Schafer: Publishers Don't See "Financial Reward" in PC Games

[CrystalShadow]

Spoiler: other stuff

Don't you love Team Keyboard anymore?

Team Keyboard > Team Joypad

I should really make a shirt with that on.

Me to please.

And to Tim Schafer. Instead of removing the money from the jar just give poeple the contact details of the publisher who's decision it was and team keyboard can vent there instead.

And to publishers. Stop being so greedy. Out of the money it took to create a game for the 360 and PS3, the money to make it playable on the PC is hardly anything. Just becuase the PC does not give the billion figure returns you have come to expect on consoles does not mean it is not worth while. I think PC retunrs have stayed the same but when compared to the ever incrasing console returns they don't seem worth it, maybe the problem is you are actually not greedy enough.

Of course you can always challenge my assertions with figures, I'll be waiting.

Never could understand why the device with the biggest install base (not counting buisness machines) was such a tough sell. I think more pleople have a PC in thier homes than have consoles. I know there is a lot of overlap. And maybe a lot of those PC's are not powerfull enough, but still.

I've heard it said, (and my own calculations seem to bear this out), that the PC graphics hardware is too unpredictable.
Back when PC games were really common, the fastest PC in general use was about 10 times faster than the slowest.
Now, the fastest is 100 times the speed of the slowest.

As you can imagine, not many people own the fastest of these computers, because they really only serve the purpose of playing games. As a result, you either have to target the slowest computers, and leave the people that spent a small fortune on their gaming PC's with nothing that makes use of their expensive kit, or somehow devise a way to make the performance scale across two orders of magnitude...
Which really isn't a trivial undertaking, assuming you can do it at all without essentially creating multiple vaguely similar games.

Developing for PC is like trying to hit multiple fast-moving targets with a single arrow.
It's possible to do it in theory, but in practice it's very difficult to get right.

 

[ph0b0s123]

Don't you love Team Keyboard anymore?

Team Keyboard > Team Joypad

I should really make a shirt with that on.

How nice that one can connect a gamepad to PC and a keyboard to console.

How about

Team Mouse > Team Joypad

Don't know any current console that will take a mouse without extra hardware to 'sort of' make it work.

This I definately want on a t-shirt. And on the back it would say 'Actually joypads are also good, as on my game system I have the choice, how about on yours?' Or something which is not such a mouthful.

 

[V8 Ninja]

Team Keyboard > Team Joypad

Eh, I'd say "Team Keyboard >= Team Joypad".

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Team Keyboard > Team Joypad

Eh, I'd say "Team Keyboard >= Team Joypad".

Probably true, but it doesn't have the same Twiglet spoof value then.

 

[Therumancer]

Actually didn't Tim say there wasn't going to be a PC version of "Brutal Legend" pretty early on because it was being developed for consoles, and wouldn't work well on the PC? I'll have to see if I can did that up, because I'm pretty sure he said that, and it annoyed a lot of people at the time.

That said I do see the issue with publishers and the PC. We hear griping about it every time a piracy debate comes up. The bottom line though I think is that it's about greed, and the publishers probably figure that it's not worth the effort for the amount of profit, despite the fact that there will be profit, when the time being expended on the PC version could be invested on working on their new console product that will wind up making more money.

One of the problems with the corperate mentality running everything.

Economics 101: a firm must make at least normal profits in the long run. Normal profits is the return on investment that investors can safely make elsewhere. If a firm fails to make at least normal profits, investors realize their money would do better and they pull it out. In other words, if I can get at least 5% a year on soybeans or index funds or money markets or whatever, a firm which offers me a 4% return is NOT getting my money. Nor will anyone else sink in the cash.

Frankly, I invest after two considerations: 1) Am I happy with the risk/reward trade off with this firm? and 2) Is this firm doing something I have no objection to? I'm not going to take a smaller RoI just to make someone feel good about devs getting a product to market in a manner which does not generate the same returns as, say, putting it in an index fund or similar investment. Some of the money in my fund is in various companies that make games, but it's almost all console because those companies offer a better RoI.

When you put your own money in the market, you can go ahead and be the nice guy who pays for everyone else's boondoggles.

That's why Double Fine can't find publishers willing to release on the PC very often; they investors, the people who actually pony up the money, realize they can just do better somewhere else.

I understand what your saying, and your right, it's pretty much what I'm saying. I just summarize it more usually.

Markets are what you make of them, and simply put greed is destroying gaming. The idea of the industry was always to make money, but when you see everything being designed from the perspective of maximizing profits, then the products themselves begin to suffer due to a "design by committee" process, and entire markets are left to die because while profitable they aren't profitable enough.

I've said a lot on the subject over the years, as have people a lot more well spoken than me.

There are no easy solutions for it, but simply put greed and profits maximization are behind a lot of the problems that we have with the industry right now. Rarely does anyone get to make a game they want to make, when they know it can make a profit (ie seeing the return of the investment capitol, and interest, with some money in excess) when releasing another "by the numbers" FPS type game is liable to make even more money. With little innovation happening for this reason, the gaming industry has dug itself into a rut. Simply it allowed itself to become too much of a big business, and big business has never played well with creative industries.

 

[Charli]

...ilu Mr Schafer. Just sayin.

 

[crystalsnow]

Publishers also don't see a financial reward in being wholesome, moral humans that don't burn in direct sunlight. Because demonic dealings are more profitable. Duh.

 

[DonTsetsi]

Spoiler: other stuff

Don't you love Team Keyboard anymore?

Team Keyboard > Team Joypad

I should really make a shirt with that on.

Me to please.

And to Tim Schafer. Instead of removing the money from the jar just give poeple the contact details of the publisher who's decision it was and team keyboard can vent there instead.

And to publishers. Stop being so greedy. Out of the money it took to create a game for the 360 and PS3, the money to make it playable on the PC is hardly anything. Just becuase the PC does not give the billion figure returns you have come to expect on consoles does not mean it is not worth while. I think PC retunrs have stayed the same but when compared to the ever incrasing console returns they don't seem worth it, maybe the problem is you are actually not greedy enough.

Of course you can always challenge my assertions with figures, I'll be waiting.

Never could understand why the device with the biggest install base (not counting buisness machines) was such a tough sell. I think more pleople have a PC in thier homes than have consoles. I know there is a lot of overlap. And maybe a lot of those PC's are not powerfull enough, but still.

I've heard it said, (and my own calculations seem to bear this out), that the PC graphics hardware is too unpredictable.
Back when PC games were really common, the fastest PC in general use was about 10 times faster than the slowest.
Now, the fastest is 100 times the speed of the slowest.

As you can imagine, not many people own the fastest of these computers, because they really only serve the purpose of playing games. As a result, you either have to target the slowest computers, and leave the people that spent a small fortune on their gaming PC's with nothing that makes use of their expensive kit, or somehow devise a way to make the performance scale across two orders of magnitude...
Which really isn't a trivial undertaking, assuming you can do it at all without essentially creating multiple vaguely similar games.

Developing for PC is like trying to hit multiple fast-moving targets with a single arrow.
It's possible to do it in theory, but in practice it's very difficult to get right.

Well, some professions need a pretty powerful PC (any that have something to do with any kind of design or architecture, image editing, 3d modeling and animation, engineering, coding 3d applications, running simulations and others). That's why the cost of the PC doesn't factor in the cost of my gaming.
P.S. And the number of people needing a gaming-ready PC for their job is increasing.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Simply it allowed itself to become too much of a big business, and big business has never played well with creative industries.

I don't know, big business has done wonders for the creative output of Hollywood.


HAHAHAHAHAHA.... yeah, I'm lying.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

P.S. And the number of people needing a gaming-ready PC for their job is increasing.

That's not exactly true... It's just that a gaming ready PC is the cheaper alternative to having a purpose built workstation. Sure, you have to throw a lot more brute computing power at workstation applications when using a gaming PC to get equal results (it's a system architecture/hardware design purpose thing) but that brute computing power is still much cheaper. Hell, a lot of the time you can build a high end gaming system for the cost of a single workstation GPU.

 

[DeadlyYellow]

Don't you love Team Keyboard anymore?

Team Keyboard > Team Joypad

I can't help but consider the oddity of naming your respective loyalties after largely interchangeable devices.

It is bizarre. I still remember the rather confused disappointment when I learned there was no PC port for Red Dead Redemption.

 

[HentMas]

"Every time that happens it makes my eye twitch and I take a dollar out of the 'PC Port Fund' jar," he said.


Permalink

hahahahahahaha

OH BOY, that was the single most amazing and beautifull line ever said, i love Tim

 

[Estocavio]

If it werent for the fact his games were all substandard and unpopular, i might care.

 

[lacktheknack]

If it werent for the fact his games were all substandard and unpopular, i might care.

... Eh? Unpopular, yes, but his older stuff is legendary.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Don't let the knob hit you on the way out Tim.

Tell your publishers to call up Valve, Blizzard, and oh GSC and tell them you can't make money with PC games. Make sure to record the peals of laughter out of the other end of the headset.

GSC's STALKER is hugely popular in the former soviet republics that have a massive piracy rate. So successful that it justified the an engine just for the game and a 7 year development cycle, spawned 2 sequels with a 3rd in the works. All of those were PC exclusives.

Publishers, like most investors, know nothing about the industry they are putting their money in to, so the canned response is "what made money last year?" It is your job as a developer to make them dream big and bets wads of cash on experiments.

 

[Estocavio]

If it werent for the fact his games were all substandard and unpopular, i might care.

... Eh? Unpopular, yes, but his older stuff is legendary.

Oh dont get me wrong, i know. But he wasnt talking about his old stuff clearly, as they Were published on PC, and MAC OS incidentally. Brutal Legend and Costume Quest arent exactly groundbreaking in terms of popularity, so how is he getting so much attention for it?

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

He said it ! it's a conspiracy of entrepreneurs and Lobbies against PC gaming !

 

[SovietSecrets]

And thus we get stuck with ports like Black Ops for PC.

 

[Booze Zombie]

It's funny, because the PC is immensely popular and cheaper to publish on with digitally-acquired games not requiring any shipping or that other "physical",and should I note expensive, stuff weighing it down.