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."

Comments

Why do games sell?

[Anonymous Coward]

Marketing.

Re:Why do games sell?

[gregtron]

Being open about being a pirate isn't an opinion, it's an admission of apathy.

Fan base

[jaymzru]

I've been a casual player of GTA for years, and I imagine a well established fan base is a huge factor.

Newsflash

[Timesprout]

critically acclaimed games like Psychonauts and Beyond Good and Evil have sold far fewer sales than they deserved.

Critically acclaimed movies usually tank at the box office and critically acclaimed books and albums are usually the preserve of pretentious/elitest twats.
Who was the clever chap who said "Give the public what they want" ?

Re:Newsflash

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Also, in the video game world, "Critically Acclaimed" can mean that a few 15 year olds that write for video game blogs liked the game.

Re:Newsflash

[gEvil (beta)]

Also, in the video game world, "Critically Acclaimed" can mean that a few 15 year olds that write for video game blogs liked the game.

Zonk, I'm looking at you...

Why games sell.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some tits on the box.

Uh, this is newsworthy?

[EvilCabbage]

If you think this article is awesome, wait until my submission hits; "Why is water wet?".

Re:Vague answers for overly-broad questions...

[Comfy1]

You mean, because they're either well marketed or well marketed.

Licensing, licensing, marketing

[bogjobber]

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.

Re:Licensing, licensing, marketing

[LoudMusic]

1/3 are EA Sports titles. That's pretty sad. Sports are a proven entertainment industry. There is a fan base of tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions. A lot of them are cross sectioned with video game players. It just makes good business sense, really.

Personally I hate sports video games. The only ones I've really ever found myself enjoying (so far) are Techmo Bowl (NES) and Virtua Tennis (DC) and Gran Turismo 3 & 4 (PS2).

It's like Lego hooking up with the Star Wars franchise. Lego is cool. Star Wars is cool. Make Lego Star Wars sets and everybody wins. The three largest (if not more) Lego sets ever produced are all Star Wars - the newest of which is brand new (~5200 piece Millennium Falcon!!).

So if you want to dethrone EA Sports as the largest 'genre' of popular games you need to find something that is as popular with people who like video games as sports and start producing good games. I'd suggest Star Wars, but they've pretty much fucked up that industry with games that continually fall short.

Hindsight is 20/20

[remmelt]

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.

'Game Designer' AKA Former EB Sales Clerk

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:'Game Designer' AKA Former EB Sales Clerk

[joystickgenie]

You have got to be kidding. You can't know anything about the game industry if you think that designer positions are useless. That's like saying that programmers are useless. Design is a very important step in making the game and ultimately determines if the game is any good or not. Tell me have you heard of the names Sid Meier, Shigeru Miyamoto, Hideo Kojima, Warren Spector, or Will Wright. If these names aren't familiar to you, you have absolutely no business in telling anyone about making video games and what is wrong with it. They are game designers. Are these the development's leeches you were talking about?

Btw designer and producer are different positions designers make decisions about the games, producers make decisions about the business. In fact each is just a category for positions. There is level designer, character designer, sound designer, game designer and others. Producers are used in every facet of the game high level producers are watching the budget of a game and making planning on the development timeframe, milestones and manage the mid producers. Mid level producers are enforcing the milestones communicated between departments and aid and manage the lower producers. Low level producers handle asset management, database entry, some bug fixes, and general gofer work around the office. All of these positions are absolutely necessary in big budget games.

If you are talking money wise the number one issue in game development is marketing distribution and licensing not staff.

Re:'Game Designer' AKA Former EB Sales Clerk

[Dutch Gun]

DOOM 3 is a great example of a game that, to its detriment, focused way too much on technological prowess and neglected solid game design. (i.e. can't use flashlight and gun at the same time, an entire game of enemies magically appearing behind you, etc)

Every game I've worked on (I'm a programmer, not a designer btw) had a critical need of a designer to shape the direction, design all the missions, tweak all the numbers (skills, weapons, spells, enemies, items, rewards, etc), and ensure the game is balanced and fun to play. Yes, some designers were better than others - just like any other profession.

Does it make more sense to have your more expensive programmers or artists doing this sort of work? That makes no sense to me, although I have heard of companies leaning in this direction. The problem with this approach is that not every artist or programmer really has the sensibilities or desire to design the game as well as working on their specific craft. I've known a number of both artists and programmers like this. They work very well when they have specific and well-defined task, but tend to stumble a bit when given more ambiguous tasks.

I'd suggest that games probably cost 60 bucks because the market has determined that this is the optimal price point for maximizing profits, given the content and development costs of a AAA title versus the standard market size, not because game makers pay for designers.

Publicity?

[faloi]

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.

3 Reasons: Marketing, name and quality

[Opportunist]

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...

Re:Vague answers for overly-broad questions...

[Psychofreak]

Well marketed crap is still crap.

Starcraft is still being sold, now over 8 years past it's release date because it is a great game. There are a lot of games that were marketed harder and not as profitable.
Sorry, I don't have numbers or names to back this up. I'm looking forward to seeing some replies with well marketed busts and less marketed winners.

Phil

Good != Popular!!!

[UnknownSoldier]

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.