Scribblenauts Dev: The Retail Model is "Broken"

[The Wooster]

Scribblenauts Dev: The Retail Model is "Broken"

Another developer steps forward to criticise the classic retail model: this time it's Scribblenauts creative director Jeremiah Slaczka.

In an interview with Game Informer, Slaczka explained that rising game budgets are making the traditional $60 price-point untenable for most developers. He argues that during the last console generation, development costs were low enough to allow games that don't sell amazingly well to make money, but now we're in the age of HDR lighting, fancy shader effects and bump-mapped everything, games have to sell millions to make back their vastly inflated budgets.

"It's just insane. If you aren't going to be a mega hit at $60, you might as well give up before you even try, because it's tens of millions down the hole," he said.

Slaczka reckons that a game that doesn't sell at $60, might just sell at $40 and that making a sale at a reduced price trumps not making a sale at all. He uses THQ's recent FPS flop Homefront as an example, claiming that the game failed to meet THQ's sales projections not because it was terrible, but because the completion at the full retail price point was too fierce. "As a consumer, why would I want to play an okay FPS when I can play a bunch of great FPS titles for the same price? And that's what the consumers did," he said.

"But what if you could rent Homefront for $4.99 for 24 hours from your console?" he continued. What if Homefront was only $30 dollars upfront for the single player and if you liked it you could buy the multiplayer for an additional $30?"

"All of the sudden it's not a binary purchase option anymore."


Source: Game Informer [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-11-28-5th-cell-criticises-broken-retail-model]


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[robert01]

I see where he is coming from, but I myself really want to know how much of the budget these AAA game devote to advertising and hiring not professional voice actors but in some cases high profile actors to voice over their games. The current retail model is broken because the production costs are inflated, but I think the costs are inflated on purpose.

He has the right ideas but his logic is backwards as all hell.

"But what if you could rent Homefront for $4.99 for 24 hours from your console?

Have video game rental stores gone out of business? I'm pretty sure they still exist, at least in Canada, Rogers Plus still does game rentals.

What if Homefront was only $30 dollars upfront for the single player and if you liked it you could buy the multiplayer for an additional $30?"

Then this would lead us into another broken retail scheme where the single player content gets washed down to all fuck and the multiplayer content gets bombarded with overpriced DLC because it is the content that the players are going to us over and over again. Thus it will also lead to single player content being mediocre and wait .... seems we are already there.

 

[Baresark]

It's a nice idea. I don't agree that it's broken, it's just not based in reality. Not every game is going to be worth the maximum price for everyone. I like his idea though.

Ok, now we are supposed to sit in awe of this right, like he has his finger on the pulse of society? People did the exact same thing for Bill Gates interviews, as if his success was because he was some sort of super guru and not a guy who randomly got lucky with MS-DOS and IBM being stupid.

 

[The Wooster]

"But what if you could rent Homefront for $4.99 for 24 hours from your console?

Have video game rental stores gone out of business? I'm pretty sure they still exist, at least in Canada, Rogers Plus still does game rentals.

That they do, but currently game rentals in no way benefit game developers, in fact, kind of the opposite as they take away from actual sales. He's suggesting publisher cut out of the 3rd party and offer rentals themselves.

 

[Jadak]

Have video game rental stores gone out of business? I'm pretty sure they still exist, at least in Canada, Rogers Plus still does game rentals.

That's certainly a valid point, but personally, I have no idea what the business model is for game rentals and what developers ever see from it. In other words, do devs get profit from every rental, or do they only make money on the initial sales to the game outlet?

And on topic, my opinion is generally that if you're not making a AAA game, don't use a AAA budget. Focus on game design, cut out all the bells and whistles that are multiplying development costs. A good game will still sell if it's not the prettiest thing around.

 

[robert01]

"But what if you could rent Homefront for $4.99 for 24 hours from your console?

Have video game rental stores gone out of business? I'm pretty sure they still exist, at least in Canada, Rogers Plus still does game rentals.

That they do, but currently game rentals in no way benefit game developers, in fact, kind of the opposite as they take away from actual sales. He's suggesting publisher cut out of the 3rd party and offer rentals themselves.

I was under the impression that stores that offered rentals had to pay heave royalties to offer the service. But even still I don't feel that skipping the middle man and dealing with digital rentals themselves would really increase profit for them, because then they have to pay for the hardware, the distribution service itself, and fleshies to man the battle stations when things go wrong(and they do)

 

[Professor James]

"But what if you could rent Homefront for $4.99 for 24 hours from your console?

Have video game rental stores gone out of business? I'm pretty sure they still exist, at least in Canada, Rogers Plus still does game rentals.

That they do, but currently game rentals in no way benefit game developers, in fact, kind of the opposite as they take away from actual sales. He's suggesting publisher cut out of the 3rd party and offer rentals themselves.

Video game rentals help and hurt video game publishers. It helps them because if the person like the game and there's still stuff to do afterward or there's replay value etc. Then the person is probably going to buy the full game. That person might buy it used but that's a whole different issue. It also hurts them because if somebody played through all the content or didn't like the game, that could POSSIBLY be one lost purchase. Rentals help gamers like me decide whether or not to buy the game.

 

[Catalyst6]

He does have a point. You know the saying, "Sixty dollars is not curiosity money". That's why so much weight is put on reviews and the like, people have to play it safe with such extraordinary sums of money.

 

[Kopikatsu]

This is one of those situations where both the customer and the businessman agree that the model is broken.

60 dollars is an unreasonable price for what you get most of the time. And the millions of dollars it takes to create a single 60 dollar title is an unreasonable price for what is being produced.

We need to figure something out. I agree with Yahtzee. We should go back a generation. Because then we had a balance of graphical fidelity and low cost.

Either that or we're going to have to find new ways to produce games. Cheaper ways preferably.

I don't remember Yahtzee saying anything along those lines (Not saying he didn't, just that I don't remember it), so I can't go 'I AGREE!'

However, I would rather see graphics get scaled back significantly in favor of content. Graphics have the heaviest production costs anyway, if I remember correctly.

 

[BrotherRool]

I think this is a good thing. We need more price flexibility in general

I see where he is coming from, but I myself really want to know how much of the budget these AAA game devote to advertising and hiring not professional voice actors but in some cases high profile actors to voice over their games. The current retail model is broken because the production costs are inflated, but I think the costs are inflated on purpose.

He has the right ideas but his logic is backwards as all hell.

"But what if you could rent Homefront for $4.99 for 24 hours from your console?

Have video game rental stores gone out of business? I'm pretty sure they still exist, at least in Canada, Rogers Plus still does game rentals.

Well considering the publishers don't make money off that, how does it help? Even when they do make money, isn't it normally a straight up one-off fee or a fraction of the money? Neither of those are going to fund a game.

However I can see deals being made with people like LoveFilm and Netflix (maybe they already happen?) and that could be a profitable model if pushed further. Tho' LoveFilms rates are way below that price even before the dev gets a cut.

The other thing is, I'm pretty sure studies prove marketing is in all but extreme cases a very worthwhile reward on money spent to money earned. Detach yourself for a minute and think about the really big selling games this year, the thing about all of them is that they made a ridiculous percentage of their sales before the game was even released and people knew had good they were. There are two reasons 1)Previous reputation 2)Hype. Now even previous reputations requires marketing remember that thing where 50% of people who played CoD4 didn't even realise that MW2 was a CoD game until they put the CoD back in front of it? We're unusually knowledgable and it's safe to say if half of CoD fans didn't even know that, they won't really know the next games coming out without a nice big marketing campaign.

Hype is mostly marketing but with other factors thrown in. Reviews and forum opinions can change the marketing story around sometimes. There's quite a cool review/forum/marketing feedback loop. Because if someone states an opinion at you, regardless of whether you agree with it, it normally changes your stance slightly. Even if it changes the stance from 'most people say this but I think this'. For example, I moderately disliked ME2 however constantly talking to people who like it and taking up the other side of the argument made me dwell on the negatives more and now I really can't stand the game.

Marketing has the same affect on people's opinions. It makes them have an opinion whether they agree with it or not and then they spread those opinions and alter the opinions of those around them until a stable state is formed. Equally we all know that most reviewers are biased by expectations coming in, try as they hard not to. What reviewer couldn't avoid the fact they were hoping that Duke Nukem would be good for 12 years? What CoD review can ignore how successful the previous games were and how gamers think of them?

It'd actually be quite interesting to study. I bet the constant reevaluating creates quite a mathematical pattern with stable areas and attractors where people kind of group up and then fringe people who don't bounce around opinions quite so much strewn in between.

Marketing won't save a bad game but it will sell a good game. Skyrim broke records before many people had played the game. It did that on the back of Oblivion (although peoples reaction to Oblivion wasn't nearly so awestruck as that of Skyrim), reviews and the cool concepts and ideas the game promises. Marketing ensures that we receive all three of those, that we keep talking about Skyrim to each other and that if we're the sort of people who like it, that we're motivated to go out there and buy it.

There have been plenty of good games that didn't make the cut because they didn't have enough marketing behind them. Things like ICO and Psychonauts

EDIT: Sorry I know you weren't really bashing marketing, just questioning the percentage of budgets. I just think there might be some evidence to suggest that marketing is money that makes more money (unless again, you've got a really bad game, in which case it's a way to throw away even more money)

 

[draythefingerless]

I dont get what this guy is getting at. Games like Homefront are the exception, not the rule. Most AAA games are backed by AAA budget and AAA market and make AAA money.....lot of As....
And those that arent, still can make their money back, because theyre cheaper(for devs and customers) and more accessible.

 

[Something Amyss]

That they do, but currently game rentals in no way benefit game developers, in fact, kind of the opposite as they take away from actual sales. He's suggesting publisher cut out of the 3rd party and offer rentals themselves.

Game rental stores pay higher prices and licensing, do they not? If not, I have trouble imagining how this one slipped through.

 

[draythefingerless]

This is one of those situations where both the customer and the businessman agree that the model is broken.

60 dollars is an unreasonable price for what you get most of the time. And the millions of dollars it takes to create a single 60 dollar title is an unreasonable price for what is being produced.

We need to figure something out. I agree with Yahtzee. We should go back a generation. Because then we had a balance of graphical fidelity and low cost.

Either that or we're going to have to find new ways to produce games. Cheaper ways preferably.

I don't remember Yahtzee saying anything along those lines (Not saying he didn't, just that I don't remember it), so I can't go 'I AGREE!'

However, I would rather see graphics get scaled back significantly in favor of content. Graphics have the heaviest production costs anyway, if I remember correctly.

Graphical optimization is coming a long way now, and is plateauing, the problem now will be with more CPU power, more subroutines for AI and complexity in game, will be the hard fought battle. Also animation.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Homefront's single player isn't worth $30.

I would argue that it probably isn't worth $10.

 

[josemlopes]

I see where he is coming from, but I myself really want to know how much of the budget these AAA game devote to advertising and hiring not professional voice actors but in some cases high profile actors to voice over their games. The current retail model is broken because the production costs are inflated, but I think the costs are inflated on purpose.

He has the right ideas but his logic is backwards as all hell.

"But what if you could rent Homefront for $4.99 for 24 hours from your console?

Have video game rental stores gone out of business? I'm pretty sure they still exist, at least in Canada, Rogers Plus still does game rentals.

What if Homefront was only $30 dollars upfront for the single player and if you liked it you could buy the multiplayer for an additional $30?"

Then this would lead us into another broken retail scheme where the single player content gets washed down to all fuck and the multiplayer content gets bombarded with overpriced DLC because it is the content that the players are going to us over and over again. Thus it will also lead to single player content being mediocre and wait .... seems we are already there.

Yeah, although if there were singleplayer games they would all be Deus Ex HR, Red Dead Redemption, Portal 2 quality. Basicly the guys that are capable of doing single player would do it while the ones who cant (DICE) would just do multiplayer and leave the poor SP out of it.