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Game Industry Optimistic About Surviving Economic Crisis
CNet is running a story about how the gaming industry is looking at the recent economic troubles. Despite their status as luxury items, games and game systems have seen strong sales numbers in recent months, and that trend is expected to continue into the holiday season. Most companies are optimistic, despite the fact that many of their stock values have been hit hard and that analysts' views are divided on whether game-related purchases will be one of the first things cut from consumers' budgets.
"'I do think that the video game industry is going to do reasonably well in this time of recession because video games are a pretty damned efficient use of time,' said Bridges. 'That said, the...industry has some other problems that it has been ignoring for awhile and that are creeping up on it.' Essentially, Bridges explained, he thinks that the dominance of giant publishers like EA and their general reliance on physical, in-the-box, units, can't hold up. Instead, he said, new tools, ubiquitous broadband and hungry independent developers are going to all combine to eat away at the continued supremacy of the $60 big-name title. And that could spell big trouble for the industry."
"'I do think that the video game industry is going to do reasonably well in this time of recession because video games are a pretty damned efficient use of time,' said Bridges."
Now if we could only convince our parents of this.
"Essentially, Bridges explained, he thinks that the dominance of giant publishers like EA and their general reliance on physical, in-the-box, units, can't hold up. Instead, he said, new tools, ubiquitous broadband and hungry independent developers are going to all combine to eat away at the continued supremacy of the $60 big-name title. And that could spell big trouble for the industry.""
Does Valve count as a "big name"?
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Not every game is a Half-Life 2 or Bioshock. As the economy constricts cashflow from these companies, we just have to hope they still have the willingness to spend a little extra time and money making a great game.
Not a concern to me, as I think that the industry will be made better if games have to spend less time in the tube.
Constricted cash flow for industry giants and consumers --> more small, short projects and smaller (but more) purchases made by consumers --> more room for smaller independent developers to compete and more room for innovation in the market.
As a man who came into video games in the era of adventure games with shitty graphics that survived on intuitive interfaces and a good sense of humor, I don't really mind if they can't spend an extra two months making sure the light effects on the water are just perfect.
there's all that psychological "people want video games to make themselves happy during a recession" stuff and then there's reality. It's really quite simple: Teenagers buy most video games. Teenagers don't have investments and mortgages that tanked nor are they good at saving instead of spending. Thus, game sales are doing just fine. But of course if the marketing and finance departments at video game companies said that the boss would think they weren't working very hard.
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"Could spell big trouble for the industry"? Perhaps you mean "could spell big trouble for companies that try to keep using outdated methods"?
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"Essentially, Bridges explained, he thinks that the dominance of giant publishers like EA and their general reliance on physical, in-the-box, units, can't hold up. Instead, he said, new tools, ubiquitous broadband and hungry independent developers are going to all combine to eat away at the continued supremacy of the $60 big-name title. And that could spell big trouble for the industry."
That doesn't make any sense, independent game developers are still part of the industry, so if there is simply a rebalancing of cash flow from the big companies to the indies the industry hasn't been harmed in the slightest, it's dynamic has simply changed.
EA and co. could completely die and the industry wouldn't be harmed if more games were being sold by indies at lower prices to make up the same level of profits.
Cool, I hope to be one of those hungry indie developers. =)
Cool ! I've been waiting years for the console version of Hungry Hungry Hippos.
Squirrel!
Then again they have a completely fucked up view of low-risk which apparently involves spending most of the company's money on a single game and hoping it sells enough to make the money back.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Well, he's just trying to sound smart, basically.
There's this thing about the future: nobody knows it. All you can say is, basically: something will happen, but heck if I know what, when or by how much.
But that doesn't make for much of an article, and sure doesn't make one a well paid "analyst". So essentially you have to do the old trick: tell them an event (e.g., that the indies are going to eat EA's lunch) or a date, but never both. Notice how here he didn't give you a time frame of when will the indies beat EA, nor a quantitative estimate. There is no deadline when you can say, "hah, the date came and went and your prophecy didn't happen." Even in one year, or ten years or a hundred years, you could still nod through the rationale and wait for it to happen any day now.
Now pack it with a few profound sounding truisms (you can at least nod through the idea that better tools and broadband should make some kind of a difference in some way), and you too can be a pundit or analyst.
And as an example: it's been proven before that all the analysts in the world can't, for example, pick stocks better than throwing darts at a list of them. For all that handwaving and sounding smart and in the know, they don't know what will happen. But there the big broker names have the advantage of being able to pull self-fulfilling prophecies: if Merril-Lynch tells you to buy Pets.com stock, they must know something, so a lot of people do. Price goes up, yay, they were so smart. The best illustration of this was during the dot-con crash when they told people to buy stock they internally rated as crap and were selling as fast as possible. But they still influenced the market enough to make money even out of companies which were in free fall.
But in the game industry they just don't have this kind of influence. Just because pundit X and analyst Y say that indies must overtake EA due to better tools and broadband, it doesn't mean that anyone will go and write those better tools overnight.
So we're back to that thing about the future: they have no flipping clue. But they sound smart, people read the article, and they get advertising revenue for it.
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I just hope it means they will spend more on gameplay and less on flashy graphics crap. I mean seriously, look at how many truly great games were made with the Quake 2 and 3 engines. Were they real flashy and made everyone go "ooh pretty"? Nope, but they made up for it by actually trying to make games that were FUN. I am so damned tired of FPS that look really good but play like shit because they spent every dime on the "ooh pretty" and didn't have anything left for such things as decent AI or a good story.
And after reading review after review with variations on "game looks great, but is kinda sucky" I know I am not alone. Hell I wouldn't care if they used the Quake 3 engine as long as it had a truly great story and AI that didn't come off as retarded. So please, if there are any game developers reading this, just license whichever engine you can get for the best price and spend your time making the game FUN instead of flashy. If I got to add my own .02 to the game I'd ask for the ability to disarm my opponents with a well placed shot like I do when I play SoF I&II, allow me to play it MY way like with Deus Ex, and finally throw in some unique cool weapons like NoLF I&II instead of the same machine guns and pistols that everybody else uses.
If you build it and focus on the FUN, then we will come. Pass out some early stage demos and the gamers will be happy to help you keep it on track with feedback and suggestions. And with the economy getting worse every day try to aim for the $30-40 price point. Because with money getting tight there will be fewer and fewer megahits that will be able to make money at the $60 price point. Lastly don't fall into the EA trap of spending big bucks trying to make sure you have the nastiest DRM infection of the bunch. It doesn't do jack squat to stop the pirates and royally screws and pisses off your customers when they have to jump through hoop after hoop and end up searching warez sites to find a crack for the game they paid you good money for just to get the damned thing to work. I know that after buying many a game from EA I simply won't give them a dime, even if I found their entire catalog in the bargain bin for $10. My gaming machine runs too nicely to purposely infect it with a nasty DRM Trojan like the ones that EA uses. But if you treat us fair and keep it FUN, then we will be happy to hand you our hard earned money, even if you don't have the "ooh pretty" of a Crysis.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Perhaps they should dial down the game budgets then, I'm pretty sure those new market games Nintendo is making aren't exactly costing tens of millions.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I'm an independent, professional game developer. I don't mean to attack you directly, but you're saying some things that seem logical but that the market doesn't really follow up on. I am one of the few people for whom graphics truly do not matter, and the game I run, Meridian 59 , is a game where I hoped fun would matter more than graphics.
A lot of people say, "Graphics don't matter!" when they actually do. Many people judge a game based on graphical presentation; many people buy games based on the screenshots, for example. And, while a game's graphics may not mean much once you get into the middle of the game, they certainly do color most people's impressions at the beginning. A lot of people have a really hard time getting into a game if it's not visually stunning.
I think what a lot of people mean is that they don't buy games based on graphical advancement. The problem is that once the envelope is pushed, then expectations adjust to accommodate them. Using your examples of the Quake engines, the games based on those engines weren't necessarily pushing the envelope on graphics. But, there was a specific minimum expectations set by the engine. Most people wouldn't play a game based on the old Quake 1 engine these days, even though that engine was quite impressive for the time. In a few years, people will look at the Quake 2 engine the same way we might look at the DOOM engine now. Expectations will have changed.
The reason why you have the "ooh, pretty!" games is because some developers are trying to sell engines. The makers of Quake, id, made a lot of their money licensing the engine to other developers. They made the original games those were based on in order to sell the engine. Crysis is the same way: FarCry or Crysis may not be particularly engaging games, but the graphical presentation moves the expectations and this in turn requires developers to license the engines from the company. It's how they make their money.
And, that's not going to happen. The problem is that these shifting expectations have driven up the costs of developing games. As the price to develop a game increases, the amount of money needed to recoup costs increases as well. The reason why the large publishers are talking about reducing the secondary market is because their profit margins are becoming razor thin. They need people to buy the newer games to continue to stay in business. A lot of larger companies are feeling the pinch, especially during these economic times, and they know people aren't willing to pay more and more per game.
Here's some perspective, when I started developing games professionally a little over 10 years ago, the budget for a large game was one or two million dollars. These days it can easily reach $10 million or more. The biggest issue is that games are a hit-driven industry; the big, profitable games make the money that covers the failures. Unfortunately, that only covers the publisher and often a developer will go out of business even when they have a hit game. Check out the fate of Iron Lore studios, the makers of Titan Quest: they went out of business despite having a rather popular game title and expansion.
Some thoughts from someone who works on the inside of the beast known as the game industry.
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