Slashdot Mirror
Whether Prestige Titles?
Via some extended commentary on GameSetWatch, a post by Greg Costikyan on the Games*Design*Art*Culture blog on the lack of 'prestige' games in the modern game industry. By 'prestige' Costikyan means titles that may not do terribly great commercially, but that attract a lot of goodwill towards the developer and publisher. From the article: "Suppose Capcom, instead of closing Clover Studios and muttering about 'disappointing sales' had trumpetted Okami's critical success, instructed its publicists to attempt to interest both game and tech media in presentations of art from this beautiful and visually stunning game, and announced their strong support for innovation and creativity in future? They might have produced greater interest in, and sales for, the game, but more importantly, could have worked to establish for Capcom what no company other than Nintendo has in the industry today--a reputation for actually caring about gameplay. Could Ubisoft not have done the same with Beyond Good and Evil? And since Ubisoft is in direct competition in most of the cities where it has studios with EA, which has a reputation for mistreating its staff and a lack of innovation, would this not also have benefited their recruiting efforts?"
The summary talks about visually beautiful and stunning games and in the same thought refers to gameplay. Well, which one do you want? I think we've all established by now that gameplay comes first. So while I do understand the concept that games can be art, I disagree that art can be games - and the sales will show I'm right.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Most publishers will continue to make games in a series as long as they break even in an attempt to build a brand which may become profitable in the long run. In the previous generation many games were in the $5 Million to $10 Million to develop range and as a result required about 250,000 to 500,000 copies to break even. Nintendo has an advantage by being a first party publisher which enables them to make greater revinues per title, and they're know to keep development costs lower (partially by reusing content between games) so they can break even on much smaller sales.
One thing that should be interesting to see is how publishers are going to react in the upcomming generation when they could require 1 Million sales in order to break even on a game; will more games become multi-platform, will they reduce risks, or will they step away from attempting to push the systems to their graphical limits?
Developers and publishers have to care about profit because every title these days costs a lot of money to make. Even 'small' titles cost over a million dollars. That's ignoring advertising costs, which generally are at least equal to (and generally more than) the cost of development.
Publishers and developers these days aren't interested in building meaningful relationships with developers. They are interested in investing in a one-hit-wonder at the right time, and then moving on.
It may not be the 'right way,' but it 'the way.'
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
Or, you know, you could actually PROMOTE those games properly. Publishers dump boatloads of money into promoting sequels like the latest Madden 200X (which is already going to sell well without any effort), but I don't recall seeing any advertising for Okami. Certainly there was nothing memorable.
Of course the standard single page ad in a magazine generally doesn't even play up a game's strengths properly. If "beautiful graphics" are touted on the box cover, I'll see four 1 inch square microscopic "screenshots". If they're trying to promote the story we get a few stale phrases like "expansive storyline". You're not getting my attention, guys. And don't get me started about eye-splitting obnoxious flash ads. Oh, you're selling a game. That's nice. Your ad doesn't even try to tell me how it's different from the other 50 blockbusters on the market. That kind of sloppy advertising works fine for your sports sequel, because people already know what they're buying, and they're lined up to buy the next installment anyway. But it makes genuinely unique games like Okami flop.
Most companies seem to be blind to the difference between a great product promoted poorly and a mediocre sequel marketed to the gills. If a good game is not selling, fire your marketers and hire new ones. And if a bad game isn't selling, THEN you fire development staff.
It seems to me that budget is the key reason why game publishers are backing off on the prestige games. Specifically, a lot of people don't seem to know how to make a lower-budget game.
The article hints at this when they mention that prestige movies tend to be lower budget, and people who work on them are expected to work for lower pay. The huge expensive special effects and highest-paid actors are saved for movies with more mass-market appeal. Meanwhile, a lot of the more, shall we say, experimental games that I see coming out of major game studios still hold tight to their expensive high-detail graphics and whatnot. This makes the games much more expensive to produce, and they effectively price themselves out of their already restricted market.
I think a key lesson that the game industry could stand to learn is that they don't have to have incredibly complex graphics and endless content in order to make a game look good and get played a lot - Katamari Damacy illustrates this point extremely well. This is another thing that sets prestige movies, which do shun the special effects and whatnot, apart from most attempts at prestiget games that I've seen. Another is that people who pay attention to these games aren't necessarily all that interested in great visuals, anyway. Paying for all of that when your target market doesn't care about it is just throwing money down a well.
I don't think so, I think the main idea is that they are good games that were underrated in the mainstream. The goodwill comes from showing that you aren't making a game to sell it to the juicy mainstream market and make the most money possible, but for the sake of making a good game that includes some originality.
The last thing you say demonstrates that you missed the point, and should have made you stop and think. Right in the summary the idea of generating goodwill towards the developer is mentioned. I doubt that very many people feel extra goodwill towards Microsoft as a result of using Windows for the past decade - I certainly don't.
Just because Ubisoft isn't EA doesn't mean the conditions there are utopian. It's still a big honkin' international game company. I'm sure you could find at least a few UBI_Spouses there.
DJCC
The fact of the matter is, the majority of game buyers do not buy games based on reviews at all. A mediocre sequel to a mediocre game is guaranteed to outsell a spectacular original game for this reason.
just some guy
A little off-topic, but the logical conclusion to draw from your analysis is that less people look to video games for emotional or mental stimulation than for convenient/cheap entertainment. This is reminiscent of most film and music as well.
However, I appreciate those who go out of their way, beyond goals of profit, to create real art from within the boundaries of these media. I don't buy their goods because they "deserve" my money more, though. My reason is more selfish: I buy their goods because they are worth having.
"Why Get Hung Up On Game Sales?"
Correct. Studios should be more "hung up" on Game Downloads. (Think all of the NFS series and HL/HL2+episodes).
I don't know about Capcom (they've had their ups and downs) but Ubisoft isn't exactly France's EA. Other than the Rainbow Six series and its spin-offs (Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell series), Ubisoft has been hit or miss when it comes to sales and successful games.
I've played and finished Beyond Good & Evil. It is a brilliant game and I'm glad I found it at the local store. But I only heard about it this year. It completely slipped under my radar. I bought it from the bargain bin on a whim because the cover art looked interesting.
Psychonauts? I hadn't even heard about this game until the Slashdot story about it being available on Steam. I bought it the same day and it's been very entertaining. It's a little childish and platformers aren't usually my thing but I'm finding it fun anyway. Another one that almost slipped my attention.
Okami? This is the first I've even heard of this game.
The failure in all three cases isn't the game; it's the advertising. I receive gamer newsletters all the time - electronic and paper versions - and none of these games were brought to my attention. Even worse, word of mouth failed as well. Usually I can rely on friends to recommend worthy games but I had to tell them about BG&E and Psychonauts.
Imagine if a movie studio sunk $5 million into a flick and even the movie buffs didn't know the film existed. Yet that is the situation we currently have with $5 million games such as Psychonauts.
I played it, and I loved it. It's too short, and it had a few problems, but overall, it's one of the best games of the last generation. Interestingly, a friend of mine plays almost no video games, but it seems he played BG&E at a friend's place, and he actually talked to me about it. BG&E was the only video game he ever talked to me about, and probably the only video game whose name he was able to remember.
In my opinion, BG&E is the only recent non-Nintendo game that can compare to Wind Waker in the "Zelda Genre."
So as a result of all this, you got to play the games far more cheaply.
This is the other problem games face (which Greg Costikyan has discussed extensively before): games titles are discounted far too rapidly. A game might eventually sell copies based on its good reputation but it can never make much money that way.
No company is going to spend multi million dollar budgets on a game to make fantastic "gameplay" and be happy with low sales numbers. The simple fact is games are about making money, pure and simple. There are a couple companies out there not interested in making money and they are usually called independents for a reason. However they have to have money to make games and where ever that money is coming from has to not care about making a return. Most companies that produce games don't want to "make a return" they want to aim for a 3x-5x return if possible.
No studio is going to act like selling games isn't important, even Nintendo doesn't act like that. Nintendo is just smart to keep costs down while keeping quality gameplay alive.
However even more so many companies do care about gameplay, but they want to appeal to the entire gamer audience (larger audience, larger sales) so they'll put in great gameplay as well as great graphics. That doesn't mean they don't care about gameplay, it's just not the only concern. I'm sure in a happy world we could allow places like clover studios to live, even while it's hemorrhaging dollars. But in the real world that's not going to happy, not in America, definitely not in Japan, and definitely not in the game industry.
I'm going to assume, by your domain, that you're in Australia. Thay may be the reason you haven't heard of certain games. Until I just searched for it as an example, I had never heard of the (probably $5M+ film) Like Minds; but it's well-known in Australia. There's plenty of great (and not so great) UK music artists that chart immensely over there and we never hear a peep from here or we get their album a year or two later.
In video games, sport games are what comes quickest to mind. Ask an American if he prefers Brian Lara Cricket over EA's Cricket and they'll look at you a bit odd. Compare the launch titles here and in Japan. The PS3 has two or three Mahjong games. The Gameboy Advance had the hit-game I Am an Air Traffic Controller.
Now, none of this necessarily really applies to Okami because it's not an American game but it's been mentioned a lot of times (more than, say Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! but less than the Katamari series). So you should've heard of it. Certainly most big review sites have a review of it: Metacritic lists more reviews of Okami than of Madden 2007 and FInal Fantasy XII. The New York Times mentioned it. Slashdot has had at least three Okami or Clover Studios-related articles.
And who knows. Maybe Capcom missed out on reaching 50,000 more people like you and that's why Clover studios closed down.
The truth is, more than marketing is necessary. Good marketing or bad marketing can sometimes raise or sink a game, but it's not the end-all be-all. There's a lot of other factors, and outside, uncontrollable circumstances ("luck") have something to do with it.
I personally think creating groups/communities outside of your regular one (friends/family) can only help gaming. These can be formal (creating clans in Halo 2, guilds in WoW) or informal: Microsoft's Xbox Live friend list is ingenious. You get to see what other people are playing and when the list is suddenly populated by a new game, you may feel compelled to get it because it really is what "everybody" is playing. Some games I believe even have options to message friends to let them know about this game. Others give you special things (unlockable maps, characters, vehicles) if you recommend a game to a friend (and codes are exchanged).
I don't know if this is what drives the 360's allegedly "troubling" high tie-in ratio where owners buy more games than other consoles. But, from this angle, more inter-connectivity seems like a win-win for gamers and developers.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.