I'll narrow the current market shrinking to three simple issues that publishers seem to not give two shits about, and most aren't doing it right.
1. Distribution and content-price ratios. Due to the rise of digital distribution, publishers have spread the ratio thinner and thinner, with games coming increasingly less featured, with content sold post release through DLC. This is a system that simply doesn't work at all and even less to the extent that this practice is being done nowadays. If there isn't enough content on the main game with all of it spread through DLCs people are flat out not going to buy it since their main play experience is degraded and they feel cheated. Think of SEGA's early consoles and all their ass-backwards peripheric devices.
[B]Solution: Squeeze more content in, extend release dates, no launch date DLCs[/B]
2. Geographical distribution. As somebody who lives in a third world country I can attest that the price of obtaining a simple video game is simply too damn ridiculous to warrant the cost. There is a FAR larger extent of the world population in the so called third world countries than in the so called first world, and this an entirely untamed market that could VERY easily be worked with to produce tremendous profit margins. The clearest example of this would be what Nexon is doing. Nexon games are EXTREMELY popular amongst third world countries, and their distribution schemes allows third world countries to produce large amounts of profit without people feeling cheated. Nexon is currently a far larger company in terms of profit than even EA.
[B]Solution: Stop thinking of the world as North America, Europe, Japan and Australia.[/B]
3. Driving the community away. Publishers have on recent times got the ridiculous idea that allowing their games to be modded reduces their profit margins and increases piracy. I don't know from what utterly wrong market study did they get this idea, but it couldn't be more wrong. If a game is loved by a community, and specifically, if there is a modding community for it, you'll be extending the lifetime of your product for years and years to come. Games which came out in 1999 like Half-Life are still being sold to this day mostly due to mods, ARMA II gained a HUGE boost in sales after Day Z, hell, Garry's Mod comes with a fairly small amount of content and it has stayed alive for almost 6 years due to the community behind it. If you're selling your games to a community what sense does it make to drive them the hell away?
[B]Solution: Learn to stop fearing the mods and love them. Stop screwing people over.[/B]
[QUOTE=Zeemlapje;36605900]I gave up a game design study ages ago because it was so obvious this would happen.
you're probably better off studying a different subject & just pick up game design as a hobby. i've known plenty of people who have had jobs at game developers without a degree on the subject. I'm pretty sure some people remember Robert Stoneman who made War Of The Servers?? Yeah he didn't study for game design but got a job on the Mass Effect 2 dev. team.[/QUOTE]
Ok I have a bad way of words and have trouble explaining things, but if it was so obvious this would happen then why bother at all? The people who got into the business without a games qualification probably had experience in a similar field anyway, be it computer science, physics or architecture. It's always best to keep what you want to do most as your focal point of learning, to be able to break into the industry at as many angles as possible
For example, I did a diploma in games design while doing stuff on the side, which was the key to an internship at EA, which then eventually lead me to do what i'm doing today. Without that plan I'd probably still be on Job seekers allowance and living with my mother
Brute force determination :v:
[quote="OP"]because 90% of gamers pirate PC games[/quote]
This is a load of shit, large parts of this article is really.
[QUOTE=Profanwolf;36607255][quote]because 90% of gamers pirate PC games[/quote]This is a load of shit, large parts of this article is really.[/QUOTE]
"pirate PC games"=/=pirate all their games
It's a lot less unreasonable to say that 90% of pc gamers have pirated one thing in their life compared to 90% of pc gamers pirate all their games.
Mirror's Edge 2 EA
You know want to.
[QUOTE=Cuon Alpinus;36607358]Mirror's Edge 2 EA
You know want to.[/QUOTE]
It's already confirmed.
[url]http://www.videogamer.com/ps3/mirrors_edge/news/ea_confirms_small_team_working_on_mirror_s_edge_2.html[/url]
To me, some of the best games on the market are games like the civilization series or sim city or a paradox grand strategy game. They all have a huge variety of freedom to play and as a result, have an extreme amount of replay value.
Most mainstream games give the illusion of choice, but it really boils down to an a choose your own adventure experience with like three branching paths.
[QUOTE=l337k1ll4;36606976]How am I nitpicking his post? He listed very many games that aren't unique.[/QUOTE]
you just posted your opinion on a few games and didn't back up anything you said at all. your opinion on some of those titles just seems totally ignorant too, especially comments like "not really different than previous racing games" that reek of someone who has never actually played a racing game (in the same way that no one on this forum ever seems to understand popular sports games)
the one thing that you did possibly back up, the points about mirror's edge, are just ridiculous. that game is one of the most original titles in recent years i can think of, at least on the AAA market. you completely discount it thought just... because.... it has guns in it? that are somehow "deeply encouraged"... even though you only ever have to use guns like twice in the entire game. the shooting mechanics themselves were pretty daringly different from the average shooter too. what more do you want?
[QUOTE=ChestyMcGee;36607714]the one thing that you did possibly back up, the points about mirror's edge, are just ridiculous. that game is one of the most original titles in recent years i can think of, at least on the AAA market. you completely discount it thought just... because.... it has guns in it? that are somehow "deeply encouraged"... even though you only ever have to use guns like twice in the entire game. the shooting mechanics themselves were pretty daringly different from the average shooter too. what more do you want?[/QUOTE]
I'd go as far to say the shooting in ME was purposefully different (and pretty clumsy, especially with long guns, handguns seemed fine) to discourage shooting. You are a runner, you deliver things, you evade capture, your focus isn't to kill people after you, so your training is enough to disarm and just about use weapons. Shooting things isn't something the PC would want to do, so it makes sense for the shooting to be pretty awkward.
Is Valve considered AAA?
That's because when it comes to art, you have to take chances and make something new. AAA games have been playing it safe too much with "reuhlistuck milutury shooturs," rather than trying to come up with new ideas. There still are AAA games like Portal that create something new, but it seems like the days where every id Software game was a new revolution in gaming is over.
[QUOTE=kaine123;36608746]Is Valve considered AAA?[/QUOTE]
I'd say so
they certainly don't have AAA graphics though :v:
[QUOTE=MaxOfS2D;36609371]I'd say so
they certainly don't have AAA graphics though :v:[/QUOTE]I wouldn't consider them AAA, since they don't spend incredible amounts of money on game development and advertising
[QUOTE=Big Bang;36606995]3. Driving the community away. Publishers have on recent times got the ridiculous idea that allowing their games to be modded reduces their profit margins and increases piracy. I don't know from what utterly wrong market study did they get this idea, but it couldn't be more wrong. If a game is loved by a community, and specifically, if there is a modding community for it, you'll be extending the lifetime of your product for years and years to come. Games which came out in 1999 like Half-Life are still being sold to this day mostly due to mods, ARMA II gained a HUGE boost in sales after Day Z, hell, Garry's Mod comes with a fairly small amount of content and it has stayed alive for almost 6 years due to the community behind it. If you're selling your games to a community what sense does it make to drive them the hell away?
[B]Solution: Learn to stop fearing the mods and love them. Stop screwing people over.[/B][/QUOTE]
Wanted to single this out because it's so important. ARMA 1 gets Quarantine, sales spike. Crisis Wars gets MechWarrior: Living Legends, sales spike. Half-Life 1 had Day of Defeat, Action Half-Life, Counter-Strike, and others going for it. Every single one of those drove sales. BF2 and Project Reality, HL2 and Insurgency... list goes on and on. Developers, please include mod compatibility for your own good kthx.
[QUOTE=KorJax;36605915]The great crash in the 80's will never happen because that had a LOT more going for it than "expensive, more of the same".
1. Cartredges actually had real production cost beyond game development time. During the crash, cartredges failed to sell, which meant that toy stores had to send them back to the publisher for a refund, which wasn't possible because the costs to do so were prohibtive for the publisher. So many cartredges ended up in bargin bins. The biggest failure of all was E.T., the game that "caused" the great video game crash. They produced millions of copies of the game, but after the first month, hardly any sold at all (because it was a terrible game). This meant that whoever made the game spent MILLIONS on producing just the cartredges, only for none of them to sell.
[b]You're sort of right. Producing discs and shipping them out (still the preferred method for console players) costs money, but not nearly as much as the old cartridges.[/b]
2. There were literally about 10-15 different console makers on the market, as everyone tried to get in on this lucritive new industry. Oversaturation of consoles and brands on the same shelf - nobody wanted to buy. [b]Though it could be argued that the casual apple/google/facebook/etc market takes this spot instead, I think you're more right than wrong on this point. Still, the effect the indie game industry is having can't be ignored.[/b]
3. Because everyone wanted to get in on it, many people would just do garage-games and throw them on store shelves, despite being very terrible. Imagine if the Indie Game channel on Xbox Live was the entirety of what you saw at Gamestop, and made full price. [b]Yeah now we have AAA games that are as unfun as the old turds, like Homefront. The problems of volume and quality still exist, but yeah I wouldn't go and say there have been any E.T.'s recently.[/b]
4. There was a LOT of corporate backstabbing going on. The lack of standards set in place meant that anyone could make a game for X console and get it on there. Many people would steal code or resources from one company and simply apply it in their games for another because there was simply a lack of standards in place at the time. And because consoles lacked any sort of security features anyways, it was really easy to bootleg, or throw whatever you wanted at it and try and sell stuff for it. This made branding for your console an absolute mess, and everything was disorganized.
[b]I know a bit about this but not much. I do know this is a problem in the casual market, but core and AAA markets don't really have this problem and that's what we're talking about.[/b]
[b]Rest of your post looks to be spot on.[/b]
[/QUOTE]
Yeah my 80's comparison was an exaggeration, in the same way that saying our modern depression is as bad as the Great Depression was. The more likely scenario is a few giant publishers topple or have to break up their assets, indie devs and publishers become the center of attention (this is already happening thanks to indiegogo, kickstarter, etc), and people spend less money developing games. This will probably mean a greater focus on F2P and cheap games with lower art budgets that instead take advantage of modern computing power to do new and innovative things.
Coincidentally I happen to own an E.T. cart for the Atari 2600. I can confirm I have no fucking clue how to play it to this day.
[QUOTE=CakeMaster7;36609502]I wouldn't consider them AAA, since they don't spend incredible amounts of money on game development and advertising[/QUOTE]
Didn't L4D have a ridiculous amount of money spent on a huge ad campaign?
[QUOTE=POLOPOZOZO;36605944]It's fun to have a goal to work towards.[/QUOTE]I honestly cannot stand games that do this. If a game has to use some artificially inflated difficulty or an incredible grind to try extend its longevity, there is a problem. I honestly spend less time on games like that than the games that just give me everything I could want right out of the gate or at least pace it well so as not to become tedious and skull-fuckingly frustrating. I'm not looking to have a massive, miserable grindfest to finally get the few things I genuinely want, I just want the few things I genuinely want so I can enjoy the game in my own way.
And this isn't just with Free-to-Play games. I'd have bought the kit unlockers for Battlefield 3 they released if it hadn't been for the fact they were months late and I had already spent weeks grinding my ass off to finally get the one gun I wanted from the beginning which was the 44. Magnum and had unlocked everything else by that point. The only things left otherwise were a few unlocks for the various vehicles, and I didn't really care about those.
[editline]3rd July 2012[/editline]
[QUOTE=MaxOfS2D;36609371]I'd say so
they certainly don't have AAA graphics though :v:[/QUOTE]As the article says, a game must have a $20 million production budget to be considered AAA.
[QUOTE=POLOPOZOZO;36610051]Didn't L4D have a ridiculous amount of money spent on a huge ad campaign?[/QUOTE]
I personally don't know if it was enough to really bring it above $20 million in development costs though
and the L4D series is kind of weird, they're really the only Valve made games other than maybe Portal 2 that Valve actually spent on advertising
[QUOTE=latin_geek;36603446]Last AAA game I've bought was Arma 2 CO and that was for a mod... can't remember the last AAA game I bought. Probably Skyrim.
Companies just need a bit more time to get a little more secure money-wise and start experimenting and taking risks again. Take Mirror's Edge for example, that was something fresh and daring from an AAA company. Sure, it failed, but that's what's experimentation's all about.[/QUOTE]
Arma II is not AAA.
I think the model works like this for games now - imagine playing time crisis, you need to pay to play - let's say 50p per life so that's okay, later on in the game you find a machine gun power up but you need to pay £1 to unlock it - I would say this is where some games are going wrong.
I'm not that happy either with TF2 for making weapons purchasable, but at least they have a choice between that or crafting. Some games probably take it further and I've yet to play them but I am sure it could be terrible for any gamer to be blocked from using a machine gun because you need to pay to use it.
Does Skyrim count as triple AAA if you run it heavily modded to the point it doesn't quite resemble the vanilla game?
:v:
I remember when CCP hinted at wanting to expand their PAY to look good store into PAY to win.
A shitload of people (thousands) voiced their protest by shooting at satues in the big tradehubs and CCP dropped the subject.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xESgZCM0iAQ&feature=related[/media]
ALso kinda interesting what they are doing now with dust 514. (Mixing the MMO EVE online with a F2P console FPS.)
[QUOTE=Chopstick;36611826]I think the model works like this for games now - imagine playing time crisis, you need to pay to play - let's say 50p per life so that's okay, later on in the game you find a machine gun power up but you need to pay £1 to unlock it - I would say this is where some games are going wrong.
I'm not that happy either with TF2 for making weapons purchasable, but at least they have a choice between that or crafting. Some games probably take it further and I've yet to play them but I am sure it could be terrible for any gamer to be blocked from using a machine gun because you need to pay to use it.[/QUOTE]The fact is, TF2 actually does it well because you get to keep the weapons you buy without issue. They will always be yours unless you choose to get rid of them. Similarly, you don't have to buy them. You can get them from random drops, trade for them, or craft them. So there is no necessity to buy anything.
[QUOTE=Doctor Zedacon;36612574]So there is no necessity to buy anything.[/QUOTE]
Well if you get a crate you do need to buy the keys. And Name/Description tags are so rare that you might as well just buy them.
But since everything that affects gameplay drops commonly it's not a big deal.
[QUOTE=lavacano;36613257]Well if you get a crate you do need to buy the keys. And Name/Description tags are so rare that you might as well just buy them.
But since everything that affects gameplay drops commonly it's not a big deal.[/QUOTE]Technically, you don't have to buy the keys, you can always trade for them. Someone has to buy them somewhere, but you don't yourself. But the contents of the crates can either be found as drops or have no impact, so its not really an issue.
as nice as it would be to have many innovative one- or two-iteration IPs flood the market, that's not going to happen
it's going to become a pay2win shitfest, look at asia
[editline]3rd July 2012[/editline]
or tf2
Isn't Minecraft the most perfect example that a game doesn't need to be AAA?
It just needs a good idea and a nice image.
[editline]4th July 2012[/editline]
Yeah, you can even go on vacations from vacations during vacations.
[QUOTE=Lambeth;36611876]Does Skyrim count as triple AAA if you run it heavily modded to the point it doesn't quite resemble the vanilla game?
:v:[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=taipan;36612347]I remember when CCP hinted at wanting to expand their PAY to look good store into PAY to win.
A shitload of people (thousands) voiced their protest by shooting at satues in the big tradehubs and CCP dropped the subject.
ALso kinda interesting what they are doing now with dust 514. (Mixing the MMO EVE online with a F2P console FPS.)[/QUOTE]
You two confused the fuck out of me, seeing as I frequent both the TES and EVE threads.
"Wait, didn't I just leave the TES thread? Wait, am I in the EVE thread?"
If Game Developers at top teir companies continue to make "AAA" Games, they are pretty much going to be swept right under their feet by FREE Indie game developers, if not suprassed outright. seriously, are corporate game devs getting greedy or something?
But still, EA is the main company still producing new and original games.
I just want games to be more "complete" than they used to. Somehow I feel like content is being cut and that generally the games are very short or do not offer that much. Back in the day you got a load of content with reasonable prices. Now you get games that feels so cut down and are charge with ridiculous price tags over 60$. The worst thing is that the stuff that they cut down initially is released later as DLC which is a valid tactic to earn some money but very deceitful and greedy.
If the DLC is made after a game, during further developpement of the game, i am fine with some good dlc that gives me some actual new content.
I do not know if I am just that grown up and know far more about games than I used to, perhaps when I was younger I was far more easily amazed by stuff, even if it wasn't that great.
Nowadays I only buy those AAA games when they are on sale or when you can find them cheaply somewhere in a store.
Hopefully, If this was to happen. It would be for the greater good for the AAA publishers to wake up and stop being such dicks? Thats how im seeing it.
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