It's not the Triple AAA GTA formula. If it isn't cranking out AC money or GTA money, publishers don't wanna do it and let's be honest, the next side scroller or megaman game isn't going to do those numbers. I ain't saying it's right. I'm just saying they are following a formula they think gives them the most money.
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When Publishers Kick, Developers Start (The Jimquisition)
- Thread starter CMDBob
- Start date
It's not the Triple AAA GTA formula. If it isn't cranking out AC money or GTA money, publishers don't wanna do it and let's be honest, the next side scroller or megaman game isn't going to do those numbers. I ain't saying it's right. I'm just saying they are following a formula they think gives them the most money.
Audioboxer
Member
Middle-shelf budget, AAA title. (although I'm sure the budget will have increased from Demons Souls).
This can happen when a middle-shelf title hits home hard, and I'd say goes on to sell millions.
TheSlySoul
Member
Kickstarter does have potential in general and Shovel Knight shows this.
It just needs more regulations for hack developers before it goes main stream.
It just needs more regulations for hack developers before it goes main stream.
The problem I have with this is that we are always shitting on publishers for not taking risks and milking the same cow.
Yet, here comes the developers, asking money on KS, so they can keep the risk as low as possible (zero?) and keep making the same games again, because they make money. And also adding some shady shit on budget and project scope from time to time.
So... not a lot of change, only now developers take money with no consequences and no control.
I realize this is a simplification of the whole thing, but I am not sure KS is making the indie development scene more creative or free. As a financial/marketing tool, it's amazing for devs of course, but not sure about the creative spark and pushing the genre forward.
Yet, here comes the developers, asking money on KS, so they can keep the risk as low as possible (zero?) and keep making the same games again, because they make money. And also adding some shady shit on budget and project scope from time to time.
So... not a lot of change, only now developers take money with no consequences and no control.
I realize this is a simplification of the whole thing, but I am not sure KS is making the indie development scene more creative or free. As a financial/marketing tool, it's amazing for devs of course, but not sure about the creative spark and pushing the genre forward.
Probably not the creative spark we hope for but that's not the developer's fault. People, the funders, will prefer familiar faces and familiar names.
Mighty 9 - Mega Man
Star Citizen - Wing Commander Privateer
Yooka Laylee - Banjo Kazooie
Divinity - Ultima
If you have a unique alien concept and it needs funding, you might need an angel investor / publisher as it may be a hard sell to gamers.
You have a very wrong view of Kickstarter. Most of the developers on Kickstarter genuinely want to make the games they ask for funding for. Keiji Inafune wants to make Mega Man-style platformers and that's why he made Mega Man games. IGA wants to make Metroidvania games and that is why he made Castlevania games. The guys at Playtonic want to make 3D Platformers which is why they made Banjo-Kazooie, Conker, and Donkey Kong 64 when they were at Rare. It's no different than Bungie wanting to make First-Person Shooters and then making Marathon, Halo, and Destiny, except that Bungie actually can secure funding from a AAA publisher like Activision, whereas these guys on Kickstarter can not. The issue with publishers not taking risks is never about the AAA developers who actually want to make AAA games and thus make excellent AAA games like Naughty Dog, Bungie or Rockstar North do, It's with the imitators who try to chase after that success without the soul that developers like those imbue in their games. It's the imitators who try to make a AAA game but fail because they don't understand why the games they are trying to imitate are so good.
Jacksinthe
Banned
People are hyped and asking for those things because they know the large devs/pubs don't do anything else. They know not to expect anything "new" or exciting and if something is "new", its usually designed with the same cross-genre checklist like every other AAA IP.
And if people are clamoring over HD remakes instead of proper sequels that speaks volumes about the distrust for a proper sequel due to the aforementioned checklist bullshitery and current AAA practices if people would rather play old games instead of new IPs or proper sequels.
That says a lot. The AAA industry is done. I'm just about done with AAA entirely because its homogenized. It does nothing to raise the bar or push the envelope save for a few titles every gen and that's about it.
This is where KS and indies come in. We have the fresh ideas, often wrapped in nostalgia, sure, budgets arent the greatest, but we do push that envelope, we try to be inventive and creative because none of the AAA developers are doing it.
No, they don't, and that's the whole of the problem.
Formula would be "Our franchise x always sells around y, so as long as we keep the costs of making game X under what y is, it will be profitable."
What they're doing is seeing Franchise Z making a BUNCH of more money, and pubs going "I WANTS ME SOME OF Z CHANGE X TO PUT IN PARTS OF Z, WE'LL GET BOTH AUDIENCES!!!!!11!"
We've seen how well that works out for most of these pubs. The massive problem for us, as gamers, is this leads to pubs then thinking the games aren't profitable at all because they're not selling what they could be if they magically had every possible gamer care about the series, so they don't bother. And to that, thank god for Kickstarter.
SatelliteOfLove
Member
Another angle is that there's no angle over the IP or profits. You don't get that "work for hire" situation that doomed Game Republic and almost doomed Obsidian, and don't get IP owned by the publisher as part of the agreement (see Free Radical and most NA/WE independant studios circa 10 years ago). This allows a Bloodstained to be THEIRS, and incintivizes publishers to not exploit the desperate dev houses into no-risk contracts, as there's now avenues for independant studios to recieve funding other than them.
It's always been this way of seeking top-flight graphics and huge scope on games, it's just become untenable to sustain this except for a successful few. The year Squaresoft released the then-AAA FFVII, they had 8 other titles, and published twice as much domestically and that much internationally. You can see it in the number of boxed releases from EA, Actiblizz, Ubisoft, and others; they're plummeting after the PS2 faded away circa 2007.
It's always been this way of seeking top-flight graphics and huge scope on games, it's just become untenable to sustain this except for a successful few. The year Squaresoft released the then-AAA FFVII, they had 8 other titles, and published twice as much domestically and that much internationally. You can see it in the number of boxed releases from EA, Actiblizz, Ubisoft, and others; they're plummeting after the PS2 faded away circa 2007.
You've got to take note of when was the last time Nintendo put out a game that put the metroid in Metroidvania, or the time Capcom didn't troll on the megaman fanbase and actually released a Megaman game, or a time before Konami stopped making games altogether.
Don't get me wrong, I likes my Tomb Raiders, GTA's and Uncharted's, but if the franchises went AWOL for 10 l+ years then fuck yeah will I back the not-Tomb-Raider kickstarter, on the other end of the spectrum Assassin's Creed had me burnt out at Revelations that I wouldn't care if that dissapeared one day.
I think this cannot be emphasized enough, especially when you have a turn of console generations and people are expecting the newest shiniest games on the shelves.
Tizoc
Member
Fancy graphics are fine and dandy, but IMO if they're not backed by an interesting gameplay system it can leave much to be desired, and risks being a one-time play game.
Sure, I agree, but you also have a ton of people who are disappointed that they bought a $400 machine that mostly plays small budget games that could be run on a machine that they already own.
silvermember
Banned
With those two games it is probably due to them NOT selling enough to justify making them. Ya, they might sell a full hundreds thousands but when you are a big company a full hundreds of thousands is not enough money for a big company.
Large companies due to their size tend to get unfortunately locked out of small markets because the growth they provide will not sustain them. This is one of the first things you learn in school, which is also one of the reasons why Kodak is dead and why IBM is out of the hardware market.
So you are right they are fairly popular, but not that big.
Let me put it this way, large companies do not do things unless there is big money on it. Contrary to popular belief companies are not hate money, if they thought a 2d castlevania could make them sufficient money, they would do it.
Remember over time certain types of games and even IP loses their value.
Sho_Nuff82
Member
Is the solution simply to have more developers who are privately owned rather than publicly traded? Is it not inevitable for any publicly traded company to mitigate risk and pump out dependable sequels?
With regards to those specific franchises, we shouldn't underscore the impact that console/handheld exclusivity has had on the reception of several products. Japanese developers in particular were dedicated to putting smaller 2D projects on DS or PSP exclusively in the mid-2000s; MS obviously bought Banjo from platform-happy Nintendo. Castlevania wasn't dead; Lords of Shadow sold millions of copies. Platformers weren't dead; ditto to all of Nintendo's premiere platformers of the last 10 years.
The multiplatform nature of most Kickstarters, particularly the nearly universal appearance of these titles on PC, has gone a long way to unsheathing the "true demand" for a lot of these products.
With regards to those specific franchises, we shouldn't underscore the impact that console/handheld exclusivity has had on the reception of several products. Japanese developers in particular were dedicated to putting smaller 2D projects on DS or PSP exclusively in the mid-2000s; MS obviously bought Banjo from platform-happy Nintendo. Castlevania wasn't dead; Lords of Shadow sold millions of copies. Platformers weren't dead; ditto to all of Nintendo's premiere platformers of the last 10 years.
The multiplatform nature of most Kickstarters, particularly the nearly universal appearance of these titles on PC, has gone a long way to unsheathing the "true demand" for a lot of these products.
R_thanatos
Member
I can only be happy to see that some genre of games aren't dying because we can make them live throught kickstarter.. IMo , kickstarter in a flawed, yet good alternative that should exist along side the AAA games.. Who knows , maybe, at some point , when some publishers will stop losing money with AAA games ( becauseonly a bit of them are trully profitable given their budgets ) , they'll learn to scale down their expectations a bit.
The worst generation.
Version 3.0
Member
I'm not sure that's true. At least, not by the current definition of "AAA", which refers to a game's budget. There was no such thing back then; if the term "AAA" was used, it was referring to a game's quality. But anyway, I'd be surprised if Super Mario World's budget was even close to the highest of its time. Maybe on an extremely narrow time frame, comparing it to 8-bit games, but there are 16-bit gen games whose budgets were certainly much, much higher.
Anyway, I understand your point, but what you're presenting is a distortion of the truth. The truth is that there is no simple answer to the question asking to compare budgets now and then. To simply say "they used to cost tens of thousands and now they cost tens of millions" is a flat-out lie...even though we hear it parroted by publishers quite often.