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Why Do Games Sell?
simoniker writes "Game designer Pierre-Alexandre Garneau has published a new article compiling a list of factors that make games popular, and although he notes: "The test assumes that the game is good — if it's bad, chances are it won't sell no matter how high it scores on this test," his comparison of GTA 3 and Psychonauts tries to apply common-sense reasoning to why one sold well and the other did not."
Marketing.
I've been a casual player of GTA for years, and I imagine a well established fan base is a huge factor.
Who was the clever chap who said "Give the public what they want" ?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
There are some tits on the box.
If you think this article is awesome, wait until my submission hits; "Why is water wet?".
Because they're either well-made or well-marketed.
I think its very likely that most people don't first look at a review or try to learn about a game from an outside point of view before they decide to buy... its mostly what they hear from the hype, from commercials on tv, from ads, and from walking in the store and looking at the box. I don't know about anyone else, but just based on the "cover", GTA looks more enticing than Psychonauts. Not because of the guns, or the hip look of the box, but because after I look at the game Psychonauts, I can very quickly decide I don't wanna spend my hard earned cash on it because it doesn't even look all that appealing on many levels.
some games sell well I think usuall due to graphics alone... and maybe even a touch of friend referral as is the case with Halo and probably Gears of War
2006 top ten:
Madden NFL 07 - PS2
New Super Mario Bros. - DS
Gears of War - Xbox 360
Kingdom Hearts II - PS2
Guitar Hero 2 Bundle- PS2
Final Fantasy XII - PS2
Brain Age: Train Your Brain - DS
Madden NFL 07 - Xbox 360
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter - Xbox 360
NCAA Football 07 - PS2
2005 top ten:
Madden NFL 06 - PS2
Pokemon Emerald - GBA
Gran Turismo 4 - PS2
Madden NFL 06 - Xbox
NCAA Football 06 - PS2
Star Wars: Battlefront 2 - PS2
MVP Baseball 2005 - PS2
Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith - PS2
NBA Live 06 - PS2
Lego Star Wars - PS2
2004 top ten:
GTA: San Andreas - PS2
Halo 2 - Xbox
Madden NFL 2005 - PS2
ESPN NFL 2K5 - PS2
Need for Speed: Underground 2 - PS2
Pokemon Fire Red - GBA
NBA Live 2005 - PS2
Spider-Man: The Movie 2 - PS2
Halo - Xbox
ESPN NFL 2K5 - Xbox
Out of the thirty possible, there are only three games that are not sequels or licensed content: (Halo, Brain Age, and Gears of War). 1/3 are EA Sports titles. That's pretty sad.
Great! Speculation mixed with after-the-fact analysis.
This should all be nothing that a good marketing campaign can't handle. Notice how all the questions are very fuzzy, you can interpret them in any number of ways and answer them favourably for any game on the market.
Some examples
Sims: you can play.. people, leading... ordinary (quote, unquote) lives. Doesn't look especially nice, not based on anything well-known. Initial target market: Who knows? Girls? Kids? Yes, afterwards it turns out everyone and their dog plays Sims. Social uniqueness: it was funny that I could exchange Sims with other savegames.
Sims: Big hit.
Commandos: does not stand out at all, even at the time. Looked rather dull, with its faux 3D. Gameplay was nice but you had to use the keyboard for fast movement in the later levels, so not really for the inexperienced gamer. No social play. Communication of idea: "you blow up enemies in WW2", so much for standing out, right? But wait: this is in 2D! Game is based on a known idea only in so much as it is a WW2 game and view from the top 2D, so rather something to avoid. Target market: fuzzy question. You never really know who turns out to be a fan, right? So, anyone who likes Starcraft?
Commandos: Big hit.
Nothing like getting a lecture from one of game development's leeches - 'game designers' aka level monkeys.
Wanna know why your game costs 60 bucks? Overhead.
Overhead is the number one issue in game development. Teams are filled with clowns like this guy and a million different types of talentless producers and other dead weight. Add up their salaries over a couple year project and you have a massive amount of cash you need to make back in game sales.
Because people like to play games? Seriously, what kind of ridiculous question is this? Is this a joke or something?
You can thank Jack Thompson and Hillary Clinton (among others) for high GTA sales. Tons of publicity, making it the "maverick" game to play. I bet if a Senator had asked for a probe into Psychonauts, it would've sold a few more copies.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
I'll tell you why I like the GTA Series. It is open ended and I love the physics. It is so fun sometimes to just drive around in a motorcycle.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
And in exactly that order.
You can pump a mediocre game into the heavens by throwing a truckload of money into its marketing. It's even enough to hint at what you would probably play, as long as there is action and as long as there is ground shaking graphics. Whether that would need a 10 GHz machine with a graphics card that becomes available somewhere in late 2010 doesn't matter. It looks great. And the marketing spin does the rest.
Name is another reason. There was a good game that sold, so this will too. Civilisation IV would have bombed without the Civ-tag to it. Duke Nuke... ok, ok, no bad jokes, I promise. Everquest 2 is a very average fantasy MMORPG, really vanilla and bland, but it has the EQ name. Generally, you can sell a game that has a great name, even without too much marketing spin. People will even preorder it, without even having seen a single screenshot, the game can already sell its first batch of copies before you started coding.
And finally, quality. Quality is the poorest seller, and it's amazing how many high quality games collect dust on the shelves simply because nobody ever heard about them. Quality is a seller once someone starts a hype around them, starts recommending them and thus it sells. But this kind of "marketing" is getting more and more out of fashion. Studios prefer to pump their money into marketing instead of programming, and squeeze out yet another "graphics enhanced" version of the same old game to trying something new.
Well, people, we get what we buy...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Because people buy them.
Demonstration : if nobody buys the game (or any product), it won't sell.
Next question, please !
Bouncy Boobies
Why do game developers thing their games should sell when they make games based on teh weirdest stuff imaginabe without doing any market research about the themes and ideas they are doing?
The truth is not that original games suck, it's that the so called "original" game isn't original most of the time and creatively and thematically they game is way out there (like WAY out there).
Take for instance Planescape torment. It was an excellent game if you LOVED TO READ TEXT and CLICK THROUGH DIALOGUE for hours on end, but for people more action or task oriented, it's a very tedious thing. It was also based on the baldur's gate engine which we had seen before.
Next is the fact that planescape was thematically WAY out there, did you see the box art and ma,e for that game? That alone would have killed sales like the plague. Then there was the fact that it in no way associated itself with Baldur's gate or Forgotten realm properties and franchises. Big mistake. If we changed the box art and the name of the game and art setting and basically had it in the Baldurs gate / forgotten realm universe with decent box art and a some reworking of thee game to make it fit that universe it would have been more of a success I gaurantee it.
Some game developers go a litttle crazy when they are given TOO much creative control and it must be said that creating you dream game, while fufilling can tank your company if you're not considering the business end of it and tempering your labour of love with the reality that people will want to play in your games world especially if they are buying it for $50.
Is the Idea Behind the Game Easy to Communicate?
Can players explain quickly, easily and in a convincing way why your game is awesome? Can the marketing team? If the high concept of the game is hard to communicate, then you'll have a hard time convincing players that it's worth their time.
[...]
Is the Game Based on Something the Market Already Knows and Loves?
Put in other words, will the market "get it" quickly? It's a lot easier to convince people that a game is good if it's related to something they already like. Perfect example: Deer Hunter. Perfect name, perfect subject, perfectly low system requirements. (i.e., runs on any celeron 400mhz or higher, I'd say.)
Crappiest... game... ever! But I still find it installed on relatives' computers all the time.
> Why Do Games Sell?
Because they're sitting in stores with price tags on them?
- Daikatana
- Anachronox
both failed, yet they contain the elements of success
I addition to quality and marketing I would like to add Multiplayer. Games that have really good multiplayer force those who would otherwise pirate them to go out and buy it. If you take away the multiplayer from warcraft3 you're left with nothing, the campaign is nothing special. Being unpiratable (ok I made that word up) can work wonders. There are quite a few people that download their games illegally but end up buying them for the awesome multiplayer they possess. Course you can make a singleplayer only game and sell like crazy (cough Oblivion cough) and at the end of the day nothing beats Hype+Marketing. Diablo2 sold well despite getting terrible reviews because of the hype about a diablo sequel.
I don't like the "social" bs. For me, it's a turn-off. I prefer my friends in RL, thank you very much. I game alone. When I'm not busy with more interesting things, that is.
I really don't think Psychonauts was that good, I don't see why people elevate it to Sacred Cow status. The reason I personally didn't buy it was because I played the demo. It's a generic 3D platformer with a collect-a-thon bolted on. A cute art style and nice writing are irrelevant when the game isn't very appealing.
I basically thought that getting it when I still have Shines to collect in Mario Sunshine (which handles better and is more fun to jump around in, despite having zero writing) would be a waste of money.
Incidentaly, I bought Sunshine because I totally loved Mario 64 and wanted more. And why did I buy Mario 64? I didn't, I pirated the ROM (but have since bought it on DS)...
I quit!
EA sports also did SSX:Tricky. Yeah, that's technically a "sequel" to the SSX series, but it was innovative and fun enough that it got me to buy a PS2 in the first place.
p.s. I wouldn't accept any of the "top 10" games you mentioned if they were given to me for free. Give me Ratchet&Clank (any the first three) or Jak&Daxter (but not #2), and I'm a happy camper.
This is the power of social networks. Everyone may mutter to themselves 'Oh, I told everyone I know about Psychonauts,' but did those people pass the message along? Obviously not like GTA 3 spread. Its only sad if you cared about the game in the first place. As a side note, and just to make sure I get nailed as offtopic as well as flamebait, another great game that never really took off was Kung Fu Chaos...
Microsoft Windows, and TV with its crap "unreality shows" is proof that good is not equal to popular. Popular is (almost) all about marketing. SOMETIMES they overlap, aka the iPod.
NOW, if you want to know what constitutes a _good_ game, then EVERY game has 1 or more of these properties:
* Acquisition
* Communication
* Competition
* Cooperation
* Creation
* Destruction
* Environment that is interesting
* Execution -- how well the game executed its principles
* Exploration
* Fun
* Navigation
* Organization
* Pattern Recognition
* Strategy (Problem-Solving)
* Tactics
* Trade
Bridge is a popular card game because it is one of the rare card games that has both Competition & Cooperation at the same time, amongst Acquisition, and Communication.
Tetris is a good game because it has: Strategy, Tactics, Navigation, Pattern Recognition, Organization.
Counter-Strike: Competion, Cooperation, Destruction, Creation, Communication, Navigation, Exploration, Organization.
World of Warcraft: Every single property!
But what do I know, I'm just a game dev.
You announce a sequel to an extremely popular and profitable game, vanish, come back every two years and announce that "we are completely rewriting the engine to leverage the latest hardware," and then vanish.
Tyranny isn't the worst enemy of a democracy. Cynicism is.
Depending on price I use the following before buying the higher price/full price games (not in order and not all of them):
-Demo
-Word of mouth
-Popularity of the game
-Quality
-History of a game series (did I like it and did the previous games have expectable quality)
-Is my computer up to playing the game in an enjoyable format or do I have to upgrade
-Is the game worth my upgrade price, if needed
-Who made the game and did I like their quality (some what repeating myself)
For cheaper/bargain games, normally things I want to try (again not in order or not all of them)
-Demo
-Awards
-Game magazine review/rating
(it helps me to determine if they are close to what I like to play)
-Do I think the game will be fun or not - description on back or from the magazine(s)
-Also is it cheap enough so if I find out that I do not like it, I will not feel bad over the price
-Word of mouth
-Is it a series and how has the series been doing in the market
-Does it have something that is new or different or something I have not done before or do I have games of that style that are better or do I want to play more of that style game
Why are folks willing to shell out $60 every 4 months or so for games which will given them at most two months of enjoyment, but unwilling to pay $200 once for something that they will use for three years to write all their documents etc (like Office?)
Shaddap. Tim Schafer is a god.
Nobody complains about filmmakers like Martin Scorsese or animators like Hayao Miyazaki having too much control over their creations. Maybe that's because the players still treat video games the way we treated movies when we were kids. If it wasn't in the big 12-screen theaters back then, it wasn't worth watching. Luckily we've grown up, and realized that there are literally millions of movies made every year, and not every one of them makes every person associated with it rich and famous in an instant. This is what the games industry is like; that's what the art business is like.
Games are the opiate of the twenty first century.
South Park nailed it in both the "Towelie" and "Make Love, Not Warcraft" episodes. An addicted gamer has very similar symptoms to chemical addicts. Gamers:
-get irritable without their fix, and angry when denied it
-think about the game when they are doing other things
-spend all their leisure time and time when they should be doing chores or work playing the game
-build up a tolerance, and then go searching for something new and better that triggers the same receptors
-spend large amounts of money on their fix (compute cost of home computer + video card upgrades + games + power + etc etc) if they can't avoid it.
-will lie to themselves and others, cajole, respond aggressively, etc, indeed anything they can think of to give themselves an opportunity to play some more.
Instead of using a chemical to tap into the pleasure receptors of the nervous system, the game taps into those receptors in a more roundabout way. How?
1) By simulating one or more aspects of real life where success or merely participation gives good feelings (which drive us to do more of them).
2) Quickening the feedback loop to make the game able to generate good feelings that are more intense or generated at a faster rate compared to real life. Essentially, to take out enough of the parts of the real life experience that seem like work, but not enough so that our brains aren't fooled and don't dole out the pleasure.
As a result, real life seems a little hard and stale by comparison. Why slog away spending ten years to become a master carpenter when in 6 months you can be a 50th level mage with a huge cachet of spells, able to take out powerful monsters (though carefully selected so that you always have a chance to defeat them if you work hard, except for Lord British of course), with many and varied adventures and friends along the way?
Different people are wired slightly differently. Some people don't get addicted easily to them. And all those who are addicted tend to have their type of addiction, be it combat simulation (killing), exercising strategy and tactics (to kill people), cooperating with friends (in between killing people), ransacking dungeons or climbing the virtual ladder.
Thus it's not surprising how companies market, and why we see relatively little experimentation now that a lot of the population is hooked and we know the methods of hooking them. It's not that surprising really. We have a few traits that have been honed by thousands of years of natural selection - to mate, to band together and make war, to eke a living from the land, to function in a community doing some sort of service, to accrue scarce resources, to climb a pecking order, to explore and find new and better pastures or new and better things that other people own and we can liberate from them. (And women have a different set of drives. Which is why we have house cats and yip yip dogs.)
There are only so many human drives, and thus, only so many games that will have mass appeal.
"Boredom's not a burden Anyone should bear" - Maynard James Keenan
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
A game gets bought by me:
When it's good, and not some thrown together crap.
When it allows me to create levels or tracks (block editor) or better yet is open to complete modding. I bought Need for Speed: High Stakes a while back because a fan had made a track editor for it. If they included an editor from the get go, they may have sold more copies.
When the game (such as a sim) is wide open and free and does not try to micromanage everything I do. (ie. no going "No no no! You can't do that" if I want to run a track down the middle of a street in a rail sim game.
Conversely, here is what *guarantees* to piss me off
When a game has copy protection that screws with the OS, loads drivers our other unwanted
crap and malware that is hard or almost impossible to remove even when the game is
When features are taken away. I had an experience when I went to Best Buy and spotted
"Trainz: Drivers edition". Trainz is basicly sold as a "model railroad for your PC",
and I know it came with an editor called "Surveyor". However, the "drivers edition" added
to the title kind of made me go "huh?", so I checked the box. Completely silent about the
Surveyor. So I did a quick Google on my cellphone, and found out that this edition had
the Surveyor stripped out! Arrrrghh! One of the reasons for model railroading is to
*build your own layouts!* Clearly, a marketing weenie, not a rail fan made this incredibly
boneheaded decision, and I walked out of the store muttering some choice words about
said weenie. Of course, the non-crippled version of Trainz was no whyere to be found.
Additionaly, Microsoft's railroad simulator seems to have mysteriously disappeared
off the shelves even though it was there (along with the non-crippled version of
Trainz) just a few months prior. There were plenty of flight sims, and all of that tycoon
crap laying around those. ( I tried a few of the tycoon games, but I got bored with
them quickly because of all of the micromanagement that the software does, even in sandbox
mode Their discs make nicer coasters than mis-burned CR-Rs though.)
* Artificialy micromanaging or restricting the experience. Kind of hard to describe
when talking about *all* of the genres, but you know it when you see it. A huge
turn off.
* Too many sequels. With few exceptions (such as Final Fantasy), sequels are usualy just rehashed crap. If a game has more than say 5 sequels (I'm being real generous here) it's time for something new.