Home General Discussion

The future of Epic?

polycounter lvl 9
Offline / Send Message
glottis8 polycounter lvl 9
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-08-16-epic-games-working-on-five-new-titles

"It's nice to target the PC as a primary platform again," teased Capps, "not just for ports."

I am excited for this! and then he went on to talk about this, which i support and understand!

Capps went on to suggest that companies need smaller-sized projects to counter-balance the big-bucks, high-stakes blockbusters.

"Everyone knows the middle class is disappearing from the console business," he said. "Gears of War I hope will do really well, but a pretty good game doesn't make its money back any more. A game like Homefront sells a couple of million copies and they close the studio, right?

"That's not enough any more. That's pretty depressing. You don't want to see what happens to an industry where it's Call of Duty, Halo and Gears and no-one else has enough money to make any games any more. That's not a fun industry.

"I can't bet my entire company every time I make a game," declared Capps. "That's a really dangerous business."

Any thoughts?

Replies

  • Rick_D
    Offline / Send Message
    Rick_D polycounter lvl 12
    he has said some stupid shit before but this is pretty intelligent
  • Maph
    Offline / Send Message
    Maph polycounter lvl 8
    It's the natural evolution of this industry, wouldn't you agree?
    The risks tied to big budget AAA games are just too much for non industry top developers to handle imho. So naturally the focus is going to smaller more manageable projects that can offer a very big turnout (Infinity Blade comes to mind) with pretty much "minimal" risk.

    Also, smaller projects also have a huge potential to being truly creative and original; something I can only applaud!
  • glottis8
    Offline / Send Message
    glottis8 polycounter lvl 9
    I am hoping this mentality will spread so that we don't hear of an awesome studio releasing a game that took 3 or 4 years, turn out awesome, but soon after layoff most of their staff.

    I am comfortable working on 3 month to a year game cycles.
  • odium
    Offline / Send Message
    odium polycounter lvl 18
    Unreal ONE sequel and Shadow Complex 2 please... Then a high quality Samaritan style version of UT99...

    Otherwise, GTFO :@:
  • Calabi
    Offline / Send Message
    Calabi polycounter lvl 12
    Well the thing is none of them are really taking any risks. No new ips or ideas. Or maybe the customers dont want new things? If true the market will die eventually shedding customers a bit at a time.

    I think even Activision know that. I expect they are biting there nails at the thought of the moment when their customers, wake up or get tired.

    They have to take risks, people need to get excited about things.

    What he says doesnt mean much though, he's talking about as if these smaller games will be guaranteed sales. Not if they just make the same old games except smaller and slightly cheaper.
  • skankerzero
    the push for realism is what's bad for the industry.

    It takes longer to produce assets thus raising your budgets and requiring way more sales to make back any money.

    If I had it my way, we would still be at PS2 level game assets. That was a good time. When working on a game for a year and a half meant it was AAA.
  • Gilgamesh
    Offline / Send Message
    Gilgamesh polycounter lvl 12
    Didn't some guy from epic say that pc was dead a few months ago?
  • crazyfingers
    Offline / Send Message
    crazyfingers polycounter lvl 10
    The sooner this industry collapses, the sooner it can be rebuilt, in fact looking at the big picture we may already be towards the end, maybe 5 years away from a rebirth of the gaming landscape. All the big studios are trying to monopolize their share of the market, blizzard with bnet 2.0, EA with origin, consoles with their exclusive consoles, apple with their store, i could go on. The market fragments more and more but never grows because all these massive publishers are hoarding their player base to themselves. Brand loyalty is killing this industry. Gamers live in a bubble, able to afford a platform or two, but more or less oblivious to their other options. It's not about winning the graphics game, it's about isolating your player base and shoving overpriced content down their throats.

    Minecraft and Angry birds are the big winners because in the arms race to own a portion of the gaming market, they just put out fun games anyone could easily access for a cheap price.
  • glynnsmith
    Offline / Send Message
    glynnsmith polycounter lvl 17
    So...does this mean more muscle-headed characters in power armour, or less?
  • xvampire
    Offline / Send Message
    xvampire polycounter lvl 14
    unless console introduce new next gen tech. the graphic quality will be outpaced by multi function devices like handheld/phone or pc in upcoming years

    living room experience? we will see small phone or next gen handheld nintendo/psp can be ported to hdtv.
  • PolyHertz
    Offline / Send Message
    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666
    glynnsmith wrote: »
    So...does this mean more muscle-headed characters in power armour, or less?

    The official term is the DudeBro gener. :p
  • PixelMasher
    Offline / Send Message
    PixelMasher veteran polycounter
    whats funny is that game budgets are still only a fraction of film budgets. 35 mill for most games is about average, whereas films can cost upwards of 200 mill. I wonder what would happen if they released AAA titles at 15-20 bucks, a bit more than the cost of a movie ticket. Yes, more people go to see movies than play games but the gap is closing, everyone grows up with games nowdays. if they went for lower prices I wonder if the volume of sales would increase.

    I know I think way more about spending 60 bucks on something than 20. hell, if you spend 15 bucks to go see a 2 hour movie and it sucks its not like the average person get too pissed off. 20-30 bucks on a AAA game thats going to give you 8-20 hours or so of entertainment would fine by me, and I would probably end up buying more games as the risk vs money gamble would be half of what it is now. no one likes a 60 dollar turd.

    I would be completely fine with 30 dollar new releases with a one time use registration code to make used game sales go bye bye. if you think about it, thats pretty much how the pc market has become, no trade used games, which allows companies to have awesome sales, especially combined with digital distribution.
  • Mark Dygert
    http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/epic-vp-slams-nintendo-revolution-controller
    Mark Rein, holding up a Xbox 360 pad, to whoops and cheers from the audience, he proclaimed: "This is the Xbox 360 controller, and there's nothing wrong with it. It works just fine for playing games, and it works fine for first-person shooter games, as evidenced by the fact that they sold more first-person shooters on consoles than anybody's ever sold on PCs."
    They hurt the PC crowd when they fell in love with Microsoft's money. Now its all "come on baby you know I didn't mean it... lets make beautiful PC games again... hello? Anyone here?"
    /tumbleweed

    MS tried to reinvigorate the PC market with "games for windows" but they can't pick up the pieces after they blew it all to hell. Even if Epic wades back into the PC market its a rich mans game and the economy isn't supporting console games (poor mans PC) much less supporting people to a point that they will be dropping 2k on a new PC to play a new game. Those days are long gone and they aren't ever coming back.

    If the economy ever bounces back people will be willing to drop 50-60 bucks on trivial entertainment again then you might see a console revival, but a lot of people traded in their games budget for a smart phone data plan and are sticking to the .99 cent end of the industry. I think it will take a new round of console hardware for people to get excited about buying consoles again and I just don't see that happening. Epic will be sitting on the latest and greatest tech for years to come... while the PC crowd still rattles around in their dusty ghost town...

    The next generation of console hardware should offer in new pricing structures, they should roll prices back to 25-30 for new games and offer it through digital distribution (exactly like steam) for 15-20. Until prices come in line with the economic reality people face, they'll continue to opt out of buying expensive games.
  • PolyHertz
    Offline / Send Message
    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666
    I wonder what would happen if they released AAA titles at 15-20 bucks. I know I think way more about spending 60 bucks on something than 20. 20-30 bucks on a AAA game thats going to give you 8-20 hours or so of entertainment would fine by me, and I would probably end up buying more games as the risk vs money gamble would be half of what it is now. no one likes a 60 dollar turd.

    I haven't payed more then $25 for a single game this gen because I'm willing to wait long enough for them to get within that range (I also never buy used if its still possible to get new). But the problem with selling games at that price when they first come out is that if a game is popular enough they would be significantly undercutting potential profits.

    What really needs to happen is companies pricing games based on projected sales, instead of a one-size-fits-all like they currently are. This was common back in the PS1 day, but sense then it only seems to happen near the end of a systems life, and then a new system comes out and for the next few years virtually every game is sold at the same price again.

    Of course these days companies can release games exclusively digital to reduce costs, but on the console side this limits your market (sometimes substantially) and is still far from hassle free (especially for indies).

    Direct sales through the publisher is another way to improve profits, as it means you can gauge sales numbers better before determining unit production volume (and hence per-unit production cost). Of course you need to include some sort swag occasionally for it to work, but NIS America, a very niche publisher, has done this with great success apparently. It also lets you cater to other markets/regions that you might not otherwise reach. Selling uber limited-edition releases (the $100+ type) can help too if you've got enough fans for it.

    Anyhow I'm just saying that their are better ways to try and get additional profits when releasing non-blockbuster/AAA titles then trying to sell them for $60 like everyone else.
  • Mcejn
    Offline / Send Message
    Mcejn polycounter lvl 12
    I don't buy that the shift to smaller scale/lower budget titles will help push the price back down. It just means greater profits for the companies making them. I can picture price ranges for these new "smaller" scoped titles being around 40-50$ USD.

    In any case, I don't think Epic working on 5 titles surprises any of us, especially since they aren't going to state the level of production any of them are at right now. Most studios usually have 2-3+ projects going at any given time in some capacity anyway.

    None of this stops me from being excited about the future of this industry, of course. :)
  • Snefer
    Offline / Send Message
    Snefer polycounter lvl 16
    Mcejn wrote: »
    I don't buy that the shift to smaller scale/lower budget titles will help push the price back down. It just means greater profits for the companies making them. I can picture price ranges for these new "smaller" scoped titles being around 40-50$ USD.

    In any case, I don't think Epic working on 5 titles surprises any of us, especially since they aren't going to state the level of production any of them are at right now. Most studios usually have 2-3+ projects going at any given time in some capacity anyway.

    None of this stops me from being excited about the future of this industry, of course. :)

    Well, that is not what he was implying, quote from the interview:

    "Commenting on the size of those projects, in answer to a question from the audience, Capps intimated that the games would be download or mobile titles, and certainly not on the scale of the AAA projects which Epic had previously focused on.

    "At Epic we didn't multiply the studio size by five when we started working on these multiple projects, so you can make some assumptions about the size of those projects," Capps told the audience, when asked about spiralling development costs for AAA console titles."


    I personally believe that making small titles with limited scope is a good way to keep the revenue flow for companies, specially independent developers, while switching between projects. There is always a period of time when people are just sitting around waiting, better to use that time to build something small and cool. Its a win-win for everyone :]
  • Mark Dygert
  • Mcejn
    Offline / Send Message
    Mcejn polycounter lvl 12
    Thanks, I see what you're saying Snefer. I was more or less just throwing out my general beliefs on the subject.
  • acc
    Offline / Send Message
    acc polycounter lvl 18
    "I can't bet my entire company every time I make a game," declared Capps. "That's a really dangerous business."
    Coming from the same studio that, not too long ago, told us AAA development didn't have to be so costly and everyone was just doing it wrong.
    epicfacepalmz80.jpg
    I don't buy that the shift to smaller scale/lower budget titles will help push the price back down. It just means greater profits for the companies making them. I can picture price ranges for these new "smaller" scoped titles being around 40-50$ USD.
    You will see it with spinoffs of big IPs -- you know Activision will totally try it -- but $40-50 for a smaller game is not going to fly with a market full of $5-$20 dollar games unless it has something special going for it (like a big IP).
  • flaagan
    Offline / Send Message
    flaagan polycounter lvl 18
    Get rid of store-specific bonuses, get rid of raping gamers' wallets for post-launch dlc, get rid of nothing but repeats , get rid of "project $10" and its clones, stop worrying about your fucking bottom line and start worrying about your player's high score.
  • PolyHertz
    Offline / Send Message
    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666
    flaagan wrote: »
    get rid of "project $10" and its clones

    I don't see whats wrong with Project $10, at least in principal? Making gamers who buy used have to pay extra for the online part of a game seems fine to me as long as its done right, that is:

    1. you still have a way to play your game online if you bring it to a friends house
    2. single player content doesn't get locked out.
    3. It should use a universal payment system like psn points instead of being vendor specific.
    4. games should have an online trial period before having to pay, in case the online community is dead or their are other issues.

    And yea, store-specific bonuses are bullshit (unless its a direct buy incentive).
  • Ace-Angel
    Offline / Send Message
    Ace-Angel polycounter lvl 12
    People can wait to buy the game for cheaper and not have to dabble in second hand sales, or pay up the project 10 check.

    That's all I have to say, either learn patience or buy the game day 1, no need to wait for one of your rich friends to get bored with a game then take it off him for less money, that's cheating from a logical point of view, especially if they give away the game about a week after they bought it.

    Also, +1 to store pre-orders, honestly, what happened to the good old days of unlocking costumes for characters? I know I pulled a little too many on Jade from MK.
  • JacqueChoi
    Offline / Send Message
    JacqueChoi polycounter
    Meh. I just think the future is going to be prodecuralizing things so artists no longer have to touch it.

    Hair sim / physics would be nice. Cloth deformation physics would save a lot of zbrush/baking time.

    Removal of Normal Maps and just support for a lot more polygons (tesselation).


    I dunno. I think our current pipeline is incredibly cumbersome, and there's been almost no technological effort to streamline it.




    That said, the move to mobile isn't necessarily a bad thing. Keep in mind, my current phone is more powerful than the computer I had 7 years ago.
  • dejawolf
    Offline / Send Message
    dejawolf polycounter lvl 18
    hmm? art assets will all go turbosquid. that'll help bring down the price of the next-gen modern warfare FPS for sure.
    just take a readymade FPS engine, plop in a bunch of art assets you bought, and off you go.
  • Kevin Johnstone
Sign In or Register to comment.