Maybe we should stop ignoring gaming's screams for help.

[Rob Moir]

We're stretching ourselves too thin. We want more, newer, better, flashier, and we want it all at the same price. Reading that sentence twice should reveal the problem. Gamers want more and more stuff in their games, but don't want to pay extra for all the more that they're getting.

I don't want "more" or "flashier" - I do want "newer" and I want "better". If a "AAA" game refuses to address my needs and I therefore don't buy it, why is that my fault?

While I'd agree that there are problems in the game industry, I might suggest they're more of a symptom of a medium that's struggling to mature - the "AAA" games that try to be all things to all people generally fail because that's very difficult to do well, and the problem with games developers and publishers saying "huh, doing *x* didn't work last time, perhaps if we just did it again a bit more the next time..." instead of actually thinking about what they're doing.

Games that have a voice, know who they're selling to and take the time to find out what that group *actually* want are doing better than big budget titles... I'm simply not excited by the majority of new games out there today. So far this year I'm really looking forward to Watch_Dogs and maybe GTA 5 because those kinds of "free roaming" games are a genre I enjoy.

I've got no interest in paying over the odds for a "next gen" QTE game (RYSE), I don't enjoy the COD type games that much and I'm not interested in tht titanfalls or killzones of this world, I'd rather be playing Deus Ex. I admit that I might be fussy and a non-typical gamer to boot, but if a gaming company wants to produce games I want to play then I have money for them. I'm even prepared to pay more for a game if I think it's worth it... how about that?

Gamer demands have put us in this mess, so I think it's fair that we're saddled with the responsibility of getting us out of it. Fortunately, that's easy to do: If nothing else, at least support RESPONSIBLE development, rather than the cutting-edge stuff. Remember how American McGee said that gamers need to realize that games cost a lot of money to make? He's right.

I think that most of us who are at all interested in games already know they take a lot of money to make. It's also easy to see a lot of waste in games. It's not our responsility to figure out how to balance things out and how to get out of the rut the industry is in, it's the job of the game publishers to do that. It's our job to buy the games we like and to not buy the games we dislike; voting with our wallets, if you like.

This is no different to what's going on in movieland; moviegoers who are interested in movies as a craft already know that they cost a lot of money to make and value movies that genuinely try to do interesting things but there are also people out there who are interested in nothing but an endless stream of superhero sequels and endless "reboots" due to lazy scriptwriting. The games industry is not alone in its troubles.

 

[lacktheknack]

I'm also not sure I want Tomb Raider at this point, because it feels that buying it is supporting the crash of video games, which I don't want to do.

If we all just bought Tomb Raider it would make enough money and we wouldn't be supporting an industry crash.

Checkmate.

...That's a dumb statement, and you know it.

If we ALL have to buy Tomb Raider to justify its massive budget and avoid a crash, that's a certifiably bad thing.

 

[COMaestro]

I have a lot of friends in game development and one of them wrote out the following FAQ once when asked about the cost of creating a game. I found it an interesting read and it really does explain where a lot of the money goes. This is from the developers point of view, so realize when it comes to a publisher who dumped a bunch of money to cover all these costs and needs to cover all its expenses and still make a profit, the numbers likely double.


"So let?s get started. It is REALLY hard to explain this without going into a ton of detail, but here?s how it works in the simplest possible explanation (and this is still really long):

Ignoring for a second how hard it is to make a good game, let?s just focus on how much it costs to make all the ?things? (assets) that go into a game. We?ll assume that everything you try goes right the first time you try it, that you make no mistakes and get everything done precisely on time.

If you?re an average development studio in a place like Los Angeles or San Francisco, it costs a lot just to keep your doors open and your lights on (rent, insurance, employee benefits, power, government fees, bank interest, etc). But let?s ignore that and just assume that all costs $0.00 somehow.

Normally you have to look around for a while and try to get a publisher to pay you to make a game for them. During this time, you?re making no money and every month you?re still paying bills. But for now, let?s assume that somehow you already have a game deal, so you have $0.00 losses before you even start.

A note: the publisher has people working for them who cost money, too. For the sake of our example, let?s assume they don?t exist and cost $0.00.

So now you?ve got a deal with a publisher where they pay you a certain amount of money each month in exchange for you making a game for them. Usually, the amount you get changes every month (it costs more to make a game in the middle and at the end then it does at the very beginning), but let?s assume that somehow you?ve already done all that cheap pre-production work for $0.00 and all you have to do is the expensive production work.

Development deals of this type usually pay the development studio a generic amount of money per month for every employee that the developer has that is actively developing the game. Anyone your company has that isn?t a developer, like HR, IT, Lawyers, QA Testing (sometimes), CEOs, CFOs, CTOs, etc? don?t count in that amount that you get. So for the sake of this example, we?ll assume that every single person working at your company is a developer.

According to the 2011 Game Developer Magazine salary survey, the average salary for the four most basic development roles: Design, Programmers, Art/Animation, and Audio is about $81,000 per year (or about $6,750 a month). Remember also that this amount is probably including money the developer doesn?t get that goes to state and federal income taxes, social security taxes, or benefit deductions (which can take about 30%-40% of that number away).

Now you need to figure out how many developers it takes to make your game. This depends on how big your game is and a number of other things. These days, it can take hundreds of people to make a big-budget AAA title, but let?s take a smaller one: We had around 70 developers (probably more) actively working on Ratchet and Clank 2, so we?ll go with that number.

70 developers at the average of $6,750 each will cost you $472,500 per month that you?re making the game.

How long does it take to make this game of yours? That depends on the game you?re making. These days, it can take 2-3 years to make a AAA high-quality game, but the shortest time I?ve ever personally seen it done (factoring out pre-production) was about 9 months for Ratchet and Clank 3. Voila! It just cost you more than $4,250,000 to make all the things that go into your game!

Well what if we imagine that the game your company is making is an inexpensive phone game or a facebook game? You could make that with a team of maybe 10 people with 3 months (not counting pre-production time) if you?re really booking it. That?s more than $200,000! And remember, this is all JUST to pay your employees to make the things that go into your game.

Keep in mind that, as I already pointed out, this is not including any extra costs incurred besides those employees making things that go into your game ? extra costs such as Marketing, Customer Support, Publisher QA, Certification, User Testing, Packaging, Shipping, Servers and IT, PR, Human Resources, Taxes, Government Fees, Accountants, Lawyers, Retailer/E-Retailer costs, and so forth (Gamestop or the Apple Store get about 30% of the sticker price).

All of these (and the countless other things I didn?t mention) bring a ton of value to the table, and are worth spending money on ? so you can imagine how expensive things can get once you get out into the real world, but this might help explain a part of it."

 

[lacktheknack]

This is no different to what's going on in movieland; moviegoers who are interested in movies as a craft already know that they cost a lot of money to make and value movies that genuinely try to do interesting things but there are also people out there who are interested in nothing but an endless stream of superhero sequels and endless "reboots" due to lazy scriptwriting. The games industry is not alone in its troubles.

I'm not addressing derivation.

Blockbuster movies regularly make half a billion dollars nowadays, and even the more unique films still turn profits fairly easily.

http://boxofficemojo.com/

Tens of movies at this point have taken over a BILLION dollars, easily overcoming their comparatively small budgets.

However, the first "Big Hit" of 2013 (Tomb Raider) in gaming was a flop, something unheard of in movies. That hardly seems analogous to me.

 

[Chris Tian]

snip for space

I think the big problem is that we are at a strange point in AAA-Gaming. There is now more money involved like ever before, the decision makers and big suits at most developers are these manager types that come along with that type of cash, but they have no clue about games.

They tend to treat games like its one big market, so everything gets budgeted and marketed to compete with the biggest games out there and whatever is trend at the moment.

The thing is, games are not one big market, but several smaller, overlapping ones, just like movies. If some director wants to make a romantic comedy, hes not trying to do that with a Transformers-type budget and he will not try to market it to the Trasformers-audience.
On the other hand no sane studio would greenlight a sequel to a horror-movie, wich is more like a shoot-em-up actionflick. But you see stuff like that quite regularly in gaming.

Additionally they don't really get what makes a good game, they rely on focus testing and press for things like better graphics, lots of big set pieces and tacked on multiplayer.

I think publishers will sooner or later start to really understand their medium, they have to because thos devs and publishers are the ones that are going to make good and sucessfull games in the long run.

 

[chadachada123]

snip

Watch this. Trust me. It will make basically everything clear.


The short answer is that AAA publishers are ONLY trying to make "hit" titles that sell millions, and are investing hundreds of millions to do so. That might work for dude-bros and casuals, but the gaming market at large doesn't really care that much about how many millions is spent on development.

Gaming is ending up like the film industry, with hundreds of millions spent on fluff, while low-budget films can end up being massive hits.

The solution is to *stop buying overhyped fluff,* but, sadly, with places like IGN hyping up that crap, casuals/dude-bros are replacing "gamers" as the primary consumer of AAA games.

They also don't realize that trying to appeal to the WoW or CoD audience is relatively useless, because WoW and CoD fans are too busy PLAYING WoW AND CoD.

As far as development goes, EA(, etc) seems to think that having twice the number of developers means that they can half development time. Which ends up making buggy pieces of shit instead of real, high-quality, polished games.

 

[HannesPascal]

A big problem is that publishers want huge sales/income, when they should focus on getting a big profit. The bigger the budget the more you can do with the game (like shiny graphics) and the more sales you will get. But the bigger the bigger the cost of making your game, and the when you increase the budget of a game after a certain point the cost will increase more than the income. Thereby a game with few sales can go with more profit than a game with many sales.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

hair has some fancy tress fx bullshit added to it.

it is fucking GORGEOUS though probably my favorite graphical effect in the last decade, the rest of graphics could be on low for all i care....dat hair jiggle.

I think a bigger problem though is the kind of marketing budgets the publishers spend these days. It's fucking insane to spend 50+ million on marketing the third or fourth game in a series when everyone who cares is already well aware of it. Games are bought based on word of mouth and reviews rather than TV ads and billboards, about time publishers realized this.

i do fully agree with this though, the fucking marketing and bullshit is insane these days, let your damn game speak for itself and fucking optimize your budgets, it's insane the amount of money NEEDED to break even sometimes for game budgets.

 

[Arslan Aladeen]

Isn't Call Of Duty one of the most successful franchises this generation? Doesn't that game look kinda crummy in terms of graphics and tech and just the amount of money being put into it compared to some of it's competitors, namely Battlefield? Who's saying we want more, shinier, better graphics? Yeah, there is a problem, and it's the publishers not knowing their audience and spending way more than they should on features that no one actually wanted or needed.

 

[Rob Moir]

I'm not addressing derivation.

Blockbuster movies regularly make half a billion dollars nowadays, and even the more unique films still turn profits fairly easily.

http://boxofficemojo.com/

Tens of movies at this point have taken over a BILLION dollars, easily overcoming their comparatively small budgets.

However, the first "Big Hit" of 2013 (Tomb Raider) in gaming was a flop, something unheard of in movies. That hardly seems analogous to me.

"Big Hit" flops are 'something unheard' of in movies? Seriously? Tom Cruise's oblivion was a box office flop, World War Z was looking very questionable for a while, to name just two.

And your "tens of movies" thing - you're cherry picking... you're putting the best of the movie scene up against what you claim is the worst of the gaming scene... I bet the averages across several titles are a lot closer (in relative differences between the losses and wins, not actual dollar amounts, obviously).

And Hollywood *does* have its troubles too, I'd say.
http://www.philstar.com/supreme/2013/03/09/917343/how-hollywood-murdered-movie-magic
http://www.deadline.com/2013/04/movie-attendance-likely-drop-2013-fitch/

 

[Bad Jim]

I think publishers do actually have control of their spending. Shareholders would have taken action long ago if this were not the case. I do not think anything is critically wrong just because a game sells a large number of copies and still makes a loss, or is considered 'underperforming'.

Why? They're still posting good profits. Why is the industry inherently broken just because large numbers are involved? They gamble large amounts of money on games and not all of them do well, but nonetheless they are making overall profit.

Sure, there's doublespeak from industry talking heads trying to defend offensive DRM, DLC and so forth, but there's no evidence that publishers cannot limit their budgets should they have to, only evidence that they won't limit their budgets when they don't have to.

 

[lacktheknack]

I'm also not sure I want Tomb Raider at this point, because it feels that buying it is supporting the crash of video games, which I don't want to do.

If we all just bought Tomb Raider it would make enough money and we wouldn't be supporting an industry crash.

Checkmate.

...That's a dumb statement, and you know it.

If we ALL have to buy Tomb Raider to justify its massive budget and avoid a crash, that's a certifiably bad thing.

Yes, I was poking fun at you. (Not even to be a dick, just a spin on the whole "Checkmate athiests" thing.) If you keep ignoring serious responses like the one I posted later people are probably gonna do that more often.

I wasn't ignoring it, it's a valid interjection.

I'm not entirely available right now, so I'm being selective of what I respond to. If my thought process is "Well, that very well could be", then I don't have time for it at the moment. Maybe I'll properly respond to it later, when I have more time.

 

[lacktheknack]

I'm not addressing derivation.

Blockbuster movies regularly make half a billion dollars nowadays, and even the more unique films still turn profits fairly easily.

http://boxofficemojo.com/

Tens of movies at this point have taken over a BILLION dollars, easily overcoming their comparatively small budgets.

However, the first "Big Hit" of 2013 (Tomb Raider) in gaming was a flop, something unheard of in movies. That hardly seems analogous to me.

"Big Hit" flops are 'something unheard' of in movies? Seriously? Tom Cruise's oblivion was a box office flop, World War Z was looking very questionable for a while, to name just two.

And your "tens of movies" thing - you're cherry picking... you're putting the best of the movie scene up against what you claim is the worst of the gaming scene... I bet the averages across several titles are a lot closer (in relative differences between the losses and wins, not actual dollar amounts, obviously).

And Hollywood *does* have its troubles too, I'd say.
http://www.philstar.com/supreme/2013/03/09/917343/how-hollywood-murdered-movie-magic
http://www.deadline.com/2013/04/movie-attendance-likely-drop-2013-fitch/

No, the "first Big Hit of the year" being a flop is unheard of in movies.

Thanks for the links, I'll read them later.

 

[rob_simple]

What a lot of people seem to forget is we are not the majority of the target audience for games. By "we" I mean those of us who visit gaming websites such as this, follow the conferences and discuss the pro's and cons of gaming on forums. The vast majority of gamers are the ones who simply play games and avoid the "politics". We can talk all we like about how we shouldn't support X practice and should boycott Y company for their behaviour, but when it comes down to it, most companies care about the money first and in most cases they will keep on getting it, even if all of "us" stop supporting them.

What I mean is that we can talk all we like about how it is "our" fault for having these wants, but when it comes down to it, we are not the majority here. As long as COD fan No#5,472,402 wants a new COD with shinier shinies and expodier explodies then the market is going to keep on working to crank it out. We can complain as much as we like but as long as they think it will get them the money, they are going to keep on doing it, and there is not a whole lot we can do about it.

Case in point would be how if you look at this website in particular, WOW and COD are not particularly popular games and Assassins Creed 3 is hated by almost everybody, but those games have done pretty damn good for themselves. So clearly despite all of the people voicing the opinion that such games are bad, people are still buying them in droves.

Couldn't have said it better myself. You're preaching to the converted here, OP, that's why you'll constantly find threads where all but a very vocal (and misguided) minority are defending our rights to buy used games; where we constantly call out devs/publishers for forcing new tech that gives minimal returns but makes costs spiral out of control; and where we criticise the bandwagon jumping and homogenisation that has killed many series because, rather than standing out, they all just try to ride on the coat tails of whatever is popular at the time, ignoring the fact that people will still just buy what is popular and ignore your effort because it's not as popular.

You're never going to convince the masses of this because they just don't care: they buy a new game when they want one and their thought process doesn't extend beyond that; if you want to try and convince them otherwise then you're a better man than me, but it would be on par with standing in the middle of a McDonald's and loudly announcing how unhealthy their food is.

Oh, and also...

We're stretching ourselves too thin. We want more, newer, better, flashier, and we want it all at the same price. Reading that sentence twice should reveal the problem. Gamers want more and more stuff in their games, but don't want to pay extra for all the more that they're getting.

Um...I don't. I was perfectly happy for graphics to stay the way they were in the PS2 days, when everything was distinct and functional, knowing that it would free up production costs that would give developers the ability to expand their games in directions that are actually interesting.

It is the publishers at fault, here, for assuming that all anyone cares about is how good things look. You just have to look to more recent E3 shows, where they spend ages wanking over how powerful their hardware is, and then two minutes towards the end go, 'oh and here are some games, I guess. Whatever'.

Gaming used to be about the games, about having fun, but now it's just a pissing contest to see who can cram the most polygons into their stupid pre-rendered cutscenes. That's where the money is really being wasted, and I don't ever recall hearing any gamer ask for this.

 

[Bocaj2000]

The problem isn't gamers being greedy, the problem is ridiculous mismanagement and bloated production costs. It's gotten ridiculous how much is spent on these games when it's not even needed, an absolutely massive chunk of which is purely dedicated to pointless celebrities and advertising when it isn't more mundane things such as staff turnover, licensing, or constantly rebuilding a game over and over like Duke Nukem Forever did.

Whether you like the game or not I think everyone can agree Witcher 2 was a properly impressive game. Visually it's one of the best games out today, it's soundtrack was beautiful and fully orchestrated, regional voice actors are of excellent quality, and it even had nifty packaging if you bought it retail. You know how much that game cost?

8 million

Which is a lot, to be sure, but now let's take a quick look at Tomb Raider. If the publishers made even just ten dollars from every copy sold, which I'd say is a more than conservative estimate, and they only just broke even at 5 million copies sold that puts their budget at at least 50 million dollars. Where the hell did all that money go? I'll say it right now, Witcher 2 was the more impressive feat by a longshot. It looked and sounded a hell of a lot better, was definitely bigger and more ambitious, and was made by a less experienced developer. Even taking into account cheaper staffing costs since CD Projekt RED is Polish that's just a staggering difference. What hole did all that money vanish into? What was it all being used on?

Now I'm just using Witcher 2 and Tomb Raider as examples here but even with other games it holds true. By all reports Star Wars: The Old Republic cost over $200 MILLION to develop and Halo Reach was around $60 million, Skyrim around 85 million, etc etc. It's pretty ridiculous. When you consider all the less popular titles though the average cost of an 'AAA' game hovers around $28 million... However I'll bet you Red Orchestra 2, which looks just as good as any of the above, cost less than half of Witcher 2. Hawken meanwhile was developed on a shoestring budget and looks better than most games out there today by a bunch of enthusiasts. Trine 2, again one of the most visually stunning games I've ever played, budget of around 2 or so million if I had to guess based on the original games budget of around half a million.

So no, it's not gamers fault. It's not even greed as far as I can tell, unless a lot of those budgets are vanishing into someone's pockets. It's just mismanagement and bloated unnecessary costs.

Agreed 100% and now I have the statistics to back it up.

"Games are too expensive"
Make cheaper games.

Cut. Print. Sell. Easy solution.

If the problem is more complicated than I'm assuming, then I'd like someone to fill me in.

 

[GoaThief]

I'm personally prepared to let the market crash. We will all suffer, but the industry needs to learn the hard way. There is no other way forward, in my opinion, at this point.

Captcha: "I want control" - looks like Microsoft are doing captcha's, now.

You're personally prepared to force thousands of hard working people out of jobs because you want MOAR of whatever particular genre floats your boat? I applaud your generosity and altruism.

Perhaps the Captcha should be considered in relation to matters closer to home.

 

[Griffolion]

You're personally prepared to force thousands of hard working people out of jobs because you want MOAR of whatever particular genre floats your boat?

Nope, I don't want to force anything. However I am willing to let the industry feel the consequences of it's destructive behaviour that it's been doing for years now. At this rate, no forcing is needed, it's going to happen. And, at the point where people are losing jobs, I don't think pointing the finger at someone on the Escapist forums is going to be the first thing many will do. They will look at their employers and ask, "why?".

It has nothing to do with the genre of games being released, it has a lot to do with the industry not producing whatever genre they wish to make in a reasonable, sustainable manner. Like the OP said, Tomb Raider shifts 5m copies and yet under performs. Dead Space 3 [a href="http://www.giantbomb.com/dead-space-3/3030-38270/forums/dead-space-3-needs-to-sell-5-million-units-to-be-v-550919/"]needed to shift 5m copies[/a] or EA would not consider continuing the franchise. What kind of things in development are haemorrhaging that much money? I believe there's a Jimquisition that makes a similar point, and that's my stance, too.

Perhaps the Captcha should be considered in relation to matters closer to home.

The only bit of control I'm content to hold in this industry is where my money goes as a consumer. So long as it's underpinned by a sense of sustainability and responsibility, I'm quite happy to let the industry go where the free market takes it, as it is ultimately defined by the consumer.

 

[Julius Terrell]

I was quite happy until the ps2 era ended. Back then there were still plenty of genres for everyone. Now NOTHING gets developed unless it sells a shit load of copies. I love my niche genres and I don't give a damn about the rest of the industry. The rest of the industry could go tomarrow, but I'll still have my music games. We're a community. We have a deep passion for our games. Too bad the suits at the top will never care about that stuff. The word community only means who's pockets run the deepest.

It's only a matter of time before another crash happens.

 

[ATRAYA]

All I ever asked for was a good story and competent gameplay. Everything else was the decision of higher ups who shouldn't have any say at all in game development, but do anyway because they have all the money.

Advertising takes up a massive amount of cash as well. Publishers need to learn that word of mouth, especially with the internet being used by most of their consumer base, is VERY effective if you make a good game. If developers make something they're really passionate about and the game has a mind-blowing story, you can bet your ass people are going to talk about it (ex., Bioshock: Infinite).

 

[mirage202]

They do it to themselves really. In the mad rush to increase the pixel count and individually rendered skin pores in the next QTE fest or CoD wannabe costs spiral. Why should we feel any sympathy for the industry that creates its own issues?

As far as I am concerned they have ignored "us" for so long, they lost any right to me feeling bad for them. If they would only take note at how popular the indie scene has gotten with all these lost genres then maybe, just maybe they could make a change.

I know I have personally played a large numbers of indies that I always think at the end "I'd love to see this redone, with a bit more attention to detail in the art department and the extra gameplay and features that a large dev studio could implement".

Won't happen as they are all too busy chasing CoD/WoW/LoL money and until they stop, I am out of fucks to give over a problem of their own doing.