Megatrends In Game Development

Gamasutra has a feature discussing some of the extremely common trends in current game design. Many publishers are looking at multi-player content and downloadable additions as necessities, rather than luxuries, for modern titles. Also on the rise is a focus on micro-payments; offering small-scale games, updates, and add-ons for a smaller fee than a full game. Similar to these is the subscription-based model, which Scott Jennings of NCSoft recently called "an arms race that few can even hope to compete in, much less win." From Gamasutra: "Games relying on micropayments are founded on a somewhat different logic. Like fast gaming, these games are conceived to be immediate hands-on experiences, but are also designed to entice the players to deepen their experience of the game by purchasing affordable additional components. This economic model is fast-growing in Asia, and we can expect to witness an important impact on the west — perhaps even a major one. The design for such games will have to be thoroughly adapted, even for established genres such as racing games or shooters."

Comments

Uh, no.

[Jaysyn]

Yeah, not intereseted in micropayment-based games.

Find another sucker.

Re:Uh, no.

[Jaysyn]

I don't think that's exactly what they are talking about. I'm thinking more of games like Hellgate or that asian MMORPG / Shooter GUN, where you have to pay to get better gear than the *normal* players.

PA says it all.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/3/26/

Re:Uh, no.

[moderatorrater]

I think you misunderstand what micropayments are, at least in the asian sense. If you were to play Maple Story, for instance, there are certain things you can do if you're willing to pay money to do them. There are marginally better weapons (not a lot, but they're slightly better), you can change some color schemes, or you can buy potions which let you level faster (if I remember, something like 2x as fast). These are all for very small charges, they don't alter the balance of the game all that much (if your skills are within 10% of the next person anyway, then you are either awful or playing way too competitively, at which point you'd be paying money anyway). If you don't want to pay any money at all, you don't, and you still get the full experience of the game.

Re:Uh, no.

[Happy-R-BOB]

Perhaps you should read what happened to the makers of Hellgate elsewhere in here as they ended up shutting down because they used the business plan. I really don't see this system translating well here in the USA, and especially not for start up and indie game makers who cant afford a single screw up lest they end up like flagship studios.

Re:Uh, no.

[KDR_11k]

What's stopping Mr. 120 Hours from using the same potion?

Where would a person playing an MMORPG 24/7 get money from? :P

Steam as a new game payment platform

[Underfoot]

I think Steam / XBOX Live / Wii Ware / etc. have already started this "less than the price of a full game" model with quite a lot of success. I am often willing to pay $5-$10 to try something I am not willing to pay $40-$60 on.

Re:Steam as a new game payment platform

[Anonymous Coward]

Micropayments aren't about cheap games or trying something. If you want to try something, demos have been available for free for as long as computer gaming has existed. Cheap games have also been available online for a long time, neither Steam nor any other service is bringing anything new in this respect.

Micropayments is generally the idea of providing a central game at a regular(ish) price, and then providing each individual add-on separately to be bought at a small price. It can be thought of as a more granular concept than the traditional "20 bucks for 100 new items" extension model.

There's also the idea of producing episodic games, such as the recent Sam & Max games, although those aren't really micrpayments either in the stricter sense of the term.

Megatrends?

[Aphoxema]

The only trend I've surely noticed is there's a lot more games coming out that always need more everything and deliver a lot less (unless you go by the face counts and seizure inducing flashes).

I don't know, I'm really just starting to lose interest in games in general, it's hard to find good stories in games compared to how damn many are coming out now.

Re:Megatrends?

[Blakey Rat]

Welcome to the phenomenon we like to call "nostalgia."

I can guarantee that games today have a hell of a lot fewer seizure-inducing flashes than the games on my Commodore 64, for example. Or virtually anything in the top-down shooter genre that used to populate arcades.

Or maybe it's not nostalgia, and you're just really, really bad at picking out games. But either way, I don't think the industry is to blame.

Re:Megatrends?

[VeNoM0619]

it's hard to find good stories in games compared to how damn many are coming out now.

Watch the first five minutes, and that sums up the quality of games and the quality of critics on games, and how I feel - I agree with this about 99%. When people keep crying about how there's no stories, I've been using this to make my counter example.

Quick summary: if you want a story, go read a book or a watch a movie, but a game is meant to be played. You didn't need a story line to go defeat Bowser in Mario. You didn't need to know the Princess' life story when rescuing her from Donkey Kong, you simply jumped over the barrels because it was FUN.

Re:Megatrends?

[grumbel]

You didn't need a story line to go defeat Bowser in Mario.

Well, yeah, different games have different requirements. I certainly enjoyed the stories in Monkey Island, The Dig, The Longest Journey and a dozen of other games.

if you want a story, go read a book or a watch a movie, but a game is meant to be played.

Todays movies are really no better then todays games and even if their are, they still have the problem of just having 120minutes to get it done while games can have 20 hours, books simply lack the graphics and sound aspect, which I kind of like.

Re:Megatrends?

[grumbel]

All games I vaguely heard of and never played.

Ignorance isn't an especially good argument.

Games should primarily be played, and a story should be an added benefit

Story should be an integral part of gameplay, if you go the "added benefit" route you end up with games that have cutscenes on one side and gameplay on the other, which feels incredible disconnected and unsatisfying.

Either way, a game is meant to be played,

Sure, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't have a story that gives your character motivation and a background.

I'm sure you and everyone else enjoyed games like; pong, asteroids, pac-man

I actually never enjoyed them, since they where just to simplistic. A SuperMarioBros might not have an interesting story, but it still has interesting environments to explore, Pong, Astroids and PacMan lacked that, since its always the same thing in an ever repeating loop.

Re:Megatrends?

[joystickgenie]

Allow me to reply with a quote from Ernest Adams "The Designer's Notebook: Where's Our Merchant Ivory?" while talking about serious games and censorship of games

"Now I know from long experience that a certain percentage of you are making derisive snorts of contempt because you personally care nothing for high culture and see no reason why anyone else would either. But even if you don't like it, you still need it. And before yet another idiot pipes up with Standard Asinine Comment #1 ("but FUN is the only thing that matters!"), let me just say: No, it's not. Shut up and grow up. Our overemphasis on fun--kiddie-style, wheeee-type fun--is part of the reason we're in this mess in the first place. To merely be fun is to be unimportant, irrelevant, and therefore vulnerable."

megatrends hm?

[skyshard]

and here I thought the article was going to be about AMI moving from the BIOS industry into gaming.

I won't be playing those games

[RichMan]

The micropayment scheme is probably a fine system for a culture with vast differences in income. You get those who can only pay a little playing and get more income from those who are willing to pay a lot. Sort of a self adjusting price scheme to maximize profit.

I play for enjoyment and while I can afford to pay a fair bit would prefer not to. I will not enjoy encountering others who have payed more for flashy more powerful gear.

I will not be playing those games. So while the system might work for some it will fail for others.

Not Micro, Small

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Micropayments are not becoming more popular. Smaller payments are. The best example of a game based on the smaller payments model is WarHawk for the PS3. The game itself is reasonably cheap, and the expansions are all less then 10 euros. There is little reason NOT to buy them.

When a game, or an expansion is cheaper, it's less of a risk, and people will buy more. The idea of asking people to fork over 60 or 70 euros for a title which because of its industry has a relatively high probability of being mediocre is asking too much. People are less satisfied with their purchases, and will be more adverse to buying new games. Hence less games will be purchased.

Developers and publishers may finally have realized this. From my own experience, there are a lot of very reasonably priced titles ( 10 euros) coming out on the playstation network. Pixel Junk titles are so cheap at this price that there is practically no risk at all in purchasing them. "Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty" was only 4-5 levels long, but as it was priced at 16 euros, I can't say that that bothered me too much. I got my money's worth.

The problem here stems from fixed prices on games. Why are games like GTA4 and Motorstorm are both in and around the same price? It does not make sense, and all the games industry is doing is creating a market for lemons.

borrow from the pencil and paper rpg world

[jollyreaper]

Consider collectible card games like Magic. It could cost you hundreds of dollars to build an effective deck. Consider getting into D&D where you have to pay for rulebooks, dice, etc. Consider something insane like Warhammer (straight or 40k) where building an effective army will cost hundreds of dollars and starting an army from a different faction costs just as much. Let alone the time sink of painting everything, just think of the money!

What I'm surprised about is that nobody has ever considered trying the same sort of thing with online gaming. For example, let's look at the Warhammer 40k game that came out, Dawn of War. It started out with what, three playable armies? Then they came out with an expansion that had a crappy campaign and two new armies, and now I think they have another one out now. From what I saw of the first game, the multiplayer is pretty primitive but I can just imagine how they could progress it in the future. The price points on those expansions were pretty hefty.

With online distribution available for both computers and consoles, they could do something more along these lines. You get the initial game for $15, two races to choose from, standard units available. Continued gameplay will allow you to build points that unlock the advanced units. A mechanic like this was in use on Navy Field, the Korean WWII naval combat game. The more you played, the better the ship you could earn. The only problem is that the game had a tremendous grind component requiring way too much dedicated gaming to work up to serious capital ships. But keep the grind elements minimized and gameplay will be rewarded. Now six months after release, a new race is ready and their army can be deployed in the game. The army update can be downloaded by everyone so they can play against people using that army but if you want to use it yourself, you pay $10 to unlock that race.

The biggest thing I see lacking right now in these games is auto-ranking to pit gamers of equal skill against each other. I've played several games on Xbox Live and the general conclusion I've come up with is that either I just suck or those other people have way too much time on their hands for playing games. Given that the system is recording the player's performance, auto-ranking should be trivial, and you can always choose a non-auto-ranked host if you feel masochistic.

Now I know the first complaint everyone would have, this sounds like asking the publisher to nickel and dime you to death. Yeah, $5 horse armor in oblivion was stupid. What I'm talking about is paying a reasonable price to get into a game and then helping to fund continued development by giving the publisher a dependable revenue stream. Instead of gambling on continued interest in a sequel to a top-performing title from three years ago, the publisher is dropping content every three to six months, has a finger right on the pulse of the community and can gauge the level of interest. This should benefit everyone, just so long as the publisher doesn't get bought by EA. Then they'll just make a minor tweak to Whatever 2008 and call it Whatever 2009 for $60 MSRP.

Re:borrow from the pencil and paper rpg world

[MaineCoon]

Unlike D&D and Magic and such, Warhammer and 40K are a 3 part hobby - modelling, painting, and playing. Each player puts a different amount of emphasis on each. Some love painting most and don't play all that much, so this is not much different than buying and painting regular plastic kits. For me, modelling comes first, then playing, finally painting.

The models, assembled or not, can often be resold for 75% or more of their purchase price. If well painted, they can be sold for more than purchased.

Megatrends

[Dude McDude]

He is my favourite Transformer.

Maybe.

[anyGould]

I have seen micropayments done properly - Puzzle Pirates runs separate subscription and pay-as-you-go servers, and it's reasonably fair. You get basic gameplay for free, and pay to gain access to extra content. Works rather well, IMO. (I only stopped playing after two years out of general "been and done" boredom).

Plus: You pay for what you play...

[Rollgunner]

As a casual gamer, I find that with many MMO titles, I never get to experience the 'whole' game. In World of Warcraft, I do not have 39 buddies and two five-hour blocks of time a week, so I will never see a fair amount of the 'end game' despite the fact that I paid for it and continue paying for it. Analogies are suspect, but I somtimes feel as if i've paid $20 to see a movie, but am not allowed to watch the last reel.

A game where you are charged a minimal fee for the 'basic' game, and optional additional charges for more 'hardcore' content would be fine by me.

Re:Plus: You pay for what you play...

[Serician]

My problem with WOW was that I could no longer justify $15 a month for 2-4 hours of gameplay. The price was fine when I could put in 10 hours or more every month, but was way too high when you only play 2 hours. May as well go out and buy a movie instead.

I just didn't have the time to play anymore. I have a house that constantly needs repair, and a wife that I want to spend time with. At some point, you have to look at how you spend your free time, and I had to cut back on the games. So my $ per hour of enjoyment cost goes up, to the point where it is no longer worth paying to play.

Now if WoW offered a $10 card that allowed for 20 hours of gameplay (with no expiry date), I would be interested. Hell, I would probably even go out and buy the expansion.

If I could set my "cost per hour of play" at a fixed rate, I would be much more likely to stick with a game. The $15 "all you can play" model is about as appealling as the chinese buffet at the scary place down the street.