobbies has negatively impacted the base multiplayer experience, but at the same time multiplayer now is probably more important than ever. It has higher player uptake. The bulk of the people who opt for the $110 experience are playing hundreds or thousands of hours. I think in general you would find relatively high player satisfaction with map pack options. Not 100%, and obviously there's been griping about let-down season passes, but in general I think this new business model is welcomed among players of those games. You ask why companies don't try subscription models--these ARE subscription models. Would it really make a difference if CoD was $5 a month for a year versus having $60 in map packs over that year? There were games getting map packs in the 90s and certainly they didn't cost the money they do now, but I think hour-for-hour people paying full price are actually paying less than they did before.
The negative impact of Software-as-a-Service isn't low value for players playing those games, it's that the money that would have been spent on other software goes towards services. MMOs, Map Packs, Microtransactions all serve to consolidate consumer spending on fewer, larger targets. That's a worrying trend in the industry, but it's not worrying because people are unhappy with Battlefield Elite or whatever they call it, it's worrying because people aren't buying from other publishers.
In general, I think this is false. Network services are far more important now than ever. Sure, DLC typically doesn't stand up to old expansion packs. But old expansion packs were a lot less common than DLC is. Most games used to be one and done, even on PC. Most games are not today. With games like Demon's Souls, we're seeing alternative multiplayer modes. The Ship's core gameplay idea is now the basis for the AC multiplayer. Online co-op is more common, including drop-in drop-out co-op. Leaderboards are online and standard now, far more than before. Achievements and trophies have sprung up. I mean, if your judgment is that you don't care about those things and you'd rather the old emphasis, I think that's reasonable enough. It sucks that the industry is not in sync with you. But in general I think the scope of provided services is much broader and applies to far more games now than ever. Multiplayer games today get more balance patches than ever before. I have no interest in CoD, but it has been balanced and rebalanced over millions of player-years of analytics. You might feel, as I do, that CoD's game design is less interesting than Doom or Duke 3D multiplayer were, but you can't argue that CoD is getting less official support than those games were. It's not.
Tons of content on PS+ and other deals comes from major publishers. The whole sale ecosystem you're talking about comes from major publishers. Most publishers have done bundles at this juncture--first on Steam (complete publisher libraries for $50!), but also through bundle services like Humble. WB, THQ, and EA are notable major publishers that have done this. Sega frequently does game bundles too, as does Square Enix. Square Enix is about to start their own version of Kickstarter. Crowdfunding exists, and a lot of mid-to-large developers or smaller publishers are using it.
Every publisher is experimenting with different kinds of pricing models. Take 2 does pre-order and get our last game models. Almost everyone does GOTY editions this year, more than ever before. There are more F2P type games, and full price games drop in price faster than before. One of the few truly anti-consumer steps, the $10 Online Pass, was rejected and has been discarded because publishers now seek extra monetization through content.
I'll also add that Microtransactions are a point of contention. First, cosmetic stuff. When Bethesda release horse armour, people were pissed. Now, it's common-place. And it's actually agreed that it's not a bad sort of setup. People who want to pay for cosmetic stuff pay for it. People who don't, don't. It affects balance less than the alternative. Costumes are big sellers in fighter games, they're big sellers in shooters, they're big sellers in RPGs, one of the big MOBA business models is centered around it. I don't buy cosmetic crap. I am mildly frustrated that extra costumes which used to be free aren't now, but in many cases the variety available now far exceeds what used to be the case. Old games had colour swaps and alternate costumes, TF2 has what... 1000? 1500 items?
Microtransactions that affect game balance are more controversial. Clearly they can be poorly implemented, as we're seeing with some new release games. And I think in general with iOS games we've seen really gross game economies being built around them. Where's My Water 2 is an example of a great game formula being wrecked but a truly disgusting game economy. I'm not going to defend Farmville either. What I will mention is major publishers. EA has had microtransactions in basically every sports and driving game they've done since 2007 or so. There are plenty of complaints about EA sports games, but I very rarely hear that microtransactions are one of them. You can powerlevel your hockey manz for example. Yeah, this is something that used to be a cheat code. Yeah, closed systems suck and modding is great. But my point is that it is possible to design a game around people playing through naturally but also allow them to pay to skip or get ahead. And on iOS many games are fairly balanced. I just played through Joe Danger Touch, which has pretty extensive in-app currency options. I paid nothing and 100% completed the game with no grinding.
I don't know what this means, but there are more community personnel now than ever. Fans are more involved now than ever in discussing games pre-release. There are more outlets than ever, official and unofficial, to do so. Community managers exist at all because the role of community is more important now than ever.
This is just flatly wrong. Game development is more transparent now than ever. More assets are available pre-release, more questions can be asked to developers and more are answered by developers. Flashback 15 years and games were largely made in secret, released with little fanfare, and the only outlets for fan connection were from reviews in magazines which were often hands-off reviews. I agree that the move towards review embargoes until release day has been a regression from the early internet era, and I agree that the move away from demos is unfortunate, but in fact there are more outlets for pre-release stuff now than ever.
What has changed is the DEMAND. What 15 years ago would have been a handful of usenet posts, buying a magazine and talking for a little bit with friends... today is people who use internet forums and outlets 6+ hours a day dissecting every little thing. Fans are insatiable. There are people on GAF who use GAF 16-18+ hours a day. No matter how much media you release, people want more. Smash Bros released new media every single day for a year before release and the common sentiment in the thread about that was that they weren't releasing enough and the eventful media releases were too few and far between. How much more can you give?
Moreover, when a lack of transparency occurs (let's say release day review embargoes for Homefront; microtransactions in Forza 5), there are more unofficial outlets now than ever to spread that information. It is easier to be an informed consumer now than ever. The cost for waiting a few days before buying a game to let people rapidly figure out if something is afoot is very low. Companies shouldn't try to scam consumers, but consumers should also learn to be savvy. We have currently active threads right now where OPs have bought full price next gen new release hardware and are complaining because they didn't know basic facts before buying the hardware. It's not about whether they are to blame, it's about how easy it would be to fix those issues.
In addition, while CG trailers are common in commercials today, I'd argue that today's commercials are in general more representative than ever before. NES commercials consisted of a bunch of live action stuff that had nothing to do with the game and then a few second clip of decontextualized gameplay. BioShock Infinite's commercial is nonsense, but at least you knew it was about a guy, a girl, and shooting.
Almost no games were ever designed with the product in mind. Publishers used to routinely tell developers "Here's 6 weeks of salary, give us a game". Stuff was more commodity than anything else back then. Metacritic metrics, as much as you can complain about them, were introduced to make creative quality more important and sales less. It used to be that you got royalties and bonuses if your product sold well. Companies decided to try to implement quality metrics. What options do you have for quality metrics? Have an internal quality review? Pay a reviewer to come up with it? Focus groups? I'd argue that of the alternative options, the best way to ascertain quality--no matter how imperfect it is--is aggregate review reception. There are problems. Trying to influence scores while also using them as a measure is a problem. But the system they replaced, which was a sales-only metric, is inferior.
The primary case of Metacritic being harmful is purportedly one like Obsidian missing their bonus for F:NV which was assigned to a Metacritic score they missed by one. Yeah, that's a problem. Just like it'd be a problem if their bonus was assigned to sales and they missed by 100k. Just like it's a problem when a student earns a 49 on an exam instead of a 50. I believe it'd make more sense to have bonuses distributed on a sliding scale. I believe Bethesda is a shitty publisher that treats developers terribly. But the source of the problem is not that Metacritic was used as a quality indicator for bonuses, because any other quality-derived bonus that was all or nothing (say "Wins at least 5 GOTY awards", "Focus groups at at least 90% satisfaction", whatever) could have been just barely missed as well. Publisher exploitation of developers is to blame here.
None of this is to say there aren't examples of your points, or that there aren't problems, or that your particular taste might not be being catered to right now. It could be that you are very dissatisfied. But I'd warn against generalizing about the doom of the industry when many of the problems you identify appear to be cases where you don't like what consumer spending is driving, rather than that publishers aren't listening to consumers. Most of the problems you've identified appear to be problems where you are out of touch with the people buying the most mainstream games. It might seem jaded and cynical to call people idiots, but that might be the better option for you. This is like the difference between saying "The best-selling albums on the chart are all shitty" versus saying "Music publishers are putting out garbage and they're going bankrupt because there's no music like My Bloody Valentine anymore".
I think the industry has some challenges in terms of their business models. But I play more games than I ever have in my life, I am more satisfied with the games I play than I ever have been, and I pay less for those games than I ever have in my life. No matter what genre I like, there are options in indie, mid-tier, and high end. There are green shoots everywhere.
Obviously we can talk about the industry until the cows come home. But what might be a better option is looking into what choices you have under your control that can make you more satisfied. If you feel journalism isn't doing a good job, read less of it. If you feel AAA games suck, try buying different stuff. If you hate the chase of the day one dollar, sit back and buy games a few months later. This is not me calling you entitled, it's me saying that you have a great deal of control over your own happiness and if things are making you unhappy, you should avoid them. This comes with tradeoffs, sure. Indie games can't have the budget of an Uncharted game. But you need to decide, of the available options, which is the best for you and how you might consider being more flexible to find things that make you happy.
I'm pretty sure Dead Island launched at $60, as did Borderlands.
I'll agree to disagree, as this will essentially devolve into a discussion revolving around semantics. Everything has an cost, be it price or opportunity. I believe that there have been missteps in the handling of digital and budget priced titles that otherwise could have been done better, and more effectively, utilizing tools readily available to publishers and platform holders (MS, Sony, Nintendo).
Price flexibility is a rarity, unless you're shovel ware. There are a lot of $60 titles released annually that absolutely should be $20-$40, without question. Will they sell more copies? Maybe, maybe not. However, that is where retailers and platform holders need to step up and start giving some of these titles more visibility. People will ultimately know when their big budget games are coming out, or when they release. They'll buy them. The day 1 sales need to be less important, and the health of the industry needs to be more important.
Day 1 is great, however, generating legs and more revenue overall will only serve to help EVERYONE, and no one is doing it because those big numbers in the short term are "easier to see" than the smaller (but cumulatively larger numbers) over the long term.
As for Unreal Engine 3, I still think it shouldn't be built into the Gears budget. Epic didn't pay themselves license fees, and ultimately they would have made Unreal 3 either way, just as they had before with 2 other engines that were licensed as middle ware. Unreal 3 wasn't built because of Gears, thus the two are budget independent (and likely didn't have 100% overlap on development of either product). You have to remember that Unreal 3 is a product in itself, and had its own budget.
TC McQueen
Member
I agree with you, but you have to let people know they exist and show them that it's fun. Most people don't have the time and money to take risks on games, especially now that video game rental in the US has shrunk to GameFly, Red Box, and some public libraries. If I've got limited time and money, I'm not going to spend it on anything I don't know about, even if it's really cheap. And while some sites do an alright job of showing off lesser known titles, if a game doesn't appeal to me for whatever reason, I'm not going to spend money I could use on other things. And don't get me started on hardware.
Because its the only way to compare historical prices with those today. You rase an interesting point re: cost of living and salaries - in that most people don't think to include them when making inflation adjustment comments to balance how these things fit into cost-of-living.
A quick look on here:
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/...tion-calculator-value-money-changed-1900.html
Shows that £30 in 1995 would be worth £48 today.
I see where you're coming from OP but like others have already said there are many gamers supporting the direction the industry is going in buy still buying the products and services that you're complaining about.
My taste as been leaning more towards indie games because of the directions things are going. If Nintendo starts charging for online mulitplayer I'll be completely done with home consoles too.
My taste as been leaning more towards indie games because of the directions things are going. If Nintendo starts charging for online mulitplayer I'll be completely done with home consoles too.
Kotetsu534
Member
I've largely drifted away from video games, because the direction of travel has taken them to a place that doesn't much appeal to me. I get much more joy digging out Resident Evil 4 or Valkyria Chronicles for a few hours than I ever would from the latest yearly CoD or AC. I still pick up the small number of well-promoted titles that do appeal to me (this year I've purchased The Last of Us and Zelda), and I keep up with the industry news well enough. But people like me are in the minority, and ultimately there's less money to be made from us than the masses, so I wouldn't expect the direction to change in my favour.
I also follow the League of Legends pro-scene fairly closely (along with friends), but that costs me nothing.
I also follow the League of Legends pro-scene fairly closely (along with friends), but that costs me nothing.
While there may be people supporting those publishers and studios, it illustrates that the industry (and maybe us as gamers / onlookers) are short sighted, and possibly out of touch. "Well, it's working now for these guys, so clearly they're doing something right".
I mean, new entertainment mediums could spring up (and they have) and it could impact the industry significantly. Competing dollars are important, and the industry isn't doing enough to really spread that out. Too many publishers are betting their chips on a handful of releases to make day 1 dollars, while putting more and more pressure on other smaller studios without big name success to somehow be competitive at the same price point (without the same marketing budget).
I just don't think "well clearly it's working" as an argument as to it's viability in the long term (we're talking 10, 20 years down the road). I just think that as time goes by, things will change, and if the industry doesn't start to get it right NOW (as in this generation) then there could be some serious consequences later for a lot of studios and gamers alike.
Pound_lb003
Member
That bit specifically evolved not with the consumer to the stage it's at, but to capitalise on the consumers.
And it's all being spread too thin, and it's why the AAA industry is headed towards a bust.
Oi! Usenet was awesome!
I'm going in a tangent here and assuming most people have a smartdevice if they can afford a "luxury" hobby as gaming(I hate the person who came up with that term). So why it may not be the best thing to do, time, money etc you can always "window shop", google/duckduckgo the name of any game that caught your eye and watch/read something about it. But yes I may not be the best to talk about these things, I do know younger people and those just a few years younger than me have it though.
Please Observe: The majority of low income jobs are not held by the teens of today but by the 30 year olds, the single parents. And with that comes awful work hours.
But that makes it even more important to actually research your purchases instead of going with flow.
All great points, but I'm not necessarily concerned with whats working now, but more or less what I see, and how it can be (will be?) problematic to the future of the industry, and us as gamers.
Re: prices. I don't think "hour for hour" is a fair measurement of price, just in the same way I don't think "dollar per hour" is a fair measurement of content pricing.
The important take away is that there are many mediums and platforms that are competing for our dollars, and sitting idly by while competitors and competing mediums rise up for those competing dollars is arrogant and foolish. No industry can remain 100% reactionary to changes in technology. There absolutely needs to more flexibility with pricing, and I can't imagine anyone can honestly dispute that. Failures or not, there are too many games that are releasing outside of their price range, be it at retail, digital, or with DLC, etc. Publishers are exerting too much control, and it is costing a lot of people their jobs.
Re: Services. I disagree. While I think networks and services are further now than they once were, they still lag behind other subscription services (which is specifically what I'm talking about). Content delivery, discovery, and in some cases, even creation is sorely lacking. Exerting control isn't the answer. Perhaps moderation is necessary, and some guidance, but absolute control will not help your platform to grow in a meaningful way.
Further more, there isn't enough in the way of service (for some instances) to justify the cost of the subscription. Simply saying "well, a lot of people don't have a problem with it now" isn't sufficient. If a competitor rises up with a better pricing model and services, and crushes all competitors...that is disastrous, and with the way these platform holders function, reactionary measures may not be enough to prevent something like that. (Granted, this is a fictional scenario, but it is only here to illustrate a point). The point being in this case that there needs to be more forward thinking, more innovation, and more in the way of "services" that outdo the competition, rather than "meet it".
Re: Metacritic. While it can be a measure of creativity, and used to award bonuses, etc, I think that's extremely poor practice when you consider that Metacritic has (as far as I can tell) no metric as to what is a "legitimate" outlet. There are a ton of sites that hammer on specific genre's, platforms, or development studios. There is no "standard" for a reviewer, since it is subjective, and as such, the standards for metacritic scores ad bonus payouts should absolutely NOT be tied together. It's not good practice, frankly.
I think there are good things, and bad things, about all of these practices, but subjectively, I think some of these should be course corrected, as they are hurting competition (even internal publisher competition) and promote stagnation within the industry.
yellow submarine
Member
The industry is maturing, similar to the movie industry, so it's not bad. You need a brain dead annual summer blockbuster to fund a few indie movies.
The industry is now shaped by what people will pay for. This is the only reason why change is driven now, especially for things like DLC and DRM.
It's just a business now. Look to smaller players for the changes you look for, and support them with your money. That's the way to effect change.
The industry is now shaped by what people will pay for. This is the only reason why change is driven now, especially for things like DLC and DRM.
It's just a business now. Look to smaller players for the changes you look for, and support them with your money. That's the way to effect change.
While this is partially true, the way the two industries work couldn't be further from one another.
As an example, it isn't uncommon for an actor or actress to take a role in a block buster film, while stipulating that they will be given the opportunity (be it in budget, publishing, distribution, etc) to make or film a smaller pet project of interest. Or in other cases, these will be stipulations set forth by publishers and distributors.
In the game industry, however, someone like Kojima or Cliffy may not have that freedom to say "Hey, if I make this MGS or Gears for you, I want to have the opportunity to go out and make this little indie project I've been thinking about."
Why? Because Movies are faster and easier to make, and can have lower budgets. How can gaming achieve similar results? By investing in tools for content creation, new technologies, etc. Improving content delivery and discovery is equally as important, and the industry as it sits is doing a piss poor job here.
So while I can see some things being similar, there are things that separate the two, and the gaming industry could definitely improve in some areas to better reflect the movie industry.
yellow submarine
Member
I was trying to simplify my argument, but maybe I went too far. But essentially, the industry needs to mature to the level that the business directors realize what it means to attach a name like Kojima or Cliffy to a project. I think we're well on the way to that happening. Once you get more power into the hands of creative people, then you will certainly see people on the level of Kojima get to make these stipulations.
This is why it's vitally important to have things like industry awards to have /public/ recognition of developer talent.
You have to remember that it took a long time for the movie industry to go from "random bloke based in Hollywood" to "multi million dollar corp making decisions". Once the industry tools mature and standardize, the video game industry will move in that direction too. This is an exciting time to watch it evolve in front of our eyes! From dedicated arcade box to a way to talk to your TV. All within ~30 years, that's amazing.
We're well on our way as an industry to that stage of maturity. You can compare it to things like cartoons -- Family Guy's creator would not have had that kind of pull many years ago, but in this day and age he does.
Let me start with a summary reaction to your position before I get into the detail.
TLDR: Hardcore gamers are often naive and make misguided assumption with respect to the commercial realities the games industry, the challenges it faces, and what is required to overcome those challenges.
And before I proceed, let me also say, my intent here is to inform, not to inflame.
The things you list are not the cause of industry risk. They are the symptoms and reactions of the actual underlying problems of the industry which includes public quarterly reporting cycle, increased competition, very limited retail channel space, rising game development costs, rising consumer expectations of value, a splintered market in terms of platforms, piracy, and retailers aggressively pushing used games over new (on the latter, let's avoid derailing this discussion by saying on this point we agree to disagree).
"We" don't call the shots because anyone posting on this board is, for better or for worse, a minority demographic with respect to the overall market for videogames.
I don't really disagree.
Publishers are often smarter than many would give credit for. Don't mistake decisions arising from "obligations" to their shareholders as raw stupidity. They are two different things.
Very few publishers are engaged in trying to limit. Very few. And even in those cases it is usually limited to only a portion of their portfolio.
You are fundamentally mistaking the motivation here. The aim is not to claim advertiser revenues. It is to control the message. That in itself may be misguided, but it is a very different outcome that is being sought than what you are suggesting.
You are making wrongful assumptions. The "voice of the gamer" is very clearly heard within publishers, and there is a large amount of resource devoted to collating that feedback.
However, you forget that publishers also have at their disposal additional information which gamers don't - sales, revenue, and usage statistics. Gamers only see a small portion of the overall picture.
Decision making is driven when all information is weighed up, and just because it may seem from the outside that a monetization strategy hasn't been successful or that a publisher isn't listening doesn't mean that it actually is the case.
To get some insight into the feedback and decision making process at publishers, I heartily recommend this presentation by Ben Cousins regarding Battlefield Heroes
http://www.slideshare.net/bcousins/paying-to-win It specifically goes into how they approached altering their monetization strategy taking consumer feedback into account, and also makes an illuminating point on the differences between what dissenters say they will do in response to changes and what they actually did.
The average cost of developing and supporting a (console) game has jumped massively in the past 10 years. Over that same period in the US, inflation has raised the price of consumer goods in general by ~26% (see http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Calculators/Cumulative_Inflation_Calculator.aspx)
So, I'd consider there is reasonable upward pressure on pricing, and arguably game prices haven't risen enough in the face of that pressure.
I'd also dispute claims that games are somehow offering less or are overall quality than 10 years ago (and especially claims that DLC is "something we used to get for free" when you actually look at the base offering). If you objectively compare videogames in terms of their content quality, content volume and feature set, I think you'd be hard pressed to make a solid case for suggesting games, on average, have regressed in terms of quality or value for money without donning rose tinted glasses.
Also, if the market in general agreed with that assessment, they'd still be buying games from long ago in preference and greater volume to those released more recently.
Our company has had experience with Humble Bundle, and PS+, and other channels such as Steam sales. While I consider them all great sources of incremental revenue for a given premium priced product, I do not consider them sustainable channels in their own right. Indeed, I actually see them as a catalyst helping drive down prices in general while ratcheting up consumer expectations of value, speeding the adoption of other business models such as free to play.
Also, let's not forget - MOST indie developers are not profitable. When that is the case, you can't advocate indie developer strategies as a model for the commercial game industry.
I don't disagree there are many forces which have stifled creativity, not the least of which is market risk which gamers have a hand in (it is claimed "we" don't want sequels when sequels dominate the tops of the sales charts more often than not - consumers don't want "risk" either it seems).
At the same time, I think we are seeing a resurgence of creativity across the board as different channels have opened up such as web, mobile, and PC/console digital distribution which allow smaller players to bring content to market and larger players to experiment on a smaller scale. I'd go as far to say that there is collectively more creativity and innovation in the marketplace now than any other time in history.
But let's be clear, a large number of studio closures that happened between the end of 2008 and 2011 had nothing to do with anything you are talking about (and pinning the rest on a "lack of creativity" is a huge oversimplification). There are a large number of studios that closed as a reaction to the GFC.
Basically, what happened is that in October 2008 when the markets crashed, it reduced the market cap (and share price) of almost all publicly traded videogame publishers by half, despite the fact that the market for videogames was actually robust (indeed, December 2008 was a record revenue month for the industry). However, publisher corporate executives and shareholders (and to some extent some employees) are motivated by share price.
In order to get the share price back up, you need to beat your predicted numbers in your earnings report. You either new to generate a lot more revenue or reduce costs to get your profitability up. Now, in videogames, generating new revenue usually requires releasing new product which can't happen overnight, so instead almost every publisher slashed the number of products in development dramatically, to bring their overheads down in an effort to stop further share price erosion and to build it back up. And they avoided signing up new products.
This had the knock on effect of pulling the rug out from under innumerable developers with existing projects, and those who needed a new project to survive. The number of projects was so scarce that many developers took on work for less than what it would cost them to develop, in the hope that a new project would come along to subsidize it. But new projects didn't materialize, and many of those that made it past the first few months of the crash didn't last another year as they ran out of money.
Publishers themselves then faced a revenue problem in late 2009 and early 2010 they themselves had created, because they had cancelled a bunch of product that was supposed to land then at the end of 2008. More cuts, layoffs, and cancellations.
At a time when the games industry was actually doing better than ever revenue wise, the mechanics of the public market turned out to be the greatest threat to developers.
One company that I will say failed due entirely due to a lack of creativity, a misunderstanding of the marketplace, and a totally cynical approach to business was Brash. They were so bold and wrong that it was obvious they would fail from their very first press release. Read more about them here http://variety.com/2008/digital/news/brash-fallout-a-cautionary-tale-1117996526/
I would agree that publishers playing to their quarterly earnings reports is a massive detriment to the quality of games and sound, long term decision making.
However, it won't change until there are executive teams are willing to take the short to medium term hit on their share prices and options in order to build long term value, AND they are able to convince shareholders that this is the right action to take.
Again, I think you are oversimplifying the situation and misreading what is actually going on behind the scenes.
We are still in a period where new, sustainable models for building and monetizing content are shaking out. There will be a lot of movement in the form of closures, acquisitions, spinouts, and consolidation as the new market matures.
I think for gamers, there is mostly good news in terms of there being more content and variety than ever before to choose from at all manner of price points. In my opinion, there is more reasonably priced, quality content available than you could ever possibly consume.
As for "reaching" game developers and publishers, as mentioned above, they are listening even if you don't think that they are. What you actually need to do is make sure you back up your voiced opinion with your wallet. If you actually don't like something, then the best way to communicate that is not to buy it.
Just bear in mind again, GAF is in the minority, so consider that "we" might be the ones in the bubble with respect to the market, not the publishers.
I can agree on some points, but not as an excuse to what is or will happen. The film industry began when technology was moving forward at a much slower pace, and as a result, matured at a much slower rate.
We have the technology today to make the industry work better. Unfortunately, none of the platform holders want to agree on a standard of tools (and they never will) and publishers aren't investing enough into their own middleware tools to reduce costs. Given that this is a reactionary industry, it would only take a single publisher to build a standard set of tools to speed along development.
I believe with this new generation of consoles we are at the point where things like textures and facial animations don't need to be done by hand anymore. We can begin to use real people, scanning technology, and mocap to accomplish things significantly faster. Obviously this isn't applicable to every type of game, but those are the "indie projects" that people would work on.
I'm just saying that the industry really needs to reassess spending, prioritize development tools, and become more efficient over all. Sweeping changes would beat out a slow evolution any day of the week, but publishers don't want to pull a studio off of a project and pay them to make tools. They want to pay them to put out whatever product, and then (possibly) make money off that product.
I would love to see a studio like Naughty Dog take a break for a few years and focus exclusively on tools and technologies that would be readily available to all Sony's 1st party studios (and available for license) for content creation.
...but that's a pipe dream until someone wakes up and smells the coffee.
Thanks for some of the insight! I'll try to respond as best I can with what little information I have, as I'm not privy to the same things you are .
Do you not think it is an issue that measures to reduce development costs drastically do not seem to be an industry norm?
While I don't think they are stupid, I still firmly believe they are out of touch. Publishers rely too much on data they get now, and use that simply to react. That data should be driving innovation, not reactions in the short term to reflect profitability during a single quarter.
The problem is that there is no consistency here, and the portions of the portfolios of the major publishers (who are the primary offenders) are the popular titles. I completely agree that it is about controlling the message and not about the money, and that is a solid point...but at what point does controlling that message bite you? For all we saw with Microsofts "Message" during their XBO reveal months...you would think some would aim to avoid such a negative stigma.
Where is that feedback going though? How meaningful is that feedback if, at the end of the day, Publishers are still aiming to meet the expectations of their shareholders and quarterly earnings reports?
Technology has certainly gotten more complex, and some platform holders (Sony) didn't do much to help in that regard last generation (or the generation before that). However, I still believe that investing in tools to reduce these costs in house would be a better approach to increasing profitability and sustainability than simply raising the prices of your titles. DLC isn't always a bad thing, however, the content creation and what you get for your money are often hit or miss. Publishers and developers alike know what content they've created. They've play tested it dozens of times. They know (for the most part) the shortest amount of time it will take to play, the content it offers, etc. Why, then, are they still so inconsistent with pricing, rather, determining their value appropriately? Certainly with all of this data, publisher can see where something has succeeded and failed, and they can appropriately gauge how much they should charge for a title...no ?
Do you think out of control budgets, lack of publisher created tools / adoption among studios, and massive marketing budgets had anything to do with this? I understand that those obligations would still be there, but I can't help but think the publishers put their studios in this position. The marketing budgets for some bigger titles alone is probably larger than smaller ones, which is unfathomable to me. In the day of new technology, why are we seeing marketing strategies from two decades ago? Why are publishers not pushing their own products as a service? There is zero focus to bring the consumer to the publisher, and instead they are simply okay with selling the individual product.
Disney does a great job with their branding as a publisher, and (most of the time) it is successful for them. With the exception of a few major stinkers, Disney has done a great job of making their "Brand" synonymous with quality among the mass market. Publishers need to drive that message, not simply sell their biggest product to consumers.
In addition to that, when a publisher releases dozens of titles per year, there is no reason not to attach your own store front to every title (through a menu, not an obstructive advertisement) to promote their own titles and content. Again, this is something that would be very possible if the investment into your own tools and development environment was made a priority among studios. I can't help but feel this type of investment would pay off in spades over the course of a few years.
I agree that we're the minority, but the minority is also the group that is generally the loudest and gains the most attention, no?
Anyway, on the subject of changes and evolution re: DLC...should we really still be feeling things out nearly a decade later? Seems extremely counterproductive given the oft unstable state of development studios.
Again, thanks for the time, and I hope I'm not too off base here (though I expect I may be!). Thanks
Publishers and developers are constantly trying to improve development efficiencies. Just because it isn't readily visible doesn't mean this isn't happening.
Mixing in your other relevant post here...
All top tier publishers with their own inhouse dev capacity have actually generally invested huge amounts into their own tech and processes, and/or have heavily leveraged middleware.
Small publishers like 505 Games or Majesco don't, but their business model is very different, and they don't have inhouse dev.
EA bought Criterion to acquire both their Renderware engine and their production capacity. And while there was some mismanagement of both those things, ultimately they failed to establish Renderware as a standard across the company as the needs of individual games were just too divergent for a single engine solution to be viable. At the same time, third parties then shied away from licensing Renderware because they didn't want to be beholden to EA with respect to support and they would necessarily have to expose a competitor to their product roadmap.
A single engine or tool can't and will never be suitable for every game given the variety in the medium, and no industry will (willingly) adopt a standard where they are reliant on a competitor.
This is a very naive view of content development. Leveraging technology and processes like mocap and scanning doesn't really reduce the cost of development so much as it improves the quality of it. Mocap can even be more time consuming and expensive than "animating by hand" given the performance setup, cleanup of data, and integration of motion.
There are tools, processes, and engines that can limit increases in development, but in aggregate given the advances of the platforms in producing higher fidelity experiences combined with the ever rising expectations of consumers costs are only going to increase for retail console development.
You are assuming how publishers are using and reacting to data, and also I think putting too much stock in the reliability of feedback.
Feedback is anecdotal and much more emotionally charged, and tends to only reflect opposing ends of the spectrum, where consumers have felt strongly enough about something to actually react to it. Data tells you what is actually happening.
Consumers often do not actually do what they say they will or did. We see this all the time in our usability testing. This happens both consciously and unconsciously, and is not a behaviour just limited to games.
In the Battlefield Heroes talk I linked they had some very specific examples relating to the "pay to win" items in the game where those players most ardently opposed to the concept who threatened to leave not only didn't leave, but ended up spending at a much higher rate than the average player. The changes they made, in spite of a lot of the negative feedback, actually shifted the game to be much more profitable and people spent more time playing the game.
Large companies are still grappling with the nature of the internet, and what you can and can't do.
What you definitely can't do is keep the lid on a misstep and try to suppress it. Ultimately, the truth is going to come out and spread.
What you can do is maintain a product or brand position for a few days leading up to and post launch. This is where publishers try to exert the most control over what content and quality information about a game is released, because those are the days that matter with respect to retail sales which are totally front loaded. Suppressing social channels at this time is merely an extension of review embargo policy, which mostly exist for the same reason.
This may be a misguided or disingenuous approach that doesn't show faith in ones product, but they do it because every hour of good (or at least non negative) buzz at launch matters hugely in terms of revenue generated.
Collating feedback is quite challenging given the many forms and channels it can arrive in. However, all major publishers have channels through which feedback is delivered to the appropriate people, whether it be the dev teams or otherwise.
Again, this is supplemented with other sources such as review scores, actual revenue and sales results, and actual other behavioural data in order to drive business decisions.
Publishers are not a charity. They are businesses that are making decisions towards profitability. So while you may not like the decisions they are making in the context of being a gamer, you need to understand .
Now, you may argue that keeping you as a gamer happy long term has more value to that publisher. But again you need to bear in mind that you, as a minority demographic, likely provide much less potential than if the publisher just focuses on keeping the bulk of their audience happy. And also, there is a short sightedness being generated by the quarterly earnings cycle makes any potential that is their irrelevant (relative to what they are tasked with achieving).
So, coming back to your original question of how meaningful is that feedback if, at the end of the day, publishers are still aiming to meet the expectations of their shareholders and quarterly earnings reports? It is only meaningful to the publisher if it drives profitability, and unfortunately that likely means that feedback isn't as valuable as you yourself thinks it is.
While I agree with you from an architecture perspective, Sony actually invested heavily in tools and an engine that they made available to developers and publishers for free.
We actually built several games on their engine, and actually ported it to 360 and PC.
Again, publishers are both doing that and investing in middleware where it makes sense. It is happening, along with other exercises designed to reduce costs like code and asset reuse.
Relatively speaking, it is still early days for DLC as part of the business model. Some publishers are more sophisticated than others, but all are learning at their own pace.
As people move between companies and the knowledge disseminates more, you'll start to see more consistency emerge.
Facebook and mobile game developers and publishers are much more advanced in this area because the rate of learning is faster as the rate of game releases and version iteration is much more granular than console. Those people moving back into the traditional industry will help create some standardization in pricing also.
Also remember, of course, that publishers are privy to the sales data that gamers are not. It may seem like something is heavily overpriced relative to your perceived value, but a critical mass of other gamers may not see it that way. What functionality or specific additional gameplay time is added via DLC is actually (perhaps surprisingly) a very separate question to what it should actually be priced at given humans are somewhat irrational when it comes to a lot of purchase behaviour (on that note I can recommend the Century of the Self documentary which explores this concept http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-century-of-the-self/ ).
There are a lot of reasons why individual developers and publishers have gone out of business over the years. I was just highlighting the root cause of a lot of recent strife because there are many who attributed the demise of one entity or another to the wrong things.
Large development and marketing budgets are again symptoms of the market, not the cause of the problems themselves. However, a failure to divert from this arms race is a problem in itself, and the slow reaction to the issues has put many companies in a precarious (and long term unsustainable) position.
Note though, some companies, like Ubisoft, want an arms race. They want the barrier to entry to be high to create a defensible position and limit the competition.
Don't mistake apparently high quality messaging and product for market success. Disney has made some huge strategic missteps when it comes to their platform and product choices.
Somebody who has done it "better" than Disney is Warner Bros who I'd argue has had both a consistently high quality output which they have combined with commercial success. However, Warner Bros has totally under-invested in digital distribution, mobile, and web which I think is going to hurt them long term (a topic for another htread).
This is a heavily utilized technique in web and mobile games, and is something that console publishers could consider (though I'm sure many gamers would object).
Hardcore gamers are the most visible to publishers, yes, as they are the most vocal.
But that doesn't mean they should be listened to more than any other segment of the market. Indeed, publishers and developers often need to be careful to put the feedback of hardcore gamers in context because playing to that group could potentially result in decisions which heavily limit the accessibility and revenue potential of an individual product.
DLC was only really introduced in the last generation, so it was very new to everyone - publishers, developers, and gamers. Everybody was starting from zero.
As mentioned further above, with console games you only get to try new things on a very slow schedule given the cadence of releases. Technology and expertise only gets built up over time as you get the opportunity to experiment and innovate.
I'd expect things to shake out within just a couple of years once publishers gravitate to the "optimal" pricing and monetization models.
Again, thanks for the time, and I hope I'm not too off base here (though I expect I may be!). Thanks
You are just operating with only half of the picture, and that is no fault of your own given publishers keep a lot very close to their chest.
Hopefully my comments can help fill in some of the gaps and add perspective.
noonespecial
Member
Mario and 8byte - thank you for the thought provoking and very civil discussion, the well thought out questions (8byte) and the informed responses (Mario). This discussion demonstrates the incredible conversations that can happen only on NeoGAF and I wanted to let both of you know I very much appreciate the time and energy both of you spent posting your thoughts on this subject.
Thank you.
Thank you.