80 Games
polycounter lvl 18
I saw this over on cgtalk and wonder how the PC community thinks about this report.
"A new report on the risks involved in game publishing and development has been released suggesting that, in the next generation, as few as 80 games a year will turn a profit."
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1621&Itemid=2 Money Money Money - where is it ?
"A new report on the risks involved in game publishing and development has been released suggesting that, in the next generation, as few as 80 games a year will turn a profit."
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1621&Itemid=2 Money Money Money - where is it ?
Replies
Its the Hollywood system pretty much, the entertainment is so cheap that consumer doesnt care if he/she will not like it and thus just goes to see the movie and usually does no research (like reading reviews). That way they can sell shit and still turn huge profits.
Imagine this: you go to store (irl or internet) see a new game, look at the box and think 'it might be cool' look at the price tag '5' and buy it without a second tought.
Only problem i see is that games requier a system or another to run them and movies dont. Thats why maybe a cheap ~50-100 system might be needed so that people would buy that without a second tought aswell.
2-3 hour long games sound like a bad idea. a game is not comparable to a movie, different sort of entertainment. instead, a game should have replay value, not some linear story where you only have to click through in the right order to get to the outro sequence.
i agree that there are too many games out there that follow this scheme though.
rising dev costs will lead to new ways of financing and ultimately to different types of games - less interactive movies that are counted by the hour. at least i hope so.
that article however follows the same old routine - assume what's hot today, will grow steadily for the next years. not that they had ever failed in such forecasts...
so, lot's of mmorpg's based on licensed ip running on mobile phones must be the answer for the years to come
Anyways with my idea of 2-3h long games that are cheap you can pretty much make one core game and release multiple titles with just different artwork and sound (even that you could recycle in large quantities).
Also there comes the possibility of episodic games, you could compare them to comic books, its short, its cheap and next issue comes the next month. But dont think of it like expansion pack as they would have to be playable separatly so if you buy episode 10 and like it you can hunt down episodes 1-9, that way they have longer shelf life.
Why also should publishers be the only group to fund games.. It would be cool to see games funded by organisations, without becoming a large advert..(would be tricky I suppose). But a genuine quality title with appropriate branding could be really successful. Itd be nice to see companies thinking beyond 'slap a few billboards with coca-cola by the side of the racetrack'.
Online distribution is the way it seems to be heading, many many times I've wondered into Game looking for some old classic that I'd like to pay money for, only to see they have a tiny select range of the newest titles, and a few token budget ones. If people mainly buy games from a store with only a fraction of available games, is it any wonder that only a fraction make any profit. Having said this I have noticed a growing number of second hand and budget game stores opening up around the place, which is really cool.
I agree also with the short but sweet idea of gaming, I think ultimately this would allow bigger risks to be taken because of the reduced cost, and we'd hopefully see a larger variety of products. I for one would be happy to see the death of the system as it now operates..The system may change, but games will never die
edit: as far as consoles are concerned, they're basically turning into PCs in boxes anyway, with all the online play and content download.. the only thing that stands in the way of the shareware model working on consoles is the console manufacturers. I hope someday we see a gp2x style indie console appearing with its architecture genuinely designed for ease of development. I'm just daydreaming here..
http://www.incagold.com
From marketing point of view high replay value can be bad as it doesnt motivate consumer to buy the next game.
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i agree that episodic content is one possible way to go. however the episodic concept of a soap opera would not work with a game, imo. linear stories have to be one hell of well developed and presented to make an impression, which is costly. crappy cutscenes with talking heads and the usual save-the-planet stuff sure would not motivate me to buy a sequel. i want to take an active part in the story development - after all i'm not watching a movie, why be passive?
look at how badly cloned titles perform most of the time on the market. someone has this really cool idea that's copied like hell. but by the time everyone else has their product on the market, the customer has moved on and want's something new and different.
so i guess this would happen to all too similar episodic content as well.
lowering dev costs by using largely procedural content could be another way. anyone remember kkrieger, a little game programmed by guys from the demo scene? all the assets were procedurally generated - they didn't need a large art team to do this. especially environments could be handled this way, i guess.
look at how badly cloned titles perform most of the time on the market. someone has this really cool idea that's copied like hell. but by the time everyone else has their product on the market, the customer has moved on and want's something new and different.
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I have to disagree with that, the biggest sellers ARE clones actually FPS, RTS, RPG, etc. - most of these only have slight variations from each other in core gameplay.
I could include sports games buy they mostly rack in cash because player a or b changed a club this season and now everyone wants an update, which maybe adds little new content and few gameplay tweaks and is essentially a patch but they are very licence based thus wouldnt apply to most games.
Rooster - I'd have to disagree about online distribution as well. Although that means more money for the developer, who the hell is going to pay for the game's development? Private investors are extremely hard to get, and there's no way a bank would lone a small studio $3-7 million.
We need publishers, and they know it. That's why they push developers around so much.
Rooster - I'd have to disagree about online distribution as well. Although that means more money for the developer, who the hell is going to pay for the game's development? Private investors are extremely hard to get, and there's no way a bank would lone a small studio $3-7 million.
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Versus 3 to 4 times that for a regular title?
Versus 3 to 4 times that for a regular title?
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I really doubt that. Unless you're making a ridiculously long RPG or something, you're not going to need $28mil to make a game. Unless the studio completely mismanages everything.
And it would make non-generic art styles more expensive than generic ones.
If for example buildings, cars, characters etc are all shared by several games, it would lower production-time and cost tremendously.
And it would make non-generic art styles more expensive than generic ones.
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You think counter productively, its like mass production is bad because now you can buy a car for eur7000 instead of 300k or you can afford more than 1 pair of boots every odd year.
You see it doesnt make non-generic art more expensive than it is now, it will only be more expensive compared to generic art.
But I don't know if I agree with the idea of art middleware. I agree it could help with production time and lower costs some but where are all the big dollars going to? Everyone always talks about cutting this and that in development but that is where content is. Cutting content is creating a lower quality product for cheaper so more money can be made on an inferior product. It cheats the customer, the developer, and content. Cuts need to take place somewhere else I'm just not knowledgable enough to know where that is. I just don't agree it needs to be in development. I could be totally wrong.
Its capitalism, the chinese factory worker who makes your clothes gets paid almost nothing, you might pay $100 for your shirt but the worker is lucky if she/he got $0.01 for making it. Only these poor workers cant afford a computer to bitch about the low pay over the net thus they get ignored.
Anyways the game only has to be as good as requierd to warrant huge sales, if you polish it too long it will cost huge amounts more but sales increase only slightly. To put it simpler they make as shitty game as possible that they can still sell.
Toomas: But most people apply a glass-half-empty logic, i.e. they think "non-generic art is more expensive" instead of "generic art is cheaper" (or in addition to). The problem with that is that many people will opt for a generic style to save money even if they could have made some original new style instead.
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True but its still better than the scenario when you just cant choose a game because its not profitable to make them.
Heres my question, do you want an average game or no game atall?
episodic content, i suppose, is part of a solution. product placement is an obvious one that comes to mind, although i'm not sure if that's what i want exactly.... although.. if we're going to be obsessed with realism, i'd rather that coke can that i can pick up in half-life 2 really be a coke can.. haha it'd be nice to know that in such a bleak world, coke is still running things
Seriously though, I know money begets money and thats the way it is but there's a point where it's ridiculous and oppressive I think.
Hey if I win the lottery I am going to give my money to great game companies so they dont need stupid publishers.
Ok I know I'm being naive but this just makes me hurt inside.
Of course no small company is going to compete with doom3, but theres no shortage of doom3's now are there. Theres a whole lot of niches to fill inbetween those big name games.
edit: that sounded rather unfair on introversion- they are making commercial quality titles. Infact so are the others, just not equal to far cry etc
melissa but you would keep enough money to live like a rockstar, wouldnt you?
I am not saying that I think it is a exspecially good idea (because I also love non-generic art styles), but it will not lower the quality of these (already) generic games. Actually the opposite is true: If an entire team is just working on creating great characters for a wide variity of games, they will surly be a lot better than standard (maybe even made with a tight deadline) game characters.
Just look on how speed-tree is used today: It is not used because it is cheaper (well it might acually be, or atleast the general concept could make it potentially cheaper in the long run), but because it looks better.
i think it's quite an example of totally generic, over and over re-used stuff. i would be much more fond of seeing procedurally generated stuff, that way you're saving big time modeling, uvmapping, texturepainting but have variety. it's been done already. hand made content looks still nicer but takes much longer as well.
toomas: i was thinking more in terms of "always the same subject", specifically counter-strike/anti terror multiplayer shooters spring to mind. when you have episodic content, you have to do more than just offer a new story in the same setting like in some soap opera. gameplay has to evolve - and it does afaik in the sort of titles you mentioned.
vassago: i guess you misread - i'm not in the 2-3 hours camp