Jimquisition: Sequel or Slaughter

[Lightknight]

Jim, you keep having this misconception that these games are cheap to make. Cliff B. mentioned a great video on used games in one of his recent blog posts and I think you should watch it. It may seem disconnected from what I'm saying at first but trust me, it will all connect in the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G_f8YBy39M

No, Jim doesn't have a misconception that "games" are cheap to make. Of course, that statement is like saying that "movies aren't cheap to make" when some movies certainly are. What Jim maintains though, is that games should cost what the budget allows for them to cost or they shouldn't be made at all. He appears to believe (correctly, in my opinion) that these companies aren't budgeting properly.

Example:

Let's say making a certain kind of game should reasonably bring in $2 million in revenue. You then need to make a game that costs less than $2 million to produce/market/sell.

What producers are currently doing is hiring their inept grandsons who can't find a job elsewhere (on account of their terrible crack habit) to work in their forecasting depatartment. This department, full of inbred inept beings of stupidity, then does "market research" in which they see how much money COD makes and then project COD's revenue as a possible trajectory of their own RPG. The board of the company then make budgetary decisions based on what their ridiculously out-of-touch forecasting department tells them they can make on the game if they spend money that compares with COD investments.

So then, they spend $250 million on a game that can only make, say, $150 million and are suddenly shocked that it fails to make the eleventy billion that their slack-jawed mouth breather of a department thought it would. That's how great properties like Sleeping Dogs or Tomb Raider can be immensely popular and sell VERY well but not cover the costs of production. So now, they are trying to cover their asses by making only safe bets that equates to them relying on IPs that are francizes. Even inbred Johnny can't screw up that forecasting. The last game sold X, so spending Y on marketing should increase X by around Z amount. They can look at actual data from that market segment so it works well.

With Ubisoft's mindset that they can't profit off smaller scoped IPs, they're essentially saying they don't understand budgeting where new titles are concerned. They either have to swing for the fence or not try at all. That's bad business. Small IPs ARE risky and so should be budgeted for conservatively. They should be forecasted for by looking at games that try to do similar things rather than the top of the line seller in the industry/genre. If they could spend a reasonable sum on a few new ideas, they could see a HUGE return on their investment per dollar. They're giving that up because they don't know how not to spend millions of dollars on a game that would make less.

It's ok to make a smaller game that caters to specific market demands rather than the entire market. That can be very profitable and can produce an extremely viable franchise where sequels were not initially considered. You just have to remember to play it safe with new IPs and only budget what you can reasonably cover with sales. That's essentially what big publishers are supposed to do. Play it safe and put money into good/reasonable investments.

EDIT: If anyone here is part of a marketing department that forecasts profitability, I don't mean all such people are dumb. I got my start in marketing. I'm just saying that there are some REALLY bad forecasters in gaming right now.

 

[Jimothy Sterling]

Jim, you keep having this misconception that these games are cheap to make.

No I don't. I never said they're cheap. In fact, I know they're expensive, which is why I speak out against senselessly bloated costs on top of an already expensive project.

Games aren't cheap. Through avarice and short-sightedness, they can be more costly than they need to be, a stance backed up by as many devs as refuted, depending on who serves what masters.

I'm sure some of the costs for some games are bloated but for a lot of them, I bet they aren't. And if they aren't and they start cutting down on the budget, then we're looking at possible features now not being possible. Less than stellar graphics. Now I what you're gonna say to that last point. We don't need expensive graphics, right? Well, we may think that but others would probably get the wrong idea. They release a game with noticeably worse graphics than the other games currently released and people will say, "Oh look, the publishers are so cheap that they're even cutting the budget on graphics just to be greedy and keep more money." And if they have to do that with features, well, multiply that uproar by 3.

Having the best graphics do not mean much in the sales department. If it did, we wouldn't have Call of Duty dominating every year, Minecraft becoming a ridiculous sensation, and the Wii trouncing its competitors.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

So you're saying he doesn't, in fact, like money anymore?

No, I'm saying he has access to so many ways of gaining obscene amounts of money that he didn't have to spend another three years exhaustively tramping across huge uninhabited swathes of New Zealand in order to get it. If money was all he was after, he has many easier and faster ways of getting it than three Hobbit movies produced on the same scale as LotR.

Yes, it all makes sense, in a technical, hand-wavy sort of way ("Oh, Legolas would be around", "Oh, we should show Gandalf's actions, even though we could not and let him be the mysterious character he was written as", "Oh, we could totally stretch every single setpiece to turn an adventure story into an action story"). I can't get over the fact how unimportant Bilbo, The Hobbit, is. I love Martin Freeman as Bilbo but he's pushed aside for the most part even though he's supposed to be the main protagonist and narrator of the story bearing his name. We see more of Legolas and "Tauriel" in the new trailer than we do of Bilbo. And speaking of the trailer - they show they're going as far as Bilbo stepping into Smaug's lair. So what's the third movie going to be about? 170 minutes of the Battle of the Five Armies, which Bilbo totally didn't miss in the novel?

Again, a lot of the LotR stuff was treated this way. Hell, they even gave totally different characters different lines in LotR. They moved the Old Man Willow scene to the Fangorn so that Treebeard could recite a few of Tom Bombadil's lines, in order to pay tribute to that event. That was not only the wrong place and wrong character, but also the wrong film since that was in the Two Towers, and Tom Bombadil should have been in Fellowship.

While I also adore Martin Freeman as Bilbo, I don't feel he was neglected at all. Yes the Council of Elrond took up time, but it was used to explain how he and the dwarves got out of Rivendell even though Elrond wasn't going to allow them to go on. Yes it took them a while to get out of Goblin Town, but how else could they have stripped that down? They had to fight their way out, and it wasn't as though they were near a door. And then Bilbo's role in the battle against the wolves was greatly increased from what it was in the book. In the book, the eagles basically hear the racket they were making and pick them out of the trees. But in the movie, they had Bilbo fight to make the finale about him and to finish his arc with Thorin. While a lot of the story wasn't about Bilbo, they made sure both the beginning and end were all centered around him.

What about the third film though? Bilbo is already confronting Smaug in the second movie. What do we have left? Lake Town and 5 Armies? Seems like a stretch. I predict the movie will be 50% filler.

 

[Adon Cabre]

Jim, you keep having this misconception that these games are cheap to make.

No I don't. I never said they're cheap. In fact, I know they're expensive, which is why I speak out against senselessly bloated costs on top of an already expensive project.

Games aren't cheap. Through avarice and short-sightedness, they can be more costly than they need to be, a stance backed up by as many devs as refuted, depending on who serves what masters.

I hear ya, but Ken Levine had very interesting things to say about the process of trial and error in Bioshock Infinite; how the team would scratch whole set pieces and recorded dialogue because it wasn't consistent with the direction of the narrative.

But because art is a feeling out process, and because the larger more ambitious titles require extraordinary amounts of coordination, there may always be high costs, and even more likely, a desire to mount a franchise; especially as the markets globalize -- i.e Iron Man 3 grossing $700 Million abroad [http://www.thewrap.com/movies/article/iron-man-3-races-past-1-billion-dollar-mark-monster-foreign-take-91901].

I guess it comes down to quality.

 

[Vivi22]

I like to see Shadow of the Colossus and ICO cited but I'm not sure they deserve to? Shadow was marketed as a "spiritual prequel" to ICO after all. And Sony's making Last Guardian, the third in a trilogy of similarly-themed games. So why cite them as examples of one-off stand-alone games, Jim?

Probably because, first off, Ueda never stated Shadow was a spiritual prequel until after it was released, and second: if it didn't have a similar art style and end with a baby with horns there'd be absolutely nothing to link the two at all. Shadow of the Colossus isn't even remotely similar to Ico. For all intents and purposes, they are one off stand alone games with one having a minor nod to the other at the end.

 

[Ishal]

snip

I'm sure it was BS, but Speilberg and Lucas were doing some forum a few weeks back and they were talking about all of those high budget John Carter, After Earth movies that were flopping. If a few more go, they said, the industry would collapse.

Disney wanted to make Lone Ranger another Pirates of the Caribbean franchise; and while I would never fault anyone for wanting to go big, it's ultimately up to them to make a great movie/game/novel. If Watchdogs sucks, it won't sell; and like Aliens: Colonial Marines, it will disappear. But if its ratings and sales are golden, then why not?

A professional writer and creative director is supposed to create -- sometimes for a sequel, or sometimes from scratch.

If the ratings and sales are golden, and it was set up to have more, then there is no issue. If something is put together, say a movie, and characters keep referring to this thing that is supposed to happen, or they refer to meeting a character that is very important and a major driving force in the story. The movie then ends on a cliffhanger clearly alluding to what happens when these events finally occur... in the next movie. What I mean is, if the author purposely sets time aside to plant these seeds for future events, then they should happen in a sequel, and I say go for it. Nothing wrong with it.

However, if the story is told and completely wrapped up in the first installment, then we have a problem. I get wanting to make money, I can see where these suits are coming from. But the thing is, I ain't no suit, I'm a consumer. As a consumer, I get bummed out and ornery when a perfectly good story is necromanced back to life to make a few quick bucks at the theater.

Going back to Halo for a moment, people didn't like Halo 4 because they feel the series should have ended at Halo 3. Bungie might have wanted to move on to other things, but the thing is, they left a lot of things open and ambiguous for another game, so imo its justified that another one gets made.

There is nothing wrong with creating, creators should create but they should do so with planning and outlines. If I'm a producer I want the writer in my office with an outline telling me step by step what will happen in part 1,2, and 3 of our trilogy, that way I can get the guys in marketing to sus out their plans. The way things are going now is just boring and stale. I didn't care about the 2nd Pirates of the Carribean movie let alone the next two. They can make sequels, but even the general public will get bored of it eventually, its how people are.

 

[Lilani]

What about the third film though? Bilbo is already confronting Smaug in the second movie. What do we have left? Lake Town and 5 Armies? Seems like a stretch. I predict the movie will be 50% filler.

I really don't know, and I don't find it fair to criticize someone for something that hasn't even come out yet, one way or the other. Will the last Hobbit film be missing a lot of Bilbo? I don't know. I rather doubt it, but I also don't know what they'll do to make him involved. So we'll just have to see.

Oh, and one more thing I forgot to mention in the last post. Yes Gandalf isn't quite as mysterious in The Hobbit, but since most everyone seeing the film today already knows everything about Gandalf and what happens to him in LotR, trying to make him mysterious now would have been a terrible farce that would simply make his character stunted by comparison. After the cat's been let out of the bag, it's rather hard to put a cloak over it and pretend we didn't just see all that.

 

[Lightknight]

So you're saying he doesn't, in fact, like money anymore?

No, I'm saying he has access to so many ways of gaining obscene amounts of money that he didn't have to spend another three years exhaustively tramping across huge uninhabited swathes of New Zealand in order to get it. If money was all he was after, he has many easier and faster ways of getting it than three Hobbit movies produced on the same scale as LotR.

No, none of them are as lucrative as this project. Not by far. LOTR might as well be the Potter series where fast cash is concerned.

The budget for the LOTR was $281 Million. The Box office? $2.92 Billion. That's over 10 times the investment.

Cost of King Kong? $207 million to make, $550.5 million revenue. 2.66 times cost.
The Lovely Bones? $65 million to $93 million revenue = 1.46

It's great, he's doing very well for himself. But the money to be made in LOTR is just sick. Really easy money. He's not dumb for doing this. It's frankly dumb of the publisher to allow that with the knowledge of the watered down nature of the book if split up that way. However, everyone's seeing dollar signs and so it floated. If they offered him something close to the ration he made on films from his studio then he'd be dumb not to jump on this.

Not sure why you think he farts cinamon and can do no wrong.

 

[shrekfan246]

I like to see Shadow of the Colossus and ICO cited but I'm not sure they deserve to? Shadow was marketed as a "spiritual prequel" to ICO after all. And Sony's making Last Guardian, the third in a trilogy of similarly-themed games. So why cite them as examples of one-off stand-alone games, Jim?

The games have similar themes and aesthetic world designs, but are self-contained and nigh unconnected if you look at them on the surface. The only thing actually connecting the games themselves is the very end of SotC and potentially the shadow figures standing around Wander every time you defeat a Colossus, and even those can be interpreted in multiple ways.

the game's director and lead designer, Fumito Ueda, maintained that the game's status as a prequel was simply his personal take on the game and not necessarily its canon nature, as he largely intended for players to decide the specifics of the story for themselves, but he confirmed the two do have a connection.

Being connected in ambiguous ways is fairly different from making something directly designed to continue the story of a previous entry in a franchise.

Also I'm a little dubious about the state of The Last Guardian, considering it's been in development hell just as long as Final Fantasy Versus XIII/XV, but unlike the latter hasn't received any sort of update on the state it's in and has gotten more and more rumors about being cancelled as time passes.

Here's a list of sequel spewing series that need to die:

-Diablo

-Starcraft

Yes, two sequels in seventeen years and one sequel in fifteen years respectively certainly qualify as "sequel spewing series'".

-Total War

-

-<insert anything with "Mario" here>

-Sonic

-Final Fantasy

You know those titles are rarely, if ever, connected between games, right?

Or is their mere existence as long-standing franchises enough to make you lose your mind in rage at their continued ability to sell on mostly brand-name alone?

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Would games that take place in the same universe, but have different-yet-tangentially-connected stories count as sequels? Is that setup like the problem outlined in the video?

 

[Pinkscare]

Love that you included the consumer as a part of the problem.

This. Exactly.

I don't think I could ever place myself on a side. As much as I wish sequels--or the drive to create sequels--would go away, I wold loose my mind if Hotline Miami didn't have one.

Lastly, I'm terrified Ubi will slaughter WD in their hopes of creating WD2+.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

[
Having the best graphics do not mean much in the sales department. If it did, we wouldn't have Call of Duty dominating every year, Minecraft becoming a ridiculous sensation, and the Wii trouncing its competitors.

Ah, but it's about public perception, Jim. Call of Duty, while not using the best engine out there, still keeps up at least somewhat in terms of current graphics. Heck, the first Black Ops still looks kinda good for the 360 even today. Minecraft was an Indie game and thus, didn't have any expectations of what kind of game it was supposed to be. The Wii's success even though it had less than stellar graphics power can be explained by two things.

1. The motion controls selling the system just by themselves.
2. Nintendo isn't really known for having the best graphics of anything at all so there's no public pereption that they must watch when it comes to that area.

 

[Adon Cabre]

snip

You're coming close to the discussion of Niche vs Broad Attraction. But every publisher wants their own Halo, and Ubisoft wants another trendy Assassin's Creed franchise to sustain their growth. "If we're pouring in $100+ Million, then this better be longevity" -- that's how I see it. Sort of like a Writer who spends years creating a world and its characters; of course it was all meant for the first book, but he did invest so much time (money) into this project that it would be a waste not to continue building this world.

But I can see why your frustrated; the "top floor" is pushing its weight and distorting the vision and work of creative directors' efforts. It's sad, but it's business.

It's improving the bottom line, and that's all that marketing is geared to do, right?

 

[themilo504]

Love that you included the consumer as a part of the problem.

He pretty much has to. This wouldn't be a problem if people didn't mindlessly snatch up the next FIFA or CoD or Assassin's Creed. I like these games, and I wouldn't mind wanting to play another game in their world again. But for FUCK's sake, I don't need one every year. Give me some time to appreciate and grow fond of the goddamn thing before you push the next one in my face.

It's why some series get a bigger pass than others. GTA4 had a load of problems, but it still sold over 20 million copies because people waited 4 years and longed for it again, and GTA5 will sell just as well because it's been another 4 years. This is why Rockstar can also try out other ideas and give others chances, throwing out games like Manhunt or Bully or RDD... or hell even LA Noire. They try those out because they know GTA will bring in a mountain of money, and they can experiment in between the iterations.

Assassin's Creed I'm done with, because they're pushing too many out for me to grow fond of them again, and the more they throw the same tired gameplay at me the more I see its problems and loathe them.

I wish more companies did that, I would love to play a mass effect turn based strategy game.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Peter Jackson may not be a sell-out, but he's very close to reaching George Lucas amounts of overindulgence. King Kong already displayed a lot of that.

The man is a self-taught filmmaking genius. I never saw King Kong, but if I had grown up admiring a film and finally got the access to money and resources to have a crack at my first inspiration, I'd do it too.

That still doesn't make it a good movie. Now, I like Peter Jackson's King Kong, there's some absolutely fantastic moments in it, and the core experience (the relationship between Kong and Ann) is pulled of fantastically. But on a whole the movie is very bloated. It actually shows Peter Jackson can like things a bit too much. There's a whole father/son subplot for instance that did not need to be there at all, especially in a movie that's already pushing three hours.

Peter Jackson is a great filmaker, there's no doubt about that. The only reason I even went to see the first LotR movie was because I had seen and greatly enjoyed The Frightners. But even great filmmakers can sometimes go a bit overboard, and need to told to tone it down. This indulgence can already be seen somewhat in the Extended Edition of Return of the King.

It took balls for him to demand three movies for Lord of the Rings - A project no studio had any faith in, and one that everyone in Hollywood thought would bankrupt New Line. With The Hobbit he simply had to ask, "Hey, can I make this three movies?" To which the studio replied, "Well, you made shit tons of money with that other Fantasy franchise, so sure!" Nothing really ballsy about that, just regular Hollywood business.

I'm not sure what you know about the production of LotR, but he didn't "demand" three films. They had written it as two when they were originally going after Miramax to fund the film, but Miramax said even two was too much and after that they gave up. They scrambled to find another studio interested in the project, and eventually found New Line and pitched their two films to the head of New Line. At the end, the man said "Why are there two films? This is three films." So they retooled their scripts to be three films, and never stopped editing the scripts until they had nothing left to film.

I know about New Line ultimately making the suggestion to making it three films, but that's because to Peter and Fran that was an impossible dream, and they were low-balling it with the two movie deal. It's hard to imagine now, but back in '97 the Fantasy genre was less popular than Nazi exploitation.

 

[Adon Cabre]

snip

snip

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I love your ending sentense, because that is an easy rationale, and it has been the case for nearly century for movies; that is, until I saw some interesting discussion on CNN.

Like I posted in another comment, the market is gearing toward globalization. In other words, this domestic market is no longer what's most important. That CNN discussion was about how the Ice Age sequels did worse and worse in the states, but they doubled each other in the world market. Halo has that cache, and it will most likely last for as long as the xbox console does.

ubisoft wants the world market. this is the trend. how else does iron man 3 gross $700 million abroad? because of the first two; and you're right, iron man was consistently setting up the sequel in style.

That said, there are good spin-offs -- none come to mind right now, but I'm sure there are a few shining spectacles; but there are also lazy spin-offs. The market determines what is golden in the end. Even if it is the Transformers.

But this market is growing.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

The issue is Publishers are Corporations, and the leading board of a corporation is REQUIRED to MAXIMIZE PROFITS for the share holders. How do you do that? SEQUELS!

Therefore, business leaders are under tremendous pressure to ALWAYS push for the franchise, to fulfill their obligations - and to do otherwise requires a great deal of justification. This is the fundamental flaw of the Corporate system over the Single Ownership model - you can't just make some of the money, you can't just turn a profit - you have to make ALL OF THE MONEY. FOREVER.

Oh well, this reminded me to get DW8 so that's good

 

[Rad Party God]

I'm a bit neutral towards sequels. Ever since the NES days, I've always enjoyed sequels, heck, some of the best games for the system are sequels (MegaMan almost turned into the Dynasty Warriors of it's era), but I totally agree that making sequels for the sake of making sequels is bad, really, really bad.

I totally agree that some games are best left stand alone (Eternal Darkness and Planescape Torment anyone?) and I totally applaud a dev that makes a sequel because it wants to (kudos for MercurySteam for leaving Lords of Shadow as a two parter series), however I totally disagree with corporate suits churning sequel after sequel just to make money.

Granted, I wouldn't list The Hobbit as a greedy corporate affair to milk money, just because it's attached to The Lord of The Rings, although I'd love for Peter Jackson to leave it as a two parter, he already introduced a lot of stuff to flesh out the story even more because he wanted to, not because Warner or Tolkien Indistries told him to, heck, considering how overzealous Tolkien Industries has become with it's franchise, it's a wonder they let him do it at all.

 

[babinro]

I've got absolutely no problem with Ubisoft's statement.
This is coming from one company only and doesn't reflect the AAA industry as a whole.

A gaming franchise doesn't mean that every story will be filled with cliffhanger endings and open ended questions. We've seen a ton of gaming franchises whose games tell a solid self-encompassed story. I can appreciate Dragon Age 2 without having played the first one, same for Resident Evil 4, most final fantasy games, Diablo games, etc.

I'm of the view that I would rather have too much of a good thing then not enough. Portal 2 had no reason to exist but guess what, it was fun. I'm glad it was made even though the original had no business turning into a franchise. Mass Effect was a new IP made with a trilogy in mind and many of us regard as one of the best RPG's of this gaming generation.

Starting a new IP with the idea of a franchise in mind doesn't establish a negative precedence unless the industry does the worst case story telling tropes that Jim seems to imply will be the norm.

 

[Jimothy Sterling]

[
Having the best graphics do not mean much in the sales department. If it did, we wouldn't have Call of Duty dominating every year, Minecraft becoming a ridiculous sensation, and the Wii trouncing its competitors.

Ah, but it's about public perception, Jim. Call of Duty, while not using the best engine out there, still keeps up at least somewhat in terms of current graphics. Heck, the first Black Ops still looks kinda good for the 360 even today. Minecraft was an Indie game and thus, didn't have any expectations of what kind of game it was supposed to be. The Wii's success even though it had less than stellar graphics power can be explained by two things.

1. The motion controls selling the system just by themselves.
2. Nintendo isn't really known for having the best graphics of anything at all so there's no public pereption that they must watch when it comes to that area.

It IS about public perception, and the public does NOT perceive graphics to be that important. Source Engine games can be frighteningly popular, despite being based on positively archaic tech. And to re-use the COD example, sure, it's still doing enough to hang with other games, but that doesn't alter the fact it's reused an engine all generation and not suffered from it. Point being, you don't need to be like Square and build a new engine constantly. Games do not have to be as expensive as they are.