Core casualties
For whatever reason, my post on core gamers and what sort of landscape they face seems to have resonated with a lot of folks, or least caused a fair amount of controversy — but in like six different ways at once. The issue of what casual is, and whether that market is serviced and whether developers are listening to that type of player, and so on, is a large and complex one; and microtransactions, whoo! — so I am going to answer a different set of comments first. 🙂
One of the threads has been “why should we think of core games as being in jeopardy?”
Matt Peckham at PC World used wargames as a contrarian example:
So while I half get what Koster is arguing here (just like I half got what he was saying when he argued games for introverts are ipso facto doomed) I think he places too much value on gaming’s production metrics and too little value on the tenacity of by-niche-gamer-for-niche-gamer studios or groups of developers who’ll never swallow the notion that mass attraction equals mass satisfaction.
I actually think wargames fit my arguments quite well. Wargames today do not get the AAA budgets, though they once did. The net audience is probably somewhat smaller, but not significantly so — it’s just that where they once represented a large share of the overall computer game market, now they do not. They are never going to go away — there will always be some made, and there will always be a fiercely devoted audience who plays them. Given that they are fiercely passionate, they probably could be monetized more, but they aren’t. The picture for wargamers looks fairly rosy, except that perhaps there are fewer being made than in their heyday.
But wargames are not on the hopelessly steep budget curve that core games are. If wargames cost ten times to make than they used to, we would be seeing a different wargaming market. Wargamers passed through the hump I am describing.
The issue is, in large part, that core games are defined by production values right now, and it’s part of what core gamers expect. Michelle D’israeli in the comments states
We have become locked into this view of being a genre, of meaning seven hours of gameplay priced at £40.
She goes on to say.
The big point here is that films still exist, despite the other forms of visual non-interactive recording. And even with their competition from other mediums, we still have blockbuster films each and every year, and audiences have not seemed to decrease. Production quality of television shows has markedly increased even in just the last decade, yet movies are thriving. Similarly, games will adapt, change, cost less and be more casual, but we will still have blockbusters. The easy money for blockbuster games might dry up, and the industry’s sales methods may change, but the supply of blockbuster and other film-like games certainly will not.
Film is not a good analogy for a number of reasons. For one thing, the subsidiary markets for films are vastly different. A film has an earnings lifespan measured in decades; a game, only a few years. A film invites repeated watching, and a blockbuster games do not to the same degree. The end result is that the lfietime earnings curve for a film is hugely different. This will enter into the calculus of whether it makes sense to make a given blockbuster.
Another point made in the comments, by Leo, makes me think that this basic calculus isn’t understood clearly enough.
There’s going to be more tolerance for niche markets and large budget titles like Halo aren’t going anywhere because the hardcore gamer won’t die out and these things are fun as hell to play. Just because a market is niche doesn’t mean you can’t be successful in it. Case-in-point: EVE online.
Let’s start with some basic premises: only around 1 in 10 games will hit, earn out, result in a significantly worthwhile business venture. It’s a generalization, and not really completely accurate, but worth using as a yardstick.
If you have $100m to spend, you can make $1m “light” games and $25m “core” games. Obviously, doing only core has a high likelihood of not having any “good” ones in the batch. So you do portfolio planning. 2 core games and 50 light games? That means that in a given year, you have low odds a core game will hit, but you will probably have 5 lighter games that do. Oh, when a core game hits, sure, you hit a jackpot, because the earning power of the core game is higher. You plan on one of those every five years, under this simplistic model.
This works fine. Then we double the costs: core is now $50m and light is now $2m. You can make one core game and 25 light ones. Now you have ten years between hit core games, and you have 2 1/2 hit light games… do you make core games, or do you instead chase the 5 hits from light games?
Obviously, this is a highly reductionist model. Costs exist at all points of spectrum, and so do earnings (there’s light games that have made insane amount of money). So sure, an EVE Online can, and will exist. But it may not exist from a major studio, and it won’t get enough money first pass to launch with avatars, and it won’t get the kind of marketing and other bells and whistles that an AAA game would.
Swatjester, arguing the value of the core gamers, says,
Casual gamers are a one time cash influx because they play the game a few times and then quit. They don’t conduct microtransactions. They don’t buy expansions and strategy guides. They don’t attend fan events and cons, and spend hundreds of dollars on limited edition items, or hundreds on a con just so they can get a coupon for a free in game item. Hardcore gamers do that. Hardcore gamers are the ones that will keep a game going for months and months. Hardcore gamers buy everything they can, stretching their cashflow to the limit because games are what they care about. Hardcore gamers are the ones that preorder games. Hardcore gamers are the ones that really drive the industry and no amount of fearmongering is going to change that.
You are absolutely right. The path to the mass market lies through the core. Less committed gamers buy stuff in large part based on the recommendations of their core gamer friends.
The difference, I think, is that we are starting to see the rise of another core, one that doesn’t demand the same production values and high budgets. There’s a new sort of core gamer in town: the core casual gamer. (This is why these terms are so freakin’ useless). One can be “hardcore” in anything — including light games. People who knit Katamari hats are not casual.
Moroagh questions several of my statements — is, or was, PC the most core? Are RPG lengths actually in decline? And what about the growth in other PC segments?
The PC market has traditionally been primarily to “core” gamers. The genres that did the best on that platform were aimed at hobbyists, while consoles were seen as the bastion of “kid games” and “family games.” PC gaming demands high investment in hardware, which limits it to hobbyists, usually. This has changed a lot over the years. Today, the core PC gaming segment has declined to the point where the top ten chart, as I posted a week ago, shows only one non-MMO title on it. That isn’t because the MMOs are doing spectacularly — some aren’t. It’s because the sales of PC titles at retail suck.
Yes, there’s a huge and rising market in PC gaming that isn’t based on that core hobbyist audience. That’s because a lot of that audience moved to consoles.
What’s an RPG that is 8 hours? It’s called Bioshock. It’s a linear RPG with streamlined stats — the modern face of where the genre is going. The rare ones these days are the ones like Witcher and Mass Effect — we currently get two of these a year. This is way down from the peak production of RPGs, and we have in fact seen the AAA studios who specialized in this style of game dwindle until now there’s basically only one: Bioware. There’s a reason why the sleeper RPG hit is Eschalon Book 1, an indie game written in BlitzBasic — the market simply isn’t being serviced.
The bottom line: games will always be made for hobbyists. But they won’t be made to the tune of tens of millions of dollars unless
- hobbyists pony up to cover the costs and supply a profit, or
- they aren’t just for hobbyists
If they’re not made for tens of millions, then the hobbyists need to stop defining the “good game” as the one with highly flashy graphics and huge amounts of content. Because the dev budget simply won’t buy that for them. And currently, that is what the core market is.
52 Responses to “Core casualties”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
It will be sad if the likes of The Witcher, Mass Effect, NWN, and other … “complex”(?) or “deep”(?) games are never seen again, or that they are never given more than basic treatment by enthusiastic developers lacking the resources to do a “proper” job of it.
I see the core types of RPG games (and others, for that matter) disappearing if not for the regular “Hollywood-budget” titles. I realize the casual or non-core gamer is the target audience du jour, but loss of core gamers is a loss of the voice(s) that raised gaming to the point that this new audience is even interested. And that would be a shame, I think.
I don’t see why a successful $2m game couldn’t span to a $20m core game. If you look at the games Raph’s been discussing that have seemingly emerged from nowhere, and now have millions of players, many of those started out as small operations but now have enough money to fund “core” development based on the theming of the small-budget wonder.
It can span — Eve is probably a good example. But That only works for online ones, not say, console titles. 🙂
Agreed for the present. But if we’re looking long-term, do you think this will always be the case? Long-term revenue stream don’t seem possible while technology is changing every 3-5 years, but if the technology side ever does settle down, it seems like games would then be able to solidify long-term revenue streams. If there’s money there, someone will find a way. Even now, downloadable games are starting to hint at potential for milking revenue out of older games.
Overall, I agree that there are many places where casual is likely to eclipse hardcore, but I think long-term there may be hope for a central game industry where the two can get along.
My favorite computer game of all time was a called Independence War. One of the few space combat games that used “real physics” in the combat, meaning it wasn’t a flight simulator set in space like TIE fighter or other’s in the genre. Later its sequel came out with incredible graphics, truly stunning visuals and the music was great too. The problem was they had dumbed down the game play to the point were it was almost unrecognizable as a sequel to the original.
Do you think that graphics becoming the main focus of AAA titles has slowed development in areas such as story, AI, and core game mechanics? Will the prohibitive expense of making games look good force developers to work more on these once neglected areas as a way to differentiate their titles from the competition?
Brookston wrote:
Yes.
I think the case in point is that most hardcore gamers want good AAA titles since they tend to be better quality then casual web games. In my experience casual gamers tend to only remain casual until they find a AAA title they like.
Just wait until Nintendo gets off its butt and makes a Pokemon based MMO and kills every Neopets clone. Another example is the large amount of people I know who have switched over from Runescape to World of Warcraft. While some of them have left for LOTR or Guild Wars none of them have returned back to Runescape. And usually people return to their first MMO a couple of times for remembrance sake.
While I think micro transactions and casual web based games will see a sharp increase in the next 3-4 years I think it will be short lived. As gaming becomes more casual and swells the overall numbers, more and more players will start to display the characteristics of what we call hardcore gamers. Within 10 years I think the market for casual games will become restricted to only the few kids who are dependent on non-gaming parents to pay for their games.
At the risk of sounding like a biz school prof [it’s unavoidable] I’d like you to elaborate on something. Your focus seems to be on the lower production costs of light games while assuming the same probability of success for light and deep games. My economist friends would likely argue that the the lower production costs of light games make for lower entry barriers … there will be a proliferation of light games which compete against one another and as a consequence average profitability will go down as will the likelihood of success. Does that [will that] affect where the gaming world goes?
Relmstein, I believe that something akin to that was my conclusion in the original post. 🙂 I think you are wrong about the total conversion to hardcore, though. That’s not my experience at all.
Tom, tech doesn’t seem to be slowing down — if anything, we can expect it to accelerate faster than the industry can keep up with!
tech is definitely not slowing down– in fact I agree with you Raph in that it is still building speed. Micro-transactions are hugely on the rise and the MMO enviroment is wide open, which sits in with your comments about Eschalon Book 1. Raph Im curious to know what you think about this product…..
http://dualscreen.com/
Tavis
I don’t quite agree with your marketing math/reasoning:
If a game developer has $100M to spend, at an extreme, they can make 100 games for $1M or 1 game for $100M.
Any corporation would LOVE to go for 100 games for $1M because that many games negates any probabilities and ends up producing a predictable income… which is good for the stock price.
However, the average net return for $1M games is lower than the average net return for $100M games (as a percentage of investment). Basically, safe bets (cheap games) are commodities and make no money.
So, a company is between a rock and hard place: Producing 100 games is safe, but inevitably profitless. Producing 1 game is highly risky, but statistically profitable (assuming you don’t go bankrupt fist).
Raph, to more claims of yours:
Claim 1:
Also give me one year that seriously had more than 2-4 Witcher-grade titles that year. It’s an atypical year when Gothic, Elder Scroll and Neverwinter Night releases overlap. Gothic 3, Oblivion and NWN2, that’s 3 for 2006, Gothic 2 and Morrowind didn’t even come out the same year (2003 and 2002 respectively). I don’t recall 2004 and 2005 being all that particularly “hot” in terms of RPG titles.
Or are you talking 1985 Bard’s Tale times? Even then I can’t remember being flooded with RPGs back when. Or Ultima offline times, there weren’t that many RPGs around then either.
This too misses, that WoW is RPG, LoTRo is RPG, and most other running MMOs are RPG in one way or another. The two most prominent upcoming MMOs are RPGs.
And yes if you don’t allow for Tabula Rasa to be the modern day SW-KotoR, something got lost.
If anything I see the RPG genre as one of the most healthy ones out there! And I’m a huge fan of the genre and would be worried if I thought otherwise.
See I’m a long time gamer who loves the genre, I can’t follow your claim because it doesn’t match my experience over many years.
Claim 2:
Of course those who care about the genre know that deep future titles are in the making, and we can expect to see continued Gothics and Elder Scrolls and Witchers. And the Warhammers and the AoCs and the WotLKs. And none of these are even by BioWare the supposed only place around to make stuff like this at high quality!
Claim 3:
BioShock doesn’t take 8 hours, but it’s a neat way to stir controversy some more. Because 15-20 hours sounds less than half as scary (that’s PC Gamer’s review game-time, which matches my own experience and matches what I have read around as typical play.) And that’s if a core player absolutely insisted on playing it on easy and didn’t play it for a second ending. But quoting the extreme is great for extra scare value I might add.
The game was announced as 20 hours of gameplay. I consider this a fair announcement.
And BioShock isn’t even a typical RPG title to begin with but comes out of a FPS sector where single player campaigns have a history of being shortish. Even if you allow it in the RPG genre it’s the exception to the rule not the mainstream example to a trend.
Claim 4:
As for PC retail numbers, you know that the US PC retail market actually grew slightly in 2006 via NPD (excluding digital download sales and of course all the subscription earnings and any alternate business models/nonretail gaming). And if we want tractable comparison we do have to wait for NPD’s 2007 numbers and not take a single web-sites numbers as the end all.
The gamestop results in no way allow the interpretation that the PC game market sucks! It may be reflecting the bias of its particular customer base rather than the whole market.
Couldn’t it well be that people with online access bias their buying habits to online games? Couldn’t it be that gamestop’s particular front page ad strategy biases their own sale numbers in a way that isn’t representative? The gamestop is what is called “uncontrolled” data.
Let’s check this source today:
You seriously think that there is no correlation between “The Sims2 free time” being top 4 today, and an ad for it appearing on the front page today? And PotBS and AoC beating it not for the fact that they too have front page ads? Or Rail Simulator having any shot at top 10 except for it’s ad position? Basically the post you quoted on MMO dominating sales fell pray to a short-term bestseller servelet on gamespot. (I can’t freeze what the game site shows, but current reading is PotBS (front page ad) AoC (front page ad) AoC collectors, Sims 2 FT (front page ad). I’d expect this reading to change immediately when they shuffle their front page ads around.
This is a very poor source to base solid claims on.
In fact NPD analysts called the PC gaming market in the US healthy in 2006 after years of decline. I’ll let the NPD 2007 speak to 2007, and not some unrepresentative gif pulled of a random site. But I’m sure once it’s announced we both will have different reaction to whatever the numbers mean.
Finally networked gaming may just be the future (completely independent of the gamestop “data”). That’s not a “core” casualty, but a technology change. So MMOs being the top sellers just means that people dig their RPGs to be MMOs! I certainly do, while I still enjoyed Witcher. And core are most likely to have broadband.
Anyone surprised if we end up seeing NWN Online, Gothic Online or Witcher Online? BioWare has announced MMO projects. And these may well be console games eventually (console retail grew 43% last year but they aren’t yet MMO platforms the way PCs are)! What will the core have lost then? Nothing much at all. Casualty? Maybe PC as game platform, but even that is still to be seen.
For now I still hold that you are basically just scaring the “core” and I don’t really buy the claims you offer to support your conclusion.
You know, a friend of mine was hugely into Firefly (the TV show by Joss Whedon), and I’m hearing echoes of that same situation. Sure, you’ve got a large group of intensely loyal people, but “large” in this case is miniscule relative to the mainstream television audience and simply wasn’t enough to justify the budget the show required.
The show required a high budget because it wasn’t a one-set sitcom. You needed all those special effects, all those actors and extras… without the capital it just wasn’t possible. This is important because it’s special effects, actors and extras that are ballooning the costs of the major computer game releases (as the link Morgan Ramsey tossed out argues). But, what would a low budget, no-voice-acting, no-insane-graphics-settings Mass Effect or Bioshock have looked like? How many people would still have played it?
I think part of the fear, if I were to put others’ apparent reactions into words, is that the large budgets needed for the games we like right now won’t get to games of the same types in the future, diverted to mass market shovelware at the 10-to-1 ratio described above. Firefly will be cancelled (or never made to begin with), and you’ll end up wth nothing but reruns of King of Queens (or any other equally… er, equivalent sitcom). Low budget plus huge market equals disturbingly large potential profit margin (see the Zero Punctuation review of Peggle), not to mention lower risk.
I think the other part of it is fear that even the big budget hardcore titles will be diluted in order to expand their potential market. After all, if making a few simple tweaks to the script will make a show more “marketable”, increasing it’s appeal to people other than the hardcore fans (and often at the expense of said fans, dependng on who you listen to), your financiers will pressure you to do exactly that. Happens all the time in entertainment, and these games are certainly becoming mainstream entertainment now.
That’s the impression I get, anyway, which is why I find it hard to disagree either with Raph or with the ruckus he’s stirred up.
Maybe I’m not stating anything new, though?
If (like me) you have a mother who’s starting to play some casual games, you see that there’s a very lucrative segment of the casual market that will NEVER be hardcore.
If (like me) you have a father who was brought up to believe that games = kid’ stuff, you see there will always be a market for games that hide behind words like “training”, “simulation”, and “brain”.
I’m agreeing with Raph. Core gamers have been enjoying most of the pie, and that situation is coming to an end.
Really? Graphics seem to be getting close to a plateau, at least on console/PC. The difference between graphics on a PS2 and PS3 is much less than the difference between a PS2 and a PS1 (and much less than previous generations). Web graphics haven’t caught up yet, but they will. Network tech still has a way to go, but it seems reasonable to suppose that we’ll get to the point where the data processing of the people becomes the limit rather than the data transmission.
There are always new tech possibilities out there (new input devices like voice, meaningful AI advances, etc.) but many of these aren’t the changes that the hardcore have currently defined themselves by. The Wii has exciting new tech, but it’s being put to the use of casual rather than hardcore gamers. Once graphics and networks settle down, the industry could convert new tech in service of a long-term business model instead of despite it – DVD transition rather than platform transition.
If the game I buy now looks basically the same as the one from 20 years ago, the one from 20 years ago has a chance in the marketplace.
To me, the most important line of the last article was:
I think there is a common misconception as to why the casual games are popular. It is not just the simplicity of play or the low production values, but rather a combination of getting back to “fun fundamentals” combined with game design that works around the player’s schedule.
No matter how hard core of a gamer you are, at a certain point in your life, you only have so much time. I would love to play a AAA game — I was drooling over Oblivion when it came out. Then there is reality: I have two toddlers and manage the 8 different products.
Much like iTunes and Tivo have transformed television into something that melds around my schedule, so too has the ‘casual’ game design brought games back into my life.
This very same style of game has also made games accessible to the “mom market” and that is good as it expands the general population of games. They provide that initial stepping stone that will lead to more complex games as long as those games work around the “mom market” schedule.
It is not just the rampant growth of cost that reduces the success probability of a high end title, but also the fact that as production costs have risen so to has required play time, thus reducing the total available market.
The question for the AAA game is can a rich experience be created without also incurring the heavy dedicated time investment that has historically followed. If the answer is yes, then I soon think Mom will be out looking for the latest dual core 4GB ram graphics monster available.
[…] extent.” If you can think of a catchy moniker for that, I’m all ears I refer you to Raph’s follow-up post, which comes to a similar […]
Raph said,
Yes, however expect a shift to areas other than 3D graphics. 3D graphics is getting very close to a point where it bottle necks on the artist. The labor and skills required to create a character for modern game engine is way up there now. Many artists failed to make the leap from the previous generation hardware as the new consoles exposed every weakness in thier skill set and no longer allowed them to hide behind low polycounts. They are fighting for that last 5-10% of quality and 3D engine capability is becoming less of an issue. (at least the raw rendering capability of the engine) Then 3D becomes like word processing, 2D paint and music software – where new features and tech will come, but you need to be a professional to see or hear the difference.
I disagree. A great irony of the games industry as that we tend to think of it only in terms of big studios and Triple-A titles. The reality is that casual games, particularly web-based and mobile games, are vastly more prevalent that big console titles like Bioshock or Halo. And now, with digital distribution slowly taking over, the increasing support for online play on consoles, and the incredible success of handheld systems like the DS, the casual markets are only going to get bigger. The player base for all types of games is growing, and the casual cross-section is growing fastest—case in point, grandmothers playing Wii Sports.
Thank you, Raph, for discussing my comment! I am a bit confused by the context you intended for the first quote you pulled out, though. As for the second, well, I’m feeling a little silly now, as your response is something I have argued for in the past also!
Unlike Tom, I certainly don’t see a technology plateau being approached yet. Certainly, the year-on-year improvement appears to be less (as to increase the apparent visual fidelity, a greater, non-linear increase in processing power seems to be needed), but then we are also hitting the uncanny valley hard in some areas, and current game content design does not scale well with respect to being auotmagically to possible future systems of indeterminately greater processing power.
However, I do believe that the games industry does need to try and find means to increase the earnings lifespan of it’s games. Replay desire is a matter of game design. Myself and most other gamers I know return to the same games year on year, and have games with longer return cycles. Where scripts are used to automate the reduction in content fidelity to match hardware capabilities, automated update systems could be used to keep content quality high. Syndication of games is another route to be investigated, and whilst I have yet to really like any current implementation, it is an area that needs exploring. Product and brand placement is perhaps a very easy aspect to make use of in contemporary or near-future games (and I would expect marketing companies to soon be offering their own models for this purpose), as is advertising, and both of these can offer additional returns for the long-term sales (although are probably best used in conjunction with syndication).
Of course, this is not just a matter for ‘core’ games, and indeed the above would probably serve best casual games.
Regarding medium comparisons, it may well be safe to say that the earnings lifespan for films and TV series has plateaued. Similar things regarding total income potential can be said regarding magazines (which are now having to adapt to ‘the internet era’), or all products in general. The games industry, however, is still young, and many of the ideas above have only just been touched on so far, and those do not even discuss matters of more immediate returns. There is plenty of room for total earnings and earnings lifespan growth still.
I think I shall close by saying that this whole topic is making my head hurt! Core, casual, casual core, hardcore casual, casual hardcore…????? We need better terminology, lest heads start popping from the confusion! 😛
I think the interesting part about this whole argument when you get right down to it is the PC vs the console. Why do I continue to play games on my PC when I could easily buy a console and play them there instead? Albeit mostly different games.
When you strip away everything else, it comes down to “chat”. I am probably one of the least social players in MMORPGs. I don’t really even chat that much, but it is an important part of my gaming experience. Try typing out a message to your guildmate on the Wii. When they break that barrier I’ll probably be 100% console.
I think the other really interesting part of this argument is the “Many millions of bucks” for core games vs the “few million” for light games assessment. While this argument clearly props up the metaplace business model (which I am a fan of btw), and is certainly status quo, we really need to be asking ourselves why the core game takes many millions to produce. Change that paradigm, and you open up a whole new world of possibilities.
Maybe it’s time the “Core game” market did its designs in the US and offshored the rest of the coding to India. Like the rest of the Fortune 500. Personally, I’m against the offshoring of America, but it’s a sign of the times.
And before somebody tells me you can do voice chat on the Wii or some other such nonsense, I avoid voice chat at all costs. I find it very intrusive. I’m not afraid to voice chat. I have done it for multiple months in an EQ raiding guild. I just find it very intrusive, unlike typing.
Here, here! If you look at the emergence and evolution of these terms they came into existence at points when the industry was coming to terms with the success of new distribution or revenue models. For example, in 2003 Popcap started having success with digital distribution with Bejeweled. The big question was WHY? Digital distribution existed at that time, but it was widely considered a bunch of hype with no substance or proven success. So a widely accepted hypothesis emerged that digital distribution attracted a different kind of player and the term “casual” was born. But it was the digital distribution that excited the investors and started the gold rush. And why not? You could sidestep the established retail model with it’s high barrier of entry. Digital distribution went just like a gold rush for the next few years, with a bit of a bust going on right now.
It’s the same with RMT and Web MMOs. Investors see them as disruptive, alternative, routes to new customers, while the core retail market is established and mature with much slower growth. If you watch the debate over time you’ll see that it’s changes in distribution and revenue model that creates all this new terminology around players types and design style. They probably should be independent of each other.
RE: “We need new terminology” comments.
There are more accurate terms that people can use; unfortunately, these terms tend to be used only by professional researchers in their published reports. Of course, I’d criticize most of these reports for focusing solely on demographics while a more complete picture would arise from complementing demographics with psychographic research. On the other hand, some researchers fail the entire industry by embracing what I would refer to as slang for types of consumers. (I can’t fault those researchers who use common terms and yet more specifically define those terms in the context of their research.) Examples:
NPD defined 6 consumer segments.
> https://www.raphkoster.com/2006/09/19/npd-market-segmentation-study/
Parks talked about casual vs. core segments.
> http://newsroom.parksassociates.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=4999
Parks had previously identified 6 segments, too.
> http://newsroom.parksassociates.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1055
Magid also uses casual vs. hardcore, but recognizes consumers are buyers, players, or both.
> http://www.mi6conference.com/Magid_MI6.pdf
Well my company does what most here would call “casual games” (personally, call them niche game) — I run development and this is exactly what I am considering. Right now, for one our our games, we are doing the game design and software architecture here — but having a team offshore do the ‘grunt work’.
As with any game (even though our graphics are low end) the demands of our audience has become increasingly complex. It is a constant struggle between not making the game too complex for the new players vs. giving our ‘hard core’ audience a reason to keep playing. No matter which way we go on that balance, the programming demands grow and I need to find ways to have those costs grow slower than the complexity of game mechanics required.
Maybe I missed this somewhere but I sense a new trend coming and thats from games no longer needing better hardware to deliver a well optimized experience to the user. This will increase the lifespan of games to be longer and longer.
Lots of “snobbist gamers” said stuff like WoW looks dated and “ugly” back in 2002. These are the same people that praise the qualities of high end 3D engines etc. These voices were strong within the mmorpg communities until after the launch of WoW, then they went into hiding.
The big truth is that appearance and graphical level of detail has almost nothing to do with the user experience, since some time. What the industry needs to learn is getting rid of the technical things that make a game suck, like load times, poor framerate and other faulty interactive things. These are the reasons why most gamers buy new computers, not to have higher resolution and more texture detail.
The tyranny of win-by-prettiest-screenshot market will be lifted. The little group of snobbist gamers are as Raph so often says highly specialized within a niche which is going out of style.
I should probably note that the above is not strictly true. Were the user experience aimed for involves a high level of realism, or other graphical factors are at work (e.g. a desire to seem ‘cute’), a core aspect of the user experience can be a direct result of the graphical appearance.
Technology push can be shown to have a poor correlation with user experience improvement. Adding technological features because you can, not because they are required, tends to be a very poor idea. That was one of the major failings of the VR movement. It is also at the heart of the trick that Nintendo have pulled off with the Wii.
Rather, one should use technology as required to meet the user’s needs. In entertainment gaming, there is typically more a concept of a desired audience than of a specified user as such, but the principles of ISO 13407:1999 can still be applied. Consider what that desired audience wants to get out of the product, analyse how they will be playing the game including the environment in which they will be playing and any factors that effect their game, from this identify the key elements, and get regular feedback from members of the desired audience.
This doesn’t mean you need to aim for full certification or anything like that, you simply have to consider what the audience needs and desired and develop around that rather than around cool technology. If the desired audience states that they require a high level of realism in the graphics, then you give them a high level of realism. If, on the other hand, they stress the importance of system balance, then you invest more in system balance. You build each component to the fidelity required.
The origin of the obsession with hyper-realism in entertainment games no doubt stems from the mid to late 90’s, where internet bandwidths were still low, and game sizes were increasing limiting the distribution of demos. As such, paper coverage of a game within a magazine or on the back of the retail box became the main means to promote games. As these are inherently static products, still shots had to be used, and so the only means players had to judge a game for themselves was through the graphics alone.
Now, of course, internet bandwidths seem to be increasing, and sites like GameTrailers exist, as do systems like xBoxLive. Demos still pose a problem, since they are often too large for the average user to download on a whim. Personally, I have found with Steam that it is often easier to spend £10 on an interesting looking game than to try and read about it! Of course, screenshots are still however an essential part of game promotion, and I doubt that will ever change. But the market seems to be becoming more receptive to lower graphical fidelity, as players can more easily discover the other aspects that result in a deep level of immersion.
Oh, I think this is very much inaccurate. Appearance has a LOT to do with the player experience, just as audio does. It’s just not as important as people think. WoW’s appearance is a huge part of its success.
I agree; I also think that people, once introduced to a game mechanic or a game genre, start on the gradual ramp of learning the system and gradually expecting greater complexity. It’s a learning process overall, after all, and it does lead to more complex games.
“The bottom line: games will always be made for hobbyists… [But]”
Hey, isn’t that my line? 😉
Hmm, I really mean level of detail beyond a certain point. A Higher level of detail is not worth loading times of more than a certain % of your total playing time.
The technology to deliver a good enough appearance is already installed in about every computer which is used for gaming. The same goes for audio playback. Some people argue that higher sample rate audio playback will make significant improvements on the user experience but it wont. Cranking up the volume on your stereo will have a much more noticeable impact on the experience than adding surround channels, but the audio industry really wants to sell more technology so they keep pushing their message to drive sales.
The quality of the assets and the art does no longer share the same development velocity as thecnical performance. It did until a few years ago, but many people still believe it does. Sound playback is already at a point beyond where the human senses can notice an improvement. Video rendering is pretty much there too, but it has some kinks to work out.
—
I generally prefer to compare games with music rather than with movies, I really know more about music and games than what I know about movies. But I also believe the core psychology behind games is much closer tied with the psychology of music than with film.
The ageing of music productions is driven by many things, but technology advancement is not exactly a major player. Its more present in some genres but I dont see why games should not be starting to age like music. People still play commercial versions of Snake and Tetris, and other old games like Counter Strike and Star Craft. Why should they stop?
When Blizzard launches Star Craft 2 there will still be some crazy people buying the original Star Craft if they can find it. As the years go by we will start seeing more of these “old games” selling, perhaps they will all have to be online games but thats another topic.
But WoW has none of the graphical level of detail of, say, a three-year-old copy of Hitman. Wings are a single texture, bent and wiggling. Wheels are six sided instead of round. Screen shot for screen shot even at high settings it’s just not that good from a level of detail perspective on shapes of things, nor can one zoom in and read the cover of books. It’s certainly impressive how it’s designed to look as good as it does with so few “polygons”.
vs.
Isn’t that the whole point, proving that sub-pixel texture accuracy is not relevant for appeal of game? Shouldn’t this be obvious?
Some actors in sitcoms earn more money than many AAA blockbuster stars. Yet sitcoms are very low-budget productions. Does it mean the actors don’t look good, or that the scenery is so poor it diminishes the quality of the sitcom?
Far from it. Epic detail is of next to no importance in sitcoms. It also doesn’t matter in WoW, it’s visually appealing design that’s crucial.
You young whippersnappers. In our days we didn’t have six sides. We had a square. It was green. And we didn’t have them fancy flapping wings either. We had a square for that too, and it was red. And we were grateful for it.
Jokes aside, games really were like that. Looking at 8-bit game platforms, graphics were mostly squares, assembled in various shapes. And those were graphical games, many had no graphics.
Take Battlezone. 20 green lines and a flying square. Yet it’s remembered today. How many 5 year old super hi fidelity shooters have been forgotten after they didn’t even last in bargain bin?
I’m sure that many would also argue that detailed graphics in any fantasy genre is a flaw. Shouldn’t imagination be filling the polygons rather than 16-pipeline shader?
Graphics have reached the point of diminishing returns. To add 20% more perceived detail to game, you need to spend 80% of the budget.
Or put differently – if your graphics are only 20% technologically poorer than that of competition, you will publish 5 games in same time they’ll publish one. And the only difference will be 20% lower texture resolution, and 20% less visual effects.
And if that makes or breaks your game or genre, then you’re as niche as it gets, and just about doomed to extinction as far as games go. I can’t recall a single game that would be remembered for its graphical technology – with graphics being a good thing, not the saving grace. In 2 years, technology will be obsolete, no matter how good it is today.
Doesn’t it then make more sense to focus on lasting aspects?
Don’t “core” gamers always complain that “they don’t make them like they used to?” Isn’t that at odds with latest/greatest hi-fi graphics argument?
It’s a long way from the earlier implication that everyone’s going to be playing Club Penguin to the new idea that they’ll be playing Bioshock, Guitar Hero, and Portal.
Isn’t the second statement just predicting the present? Or the past? Simpler games have sold better for a long time. Diablo sells better than Baldur’s Gate. World of Warcraft sells better than Everquest. That’s what happens when games are made for people who won’t manually tweak their himem settings and resolve their sound card’s IRQ conflict.
I guess I’m not seeing the big statement here. Are high budget games going away entirely? Is console gaming dead?
Raph, Antheus,
There was an article I read a while ago (I *think* within the last year, maybe within the last two) about “verisimilitude vs. simulacrum”. A very similar discussion, among other examples it looked at WoW versus EQ2, WoW’s art style being an example of the first and EQ2’s being closer to the second.
To summarize the article, it was about “pretty” graphics versus “realistic” graphics (if memory serves). Using the above examples, WoW has a consistant art style that creates a coherent whole; the low poly count and six-sided wheels don’t register, and people say the game looks good, even great, despite being criticized as cartoony. EQ2, meanwhile, has generally higher poly counts, more detailed textures, and thus higher system requirements. People don’t consistently find the game looks better than WoW, and even complain about the graphics; the more realistic one tries to make things be, the more noticable the gap between the graphics and the real becomes (kind of an uncanny valley thing).
This means, ultimately, that the only net result is that the game’s performance is harmed, since trying to be more and more realistic is harder than trying to merely be “prettier”. Graphics aren’t subjectively improved since the same subjective pleasure and immersion can come from graphics that don’t attempt full simulacrum. The general conclusion (again, if I remember right) is that development focus should shift from the technical capabilities of a graphical engine (and tailoring the art to fit what’s possible) to the artistic (and implementing/enabling only those features necessary for the artistic expressions of the art team to be realized). I don’t recall whether the article discussed any convergence of the two.
Anyone else recall that article? It seems especially relevant here, and I can’t get much search-fu happening from work. 😛
@Wolfe:
Music and games. Similar yes. If music ages, it does not become unperformable as long as there are performers with the skill and the instruments still exist. Fidelity to the original performance varies by mastery and completeness of the original notation. Also with music, derivative works abound and are almost the rule. Last night I was learning a choral piece where the original was composed in 1623. The updated arrangement is about ten years old. The style is early Baroque. This is a challenging style and this is another thing to consider: in music, complexity comes and goes in styles but the costs to produce it don’t vary a lot. Substitutions are possible (say you don’t have a six string cello). This is true because of common notation so even if 4/2 is a slightly odd time signature, any reasonably competent musician can read it.
Games can be very expensive to build but very easy to play or vice versa. Expense of production will cycle irregularly but will cycle. Ease of play is dev-determined for the most part. High cost graphics will come down in costs. This is where the infrastructure virtual world markets and the game/closed garden vws begin to diverge in the large patterns but locally, all bets are off. Or as the sign over the motorcycle shop said: “Speed is money. How fast can you afford to go?”
I’m not so sure the high-dollar games will go away. I think they are and actually always have been a boutique market. It is the market types and sizes that are getting bigger. Just as at one time, only a well-heeled church could afford to produce music manuscripts, copied by hand (that was Bach’s job when he was young), and often composed for the specific church or occasion (that was Bach’s job when he was old), there will still be a market for the core gamers, there will be a bigger market for the casual gamers, and these two will overlap and exchange membership frequently.
I don’t think you can escape the fact of ‘hits’. Creativity can do with less and technology can do more but make less of it. It will always come down to the hand that holds the tool, not the tool when it comes to how long a game is worth replaying just as it is in music with regards to how often a song is worth recording or rehosting into new media. If I were investing in your markets as a producer, I might be paying a little less attention to the ‘program to the metal’ competition and a little more to the ‘make the game great and playable and pay attention to how well it can be rehosted’. In the music market, the big money spikes are made when the media base changes and the ‘oldies but goodies’ are rehosted. With software, of course, that is a much harder job, but that also means the value is that much higher.
Another question: over time, any genre becomes repetitive in the gestures. For example, blues is not an innovative music genre as much as it is a personal touch genre. The evolution of blues to jazz to rock to jazz and back again is easy to see from 100000 feet. Bluegrass? Exactly the same issue but without much style bifurcation. I am curious if this is what goes on in games as well. Is it an art that has become repetitive in style if variant by touch or is it too young for that cycling to set in?
I agree. The art direction, particularly around color is great. They seem very disciplined and keep to distinct palettes, focusing on two or three colors in an area. It is also almost as saturated as a platformer game for kids (ie. reds are actually red, not grey with a hint of red in it) This approach lets them manipulate the players emotions a little and create moods appropriate to areas.
We are not talking solely of graphical detail. We are speaking of production values. That’s what drives cost, and therefore drives the economic calculus. And by that yardstick, WoW probably spent MORE than Hitman, as a proportion of budget.
Hmm… neither was what I was saying. I was saying that core gamers demand a level of production values and complexity to their games; that the business calculus may drive away from that towards markets that do not demand that for various reasons; and that core gamers may therefore get fewer titles aimed at them.
Among the symptoms you would see of that would be trends towards games that take complex mechanics from other games and create reduced versions (Bioshock); games with new mechanics that are accessible to mainstream audiences, starting with a much lower bar on the production values (Guitar Hero, etc); games that still try to aim at core gamers, but have to have reduced scope to reduce costs (Portal)… It’s about reducing the costs in the equation.
You’d also still see the megablockbuster made, of course. Just probably less of them as publishers try more of these other recipes.
It’s always best to predict the present, you are much more likely to be accurate (though still not guaranteed!).
WoW is not simpler than EverQuest… IHO, anyway. 🙂 So yes, on the general level, sure. But that isn’t my point either.
One of the interesting things about being relatively prominent is that people assume that a relatively simple comment is a big pronouncement. 😛 I said “I’ve been making predictions about how publishers will shift, and I think it means fewer games released per year aimed at the hardcore, but that this will evolve over time because the supposedly casual games will grow more hardcore over time.” Everything since including this whole post, has been elaborating on that. I didn’t make any claims that it was a “big statement.”
So we have an interesting difference between “Production Value” and “Production Cost”. I agree that WoW has a high production value, but the asset development cost per minute of consumption is surely in the low end of the scale.
As Len Bullard said:
This is something that is becoming more true for each day that pass. The oldskool games were in some senses the opposit. Technological marvels of their day, hinting at the potential of the future.
The future is now here, WoW proves it at least for me.
Music is also an entertainment form which is highly recursive. The primary pattern of the melody is like an “entry point” for a casual listener, the more advanced listener finds enjoyment from the twists and turns of the melody in other aspects of the same piece such as harmony, rythm and instrumentation.
The new game titles we see today are mashups of previous designs, with a bit of a personal touch or innovation sprinkled around it.
I doubt it, actually. That sort of unity of visuals across such a huge scope is not at all cheap to come by. Once it’s established, perhaps, but given how much Blizzard iterates… I bet it cost quite a lot to achieve. It’s probably on the lower end now that it’s established, though.
Another factor here is is sheer quantity of assets, too. Also drives up production costs.
Consider that Blizzard has a tendency to not only iterate, but to throw out content and assets that they feel are not working well… To use StarCraft 2 interviews as a bit of an example of the way they say they work, despite several years of working on the game, as of less than 6 months ago they still didn’t have a final unit list. They’ve made units, thrown them into the game with fully functional art work and code… and they’re not even sure that they’re going to keep them. WarCraft 3 underwent major changes that would’ve resulted in large amounts of assets in code and art simply being tossed. Even if they don’t push the tech level up graphically, and the content is individually inexpensive, their process is extremely wasteful in terms of money. Quality wise it works brilliantly, but it’s damn expensive.
I’m sure that WoW burned through more money than some smaller, but still high quality, games have had as their entire budget just on efforts that never even made it into the final product.
Well, I do think that not releasing Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans has a lot to do with why Blizzard had a good reputation and was able to use that reputation to make WoW have an impressive launch.
Eorlin: So do musical albums. It isn’t uncommon to record two albums worth of material for each one released. Productions costs and production values aren’t isomorphic. Compare Bob Dylan’s descriptions of working on the Traveling Wilbury’s while recording with Don Was on the same days. Note the market results both short and long term.
As I said, it is the hands, not the tools. Tool costs for music production have plunged. Production costs vary enormously, but put the right hands together at the right time with effective even if not extraordinary tools, and you get very different results. The Beatles had the best tools but nothing they worked with compares with what I have sitting on a shelf behind my computer dusty and no longer used. OTOH, I hang on to the AWE 64 for the two or three things it does well and I clean it up with brand new filters.
I’m not a game dev, but my analysis is you have a lot more options and it now comes down to the teams you form and the choices you make about the works. Good graphics and a bad game will not do as well as adequate graphics and a new game with new gestures not yet played. That is why I asked about style consolidation.
Interesting. So, to put it another way (I think): in the future, games will be complex or expensive, but not both. (There will be occasional exceptions.) I’ve thought this was the case for a while, but games like MGS2 come out and ruin the calculation.
One think I’ve wondered about for a long time is the fate of the FPS. Non-gamers can’t jump into an FPS: the dual-analog control system takes a lot of practice. So even something like Portal requires some sophistication from its audience. Will there always be a big enough audience for the blockbuster FPS? Will dual-stick control simply remain an acquired skill for legions of core gamers? Or will the blockbuster FPS fade away, replaced among AAA titles by simpler control schemes?
I agree 100%, despite having just said the opposite. 😛 It’s easy to confuse “less punishing” with “simpler”.
I’m really interested to see this progression: where it leads, and how quickly. When I look at casual game top 10 lists, I see plenty of games remaining extremely simple, but some seem to be adding hard core elements. I’ve been surprised by how quickly persistence has been embraced (in games like Virtual Villagers), when I remember some people predicting this as decidedly non-casual.
Percentage of marketshare is a nothing but misdirection in this conversation. Also, a lot of the core claims are flawed as Moroagh pointed out. RPG’s have moved online. That doesn’t mean they aren’t RPG’s. The number of titles shrinking has little to do with the market size which is growing. It has more to do with market maturity. If you seriously consider making 100 $1 million titles you quickly realize this is a piss-poor strategy. The real money is in innovation whether it’s in casual or core form. See Nintendo. After you innovate you make your money off of production values. That’s how these markets work. All the stuff about budgets is missing the point. High budgets aren’t an attribute that is particular in any sense to the core market. The only reason why high budgets are attributed to the core market is that it is the most mature gaming market. Give casual gaming 10 years to catch up and its budgets will be well on the way to the $50m mark. Guess what: Mom’s care even more about brands and production value than their kids who are the ones actually looking for the next cool thing. The Mom market just hasn’t hit that critical mass yet.
Want a good comparison? Let’s look at a mature Mom gaming market: gameshows. What do you see? Tons of money paid out to get recognizable talent to run the show (this just in, Drew Carrie is hosting the Price is Right). Ridiculous displays of gaudy sets and computer graphics. Exponentially increasing prizes. It’s the same thing. As the market matures, companies learn to compete by outspending the competition. Margins decrease but that’s just what happens in a mature market. Merely mediocre content becomes essentially worthless and the market becomes a few big players willing to spend out large amounts of money trying for the next hit.
So now we have a quickly growing casual market. Awesome. Gaming is now mainstream. And that just means a lot more exposure to core gaming as well which is doing fantastic these days. My Mom does know what WoW is and not because I told her about it but rather because there are 2 million people playing it in the US, commercials with recognizable stars, etc., and far more conversation and content being created worldwide than for any of the casual titles (despite what the methodologically dubious metric of “search hits” might tell us — no one needs to search for WoW, Halo or Zelda content because they’re far too well known and discussed, there are far more WoW web pages on the ‘net than all the pages combined for any other casual title out there). As I mentioned on a different site: searching for “World of Warcraft” in MySpace profiles will give you about 5 times more hits than all the hits combined for Runescape, Penguin Club, Habbo Hotel, etc. Raph may argue that this is because the demos are young (note, the MySpace demo is young too) but it’s at least as relevant a stat as search hits which is methodologically extremely poor.
It’s alright to just say that casual gaming is booming. You don’t need to drum up “core casualties” when that’s anything but reality. Go long tail! Go electronic distribution! Just remember that these things will affect our markets but really have nothing to do with casual or core gaming either (except to the extent that “core” gaming, as an older market, is more historically entrenched in brick & mortar retail).
Wow. This honestly blows my mind.
1) No, you cannot compare standalone CRPGs to MMORPGs. They have audience overlap, certainly, but one is not the replacement for the other and the audience mapping is not one to one. In particular, the narrative element that is the core draw for the CRPG market is mostly missing.
2) PC gaming is healthy because NPD is including MMOs. Take out MMOs, and PC gaming as a segment is nearly dead. Top ten titles moving less than 10k units in their launch month sort of dead. Market size of retail PC gaming is in clear decline and has been for years. And the segments that are growing, again excluding MMOs, are not games sold in Gamestop or to core gamers, but games sold in Wal-Mart and Target to moms.
Again, neither of these are outre or odd statements, and I find it odd to even have to defend them.
That said, I agree that budgets are on the rise for casual games. 🙂
PS, I have to admit that I haven’t read this thread very closely, so I missed Moroagh’s reply. My point with Bioshock is that it is taking over the market segment that used to buy RPGs. It’s a lite RPG, with lots of story and just enough RPGing to capture a non-RPGer. The FPS elements are almost incidental.
Yes, there used to be a lot more than 2 major RPGs in a year. In fact, something like Witcher wouldn’t have BEEN a “major” RPG a few years ago. Does no one remember when we had studios like Interplay around?
It’s probably obvious, but I am not relying on Gamestop’s top ten on the front page to derive my conclusions — it was just handy and visible. 😛
Finally, very few core gamers buy Sims 2 expansion packs. I view that entry as supporting evidence for my points. 😛
Consider Blizzard spent all their WoW development budget on producting art. Combined with other statistics about the average player /played until churn I come to a cost per hour of content which looks something like.
– Total cost ~$50M
– Average player lifetime ~1 year
– Average /played per week ~25 hours
Development cost per hour of content gets to be about $0.5M.
Ok, Runescape will have a lower cost. As would probably any successful MMORPG. But almost all other modern AAA productions will have a higher cost per content hour, or am I totally off?
The game I was working on last year would have been at about 0.1M per content hour using the same reasoning. Altho single player, knowingly aimed at a rather narrow niche audience and far far below any AAA classification. And we were aiming at a level of art direction which would be functional and likeable, but nothing more fancy. That Blizzard could do the quality of WoW six years ago at only a five times greater cost is at least to my perspective remarkable.
For a post that blows your mind you really didn’t seem to read it or actually replied to most of its points. I didn’t, for example, claim that PC gaming was doing that great. I claimed that core gaming is doing fantastic. The death of PC gaming, while exaggerated, has far more to do with fierce competition from core gaming alternatives on consoles. Value propositions for core gamers have shifted significantly over the past few years and that has meant a lot of attention on consoles. I myself, while having changed little as a gamer, find myself playing a lot more on consoles because I can have the top-of-the-line system for $300 instead of spending $2,000 to upgrade a computer that I don’t really feel the need to upgrade otherwise.
This just shows that your rhetoric is couched in old terminology. You’re fine with casual games going online and still being casual but if core games go online you suddenly think they aren’t core anymore. And if you think that you aren’t making an odd statement here I think you need to listen to a few people more people who don’t agree with you by default. The terminology that most players use is MMORPG which contains “RPG”. No one uses the terminology CRPG anymore unless it suits an argument that is fundamentally just a play on semantics.
With respect to the # of RPG’s per year, again you are confusing market maturity for market death. This cycle isn’t endemic to core games, it’s something that casual games will experience too. It’s something that we already see in Mom-gaming markets like game shows where we tend to have one big gameshow per year that people actually talk about (Millionaire one year, Deal or No Deal the next year) and a few ancient franchises that chug along.
Basically you’re just confusing trends and investing far too much in whatever trends most validate your claims. Core gaming has hit its blockbuster state because it is an older market, not because of any other differences between casual gaming. Casual gaming will end up in the same place. Core gaming is only having “casualties” if you want to consider %’age of mindshare as the only useful statistic. Even the way you approach mindshare has a very strong bias to casual gaming (for example considering search hits instead of considering overall web content created for different products or considering people who have played as opposed to the amount of time or money they spend playing). In reality, core gaming is selling better than ever, getting far more media coverage, and far more mindshare with a huge amount of growth potential. That casual gaming has even more growth potential is completely beside the point. In fact the growth of casual gaming has a purely complementary effect on core gaming as casual gamers have more and more exposure to core gaming experiences and are more likely to join the market. Casual gaming is just a stepping stone to the harder stuff. In a lot of ways (i.e. revenue) casual gaming is still way behind core gaming and that’s something that you will likely admit to when pressed but won’t stop you from claiming that core gaming is “dead” or “suffering casualties” or whatever hyperbolic headline you want to push this month.
These kinds of discussions don’t seem to go anywhere because everyone falls into the trap of using terminology that lacks acknowledgment of nuance. Different people using the same words to describe entirely different aspects of the gaming audience.
The same person might play one game at an entirely different frequency and level of engagement than another. The difference is in both time available to play and how much the game actually interests them. Through half a dozen major MMOs now I’ve been all over the spectrum. I get just as turned off by game companies that chase whatever is ‘popular’ today as I do with friends who change personalities depending on who they’re with. Be what you are, attract your audience and stop looking for greener pastures. Can the powers that be get a clue that everyone rushing into the next new thing leaves that much less competition for the market segment they’re already serving and joining in means risking everything on a segment that is unproven in sustainability and saturated with offerings already?
As a long time gamer right now my biggest concern is if the industry is going to start turning out models of games where paying more money means getting more free reign to dominate competitive fields of play with endorsed superiority. Its already partly this way when it comes to time-sinks, I was hoping for a way to move further from these issues. Most people aren’t going to enjoy being someone else’s entertainment. Sure, some folks will be pressured into blowing more money to keep up with the joneses, but just as likely they’ll say screw it and go back to playing Bejeweled where they at least have the option of ignoring their rank on the ladder and just enjoying playing the game. Most people won’t bother drawing a distinction between being completely locked out of enjoyable gameplay (keys, reps, lockouts, etc) and being effectively locked out (can’t compete with the folks who paid big money, spent more time, etc), either way, the model isn’t serving their interests.
I’ve seen quite a few complaints of these supposedly ‘casual’ RMT driven games where if you don’t have an ‘appropriately’ decked out avatar ($$$) that a good portion of the playerbase will shy away from grouping or associating with you. There’s hardly any difference between that and being denied a raid invite because I need more gear from heroics and badges first. One involves time, the other money; neither proves or disproves aptitude, so both suck.
Is that emergent behavior? Yes.
That doesn’t change it from being a reality that designers need to take into account.
I feel like you’re mixing things on me too, StGabe. I never said that core gaming was currently doing poorly overall, for example. It’s not. You bring up the “search hits” thing over and over as it is were core to my argument, when it was a toss-off somewhere I don’t even remember. I didn’t reply point by point to your previous post because a) I lack time and b) I didn’t even know where to begin!
For example: being dismissive of percentage of marketshare is a mistake, IMHO. Market share determines publisher spend on different segments and number of bets in a segment, for example. If the whole pie gets bigger, that’s great — unless the costs also rise commensurately, or grow faster for some segments than others.
At that point, we’re in a multivariable discussion. Marketshare might be inconsequential, it might not be. Dismissing it out of hand is insufficient.
“RPGs have move moved online, doesn’t mean they aren’t RPGs.” MMORPGs have been a distinct segment for a LONG time now. It isn’t a “move.” A supplanting, perhaps. That’s fine, supplanting happens all the time. But they are not servicing the same market segment. Show me the online version of Final Fantasy VII or Oblivion, maybe I will change my mind.
“You’re fine with casual games going online and still being casual but if core games go online you suddenly think they aren’t core anymore.” — where do you get that from?
“If you seriously consider making 100 $1 million titles you quickly realize this is a piss-poor strategy.” — Nor did i suggest anyone go do that. 😛
I agree with just about all of this. I am not attempting to describe markets in general — I am talking about this market, in the near-term future. Right now, core gaming has a very high budget demand because of a particular core gamer culture. If that culture shifts — which I have asserted it will for a variety of reasons — then current members of that culture may be disappointed. That was all I was saying.
None of that means that other segments and audiences might not demand high budgets as well.
All of this is true. But the comparison I am making is more like “reality shows may chase out a lot of scripted shows because they are much cheaper to make, and can be monetized well enough.”
As we measure the market, certainly. At the same time, I am saying that the games on consoles are less “core” than they used to be, in the name of broadening audiences. We are still calling them “core” because the nature of “core” is moving. To go back to the perhaps risky Mass Effect example — it barely has an inventory system and barely has stats. Bioshock, if derived from shooters, has virtually no requirement for 3d spatial awareness, taking place in a series of highly constrained “bubbles.” And it has almost as much RPG as Mass Effect — no branching convos, but a lot more backstory! And so on.
Heh, most people don’t agree with me by default. 🙂 Yes, of course MMORPG uses the letters RPG in sequence, and yes, of course they share a heck of a lot of common ancestry. If anything, though, CRPGs had lost quite a lot of classic RPGness to them, and that current was diverted to MMORPGs. They aren’t the same market segment, though they have overlap, and in the process, the sort of people who used to play, say, Icewind Dale are out of luck. Or consider what happened to the Legacy of Kain series.
Technically, it IS endemic to core games AND casual games. 🙂 It’s just not exclusive to core games — nor did i say that it was. The whole Match-3 genre is a great example.
RPGs have always been one of the most expensive genres to develop because of the sheer volume of content. Walls started getting hit on this years ago, and the games began to shrink in scope as a result. The size of the audience did not justify the spend required to make something competitive. The number of RPGs released grew fewer (compare the number of JRPGs in 1998 to today, for example) and the ones that did survive tended to have big franchises behind them that could bear the cost and deliver the larger audience to justify it. This, as you say, is a sign of market maturity.
What we have seen before is the outright abandonment of segments by publishers — flight sims, wargames, adventure games, etc — when this happens.
The difference is that although there’s one big hit gameshow, there’s a half dozen launched each year. Most of them fail. That is different from what has happened in the past in the games market, and different from what I am predicting.
Personally, I find this a reductionist analysis. After all, many older markets do not hit blockbuster states. The pace of budget rises, the advances on technology, are an integral part of the equation that cannot be ignored. Casual gaming is on a different curve in part because of the limitations on the platform for its chief delivery mechanisms.
I think this is just inaccurate. We can look at dev studios folding or being acquired, genres once available and now not, numbers of titles released in given genres, and so on, and I think we will find that it isn’t just % mindshare that we’re talking about.
Historically, this effect has been minor to non-existent, but I made the same claim in my post.
When pressed? When have I ever avoided this issue?
From having played a few modern single player RPG’s on PC and PS2 I get the impression that the genre is suffering a lot more from niche adaptation than development cost. To enjoy playing through the standard RPG you as a player need to fit a profile where you take pleasure from using a series of rather unlikely game systems. To list a few:
1: The “watch a ton of movies” for story
2: Optimize character performance through making selections in lists
3a: Kill enemies through twitchy control scheme
3b: Kill enemies through turn based strategy puzzles
4: Navigate 3D mazes with traps that make you start over
5: Grind XP for hours to get enough power to beat every other boss
The full list was shorter a few years ago. But the trend is to make it grow. I honestly doubt that the “core” gamer desire all these aspects of the RPG. My main personal gripe with this genre evolution is point 4 and 5 in this list, they make me quit the game and eventually the genre.
From the things I have been able to read on this topic I get the ipression that the flight sims, wargames, adventure games, etc died from lack of new players rather than steep increase of development costs.
Whenever the developer of an RPG slaps on another trapped 3D maze to increase the playtime on their next title they bring the genre closer to extinction. It gets more expensive to make and fewer players will enjoy the game. I would blame this problem on the designer.
A small number of players will get a great kick from breaking free from the maze, but arnt these players hardcore rather than core?
I’ll give some more replies when I have time but this seemed to be the main source of my disagreement with you and I thought I’d focus on it:
This is your “core” mistake. You ascribe to core gamers what is really a facet of all mature markets. We see the same in game shows. We see the same in reality shows too by the way — with more reality shows focusing on celebrities, on building $100,000+ houses and doing other things that generally outspend other competitors. The key difference between reality TV and gameshows is, again, that the Reality TV market is a far less mature market. Instead of assuming that “cheap” is intrinsic in reality TV it makes far more sense to simply say that reality TV is a new format that has started with a low, but ever-increasing cost of entry.
Here is the market cycle for all of these things:
1) Innovation — a new product, idea or technology creates a new market. Anyone with the capability to enter the market at this point is likely to make money.
2) Saturation — the market begins to fill up and new entrants increasingly need to distinguish themselves. The amount of time it requires to reach saturation varies greatly depending on the product/idea/technology in question and its market. Video games took a long time to saturate because there was a lot of potential for growth. To substitute for the initial advantage of innovation, companies will continue to spend more and more money increasing the value of the product so as to stay ahead of the curve. This is what has caused overall growth in budgets in the core gaming market (and not anything that is peculiar about core gamers).
3) Aggregation — after the market reaches saturation, the market continues to shrink as a few key players take it over and learn how to “monetize” the market once it has peaked (from the standpoint of innovating the idea). At this point the overall number of brands tends to shrink and the overall market may appear to shrink even though it’s overall revenue may be healthy or even growing very quickly (because of factors other than innovation). Aggregation usually involves even greater outlays of money as companies find even bigger ways to outspend and buyout the competition. A good example of this is EA buying the license for the NFL or companies hiring famous voice talent for games. These do not increase production value but do differentiate product. The winning companies at this point do everything in their power to make the market about spending money because that is what they are good at. Going back to the saturation or innovation phase means that they have to learn to compete on different merits.
Gaming cycles between innovation, saturation and aggregation with its different genres, with new genres and with new ways of presenting genres.
Bits of core gaming come out of the innovation phase but most of the market is in the saturation and aggregation phases. New licenses are very valuable, if successful, but the market is at a point where a successful license can only come out of a very large investment.
Casual gaming is still in between innovation and saturation. The market, being not fully saturated, especially in niches such as casual MMO’s, has a lot of room for basically any new entrant to put up shop and make some money. That won’t last. Budgets will go up and will continue to go up. Soccer mom’s want a special experience at least as much as their kids do and gaming companies will find a way to give it to them. It may not be cutting edge 3d technology but celebrity tie-in’s or other shenanigans but we will get there.
Some of these market trends may be partially or fully curtailed by digital distribution, “infite shelf space” and the “long tail” effect. These things tend to act against the strength of spending money to differentiate a product. I.e. digitial music distribution allows indie bands to get a better share of the audience attention allowing them to sell better without having celebrity musicians who people regularly see on TV. However, again, this has nothing to do with any intrinsic property of the core or casual markets. Digital distribution currently has a greater effect on casual markets but that is only because traditional brick & mortar distribution is historically entrenched in the core market.