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Major Games Publishers Are Feeling The Impact Of Peaking Attention (midiaresearch.com)
Some analysis from research firm MIDiA: Earlier this month Electronic Arts (EA) reported disappointing quarterly results, now Activision has laid off nearly 800 staff, mostly in marketing and sales. As MIDiA has reported multiple times before, engagement has declined throughout the sector, suggesting that the attention economy has peaked. Consumers simply do not have any more free time to allocate to new attention seeking digital entertainment propositions, which means they have to start prioritizing between them.
This downward trend in engagement has persisted for a while now, and the latest quarterly results from some major games publishers confirm that a revenue slowdown will ultimately follow consumer behaviour. Arguably sooner than most of the games industry would have thought. Publishers will be quick to blame declining engagement and revenues on Fortnite. While the title indeed intensified the manifestation of the peak attention economy dynamics among gamers, the coming slowdown is part of a much bigger challenge -- how to capture attention in an increasingly attention-scarce landscape.
Top publishers are facing several headwinds at the same time. Fortnite is only one of them, and arguably one of the less harmful ones to the long-term outlook of the games industry: Fortnite's model utilises the attention economy dynamics: It's a high-grade gaming experience and it's free to play, which means there is little barrier for consumers to allocate attention to, compare to its paid counterparts. While it has undoubtedly cannibalised some revenue and engagement from other major publishers, Fortnite engagement still contributes to the bottom line of the global games industry.
More gamers engage with games videos and events than Fortnite: Not only is engagement declining across mobile, PC and console gaming, at the same time, video is winning the race against gaming in capturing attention on multipurpose devices such as PC.
This downward trend in engagement has persisted for a while now, and the latest quarterly results from some major games publishers confirm that a revenue slowdown will ultimately follow consumer behaviour. Arguably sooner than most of the games industry would have thought. Publishers will be quick to blame declining engagement and revenues on Fortnite. While the title indeed intensified the manifestation of the peak attention economy dynamics among gamers, the coming slowdown is part of a much bigger challenge -- how to capture attention in an increasingly attention-scarce landscape.
Top publishers are facing several headwinds at the same time. Fortnite is only one of them, and arguably one of the less harmful ones to the long-term outlook of the games industry: Fortnite's model utilises the attention economy dynamics: It's a high-grade gaming experience and it's free to play, which means there is little barrier for consumers to allocate attention to, compare to its paid counterparts. While it has undoubtedly cannibalised some revenue and engagement from other major publishers, Fortnite engagement still contributes to the bottom line of the global games industry.
More gamers engage with games videos and events than Fortnite: Not only is engagement declining across mobile, PC and console gaming, at the same time, video is winning the race against gaming in capturing attention on multipurpose devices such as PC.
EA, Ubisoft, et al. are not.
So I have a choice with my leisure time, do I play the latest Medal of Snorefare 78 Rehashed edition where for £44 I can buy half a game and be expected to front up another 9 £6 transactions to get the full game...
Or I can play a game from a studio that interacts with it's community, cares about game-play, balance and re-playability, provides free content updates and fixes bugs (well, mostly)... Is it little wonder Paradox, Eleon and System Era see more of my money?
EA wen't off to chase the casual crowd with dumbed down "everyone gets a prize" and pay to win games. This had the nasty effect of alienating actual gamers who spend their money on games. Generic Sports 20XX isn't bringing in the money now they have to spend millions on advertising and people are realising that its the same game as last year.
Another problem is that they expect me to install yet another resource sucking, update popup producing crapware client to run their games. I refuse to do this, ergo EA lost me long ago, as did Ubisoft.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Responding to criticism with "Don't like it, don't buy it" definitely lessens the attention directed towards your game, even if customers have some in reserve.
Perhaps the problem is market fatigue due to post sale monetization. Today, buying a game that isn't intentionally hobbled to allow for micro transactions is rare. Metal Gear Survive came out with a requirement to pay for a game save slot - the permission to save your progress. You have the likes of Madden and FIFA coming out where it's no longer a game of skill or strategy as building your team is making your best of random unlocks unless you pay for them. You have Call of Duty putting shame icons next to players who don't have the season pass, preventing people from playing all the maps without kicking them from matchmaking. Deus Ex Human Revolution had you pay to unlock and level your various skills in the game at 1.99 a piece, or else to unlock your entire tech tree it would take ~3800 hours to unlock them... For a single player, story driven game. And yes, this literally has made me ignore a number of titles I previously looked forward to.
Thirty four characters live here.
Oh the genres you listed only adventure games are actually dead. New platformers come out every year, including fucking Mario for crying out loud. It's also a popular genre with indie studios probably because of its straight forward design. Paradox has some great strategy games that cover all the major gameplay types, RTS, TBS, 4X. There are many building simulators of various types as well ranging from crafting games like the ubiquitous minecraft, space engineers etc, to city builders like the Anno series and Cities Skylines and the really complicated ones like Factorio. I haven't seen a good adventure game since the start of the 3D era though.
My two kids (10 & 5) spend more time watching people play video games than playing games themselves! :(
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer