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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.
It's a high-grade gaming experience and it's free to play
So giving away games for free hurts the competition. Who knew?
This is meaningless:
"More gamers engage with games videos and events than Fortnite."
There is no conclusion.
Makes the article worthless.
Bring The Buggles back for this, please. We need a new take on this ironic, but iconic, turn of events.
are going to have to learn to code some other projects.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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.
... the game industry succesfully got it's way to control software and by keeping half of it on their machines. They're finding out how gaming always was - most games will be played once, finished and then forgotten. It's hard for any game to keep players for a long time, which is why people need a rest from games between sequels instead of always online service base gaming bullshit. This is especially true for mobile games that survives off a tiny minority of whales. The sooner the game industry figures out we want good content for money and stop trying to turn every game into a service the better off we'll all be. People can buy multiple single player games they can't play every multiplayer game.
That means service based games are a winner take all market because free time is limited when many multiplayer games are released in the same period vying for player attention. The level of idiocy coming out of management selecting for short term profits instead of fixing the AAA game industries ability to make said games is the issue.
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.
I think that they're probably right. The amount of entertainment that Americans consume today is insane. Most are badly, *badly* addicted to their screens. From what I see, those who are addicted are already spending as much of their time on these things as possible, already. At some point, there is going to be significantly more entertainment produced than can be consumed profitably. I think that people who are not going to be addicted to the inanity of having to be constantly entertained aren't likely to suddenly become addicted, so I think that we are probably at peak entertainment right about now, at least in the US. The only way entertainment companies could sell more useless garbage to Americans would be if people started doing this:https://www.soundandvision.com/files/_images/200902/2172009173627.jpg
I don't respond to AC's.
https://store.steampowered.com...
https://store.steampowered.com...
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in the UK it's 999 but I'm assuming you're murican and couldn't place it on a map so you are forgiven.
You can still play old games. Loderunner and Sword of Fargoal are two games that are nice and slow and boring and entirely addictive. Loderunner especially, it's like a one-Lemming Lemmings with only one tool and the other Lemmings are trying to kill you.
The funny thing is that both companies have some awesome IP.
EA could make cash hand over fist if they decided to crack open some of the old Origin games and make them.
For example, an Ultima reboot. Not a "mobile friendly" app that demands DLC and microtransactions to play, but a complete revamping of the series, where one buys the game, with zero microtransactions. No Avatar loot boxes, no mongbat pets, no fluff... but a return to basic plot and gameplay.
EA would make money hand over fist if they did this in a way that wasn't a quick cash grab, driving away everyone.
Sadly there are very few people left who know what a Lemming was or were ever familiar with the game. It seems like everyone around now starts at Minecraft or WoW.
After Doom, I was already tired of the first person shoot em up. However because it was so popular, nearly all the games have been like that afterwords. Then World of Warcraft was a big hit, so all the game companies moved over to online games. Game makers gotten serious about their stories, so all the games started to have these big huge complex stories.
With the companies following these fads, we had a lot of good games genres die out.
1. Single player Adventure Games, these were once games with state of the art graphics and sound, it made progressing to the next screen and area a real joy, you weren't playing against people, or having to keep your twitch reflex on maximum all the time. You get into a place, you then can take your time explore the area find as many hints as your can. The 2016 new Kings Quest while not getting big reviews, I found was a decent attempt of a modern version of the adventure game, however could had been much better with more budget and planning. (There was a trend in it, to make some puzzles, actual puzzles, and not organic part of the game environment)
2. Platform Games. Sometimes we don't need to use all the buttons on our controller. No story to figure out, no moral ambiguities, you are the hero, everyone else is the bad guy.
3. Strategy Games. No rush, take your time, come up with a plan.
4. Building Simulators, no plot just keep of building and simulating
Sure they are Indy games like this, and on the mobile market they have more options. But most of the big name games are nearly all the same. It isn't that we have lost our ability to pay attention to a game, but the fact after playing a few of these types of games, there isn't much we want to pay attention too.
Fortnite, is one of those quick to play games with a combination of many genres. You Win, then you Win, if not then you play again.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I'm Canadian, so you're assuming wrong. I also know different countries use different emergency numbers. I was expecting/hoping someone to reply the exact same thing as me but with a different number than 911 and 999.
And by the way, the emergency number in the UK is not 999. It's 0118 999 881 999 119 725... 3.
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People are getting too lazy to play a game. They can only muster the attention to look at a crappy video on their phone.
Cyberpunk 2077 will have none of that BS and be on GOG DRM FREE!
No it isn't, everyone knows the emergency number in the UK is 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3
Have gnu, will travel.
Problem for me isn't Uplay, but FarCry 5, AMD Phenom, and DRM. In a nutshell the included DRM uses SSE 4.1 which is an extension Phenom's don't have (SSE4A). Other games have had this issue until publishers applied patches. Guess who hasn't, and Assassin's Creed: Odyssey is the same issue. FarCry Primal is the latest of that series that'll run on Phenoms. If Ubisoft wants my money they know what they need to do. If not there's plenty of other publishers that'll take my money, and deliver.
I haven't looked forward to a game release in years. It's pretty simple...
-I don't game on my phone. ...So basically, 98% of new AAA games aren't written for me. And that's fine. I'm voting with my wallet; I've got green pastures of games in my Steam. Not everything has to be incredibly story driven or be some GPU workout, either. I have fun playing PinballFX and Sol Exodus, Game Dev Tycoon and Trine. I'm one of those people who still enjoys playing Unreal Tournament in all of its iterations - it's got the same concept as Destiny 2 ("Go to the place and shoot the lads"), but with far fewer annoyances, free DLC, and free multiplayer. And, of course, no matter how many times I play the Mass Effect trilogy (and even Andromeda), I come across a new thing somewhere.
-I don't want a game without a single player campaign (y'know, an actual campaign, not a 90-minute tutorial).
-I don't want a game with lootboxes.
-I don't want a game with microtransactions.
-I don't want a game with an always-online requirement.
I realize that saying "they don't make 'em like they used to" wreaks of nostalgia, but I preordered Andromeda, and on the sole basis that it was one of the last EA games that didn't wreak of microtransactions and lootboxes, I'd do it again if only to encourage that sort of model. Activision has the same problem - Starcraft isn't always my cup of tea, but when I'm in the mood, I'm happy with what it is, to the chagrin of Activision who would far rather I be a fan of CoD: BO4. I got that game for free and I still didn't find it to be fun at all, even though the first Black Ops game was one of my favorites of the series.
EA shifted their business model toward short term profits, and while it worked for a while, it's obvious to everybody with a brain stem that microtransactions and second-half-of-the-game DLC simply isn't going to garner loyalty in the long term. It's just that the chickens are finally coming home to roost, and while it's possible that they'll figure out what the rest of us already know, I wouldn't wager a counterfeit wooden nickel on it.
Oh hey, look! Another woosh!
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And also, yet another moran who thinks only the U.S.A. uses 911.
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Am. Canadian. Can confirm. 911 summons red clad officers on mooseback
Fortnite is not the problem, and neither is a dwindling interest in video games.
It's a dwindling interest in paying again and again and again for getting the same video games.
Does EA even have a line of games anymore that doesn't have the current year in the title? Or does any major studio still offer games where you actually get to buy the whole game for 60 bucks instead of buying a husk that you can then fill with zero-day DLC and "season passes"? Only to eventually find out that you shelled out about 200 bucks for game you already had, just that back then you actually did get the whole game for those 60 bucks (aka what today passes as a "sequel")? But it has a new gimmick and worse, dumbed-down mechanics because crippling games so they run on consoles was not enough, today's gaming market is cell phones so enjoy playing games with mouse and keyboard on your 30" screen that were designed for stamp-sized touch screens.
EA, it's not that people don't want to play games anymore. You just don't produce the games anymore that we want to play.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... and until they do, I see no reason to pay for their games rather torrenting it and getting tired of the uninspired crap real fast.
I really enjoyed Assassin's Creed 2 and was ecstatic that I could get it for the PS4 that I bought for my kids. So I bought the whole Ezio collection for my PS4. Then I just found out that the next two games were basically the exact same game with some minor elements added. I won't be buying the rest since I have lost interest.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
There is still something else? What recent AAA title can you name that wasn't aiming for online multiplayer gaming?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The micro transaction is a way to ensure the gamer returns to the same game to take advantage of the costly little things they have added. This adds revenue, but also increases the returning player base as those players want to utilize their investment into their game.
This means that for the next big game release, those same users who invested additional money realize that they would have to do the same again... and again... and again... significantly lowering the ROI of each game's annual release after having spent $100+ on the game plus micro transactions. This makes the game much more difficult for a user to justify the cost of leaving the old game for the new one.
Some people have finally realized this, and the marketing guys are losing their collective bonuses to their own success for getting those players to return to the game by increasing the cost and adding to it such "a sense of pride and accomplishment."
Well, gamers caught on when they left out the part where you first of all have to make a game instead of slapping a new year number on the old one before trying to sell it again, only this time you get to pay for the book and then extra for every page you want.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
EA and Blizzard are publishing mostly shitty games.
This. They're both trying to blame Fortnite for their problems, but they simply don't make great games any more. Perhaps giant corporate conglomerates never can.
AAA games focus on presentation, not gameplay, as that's the easiest way to get first-week sales. But when gameplay is bad game after game, not to mention code quality and server quality, people start to notice. I sure as heck won't buy e.g. the next Diablo without seeing reviews (by post-launch reviewers - everyone who gets pre-launch copies is captive these days).
Meanwhile Indy games with crappy graphics keep me entertained for endless hours. Much as I'd like to see those games look better, I don't want a better-looking game that's not fun to play!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
During high school, my friends and I joked that one day, every book that needs to be written will have been written. then we will not need to write any more books! Joking aside, maybe video gaming is getting there. If I had infinite free gaming time right now, I want to go back and play the Bioshock series, and the Doom expansions I never played, and a bunch of adventure games that my friends played and I didn't, and the Final Fantasy games I missed, and the Frictional Games (SOMA, Penumbra). Yes, I want to play Red Dead Redemption 2 ... but that's $60, whereas the other games I listed are like $10 on Steam. So... why buy a new game?
I know this talk frightens the game companies and they try to make it hard on me. But they finally discovered it is better to sell old games than to have people pirate them.
"Home prices NEVER go down" -- typical real-estate agent in 2006
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
The whole gaming industry needs to go through massive a overhaul. The whole model has been straight fucked by mobile and micropayments. Burn it all down, send most every new company out of business, leaving the quality operators like Nintendo and Sega behind.
When have "AAA" publishers looking for a profits from CEOs whose salaries could easily fund a smaller more agile studio. Or could replace them with those who are more like the late Satoru Iwata, and willing to cut their own pay in slim times.
Really what needs to be done is take guys like Bobby Kotick out of the picture. He wants fear? Give me a few minutes with voting stock, and watch him fall flat on his ass as to change his contract to remove the golden parachute to replace it with one made of frayed nylon. Unfortunately guys like him have no clue about the industry, usually because they haven't had the chance to see what it's like on the ground in the trenches.
Unfortunately these sorry excuses for executives are usually the ones who whine about short term profits over longer term gains. Kind of sad that they look at the balance sheet and don't see that their exorbitant pay stubs are what happens to be screwing the damn ledger.
âoeIâ(TM)ll just put this here... with the rest of the fireâ
Which is coincidentally how EA and Blizzard are handling their fires.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
So far the only bug I've seen is when you lose and you continue an island, the archers walk in mid-air to rejoin their tower.
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It's a problem with corporate governance. Growth is usually favored over sustained dividends. The problem was created by the favorable tax treatment of capital gains over dividends - investors of course want their profits in a lower-tax way. But it has created a disease that has killed business after business, as corporate leadership seems unable to say "we've won: we've saturated the market and this business can't double again because we already have more than half the possible customers; here's a fat dividend which we can sustain indefinitely".
Transitioning from growth to dividends is the freaking point, it's how profits are supposed to flow to shareholders. But the culture of corporate governance is broken now, and cultural fixes are hard.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It's not about IP, "plot and gameplay" take talent; microtransactions, always-on connectivity to collect user data, loot boxes, etc don't. The fact they seem to have ditched mostly marketing and sales people may be a sign they are starting to catch on to this, but generally large companies have stable management placement programs, to such an extent that they don't place people in positions of leadership who can see the issues faced any better than they guys before them - so I don't have a lot of faith that they will actually start improving. More expecting that the next great games will come from smaller shops EA and Activation are more like the 400lb raging mental midgets in the room than great creators of things.
BINGO!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
sold just fine. Far Cry 5 was the top selling Far Cry game in history and a spin off game was green lit. BF V for all the talk still moved 7.3 million copies. Not bad for a year when everybody was going up against the twin juggernauts of Fortnite and Red Dead Redemption 2.
The article is more about growth. The games industry has grown like crazy thanks to micro transaction bullshit. Seriously, these companies are all hitting record profits with insane valuations.
The YouTuber Jim Sterling has been pointing out this is not sustainable. There's only so many hours in a day for these crappy "live services" games. Plus a recession is coming and while recessions normally are good for the industry (folks cut back on vacations and play games at home) nobody knows if that'll hold true for Micro transactions and loot boxes.
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There's amazing games in all those categories. Hat in Time, Shantae Half Genie Hero & Sonic Mania, The Crash Bandicoot remakes, Life is Strange, there's a pixel art cyber punk on I can't for the life of me remember the name of and while I don't play strat games my bro who does tells me it's a golden age.
As for city builders There's 3 or 4 good ones, a couple new Theme Park style games and even a theme hospital style game. Again, I don't play 'em so it's word of mouth.
The only downside is they're really only getting the Indie and/or AA treatment. None of these genres get the AAA treatment they used to. So the set pieces are a bit less spectacular and the graphics a little less polished. Also if you're a PC gamer expect to spend an extra $500 bucks on your rig for a better CPU & GPU.
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Has EA ever had a good game?
You know a lot of people freaked out and lost their marbles with Fallout 76, but I think this was completely overblown. It was essentially a multiplayer online game - not massively though so not fully MMO. Some of the stuff people complained about the most were standard things for MMOs, and other complaints boiled down to not meeting the player's self-created expectations. And yet despite all the pre-release griping about how awful it would be, people still bought it. Not even waiting to see what the reception would be, they would even pre-order the game. If I had that game for free, I would play it, but otherwise I just don't have time for a second MMO as that's a big time sink in itself. I watched some of the Youtube videos of people ranting about Fallout 76 and some are hilarious how freaked out the presenters are.
On the other hand, go to any MMO and you will find a set of players there or in the forums loudly proclaiming how their MMO is the worst game of all time. I think that showing up to gripe is a hobby of many players. As for Bethesda, Oblivion was called a horrible game because it wasn't like Morrowind, and Skyrim was a horrible game because it wasn't like Oblivion, and Fallout 3 was the worst game of all time because it wasn't made by Interplay, and Fallout 4 was horrible because it wasn't as good at Fallout 3, and so on. Really, this is just more people who are griping as their primary form of entertainment.
I did mean "moran".
How the fuck would "And also, yet another more then who thinks only the U.S.A. uses 911." even make sense?
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes...
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that was one of the craziest things they ever got away with. When I was a kid a stock buy back wasn't just illegal it was considered a ridiculous form of market manipulation.
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There's a way to make most factions happy, but it takes some careful juggling to do so.
You have to eradicate at least one of the most powerful ones, even after you've established yourself as their good friend. (Or once you're running it, depending on which one you choose.) That's stupid. And it doesn't take careful juggling to save the other ones either, all you have to do is choose to warn them when you get the chance. None of your choices before or after really make any difference. Obviously there are mods which fix this problem, I'm running one now, but that doesn't speak to how little sense the stock campaign's ending makes.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Leisure industries should be campaigning for reduced working hours in developed economies if they want people to spend more money on things.
A week has 168 hours. If I'm lucky, 40 go to work. Let's say 5 hours to commuting (for me) and is much worse for many. Let's say 7 hours a night for sleep but round to 50 hours. Right there I'm at 73 hours. But I also have meals, hygiene, and other errands to run - let's call that 25 hours. I'm down to 48 hours to spend on other things. You're competing with everything else, including reading/movies/tv/naps/friends/exercise! If I had kids and a worse commute? I basically don't have any time to relax!
One thing that stops my significant other and I from playing as many games as we could is lack of local multiplayer. We don't live together so we're not going to schlep bigger consoles back and forth. The Switch sort of works as a solution but Steam or Playstation ain't happening unless we move in.