Game Profitability Under Threat

The BBC has up an article looking at the dwindling opportunities for profit on games in the coming years. Soaring prices for game development, the increasingly-entrenched segmentation of the marketplace, and overwhelming emphasis on sequels means that it's looking increasingly dire for game development houses. While the success of the DS means that there's a wide market for games on that platform (witness Square/Enix's movement of the Dragon Quest franchise), the phasing out of the PS2 means that for the moment there is no 'leading platform' for game creation. The article talks about how the various game companies are responding to this challenge, as in Microsoft's reliance on exclusive deals and Sony's absorption of development houses into their infrastructure.

Comments

the market will sort itself out

[Astarica]

A game is not entitled to make money due to some intrinsic 'goodness' value. If I spent a billion dollar to make the greatest game ever, I would expect to lose money on this because I don't think you can physically sell enough copies to make up the development cost. This means even the greatest game ever is not worth spending a billion dollar on it. If you make a really cool game that no one bought, maybe it's not as cool as you thought it was.

Change in Business Model

[p0tat03]

This necessitates a change in the way games are made. One of the fundamental problems is that we're building games in bigger, shinier forms, without streamlining our method of production. As our graphical capabilities increase, we will be tempted to include more and more content into our games. That 900-polygon character that took an artist 1 week to create now takes 2 artists 3 weeks, what with technologies like parallax mapping.

I have believed, and still believe, that procedural content is the answer. There is a limit to how much manpower a development team can consume whilst remaining profitable, and IMHO we're already at that line. We need to start letting the machines figure out our content. This does not necessarily mean complete and full generation of assets by algorithms, but rather that our tools need to be streamlined as such. Software like ZBrush have drastically reduced (for the skilled user anyway) the amount of time required to build high-poly models. We need more tools like this for textures, for all other aspects of game development. We need to let go of the manual shift stick and build more powerful tools that will take more off our coders' and artists' hands.

This also means the segmentation between game developer and technology developer. For years we've seen some companies stick stubbornly to building their own engines, a costly affair. It should be clear to developers by now that, if you are in any way serious about graphical horsepower, you need to license an engine. Building your own engine from scratch is no longer feasible if you want to get your game done on-time and on-budget. The industry will, in time, become the playing field of dedicated technology developers who license their engines to developers, much like Valve and Epic are doing now.

The gaming industry is holding onto archaic ideals. It is like the car factory that insists hand-built is better, and refuses to mechanize any aspect of their production. It is now suffering the consequences, and like it or not they will have to change.

Re:Change in Business Model

[p0tat03]

Agreed. I would have suggested a solution had I been aware of one.

That said, it's not about doing the things I'm suggesting and turning an obscene profit - this is about restoring profitability, not about making game development so cheap that everyone is rolling in the dough - that won't ever happen.

IMHO we need technological development in tools. We are still using the same 3D modeling tools, the same texturing tools, and the same map-building tools that we've been using since the release of Half-Life 1 8 years ago. The difference is that what we're doing now is many times more complicated than before.

In 1999 a wall was 2 polygons, and a 256x256 flat texture.

Now, we demand things like geometrically modeled light switches on these walls, power outlets, and other little things that add to immersion. We also need normal/parallax maps on all of this, not to mention specular maps too. We've added so much on top of what we used to do, without once stopping to really, completely rethink the way we interact with our tools.

When I first saw an artist use ZBrush, I was blown away. Here we have something that is smart, it is awesomely predictive, and it reduces the workload of the artist dramatically when it comes to modeling high-detail meshes. We're talking a couple orders of magnitude less time to do the same thing. And all it took was a brand new interface and way to interact with the type of models we're used to seeing.

Let's see the same sort of rethinking for our animation, for our texturing, and for our mapping.

Re:Change in Business Model

[p0tat03]

I would like to also add that games like Dead Rising are good examples of the type of rethinking we need to do in modern game development. Here we have a mall, modeled in excruciating and beautiful detail, filled to the brim with zombies. Yet, content-wise, it didn't have nearly as much content as, say, Half-Life 2. Why?

That hallway you blew past in 0.75 seconds in Half-Life 2 took someone hours upon hours to create. That same amount of time went towards creating the nice store in Dead Rising that you could visit over and over again. Twists on missions, objectives, and other gameplay-related alterations made it so that each visit was different, without introducing the slightest bit of new content!

Does this mean that on-rails shooters are on their way out? Perhaps, I don't know. But what I do know is that games that are successfully able to recycle their content (sandbox games have an easier time with this) are a lot more profitable than shooters right now. The content they stuff into their games can be enjoyed over and over. With games like SimCity, that one building that is modeled can go for *months* of player enjoyment, in a myriad of different ways. That hallway in HL2? Once. And once only.

Dead Rising was able to tell a remarkably good story given that it was a sandbox game. Complex storytelling had previously been locked to RPGs and shooters, both extremely content-intensive genres. I congratulate Capcom for pulling it off, and I hope more developers learn and experiment with storytelling in genres other than the traditional ones.

Re:Boo Fucking Hoo

[Pojut]

This is just a prelude to the games industry lobbying for more DRM, less content control, tax breaks or some other corporate-socialism handout.

You were dropped on your head as a child, weren't you...and what's wrong with less content control, or even tax breaks?

With less content control (read: regulation) they are freer to make games like Manhunt and Conker and whatnot...you know, things that if the fat bible thumping high-and-mighties in America would never allow if they had their way.

If a gaming company is giving less to the government, that means they have more to spend in-house...thus allowing them either larger budget titles or more simultaneous titles being developed...

Good news!

[mdielmann]

I've been waiting for this for a long time. Maybe we can get something besides yet another sequel, a movie spin-off, or a blatant rip-off of another game. Perhaps they'll have to settle for plot and gameplay (or at least just gameplay) instead of stunning graphics and no substance. As a proud new owner of a Wii (yay!), I have to say the graphics are good enough, maybe not a match for the XBox 360, but the games are fun. This matters most of all. Of course, new ideas are a risk, while sequels are a known quantity with an established market. I think that's how the marketing goes...

Re:Good news!

[brkello]

Blah blah blah. They come out with games like Okami and people like you don't buy it. There is plenty of innovation but everyone just buys the sequels and complains that there are no original titles without even bothering to look. I bet you love Zelda on your Wii!

don't focus on profit? Innovation is For profit!

[trdrstv]

I know this is a really crazy idea, but if companies want to be successful, maybe they should focus more on making innovative games instead of following a formula for making profit.

Innovative games are for profit. They don't compete in the same arena as the other games, and come at the market sideways. If you want a WWII FPS, there are hundreds on the market and you have to put a lot of time, money and effort in differentiating yourself. You want a Dancing game? There are much fewer. You want a Guitar game? Even less. These companies don't try to impress you with xyz above the competition, they create a new market where they set the rules.

There is lots of profit to be made when you set the rules.