CliffyB Thinks Used Games Are Bad, Sony is "Playing Us"

[NKRevan]

Digging their own hole? I guess you can lay blame on both ends of the coin, but I really, really can't blame dev's alone for the expectancy of consumers. Consumers ALWAYS wanted more realistic graphics (not every one, but a lot of them). So dev's delivered.

I agree with Journalists. They are part of the "problem" as it were.

This is not how it works. The majority of team members go into the art department and programming. And that's not just because developers THINK they need that many people, it's just a matter of how much can one person realistically do. Some of the best games made in whose opinion? Critics? Public? Consumer?

How many games by small teams do you think pull down enough money to break even? How many hundreds of failures for every ONE Minecraft/Braid/Super Meat Boy? And not because the games are bad necessarily, but because they fail to capture the audience. It's just really not seeing the whole picture if you think that AAA Blockbuster titles are a problem that could just be done away with.

And again, I do not doubt independents can make great games with little budget. But they cannot make AAA Blockbuster games. Now you and other people can tell me that that doesn't matter, because all that matters is that the game is good, but that would be silly. If anyone here claims they would never enjoy a good AAA Blockbuster title (and they exist, please don't do that whole, all AAA games are bad anyway thing), they are just trying to simplify the problem.

Developers have dug their own hole. From the NES days they have ingrained in the consumers that they want continually better graphics and better looking games. Just look at Nintendo's 80s Zelda commercial [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vumQ-D06ppg] or the infamous Atari Jaguar [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxuna944dls] commercial, which stressed to consumers that a high bit number meant better looking games (it doesn't). Granted, it's easier to market good graphics over good game design or engaging and immersive gameplay but the side effect is that this has set consumer expectations to the point where Developers have either priced themselves out of the market or cannot attain their ridiculous standards. The kicker is the average gamer honestly doesn't care. If a game doesn't look like shit, they will probably buy it, there is no need to spend massive amounts of money on tiny, unperceivable, minute details.

As for small teams, the vast majority of Nintendo's pre-Wii output was made with teams of no bigger than 30 people (given how much of New Super Mario Bros is basically cut-and-paste, I'd say a fair amount of their Wii/Post-Wii output as well). Team Ico have never had any more than 30 people working for them at a time (The Last Guardian aside, that has worked pretty well for them.) Treasure always work in small teams. Rare, even in their Microsoft days, always managed to make a game with about twenty people. There are probably plenty of others. Team size has nothing to do with lack of success in the Independent sector. Independent games usually lack promotional budgets, due to being independent. The biggest obstacle with anything independent is ignorance, people either love your stuff or they don't know/care about it.

The problem with AAA titles is that they are vastly over-produced and the publishers vastly over-estimate the market. They're willing to throw money around on more man-power than they need, perhaps in the erroneous belief that more people means the game will get made faster (the new Metal Gear has been in production for about three years and has a large multinational team. Meanwhile games made with teams of twenty get made almost just as quickly) or the game will be better (in actuality having so many people pushing and pulling on a project means game quality tends to be lower). Frequently you hear about how games need to sell five million to turn a profit or else they're considered a failure and now we're hearing how companies like Microsoft are assaulting consumer rights because they aren't making enough money to line the money pool any more.

I'm sorry. I just don't even know how to begin explaining why the assumption that it is all the developers fault is wrong.

Of course success in the independent game sector has nothing to do with team size, but you won't see a AAA game coming out of the independent sector. And I don't care how much people here claim otherwise, there ARE good AAA games and fans WANT good AAA games, not because publishers have conditioned them to want them, but because people like different things and some people like 120 minutes of motion captured video sequences and professional VO and hundreds of thousands of animations and detailed worlds and all the whistles and bangs that you will NOT see from an independent title and cost a huge amount of money to make.

I'm not even arguing that publishers and developers aren't at all to blame for these things. Of course they have some part in the problem of out of control budgets. But to assume that we can just go ahead and only make games on the scale of independent projects is ridiculous.

 

[wooty]

Phhh, all this coming from.a guy who is rich enough to afford everything brand new. The real world is a tough place right now, used games are often the only way that most people would even be able to play the tripe he used to create.

Then again, if he was so rich, he wouldn't have to keep stealing his sisters t-shirts to make himself look bigger.

 

[Infernal Lawyer]

Godamnit! And here I was thinking I was being original by thinking "You're right, massive budgets and used games can't mix. Better get rid of the massive budgets!" Oh well. At least I'm not the only one who can smell the bullshit on this guy's breath.

Just as everyone also remembers, Nintendo told us clearly "We 'combat' used games by making games that people aren't going to want to sell". And it's as simple as that. Even if you can convince us that used games really hurt the industry so much (and this is remembering you barely give anything to the retailers when they sell a NEW game for you), that fact is that used games are your problem, not our problem. We think they're great, and frankly, we don't give a shit about your whining.

In fact, ever so slightly off topic, do you know what's REALLY incompatible? Bitching about how used games are killing you, then not giving people backwards compatibility. Either let people trade in their old games for the new gear, or let people play old games on the new gear

I have two words to for Mr. Bleszinski;

Dark Souls

This discussion is over, Cliffy.

Couldn't have put it better myself. You win Jim's bowler hat (you don't really).

 

[LetalisK]

A corporate shill doing what he does best? Color me surprised.

 

[Vareoth]

What a bloody ponce.

Don't think I want to say anything more. Yay discussion value!

 

[Adon Cabre]

[HEADING=2]Technology isn't cheap.[/HEADING]

[HEADING=2]$100 Million Budget
[/HEADING]​

Is BioShock Infinite
The Last Gasp For The
Triple-A "Art Game"?​

I buy games full price.

I remember spending $100 of my Junior Graduation money on Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Socom. And it was worth every freakin' penny! because I wanted those titles.

We all want quality, cinematic experiences -- elaborate environments, life-like character animations, complex dialogue trees -- and that last 25+ hours.

But we never think about all of time and energy going into those realistic animations of Ezio's assassination jump. We love the care so many coders took in writing perfect sequences of dialogue w/ action, of illustrating a diverse number in CPU characters and their A.I. You realize that people are creating massive virtual worlds!

[h4]It's hypocritical to demand "low budget" games for
cheaper costs and then simultaneously rip developers for
being lazy with low textures and stiff animations.[/h4]

 

[JetFury]

If I saw cliffyb in person I'd want to smack him. He'd be the dude with glasses on blasting music from his convertible. Which he's posted

 

[rodneyy]

i wonder how much he got payed to say this.

maybe they could cut some money from all the marketing. or just cut down on the number of people working on a game and let it take a bit longer to make. if the only way to make money for these guys is to disable used games and sell millions of copys its your system that is not working not the other way round.

 

[Ishigami]

Lets face it: He has a point.

Many of us want games with high production values. We want shiny new graphics and big and open worlds filled with tons of professionally spoken dialogues, featuring super realistic physics and unbelievable lifelike animations all the while being very interactive.
All of this costs money. We heard it time and again that development costs have increased dramatically with each console generation. Sometimes the budget of a video game dwarfs even movie productions (SW:ToR, GTA IV).
Despite all this people want to stick to the currently established business model which is pretty old and if someone says it might be outdated he summons the shit storm.

This stance is pretty unreasonable tbh.
I'm not saying Microsoft is going about it the right way. But there must be room for discussion.

I personally have little problem with account bound video games. It has been for me this way since the introduction of Steam.
However if the industry wants to sell such a system it has to provide the customer some benefits as well.
In this regard Molyneux is right. Why should I, as a consumer, would want this system?
Microsoft did not demonstrate its system from this point of view. It therefore appears completely publisher centred which is not entirely true.

For example I read that you can add 10 people to your family on the XO. You can then share your games free of charge between these 10 people and still play the game yourself! This is actually a pretty awesome feature and leaves Steam in the dust. My brother living 350 km from me can borrow a game from me virtually and I can play in multiplayer with him. Imagine playing every coop game with your best buddy or family but only having to buy one copy.
This is only possible with account bound games. It is an advantage but Microsoft failed to demonstrate it or communicate the circumstances correctly. Therefore the customer is left unsure and reacts rather hostile.

I too am for the PS4. But tbh I think that is partly because I know that it will work the same as the PS3 which I already know. The XO won't and Microsoft did not a good job dismantling the fear that they or the publishers wouldn't abuse their power in such a system.
After all publisher are usually seen as greedy scumbags by gamers. Why should we trust these scumbags?

It's like Michael Bay saying we need to eliminate sales of used DVDs in order to have more explosions in film.

You are aware that movies (and music) have several income streams (1. theatrical release → 2. DVD/BR + rental release → TV release) and therefore don't need to collect the production costs in one big swoop like video games have to? You therefore are aware that your comparison is kinda worthless right?

 

[wulf3n]

It's hypocritical to demand "low budget" games for
cheaper costs and then simultaneously rip developers for
being lazy with low textures and stiff animations.

Is that actually an issue these days?

I don't actually remember the last time a game was panned due to poor graphics/animations.

Besides it's not like you can't do aesthetically pleasing and well animated sub $100,000,000

 

[RicoADF]

So maybe the budgets are the problem.

You see, what you did there was use common sense, something that 'cliffe B' doesn't appear to have any of, as much as I wish he did.

OT: I've never been a fan of the guy, especially when his main fame has been from Unreal Tournament (an alright game in small doses) and Gears of War, the game that has men that look unnaturally large apes running around cutting aliens up with chainsaws disguised as guns. I don't get the smartest or mature vibe from the guy who makes games like that then demands that the economics surrounding gaming be destroyed for his greed.

 

[NKRevan]

I'm sorry. I just don't even know how to begin explaining why the assumption that it is all the developers fault is wrong.

Of course success in the independent game sector has nothing to do with team size, but you won't see a AAA game coming out of the independent sector. And I don't care how much people here claim otherwise, there ARE good AAA games and fans WANT good AAA games, not because publishers have conditioned them to want them, but because people like different things and some people like 120 minutes of motion captured video sequences and professional VO and hundreds of thousands of animations and detailed worlds and all the whistles and bangs that you will NOT see from an independent title and cost a huge amount of money to make.

I'm not even arguing that publishers and developers aren't at all to blame for these things. Of course they have some part in the problem of out of control budgets. But to assume that we can just go ahead and only make games on the scale of independent projects is ridiculous.

Here's my hypothesis:

Developers tells consumers 'You want good graphics' - Consumers believe they want good graphics

Developers provide good graphics - Consumers want better graphics.

Eventually the developers get caught up in the impossibility of providing what they told consumers they wanted in the first place. I'm not saying it's completely their fault, consumer standards are usually unrealistic (see the elitist complaints of consoles' graphical capabilities from the Glorious PC Gaming Master Race). But the initial blame at least belongs to the developers. That's why I have no sympathy when they complain about consumer demands for good graphics.

While I certainly agree with you that people want different things, that Indie games aren't everyone's taste and some people do want big budget high quality AAA releases, that's not the issue here. The issue is that AAA developers are wasting their large budgets with pointless expenditure in the hope that they will sell enough copies to make a profit, and then when they don't they take it out on the consumer by assailing their basic consumer rights. It's not the consumer's fault that the developers waste tons of money, it is solely and squarely the developer's responsibility to moderate their costs.

For reference, it's the Heaven's Gate approach to game development. In many cases the kind of games developers make don't justify their huge budgets, of which they spend almost certainly every penny.

Oh I agree with that. Quite a few developers are falling into the trap.

However I do disagree that there was no desire from fans for better graphics without developer influence. I remember playing X-Wing back in the day and wishing it would look just a little better. I remember playing on my Atari 2600 and wishing I could see just a bit more of the environment.

Like I said, I'm not going to go about and say it is the customers own fault alone. It's a two-sided story.

And even for a developer that moderates their budget, games are more expensive to make. And AAA titles will still cost millions because you need the people to make them. Even in a perfectly budgeted project that will be the case for those titles and the titles remain in demand and not only because developers are pushing it on consumers.

That's my only point. People here try to say that it is all the dev's fault. And I very strongly disagree with that.

 

[idarkphoenixi]

Did anyone else picture Cliffy typing those tweets by repeatedly slamming his face against his keyboard? Because there's no other way I'm able to reconcile the blind stupidity of the comments with the fact that they were expressed by a living, thinking person.

I saw him typing his Tweets while lounging around in his gigantic house with multiple cars, talking about how he's barely able to scrape by because of used games.

 

[Ickorus]

There's a surefire way of making a profit for a game (Provided it doesn't suck) and can be accomplished in a few easy steps:

- Control your budgeting properly, set your budget for the sales you think you'll be able to achieve, don't set your sales target for how much money you blew on the budget.
- Keep your prices competitive, after a period of time (Say, 3 months) drop your prices, it doesn't have to be as low as used games since given the choice most people will choose a new game over a used one if the prices are similar.
- Offer incentives for people to keep their games.
- Pay people to return games directly to you. (And perhaps offer a resale option yourself)

Punishing the player for not being willing (or possibly able) to pay a certain amount is a surefire way to lose goodwill and ensure people will try to screw you over any way they can just to get back at you.

 

[Keith K]

Can we stop giving this addlepate a platform to spout his self-righteous claptrap?

 

[NKRevan]

Oh I agree with that. Quite a few developers are falling into the trap.

However I do disagree that there was no desire from fans for better graphics without developer influence. I remember playing X-Wing back in the day and wishing it would look just a little better. I remember playing on my Atari 2600 and wishing I could see just a bit more of the environment.

Like I said, I'm not going to go about and say it is the customers own fault alone. It's a two-sided story.

And even for a developer that moderates their budget, games are more expensive to make. And AAA titles will still cost millions because you need the people to make them. Even in a perfectly budgeted project that will be the case for those titles and the titles remain in demand and not only because developers are pushing it on consumers.

That's my only point. People here try to say that it is all the dev's fault. And I very strongly disagree with that.

Well, it's human nature to desire pretty things. My point is that developers have emphasised that to the expense of anything else. Like I said, developers think that graphics and sound take precedence over game design, which means that they will always fall back on them. As a result, you get a lot of pretty but disposable titles. Style over substance.

As for assigning blame, while money problems may not necessarily always be the developers' fault (the publishers set the budget and the deadlines), it certainly isn't the consumers'. The consumer cannot be blamed for not wanting to buy a title. Piracy is another matter, but consumers rights don't deserve constant assault simply because the consumer base isn't interested in the product being sold. The problem is a vague assumption that the developers know what people want and will go to great lengths to try to please everyone. It's a common phrase that the easiest way the fail is to try and please everyone.

Assigning blame is being played here, right now. And people assign blame solely on the side of dev's/publishers. As if everyone would be happy if we just stopped advancing graphics, animations, AI, writing, and so much more. There is the assumption on the side of the consumer that they can't be blamed for exploding costs because supposedly no one asked for "more".

I do not agree. And certainly don't agree on lumping every AAA developer (or any team larger than 20 people for that matter) into the one category of "dev's who waste money". And that's what these people are saying. GOOD AAA titles also require large amounts of money and according to people here, apparently, those are not required anymore.

Yes, there are devs and publishers who overspend and focus too much on gfx over substance, but that doesn't automatically mean that we no longer need budgets of $100M plus to make good games.

 

[josemlopes]

Lets face it: He has a point.

Many of us want games with high production values. We want shiny new graphics and big and open worlds filled with tons of professionally spoken dialogues, featuring super realistic physics and unbelievable lifelike animations all the while being very interactive.
All of this costs money. We heard it time and again that development costs have increased dramatically with each console generation. Sometimes the budget of a video game dwarfs even movie productions (SW:ToR, GTA IV).
Despite all this people want to stick to the currently established business model which is pretty old and if someone says it might be outdated he summons the shit storm.

This stance is pretty unreasonable tbh.
I'm not saying Microsoft is going about it the right way. But there must be room for discussion.

I personally have little problem with account bound video games. It has been for me this way since the introduction of Steam.
However if the industry wants to sell such a system it has to provide the customer some benefits as well.
In this regard Molyneux is right. Why should I, as a consumer, would want this system?
Microsoft did not demonstrate its system from this point of view. It therefore appears completely publisher centred which is not entirely true.

For example I read that you can add 10 people to your family on the XO. You can then share your games free of charge between these 10 people and still play the game yourself! This is actually a pretty awesome feature and leaves Steam in the dust. My brother living 350 km from me can borrow a game from me virtually and I can play in multiplayer with him. Imagine playing every coop game with your best buddy or family but only having to buy one copy.
This is only possible with account bound games. It is an advantage but Microsoft failed to demonstrate it or communicate the circumstances correctly. Therefore the customer is left unsure and reacts rather hostile.

I too am for the PS4. But tbh I think that is partly because I know that it will work the same as the PS3 which I already know. The XO won't and Microsoft did not a good job dismantling the fear that they or the publishers wouldn't abuse their power in such a system.
After all publisher are usually seen as greedy scumbags by gamers. Why should we trust these scumbags?

It's like Michael Bay saying we need to eliminate sales of used DVDs in order to have more explosions in film.

You are aware that movies (and music) have several income streams (1. theatrical release → 2. DVD/BR + rental release → TV release) and therefore don't need to collect the production costs in one big swoop like video games have to? You therefore are aware that your comparison is kinda worthless right?

Please, dont bring sense and logic to a Microsoft/Sony thread, if you dont hate Microsoft with all your heart then you are bad and you should feel bad.

 

[Sejborg]

For example I read that you can add 10 people to your family on the XO. You can then share your games free of charge between these 10 people and still play the game yourself! This is actually a pretty awesome feature and leaves Steam in the dust. My brother living 350 km from me can borrow a game from me virtually and I can play in multiplayer with him. Imagine playing every coop game with your best buddy or family but only having to buy one copy.
This is only possible with account bound games. It is an advantage but Microsoft failed to demonstrate it or communicate the circumstances correctly. Therefore the customer is left unsure and reacts rather hostile.

Incorrect. The game can ONLY be active on ONE console at a time.

"Xbox One will also allow you to give up to 10 family members access to "log in and play from your shared games library on any Xbox One."

You can always play your games, but only one of your family members can be playing from your shared library at a given time."

http://www.ign.com/wikis/xbox-one/Used_Games_and_Rentals

Stop spreading lies.