• CliffyB thinks Sony is 'playing us' and that the industry can't survive with used games.
    126 replies, posted
[QUOTE=BenJammin';41016321]CliffyB is a talentless hack douchebag and his only real decent contribution to the industry was mapping for the Unreal and Unreal Tournament games as a decent mapper. Does anybody take what this guy says seriously?[/QUOTE] Talentless? Nonsense. Like them or not, the Gears of War games were [I]extremely[/I] well made, and he was also involved with all of the Unreal games and is the creator of Jazz Jackrabbit. As to why people listen to what he has to say, it's because he was a major face in the industry for a long time. I'd rather he say these kinds of things, even if I disagree with them, because it allows for a different perspective to be talked about.
[QUOTE=Durrsly;41015862]Or maybe less developers should stop trying to be CoD and as a result lose millions over it.[/QUOTE] production values don't mean call of duty if anything call of duty is an example of marketing above production and also he's right on pretty much every aspect - if you don't want to support an unsustainable model then maybe stop expecting so much out of video games production? (not to be confused with video game design)
If he says it's bad, then it must be good.
[QUOTE=Lamar;41015857]The industry was not the same back then as it is today. Back then, games were made by tiny development teams. Many of them made by a sole person, [B]today game development rivals movie production.[/B][/QUOTE] and most triple AAA games pander to the widest audience possible and it all feels like the same goddamn thing, and it's shit. It's time for some downscaling.
[QUOTE=JeanLuc761;41016352]Talentless? Nonsense. Like them or not, the Gears of War games were [I]extremely[/I] well made, and he was also involved with all of the Unreal games and is the creator of Jazz Jackrabbit. As to why people listen to what he has to say, it's because he was a major face in the industry for a long time. I'd rather he say these kinds of things, even if I disagree with them, because it allows for a different perspective to be talked about.[/QUOTE] CliffyB could have been replaced during the development of Gears of War and I don't doubt it would have been any worse. It might of been better even. It's because of the success of the game he got so famous, and the only reason why his dumbass opinions are even on here because he's starting to lose popularity and he's clamoring for attention.
He's right though. Big retailers like gamestop are making a lot of money on used games without giving anything back to the devs and publishers.
[QUOTE=Kegan;41016403]and most triple AAA games pander to the widest audience possible and it all feels like the same goddamn thing, and it's shit. It's time for some downscaling.[/QUOTE] except people don't really want to do indie development either because it's super risky, there's no job security, and even if you 'make it' you don't get paid much unless you already have a large following and even after all that, you still get screwed over with complaints if you don't have 'enough' emphasis on production - "I'm sick of retro-emulation 2d games and this looks like shit!" is a common one
[QUOTE=aydin690;41016535]He's right though. Big retailers like gamestop are making a lot of money on used games without giving anything back to the devs and publishers.[/QUOTE] They aren't entitled to money on the second sale though. Every consumer product has a secondhand market and yet for some reason the gaming industry feels like it's exempt from that. Really, it's just a scapegoat to try and explain away lower than expected profits and if they got away with getting rid of used games, they'd just find something else to blame.
[QUOTE=aydin690;41016535]He's right though. Big retailers like gamestop are making a lot of money on used games without giving anything back to the devs and publishers.[/QUOTE] though i do somewhat agree that this is a problem (though not nearly as big a problem as people make it out to be), microsoft's alleged solution to it is horrible shortsighted draconian nonsense that will bite both them and the consumers right in the ass.
[QUOTE=JeanLuc761;41016566]They aren't entitled to money on the second sale though. [B]Every consumer product has a secondhand market [/B]and yet for some reason the gaming industry feels like it's exempt from that. Really, it's just a scapegoat to try and explain away lower than expected profits and if they got away with getting rid of used games, they'd just find something else to blame.[/QUOTE] Said no one ever. Try selling your used movie tickets. It's the same deal. If you read the game eula you'll see that you own a personal license to play the game, you don't actually own the game or anything.
[QUOTE=aydin690;41016618]Said no one ever. Try selling your used movie tickets. It's the same deal. If you read the game eula you'll see that you own a personal license to play the game, you don't actually own the game or anything.[/QUOTE] Just read my Dishonored warranty/deal/shit "You may not cause or permit the sale, disclosure, copying, renting, ... leasing, uploading, downloading, transmitting or otherwise distributing the product , the Documentation or any of other components of the Package by any means or in any form, without the prior written consent of Licensor" Half true, you do own it, you just cannot transfer it without permission and you cannot do this because you do not own the intellectual property contained within it. So far, there appears to be a status quo.
[quote]Cliff "CliffyB" Bleszinski, former bigwig at Epic Games and creator of the Gears of War franchise, was not one of them. "You cannot have game and marketing budgets this high while also having used and rental games existing," he said via Twitter. "The numbers do NOT work people."[/quote] THEN STOP HAVING 500 MILLION DOLLAR BUDGETS. Jim Sterling makes this point all the time. When 5 million sales is considered a failure, you've fucked up as a publisher. When you need 10 million sales to break even on game you're the failure. Used games are a treat to consumers to help keep new games fluid. If you required all people to buy new games, you'd end up with marginally better new sales and people would sit on their "new" games for so long before they had the cash to buy new ones. Stop putting hollywood budgets on these things. Edit: I'm speaking of Tomb Raider which supposedly got 3.4million sales in the first month and they were looking for 6. But it was not a failure, just a disappointment.
still don't see anyone in this thread complaining about steam. it's such a one layered issue for so many people. honestly if they said "also because you can't sell games they are only 40 dollars" no one would give a shit
[QUOTE=Lamar;41015857]The industry was not the same back then as it is today. Back then, games were made by tiny development teams. Many of them made by a sole person, today game development rivals movie production.[/QUOTE] Then I hope the game industry crashes and burns. The free market definitely suits the games industry.
[QUOTE=Vedicardi;41016713]still don't see anyone in this thread complaining about steam. it's such a one layered issue for so many people. honestly if they said "also because you can't sell games they are only 40 dollars" no one would give a shit[/QUOTE] I think that's what Microsoft was intending to do was to replicate something like Steam by enforcing both an online validation (Steam) and the reduction of used game market (Steam and every other pc game maker ever since 2000). Its an industry double standard and MS more or less handled it with the grace of an obese person doing ballet.
[QUOTE=Brt5470;41016690]THEN STOP HAVING 500 MILLION DOLLAR BUDGETS. Jim Sterling makes this point all the time. When 5 million sales is considered a failure, you've fucked up as a publisher. When you need 10 million sales to break even on game you're the failure. Used games are a treat to consumers to help keep new games fluid. If you required all people to buy new games, you'd end up with marginally better new sales and people would sit on their "new" games for so long before they had the cash to buy new ones. Stop putting hollywood budgets on these things.[/QUOTE] if this coming from the same guys who got hyped as fuck because GTA V had a bigger map than IV and Red Dead combined? or the guys who wanted a mirror's edge that wasn't a four-hour linear game? maybe the guys who waited 8+ years for a half-life with a bigger production? how about the guys who give bethsoft endless praise for the sheer scale of their games? or the guys whose dream game is actually [url=http://www.facepunch.com/threads/625672]production incarnate[/url] ? maybe you guys should actually not want something before you talk about not wanting them or perhaps realize that there's an entirely new industry that focuses on innovation over production (which, ironically enough, can't innovate quite as far as they hope because realizing that dream requires more money (production value))
Well when they charge my left nut and both legs for a game, I don't really see how reselling/letting people borrow games is going to hurt the industry in the slightest. Gears of war was xbox only anyways so of course they are going to try to line their ideology together. Microsoft needs to just take pride out of the equation and their heads out their ass's and completely start fresh with the xbox one and mark the current version as a failure.
[QUOTE=Juniez;41016752]if this coming from the same guys who got hyped as fuck because GTA V had a bigger map than IV and Red Dead combined? or the guys who wanted a mirror's edge that wasn't a four-hour linear game? maybe the guys who waited 8+ years for a half-life with a bigger production? how about the guys who give bethsoft endless praise for the sheer scale of their games? or the guys whose dream game is actually [url=http://www.facepunch.com/threads/625672]production incarnate[/url] ? maybe you guys should actually not want something before you talk about not wanting them or perhaps realize that there's an entirely new industry that focuses on innovation over production (which, ironically enough, can't innovate quite as far as they hope because realizing that dream requires more money (production value))[/QUOTE] Some games I think warrant big budgets. Battlefield, COD, GTA. But when Toimbraider sold like 4.8million copies and was considered a financial failure, that's an issue. Why does tombraider need that kind of budget. I did not play the game, perhaps the budget shows in the production. I realize you can't have it both ways with big games but normal budgets, but there is also a huge inefficiency with the game market, and I'd like to see a breakdown of where a budget goes. I know the movie industry has one of the biggest profit margins, which is one reason remakes are popular. If you don't completely bomb, it's very easy to make plenty of money back from a project. I just wonder why Games are doing this with their kind of sales figures and roughly hollywood budget levels, especially when they are charging 5-6x the cost of a movie ticket. Edit: Bethesda seems to atleast know what their doing with their production though. I don't remember hearing them complain about not enough sales when they keep making giant scale games. Some games do need big budgets to do what they need, and some games will sell well for a reason. My problem is with games that don't have that kind of scale, yet have hundreds of millions put into them and then the publisher complains they don't get enough sales for it. EG Resident Evil 6 and Tomb Raider.
[QUOTE=Brt5470;41016860]Some games I think warrant big budgets. Battlefield, COD, GTA. But when Toimbraider sold like 4.8million copies and was considered a financial failure, that's an issue. Why does tombraider need that kind of budget. I did not play the game, perhaps the budget shows in the production.[/QUOTE] I feel the need to correct you on this, Square Enix said they were "disappointed" in their sales not that they were in the red.
[QUOTE=Evilan;41016881]I feel the need to correct you on this, Square Enix said they were "disappointed" in their sales not that they were in the red.[/QUOTE] Yea I looked it up and I guess it sold 3.4 in the first month. They wanted 6.
[QUOTE=Brt5470;41016860]Some games I think warrant big budgets. Battlefield, COD, GTA. But when Toimbraider sold like 4.8million copies and was considered a financial failure, that's an issue. Why does tombraider need that kind of budget. I did not play the game, perhaps the budget shows in the production. I realize you can't have it both ways with big games but normal budgets, but there is also a huge inefficiency with the game market, and I'd like to see a breakdown of where a budget goes. I know the movie industry has one of the biggest profit margins, which is one reason remakes are popular. If you don't completely bomb, it's very easy to make plenty of money back from a project. I just wonder why Games are doing this with their kind of sales figures and roughly hollywood budget levels, especially when they are charging 5-6x the cost of a movie ticket. Edit: Bethesda seems to atleast know what their doing with their production though. I don't remember hearing them complain about not enough sales when they keep making giant scale games. Some games do need big budgets to do what they need, and some games will sell well for a reason. My problem is with games that don't have that kind of scale, yet have hundreds of millions put into them and then the publisher complains they don't get enough sales for it. EG Resident Evil 6 and Tomb Raider.[/QUOTE] because RE6 had like 3 campaigns of 5+ hours each and you have to pay people to design, conceptualize, build, playtest, and polish all of it and it fuckin bombed simply because they missed their target audience (a relatively tiny error in the design process) and the only reason that bethsoft can afford to do it is because they reuse pretty much everything over and over again throughout a video game, scale of the map doesn't necessarily mean they need more money (i.e. crysis 1 is way bigger than cry2 but cry2 took more effort to create levels for) also movies have a much bigger audience and bigger audience + practically infinite supply = you can sell it for cheaper
[QUOTE=Juniez;41016923]because RE6 had like 3 campaigns of 5+ hours each and you have to pay people to design, conceptualize, build, playtest, and polish all of it (and its not cheap) and the only reason that bethsoft can afford to do it is because they reuse pretty much everything over and over again throughout a video game, scale of the map doesn't necessarily mean more money[/QUOTE] I can understand that, but the last point is, did capcom really think that many people would want a brand new copy of the game? I think that's the other side of it. A game may genuinely be popular or genuinely need that budget for a huge amount of work, but does a publisher really think that amount of people would buy into a title? From my quick google search RE6 sold 4.9million, but they wanted 7 million sales to hit their projections. But 7 million is like battlefield 3 numbers. I guess it's more my problem with publishers expecting to hit these record sales each time for some of these releases. Edit: In some ways, those record numbers will continue to rise as more and more people get into gaming and populations grow and such. As much as I love those huge expansive worlds, I don't want to feel like I'm the reason a publisher decides to close a studio or end a franchise because I didn't buy their game as a consumer.
[QUOTE=Brt5470;41016949]I can understand that, but the last point is, did capcom really think that many people would want a brand new copy of the game? I think that's the other side of it. A game may genuinely be popular or genuinely need that budget for a huge amount of work, but does a publisher really think that amount of people would buy into a title? From my quick google search RE6 sold 4.9million, but they wanted 7 million sales to hit their projections. But 7 million is like battlefield 3 numbers. I guess it's more my problem with publishers expecting to hit these record sales each time for some of these releases.[/QUOTE] the price of video games haven't gone up since then, but production values certainly have! and where else are you going to get the extra money can't raise video game prices, that would probably get you killed can't use dlcs, they're already trying it and apparently people think they deserve it for free won't lower initial prices - they'll fall on their own and you'll get those people then. it would be stupid to intentionally cripple yourself from the beginning can't lower production values drastically because apparently production is what people want
To give you an idea of how much better movies sell than video games, the total PS3 sales (550 million total copies) is equal to only twice as many people viewed Gone With the Wind in 1939 (225.7 million)
[QUOTE=Lamar;41015836]He's right though, many gamers have become spoiled brats and expect the increasingly ridiculous expensive to make titles they play to be able to bought at heavily discounted prices through used game sales. Yeah, we can tell them to stop spending so much money on huge development teams and production. But games like Call of Duty, Battlefield, and GTA are what sell. If you want to send them a message, stop buying AAA titles. I'm sure many of you already have though, I know I did.[/QUOTE] no those games just set a new bar for profit, that most devs can't reach btw. Every game these days has to be AAA in publishers' eyes, but that's not true considering tons of low cost indie games doing amazing
[QUOTE=Evilan;41016962]To give you an idea of how much better movies sell than video games, the total PS3 sales (550 million total copies) is equal to only twice as many people viewed Gone With the Wind in 1939 (225.7 million)[/QUOTE] Gone with the wind has good backwards compatibility. [editline]13th June 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=Juniez;41016956]the price of video games haven't gone up since then, but production values certainly have! and where else are you going to get the extra money[/QUOTE] Well we're seeing that you simply don't. So unless you physically are that top guy, I don't think you should be making as much of a risk on such a title. I guess I'm taking a very simplicity approach to it. I see those 5+ million on top games, and unless you are one, you shouldn't be putting the kind of budget on a game that would take a miracle to do it.
[QUOTE=Brt5470;41016979]Gone with the wind has good backwards compatibility. [/QUOTE] so does the ps3 [QUOTE=Brt5470;41016979]Well we're seeing that you simply don't. So unless you physically are that top guy, I don't think you should be making as much of a risk on such a title. I guess I'm taking a very simplicity approach to it. I see those 5+ million on top games, and unless you are one, you shouldn't be putting the kind of budget on a game that would take a miracle to do it.[/QUOTE] even less people will buy a RE6 with lower production values, and then what? that's just digging yourself a hole
[QUOTE=Evilan;41016962]To give you an idea of how much better movies sell than video games, the total PS3 sales (550 million total copies) is equal to only twice as many people viewed Gone With the Wind in 1939 (225.7 million)[/QUOTE] idk where you get that number. over the years perhaps that much, and keep in mind that in the 30/40s it was the only form of entertainment. I think that is the total sales it has over 80+ years so that's not really a fair comparison at all [editline]13th June 2013[/editline] certainly didn't get that many in 1939 alone
[QUOTE=Lamar;41015857]The industry was not the same back then as it is today. Back then, games were made by tiny development teams. Many of them made by a sole person, today game development rivals movie production.[/QUOTE] Thing is - it's not for the better. I still haven't had a moment "well, these millions were well spent." Vast majority of the money goes to bloated (and often still ugly) graphics, mostly enclosed in cut-scenes or on-the-rail events. If the game ends up good or not good depends from 90% on just relatively very few people who are responsible for the story, the gameplay, and the overall design. If they hire two thousand modellers from india to be able to ad three more polygons on the antagonist's cock, who the fuck gives a shit. Big budgets don't guarantee good games, and anybody who swings budget talk about is bad at game development.
[QUOTE=Juniez;41016991]so does the ps3[/QUOTE] It did. [QUOTE=Juniez;41016991] even less people will buy a RE6 with lower production values, and then what? that's just digging yourself a hole[/QUOTE] Um what? I thought I was taking a very simple approach to this, but that surprised me.
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