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Elite Creator David Braben: Games Like Elite 'Too Risky' For Publishers
Pecisk writes "While PC game development veterans are using Kickstarter more and more for their projects (see the already successful Star Citizen Kickstarter project, which already went home with $2 million, or Elite: Dangerous, a sequel of classic space sim series, which has yet to reach its set target), questions arise: why are devs trying this rather risky way of financing, anyway? For a long time there's also been discussion on Slashdot and elsewhere of game publishers like EA have a preference for unlimited sequels (e.g. the EA Sports series). David Braben, one of creators of first classic 3D space sim, Elite, and its sequels, and also the popular Raspberry PI board/computer, has commentary on that: 'Publishers had and still have now, established processes and a key part of that is the forecast ROI or return on investment. For that to work there has to have been a sufficiently similar game in the near past to base the forecast upon Anything else will be "too risky."'"
No reward.
Star Citizen raised over $6 million dollars ($2 million via kickstarter, $4 million via paypal). Since the campaign it has raised nearly $1 million dollars more (total $6.9 million).
That just looks so sweet, heck yeah.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
One of the key advantages of something like Kickstarter is that so many of the "sales" are up front: you don't have to worry about the game being a total flop and selling nothing, because you've already "sold" $2m+ worth of the game before starting! I would've expected major studios to try to get in on some of that pre-order action by mobilizing fan enthusiasm: stuff like, if we get X preorders by $date, we'll make a sequel to $game. Or is it that actual preorders of un-made games have more legal trouble than Kickstarter's sort of weird not-really-a-preorder-but-sorta-is variety?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
this is true, it explains why EA keeps killing the Command & Conquer (both it and the : Red Alert spin) over and over and over again...
If I had one wish, its that EA would let it die, instead of the continual torture they keep putting us old school C&C fans through. Hell, there was one time I wish they would have brought back Earth & Beyond (a subscription based game I actually liked), now after seeing what they have done with C&C and C&C:RA... please dont... let it die, open source it, sell it to someone else, no more killing please!
*A sick-sad fact I hate to admit even to myself, there was the C&C FPS game (no, not Renegade), that had some leaks, before it got squashed, that I thought looked totally bad-ass (actual in-game footage leaked, made me quake in my fat-man boots), even better looking and more advanced feeling then the recently released COD:BOPS2, I was REALLY looking forward to it... Seeing what they put out instead, I can only mourn for the fact that they squished the GOOD looking game, and decided to go with the pile of dog crap that is the last few release's of C&C...
Call of Duty Black Ops 2 did $500 million in sales on its first day alone. The game takes very little risk. It is just another CoD game. Minor tweaks and updates but it is basically the same formula that has won time and time again and yet again it has won big.
While it isn't true that it was zero risk, they did outlay a fair bit of money (8 figures) in development and marketing, it was pretty low risk. Past CoD games have done very well, there was no reason to believe this one wouldn't too and indeed it did.
In the games industry, the safe road often leads to great rewards. People seem to want that which they are familiar with.
Which is the reason we'll probably never see the completion of Freespace.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/107649-Volition-Wed-Commit-Murder-for-Freespace-3
The space sim is a really hard sell (unless it's that one mission from Halo: Reach) and frankly, even with a joystick, games of this sort can be notoriously difficult. Companies only really want to make games that are like other games or sequels to previous ones since it's more of a business now than a genuine love for games (unless you're "indie").
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
Kickstarter demonstrates again that it is a fantastic vehicle for game development. It's not always about the Mega Millions. For instance The Pinball Arcade used Kickstarter to get financing for The Twilight Zone and Star Trek: The Next Generation tables (both closed and made target). Pinball is a bit of a niche market and there's a pretty good free pinball simulator out there.
Without Kickstarter to pay the high upfront licensing cost, these tables would not have seen the light of day. There's really no shame in using Kickstarter to both test the waters and raise "venture capital" that you don't pay back in cash but in product.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
If you want to do something really edgy an original, you can do it, just don't go to Paramount (or EA in this case) and expect them to front you the money, and you're much more likely getting your money back if you premiere on Netflix.
The trouble is that some genres work better with physical buttons than with, say, a touch screen. Most mobile devices open to indie developers lack a gamepad, and I've been told most users aren't willing to buy a gamepad just for one game. And though Xbox 360 controllers work wonderfully with a PC (or, in fact, a Nexus 7 with a USB host cable), I've been told most PC users aren't willing to plug in one Xbox 360 controller let alone two to four.
I believe Obsidian has said that they were approached by publishers to do something along those lines, but they refused. The spirit of Kickstarter isn't compatible with that idea, really. It's supposed to be for projects that otherwise would not be possible or viable to make. Publishers have plenty of money, that they don't want to try making more niche games is their problem. People like Roberts or Braben, while certainly not poor, don't have the kind of money to make games from scratch from their own pocket, so Kickstarter is appropriate for them.
I think there's a good chance that a publisher attempting to weasel its way through Kickstarter would receive a fairly harsh backlash anyway, which is one other reason why they haven't tried. They'd need to entirely hide behind a developer with a good reputation, and I'm not sure there's a developer out there who'd be willing to gamble that on such contrived grounds.
The problem is some games spend so much on production that 1m or 2m in sales at full price are considered a failure. That's basically what AAA means. going full retard.
A prime example for this would be Assassin's Creed 3. They had to justify the steep price somehow so they added shit on top of shit. Naval battles, board games, a surprisingly competent multiplayer component(yes, I'm shocked too), deer hunting, single player capture the flag and farmville. In fact that game is so unfocussed that you really don't know what it is supposed to be. I sure don't. But what it isn't is a competent parcours stabby game since they still haven't fixed the controls. Expect to jump up walls when you want to run around them. Expect counters to fail despite you having pressed X for victory. Expect no stealth whatsoever unless you are on a mission where detection arbitrarily kills you(without telling you that beforehand). Expect to spend half of your time in loading screens or cut-scenes.
Take the 16 minutes it takes to watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLdMgIhpD9s
That's all you have to know what makes AssCreed 3 such a mediocre game.
And yet they need to shift millions for that thing. The end credits roll for 20 minutes and all of those people in it need to be fed.
AAA is going full retard.
20 minutes into the future
Finally. After all these years....
But I can't really agree with it.
As someone who played Elite on the BBC B in the 80s, let's look at the what made different:
i) massive, open ended universe and freedom to make one's way, within a convincing universe of varying dangerousness
ii) strong element on trading, and with combat as a means to grab extra goodies and facilitate profitable acquisition of cash
iii) missions, and a progression of deadliness - that unlocks cooler gear and more dangerous missions and story progression
Does that not sound like most MMORPG ever invented? Could that not be WoW, or Skyrim?
Games like Elite don't not-exist, they're practically the norm. It's just that they were groundbreaking in 1983, and now everyone's seen them 1000 times over.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I have eleite for a couple platforms, its a space shooter with some menus tossed in there ... honestly didnt even know it existed till a few years ago, so I hunted down copies for my retro computers.
its much less risky than pumping a shit ton of money into something only a small percentage of people will remember, let alone be fond enough to play nearly 30 years after the fact
Publish that shit yourself. Digital sales digital downloads from 'the cloud'. Installer with bit torrent style distribution for day one.
There is no need at all to pay to put this stuff on a disc. and package it. and ship it to a store, to sit on the shelf anymore!
Publishers are obsolete middlemen the world can really do without. They're stealing a cut of your profits anyway.
But then again this highlights the main problem with games today. nobody wants to do shit unless its gonna make millions the first week. so risk adverse they are killing their own markets with all the silly shit they do.
Well done. For your next mission, join a conversation on a Subway franchisee forum and somehow link quality of chipotle dressing with the Israel/Palestine conflict.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Where is the investor-version of Kickstarter? The one where investors actually do get a more direct say in the product and even get a partial profit from it?
Such a system distributed among hundreds, hell thousands, of people, could likely pay of much more than Kickstarter would because the people involved actually are part of the company.
There is a bit more legal stuff that needs to be taken care of at the initial stages of investing, but it could be interesting.
It'd also give reason for the thousands of possible people investing a reason to spread it everywhere, get more people involved.
It seems like it would make far more successful products.
Of course, there is also the part where you'd need to hold investors wishes to the word or they could request or demand something be done. (just like standard investment really, but with thousands more people!)
Upsides and downsides. But if you could keep all those possible thousands happy, even most of them, you could go places pretty far.
Elite was a huge consumer of my time during my teenage years. I'd originally tried it on the 8bit Acorn Electron (the BBC Micro's baby brother), but was a bit too young to really get it and was hopeless at playing the game. But when I got my first PC, I was able to really get into it, spending hours playing when I should have probably been studying for my GCSEs, eventually getting the missions and the coveted Elite status.
All this was done on the CGA version, low resolution in four colours. On loading, a menu would allow me to select wireframe graphics only, or if the PC was really fast (6Mhz 286 or greater I seem to recall...), then you could select solid filled polygons. I had a 20Mhz 286 so could enjoy the enhanced version. Didn't matter though, because the imagination filled in the gaps.
When Frontier:Elite 2 came out, I was amazed at all the things we wanted to do in the original could now be done (landing on planets with a seamless transition between space and atmosphere, different ships that could be bought and equipped, more missions). But the flight model was a bit too complicated and lacked the immediacy of the original. I was never really taken with the "Star Dreamer" time acceleration feature either as it was too easy to skip through things (like docking).
Never played Frontier: First Encounters as I think I had moved onto girls by then, but having read that it was released by the publisher in an unfinished state, it sounds like I've not missed that much.
But Elite:Dangerous sounds like the sort of game I really want to play! A huge universe as a playground? Flying through the clouds of a gas giant? Mining asteroids? Teaming up with friends to complete missions? Yes please!
So far I've pledged a little, with the expectation I'll pledge more before the Kickstarter finishes. As a [very] occasional gamer these days, this is something I want to spend my evenings playing.
Isn't it ironic - someone who has raised money based largely on the nostalgia for what he done in the past... commenting on the gaming industry making games just like the ones they've made in the past.
Seriously, as much as the Slashdot demographic complains about endless remakes, and the mining of the past... at every possible turn they demonstrate exactly *why* the entertainment industry keeps doing so.
Given David Braben's track record on the previous Elite sequels, I'd say that game companies have all the reasons to think that a new one is too risky. The Elite: dangerous kickstarter response also seems pretty lukewarm so far.
I wish that this kickstarter thing would be used by small, starter groups to really have a, you know, kickstart in their business, and not washed up hasbeens like Braben or Molyneux...
What is risky here?
People give you money, and you don't have to give anything in return but empty promises of delivering a game at some point.
The alternative is asking investors for money, who will expect a working business model, 4 times as much as what they invested in returns, and who will sue you if you mismanage the money.
the Joystick I have for games that utilize that
By joystick, do you mean a flight simulator joystick or an arcade-style joystick?
I can't understand how someone would drop the keyboard and mouse and pick up a console controller hooked up to their PC, when the resulting level of control seems to me to be inherently inferior.
If you live alone and never have anybody come to visit, and you play mostly FPS, RTS, and RPG, a keyboard and mouse may be ideal for you. But if you have multiple gamers in one household, either living together or visiting, a gamepad is better than having no control at all because you're waiting for the player with a keyboard and mouse to finish his turn on a single-player or online game. Even fewer PC games support multiple mice than multiple gamepads. And even if you restrict yourself to single-player or online gaming, how would a mouse improve, say, a platformer or a fighting game?
Where is the investor-version of Kickstarter? The one where investors actually do get a more direct say in the product and even get a partial profit from it?
I've wondered the same thing. I've got a few thousand I'd like to invest this way, but I'm not going to donate my pension fund to kickstarter schemes to make rich white guys richers.
I want my share and if I want to help poor people I'll go to kiva, thankyouverymuch.
I think it has good prospects. I believe in "Dangerous" not only can you land on planets but be able to walk around etc. That can lead to "add-on quests" on that planet or even collection of planets to open up new quests etc.
For your next mission, join a conversation on a Subway franchisee forum and somehow link quality of chipotle dressing with the Israel/Palestine conflict.
I'd rather he joined a conversation on the Israel/Palestine conflict and found a way to link it to the quality of Subway's chipotle dressing.
The entertainment market is cyclical.
Genres go in and out of style.
Successes and failures in other media can make or break you.
Star Trek and Star Wars have been so long identified with space opera that there is scarcely any room to breathe here. That both franchises are looking rather old and tired isn't helpful.
The mainstream publisher/distributer takes more chances then the gamer geek is often willing to admit:
From EA. Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Arkham Asylum/Arkham City. From Rockstar, Red Dead Redemption and L.A. Noire. This stuff is much harder to pull off then it looks.
...learned this ages ago. "Nobody wants to be first; everyone wants to be second."
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
If you want a small sample, go have a look on Steam and see how many copies are floating out there (it is a Steamworks game so all PC copies are on it). Remember that the copy only appears in someone's account after they've paid for it.
I know there's this irrational need from some people to pretend like the game is a flop because it is a very samey shooter, but it isn't. It is a massive success. I'm not saying that is a good thing, I'm saying it is the truth. Trying to spin it doesn't change anything.
....and a whole bunch of piracy from people that don't accept a full-price-game that contains a single change.
FPS, for example - now with slo-mo! now with hiding-behind-objects! now with (etc.) - bleat about piracy killing games all you like, but when they're nearly all reduced to two or three genres of copying original C64 games, that's not really what most would consider an 'industry' anyway - and it's this problem that means pirates will never really care about costing EA money when that's exactly what EA are doing to begin with - and expecting a full-price for them. How many times would you pay The Beatles to hear the same entire album but with one slightly changed instrument with each release?
The fact that after around thiry-odd years games that are ultimately little different to Elite, Chequered Flag, Way of the Exploding Fist, the Ultima series etc. bears this out - to the point where you can stick MB Games' 'Simon' on a guitar neck and call it a new game is seen as 'original'.
I'm surprised that almost nobody is talking about the X series by EgoSoft. Used to need some serious horsepower, but even most middle level machines will now run it quite well. It has all of the elements you're looking for, along with some interesting automation and the ability to grow your empire to include manufacturing facilities, farms, mines, and entire fleets.
I've found the beginning of the game pretty slow going, but there's a real enthusiastic community around the game, and the developer has been supporting it for years with both unpaid and paid content.
MKS
I played Elite in both solid and wire-frame versions from floppy. Braben's target is Oolite ; he has to beat that, not match it, to meet his prior status.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"