Now That You're Done Firing Everyone...

[bakonslayer]

I really hope that a lot of this article is lightly [lovingly] stretched out of proportion, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have good points. There is fat to be cut and companies should only be cutting staff when they can't afford to cut anything else.

Like you said, hopefully the worst is behind us, because we are staggering right now.

 

[iamnotincompliance]

Lower your prices.

Agree, agree, agree. Like a few others here, the Steam sales at both Thanksgiving and Christmas proved to be quite the buying frenzy. Games whose demos were interesting, but not $50 interesting (Arkham Asylum) or $20 interesting (Trine) suddenly became interesting again at $25 and $10 respectively.

Stop spending so much on graphics.

Agree again. As I just said, I bought Trine. It looks nice in it's own way, sure, but it's certainly not "top of the line". No, I bought it because it played well, like a game should. I haven't even touched some of my purchases yet[footnote]Like Mirror's Edge. I figure even it's as bad as it's made out to be by some people, at least I only spent $5 on it.[/footnote], but Trine held my interest[footnote]I hesitate to use that word again, but it's way past late here, and my internal thesaurus in failing me.[/footnote] the whole way through. Arkham Asylum, not so much. Well, not yet anyway.

And, because bad movie lines deserve to live forever in infamy...

Don't abandon everything for casual gaming.

EA bought up casual game developer Playfish for $300 million. That's a lot of fish.

What can I say? I'm a sucker for stupid references. That, and massive game sales.

 

[Dhatz]

look at what XploreD games have released. (the games are also on crazymonkeygames) they took the concept of top down and adapted it not just copied like others do. and they make free games with signifficantly more effort than usual. the games change in every sequel. Dark Base is similliar to Dark Base 2(not identical), but Dark Base 3 is about doing military missions fro cash with rented guns and hired mercenaries, all of that selected by palyer(it ends the way that next game has to be different again). One thing that separated their games is that lot of 2D stuff is made from 3D models, so we can see it not only from top i.e. dead enemies fall almost realistically. they even freed their game Toxie Radd from interiors as well. That's like if new thing thing arena contained absolutely different stuff and got rid of old components. we all know that will never happen.

however they are learning on the way, which is visible on the Motel Conectin where all controls are spewed out on you before you actually can move!. and not all the games have ingame button to open controls tab(darkbase 2). motel connection has a very detailed guide by pressing "G", however if you skip all the introduction it is not reminded to you and you are lost. and the game is incrediblz complicated to learn. i have completelz died the first time.

about the prices: you are right, but they must make much much more copies, or at least it would be logical for modern warfare series. because if you run out of games to sell, you cut your profit.

 

[BlindChance]

Shamus, you forgot one.

With the money you save from spending less on graphics, hire a few writers. Good ones. Not Orson Scott Card. They cost less than technically astounding graphics, yet you'd be surprised how much they improve sales. Just ask Bioware.

 

[DemonicVixen]

Sorry, but when your advice is more or less "Stop being stupid!" then the chances of anyone actually following it are....slim at best.

Does that mean that im not the only one who isn't following it?

 

[Dogstile]

Lower your prices.

Really. Just try it. Put a new game out for $30 instead of $60 and see if you don't sell enough units to make up the difference. You are not the only industry with money troubles. Things are tough all over. Lots of people are broke. Wouldn't it be better to sell customers your game at half price than to sell them nothing at all for the full price?

That's a great idea, but:

Modern Warfare 2

Yeah. See, this is the best selling game of all time and it's the one game that was priced 60$ instead of 50$.
The only way consumers can dictate market prices is with their purchase decisions. Everyone hates Bobby Kotick for saying games should be more expensive instead of less and yet, everyone and their mum goes out and buys the more expensive game.

In his place, what would go through my mind is "Cool, they really like paying more! Any shred of humanity I had that made me slightly doubt my decision has been proven wrong!".

I just want to point out that the reason it sold so well in Britain (not so sure about other places) is because it was so damn cheap here. I'm talking about £25, a full £20 less than other games.

 

[whaleswiththumbs]

I'd like to bring back what i said about 5 EP ago

DEVELOPERS DO THIS!

 

[luckshot]

pretty much agree with everything in your article as always

-higher graphic levels means the customers must spend more on the computer/buy a new console. thus raising the price/lowering the value

-if i want to play bubble buster, ill play it as a free flash game...or maybe get it for my ds because its cheap, i would never pay more than $5 for "that" sort of game

-if they spent that $300 million...thats $300,000,000, by the way, on say a new ip of their own they could have easily saved money...ask the janitor for ideas

-the prices is what has been keeping me from getting new games, ill say "id like to try that....but not for $60/50/40". this tends to limit my gaming choices, even if i have a gift card

however i also bought several games over steam, that either are not on store shelves anymore or never were, or were on sale: mount & blade, silent hunter 3, borderlands,left 4 dead 2, dragon age. i have a friend who spent $50 on a package that included something like 15 games even if you take out the 4-5 he might never play thats still less than $10 a game

edit: also i did not buy MW2, nor will i....though i did play through it at a friends, in a single afternoon

 

[bjj hero]

I'm surprised there are not more rage killings at EA, to lay off so many people and then buy a company for $300 million is just callous. Those were real people with families and bills. Still, it keeps the share holders happy.

In 5 years time when the economy has bounced back there will be real problems getting talented staff on board. It is already well known how brutal working conditions can be for code monkeys et al. Who is going to aspire to join a developer with the current blood bath going on?

I'll stick with my job security, 37 hour week and 30 days holiday ervery year.

 

[The Rascal King]

You know, I hope they at least by now EA has fired the people who were responsible for Medal of Honor: Rising Sun. Then sent those responsible to the abandoned parts of Guantanamo Bay for routine lashing and forced sessions of playing their own abomination of a game.

 

[jimduckie]

it's the company 's fault if they keep putting crap out , buggy games , incomplete games or push games out every year when dlc would be easier ( ea games ) as for the prices , after the game has been out for a year , drop the fucking price and if you are charging 60 for a game like mw2 the first dlc should be free ... and put less into graphics and more to quality control

 

[veloper]

Great article.

300 million! Now EA can start make boring sequels to casual games too! hahaha.

 

[CustomMagnum]

- snip (too damn long) -

I forgot to mention my main point, and it goes thus: unlike, say, banking, entertainment industry is not purely financial. You can't run a publishing company with ONLY financial methods - you also have to understand what the fuck are you doing, have a basic idea of how entertainment industry works.

Launching a game or a film is not dependant only on good marketing and getting as much revenue as you can for as little investment as possible. But "big boys" seem not to understand that.

And amounts of marketing dudes employed by each and every corporation in existence are just redundant anyway.

While you do have a point in that publishing things means that you have to know what you're doing and what sells, that still doesn't counter my main point about who gets fired if a project doesn't turn out well. Again, the employees that have proven themselves in the past are more likely to not get fired when staff needs to get cut then the ones who's only projects are the game that was a massive flop that caused your company to lose lots of money. Even if the one's who have proven themselves are in marketing and the ones who haven't are in the programming end.

While Marketing isn't the only important part of the business of releasing games or movies, if the game or movie is good, but there's little to no marketing done on it, the game is NOT going to sell that well, especially when compared to games that are marketed the heck out of.

 

[TitsMcGee1804]

you are totally right about EA hoarding all the IP's

i will die a happy man if somebody made another dungeon keeper

 

[Nurb]

HEAR HEAR!

Sadly, none will heed the advice in "The Corporate Age of Gaming", so I guess we can look forward to releases like "War Game 36: The Prequel's Sequel" that are graphics engines with 'sure bet', risk-free, built-in-audience, poorly-written, mediocre mishmash catch-all of action-shooter-rpg-adventure-sandbox elements, unoriginal games attached as an afterthought

We need another video game collapse...

 

[kementari]

Shamus, you forgot one.

With the money you save from spending less on graphics, hire a few writers. Good ones. Not Orson Scott Card. They cost less than technically astounding graphics, yet you'd be surprised how much they improve sales. Just ask Bioware.

Word to this, except

Spoiler

the Bioware part, as they appear to have been on a downhill slope in terms of units sold ever since BG2, and I personally don't equate 50% of game-hours spent in dialogue cutaways "good writing", even if one or two characters occasionally has clever lines. Also, good voice-acting is not good writing.

In other news, Shamus, I'm sure I've criticized your opinions in the past, but I have to hand it to you - your articles have been my favorite part of coming to the Escapist for the last few months, and I'm one of that horde that originally just came here once a week for Yahtzee.

Keep up the good work.

 

[GodKlown]

And there is the one he missed. Stop making new engines for every game. Jesus if they work use them. I promise only a select few will notice or even care.

I completely agree there. How long were they using the Unreal 3 engine in a lot of games without much problem? The overall cost and design aspect of developing a new engine is just too time consuming to be realistic in today's market if you want to move a few new titles a year for a developer.

Mentioning Blizzard, they have become much too powerful in the MMO genre and I'm surprised with all the other companies trying to horn in on this action that no one has managed to unseat them from their throne... they are like the Poz of MMOs.

I highly dislike this new practice of upping the price of a video game that did not really cost the developer more money to make. Sure, I can appreciate the rising cost of things and whatnot, but with the recession "forcing" these large companies to do mass layoffs to stay profitable, doesn't it make more sense to cut corners elsewhere than in the manpower department? Games aren't going to create themselves (lest SkyNet takes over finally), so the all-too-important human factor hasn't gone completely by the wayside. Unless they have a pool full of dolphins to create ideas like the writers of Family Guy.

And how freakin' big is EA going to get before someone cries monopoly already?! Holy kristopher kross already, they are really becoming too big for their ambitions if they are buying up developers that make games for Facebook... in short order, I'll bet that ActiBlizzard will invest in Zynga, and then you'll get a subscription fee for applications on Facebook. Mark my words kids...

 

[FernoUMR]

More agreement on this side regarding lower prices. I'd been eyeing many games for the last year and a half; I finally picked up about 7 Wii games when prices went down near Christmas. I want to buy these games--I want to support the studios. But when I only have $80USD, I would rather support 5 than 2.

 

[Generalg28]

Game Informer states that commercialization increases game sales 3x more than good reviews. MW2 commercialized a lot.

Why the hell is Mucinex being advertised on the escapist?! Frickin snot people looking at me.