Gaming - What's Wrong With The Model

[JayVe]

I found an EXCELLENT article over at GameDaily that discusses a number of things. The crux of the article is that online gaming is the future for developers (http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/features/my-turn-the-flow-of-talent-and-money-from-consoles-to-online-development/). Not sure if I agree or not, but the article does highlight a number of things wrong with the current industry model.
I am reminded of a conversation I had with my former boss, Atari CEO Bruno Bonnell, someone I admire, discussing the launch of Driver in 1998 versus the launch at the time of Driver: Parallel Lines. The comparisons were stark and the financial results could not have been more different. The development costs had increased by more than 14 times in eight short years yet the sales projections were flat at best. The competition was now more intense, and with the advent of the web consumers were empowered to make buying decisions before they ever left their homes.

****

It is safe to say that no video game publisher has yet to find the winning model for integrating consumer feedback.

"Consumers don't know what kind of games they want to play. We have to tell them."

"By the time we get to a playable version of the game it is too costly to make any significant changes to the game."

"We need to ship this game this quarter. We can make those improvements in the sequel."

Anyone that has spent even six months in the video game industry has heard and felt these attitudes. The movie business spends significantly more money on consumer research than the video game business.
I'd LOVE to hear from the gamers as to what THEY think is wrong with the industry model of gaming today.

[DoctorFinger]

Simple: it costs too damn much to make even a basic game now. The average game - assuming there is no sequel on which to reuse assets - has to sell somewhere around 4M copies to break even. That's partly why publishers are so enamored with the Wii and DS. Those games cost so much less to produce, and therefore don't have to sell as many copies to break even. Consequently we only get games which can be 'sequelized'.

On the other end are MMOs, which everyone sees as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Unfortunately not enough companies go with the EVE Online business model, and instead try to break the bank with 'the next WoW'. Most of which fail.

That said, I don't really have a solution, either.

[frederec]

I don't think it's the whole gaming model that's flawed. I think it's instead the impulse that every game has to be a AAA title that pushes the boundaries of graphics.

I think moderate progress, rather than this explosive growth in budgets, is fine for most games. We only need a few blockbusters. The problem is many companies feel they need a blockbuster budget for a game that's not really made to be a blockbuster.

Then again, the game I've been most looking forward to this fall is a new game for the Playstation 2 (Persona 4). It's a modest upgrade over the last game, it's not even on a next-gen system. I feel pretty safe that it will be nice and profitable for Atlus.

My opinion may also not count for much in this because I have a personal policy of not paying $60 for a brand new game. It needs to hit $50 or less before I'll think about buying it (with occasional exceptions like when the missus got us to buy Wii Fit this weekend or when White Knight Chronicles finally comes out).

[JayVe]

My opinion may also not count for much in this because I have a personal policy of not paying $60 for a brand new game. It needs to hit $50 or less before I'll think about buying it

That's an excellent policy. Perhaps we can train companies to give us products we want, at reasonable prices. Solidarity. Also, check out the Last Remnant over at Amazon for $40.

[KingGorilla]

Listen to burning questions fron GDC 07

[frederec]

That's an excellent policy. Perhaps we can train companies to give us products we want, at reasonable prices. Solidarity. Also, check out the Last Remnant over at Amazon for $40.

Unfortunately, no 360 for me, else I'd be very tempted. However, the recent trend of amazon to give out (after you buy it) money off future game purchases did get me to buy Fallout 3. So now I've got this $10 sitting around telling me..."Valkyria Chronicles is only $50...you know you want it..."

And I wish I could train companies to go back to a standard $50 for new games, but I know I'm in the minority with my mode of thinking. And that's fine, at least I'm saving money.

[roboninja]

I have great games to play, and many other great games I will never play. Where is the problem again?

[Gorvi]

We could have no new game releases for the next 3 to 4 years and I'd be good with my backlog. Games just need to stop being so ambitious, not every game needs to have such high production values.

[Shadowstorm]

What really needs to happen is the stop towards the annihilation of the used games market.

[JayVe]

Games just need to stop being so ambitious, not every game needs to have such high production values.
Is that really the case? Reviews are constantly knocking points off of scores for things like, no voice acting, low resolution textures, cliché storyline, etc. If a developer throttles back their ambition, it will show.

Hell, how much flack do Wii games get for not bing in HD?

If the game is fun, a game is fun. We are in agreement on that. But to state that game developers need to be LESS ambitious is in direct contrast to comments here on CoG and every other gaming site. People demand more. more online features, more multiplayer modes, more maps, more playable characters, more weapons, more levels, more vehicles...

Edit: Heavenly Sword - great production values but is it REALLY worth the $60 price tag?

[itchyeyes]

I more or less agree. Cost structure is a very big issue in the industry today. I think that companies are beginning to realize that they have to put a reign of development costs. Most customers aren't willing to pay much more than $60 for a game, and the customer base isn't expanding fast enough to keep up. Micro transactions and subscription models help a little, but they're treating the symptom, not the problem.

That said, I think the pressure will ease up a bit in the coming years. The success of the Wii is going to put a lot of pressure for the other two console makers to stretch out the life of their current machines beyond the traditional 5 years. That means larger customer bases with stable expectations of what a game is. Additionally, I think we'll see MSFT and Sony take a more Wii-like approach to their next machines as well and not really push the horsepower nearly as much as in previous generational jumps.

I think we'll see more stratification in the quality of games as well. There will be a fewer people pumping out the big budget games, as too much competition at those levels coupled with thinner profits than before disincentivizes people to take that risk. We'll see more people shooting for the low hanging fruit with budget games, especially downloadables. I also expect to see more subscriptions, advertising, micro-transactions, and episodic games in an effort to spread risk and draw more revenue.

I also expect piracy to become a bigger issue before it becomes smaller. The bigger the budget, the more sales you need to make it work, and the more those people torrenting it matter to the publisher.

Edit: one more thing, I expect to see middleware become a much bigger business, as developers gravitate towards existing and proven engines in an effort to cut down costs.

[Schnoogs]

God I hope not...every game I've bought this year had an excellent single player and I couldn't care less about the online component.

[muddi900]

If video game companies started the same "testing" methods as movie studios, all we'll ever have is FPS and side-scrolling platformers. Focus group testing sucks!

[itchyeyes]

If the game is fun, a game is fun. We are in agreement on that. But to state that game developers need to be LESS ambitious is in direct contrast to comments here on CoG and every other gaming site. People demand more. more online features, more multiplayer modes, more maps, more playable characters, more weapons, more levels, more vehicles...
I think it has a lot to do with expectations. People demand more from a AAA $60 game, but you don't hear a lot of people bitching about games like World of Goo and Wipeout HD. They accept "less" because they expect "less". Publishers and developers have a tendency to oversell their game. How many games are billed as "(insert genre leader here) killer"? Game makers could accomplish a lot simply by recognizing who the audience for their game is and marketing it appropriately to them.

[Gorvi]

I think it has a lot to do with expectations. People demand more from a AAA $60 game, but you don't hear a lot of people bitching about games like World of Goo and Wipeout HD. They accept "less" because they expect "less". Publishers and developers have a tendency to oversell their game. How many games are billed as "(insert genre leader here) killer"? Game makers could accomplish a lot simply by recognizing who the audience for their game is and marketing it appropriately to them.
Price has a lot to do it too. $60 is a lot to ask these days for games and most would probably sell much more new (meaning less used sales by far) if they were $45-$50 new. Less people buy games new when they're $60 and I think that number is pretty damn significant.

[Kelegacy]

Stick with the generations longer. If Microsoft or Sony releases another console, fuck it. Don't jump ship so fast. It will only be more expensive. Squeeze up to 10 years out of a console. Afterall, it's about fun and not bleeding edge graphics.

That's one solution. I want to see a solution where my price of entry is less, because $60 is still too high for a videogame. I don't think gaming will ever be super mass-market until prices come down; to me, more people buying your game at a reasonable, lower price equals more revenue. But no, they're actually going to keep getting higher I bet. Absurd. Meanwhile, used gaming shops profit on the industry's folly of high priced retail games.

[JayVe]

Meanwhile, used gaming shops profit on the industry's folly of high priced retail games.

This says a lot. Developers/Publishers want to charge higher prices, but bitch and moan about the used game market. Want your cake and eat it too?:D

[itchyeyes]

Price has a lot to do it too. $60 is a lot to ask these days for games and most would probably sell much more new (meaning less used sales by far) if they were $45-$50 new. Less people buy games new when they're $60 and I think that number is pretty damn significant.
I agree. In fact, this is something I have railed about before. There needs to be more diversification in game pricing. Not every game costs the same to develop, and not every game sells to the same size audience, so there's no reason that all games should cost the same on release. Game makers try to combat this by dropping prices quickly when a game sells poorly, but as with most things in life timing is everything. If you wait 2 months to price your game appropriately you're causing two problems for yourself.

First you're setting expectations too high at the release of the game, and first impressions are important. Someone who passes up your game at $60 isn't always going to come back to look at it when it's $40. Also, you're opening yourself up to increased competition. Two months after the release of your game, you're not just competing against the same games you released next to, but also the new hot games of the month.

[Wraith]

I think it's kind of hard for me to make any kind of judgment about the cost of development for games because we rarely hear how much a game cost to make, except for these huge blockbuster titles like GTA IV, MGS4, Gears. And we rarely hear how much money was spent in individual areas (cinematics, graphics, audio, engine, QA, marketing, licensing, etc.).

The author of the article makes a number of good points, but it seemed to kind of boil down into, "casual games are inexpensive to make, MMOs can evolve over time much more easily than traditional games, hence casual MMO = profit."

But we've seen that less-expensive games can be made outside of casual games. It just seems like when we analyze the market, we don't look at much of that big middle ground between XBLA titles and huge monsters like Gears. I wonder how much games like Civilization IV or Sins of a Solar Empire cost to make.

And I wonder how much market there actually is for the casual MMO. Are developers like the author trying to be a Casual WoW (THE casual MMO that has a huge audience)? Or can a game like that still pull in significant profits, even with what most MMOs would consider a tiny subscriber base?

[Kelegacy]

What really needs to happen is the stop towards the annihilation of the used games market.

Digital Distribution with a lower price tag would help me avoid the used shops. I won't pay for DD at the same price as retail though. No way.

Look at Siren for PS3. The full price of the game is 39.99 on PSN. I think that's fantastic.

[itchyeyes]

But we've seen that less-expensive games can be made outside of casual games. It just seems like when we analyze the market, we don't look at much of that big middle ground between XBLA titles and huge monsters like Gears. I wonder how much games like Civilization IV or Sins of a Solar Empire cost to make.
Stardock has mentioned on several occasions that Sins of a Solar Empire was developed for under $1 million, as was Gal Civ 2. Not sure what Civ 4 was developed for, but I would expect slightly more than Gal Civ 2.

[Philonious]

I think that developers could cut costs by moving away from 'photorealism' and be a little more stylish. I think that they all keep hitting a point of diminishing returns with graphics, the more 'real' they want to be the trickier it gets to look good, go for style and you don't need as much pollish (and therefore less cash).

If they were clever they would launch DD a good month or three before hitting retail. Early adopters couldn't sell their copies so more units would sell, but the non-online crowd wouldn't get completely screwed.

And 'true' episodic content would be great. Provide a modable engine with a game attached and then periodically release new content that is worthwhile and relatively cheap... And not just multiplayer maps, but story chapters as well. It would limit the amount of new assets necessary and reduce the number of people who resell. GTA4 seems to be trying the idea, though delivery would need to be more regular (*cough* Valve *cough*).

Also scale pricing of games. Seems to me that there really is middle ground between launch-price and budget-price, everything is $60 until it hits $30... Why not drop price in set intervals.

Less chaff.

[Dukefrukem]

I'd LOVE to hear from the gamers as to what THEY think is wrong with the industry model of gaming today.

I know exactly what I want in a game. I want Half-Life 2. I remember posting something like this back on EA.

It’s extremely hard to find that happy medium of exciting, venturous but not boring point in a video game where the game doesn’t drag, nor does it get mundane, nor is it too short. The only game that I feel does this perfectly is Half-Life 2. The reason: 12 hours of total gameplay, shifts the TYPE of gameplay... One minute you're on the run, the next you’re slealthing through the sewers, the next you’re on a fanboat, the next you;re in a spooky dark town (very zombie like) the next you’re an all out shoot-em up.. it changes so often it leaves players HOOKED. This is of course, on top of the fact that Value knows how to package games together, I.E. the Orange Box, probably the best valued game package ever to be released. How many other games can you think of that follows HL2’s example? Why are developers so oblivious to HL2's success?

[Wraith]

Stardock has mentioned on several occasions that Sins of a Solar Empire was developed for under $1 million, as was Gal Civ 2. Not sure what Civ 4 was developed for, but I would expect slightly more than Gal Civ 2.And I think Civ IV is a great game. I haven't played SoaSE or the GalCiv games, but I understand they're highly regarded around here.

Civ4 wasn't a graphical powerhouse, even when it came out, but it looked good, played good, and I'd have to assume that it, along with its expansions, has sold rather well. I don't think it's suffered for not being a bleeding-edge technical achievement. Gamers may be a bit more forgiving in this genre than others, but I think the same principles apply. You don't have to choose between a cheap casual game or bleeding-edge tech to make a successful game.Stick with the generations longer. If Microsoft or Sony releases another console, fuck it. Don't jump ship so fast. It will only be more expensive. Squeeze up to 10 years out of a console. Afterall, it's about fun and not bleeding edge graphics.It'd be nice to see the next generation release hardware that we'd actually expect to last 10 years. (So maybe the 360 is the worst offender here, but I kinda doubt MS wants to keep the 360 around until 2015.)

[Kelegacy]

Also scale pricing of games. Seems to me that there really is middle ground between launch-price and budget-price, everything is $60 until it hits $30... Why not drop price in set intervals.


Most games I won't buy until they hit $30 or so. I will pay more for a great game, but I will buy FAR fewer titles at that point. Instead I'll trade or buy discounted, or used off another person. I can afford $60, but I won't pay that much for a game very often. Perhaps 15% (if tha) of my games are bought at that price point. And this fall? It almost makes sense to use Gamefly instead of buying all those titles. When two GAMES cost $120, you better have a decent job or no bills to afford all the games you want to play.

As a result, many titles on store shelves get glossed over. $60 is just too much for me. Especially for a guy like me who games avidly.

[itchyeyes]

And I think Civ IV is a great game. I haven't played SoaSE or the GalCiv games, but I understand they're highly regarded around here.

Civ4 wasn't a graphical powerhouse, even when it came out, but it looked good, played good, and I'd have to assume that it, along with its expansions, has sold rather well. I don't think it's suffered for not being a bleeding-edge technical achievement.
I think the interesting thing about Civ IV is just how much mileage they've got out of that engine. Pirates!, Railroads!, Civ IV, Beyond the Sword, Warlords, Colonization, and Civ Rev all run on that same engine.

[MachEnergy]

I agree. In fact, this is something I have railed about before. There needs to be more diversification in game pricing. Not every game costs the same to develop, and not every game sells to the same size audience, so there's no reason that all games should cost the same on release. Game makers try to combat this by dropping prices quickly when a game sells poorly, but as with most things in life timing is everything. If you wait 2 months to price your game appropriately you're causing two problems for yourself.

First you're setting expectations too high at the release of the game, and first impressions are important. Someone who passes up your game at $60 isn't always going to come back to look at it when it's $40. Also, you're opening yourself up to increased competition. Two months after the release of your game, you're not just competing against the same games you released next to, but also the new hot games of the month.

Movie tickets (at a single location) are always the same price. I pay the same amount to see an indie flick that I do for a big summer blockbuster. So, the model the game industry is using was already established by the movie industry. Similar to the ESRB, people can understand it because it is similar to a system they are familiar with.

I wish I could recommend a better system, but I just can't think of anything that is both better and something that will catch on. Base the price on meta review scores, cost of development, how long it maintains steady sales.... Who knows?

EDIT: i had this window up for too long before submitting.....stupid distracting co-workers :)

[Shadowstorm]

Digital Distribution with a lower price tag would help me avoid the used shops. I won't pay for DD at the same price as retail though. No way.

Look at Siren for PS3. The full price of the game is 39.99 on PSN. I think that's fantastic.

The thing is that we are starting to see publishers offer exclusive content for a game. That exclusive content is one-time only and for the user who purchased the game.

I read a really good article about this. I will try to find it.

[johnperkins21]

God I hope not...every game I've bought this year had an excellent single player and I couldn't care less about the online component.

You and me both sir. I think there are a large portion of vocal gamers interested in online, but I still believe that the vast majority of gamers are more interested in the single player, or local multiplayer experience. I believe the Wii backs me up on this.

[KingGorilla]

Read my site tomorrow, I will post a link to my article when I upload it to my site in the morning. It is not rocket surgery.

[wyeast]

Most games I won't buy until they hit $30 or so. I will pay more for a great game, but I will buy FAR fewer titles at that point. Instead I'll trade or buy discounted, or used off another person. I can afford $60, but I won't pay that much for a game very often.

Quoted for the motherfucking truth. There are a lot of good games out there that I haven't purchased. Games like Fallout 3, Gears 2, and Rock Band 2. Ok, I had to chuckle realizing those were ALL sequels...

Not that those games aren't good. They're quite good. But at $60/pop, I simply cannot afford them all. So I buy a select few, and you can bet that having short term sale prices at $40 or less puts it at a better chance of purchase. And as pointed out before, prices are SLOW to drop, especially for console titles vs PC titles. You wanna stifle the used game market, put that money back into the developers hands? Sell the old games at a lower price. I will easily dish out $20-30 for a "new" older title than give the money to someone like Gamestop for a questionably scratched and abused disc w/ no freebie DLC codes.

[frederec]

It is not rocket surgery.

Coming soon: Trauma Center 3: Rocket Surgery. I would be all up ons.

[bean]

Simple: it costs too damn much to make even a basic game now. The average game - assuming there is no sequel on which to reuse assets - has to sell somewhere around 4M copies to break even.

Where are you getting these numbers? If that were the case, there would only be around 20 games that made any money.

In various Gamasutra articles I've read that the cost of development, publishing, and marketing for a AAA next-gen game has gone up from $5-10 million to $10-20 million. There are obvious exceptions of console games that have cost much more like Halo (if I remember correctly, it was around $30 million after the crap ton of marketing) and GTA 4 (a whopping $100 million if you can believe it).

At $20 million, assuming a publisher/developer gets $40 for each game sold ($10 to Microsoft or Sony and $10 to the retailer), they are still making $40 million if they reach the industry "goal" of a million game sales. That doubles their investment over a two to four year cycle and is the base model for a AAA console game.

The developers losing their ass are the ones that either don't understand what it takes to make a AAA game but spend the money attempting to make it or are attempting to make "B" titles for ~$10 million but are finding that the competition is now too stiff and buyers are too well-informed to purchase their game and thus they are falling below their 500K sales goal and thus not getting their $20 million return on their investment.

So there really isn't any problem with the current model. . . it's working and game companies are making significant amounts of money.

[JayVe]

Movie tickets (at a single location) are always the same price.

Unless you see a movie during the day...

just sayin'

Edit: Then again, movie theaters aren't doing very well these days... are they?

[JayVe]

So there really isn't any problem with the current model. . . it's working and game companies are making significant amounts of money.
It is working, for a shrinking number of companies that can risk such large amounts of money on making AAA titles.

[JayVe]

You and me both sir. I think there are a large portion of vocal gamers interested in online, but I still believe that the vast majority of gamers are more interested in the single player, or local multiplayer experience. I believe the Wii backs me up on this.

I believe you are right. Single player and local multiplayer are still king. I was reading another thread on Internet douchbaggery where just about everyone was saying that they only played online with their friends. I think you'll find MOST gamers aren't a part of an awesome site like CoG where they can find a lot of people to add to their friends list. Those poor chaps have to deal with the Internet Dickwad Effect.

[Hotcod]

As much as i may get shouted down for this i think blizzard has taken the first step towards a model that will make more sense for bigger budget games. It's in essence the next logical step from what valve ended up doing with the "episodes" and i think for AAA titles it's something that will become more and more prevalent.

In essence valve stumbled on to this idea while trying out episodic gaming. While episodes make sense i think for smaller types of game (penny arcade jumps to mind here) i think valve found they couldn't produce the episodes to the level they wanted in the time they had. While valve is notorious for taking there time with things i still think that they would have had to move past the idea of episodes to these odd things that we have which are not really expiations and are not full fledged squeal.

What's interesting to ask about all that is "how will they deal with half life 3?" If you think about that question for a second then all sorts of questions start to pop up and they become rather intriguing. With half life 3 there will be no doubt that valve builds in the idea of the "episodes" from the start and i honestly think we are more likely to see the game come in 3 distinct parts or at lest something like it. Each part will be a "full game" in the sense they will all have a start middle and end and they will be if not full length then close to it. In other words think putting hl2 and all the episodes in to one big pot and cutting it up in to 3.

So why do that? what is the advantage of it? well it's simple really... for the same reason all 3 lord of the rings flims where shot at the same time. There is a huge work load to get things up and running, the engine, the art direction, the story writing and so on and in the end the actual making of the content it's self takes up a relativity small part of the over all cycle. The raising costs of making games is making it harder and harder to make ROI on the single sale that you get at the end of it. So why not off set the rise in cost by selling more than one product out of the cycle? You have all the assets set up and if you build this idea in to the cycle from the start then you end up off setting a lot of the costs you would other wise face. 1 game in 3 parts 3 times larger than another game will be able to make far more money than 3 of the 2nd old type of game.

The problem of course is that it's means a lot more risk. Since you are unlikely to put all the parts out at the same time if the first part isn't well revised then the other 2 parts are going to be in trouble. So i think it's more something to do once you've got an established IP. When establishing that first IP you also make sure that you plan for potential expiations from the very start... if the game dose well then get working on the expiation.

Simply put the rise in cost is mostly in the creation of the games assets and so companies simply need to be honest about the fact that they need to get more use out of those assets. So long as that use is thought out and planned from the start and we all know about it i honestly don't see the problem with it. We may end up spending more to get a "full game" but that full game will be more of something we like if we like it enough to buy it all. I don't know about you but there's lots of games from the last few years i'd liken to simply have had more of... and not really in terms of a squeal. I think hl2 and the episodes have spoiled me in that regard.

RTS and RPGs have almost always run with the idea of expiations as a way of getting more out of there assets. Never winter nights springs to mind in that regard and given that the first expiation was better than the main game it's not a bad thing. I simply thing that that attitude needs and has to spread out in to the industry and becomes an incorporated part of the whole processes so that any game is either prept from the start for expiations if it sells well enough or is from the very start expanded to cross 3 whole products.

Which is why i think what blizzard is doing is very very interesting. Given the huge out cry of nerd rage that covered the revealing of the plan (which i still think steamed mostly from misunderstanding) for star craft if that plan works and all 3 parts of the starcraft 2 game sell well... well... the industry really is going to need a good hard look at adopting the same idea for any major IPs in the future.

It just honestly think it would be nice for a good new game to come out be received well and sell well which leads to one or two good expiations before a squeal that is set up in 3 parts. In which case from a good game, a good idea and a good IP we get at lest 4 times the content than we would just from a game and a squeal. We of course will have to pay for the content but if like the game and understand why we are not just being handed it all for one price then i don't think it's such a problem.

Thinking about it you could ask why not just sell a larger game for a higher cost? well the "price" of a full game is rather entrenched in peoples minds which is the lest of the problems. The cost of 3 games is a rather large chunck of cash to part with at one time and even more so if you don't know if you'll enjoy the game... even if you buy 3 different games at the same time if you dislike one of them you still have 2 others. So by spreading them out the full cost will feel lower and people will simply be far more willing to buy parts 2 and 3 if they've enjoyed part 1.

I think i may turn this in to a blog post

edit: given i've just edited in a whole new end section i think i will

[JayVe]

I think i may turn this in to a blog post

Please do! This post is full of way too much awesome to be left in this pathetic thread. :D

Oh, and for the record, I think you are probably right on a number of ideas. I especially like comparing AAA games to the Lord of the Rings movies.

[Hotcod]

So there really isn't any problem with the current model. . . it's working and game companies are making significant amounts of money.

Well... yes... your right but your missing a few points that make the whole thing rather worrying. The main one being that so far the rising cost in making a game has mostly been off set in the rise of the number of gamers. The last 10 years has seen gaming move in to the mainstream and while the industry will likely carry on growing it simply will not see the core market expand as much as it has done. So unless something major happens the cost of making AAA titles will keep on going up and in time simply isn't going to covered by the growth in the market.

Secondly, as JayVe pointed out, the huge amount of money involved means that we are seeing a shrinking and consolidation of game makers and publishers that deal with AAA tiles. Just take a moment to think about the games you've played in the last week and you should see what i mean. While this is unlikely to change as such and wouldn't even in the model i proposed it is a problem that will get worse if nothing changes.

Lastly and this is a more recent one... we've just hit what is in essence a global rescission (even if every one is skipping around actually saying it) and that is going to make the problems there already are far far far worse. It simply makes risking so much money a much less attractive idea... if the market starts to shrink we are going to see systemic shifts in the nature of AAA titles i think. Again the idea of making more money on the same assets will look good here... on an established IP you end up hugely limiting your risks

[Kelegacy]

I believe you are right. Single player and local multiplayer are still king. I was reading another thread on Internet douchbaggery where just about everyone was saying that they only played online with their friends. I think you'll find MOST gamers aren't a part of an awesome site like CoG where they can find a lot of people to add to their friends list. Those poor chaps have to deal with the Internet Dickwad Effect.

A good singleplayer game will get my dollar any day. A multiplayer only game, like Shadowrun? Titles like that have an expiration date. I can go back to Bioshock and still have a wonderful time, but if there are no people to play Shadowrun with a year or so down the road, I'm screwed. Well, I guess there's always bots... :rollseyes:

I like games that have an excellent SP and a good Multiplayer aspect. Games like Gears and perhaps Halo are good examples. Even if people move onto the sequel and no longer play the previous iteration of the title online, I can still play the great singleplayer game.

But then, I'm a loner at heart and would rather play most of my games by myself. Or, to put it better, the types of games I enjoy most aren't really made for MP. I still think MP games are amazing fun (the girlfriend and I play Scene-It on 360 with friends and have a great time, and I was a rabid N64 fan with great gaming nights back in high school) but dealing with the internet can be a bitch. I like knowing that I can pop a game in and don't need to rely on anyone but myself to show up to game. I play for escapism mostly, and enjoyment like I would a good book, so it's not a surprise I like to play "with myself". :)

[JayVe]

A good singleplayer game will get my dollar any day.

I like to play "with myself". :)

It isn't any fun if you take your own straight line. ;)

[bean]

Secondly, as JayVe pointed out, the huge amount of money involved means that we are seeing a shrinking and consolidation of game makers and publishers that deal with AAA tiles. Just take a moment to think about the games you've played in the last week and you should see what i mean. While this is unlikely to change as such and wouldn't even in the model i proposed it is a problem that will get worse if nothing changes.
I'm seeing more AAA games in 2007 and this year than in years previous. There are a lot fewer "B" games coming out, but that is the result of the high cost of games. . . people just aren't willing to pay $60 for a game that they don't love. This is even more true when there are so many great AAA games competing for gamer's dollars (and 75% of them are releasing in the holiday months).

Lastly and this is a more recent one... we've just hit what is in essence a global rescission (even if every one is skipping around actually saying it) and that is going to make the problems there already are far far far worse. It simply makes risking so much money a much less attractive idea.

Well, how big a risk are we talking about really? A 2-4 year investment that doubles your return but requires $20 million is a lot of risk and a lot of money tied up over an extended period of time. However, when you look at Hollywood, a AAA movie will normally cost $100-300 million dollars to produce and will take a year or two to create and while the return on investment can be as high as that in video games and can even exceed it with a monster hit (though it is about in line with the ROI for a video game that is extremely successful), you can also lose your ass with a much larger investment.

Even a bad AAA game that has the amount of marketing $20 million games get will sell 300-500K games (unless the marketing is also incompetent). Look at Army of Two. . . it's not a terrible game, but it is certainly not a great game. It has sold ~2.5 million (http://vgchartz.com/games/index.php?name=army+of+two&console=&region=All&developer=&publisher=&genre=&keyword=&boxart=Both&results=50&order=Hits) copies on the Xbox 360 and PS3 combined. Even the fairly underwhelming Infinite Undiscovery has sold 310K copies, and that probably makes back their investment money.

[Hotcod]

Yes, they do sell well in an expanding market based on a growing economy. Where at a point where the market growth is slowing down (get worse with a resection) and the economy is likely to at best shrink a little. If costs of making games keep going up the ability to make ROI is going to shrink rather remarkable and that will bring up problems.

But the point is that a AAA or even B game at the moment can "flop" and still make a reasonable amount of money... that is going to change in the next few year to the point where if a game flops you are going to lose a lot of money beacuse the "safety buffer" that even a bad AAA title tends to have is likely to go away.

It's also a bit hard i think to put the film market like to like with games in terms of ROI. Film is a bigger and (at the moment) a more risky investment in terms of AAA but the rewards are bigger and the turn around much faster than with AAA games. Film studios also tend to be involved in more than one project at a time in a way that even the biggest gaming studios like blizzard would find it hard to match. If any one of those films loses big money it's likely they have enough other films out or coming out for that flop to not have as much of an impact as if a AAA game flops.

I've never been saying that there's anything that wrong with the market and model now... just that the way it's set up now is going to lead to the point that there is the chance of some real big problems.

In a way it's a lot like why we are in trouble with banks and such now. In that while the housing market was growing the mess of a banking system could keep on turning and even make lots of money but when the housing market stopped growing it stopped propping up the system. Game are kind of in the same place, while the market keeps growing rising costs don't matter much... It's in effect a bubble and like all bubbles it will burst and unless the market is ready for it, again like all bubbles, a lot of people stand to lose a lot of money.

Well ok, its not that bad as such in that the market for games is unlikely to shrink by major amounts but when it stops growing rising costs are going to start eating in to ROI in a way we've not really seen yet... which is going to lead to trouble. Hence why i think raising that starting ROI to expand the game over 3 parts or so will start making more sense as the rise in the ROI is likely to be offset greatly by the extra money you make meaning you are far more likely to make your ROI in a market where the cost rises are not being out paced by the market growth it's self

[Mason]

Hotcod: Some impressive walls of text, but I've got to disagree.

- Creating game-specific assets is the bulk of development costs. An investment in engine technology can be used across titles, so a company that spends more on its engine than its assets is either named Epic or is very bad at project management.

- StarCraft 2 is a very special case, as RTS games are unique in having the bulk of their gameplay and content not be scenario-specific. For shooters, platforms, RPGs, &c., the gameplay is the scenario.

- Valve and the rest of the industry didn't recently "stumble" onto the benefits of episodic gaming. We used to call them expansion packs, and they were a traditional way of milking a franchise without investing in a full iteration. Names and emphasis change, but the economics are the same.

- Games aren't riskier or less profitable than film. The Dark Knight is notable for making a billion dollars; WoW is now making a billion annually. Film still relies on a horribly outdated and inefficient distribution model, and box office revenues are stagnant. Games keep evolving to thrive on whatever platform is available.

- Market bubbles don't mean what you think they mean. No one is blindly speculating on games and driving their cost up to unsustainable levels. The only place that this could technically occur is in the stock prices of game publishers and, no, those aren't unrealistically inflated. The major publishers are still posting decent profits, fueled largely by reliable sales of sports, music, and major franchise games.

- Costs did get away from console developers early in this generation. Everyone has been clear on this for a while, and yet, Christmas 2008 is still seeing a freakish number of traditional AAA games. There will be winners and losers, but fear over development costs wasn't sufficient to stop the people paying the money from pushing all of these games to completion. Perhaps the industry still hasn't received the memo from 2006 instructing it to slash budgets in a panicked frenzy.


Fundamentally, the business model of gaming isn't bad because it isn't a single thing. We have a whole ecosystem of business models: what do Rock Band, Peggle, Bioshock, Professor Layton, and Warhammer really have in common?

[violent]

I think the industry is lacking in passion.

[KingGorilla]

As Promised (http://newsforgeeksdaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=75:mechanics-needed&catid=39:pure-rambling)
It would not take a massive effort to help subsidize, improve, and monetize game rentals. Gamefly or Blockbuster with a better selection of games, paying wholesale for the product, and a good royalty headed back to the publishers seems good for everyone involved. Gamestop Corp fired a preemptive strike on used game sales by cutting the publishers a deal on unsold product. Rather than shipping back unsold product for a full refund, gamestop gets 50 percent of the cost back, breaks the seal and sells the game as used. That is called loss mitigation. Now envision a proactive solution where used games and systems are “re-certified” by the manufacturers and publishers like a car is. The cost of that re-certification goes back to those companies, and maybe the used game sellers get a nice premium from a re-certification sticker on a box.

What frustrates me the most about all of this talk in the industry about how piracy, used games, rentals kill the industry, is that no other industry in the world has these problems. The models to monetize these parts of the business are there, and obvious. But as I said, we need to stop comparing games to movies or television, the industry is nowhere near as smart as the people working in those other mediums.

[Kelegacy]

Release some feckin' games elsewhere in the calendar year and you might not have as high a chance of being overlooked. Seriously, I've passed over quite a few games so far that would otherwise get my attention in say...May or June. I just don't have the time or money to snag them while playing many others.

550 games released thus far between September and mid-November? Ridiculous.

[Purple Santa]

Release some feckin' games elsewhere in the calendar year and you might not have as high a chance of being overlooked. Seriously, I've passed over quite a few games so far that would otherwise get my attention in say...May or June. I just don't have the time or money to snag them while playing many others.

550 games released thus far between September and mid-November? Ridiculous.

I was going to write the very same...it just took me a while to read through all of this...but yes and yes and yes.

Can't publishers find another time in the calender year to sell their games? I know they have board of directors, stockholders who are wedded to the idea big profits = holiday time. That really needs to change. I'm hoping this holiday season shows that not all the AAA titles sold as well as they should because the market being saturated as it was, didn't help the publishers nor the gamers.

[Jeffool]

I agree that inevitably the future of games will be online, but for entirely different reasons (piracy in short. In long, read this (http://blog.jeffool.com/2008/08/18/the-world-post-piracy/).) But so far as what's wrong with gamedev now? They're focusing on things that shouldn't matter, and that I, as a gamer, don't give a shit about. Namely, the number of polys in a pistol.

What's needed (in my mind) is either some serious (thought) investment in an actual long-term scalable solution, or some re-thinking of what 'gaming' is. Preferably both, but hey, I'm an idealist.

First, I've programmed, but I did flunk out of school for it, so I'm no genius. In theory, I see why people like the idea of more and more polys being pushed every game, but as a gamer I just don't give a shit. Period. What I want is more in-depth interaction, not better looking. Our own GrinR, I believe, said it best when he said (along the lines of:) "damn that indestructable light bulb looks great!" Insofar as graphics go, we've long passed the point of diminishing returns, and they're sticking their head in the stand by not realizing this.

Secondly, at least [/i]some[/i] games should be about interaction, not constantly leading players along a linear narrative trail. Nearly every AAA game has completely forgotten that. And those that we do have just a couple of endings, instead of the procedurally generated story that we need to get to.

Finally, they also need to set some open standards so that they don't have to recreate the wheel every damn game. Seriously. Would any of us notice if half the FPS games out there used the same engine? We know, we know, your dystopian future is special, and not like everyone else's, but c'mon, does the industry really need to drain a few million on your custom engine? Just hire two guys to patch up the Quake 3 engine and call it a fucking day.

[Kelegacy]

I've always said I'd love to play more games on the extinct Infinity Engine, or even the Ultima VII engine. I wish more companies would milk the here-and-now tech instead of the expensive licensing of a new engine (the Unreal 3 engine shows up in nearly every game this generation it seems, giving many games a similar look unfortunately).

Jumps in technology can help improve gameplay, yes. I wish more focus was on gameplay and atmosphere instead of super graphics. That's why I was disappointed with Mass Effect. Seemed like a lot of work went into graphics and dialogue, but the gameplay was a secondary concern...at least in my opinion.

I love HD graphics, but at the end of the day I'm more concerned about how much fun I'm having instead of how pretty my character looks. I'd ideally like BOTH, but if it's going to alienate so many developers or hurt them, just focus on the most important.

[Hotcod]

lots 'o things

I'm far far to tired to give a full point by point reply to that so i'll keep it short. Mainly you make a lot of good points some which stem i think from me not making my self as clear as i'd like and others from me making out right mistakes in my logical thinking and tripping over my self... i had been up most of the night drawing things (still not slept heh) and a mishandled a few points.

As for the bubble, i know it's not actually a bubble in that the thing is not really a feedback loop. In that rising game costs are not fulling the unsustainable growth in the game market. It's just that it's an easy term to understand... the rising costs of making games have been kept with in the bounds of the market beacuse the bubble has been growing but it's now looking like there will come a point when that stops happening and in effect the bubble will burst... which is not the same thing as the dot com bubble bursting... come to think of it it probably was not the best term to use but the point i was making i still think i sound. I don't think we are at all going to see anything major happen in that respect until the start of the next generation of consoles where another spike is likely to take place if people don't watch them self's.

As for the rest, well, i'll go back and try and clear up my plan and sort out the mistakes i made. It's an idea that's been floating around in my head since the blizard thing but that was the first real time that i've tried to turn it in to a plan of action heh

But, as for you final point... what do they all have in common? the platforms on which they are played. Like it or not the growth in the gaming market has clearly been consoles... that is not to say PC gaming has not grown or has shrunk or is dying... it's just undeniable that most teenagers and young adults own or live in a house that has at lest one of the major consoles. That really is a rather large change in that it's no longer just for "geeks" so to speak... not that it ever really was but still... consoles are the source of the major growth in the market.

Which means your still right, it's not just one thing it's 3 companies and an open platform but ya while the gaming market is divers the major growth area is held by 3 companies and in that sense it's a loss less flexible that you really think it is. Gaming will carry on no matter what but as the industry it is now it's future mainly rests on the 3 main players and the big publishers... what the games are isn't really an issue oddly.

edit: also if this is me keeping it short i shudder to think what it would be like as long

[bean]

Release some feckin' games elsewhere in the calendar year and you might not have as high a chance of being overlooked. Seriously, I've passed over quite a few games so far that would otherwise get my attention in say...May or June. I just don't have the time or money to snag them while playing many others.

550 games released thus far between September and mid-November? Ridiculous.

You know this is a drum I like to beat periodically. So, yes, absolutely I agree.

Now, that isn't to say it isn't smart to release well known and obvious hit franchises during this time. Let's face it, Fable 2 is probably going to sell an extra million copies by releasing near Christmas, but if you have a new IP and it is GOOD then release some other time of year. . . I bet Spiderman: Web of Shadows (an outstanding Spiderman game, I'm just loving it) would have gotten huge amounts of free game site coverage and would have been hailed as an important title if it had released in May or June. Now I think it is on most of our "renter" lists, and even though I'm really, really enjoying it, I have to plan to buy it later on as I'm quickly exhausting my "holiday dollar".

[bean]

I love HD graphics, but at the end of the day I'm more concerned about how much fun I'm having instead of how pretty my character looks. I'd ideally like BOTH, but if it's going to alienate so many developers or hurt them, just focus on the most important.

There is a low budget and low graphics alternative, but it limits your game genre. Develop for the Wii.

[Kelegacy]

There is a low budget and low graphics alternative, but it limits your game genre. Develop for the Wii.

I really don't like that alternative.

[JayVe]

I really don't like that alternative.

36 Million other people think it is a great option, and solves the issue you stated above. If it comes down to graphics or gameplay, which do you, as a developer, pick? A fun standard definition game is still fun.

I think one of the problems is that a good number of developers don't know how to make a great game, and use Graphics as a crutch. if you can't make a good game, make a shiny one. *cough*Lair* cough*

[Gorvi]

There is a low budget and low graphics alternative, but it limits your game genre. Develop for the Wii.
How does that limit your game genre? Do we really have any genres now this gen that we didn't have last gen? Unless you want a full, fleshed out online experience, the Wii is capable of doing pretty much any genre with little to no problem. You can't have the graphical fidelity and scale that you would with a PS3/360 game, but I see no genre other than MMOs that the Wii really couldn't handle.
I think one of the problems is that a good number of developers don't know how to make a great game, and use Graphics as a crutch. if you can't make a good game, make a shiny one. *cough*Lair* cough*
Except the actual graphics in Lair were shit.

[JayVe]

Do we really have any genres now this gen that we didn't have last gen? Unless you want a full, fleshed out online experience, the Wii is capable of doing pretty much any genre with little to no problem.

I came in here to argue this in some kinda smart-ass way... but the more I think of it the more I can't think of unrepresented genre on Wii. There are UNDERrepresented genre on Wii, but I gotta agree with Gorvi.

I suppose you may limit your audience to those who will purchase only HD graphic games... but the Wii can represent just about any genre the same way the PS2 did.

[Kelegacy]

36 Million other people think it is a great option, and solves the issue you stated above. If it comes down to graphics or gameplay, which do you, as a developer, pick? A fun standard definition game is still fun.


I don't think all those people that own a Wii are interested in the same games as the rest of us. The core gamers, anyway. The people who make or break games like Gears and Fallout. That's why you see titles like Wii Fit, Wii Play and Cooking Mama rounding out the top 10 lists.

If developers want to sell their souls and produce different kinds of games, the Wii would be a great home for them. But their interests in game making are more akin to the PS3 and 360 demographics currently.

But my beefs with the Wii are not just graphical. I really dislike the controller and how most games implement it. I feel the same way for many games on DS with the stylus.

[Virtual Machine]

Within the development community, the dev are all too worried about one single, solitary item: Technology.

The focus needs to shift. Rather than focus on a graphics engine that can push out 2000 movign objects in HD with antiwhatever filtering and HRD blooming, how about licensing a cheaper engine like Digital Extreme's Evolution engine (Used for Dark Sector - very very pretty), or Gamebryo, and focusing that talent and money on ART DESIGN!

A powerful engine is nothing without the art design to back it up. Look at Shadow of the Colossus or Final Fantasy XII, neither game was the "prettiest" on PS2, but they did things with art design that made them look truly world class. The really talented artists can get a sweet looking, beautifully executed game out of an engine despite whatever technical limitations they may face (on the other hand, looking at how Japanese develpers are struggling with the Unreal 3 engine makes me laugh riotously - Lost Odyssey and Last Remnant look awesome in pictures, then we see them in motion... sheesh). Adapt an art style to suit your game. Everything doesn't have to be photo-realistic or shiny as hell (look at World of Warcraft as your shining example here...) Developers should be taking more chances, you could have a game up and running with lower poly models imitating an animated style (some recent Anime-inspired games have taken this approach with amazing results - Tales of Vesperia or Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm come to mind). If a focus on art design over technology became the norm, you would see more artistic diversity in games this generation, instead of a million shooters that all look like they're sharing texture data. This would also give the devs a little more horsepower to spend on atmosphere and effects.

And the second big one - Narrative. The relatively few gamers who played through Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway will probably be talking about that game LONG after the millions who played through Call of Duty:World at War have sold it off and moved on to the next big thing. Over on that "other site" there was a multi-page thread discussing the plot points and ending of Assassin's Creed. Bioshock was heralded as a brilliant FPS, one of the best of this generation, despite not having a class-based, experience driven, time sinking multiplayer component. Call of Duty 4's single player game was a ridiculously short 4-6 hour affair, and yet everyone fell in love (and you can't tell me your jaw didn't drop after playing through "shock and awe".) Uncharted and Heavenly Sword come off my shelf once every few months, just like a good movie. Halo has become a phenomenon, and will likely NEVER be dethroned as the "face" of Microsoft's gaming efforts, in large part, due to the deep and thoroughly plotted mythology present behind the game. Gears hasn't even come close in that regard.

Devs need narrative talent. I really feel that more emphasis needs to be put on that element of a game, and the most successful studios in the future will have a Story/Plotting unit working alongside their Artists and Programmers at equal capacity, and al three teams will work around one another to provide each with the tools they need to make a truly world class piece of software. These are the games that will define the medium as it matures.

Right now we're stuck in some kind of "gaming puberty", where limits are being tested, and devs are experimenting and discovering where the medium will mature (while other devs are just stuck in that 12 year old "follow-the-leader" mentality).

This is why Microsoft and Nintendo have been frustrating me so much of late. Microsoft have always been a driving force in the past, but for the last year and change they seem to be content just playing the "me too!" card, and looking too closely at what Nintendo and Sony have been doing instead of charting their own course. It's a wasted effort, and it will ultimately dilute the Xbox360's strengths, like adding water to wine. The third parties will shoulder the burden, but Microsoft is making alterations at the very core that changes the system at a fundamental level. This is not a good thing. This will alter perceptions, this will divide the existing fanbase.

Nintendo have a sizeable market to themselves, i won't say it's a lead, because they went after another crowd entirely, and kudos to them for seeing an opening and taking it. But rather than push the Wii forward with some solid software, rather than attempt to appeal to fans of Microsoft and Sony, many of whom (like myself) were raised on "big N" machines, they've taken a stagnant approach and just decided to count their money and continue to pump out casual software. The third parties are no better, they smell money pie and want a taste. I look at Capcom, and Monster Hunter 3 in particular, and i can't help but smile to myself. At least one developer gets it. More software like that and i'd throw my dollars across the bark dust for one of Nintendo's consoles.

[MachEnergy]

Right now we're stuck in some kind of "gaming puberty", where limits are being tested, and devs are experimenting and discovering where the medium will mature (while other devs are just stuck in that 12 year old "follow-the-leader" mentality).

I think your statement is very astute.

Jesus, this entire thread has may wall-o-text posts! I think it shows just how passionate we are about gaming. Often times I have to tell people that gaming is not my hobby or passtime. It is practically my way of life. There's a reason why I get so upset over many issues most people couldn't care less about. It matters.

[JayVe]

Jesus, this entire thread has may wall-o-text posts! I think it shows just how passionate we are about gaming. Often times I have to tell people that gaming is not my hobby or passtime. It is practically my way of life. There's a reason why I get so upset over many issues most people couldn't care less about. It matters.

:D

I have to agree with this post. CoG really is a special place.

[Virtual Machine]

:D

I have to agree with this post. CoG really is a special place.

Yeah, i'd call it a passion for sure. I've been managing a video game retailer since 1999, was around for three generations of system launch. Wrote reviews for a now defunct but onetime mainstream site from the early interweb days, and actually had to turn down a job at a major studio in the design/layout department because i couldn't get into the USofA.

Vidja games are in my blood.

[bean]

How does that limit your game genre? Do we really have any genres now this gen that we didn't have last gen?

Are you talking about what I was talking about? I said that it limits your genre to make a low budget game on the Wii.

1. Certain game genres can't be done with low budgets.
2. Certain game genres won't be competitive with a low-res version because there are very good HD alternatives.
3. If the goal is to make money, then catering to the Wii's non-traditional audience is the smart move to make.

[Loki]

I fel that as the next generation comes across the horizon, much of the hardware and graphical boundaries are going to hit their peak. As that happens, both price and time to develop a game will also fall.

[Gorvi]

Are you talking about what I was talking about? I said that it limits your genre to make a low budget game on the Wii.

1. Certain game genres can't be done with low budgets.
This I would dispute. Can they be done as well as with a big budget? Of course not, but they can still be done, and in a completely competant way.
2. Certain game genres won't be competitive with a low-res version because there are very good HD alternatives.
Now that's just pure speculation. The only genre that I can think of that simply won't work in low res is traditional RTSs, but we haven't seen one of those that really succeeded on the newer consoles either.
3. If the goal is to make money, then catering to the Wii's non-traditional audience is the smart move to make.
In that way you're right: gimmicky crap has been selling on the Wii more largely because the broader audience is less informed than your traditional gamer. Enough traditional gamers have the system, though, that if you make a game targeted towards us and actually market it it should succeed.

[bean]

The focus needs to shift. Rather than focus on a graphics engine that can push out 2000 movign objects in HD with antiwhatever filtering and HRD blooming, how about. . . focusing that talent and money on ART DESIGN!
Art design isn't expensive. It is a matter of talent that exists or does not. You can't pay someone more and make them a more talented artist. This is also true about game narratives. People are talented or they are not. In both cases, you could spend money sending your employees to take college courses or spend time at work showing them great works of art, or allowing writers time to read novels, etc. Plus you could extend the development time so that artists can refine their work until they feel it is close to perfect, so money can be thrown at these things.

However, having an engine that can deliver great effects and visuals simply gives a great art designer more tools. It allows a designer creating the story to bring that story to life in dramatic ways that awe and excite the audience.

So I don't understand your argument. It's like you are saying that Picasso shouldn't spend so much money on paint brushes so that he can afford to spend more time on each painting. Maybe what you are saying is that he should spend less money on paint brushes so that he can spend more time on each painting instead.

If that's the case, I still disagree with that as a blanket statement. I'm seeing incredible visuals and art design in a lot of different games. This may be true for games that are rushed out and have art that suffers because of this, but it isn't a problem that plagues all games and thus is a problem with the "model".

[Kelegacy]

In that way you're right: gimmicky crap has been selling on the Wii more largely because the broader audience is less informed than your traditional gamer.

I also think they are more easily amused than we jaded gamers. Something like Wii Play can keep even some adults going for a while.

My girlfriend and I heard a funny conversation (arguement) at a restaurant the other night between an older sister and her kid brother. She was arguing the PS3 was the best console and he was screaming that the Wii was better. They were both listing bulletpoints, and my non-gamer girlfriend was chuckling.

Hey, if they're having fun, that's all that matters. The Wii has been a successful machine, but it's definitely not something that has a lot that attracts a gamer like me. It COULD, but the focus has been unfortunately not to my liking.

[MachEnergy]

My girlfriend and I heard a funny conversation (arguement) at a restaurant the other night between an older sister and her kid brother. She was arguing the PS3 was the best console and he was screaming that the Wii was better. They were both listing bulletpoints, and my non-gamer girlfriend was chuckling.

Funny. My wife and I overheard a conversation about the Sony Wii, and they've got that Halo game and the fitness pad. I shit you not.

My wife isn't a gamer, but she's well aware of the industry (my interests probably aren't varied enough ;)) and she shot some Thai ice tea out her nose. It was absolutely an amazing night. :D

[JayVe]

Funny. My wife and I overheard a conversation about the Sony Wii, and they've got that Halo game and the fitness pad. I shit you not.

My wife isn't a gamer, but she's well aware of the industry (my interests probably aren't varied enough ;)) and she shot some Thai ice tea out her nose. It was absolutely an amazing night. :D

That sounds fantastic!

Can I get me one of those Sony Wii60s with the dance fitness maracas that makes bloo rays please?

[Wasson_]

I think the industry is lacking in passion.

I Agree with the violent one, the industry has certain standards now that it kinda just adheres too, sometimes not even really wanting to polish the turd they crank out, "this is too standard...lets roll boys." It must be a fucking mess when a game starts to almost really "come together" but then the people working on it are like, "this game is gay as shit, i hate these characters, I hate this story...I just fucking hate it: FUCK." but seemingly the push it through because it just might happen to be something different hopelessly so since it was developed so shittily and probably under great constraint. I mean, you've gotta figure the people making games for a living have got to be > gamers than us...I mean, it's their bread and butter, and when a game comes along that even "we" think is bad or shitty? how do you think they think? I'd say a nice example of this might be that Kane and Lynch game, I imagine at one point, development was going fine but somewhere along the lines they just sorta realized, "this is going to be a real piece of shit...nobody has been behind this since day one...we've gotta cut our losses."

Modders, those guys have passion, go to so much work and not be compensated at all. That sucks. Then you have homos like that Cliffy B-tard

"yeah this is my game...I made it, I'm the jesus of gaming....it's so badass, look at that, pssh, you can't hide behind shit so good in your online shooter...pfffth dude, we got fuckin chainsaws on our machine guns, douche nozzles HURRRR. Look at these guys...their so big and covered in armor, you know this game is great. Look at this world...it's so like beautiful but like...destroyed, you konw this game is great."

ok i've been drinking a bit...but I'm just tipsy enough to not care..

Look at an old game like Wing Commander, think about how epicly good it was, (not just the gameplay itself, but the branching missions and all that...there's your abality to change events in a storyline, 1990, too bad Fable II, you unfullfilling bitch, it's sequal too, with all those awesome cutscenes and shit - SHIT, Think about the first time you played X-Wing! Remember how you were pretty much blown away buy how much it kicked ass? Those games were made with passion. How about the first time you played Doom? / the first Half Life? --the first time the devs really made like a real world for you to play around in.

I start to think about childrens moves now, passion, ever seen "The secret of Nihm"? Beautifully made, passionately made, excellent, shot at 2 frames a second for the beautiful smooth animation Bluth was known for. Look at this garbage they come out with every few months now...save for the pixar movies (which are all great...save for A bugs life.) they're complete fucking garbage, cheaply made computer animation..Hey, maybe that's just it, people are getting to used to letting the machines do the hard work for them..."anyone can do it!"

well, maybe not just anyone should do it...only the people with real vision and passion.

[Jeffool]

I have no doubt that the amazing amount of passion that game developers have, but it's ground the fuck out of them by increased standards, decreased timescales, payscale, and having leaders with no artistic vision. Many people want to make art, but good luck finding a job like that. Conversely, who the fuck wants to spend their entire life making models of ruined 1940s German architecture and the same guns over and over again? Or programming the same physics problems over and over again?

The burn-out rate in the industry is insane. It's not a question of passionate people, it's a question of passionate leadership, and corporate whoredom. (And people seeing working in the industry as "making it," instead of just finishing a game, even if that means independent development.)

[Seconds Out]

I still have yet to play a game I've enjoyed as much as the original Legend of Zelda, thats the problem with the industry. A game from over 20 years ago has as much juice for me as Resistance 2, Halo 3, Call of Duty, Gears of War, etc... There are very few revolutionary ideas coming from the game industry right now. Rock Band/Guitar Hero was the closest the industry has come to revolutionizing gaming in recent years. However, going from Atari 2600 to playing Legend of Zelda will never be duplicated. Ever.

[Troggles]

No game has even come close to topping Super Metroid for me. I pine for the day that a game with shortcuts and hidden stuff isn't so obvious. That, and the ability to do speed runs that require a mastery of all techniques.

[Wasson_]

No game has even come close to topping Super Metroid for me. I pine for the day that a game with shortcuts and hidden stuff isn't so obvious. That, and the ability to do speed runs that require a mastery of all techniques.

Few games have such a perfect combination of artistic vision and playability...it's just epic.

but now I think about it for a second...the last couple games I have bought...I have really liked...so what am I bitching about??

[bean]

but now I think about it for a second...the last couple games I have bought...I have really liked...so what am I bitching about??
Occasionally I pull out classic games I loved when I was a kid, and I have the opposite reaction to what you guys are saying. Usually they disappoint me in all aspects. . . I don't remember them looking as bad, having such poorly told narratives, bad controls, and repetitive gameplay. There are a number of exceptions, but on the whole I think we are seeing more games that are timelessly good come out lately than ever before.

[JayVe]

I mean, you've gotta figure the people making games for a living have got to be > gamers than us...I mean, it's their bread and butter, and when a game comes along that even "we" think is bad or shitty? how do you think they think?
I was reading an interview with Gabe Newell of Valve recently where he mentioned the same thing, that gamers themselves are much smarter than most of the industry gives them credit for.

The more I read about Mr. Newell and Valve, the more I respect their philosophies.

[Virtual Machine]

Art design isn't expensive. It is a matter of talent that exists or does not. You can't pay someone more and make them a more talented artist. This is also true about game narratives. People are talented or they are not. In both cases, you could spend money sending your employees to take college courses or spend time at work showing them great works of art, or allowing writers time to read novels, etc. Plus you could extend the development time so that artists can refine their work until they feel it is close to perfect, so money can be thrown at these things.

The cash can be better used to hire people WITH talent in those respective fields. The focus has been on more powerful engines, better technology, more more more. Shadow of the Colossus is one of the most beautiful games i've ever played, and it was on hardware that was what? Near a decade old? They didn't need a cutting edge engine or hardware to present a genuine work of art. Likewise with Okami. Half Life 2 had a remarkable physics system, and other engines where annihilating it in terms of raw power, and yet Source is still a viable resource for game developers. How many stock looking, unexceptional shooters have we played in the last year that were powered by Unreal 3? Or worse, how many had a proprietary engine that was put to waste? An imaginative design team, or perhaps an experienced art director from the film or game industry, could have been brought in early, and things could have evolved beyond stock characters and situations. With development costs constantly rising, something has to give. A top tier art team can work wonders without having to spend tens of millions developing a new engine.


However, having an engine that can deliver great effects and visuals simply gives a great art designer more tools. It allows a designer creating the story to bring that story to life in dramatic ways that awe and excite the audience.

That much is true, and i can certainly agree, however it creates new problems for many teams. People need to take extra time and resources to learn to operate at a workable capacity within the new environment. Take the PS3 as a prime example here. PS3 development cost a bloody fortune early on because the tools and experience weren't there. Getting a project up and running took more steam. I'm not saying devs should have abandoned the system, but the support structure should have been there to allow a developer to take full advantage of the tools on hand. Look at Silicon Knight's problems with the Unreal 3 engine. They supposedly tore the core of that engine apart and rebuilt from scratch, and the artwork STILL looked like "stock Unreal 3" when the game was released. The design was more limited by what the engine could do than aided by it.

So I don't understand your argument. It's like you are saying that Picasso shouldn't spend so much money on paint brushes so that he can afford to spend more time on each painting. Maybe what you are saying is that he should spend less money on paint brushes so that he can spend more time on each painting instead.

No, i'm saying more studios should hire Picassos rather than Andy Warhols. Too many games are looking generic and stagnant. For every Farcry 2 there's a Fracture. For every Gears of War 2 there's a Legendary. For every game that genuinely seems to care about presenting a new, wonderfully realized environment, with truly inspiring art and design which really complements the technology on display, there's a stagnant, generic looking also-ran running on top drawer technology with non existent art design and seemingly no desire whatsoever to stand out from the crowd.

If that's the case, I still disagree with that as a blanket statement. I'm seeing incredible visuals and art design in a lot of different games. This may be true for games that are rushed out and have art that suffers because of this, but it isn't a problem that plagues all games and thus is a problem with the "model".

and i love that we can disagree. I too am seeing some incredible art design, some truly mindblowing, wonderous stuff, (Assassin's Creed, Uncharted, Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Farcry 2, Fable 2, Gears of War, Dead Space, Brothers in Arms, Metal Gear Solid 4, Zelda:Twilight Princess, Halo 3, GTA 4, and the list goes on) But many developers, and not only minor studios either, seem to ignore the importance of good art design early on in development. This has been a banner year for gaming, quite possibly the best in recent memory, last year was almost as good, and when you ask people what their favorite games were, they will almost always be games with a strong sense of design, or a memorable narrative - so yeah, maybe i'm totally off base, as that model seems to be there and growing exponentially, but i still see so much bland, genereic SHIT released every year, and coming from a design background, it frustrates me to no end. There's nothing worse than playing a mediocre game that could have been great if they'd just put that little bit of effort into design and narrative early on.

With regards to the narrative angle, there's still a long way to go. The closest i've seen a game come to really providing that perfect mix of narrative and gameplay would probably be either Dead Space or Uncharted. MGS 4 was amazing and all, but it wasn't the proper approach. I'd love to see more games take their cues from Uncharted or Dead Space. Give players a game where the plot and the gameplay are symbiotic, where the story propels the player forward, rather than being something a player skips over. The best mix makes a game like a good movie, something you pull off the shelf on a lazy sunday afternoon to experience. There are VERY few titles out there that exist on that level from a narrative standpoint. I'd like to see more.

[bean]

The cash can be better used to hire people WITH talent in those respective fields.

That's the thing though, you can't simply buy talent. You can pay to headhunt for it and pay to train it or pay to give it more time, but real life isn't like a simulation game where you simply pay more for better talent. However, many developers already do headhunting, training, and giving asset generators more time.

Plus, this is something collaborative. You can have the best artist's in the world, and if you are telling them to make a big-budget "popcorn" game then they are absolutely doing their job when they come up with incredible finishing move animations or vehicle sequences that are all a bout expressing dominance.

You've said that you agree that better game engines and hardware allow talented artists to do more, but you still persist in saying that these are two things that are opposed to one another. This is where you are wrong. Artists with better tools produce better art.

I think what you want is for game designers to focus on more interesting worlds that artists can bring to life in new and interesting ways. If Cliff Blezinski decides to make a game that has dominance and survival as it's major themes and sets this on a planet that is facing near complete destruction, then as an art director your job is to make the environments in that world as interesting as possible and to make them support the themes of the game (and those levels) as well as possible. The art design is incredibly successful at delivering interesting environments that support these themes in Gears of War 2.

However, even though they did an outstanding job of art direction in this "popcorn" game, I'm betting you would say that it is poor because what you seem to mean by "focusing on art design" is that you would like to see more innovation and creativity in game design so that new themes and artistic styles are used in the art design.

[Variable Gear]

A lot of things are wrong with the current model. I plan to spend next week's VG Rant discussing my opinion.

[Mason]

Within the development community, the dev are all too worried about one single, solitary item: Technology.

The focus needs to shift. Rather than focus on a graphics engine that can push out 2000 movign objects in HD with antiwhatever filtering and HRD blooming, how about licensing a cheaper engine like Digital Extreme's Evolution engine (Used for Dark Sector - very very pretty), or Gamebryo, and focusing that talent and money on ART DESIGN!
Again: the vast majority of development time and money is spent on asset generation. I'd be surprised if any major studio had engine programmers constitute even a third of their team.

If you're worried about art design, a far larger culprit would be the trend toward contracting out level art tasks.

[Virtual Machine]

That's the thing though, you can't simply buy talent. You can pay to headhunt for it and pay to train it or pay to give it more time, but real life isn't like a simulation game where you simply pay more for better talent. However, many developers already do headhunting, training, and giving asset generators more time.

Plus, this is something collaborative. You can have the best artist's in the world, and if you are telling them to make a big-budget "popcorn" game then they are absolutely doing their job when they come up with incredible finishing move animations or vehicle sequences that are all a bout expressing dominance.

You've said that you agree that better game engines and hardware allow talented artists to do more, but you still persist in saying that these are two things that are opposed to one another. This is where you are wrong. Artists with better tools produce better art.

I think what you want is for game designers to focus on more interesting worlds that artists can bring to life in new and interesting ways. If Cliff Blezinski decides to make a game that has dominance and survival as it's major themes and sets this on a planet that is facing near complete destruction, then as an art director your job is to make the environments in that world as interesting as possible and to make them support the themes of the game (and those levels) as well as possible. The art design is incredibly successful at delivering interesting environments that support these themes in Gears of War 2.

However, even though they did an outstanding job of art direction in this "popcorn" game, I'm betting you would say that it is poor because what you seem to mean by "focusing on art design" is that you would like to see more innovation and creativity in game design so that new themes and artistic styles are used in the art design.

I didn't say they were directly opposed to one another. Quite the opposite. I said that problems can and will appear (See Silicon Knights and the crap over Too Human). I think we're more on the same page here than you think.

With regards to Gears of War 2 - i think Epic has some of the best art design in the business, and the look of Gears and Gears 2 shows there was a LOT of effort put into nailing down a unique and cohesive look for the games, and it certainly paid off. I'm not just saying that cause i've got pretty artbooks either. Now what some other studios are doing with U3 is just ridiculous.