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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."'"
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.
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).
Expect that figure to climb. Star Citizen is also much more tangible than what we've seen from Elite. They just released footage of what one of the space ports will look like. For the early adopters (people who invested prior to 11/26) all ships purchased will be insured for the life of the ship (the insurance transfers with title, hello second hand market value). In addition to that, additional ships may be purchased and accounts may be upgraded for the next 12 months. I wouldn't be surprised it if breaks $10mil. They've given this a lot of thought, one of the points raised was how will this prevent people from simply ramming ships? I recommend reviewing the link and giving the FAQ (and comments) a once over.
Some of the models they're releasing images of show the insides of the ships which players will be able to move around in. They've got a pirate style 2 man ship which enables the passenger to board a vessel. Very cool stuff if you're into that sort of thing. Now, about that Constellation...
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
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.
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.