I Told You So!

[ravinhood]

Well, I've been saying this for about 2 years now, finally some developers have heard "ME"! heh

http://www.gamespy.com/articles/596/596 ... ?fromint=1

Listen up Matrixgames, time for some NEW stuff, WWII is OLD! hehe Hurry up with Caesar

[Deride]

ravinhood,

Today, only about 12 games per year sell over 1MM copies each (and these are all console games.) For a typical AAA developer, they are looking at making 15% of net from retail sales. At a $50/unit basis, that means they will see around $6MM-7MM. The average cost to make a game is around $6MM today.

Can you image what is going to happen to the gaming industry when games cost $20MM each to make? Under today's model, your BEST games are going to LOSE $10MM for the developer. (However, they may make money for the publisher who is willing to spread gains from one game towards losses on other games.)

As Warren Specter said, the industry is in terrible shape. Frankly, I don't know how any independent development shop is going to be in business under that model. Only games from EA, Microsoft, Vivendi, etc. are going to be in business. And, they are not going to take any risks for new content or innovate game systems. Would you gamble $20MM on a project that you can't forecast your sales?

Deride

[Paul Vebber]

Valve and Bioware are making products available online for direct download, as is GameSpy's own Direct2Drive and others. All it'll take is a hit or two to make everyone turn their head and embrace new means of distribution.

We are ahead of the curve...

Selling games at retail is much about PR as it is selling games. In think in years to come there are a lot of ways to "turn the distribution system on its head". But its not going to come without change in the gmaing community of palyers as well. Games will incerasing by less about "buying a box with a thing it" and more about providing incentives to players to provide increased content and value for increased cost to them. I see the advent in the next 5-10 years of "pay you go" and "subscribtion" services. You will have "game products" but you will increasingly see game "services". My son is growing up in an world of Xbox live and Runescape.

I would love to see a "soution: to teh disparity between first person shooter players and "wargamers" as an environment where teh few "wargamers" direct teh operations of groups of FPS'ers. We are begining to see that sort of thing, but the architecture is all wrong, and leads to problems with campers and good players getting hosed by noobs.

People are going to have to understand that THEY are going to have to adapt to new methods fo distribution and new pricing and value structures. My son is already being inculcated into that way of thinking...Its that next generation of gamers who are going to push the envelope that way.

Anyway, the gaming future is "virtual" both in venue, distribution, and production. 20M$ a game will be unlikely - such things will tend to be too risky outside of highly choreographed and ubiquitously marketed tie ins to movies and TV.

We have a long way to go. But we have some good ideas moving forward! I frankly concur withthe guy who said retailing gaming SHOULD get nuked so somethig better can grow in its place. To much money involved in entrenched interests (NONE of whom are game design/developers) for that to happen any time soon.

[benpark]

The obvious analogy is to the Hollywood movie system-big budgets, big names, big production values. Somehow 90% of what they turn out is terrible and bland. Yet there are plenty of "independent" films that constantly raise the bar with new ideas and innovative methods of making-do. Just because the big money and production rules the theatres doesn't mean that they aren't shaken up constantly by the little guy.

[RUPD3658]

The rising cost of development seems to be due to the graphics. Unless you are into first person shooter type games (I am not) this is a cost that can be drasticly cut.

I don't care if the graphics look like the ones from 15 years ago as long as the game engine is better. War in the Pacific is great but I would have settled for PacWar style graphics if it meant the differnce between Matrix being able to afford to do it or not. [&o]

In effect I am saying cut the bells and whistles and just give me a good game. I will buy it.

If you want great graphics and games that are nothing more than a home arcade, borrow your kid's playstation.

[Hertston]

What the heck, lets plug one of my favourite "creative" games at present. Amazing stuff (and installs in 27MB !) if you want something a lot out of the ordinary.. and some nostalgia, too. [;)] There's a demo, only 12MB or so. Don't let the install size fool you - its worth every penny.

Darwinia

[ravinhood]

Would you gamble $20MM on a project that you can't forecast your sales?

First of all it doesn't take 6 million dollars to make a great game. Plenty of games from 95 to 2000 were great games and 1/2 the mbs of games today. You could make a $100,000 game and put in a $1,000,000 worth of advertising and probably do better. I've found some great games that got little or no advertising and they could have been great sellers with some good PR work and advertising.

I've suggested to Matrix to not only show their products at conventions but hire some PR people at some major city areas to goto local software outlets and offer onsite demonstrations of the game. I even offered my services for a few grand a year and a company car and my own private(s) secretary. [:D]

Coming from a business atmosphere for the majority of my life, advertising is big business nowadays one should put at least 2% of their profits back into advertising if not more. I can sell you a can of worms if you give me the right advertising backing to go along with it, let me give demonstrations of how catfish love my worms over the next guys worms. [:D]

Your consumers out there aren't really thinking like developers and publishers are thinking, the consumer is looking for the best quality at the best price, but, in most cases price will always win out along with quantity.

Why is there a need to push for state of the art graphics, when the meat of the game is old? One could make a new and innovating game with 5 year old graphics and do better than some out there. I'll give Spartan as an example here. There's nothing really state of the art with that game, but, the gameplay is fun, the AI is challenging and there's a multiplayer feature that other games like this don't have (the total war series). Did Spartan cost 6mil to make? I hardly think so.

What has happened are developers have raced against one another to produce the latest greatest "looking" game at a cost of millions, attempting to compete with themselves and have priced themselves right out of the market, good, I'm glad, they deserve it for not thinking about the "consumer". I don't know of many people that can afford to rush out and buy a new $400 video card and upgrade their computer on the fly.

Many people I know have computers 3 to 5 years old and cannot afford to upgrade anything. Trying to stay up with Nvidia and ATI is causing much of their issues. The market size is declining because of costs to upgrade, not so much the cost of the games. By and by a console is the cheaper route to go in video gaming, because for approx 5 years that console will get games that will work on it, can't say that for the PC without major upgrades in many areas.

It's like was said at that meeting, when designers and developers go back to the garages again and make their games as they can, then the profits will come, but, selling out to big business over the years by many of these great designers and developers has led to where we are today. They now work under sweat factory conditions. They let their "hobby" turn into visions of grandeur that like most visions of such end up being just that, a vision with horrible outcomes. I support Schwerpunkt, mainly because they are an independent and I know they are taking their sweet time about producing a quality game, and also at a very resonable price of $29.99, now to me that is "value for my money". It may not have the perfect graphics, or UI, may not even have a great AI, but, it doesn't have to have any of that as long as it is challenging to play.

I feel people buy most of their games to be challenged, to tickle their grey matter, this for soloists of course, other people that are multiplayers play games for competition, I wonder how many would say GRAPHICS is the MOST IMPORTANT aspect of a game when they buy it?

I also feel what people don't want and it's pretty obvious if you read around several forums is "repeats" of the same old recent titles and same ole type of gameplay. Hell I've stated I'd buy an updated version of RoadWar 2000, mainly just to have it again that works on my latest computer that I've had to upgrade to be able to play these same ole games. Well that old dog don't bark anymore and I'm no longer going to do that either. Taking HOI and HOI 2 for example here, it's HOI nook crook and bounty, it's the same overall game that HOI is, with some refined gameplay and a few extra provinces, but, overall tit for tat it is merely HOI upgraded. I and many others are just not going to pay retail price for the same games anymore and I'm glad it's growing and too bad if companies fall because they don't want to take chances, if they can't make it in the big business world then well the garage is where they belong making games, if that's what they like to do as a "hobby".

I'm waiting with mouth agape and tongue hanging out for Master of Magic remake by the makers of Galactic Civilization. I don't mind buying a remake of a game if it's 10 or 15 years old, it's these games that come out every year or every other year of the same damn games. That's just milking the donkey to me.

At least Mr. Wright has the right idea, he's creating something new called SPORES and it sounds fantastic, a very godlike game and it sounds like its going to have unlimited content because the players create the content and not the designers, they merely give us the tools to do so, I've said this in another thread, we need more "construction set" type games and let us gamers use our own creative imaginations to create more content. "Wargame Contruction Set 2005" anyone?

The other thing I see is back in the 80's and early 90's there wasn't a glut of designers and developers and publishers, now just like every other business venture out there, there is a glut and the consumer base is not large enough to support them all, not at 20 million dollars a pop. So, they are either going to have to stick to a base price for the movie or go out of business, simple as that. Then they can go back to making moonshine in their backyards/garages again.

Trying to turn a "hobby" into big business was a mistake in my eyes. When it was a hobbist type game they were much more fun, had much more content and we all survived the graphics of them. I wonder how much Richart Garriot made off of the early ULTIMA series? Remember it, pure stickmen, 16 colors if that, some good music though, I still like the Ultima III & IV music, but, those games had meat my friend, lots of meat, I was just as immersed playing those if not moreso than playing Baldurs Gate or NWN's of today. Sometimes too much is too much, too much eye candy, too many frills and designers and developers forget about how much a consumer can take. None of the games today are any better than the games of yesterday, except for one thing and one thing only. GRAPHICS. For me DOOM origional is just as much fun as DOOM III, only the graphics makes any difference and it's not that important, mainly because my system will run DOOM origional much better than DOOM III, heh. See what I mean? Having to upgrade to play a silly game is rediculous and I and now I'm sure many others, just aren't going to do it.

I feel the independents can make money in this industry, but, they have to be realistic and realize they are not going to get rich doing so, not unless they discover something new and innovating that will knock peoples sox off like the ULTIMA series did in the 80's. Well up to about Ultima V anyways, that's when I started to feel it was getting old. Had nothing to do with the graphics, but, if you recall when ultima VI came out there was a big graphics change, but, I was tired of the "series" so the graphics didn't make a hill of beans to me.

BTW I can't wait for Ceasar you guys are making, is that going to cost you 6mil?

[Deride]

ORIGINAL: ravinhood
First of all it doesn't take 6 million dollars to make a great game.

Ravinhood,

There are basically two types of games being developed now-a-days: console and PC-only. To get your feet wet in the console space, you have to spend $6MM or more. (Again, many AVERAGES I have seen put the console costs at $8MM.) So, let's just focus on PC gaming, then.

Last year, the PC gaming market went from $1.7BB to $1.1BB. That marketplace is still dominated by the AAA games such as AoE, AoM, RON, EA Sports, Halo, HL2, DAOC, EQ1/2, WoW, R:TW, etc. So, you are looking at an even smaller segment of that marketplace.

For a consumer willing to purchase a game at $50, you basically now have two camps: casual, mainstream players and niche, hard-core players. The fist segment will pretty much only buy AAA titles. And, they are going to be buying fewer and fewer of these since stores such as GameStop or EB are barely stocking PC games now.

So, we have an even smaller segment -- the hard core, PC gaming only, niche wargamer.

As a developer, I have to budget for the following things: 1) cost of development of the game, 2) cost of support for the game, 3) cost of content updates/patches to the game, 4) general and administrative costs and 5) % of gross that I am going to give up for publisher, distribution, retail, sales & marketing, etc.

1) Cost of development -- for a decent wargame, you are looking at 5 or so man years of development. At a low-end cost of $35k per resource, that means your development costs start at $175k for the game.

2) Cost of support -- when a game comes out, you are going to see support needs from your user base. This will extend into the future and takes time away from development. In addition, you have likely gone through beta testing of the game, and you need to spend time answering questions, responding to issues and making decisions on what to do. All-in-all, I would expect a 2-3 month beta test and a 3 month level of effort for support. Let's put that at 1/2 man year -- resulting in $17,500.

3) If you are going to be providing any type of patch, content update, etc. that is going to continue costing you time and money. For this example, I'll just assume you don't put a dime into this.

4) Your G&A costs for development can be capitalized across your efforts. But, reasonablly, you are going to need graphics programs (Photoshop $750, 3DS Max, $3,000), development tools (VS.NET $1,500) and misc. support tools (QuickBooks $700, Microsoft Office $1,000) Depending on your team size, this cost varies, but I would put the total amount around $10,000. Plus, add another $10k for hardware.

5) As a developer, you are not going to see money from the gross sales of a product. I won't give away any private information here, so, isntead, I'm going to use statistics from IGDA on what a developer could see for royalties. That number is about 25% of net.

So, my total cost of development/support is going to be in the neighborhood of $225,000 with a take of 25% of net sales. If the game retails for $40, net sales in a retail model is going to be about $22.50 per copy. So, the developer will get around $6 per copy. That means, I need to sell about 37,500 copies just to break even. (And this is assuming that I'm paying all my resources hobbist level dollars!) And, of course, these sales are going to take over a year to achieve, and you had to spend your money up front and continue paying your resources for development of future games -- or be forced to close the shop and take regular jobs.

BTW, based on the same publically available statistics, in the PC marketspace last year, only 3 games sold more than 400,000 copies and only about 15 games sold more than 100,000 copies. And, these are AAA titles! Based on our knowledge of the industry, niche games that sell 5,000 plus copies are "successful." So, 37,500 for a niche game is not easy to achieve.

ORIGINAL: ravinhood
BTW I can't wait for Ceasar you guys are making, is that going to cost you 6mil?

Of course Caesar is nowhere near $6MM. But, the example above is a LOWER approximation of our real costs.

Deride

[mbelew]

I didn't go to this year's GDC, but it sounds like Indie games were a hot topic. Check out the Independent Games Festival finalists for this year (one of them had a budget of 1.3 million dollars).

http://www.igf.com/2005entrants.shtml

[ravinhood]

That's why I said Deride when hobbyists moved to making a living from developing games that's was the beginning of the end. The maker of Schwerpunkt games doesn't have the overhead you are designing, from my understanding he has a regular job and programs games as a "hobby".

Of course back in the 80's games didn't take near the costs you are suggesting, because profits were seen at a sales of 10,000 copies.

Costs go up because some developers attempt to keep up with the JONEes, when they should stick within a budget they know they can afford.

Also, why not pool those resources required with other independents and share the costs? Or is what you are describing merely license fees that you must spend?

Why not create an independents designers/developers "union" and pool resources needed out to one another without each independent having to purchase those same resources or licenses independently? Independents could create their own company if they would all "stick together" and "work together" as a union for the betterment of themselves and the industry. I sort of felt that is what Matrixgames is in the first place, a great place for independents to get their titles seen and produced. Of course I'm not an insider to see all the workings of Matrixgames. But, I still feel an independents union is the answer. If you want to get out from under the blue suits collars, then you have to start working together with each other instead of competitively against one another like the AAA industries are doing.

Everything in life eventually leads to the almighty $$, both for you guys and everyone involved with getting your product to the consumer, then also the consumer must determine if the costs and the product are worth their consumption. Feeding someone milk and cookies on a daily basis just gets old. I mean I myself am getting pretty sick of WWII titles and RTS/FPS games alike. It's one reason I look forward to Caesar out of you guys. It's "different", there's not much out there of that era, I don't even count Age of Empires in the same light, all I saw out of AOE was RTS clickfest, hardly any historical value or the kind of gaming out of that era I am looking for. Same goes for RTW, great game to some, horrible to me. I think your Caesar will hit the nail on the head for what I am looking for, a thinking mans game and not a kiddie clickfest.

I see the decline in AAA titles just as much as the next guy and the reason why is pretty simular to my own statements. We are getting tired of the same ole same ole. Many have pushed graphics update down our throats with little or no difference inbetween game sequel and same game other than the graphics. That's the biggest beef I'm reading around the forums. The other is buggy and faulty games out of the box as I stated and have stated many times before and the no refund/no return policy in a lot of situations. The other thing, I'm sure more likely to give my child $30 for a game than I am $50, $60 and $80. So pricing makes as much difference as anything else.

When I was in retail management, I tried like hell to get upper management to price items without having to price match items with other competitors. People and myself included don't really like this "price matching" policy. You don't know how many times I heard "you should just have reasonable prices to begin with" out of customers. Well eventually this business went out of business because they continued to raise prices and expected, even projected more income each and every year. I have never agreed with that policy, you just cannot expect and project increased sales every damn year, economies change, peoples buying habits change, and yes, even peoples wages change. Lord knows I put in enough hours over 40 that my own wages sometimes weren't as much as some regular time employees.

Gaming is a hobby, it is an entertainment outlet, but, I just don't see it as a "necessity" of life. Not like repairing ones house, buying new appliances, etc. etc. That's the difference in this gaming industry as a whole. It's not "required" for a consumers lifestyle, it's merely an outlet for entertainment. Computer and console gaming is a fad, it's something that has been around awhile, but, I feel it has reached it's uphoria, it's reached it's peak and it's getting dull and boring as it hasn't really done anything that exciting in the past 5 years as far as I'm concerned except beef up the graphics. Hardly worth my money in many cases.

I used to spend $50 a month as a gaming habit from the early 80's to about mid 90's. Then I had a family and wife and kids and other life situations that took much of my gaming time and money away. Now, if I buy two retail games a year I feel lucky. If I find two retail games I like a year I feel even luckier. I can't be the only one that fits now into this type of gaming lifestyle.

One things for sure, probably on both sides of the fence, you can't expect the consumer to be concerned over a developers or designers or publishers survival, just like I'm sure the developers, designers and publishers feel the same way about a consumer. We are all trying to survive, but, as I see it, the developers, designers and publishers need US more than we need them.

[wodin]

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

I mean I myself am getting pretty sick of WWII titles and RTS/FPS games alike. It's one reason I look forward to Caesar out of you guys. It's "different", there's not much out there of that era, I don't even count Age of Empires in the same light, all I saw out of AOE was RTS clickfest, hardly any historical value or the kind of gaming out of that era I am looking for. Same goes for RTW, great game to some, horrible to me. I think your Caesar will hit the nail on the head for what I am looking for, a thinking mans game and not a kiddie clickfest.

My thoughts exactly. I'm amazed at how many people who like these games frequent a certian forum which is supposed to be for Wargamers. Not so long ago I'm sure that wasn't the case. Still horses for courses. Only two games that are RTS ever come to mind as all out wargames, we know what they are.