Obsidian: Forget "Gimmicks" Like On-Disc DLC

[Gunner 51]

Spoiler

It's a sentiment I can agree with: Make more satisfying classic games that people would be willing to pick up and enjoy again later, and you will see more hard-sales (and less trade-ins).
This logic works, so why aren't more Publishers adopting it?

Because the Publisher suits are (primarily) concerned with two things:

1) Profits (duh)
2) Market control (Or Controlling market behavior. YOUR behavior, specifically)

Profit-margins come first, and is the focus of their short-term strategy. Business 101.
While the publishers don't want their customers trading their games in (it exposes their revenue to the effects of arbitrage), they also don't want them content just playing those games unless they're willing to pay for it. (Enter: DLC).

So, the publishers will commission their developer minions to craft relatively short and flashy games: Good enough to remember so the inevitable sequel does well, but short enough to ensure it doesn't tread on other games they publish, especially the sequels and DLC for that franchise.
Call it "economic pacing" and know that it's a form of market conditioning.
By keeping their market share stuck in this loop, they can milk them for more cash. It's smart business.

This is why we don't get very many "Instant Classics" anymore from AAA gaming; only sequels and their DLC.

Tangentially: This is also, as I've come to realize, why there are so many Bethesda fanboys (who at this point have probably jizzed themselves dry. being this close to Skyrim's launch). As much as I hated my experiences with Oblivion and Fallout 3 (for technical reasons), those games are bloody HUGE and they lend themselves towards further expansion.

It's why you hear about people playing them to this day, yet nobody is going to spare a thought to Call of Duty 4.0; I mean, why bother with that game when you have Black Ops, and Modern Wankery 3 is just around the corner? But I digress...

Thus, things have changed: From the suits' perspective, they don't want "satisfied" customers anymore; they want "addicted" customers instead, because addicts are NEVER truly satisfied. Addicts will continue to spend and spend on the same regurgitated crap, year after year, sequel after sequel.

And that makes them more money in the long-term. "Satisfying" doesn't look so popular in comparison.

ASIDE: If you treat gaming (or any creative medium) purely as a business, then this is what you get: a stagnant factory-line stamping out sequel after sequel while demanding more and more of the player's money for the same stuff.

I cannot accept the oft-repeated "Capitalism/Profit" cop-out argument, because of this: From my perspective (and many other gamers') I just want some satisfaction and believe me, I'm willing to pay for it.
...But I'm not willing to get stuck in this dirty cycle of economic entrapment and psychological conditioning.

[sub]I will be shocked if anyone has the patience to read through that mess.[/sub]

I read all of your post and found it quite fascinating.

A good game worth it's money will keep a gamer happy for a while and out of the hands of another buyer. The trouble with gaming, it's a three sided affair.

Firstly, you get developers who see their games as art and will want to treat it as such.
Secondly, you get publishers who see the games as products and will screw anyone over for a quick profit and like you said, control over the market.
Thirdly, you get us fickle, fickle gamers who are slave to our emotions.

Personally, I think the publishers have FAR too much power over the development teams. They are also incredibly greedy, their line of thinking is - "can we cut that part out and sell it back later at a premium?" More often than not, the answer is sadly yes.

Games like Modern Warfare 2 or BLOPs have the greediest publishers in the entire medium (barring EA) and publish map-packs at grossly inflated prices and even increase the Recommended Retail Price simply for being a CoD game. Which is over in a flash compared to something like Oblivion. If I paid a premium price for a game, I would like to play a damned good or a decently lengthed game, or one with a ton of multiplayer maps.

As your asides has stated and indeed has come to pass, a lot of games are becoming "a stagnant factory-line stamping out sequel after sequel while demanding more and more of the player's money for the same stuff."

Cookie cutter games are sadly becoming par for the course and this troubles me as a gamer who remembers imagination being the primary driving force in games. Personally, I think games are art and to treat them like a product is disrepectful to the artists who made the game in first place.

Cloud gaming is coming, and the publishers will soon have their power taken from them by the developers they have royally shafted. Gaming will be hurt in the short term as a result of it, but when the developers get money directly from the gamers - the boot will be on the other foot.

 

[lord.jeff]

Whenever a company releases a statement like this I cant help but feel like it's nothing but a quick way to get on the consumers good side.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I read all of your post and found it quite fascinating.

I commend you on your patience. I had not intended to type that mountain of babel, but there it is.

A good game worth it's money will keep a gamer happy for a while and out of the hands of another buyer. The trouble with gaming, it's a three sided affair.

Firstly, you get developers who see their games as art and will want to treat it as such.
Secondly, you get publishers who see the games as products and will screw anyone over for a quick profit and like you said, control over the market.
Thirdly, you get us fickle, fickle gamers who are slave to our emotions.

That's a fair summary of it; ignoring some potential ambiguity in developers who think more like the publisher, and only see their work as the means to a paycheck.

Personally, I think the publishers have FAR too much power over the development teams. They are also incredibly greedy, their line of thinking is - "can we cut that part out and sell it back later at a premium?" More often than not, the answer is sadly yes.

In practice, that is ultimately what the publishers have become: Greedy Monopolists who have way too much control and influence over a creative medium; they're every bit as bad as Hollywood.
On paper, Publishers were a go-between entity that managed distribution, the finances and kept pressure on the developers to actually follow through with finishing their products (and with good reason, as history has shown *cough*Daikatana/DukeNukemForever*cough*).

But they've gone from being an essential service to the developers, to taskmaster and virtual owner of said developers. Most of the developers don't even control the Intellectual Property of the projects they're working on.

Call of Duty 4 changed developers due to the Infinity Ward debacle, and virtually nothing changed between iterations. That is how little control the developer has in this business. Small wonder there's so much stagnation: when someone completely different can butt-in and still set record sales just by copying and pasting your marketable formula.

This game of consolidation and stagnation cannot last forever; markets crash.

Cookie cutter games are sadly becoming par for the course and this troubles me as a gamer who remembers imagination being the primary driving force in games. Personally, I think games are art and to treat them like a product is disrepectful to the artists who made the game in first place.

And you lead into the next point.

...However, the publishers have augmented their methods not for the sake of making profits as a result of distributing good games, but selling "economic" mass-production games that exploit market control. The merits of the game pale in comparison to the merits of marketing.

Hence, my previous distinction between a "satisfied customer" and an "addict".
"Don't change the drug if they're already hooked. Just up the dosage."

Cloud gaming is coming, and the publishers will soon have their power taken from them by the developers they have royally shafted. Gaming will be hurt in the short term as a result of it, but when the developers get money directly from the gamers - the boot will be on the other foot.

This could come to pass, but there exists a very serious threat of publishers taking control of Cloud Gaming for themselves before the developers can regain control of it themselves.
They have the market clout to accomplish this, and like as not could force developers who do "self-publish" under such a distribution system out of the market through a number of strong-arm tactics.

To these publishers, they have the most to lose. They've already grown the market's boundaries to what it can feasibly sustain, so any new gains made by an individual publisher must come at the expense of someone else.

To make a long story short [sub](too late)[/sub]: The Publishers will force stagnation onto the market, and fight to keep their control tooth and nail.

It's already starting with the implementation of hard-line DRM systems (Origin, Battlenet 2.0), where the DRM isn't just meant to keep people from pirating/sharing the game, but to establish a monopoly on their players' behavior as well.
If you're on their system, they know you aren't on their competitors', and if they have to violate your privacy or force you into legal and/or economic entrapment, they will do so without a second thought.

The catch (for them) lies in two points:
1) Convincing their customers that it's "good" for them,
2) Recouping the massive investment of capital it takes to establish these systems in a timely manner.

If customers do not buy into these systems in their infancy, then publisher will have no choice but to cave to their customer's demands (due to investors pulling out) instead of the other way around.

But, as I've seen, they've convinced quite a number of people to gleefully throw away their rights, legal protection, and voice as a consumer for short-term "gain". And then they wonder why they have to jump through more and more hoops just to play a frigging video game.

Well, thanks for the reply. Hope this mess made sense.

 

[teisjm]

Correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't the DLC/activasion codes more a spawn of the publishers minds than the developers?

Big applause for a guy stepping up like that, but honestly, that's not supprising since he's from a development studio, made up of people who really want and like to make games like most dev studios.
The publishers on the other hand may not neccecerily care a whole lot for the games, since they're not making games, but just selling a product.
I'm not saying noone at publishing cares for games, but theres not the same foundation for lovign games and gameing as there are, at the developers. Just look at Bobby Kotick...

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

Ok, shameless plug coming.

I think "The Bastion", which for once I agree with the positive reviews on, is proof that even fairly small, tight, self-contained games can have endless replay value. Besides the multiple endings, it's great to replay the different areas with different combinations of weapons, idols, etc. It's just a great example of game design. You don't have to have the resources available for a game like "Fallout: NV" to make a game with endless replay value.

Extreme example: Solitaire...

 

[YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH]

I disagree, even with the best replay features, the average gamer is still just going to go through the story and then trade.

proof? example? anecdote?

 

[Baldr]

I disagree, even with the best replay features, the average gamer is still just going to go through the story and then trade.

proof? example? anecdote?

I did read the whole thread.

 

[punipunipyo]

the focus is all wrong!

If DLC is to make players "keep the game longer" to fight the "pawn", then they should be free, and new contents... not making people pay extra to unlock part of the package they have ALREADY paid for, but locked away...

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

regret renting Alpha Protocol, might buy it off Steam as a show of support

 

[Gunner 51]

Big snip

It was no problem to read through your post Atmos.
I cannot deny there are a few developers out there who see their artistry as nothing more than a paycheck, but I'm going to be optimistic and presume that they are a minority.

I agree that publishers are turning into the new Hollywood. But you were spot on when you said that publishers on paper are little more than investors and in practice, the developer's taskmasters and owners of their own artist's visions. This is immoral, and I think the publishers should stop screwing over their developement teams like this. Sadly, they're not going to do this so as long as the money keeps rolling in.

If a developer is smart and can get copy number one onto the cloud, they'll almost completely bypass any need for an external publisher. The only thing stopping this is publishers buying Intellectual Property rights, if the developers are smart enough to avoid selling out and manage to get their heads around digital distribution via the cloud, they're on Easy Street.

The publishers can try fighting this, but there's no court in the world who's going to be sympathetic to a well dressed bullying publisher who pleads poverty while shaking down the developers for their lunch money. But stagnating the market will only last until the next crash - once that crash happens, they'll have to downsize badly and it should be enough for devlopers to wiggle free of their grasp and start selling things via digital distribution independently.

Without a retailer or publisher inhibiting the creative process or taking a large share of the profits, they could sell the game for much cheaper and still make a massive profit. For gamer and the developer, it's a win-win situation.

DRM and DLC will still be around, but this time - I think the publishers will have a lot less say in the matter if they are still in the picture. Publishers will survive the cloud, but they will only be used in the capacity of investor. They'll still get a share of the profits, but it won't be the lion's share any more.

The Publisher's sun is slowly setting, all it takes is for one good developer to use the cloud well - and the rest of them will follow suit. Gamers have had enough of overpriced DLC and oppressive DRM, it'll only be a matter of time before gamers fight back with the cloud.

 

[Tel_Windzan]

While I guess some of what he says is true, wouldn't at some point in time the player would experience all that the game has to offer? Granted, I suppose this could take a while, if you are talking about games that take maybe 50 hours to complete, but I think there would eventually reach a point in the game that you really have nothing new to be had with the game.

The only way you could still keep a game on someone's shelf is if you were adding new content constantly and, judging by what Arquhart is saying, this might have to be enough content to be equivalent to an expansion pack for a game. While I guess this could be done, this would take a lot of time and effort on the developer's part to continue to work on a game after it has been release. This does work for some games, as I am a fan of Minecraft and Terraria, where the former will follow this type of updating once its official release and the latter has been doing this since it was officially available on Steam. So I guess if the company is willing to release new content constantly on their own, then I guess there is nothing wrong with that.

If the developers do not give new content, then my previous argument of eventually playing though all of the content in the game is still very much valid. Pretty much after that, the game to me becomes just like a book in that I would only pick it up again if I want to read the story again, but even then I can say that is questionable on how long that would keep my interest.

Also, there just might be player's who only are interested in one play though of the game, either because they didn't like the game, they do not really like to mess around with side quests and/or they just do not have the time to play though the game again. All of these are possible reasons I can see for why a person might return/trade in a game.