Jimquisition: The Unholy Trinity Of Blind Greedy Bastards

[RunicFox]

So many people I work with do not play, or really make, video games. I'm going to ask anyone willing to read this to go on an experiment with me:

1. Download Fantasica, Rage of Bahamut, or Marvel: War of Heroes.
2. Play it. Or try to. If you can't or won't make it to the 10 minute mark, this is because you are sentient.
3. Once you're at this step, I want you to read this slowly and carefully: Right now, in a large portion of game companies, there are people who hold serious amounts of sway over money and resource allocation that believe these games are exactly what users want, and that they should not just be followed but outright copied. These are people who make 6 figures easily.

For those that want the crash course: These games are the most devious and obvious contenders for systems that are made exclusively to generate money.

To those that haven't heard of clash of clans, it is THE highest grossing game on all mobile platforms, rumored to be making millions of dollars a day. This game, while there are systems I find disturbing, has extreme amounts of polish which go a long way in making a game stand out on the app stores.

To balance out this negativity, realize that there are people within these companies who are working to make games, and are in the positions to do so. There's a lot of us, we're just not always given opportunities. Stay strong, and buy games you love -- it has a much larger effect than you may realize.

 

[senordesol]

Is this Clash of Clans game really that popular? I don't tend to follow the mobile games market but this is one I've never heard of. Is it really that big? I mean I have heard of a few mobile games like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja and Cut the Rope, is this one just new?

It's been consistently in the Top 5 grossing games in the iOS store since late 2012 at least.

 

[RA92]

Excellent episode all around. Carry on, Jim.

 

[Candescence]

Excellent episode. It's horrifying to think that big companies are being lead by people who are just so cripplingly clueless about games.

Still, good thing indies and smaller-budget titles can pick up the slack and provide fresh new stuff - for example, I just finished a playthrough of the Freedom Planet beta to see what's been added since alpha (for Kickstarter backers, mind you, not early access), this game is so fucking good, an easy contender for GOTY in my eyes.

 

[Something Amyss]

Jim, just tell them that it's "buyer beware," and if they don't like what you have to say, they shouldn't buy it. This defense even applies to F2P games, so the fact that people don't inherently pay money into the Jimquisition shouldn't matter (And many F2P games are ad-supported, so there's that).

I want to know how this happened. How is it that people who know nothing about video games ended up running video game companies?

Businesses can, in the short term, be very successful with an incestuous streak. Businesses running business for the sake of business will look for businesspeople first. And it will work to some degree, if not for the right reasons. It's sort of like those hair transplant surgeries. It doesn't so much give you more success (automatically) as it reallocates success. You can improve revenue streams relying on what has already been established, but the problem (and not just in gaming) is that you need to eventually have someone with a clue come along and come up with new things.

So is this now Jimquisition Beta Version 0.75? When's the official launch going to be, Jim?! Will 'Version 1.0' have a 'twice the size fantasy Willem Defoe'?

As per Steam's quality control, Jimquisition has no set date for final version, no full list of planned features, and no time table. And this is all 100% okay because that's the standard we've set.

However, I'm an incredibly skeptical person when it comes from the account of ANONYMOUS sources, especially without some proof. There's just so little information about the source (position in games industry, what publisher they may be working for or talking about) that I can't help but be on the side of skepticism

I'm a fan of Occam's Razor. And in gaming "journalism," one doesn't need to claim an anonymous source to be disingenuous. As such, I'm inclined to believe this is real. Otherwise, Jim could have stated it as fact with no claimed source to the same end. As you do.

Especially since he'd be preaching to the choir and telling us all exactly what we want to hear. >.>

 

[RunicFox]

Is this Clash of Clans game really that popular?

It is right now assuredly making millions of dollars a day. No exact figures are usually released but when something can be extrapolated it points to millions of dollars.


The largest generator (world wide) is Puzzle and Dragons, which makes 10s of Millions a day I believe? And on the high end.

 

[RunicFox]

Jim, just tell them that it's "buyer beware," and if they don't like what you have to say, they shouldn't buy it. This defense even applies to F2P games, so the fact that people don't inherently pay money into the Jimquisition shouldn't matter (And many F2P games are ad-supported, so there's that).

I want to know how this happened. How is it that people who know nothing about video games ended up running video game companies?

Businesses can, in the short term, be very successful with an incestuous streak. Businesses running business for the sake of business will look for businesspeople first. And it will work to some degree, if not for the right reasons. It's sort of like those hair transplant surgeries. It doesn't so much give you more success (automatically) as it reallocates success. You can improve revenue streams relying on what has already been established, but the problem (and not just in gaming) is that you need to eventually have someone with a clue come along and come up with new things.

Close, in some regards. It's an old boys club of very wealthy CEOs and power players. Normally the C-Level executives have very little knowledge, so they hire people who are analysts from larger companies (EA, etc) who haven't actually had experience making a game to keep them informed. In general most C-Level executives work within circles to generate support for their company and need to know the language of business -- and often times have rarely played or even had experience within the industry.

 

[C14N]

It is right now assuredly making millions of dollars a day. No exact figures are usually released but when something can be extrapolated it points to millions of dollars.


The largest generator (world wide) is Puzzle and Dragons, which makes 10s of Millions a day I believe? And on the high end.

Fair enough, I guess I'm just not down with the kids anymore. Is its success primarily from popularity (as in, a particularly large number of downloads) or just high levels of monetisation though?

 

[Hero in a half shell]

What are you even going on about with the early access comment? A big part of early access is allowing players to voice their criticism on a title while its still in production.

Did you do a video on this? I hope your option on the subject is more nuanced and you were just being hyperbolic.

EDIT: Found the video. Nevermind the above then.

Ideally early access in gaming is exactly as you described; an alpha or beta build that is put out so the community can bug test and refine issues.

In practice companies have learned that you just need to stick a 'Beta' onto the end of your title and you can pass off all criticism (and convince a lot of your playerbase that the issues aren't a bad thing) because the game is 'early access' and it's 'still being worked on' (This is increasingly the case in mmo style games that have a long term development cycle, where the developers hide behind the 'beta' flag to avoid all criticism because any issue whatsoever can be brushed off as 'but we haven't finished the game yet')

I was in a thread on this site a couple of days ago and someone joked that a particular game they played was practically in 'gamma' now because it had had so many major updates since the beta was opened up years ago (although I cannot remember the name of the game unfortunately.)

A few examples:
Battlefield Play4free: In Beta since April 2011, no release date.
Firefall: Beta since September 2011, no release date.
The War Z: Caused an unintentional war of it's own because the game was practically unplayable, but the developers just said 'lol beta' and banned everyone complaining
The entire Ninjakiwi developers website is a beta (as in, they have actually beta'd the webpage that hosts the games - Now that's a new one!)

Claiming the game is a beta and therefore basically beyond criticism is a nasty trick that developers have been using for quite a while.

 

[daxterx2005]

hope you get that shoe!

 

[RunicFox]

It is right now assuredly making millions of dollars a day. No exact figures are usually released but when something can be extrapolated it points to millions of dollars.


The largest generator (world wide) is Puzzle and Dragons, which makes 10s of Millions a day I believe? And on the high end.

Fair enough, I guess I'm just not down with the kids anymore. Is its success primarily from popularity (as in, a particularly large number of downloads) or just high levels of monetisation though?

It's success is, in my opinion, due to a few factors:

1) Simple, clean user interface. You would be surprised at how many games on mobile are terrible at this.
2) Extremely great polish and theme / art style
3) Easy to purchase, and lots of incentives to do so. They actually charge the least if I recall in their genre. I could be wrong on that.

They also were incredibly viral. Which again, I attribute to the above. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of minute factors in there (being able to see the top player's base layout for instance) but in general this game pushed itself to the top by being playable and in some ways fun. Build timers, though, so many build timers.

 

[Thanatos2k]

So when we've been saying that those games are "destroying gaming" we've actually been right? Huh. Fancy that. It's not hyperbole when it's true, now is it?

I'm surprised World of Warcraft wasn't the 4th game on the tunnel vision list. Maybe it would have been 5-10 years ago.

 

[Therumancer]

I want to know how this happened. How is it that people who know nothing about video games ended up running video game companies?

Oh that's simple, the companies got big, decided the go corporate, and then hired experts in running corporations. As there weren't any big video game corporations previously, the only people to put in charge were those who ran other kinds of industries. Being experts in packaged goods, they largely turned video games into another kind of packaged good. It's something that worked for a few big companies like EA and Activision so everyone started following that model. I've been saying largely the same thing as Jim for years, it's not about making a fair profit, it's about everyone always chasing the biggest profit possible. A lot of the huge failures in video gaming is because you have too many giant hogs all trying to push each other out of the way for the same trough, while they totally forget about everything else they could be making money at with far less competition leading to spectacular failures.

The odd thing is that the whole "free to pay" market blindsided the AAA market who had no respect for that kind of gaming, all fighting over Call Of Duty and AAA shooters, until people started making huge money at it. Then you saw AAA companies pushing the whole "pay to win" envelope hoping to find the next big thing. Ironically when someone actually makes a huge success off of one of these neglected markets, that will be the next huge trough all the pigs will rush and breed the next big generation of failures since they will all be doing the same thing.

Honestly I am sort of surprised we haven't seen a AAA publisher more or less cast a wide net and try and become the dominant force in numerous neglected secondary markets all at once. You do see lesser publishers trying things like this, but none of the really big ones. Cumulatively getting control of all those markets (or a lot of them), which will eventually breed an uncontested success on the level of one of the "trinity" seems like the move you'd expect at least one or two huge corporations trying to make, sort of out maneuvering the competition.

 

[AznaktaX]

I feel so behind.

I mean ok, I don't give a cr@p about Call of Duty, but at least I have a general idea as to what it is.

But it's the first time I even heard the title Clash of Clans, and I had absolutely no idea that Candy Crash was really that famous.

And yet, I probably still know more than those corporate fools.

2) I do feel that you may be exaggerating just a touch. From my observations, while they are from outside the window of the industry, AAA companies seem to be aware of a bit more than just those three. I'm not suggesting they aren't a bunch of lemmings without the artistic backbone to give new things a try, just that they have a bit more of a bland palette to work with then you're suggesting they do.

I'm positive it's just a general idea of what is going on inside the industry.

It goes without saying that one corporation will know a few more things than the other one.

What did you expect?

Someone to come out and start giving names and details?!?

"So, company A, B, and C know only about these three games, while company D knows about these same three games plus one more, and company E..."

You get the picture.

Square Enix did, right?

Except Square Enix did when one of THEIR games succeeded.

Took them long enough.

Of course, it will help if they don't have Motomu Toriyama ever again barfing out mediocre/s**tty rpgs one after the other.

 

[RunicFox]

So when we've been saying that those games are "destroying gaming" we've actually been right? Huh. Fancy that. It's not hyperbole when it's true, now is it?

I think that's inherently incorrect. It's doing a lot of things that long-term will be effective. A lot of people who never played video games are now playing them on mobile. The downside is that some of those experiences are taking advantage of them. BUT when their pallet grows and they experience better titles, their expectations will be adjusted.

There are also a lot of spectacular mobile games that still "monitize" but create positive experiences. Even Clash of Clans has some merits, and I still posit that despite KING (ugh) Candy Crush is probably these most video-game like game on the top 10 grossing.

 

[jehk]

What are you even going on about with the early access comment? A big part of early access is allowing players to voice their criticism on a title while its still in production.

Did you do a video on this? I hope your option on the subject is more nuanced and you were just being hyperbolic.

EDIT: Found the video. Nevermind the above then.

Ideally early access in gaming is exactly as you described; an alpha or beta build that is put out so the community can bug test and refine issues.

In practice companies have learned that you just need to stick a 'Beta' onto the end of your title and you can pass off all criticism (and convince a lot of your playerbase that the issues aren't a bad thing) because the game is 'early access' and it's 'still being worked on' (This is increasingly the case in mmo style games that have a long term development cycle, where the developers hide behind the 'beta' flag to avoid all criticism because any issue whatsoever can be brushed off as 'but we haven't finished the game yet')

I was in a thread on this site a couple of days ago and someone joked that a particular game they played was practically in 'gamma' now because it had had so many major updates since the beta was opened up years ago (although I cannot remember the name of the game unfortunately.)

A few examples:
Battlefield Play4free: In Beta since April 2011, no release date.
Firefall: Beta since September 2011, no release date.
The War Z: Caused an unintentional war of it's own because the game was practically unplayable, but the developers just said 'lol beta' and banned everyone complaining
The entire Ninjakiwi developers website is a beta (as in, they have actually beta'd the webpage that hosts the games - Now that's a new one!)

Claiming the game is a beta and therefore basically beyond criticism is a nasty trick that developers have been using for quite a while.

I went back and watched his video on the subject. It's easy to point to good and bad examples of early access. I don't think we really disagree on the matter much.

Honestly, I'm shocked anyone would say a game is beyond criticism while its in early access. In my mind, that's the whole point. I thought Jim was constructing a strawman here.

 

[Johnson McGee]

I hate how devs and publishers look to games like Candy Crush and Clash of Clans as models of games. In my view these titles are only tangentially related to video gaming. A better comparison would be to harlequin romance novels or tabloid newspapers, these 'games' don't have the same market or appeal as 'real' video games do, they don't target the same audience and there's no way to make that so. They have mass appeal in a completely different way to the rest of video gaming and trying to lump them in the same category is silly.

 

[garjian]

I just pictured a scene in my head...
Asking a room of these executives to list their top 10 favourite video games, and if they can't even think of 10 to list, telling them to get the fuck out.
Remember, they're not allowed to use the internet to help, so I'd expect this to be a real challenge for them.

I hate how devs and publishers look to games like Candy Crush and Clash of Clans as models of games. In my view these titles are only tangentially related to video gaming. A better comparison would be to harlequin romance novels or tabloid newspapers, these 'games' don't have the same market or appeal as 'real' video games do, they don't target the same audience and there's no way to make that so. They have mass appeal in a completely different way to the rest of video gaming and trying to lump them in the same category is silly.

I don't think they care who they target, so long as it makes all of the money.

 

[Drejer43]

That end about early access tho.
I am tired of half the games popping up on steam being early access trash and the half +4 year old trash games

 

[gargantual]

The Unholy Trinity Of Blind Greedy Bastards

Only three videogames in the world exist, according to those who now get to make all the videogame decisions. The blind lead the blind, and ignorance reigns supreme.

Watch Video

Cool profile image. Very 'gangster'

But seriously thank you for this. Thank you immensely. The executive naivety we're seeing is beyond the pale. I wish Micheal Mondo would walk up to these offices as Vaas and explain to them the definition of insanity regarding selling games.

It looks like the tech industry is suffering this same horrid disease of executive daftness where consumer devices and software are concerned as well as gaming. The evolution in gaming and consumer technology was brought about by people who knew what they were investing in, what they wanted to see made, and its meat and potatoes benefit to the user.

Now were in the age where cynical opportunists have seen money exchanging hands, and won't even stop to educate themselves on why or what makes said product valuable to them in the first place. I honestly wonder how hard it is for some marketers to play a good deal of video games in between bean counting, and understand the value of GTA, minecraft, Tekken, Outlast, Portal, Half-life, FFVI (since its finally on mobile) or Resident Evil for themselves.

I know i'm just pulling from my comments on the vid earlier but its really like farms run by folks who don't know how to raise crops without steroids. This is just another cold reminder of our economic gap. Entertainment is where we come to not focus on how financially divided or disadvantaged we are compared to the 1 percent. And yet we're being painfully reminded of it by too much exploitation ruining our entertainment. There's no honest exchange or 'a lot of bang for your buck' anymore.

Would this massive resounding yell of "OHH! I GET IT NOW!" ever happen in those mega story offices if marketers started playing ? Who really knows sadly.