Lies, Damned Lies, And Gaming Statistics

Thanks to the IGDA for pointing to a recent Chris Crawford-authored piece discussing the unreliability of statistics that reveal an ever-more diverse gaming public. The piece cites a recent Entertainment Software Association study and suggests that, because they don't reveal their methods or sources, "...the ESA results are unscientific. We can't place any confidence in them because we have no idea what they really mean. It doesn't matter how representative the sample is or how large it is or even if the researchers wore white lab coats." The ever-controversial Crawford goes on to argue that "Games people are smarting about the tawdry, unhealthy image that their industry suffers", and then offers a way out: "What's especially sad about this is that the solution to these problems is obvious: start making respectable games."

Comments

Aye, there's the rub.

[fuzzdawg]

If you look at the most popular games of all time, (I have in mind Tetris, Final Fantasy, Unreal Tournament, GTA, Pac-Man, The Sims, WarCraft, Mario, well, you get the idea . . .) they are all fun. That's the point. But they are all respectable in their own right.

The reason violent and brutal games are fun is because games involve conflict, and the most basic type of conflict is physical violence/confrontation. It is also the easiest type of conflict to understand, and resolve. (Guy is in my way, kill him)

It is much easier to make a game where you have to kill all your enemies, as opposed to make them loyal and win their friendship and love. And besides, most of us do the more complex task in our daily lives anyway.

As far as comparing books and film to video games, the problem is interactivity. A person doesn't make choices in the two proven genres, but games are participatory. The future of game development is going to be intresting, because current game sales have been based on improved technology; not improved gameplay. (ex: UT v UT2003) The proven game genres are going to have to take a back-seat, and be modified to make some fresh ideas. Who would have thought games such as The Sims would have been so successful? What the game business needs is innovation, not this repetitive stagnation.

How that is going to come about has yet to be seen -- I don't have any ideas just yet.

Re:Aye, there's the rub.

[PainKilleR-CE]

If you look at the most popular games of all time, (I have in mind Tetris, Final Fantasy, Unreal Tournament, GTA, Pac-Man, The Sims, WarCraft, Mario, well, you get the idea . . .) they are all fun. That's the point. But they are all respectable in their own right.

Almost half of those games don't even rank in the top 20, while games that do (Half-Life, Myst) aren't there. Mario accounts for about 25% of the top 20, though.

It is much easier to make a game where you have to kill all your enemies, as opposed to make them loyal and win their friendship and love. And besides, most of us do the more complex task in our daily lives anyway.

Civilization (and most of it's sequels and derivatives) can be played this way. Obviously, though, it has a more niche appeal than the others. Of course, a handful of the top selling games involve no conflict at all, such as Tetris and Myst.

As far as comparing books and film to video games, the problem is interactivity. A person doesn't make choices in the two proven genres, but games are participatory.

This is also why games tend to get hit by controversy and that controversy tends to stick better than it ever did with music, movies, and books. This is also why controversy stuck with pen & paper RPGs. Still, it has little to do with whether or not they can be considered art, as that's a matter of the people working on them treating them as such.

The future of game development is going to be intresting, because current game sales have been based on improved technology; not improved gameplay. (ex: UT v UT2003)

As far as I knew, UT outsold UT2003, and Unreal outsold UT. Half-Life outsold Quake 3 by quite a bit. Super Mario Bros 1 outsold all other Mario games (though SMB3 is the best selling game never officially bundled with hardware). Doom 3 might be the exception, if it does well, because it has a better name in the mainstream than Quake. There are far more non-gamers that played Doom than Quake.

The proven game genres are going to have to take a back-seat, and be modified to make some fresh ideas. Who would have thought games such as The Sims would have been so successful? What the game business needs is innovation, not this repetitive stagnation.

As with anything else, the stagnation will remain. Movies certainly suffer from it, music suffers greatly, and books slightly less so, but still to a degree. Occasionally there are those rare games that surpass the current genres and/or bring in mass appeal. I am much happier to see Half-Life on the 'top selling games of all time' charts than Myst or the Sims, because it shows that an existing genre can appeal to the masses with some effort on the part of developers. Too many people are complacent to keep doing the same old things, to try to develop something cheaply that will bring in quick cash. The Sims is actually a solid example of this, as once the actual game took off they kept turning out expansion packs that required very little change to the game itself, and brought in tons of cash. Of course, Valve is nearly as guilty with Half-Life, turning out a dozen or so versions of the game over the past 4 years and selling mods developed by fans of the game (though, of course, those fans made a pretty penny in most cases, too).

People tend to go too far into the mindset of 'we need something completely new' instead of realizing that we just need people to tell new stories and create technology that tells the stories better. Even Half-Life's story was fairly derivative of the rest of the genre, with only a few twists and changes, but the technology they developed to tell the story made it a best seller. Of course, Quake 3 was considered better from a technological standpoint, but it's technology was focused around flashy eye-candy rather than story-telling, which is why it came nowhere near the sales numbers.

On the other hand, what are the SMB games really about? Those are the best-selling ga

There is a pretty big indie games scene.

[illumen]

Very interesting article :)

"""The games biz has nothing like this; we have hobbyists who slap together amateur efforts, and we have big-time people who develop the mainstream products. There's nothing in between, which is one reason why the games industry is so creatively stagnant."""

I do not think that is so true. There are a few independant groups which make wildly popular games. eg Doom, snood, various other 'indies'. Over the last few years the indie game scene has really taken off. I think these people make games for a lot of people not into the mainstream games. For example many of them make games which will run on many computers, not just the latest ones.

A game like snood, for example has gotten very wide public attention(In the multi millions). I've meet a number of non gamer types who have played it. The same with the doom/quake series of games. People who didn't normally play games at that time gave it a go because it was so interesting.

Indie game developers can also afford to make games which do not sell lots of copies, because they are running more efficient businesses. For example instead of making 3-5% of each copy sold they can make 70-90% of each copy sold, and generally make games with much smaller budgets. They rarely do not sell as many copies as the publisher distributed.

Take a look at the igf.com, dexterity.com/forums/. From there you will find lots of indie games, and evidence of such a scene. Check out gametunnel.com, indiegammer.com for reviews of indie games. There are really good original games in there, but also a number of crap games(like other indie, and publisher funded entertainment areas). Also check out ludumdare.com where there are occasionally 48 hour game making comps. Some very interesting ideas have come from there.

Something like the Harvey Keitel effect*1 in pulp fiction is happening in other indie games. One occurance is where one/some of the makers of ufo XCOM are selling a game: Laser Squad Nemesis, http://www.lasersquadnemesis.com/.

*1 Harvey Keitel effect - Having a big name giving more reputation, expertise and funds to an almost unknown group, drawing more attention to it. Like what happened in pulp fiction with Harvey Keitel. Because people knew he was on board, other people agreed to work with them.

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