Off Topic: A Sad Note About PC Games

[Atrocities]

As many of you know, many of the large PC game developers are moving away from PC game development toward the Consule market. That spells doom for many would be excellent PC games.

This also spelles doom for many smaller developers as they try to find publishers that can sell their product and help support development costs and such.

For example, if any of you follow Stars Super Nova, then you know about the difficulties that the developers over at Mare Crisium have encountered.

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Lead Designer Jeff McBride of Mare Crisium posted an update on the Stars! Supernova Genesis project status to our discussion forum:

Well, we've spent a full year now talking to possible publishers. Most of the big names are moving entirely away from PC games and most of the small fry do not have the resources to fund the remainder of development costs.

There is at least one big name publisher who would like to talk to us again once the game is essentially complete and there are a bunch of smaller companies that would be happy to manufacture and distribute the game once it is complete. For that matter, self-publishing would be a possibility once we were finished.

Meanwhile, we have been dividing our time between doing outside contract work and following up possible publisher/backer leads. The upshot of this is that very little actual game development has happened over the Last few months.

If any of you happen to have a lead on a possible investor please drop us a line.

Stars! Supernova will ship some day. We just don't know when at this point in time.

Jeff McBride

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I wonder if Shrapnel has what Jeff is looking for? You never can tell, with the success of Shrapnels other games, Stars SN could make a nice addition to the game list. Just a thought.

The point is, with more and more publishers and developers going for the Consule big bucks, those of use who prefer PC games are going to get the shaft.

I know that if MM geared SEIV up for Consule play, they would make a **** pod of money, and I would hope that happens for Aaron.

[geoschmo]

Well, I cannot speak for Shrapnel, but based on their standard operating procedure I would say they fit mroe into the "bunch of smaller companies that would be happy to manufacture and distribute the game once it is complete." That is how they operate typically.

Geoschmo

[Gimboid]

It's sad that they are moving to consoles, but in their search for $$$ they have to go where the market is

I dont see all game developers ending up that way though, since its rather difficult to play strategy games that have any significant level of detail (non real-time strategy games) on a rather awkward to use 10 button controller (or however many buttons there are)

And it isnt all bad that games are being ported over to the larger market, more games are produced in that market. And games on XBox especially are easily ported to PC due to them being on windows environment anyway...

Whether the games are are desireable to the PC gaming market however is a different story. Personally i wouldnt touch games like Tony Hawks pro skater or the like, but games such as Halo on XBox are interesting and quite playable IMHO


Just my $0.02
Gimboid

[Richard]

But this isn't the full story, in fact there is a larger lie in the gaming business.

The reason folks are moving to consoles is because of the amount of sales they generate. They have to do this because most publishers now spend far too much money on marketing, artists, and etc when developing their games. Recently Ghost Recon, for instance, cost something like 9 million dollars to make. This is something that Ubisoft doesn't plan on recouping for 3 years (ie the whole cycle though the bargain bins and multi-packs). A smaller developer could never hope to make any money, even though their sales volume would have made a publisher a mint a few short years ago, in the current climate. And if they did sign with a big publisher they will NEVER see royalties as they will never sell enough copies to make the break even point. I get very frustrated by small developers who sign on with large publisher because for the most part they are setting themselves up for eventual doom unless they dumb down their games for a mass audience. But the lure of retail is strong (the dark side is powerful ).

And besides the large publishers bleeding money like a stuck pig the retail outlets are worse. Retail is the reason why niche products will never be proitable again, much like niche board wargames are not on the shelves anymore. Only the top 10-20 games in a year will ever make money in retail, the rest will operate at a loss. A large publisher can eat that, and in turn will make sure the developers never see a dime in royalties.

Ack don't get me started. We lose developers all the time to retail publishers, but unfourtanetly they don't know HOW much more money they can make Online and that in the long run they are going to kill themselves trying to compete with EA and Sierra for the mass market.

[Saxon]

There was an interview with a veteran game designer in either PC Gamer of PC Gameplay a month or so back. I forget his name, sorry. They asked him about the death of the PC game at the hands of consoles, especially in light of Halo moving over to the Xbox. He laughed and said it is a cyclical trend. As a new generation of consoles come out, designers drift over to them and more games come out in that area. Then, as that technology ages, more and more designers move back over to the PC, which is where the cutting edge games (technologically) are being made. The PC specs move forward continuously, while the consoles move in steps. Further, many designers want to work on the next Great Game, not “Generic RTS” which will never be famous.

He also pointed out that the control system on consoles limits them to what type of game they can have, “dumbing them down” as Richard notes. Peter Molyneux, who is noted for cutting edge games, talked in a different interview about PC’s vs consoles . He points out that the mouse is a much better tool than your average game pad. He also noted that the installed base of PC’s is very high and that with the rise of the internet, a lot more people see the PC as an entertainment device than in the past. His feeling is that PC games have a bright future, as more and more people are using PC’s. Buying a game to try out on the PC you are using for the internet costs $50, while buying a console and then a $50 game costs a lot more. The market is growing, which makes more room for niche developers and quality products appreciated by only a small audience.

I guess I am trying to say that PC games are actually in great shape. I remember when only one store in my town had PC games and there were only three or four on the shelf. Now that same town has dozens of places to buy games and mail order internet is amazing. Hell, Nairobi has a second hand PC games shop and I have had to discipline staff for playing games during working hours. PC games are everywhere and are being bought left and right. I won’t say it is easy for a developer to make money or that all the games coming out are great, but for the consumer, the roses are blooming. Further, for the specialist developer, the market is just big enough that if you do things right, you can do ok.

Way back when I joined this board, I remember someone asking Richard if Shrapnel was going to go broke due to some event, something about sales of SEIV. I think he replied that he couldn’t release numbers, but that sales were doing quite well and were competitive against a certain Category of the big developers. Perhaps Richard could refresh my memory, but I remember sitting back and saying “Wow, these little guys are doing pretty well with this internet business model”.

The market might be as cutthroat as hell, but the number, quality and choice of games has been rising for the fifteen years I have been playing. Sure, the Playstation has more games than my PC, but Atari also had more than my Vic20. We might be coming up to a consolidation of some companies and we have already seen the bankruptcy of others (Looking Glass comes to mind as a quality company going bust), but if you look at the number of games in development and expected to release this year, it is hard to be pessimistic, at least as a consumer.

[Growltigga]

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Originally posted by Saxon:
I have had to discipline staff for playing games during working hours.

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Ooh, you sound like just the sort of imperialist ratbag I wouldn't like to work for

On a serious note, I consider that the vast proportion of your post is right on the mark

[Richard]

No the market is cyclical, however there is a major shift going on that won't change unless folks change the overall business model.

With computer and video gaming becoming a larger business it has attracted more folks who are interested in it as just that, as a business and not as a hobby or community. These few companies and retailers are making it a very hostile environment for small or medium developers or publishers to ever make money in retail.

Consoles do well because they are relatively cheap and deliver fast paced games folks can get into and folks also don't have to worry about configuring their console or installing a game.
Since they have such a large audience folks can make a killing by making console games, and that is where the money is so companies like lemmings are jumping that way.

This might change eventually but for now small and medium developers need to relize that the Online venture is the only real way to go as long as you have a strong game title. Without the deep pockets of major publishers they will never survive in retail long enough to ever see a dime of royalties. Less than 1% of the games sold in retail today ever make their development teams a dime in royalties.

[Growltigga]

Richard, this is interesting but given the lack of synergy you are highlighting for the big companies, I would query how sustainable their existing business model is. Thinking about this rationally, even the most demented development team is not going to go with a market maker that gives them nil to low returns, isn't this where the smaller and mid-sized companies can make good returns by (a) profit sharing with the development teams and (b) selective but intrusive marketing techniques (similar to how the mobile phone companies started back in the 80's) in order to ensure profile

[Richard]

Possibly but I have seen very little cooperation between development teams in the past like this. We tried launching an Academy of Strategy and Wargame sciences to pool together money for such a venture but no one was seriously interested.

I have actually talked to developers and shown them the hard facts about retail and still told "well that's nice". I think the main reason for that is there is still this rock star persona to retail. To be honest we had planned on getting into retail shortly after we opened shop but after rejecting 15 seperate offers because they would have screwed our developers over we seriously don't try anymore, except maybe foreign retail.

The large companies, like I said, can take the hit over the long haul and can fund games to the 2 to 3 years it typically takes to gain profitability. And if a developer gets lucky (like say the guys who did Kohan) enough to get funding that way they are set for awhile, but their are still at the win of a publisher deciding that it no longer wants to do their specific genre because it isn't profitable enough.

There may be another alternative besides Online sales to the small and mid guys but right now I don't see it. I think it will take some real disaster stories (ie some well known but small company going under due to retail pressures) to get these guys to relize that the time to act is now in getting a viable alternative to retail going. For niche titles to survive this needs to happen, they just can no longer compete at retail (at least not in the US).

Luckily I think we have proven (and some other indie companies) that if you keep your costs down and deliver a good quality game a year that you can easily guarantee your existance in the long term.

[Gromitt]

Forgive me if this has already been said but isn't a large issue money. I'm not talking about how much it costs to produce or market a game or even how much the game costs for that matter. Lets talk about the system. Most of these games are being sold to kids, ages ? to 16, working part time jobs. It's a hell of a lot easier to fork out $300 for a console that $1500 - $3000 for a computer.