"I was watching a JimQui episode, then my mom walked in, I had to switch to a porn site, so I can explain my situation better..." LOL
Good EP, thanks...
Good EP, thanks...
Jimquisition: Time To Get Paid
- Thread starter Jimothy Sterling
- Start date
Recommended Videos
I've often wondered about the % of sales increase a game receives relative to its marketing costs.
With the advent of the internet, I'm not certain how the average person learns about a game (via marketing) outside of pre-order displays in stores or simply looking at a box (or picture/trailer on a download-only service). It's highly unusual for a lot of triple-A games to have commercials in the US, and I know not everyone goes to gaming websites, so their marketing ideas seem strange. Is all interest for a sequel acquired simply because players of the first game were keeping an eye out for it? Or do the majority of gamers simply keep an eye out on review websites for everything and anything that garners interest?
With the advent of the internet, I'm not certain how the average person learns about a game (via marketing) outside of pre-order displays in stores or simply looking at a box (or picture/trailer on a download-only service). It's highly unusual for a lot of triple-A games to have commercials in the US, and I know not everyone goes to gaming websites, so their marketing ideas seem strange. Is all interest for a sequel acquired simply because players of the first game were keeping an eye out for it? Or do the majority of gamers simply keep an eye out on review websites for everything and anything that garners interest?
"Well at least he got clothes on this time..."Greenstripe0 said:
OT:
Gosh, a game that was made on a reasonable budget and did not blow enough money on marketing to buy a small country and dust it with cocaine is actually making money? As in: They got their investment back and are now getting more than they previously spent? Stop the fucking presses and get me a clean-up crew because there is brain all over the ceiling after this mind-blowing revelation.
Let's see how long it takes one of the big guys to hammer out a payday ripoff.
So it looks like to moral of the story here is if a company sets out to make a good game, designed to appeal to a known core audience, and doesn't let the production budget spiral out of control like Julie Taymor did with Spiderman Turn Off The Dark, then the game will be a resounding success. I find it alarming that anyone would need to point this bit of logic out to people who are supposed to be industry professionals.
And sorry to hear some self righteous jerkface felt they had to resort to name calling during an argument on twitter. I do hope you don't get the impression that they are in any way an example of how the rest of us out here in internet-land choose to comport ourselves.
Last but not least, the Dragon Tongue Dildo. I found your antics quite amusing. But as I mentioned in another thread which you may have missed, and considering some of the comments here, maybe not a subject everyone who comes here finds comfortable. I fear this kind of content may detract from the enjoyment of some viewers and there-by lessen your main message about the games industry. Please don't take that as complaint, just advice. It's very much your show and you should run it as you see fit. I'm just trying to be a little more open minded and think about things from another persons perspective. You know, do my part to make the community a friendlier and more welcoming place. For my own part I've decided to cut all profanity from my posts as it serves no real purpose to get my ideas across, and at the same time could potentially cause unintended hostility to those who find profanity unappealing. I've even gone so far as to change my avatar from the creepy alien thing that some people could find upsetting, to a softer, friendlier 'Kitteh' picture.
To sum up, great video. Much better than last weeks. And hey, let's all be careful out there.
And sorry to hear some self righteous jerkface felt they had to resort to name calling during an argument on twitter. I do hope you don't get the impression that they are in any way an example of how the rest of us out here in internet-land choose to comport ourselves.
Last but not least, the Dragon Tongue Dildo. I found your antics quite amusing. But as I mentioned in another thread which you may have missed, and considering some of the comments here, maybe not a subject everyone who comes here finds comfortable. I fear this kind of content may detract from the enjoyment of some viewers and there-by lessen your main message about the games industry. Please don't take that as complaint, just advice. It's very much your show and you should run it as you see fit. I'm just trying to be a little more open minded and think about things from another persons perspective. You know, do my part to make the community a friendlier and more welcoming place. For my own part I've decided to cut all profanity from my posts as it serves no real purpose to get my ideas across, and at the same time could potentially cause unintended hostility to those who find profanity unappealing. I've even gone so far as to change my avatar from the creepy alien thing that some people could find upsetting, to a softer, friendlier 'Kitteh' picture.
To sum up, great video. Much better than last weeks. And hey, let's all be careful out there.
It's fine to not want a game due to it's subject matter, not going to criticize your choice but I am curious about something. Would you be against a game of chess where the player side were modeled as criminals and the opponent were modeled as police. In this scenario, your objective is to out maneuver and destroy the enemy, the police. Would this be against your morals?brazuca said:Orekoya said:geldonyetich said:
Not sure if this would be considered warning bait or not but it is just way too appropriate a response.
So now I can make games about plane hitting towers and achieving massive points by doing so. Geldonyetich is right. I'm talking about my exp. alone, but I come from a family of cops. I don't mind killing cops in a video game, but GTA for example is ludicrous about it. Payday is the only thing you do is gun down cops. Like a lot. That is why I used the 9/11 reference. People are so much into that double standard that some times it's hard to realize how sleazy and imoral some media stories became.
Also going back on GTA, that is one of the reasons GTA goes for the comic relief so much. Payday wants to be taken serious, when we know it simply can't. Another example are those eroge games made in Japan about raping youngster. Playing Payday (yes I played the first one) and saying well it's okay, it's not real, to me atleast sounds the same excuse as playing those eroge game and saying: of course it's not wrong. It's not real...
Also, would you be fine with the game if it had a medieval setting and the lord of the treasury and his guards were established as unapologetically bad and your goal was to liberate the treasure to distribute it to the poor townsfolk?
Oh, and I'm not trying to change your opinion about the game, I really don't care about it, I just found the questions interesting.
I haven't played it yet, but I'm pretty sure that there are stealth options in the game where you can do an entire mission without shooting a single cop (though you probably have to deal with staff members and I don't know if there's non-lethal options to taking out security guards other than yelling at them and hoping they surrender, or just smacking them in the face), but of course when the shit hits the fan, yes, you probably don't have a choice...geldonyetich said:
I know it's not classy to quote the OP but I was thinking during the vid that you mentioned promoting Jim. You say that it didn't blow gajillions on marketing but have also said before, e.g. your Konami ep, that not promoting a game can be devastating. I know the answer will proberly be, like most answers, to find the middle ground but it would make an interesting ep to hear how you think promoting games should go. I know it's not your area of expertise but it would be interesting.Jimothy Sterling said:
Also, thanks for that fap fuel at the end... good stuff, good stuff.
Payday2 was profitable off of pre-orders alone. Every single release day and after sale is pure profit. So even if they only sold 10 copies that's still pure profit.uanime5 said:
Also, Jim was talking about how certain games under-performed according to their expectations, if a game sells out that means it exceeded expectations.
The whole point was that payday 2 didn't NEED to sell 3-5 million copies, because it had a reasonable marketing budget and general game budget. Huge sales are irrelevant, what matters is profitability. If I spend $10,000,001 making and marketing a game and I get $10,000,000 from its sales I have made a loss. He's advocating more mid-tier games that can be profitable in niches, because huge sales are entirely irrelevant. Mid-tier games can be pumped out faster and don't need to sell a copy to every thousandth person in the world to be profitable.
As much as I agree with the reasons that made Payday 2 successful (not blowing the GDP of several small countries on graphics and advertisements, and instead investing enough to make the game fun and challenging, while having it's "own" style), I really have to disagree with his idea that the problem with big games is trying to make it more appealing to "casual" gamers, since, if anything, casting a wide net over people who aren't hardcore gamers would be a good marketing strategy (see the success of the Wii, which mostly had simple titles that were nevertheless easy to hook entire families on). The problem is that the types of games that are being "dumbed down" are ones ostensibly tackling non-family friendly material, such as bloody violence, scantily clad women, foul-mouthed language, and/or "mature" humor. That quickly isolates most of the casual gaming market down to XBox Live trolls that trade sexist, racist, homophobic, and downright mean insults at one another while using every exploit they can find on their FPS-Deathmatch arena to camp and aim-bot. Who, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, arrogantly proclaim themselves to be "hardcore" gamers, and will bully any noobs out of their digital frathouse.
As for the obsession with spending money on graphics and marketing, I think the obsession isn't being callous and stupid, but misguided. I recall reading some magazine articles a few years back, where developers eagerly talked about how quickly they were improving gaming graphics, claiming they could be "photo-realistic" within twenty years or so. I even recall an advertisement for a flight simulator where they held up four photographs, claiming that one was from the game, and the rest were photographs of actual jet fighters, daring the reader to spot the difference. Presumably, every major developer is thinking that making their graphics 100% photo-realistic would be the Holy Grail of gaming, and they're risking damn near everything to ensure that a game under their company reaches that historical milestone, actual "game" be-damned. The closest analogy I can think of for the situation is all the times in the past mankind has tried to achieve flight, or the Space Race between the US and USSR. The problem with gaming companies is that these races of technological innovation often relied on trial and error, and that the errors often prove fatal. Only instead of a spaceship blowing up on the launch pad, or a would-be Icarus splattering across the ground, the "fatal" errors in videogames involve massive commercial wipeouts that are barely minimized by omnipresent advertising suckering in buyers and pre-orders, and results in an ever-growing disdain for the gaming industry by both gamers that play their piles of over-polished crap, or non-gamers that are hearing all the spew and bile from the sidelines.
Frankly, the reason indie-developers and smaller studios like Payday's OVERKILL are doing better isn't because they're more talented and resourceful than people working in the big industry. It's because they have their sights solely aimed at making games over digital realism, not because they cater to hardcore gamers: some hit indie titles are patently simple and "easy" compared to Payday 2, and market to a family-friendly crowd, but are still focused on being games.
Also, not to be petty, but claiming that Payday 2 relied on word of mouth alone isn't exactly accurate, as there was that whole web series thing going on that Jim himself was using in his video. Although it certainly was a lot more low-key than the explosion of advertisements triple-A games use to inflate their importance, and even more so because Payday actual had gameplay movies, not pre-rendered trailers that try to show off graphics, and hide non-existant gameplay.
As for the obsession with spending money on graphics and marketing, I think the obsession isn't being callous and stupid, but misguided. I recall reading some magazine articles a few years back, where developers eagerly talked about how quickly they were improving gaming graphics, claiming they could be "photo-realistic" within twenty years or so. I even recall an advertisement for a flight simulator where they held up four photographs, claiming that one was from the game, and the rest were photographs of actual jet fighters, daring the reader to spot the difference. Presumably, every major developer is thinking that making their graphics 100% photo-realistic would be the Holy Grail of gaming, and they're risking damn near everything to ensure that a game under their company reaches that historical milestone, actual "game" be-damned. The closest analogy I can think of for the situation is all the times in the past mankind has tried to achieve flight, or the Space Race between the US and USSR. The problem with gaming companies is that these races of technological innovation often relied on trial and error, and that the errors often prove fatal. Only instead of a spaceship blowing up on the launch pad, or a would-be Icarus splattering across the ground, the "fatal" errors in videogames involve massive commercial wipeouts that are barely minimized by omnipresent advertising suckering in buyers and pre-orders, and results in an ever-growing disdain for the gaming industry by both gamers that play their piles of over-polished crap, or non-gamers that are hearing all the spew and bile from the sidelines.
Frankly, the reason indie-developers and smaller studios like Payday's OVERKILL are doing better isn't because they're more talented and resourceful than people working in the big industry. It's because they have their sights solely aimed at making games over digital realism, not because they cater to hardcore gamers: some hit indie titles are patently simple and "easy" compared to Payday 2, and market to a family-friendly crowd, but are still focused on being games.
Also, not to be petty, but claiming that Payday 2 relied on word of mouth alone isn't exactly accurate, as there was that whole web series thing going on that Jim himself was using in his video. Although it certainly was a lot more low-key than the explosion of advertisements triple-A games use to inflate their importance, and even more so because Payday actual had gameplay movies, not pre-rendered trailers that try to show off graphics, and hide non-existant gameplay.
Whilst your idea is a sure fire way to get a kick right up your royal arse; an idea has sprung to mind about how interesting it would be if the human players were actually playing as undercover cops as part of a larger group and the job is to successfully pull the heist, avoid any innocent fatalities whilst avoiding the suspicion of the gang to lead you to their hideout. THAT sounds interesting.Bat Vader said:
Dear Internet imbeciles: Using words like "gay", "******" and the like in an attempt to insult a gay man only means that you fail TWICE. I look forward to the lot of you realizing the depths of your failure and shutting up about everything forever.
[small](Hey, look, a wolf can dream, okay?)[/small]
I bought the original Payday and never even started it up... I'd had expectations of playing it with others, but those fell through. Still, I'm glad to see that the company actually did everything right and got rewarded by the market for it. I won't be holding my breath that the AAA developers, so many of them chained to the bean-counters as they are, will suddenly pop out of their holes like meerkats and say "Wow, look at that!", but if it makes even a slight impact in the gaming market as a whole, I can only be thankful.
[small](Hey, look, a wolf can dream, okay?)[/small]
I bought the original Payday and never even started it up... I'd had expectations of playing it with others, but those fell through. Still, I'm glad to see that the company actually did everything right and got rewarded by the market for it. I won't be holding my breath that the AAA developers, so many of them chained to the bean-counters as they are, will suddenly pop out of their holes like meerkats and say "Wow, look at that!", but if it makes even a slight impact in the gaming market as a whole, I can only be thankful.
Probably just "Oh, that Sterling lad is up to his oddities again... Martha, make sure the children stay inside for the next hour".[email protected] said:
I agree with everything Jim says in this video, and i generally like Jim as an entertainer/journalist. However, this kind of grates on me as everything he is praising here, he blasted dark souls fans for asking FromSoft to do with Dark Souls 2. He argued that changing up the way the game was presented and played to include a larger audience for DS2 would be a good thing, rather than them focusing the game how they wanted it for the fans that already love it, yet for Payday its a godsend that they did just that.
Why the difference? Why is it good for payday to be made solely for one demographic of player, the ones that love it how it is, but it's a detriment to games and it's just DS fans being elitist jerks when they are hoping that Fromsoft will do just what the devs of payday did?
Why the difference? Why is it good for payday to be made solely for one demographic of player, the ones that love it how it is, but it's a detriment to games and it's just DS fans being elitist jerks when they are hoping that Fromsoft will do just what the devs of payday did?
I'm glad you stand up for the Trans crowd Jim. Mad respect.
Now I have a new game to look into. That really looks like something I would love to get into with a group of friends...
But...
University. x.x
Also that was the best ending in this shows history.
Now I have a new game to look into. That really looks like something I would love to get into with a group of friends...
But...
University. x.x
Also that was the best ending in this shows history.
Clearly he's the lesser man here.Jimothy Sterling said:
Can we all just sit back and imagine a world diversity of games truly existed? I mean... I could be playing something that ISN'T a first person shooter right now. Sure it wouldn't be triple A... but I think I'd rather a world with hundreds of B titles to choose from a year, than 12 or so triple A titles I have no interest in.
It would be glorious.
The gameplay is the game they wanted to make but im sure if they had the money to make the graphics better and add lighting etc they would have. At least they concentrated on what was important an that is the gameplay.
D-..did you... Did you just strap a dildo to your face?!
As for the topic at hand, it always is good to see a good dev being rewarded justly. I wish it happened more often to some of the other games in the past. Clover Studios still should be around after Okami, and I think that Sacred 2 was a masterpiece that shouldn't have killed Ascaron.
As for the topic at hand, it always is good to see a good dev being rewarded justly. I wish it happened more often to some of the other games in the past. Clover Studios still should be around after Okami, and I think that Sacred 2 was a masterpiece that shouldn't have killed Ascaron.