In the interests of debating the success or failure of Game Development for Gaming Portals, I found this postmortem by Pyrogon, and this blog that discusses the postmortem. Pretty bleak, if you ask me. What do you think? James R. DiGiovanna (dba Crystal Paradigm)

It is fairly meaningless in relation to the market in general. They set out to be a full price developer but hadn't actually worked out what you need to do to get a deal (not a good sign).

So they became budget developers, without actually workeing out what you need to do to be a budget developer. The aim was to make enough to do the demo needed to get back to full price. That was pretty much the only plan made and they didn't stick to it. They made money on budget so they stayed there (with no real plan for the future). When the market matured (as they always do) and the easy money dried up they were just another fish without a plan.

As was said in the postmortem, not everybody has the resources to spend a year or two without revenue developing a hollywood hit. Neither do I believe that the large turnover of games at Gaming Portals means that the market has "matured". I think mainly it means that the Gaming Portals Market in general is taking advantage of developers with limited capital (and all beginning developers have limited capital) and giving back very little in return. Ultimately, people will just start giving up after a while, realizing that if they're not independently wealthy, have hordes of angel investors, or already established, they won't be able to ever bring a decent game to market. I would say that's pretty relevant to the "market in general".

James R. DiGiovanna (dba Crystal Paradigm)

The main problem is that there are few publishers around, so they can come up with outrageous terms. When we will start making an offline game (as opposed to our MMORPG), the marketing strategy will be like this:
Make a complete game, FREE for download.
Wait until a lot of people download it and get addicted.
Release an update (new quests, maps, mosnters, etc.) and charge money for it.

Quote: Original post by CrystalParadigmAs was said in the postmortem, not everybody has the resources to spend a year or two without revenue developing a hollywood hit.

Indeed, but they could and should have known that. Publishers have been requiring really great demos for many many years. Even basic market research would have told them this - hell they were already in the mainstream game dev industry and yet they were totally ignorant of how the business that paid their wages operated. Their original plan was fundamentally flawed from the start and this could have been avoided.

Quote: Neither do I believe that the large turnover of games at Gaming Portals means that the market has "matured". I think mainly it means that the Gaming Portals Market in general is taking advantage of developers with limited capital (and all beginning developers have limited capital) and giving back very little in return.

But by any economic measure that is exactly what the definition of a maturing market is.

It used to be easy to set up a web site and promote your games through the portals and make money. The portals paid because their weren't many developers and the portals were trying to build market share. This was an immature market; not many developers and money easy to find.

The portals grew and at the same time more developers entered the market, attracted by the easy pickings. In addition, a growing number of experienced developers from the mainstream software world saw Indie as an opportunity to escape the tight commercial constraints of their industry. They joined the indie movement simultaneously increasing the number of developers and increasing the quality (due to their previous experience) of the games. That increased the amount of work required to make a game even though the revenue didn't increase.

The increase in developers meant an increase in supply. The portals no longer needed to pay so much as there were plenty of developers who needed a deal. The portals reduced the amount they paid and the market (which had now moved a big step closer to being "mature") became harder for developers.

My point however is that this was always going to happen. Immature markets always mature as people move in to these lucrative new sources of income. The author of the post clearly hadn't made a plan to cope with this and in fact hadn't made any proper plans at any stage of the venture. The one plan they did make they didn't follow through on until it was far too late.

Conversely many other developers survived and thrived in this maturing market (either by luck or good planning). This shows that their failure was a result of bad planning and not the fault of the market, which was acting in the same way it always acts.

The failure of a badly run business doesn't have ramifications for the entire market. The market is behaving as expected and poorly run companies fail in any industry all the time.

[Edited by - Obscure on August 25, 2004 2:11:46 AM]

I agree with the above poster. They didn't really know what their plan was. They had a vision, but they didn't follow it.