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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."'"
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).
tell that to the bankers who got to roll the dice.. and when they won they kept the money... when they lost they charged it to the tax payer.
A 3% return on 20 million units is preferable to a 100% return on 20,000 :)
I work in the film industry and the story is about the same; this is why we seem to keep making marginally-good $200 million films, instead of twenty $10 million films, 16 of which bomb because they don't find their audience. 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.
I'm not sure this is an Earth-shattering tragedy, it has a lot to do with the way large corporations make decisions, and organize themselves around their distribution chains.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Wrong. Let's see the what the best selling games are (source: vgchartz.com/weekly):
1 X360 Call of Duty: Black Ops II 1,239,686 [generic FPS, sequel]
2 PS3 Call of Duty: Black Ops II 1,183,752 [generic FPS, sequel]
3 X360 Kinect Adventures! 615,283 [sounds innovative enough, risky]
4 X360 Halo 4 607,817 [generic FPS, sequel]
5 Wii Just Dance 4 569,302 [sequel]
6 PS3 Hitman: Absolution 501,081 [sequel]
7 X360 Hitman: Absolution 488,127 [sequel]
8 PS3 Assassin's Creed III 471,345 [sequel]
9 X360 Assassin's Creed III 402,324 [sequel]
10 WiiU New Super Mario Bros. U 372,169 [sequel]
MYTH BUSTED! Risk is for suckers, what the wallets want is more sequels.
Actually, it is even worse -- bad prediction models (because past performance does not guarantee future returns, as the disclaimer customarily goes) reward mediocrity, and not only in games. Anything from music to clothing to computer devices is affected. The larger the market, the fewer the players, the more obvious the effects.
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.
Ummm. We PC types bought flightsticks, HOTAS systems, steering wheels and other input peripherals when console games were just Mortal Sonic Mario Kombat with all analogue thumb twisting blocky controllers. :(
...heaven forbid... venture capitalists.
I really don't understand why some of the current PC gamer generation don't like controllers. For some games they are great. I can see them working in a space sim. Just don't forget to also have mouse support for menus and such. No Skyrim inventory shenanigans plx
Also port it to Android/Ouya. No publisher needed there. And you can easily get it on Steam/GOG without publisher backing.
Braben raises money by his name alone and Elite is still fresh in memory. Publishers wouldn't add anything in his case anyway. So why did he even bother? It's not the only way to get funding. Hell, he should even be able to get venture capital. Kids playing Elite grew up to be all sorts of things. Accountants, mass murderers, heads of state, blue-collar workers and
Publishers used to be needed for funding and access to the sales&distribution channel. Sales&distribution has become trivial if you don't need to get boxed games to WallMart. A lot of games are digital distribution only and are doing fine.
And funding comes your way when you pitch it to the right people.
The classical publisher is going the way of the dodo.
20 minutes into the future
Ummm. You know we stopped believing those numbers years ago? They do not include digital distribution and only very few games get shelf space.
Also there is a lot of money to be made in the long tail when you cut out the middle man. Which in this case would be publishers and retailers. So you don't need to be #1. Or even in the top 20 to make back your money. Unless of course you had a production cost rivaling the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Which Braben doesn't need.
Sales figures alone are meaningless.
20 minutes into the future
The summary is wrong in its implication. Kickstarter is about the most risk-free fund raising you can do. It's a formal way to solicit donations. Non-refundable, no-promises, walk-away-and-keep-it-all money. Legally a Kickstarter project that funds has no obligation to do anything at all. Some percentage of them (so far small, and small amounts of funds) don't.
Venture capital, on the other hand, will insist you field a AAA-class team, will insist on majority ownership, and will insist on installing a suit as an executive, and will want signatures in blood for your first born if the project fails (or as much of whatever as they can recover, which very likely includes exclusive intellectual property crap like trademarks and any copyrights that have attached). So if you fail, you lose everything and can't even try again. If you succeed, you pay your investor the majority of the profit.
If your Kickstarter fails, you owe nothing to anybody and retain 100% ownership so you can try again later (though probably not with another Kickstarter). If your Kickstarter succeeds, you retain 100% ownership, deliver on your Kickstarter promises (which is usually a vehicle to get you even more money, if you're doing it right), and keep 100% of the profit.
The classical venture capitalist could easily go the same way of the dodo as the classical publisher, at least for projects below the level of capitalization that crowd-funding can generate. And that ceiling is already higher than anybody expected. Whether or not it continues is anybody's guess, though the number of successful deliveries is high enough that the odds are good. Venture capital, meanwhile, is also mercurial and unreliable long term. It goes through fads of its own on a regular basis.
Markets certainly reward franchises. There's room for innovation, but now is not the time for it. Right now is the end of a console lifecycle and no one wants to go too far out on a limb on this generation.
Note that Borderlands, which isn't on your list was a brand new franchise not too long ago, Xcom has done very well which is a resurrection of a very old genre. You only need to sell about 500 or 600 k copies to make a decent amount of money on a moderate sized title (you aim for a million for a console title generally with ad cost etc. ).
The only big new IP lately is Dishonoured, which is a sort of action stealth game in cyberpunk world, pretty standard stuff to do technically so the technical side is low risk and the gameplay is reasonably generic, but at least it's new IP.
Yeah but one thing you are missing is the long tail and lack of competition in this genre. We got a billion "fat space marines that love Chesty McWallHigh" but a good flight sim (needs to work good with keyboard and mouse as well as stick) can be sold for years and years.
Hell just a few months ago I went out and bought yet another copy (my third) of Freelancer...why? Because i had lost my disc in my last move and thanks to the mods there are hundreds of star systems, and factions, you can go lone wolf and just mine and trade or join a group and fight as a pack, this is a game from 2003 yet has tons of people still playing and more mods seem to be made for it every year, so even after nearly a decade its still worth buying.
So you'd think as long as the budget wasn't insane studios would jump on this, sure its a niche audience but its a niche that has money, is under served, and will buy games even years after they are released if they are good and moddable. Frankly good elite style space sims and actual survival horror (as opposed to current games where you are given practically infinite ammo so it feels like playing Power rangers more than being in actual danger) are niches that have fans just aching to open their wallets and hand you money if only they would give them something to buy.
And if anybody here doesn't have FreeLancer? BUY IT NOW and go to ModDB and load up on mods and grab the mod manager. With the great mods you have this HUGE universe with everything from little cargo haulers and mini fighters to fricking monstrous capital ships ALL of which you can buy and customize if you have the credits, and with so much space to explore, trade routes to make runs on, derelict ships to raid, even badlands to hide in, its truly an epic exp.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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
IMHO there's absolutely nothing wrong with a good sequel. Chances are extremely good you didn't get everything right and you didn't have the time or budget to implement everything you wanted to do. You'll probably also learn a lot from the feedback from the first game that you don't get in alpha/beta testing or possibly to late to do anything about it. It doesn't matter if it's the modern games or the classics, I'd be pretty sad if they stopped at Ultima I, Final Fantasy I or Civilization I and said that was it, on to the next thing. Not to mention you have a bunch of fans, people now know what the game concept is and they're hopefully looking for more. By all means if you have a cash cow, milk it.
That said, if you drop anything that isn't a cash cow today chances are good the customers will eventually get tired of the same old rehashes and you'll slowly head into the sunset. Most cash cows started as a risky proposal. Sure, for example "The Sims" is now out in two sequels and dozens of expansion and stuff packs but the original was a very risky game. I perfectly understand that companies don't want to bet the farm on unknown projects, but in this case I think it's too much next quarter thinking. That chance game that may lead to a decade long series of sequels making us money is probably going to be a loss on next year's performance. It's like R&D for the game industry, except it's a lot more accepted to not do any.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
This is what the bankers' methods remind me of: "Nicky's methods of betting weren't scientific, but they worked. When he won, he collected. When he lost, he told the bookies to go fuck themselves."
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
Tell me, what's it like living in a world without art?
DATABASE WOW WOW
I have a co-worker who told me mouse and keyboard in FPS games was "cheating". I laughed.
Karnal
Star Wars: The Old Republic -- "Let's re-skin World of Warcraft!"
How's their reward doing?
On the other hand, City of Heroes shut down last night. It was everything those games aren't -- Innovative, fast, cheap, true 3-D travel, very powerful compared to monsters, which come at you in masses.
And it ran out of enough subscribers, too.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Netflix pays an amount-per-view, either against an up-front access fee or not -- it's a small amount, but it's something. their model to charge subscribers a flat fee and simply have such a huge number of titles available that people are willing to pay a premium over what they actually consume, just to have the full-time access to the titles.
Netflix lost the Starz content because Starz wanted an amount per subscriber-month, like a premium cable channel, and Netflix (probably rightly) deduced that having a premium tier would ruin their business model, because all of the sudden subscribers would have to jump through hoops (let alone pay more) to access particular movies. Starz demanded the premium tier because they (also probably rightly) deduced that they were losing cable sub revenue to Netflix. This is why HBO and Showtime are strict about not releasing any of their stuff to the Internet unless you're already a cable subscriber or a lengthy blackout period has elapsed.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.