Of Three Types of Game Developers, Two Are Going Extinct

[GregRichardsonRumble]

Of Three Types of Game Developers, Two Are Going Extinct

A cautionary essay about what it will take to be successful in the new Digital World Order.

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[Clovus]

This seemed like a bit of nonsense really. Are all regularly priced games in the "Oldguard" category? The article makes it sound like only "free-to-play" games are the future, which is crazy. The only reasonable free-to-pay systems I know of are in multiplayer PVP (LoL, DOTA2, TF2). Free-to-play for single player games is amost always a problem since you can never get away from being asked for more money. There's hardly any immersion when you have to buy certain items with special money that you can buy with real money.

AAA gaming isn't going anywhere. Is it really shocking that sometimes big companies that are badly managed go under? There are plenty of AAA developers, just like there are plenty of blockbuster movies.

I wish free-to-play in the style of Zynga or "Candy Crush" would go away, but that probably won't happen for years.

Maybe I'm just missing the point here. Sure, free-to-play games should cater to their audience. They should be of good quality and not totally rip off their players. But, that's obvious, right? That's not some new era in gaming.

The whole thing seems predicated on the incorrect assumption that because a new group is making money in a new way, that means on old group can't continue to make money in the old way. It's like when you hear stuff like, "Consoles/PCs are dead since everyone will be playing games on their phone. Just look at the huge growth in mobile."

 

[TiberiusEsuriens]

I don't think the categories are quite so black-and-white as Greg describes. For instance, while there are certainly plenty of 'Old Guard' that are screwing themselves over by hiding behind sketchy marketing practices, there are plenty of new and old that have taken that single most vital step he stated to be relevant for a long time: interaction with fans through-out the development process. The two examples I think of off the top of my head are CD Projekt RED and Carbine Studios. The former has absolutely mastered the 'packaged goods' idea for many years, with no signs showing of slowing down with the upcoming Witcher 3. The latter is newly formed but consisting of many old veterans, and they have gained a strong fan base by using the tagline "The devs are listening" and actually following through with it.

'New Innovators' are not successful because they innovate (many have actually returned to REALLY OLD game styles, while others are all re-re-copying new trends) but because most are smaller studios and thus can be very personable. Illustrated by the 'Old Guys' I pointed out, it's not that the only way to be successful is to innovate, but that you be incredibly transparent, or at least honest, with your customers. Marketing departments can still exist, but the successful 'Old Guard' usually incorporate a large percentage of them to Community Management.

 

[Albino Boo]

Yeah AAA is dying the same way TV has killed off the summer blockbuster.

 

[RandV80]

The reliance upon the retail business model requires the consumer's upfront faith, and the only way the Old Guard has found to scale up the engagement of passionate fans is through forced scarcity: pre-orders, special releases, DLC season passes, collector's editions, etc. Since there's usually no ongoing dialogue with the customer as games are produced in this fashion, corporate investment is poured into market research, leaving the Old Guard stuck with best guesses and survey averages, rather than knowing exactly who their customers really are, how they are really playing the games, and the exact reasons and timing they choose to stop. Isolated development combined with three year or longer development cycles and budgets often eclipsing $100M all lead to reduced risk-taking and the virtual elimination of new intellectual properties.

While AAA are heavily reliant on stuff like focus groups, don't they also collect metric data from their games? How long you've played, what classes/skills/items/etc you used, when you stop playing, etc etc. Personally I'm not a fan of this as it can only homogenize the experience. A simple example, did Bethesda take into account that only some small x% of people used spears in Morrowind, so dropped the weapon class from Oblivion and Skyrim? That's kind of shitty. But anyways the point is that big developers do know a lot of this stuff. They may not exactly know why, but they have the raw data.

Personally I'm a big fan of the newer creative indy scene over the old corporate big developers, but unlike what he calls the "online opportunists" I can't see them going 'extinct' any time soon. Yes they're in a bit of a tight spot right now with a number having gone under already, but there's still billions of dollars to be made here. They just need to figure out how to make those billions without requiring a >= amount of $$$ creating and marketing the games.

 

[Clovus]

The current generation of gamers wants to play these great games across all of their devices, bringing the fun with them just as they do with books, music, and videos.

No, I don't. I don't want a game made for PC/console to also work on a tablet. I want to play games that take advantage of modern controllers or kb/m.

They don't want to fight a steep learning curve around UI and UX,

Yes, I do, although I'm not sure what "UX" is. I don't want to play games that I understand in five minutes. I want to play a game that is interesting.

and they don't want to spend hours downloading or installing a game.

If, by magic, you could make a great looking game immediately start, that would be nice, but I understand that all that cool stuff happening on my screen requires a little time to download. That's not really a problem.

They want them to be free to play

No, I don't. I want to pay a reasonable price for a complete product. I want to know that I'm supporting the developers of a game that I enjoy. I don't want to do this by buying a hat or some "gold" to imbalance the game. I don't want to have to continue paying more to see the rest of the game or overcome a grind.

and for whatever investment they make in game to be met with a corresponding increase in the fun they receive.

Nope, I'd rather pay once and have as much "fun" as I want. I'd also like games that are challenging or meaningful; gaming isn't solely about "fun".

 

[weirdee]

Criticism. "Wanting it all" is not the basis for many games, and also contributes to feature creep if it is not managed properly. The writer may consider replacing it with freedom of choice in game design, which is the closest thing I can come up with. Also, while free to play opens up opportunities which I will underline as POSSIBLE TO BE POSITIVE FOR PLAYERS if handled responsibly, these models are also very susceptible to the same types of abuse engendered by the previous two categories that are described. Additionally, baseline difficulty of accessing game interfaces will vary based on their systems, and are not a solid indicator of success if they are targeting a niche market with, say, a highly detailed flight sim, although efficiency in interface design should always be a factor. This extends to platform availability. While increasing the accessibility to the experience through wider platform distribution can reach more audience members, the platform itself also factors into the experience and may change it beyond initial recognition, so this may or may not be detrimental to what the developer wants to deliver, and should also be considered carefully instead of blanketing the market with subpar shoehorned products.

The new games are being led by folks who have honest expectations of their own capabilities, and specific intents for their creations, and the experiences that they want to create with them. The experiences that are delivered and distributed the most efficiently and effectively to the audience that they are designed for will be the most "successful" in terms of intent and profit, but the real "winner" must be the user (specifically by enriching their life experiences), as this is the intent of the medium, and will continue to be such, save for experimental projects which might introduce new, unexplored factors into the mix.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

You know though, the New Innovaters are missing something that the two others have. You know what that is? Capital. I hate to say it but it's all well and good to start talking about how the New Innovaters are the game development master race but without the money to back that up, they won't get very far.

The New Innovaters have to worry a lot more than the big publishers about whether their game they devoted a bunch of time and money into (money that they might very well have to borrow) will even get them to break even. If not, then they will be hurting. A lot.

 

[Nazrel]

This seems more like Rumble Entertainment's mission statement then an actual article.

 

[WashAran]

With new innovators I am guessing you mean the indies? The people that mostly ride on nostalgia? The people that are innovating by bringing back old gaming concepts? Yeah...

 

[AntiChrist]

Like I asked [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.836676-Respect-Your-Gamer#20508696] in regard to Johan Andersson's article last week: Is there a reason behind featuring these particular developers' take on the video game industry? Is there some context that I'm missing...?

 

[deathbydeath]

This article has made me not want to buy/play/put money into KingsRoad, congratulations. Anyways, the ginormous publishers aren't going away anytime soon, at least not while the world sticks with capitalism. Stop wanting them to go away, too. The whole "fuck the richest one percent of people" shtick got old halfway through the Occupy trend, and it's not like they have nothing to offer in the first place.

Why are you praising Riot for their strong community? I've heard nothing but disdain for the LoL masses. Also Nexon published Scarlet Blade with a straight face.

Mr. Richardson, by claiming that F2P/online games are the inevitable future of interactive entertainment and claiming to be an esteemed member of the innovative elite, you are acting just as ignorant, blind, and ridiculous as the companies you denounce.

Yeah AAA is dying the same way TV has killed off the summer blockbuster.

This, too.

 

[JonB]

Like I asked [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.836676-Respect-Your-Gamer#20508696] in regard to Johan Andersson's article last week: Is there a reason behind featuring these particular developers' take on the video game industry? Is there some context that I'm missing...?

We think it's interesting to see what the people making the games (and making the games happen) are thinking. I'm not sure that they're more right than anyone else, but they do have a unique insight that's not always shared outside the exclusive circles of themselves and other devs. I'd like to share that with you all. No more, no less.

 

[Ruzinus]

Even if it's coming from the little guy, this is basically advertising masquerading as an article.

There's something offensive about seeing this presented as if it were journalism.

If The Escapist is going to run this sort of material, why doesn't it open an Op. Ed section? That's where this stuff is valid.

 

[RandV80]

With new innovators I am guessing you mean the indies? The people that mostly ride on nostalgia? The people that are innovating by bringing back old gaming concepts? Yeah...

I'd say it's innovative if the 'old gaming concepts' have been long dropped/forgotten by mainstream publishers and the game adds something new. Like I've been playing Rogue Legacy recently, and despite the 16-bit like graphics and platform gameplay you won't find anything quite like it for the SNES.

Basically the big publishers have become experts in homogenizing the experience, indies are filling the gap for niche specialization. You talk about nostalgia like it's a bad thing, but there's a significant enough market out there for it to exist.

But I'm defending indy developers here, I don't think that's quite the same thing the article is talking about. After all from what I can tell at a quick glance they're pushing a FTP browser based diablo-like MMO.

 

[Vault Citizen]

I did find if to be an interesting article but when I got to the end and I saw it was written by a guy in charge of one of the places he said was so great it felt like the guy was trumpeting his own horn.

 

[weirdee]

addendum. isn't nexon kind of the poster child of companies that adopted, if not partially responsible for inventing, abusive monetization?

 

[AntiChrist]

Like I asked [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.836676-Respect-Your-Gamer#20508696] in regard to Johan Andersson's article last week: Is there a reason behind featuring these particular developers' take on the video game industry? Is there some context that I'm missing...?

We think it's interesting to see what the people making the games (and making the games happen) are thinking. I'm not sure that they're more right than anyone else, but they do have a unique insight that's not always shared outside the exclusive circles of themselves and other devs. I'd like to share that with you all. No more, no less.

Don't worry, I don't mind you featuring these articles. I'm okay with a media outlet dedicating both time and space to particular vocies that (in the outlet's opinion) deserve to be heard. In fact, if you guys weren't doing that, I'd argue that you weren't using your outlet to its fullest potential. The articles just appeared out of nowhere - I was merely beeing curious. =)

 

[BrotherRool]

There's always going to be a healthy amount of suspicion of any type of article that says 'there are three types of people in the world, and the two that aren't me suck'

...and yeah I don't know if I was really convinced beyond that. The categories seemed pretty fuzzy and more than a little loaded. Particularly with the online opportunists, it feels like you're defining a category by it's negative traits and then saying 'you know these pile of negative traits? They're bad.' I'm not convinced it would be a lot of help telling an Online Opportunist from a New Innovator.


I'm also not convinced that the Old Guard are going anywhere. These games sales only seem to be going up. We can afford for companies and studios to go bust because the ones that succeed, succeed so well that they can buy up and hire the people who were unsuccessful. Someone is going to make a return on their investment as long as people carry on buying AAA games, and I really believe they will. Even the hardcore indie lovers enjoy some Witcher or Battlefield every now and then.

The only argument the article really makes is that one studio went bust, a few others have been outcompeted (and even then Nintendo seem to be doing fine to me. It's a Wii game that's the bestselling game of all time, and Konami have had some hits too) by other studios which are doing better than before, and a couple are having financial troubles (Whilst others have a net profit of several billion every year). AAA games are dead in the same way blockbuster films are dead (another industry which spends 100's of millions on the risky chance of a hit, but seems to be doing fine)

 

[faefrost]

I suspect that the author is more than a bit biased in terms of his hypothesis. Hmmm? Anybody want to guess where he probably pictures his company on a list of the 3? I think its more a case of the Old Guard must evolve or slowly die. But the Old Guard isn't the 'Old Guard" without reason. In many cases they have done this before. and unlike the "New Inovator" the Old Guard has a huge degree of capital and resource backing them. They have the ability to change the rules of the game to some degree. Those entrenched deals with retailers, etc. Those only exist until they are no longer of a benefit to the more solidly capitalized old guard. And yeah some of them will die off as they are unable to adjust, or are too far extended to make the needed changes. I don't think we are in any danger of seeing Activision, EA or Nintendo go anywhere.

What happens is the succesful members of the "New Innovators" become new members of the Old Guard. It's that simple. Heck where does the author consider Valve on his list? How about Notch, who is now acting as a well capitalized games publisher?