Game Distributed Online Forgoes Publishers

KrackHouse writes "A group of developers from Black & White got together and used their bonuses to fund a project called Live For Speed. This online racing simulator uses the Internet as its distribution channel exclusively. No retail stores carry LFS and you need to use PayPal or a credit card to buy it.vIf this is successful will game publishers go the way of the RIAA and face irrelevance? LFS is much less expensive than a typical boxed title and if it ends up becoming a profitable venture more devs will surely jump on the solo bandwagon." It'll be a long time until this sort of thing becomes more common, and there's still a lot of consumer reassurance that comes from buying something in a box and having the disc laying around. It's a nice case study for what will inevitably become the way things are done, though.

Comments

hmmm

[i8urtaco]

I don't know about everyone else, but I like having my install CDs available. I'm the type of guy that has reinstalled Windows a bunch of times for one reason or another (mainly becuase I'm anal retentive about my system), and I hate having to enter the Product ID for each game on every reinstall, let alone having to download a mega-huge file and having the publisher have a shifty eye pointed at me because I do a complete overhaul every 6 months or so.
And yeah, yeah.... I know... I'm planning on eventually doing a Ghost image of my machine so I don't have to do this every time.... it's just going to take a huge number of CD-RWs...

What matters most: PRICE

[MBraynard]

Typical Price of a new game: $50
Price of this game: 12 lbs (~$18?)

Assuming this isn't a crap game (and often enough those $50 games are), this is the price you can expect to pay when you wipe out all the expenses of the box, the disc and jewel case, the instruction booklet, and the cut that everyone along the way gets.

So that means that even with the developer making a profit along withthe distribution bandwidth, they cut the price of a game by +60%.

Given how many stupid Xbox games I've bought, I hope that Phantom is able to have games similarly cheaply distributed using this same model. And considering it's a closed system, maybe it's the only fool-proof way to distrubute games this way.

put under the xmas tree?

[Splork]

how do you put this under the xmas tree, wrap as a birthday present or give to someone without good internet access?

all of those are reasons for retail boxes. if a publisher would wake up and not demand exclusive rights, they could sell a happy retail box of this for $10 more than the online version.

Re:put under the xmas tree?

[The_Listener_1985]

you could always burn it to a disk and put it into a CD case, but then again, that seems like the definition of "Tacky". Good point.

Comparing Game Publishers to the RIAA is silly.

[Elwood P Dowd]

See subject.

Sure, they finance and ensure the marketability of a product, but they're occasionally cabable of quality and innovation. They haven't tried to arrest the majority of their customers yet, either.

Making games cost money. Game publishers have money. They'll be around for a while.

No publishers?

[Mike Hawk]

Thats a laugh.

Who do you think pays the developers while they make the game? Very few developers are in a position to publish a game without any outside funding. Web-based games are cheap to make, but does the world really need another Bejeweled rip-off? Who is going to pay for the 3 year development of a game and the engine license in the first place?

Then lets talk quality control. Its the publisher who does the QA. Now I know we all have different opinions about how well that works, but it is something. Along with quality control goes support. Who is to say there would even be a serious customer support webpage, let alone a call and email center?

Patches? See above for cash. Once the game is out the amount of money earned is basically set. The chance of extended support with patches is even more unlikely.

Broadband support is not ready. If you don't believe me, look how the Counter-strike population shot up once it became a retail product. That was a free game in the first place, but since it was a huge download it didn't REALLY blow up until someone could walk into a store and buy it at retail. Broadband is spreading but its just not there yet. Is a couple thousand units sold enough to justify making a top quality game in the first place? Enemy Territory was recently released and even at the delicious price of 0 it only has less than 8000 users online at a time. Assuming TEN times that many have downloaded it, that is eighty thousand units. 80k units at $50 each (yeah right for an online buy) = 4 Large. Blizzard (chosen because I could easily find the info) has about 150 employees. The sales from that game would earn each employee an average of 27k per year. For exactly one year. They definitely need a larger base than that, even given the well rounded up and generous numbers.

Then there is the physical product itself. There are so many questions there. Sure, I can make a backup copy once it is downloaded, but what if there is a problem with the download? Can I download it again for free? Do I have to buy it again because there was connection trouble. Don't have to worry about that if I walk into Best Buy. If the CD is defective they will exchange it for the same title. No thanks, I'll take the box, jewel case, and paper manual any day.

Don't even think about publishers going away just yet. Wallstreet analysts will be the first to correctly predict that one.

Re:No publishers?

[Torvo]

Besides all the points Mike Hawk brings up, there are also the issues of end-user documentation and licensing. First the documentation. A lot of developers I've dealt with in seven years of being in the industry, have an incomplete understanding of end-user psychology, user interfaces and cognitive sciences. Usually, a developer's idea of "intuitive" works great if one is a programmer or an artist. Most people, however, are not. The docs -- user manual, read me file, whatever, is usually composed by someone not dedicated to the development cycle, but who understands the demographic from the marketing standpoint and the needs of that consumer. The American consumer, Joe Gameplayer in middle America is not as bright as most people would like to think. Make it easy for him to get the game, but someone has to make it easy for him to play it, too.

The second issue is that of licensing. In this racing game, or any other sports sim, the players who'll be interested in playing are usually also interested in some connection to reality. They want to race the cars they see on the streets, in the showrooms or on the NASCAR tracks. Are the developers also going to track the bureaucratic hassle of getting the images and names of all the licensors correct? My experience says not, but I am willing to be surprised.

Unless the developer groups want to take on these two issues, as well as the other ancillary bureaucratic ugliness that publishers take care of, don't count on the publishers disappearing anytime soon.

Re:product activation... (and other things)

[Frac]

If the development team is unable to do such a simple task as designing a user-friendly Web site, I'm a little sceptical about the quality of their game.

Yeah.. there's this open-sourced kernel called "Linux", and I heard the developers don't even maintain an official website. I bet the quality is even worse... [/sarcasm]