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Original post by kingy Quote: It's not about making games, it's about making money. That, in a nutshell, is what I am talking about. Say goodbye to the games industry in the long term if that does not change.

Hah!

Hahahah.


Because clearly people will stop spending tens of billions of dollars if games become crappy. And nobody will be remotely able to come up with something fun and clever to fill that void.

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Original post by Megahertz It's not about making games, it's about making money.

This is a very naive viewpoint. More importantly, it doesn't match up with reality. At the same time, it is not entirely incorrect either.

Most games don't turn a profit.

How exactly can it be all about making money, if you're not actually making money? That's the weird part about things. The goal is not to make money off any given game, the goal is to take a calculated risk and lose some projected amount of money, on average, for most of the games you publish. Just one of those games needs to make it huge, and as long as your losses on the dozen other titles you put on the market that year were under control, it's fine. World of Warcraft, Guitar Hero, Sims, Halo, GTA, etc -- these games essentially prop up the entire industry on their own.

But your risk has to be carefully calculated and controlled, and if that means turning out a couple mid budget shooters that you can be reasonably assured will ship 2.5 million world wide, so be it. Except one of those turns out to be not so generic and now you've got Call of Duty 4 edging towards 10 million. In other words, most of the games out there are merely hedged bets. (And game designers have to live within those boundaries, frankly. Publishers are rarely interested in your more off the wall ideas.)

There's also shelf space competition. Did you know that nearly every laundry detergent brand is actually made by the same company, Johnson and Johnson? It doesn't matter what you buy, it's the same damn powder and the money goes to the same people. The reason there's so many is that the brand variety allows them to dominate the shelf space. Games are subject to similar mechanics (albeit not quite as easily). As a publisher it's to your advantage to have MORE games out even if those games are crap and everyone knows that. The visibility alone is worth it.

Oh, and sorry to break your pie in the sky game designer ideals (which annoy everyone you people talk to, by the way), but most of these generic games will sell decently as long as they have a modest bit of marketing coin behind them. That's what makes them safe hedge bets.

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Original post by kingy Quote: It's not about making games, it's about making money. That, in a nutshell, is what I am talking about. Say goodbye to the games industry in the long term if that does not change.

Eh? What's your definition of "industry" in this sense, other than "a particular form or branch of economic or commercial activity", e.g. the car industry, the tourist industry, or in this case: the game industry.

Surely for the game industry to survive developers need to be making games of sufficient quality to sell for a profit. If one business stops making sufficient quality games, there will be a gap in the market that someone else will exploit. That's how the process works.

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Original post by kingy Quote: It's not about making games, it's about making money. That, in a nutshell, is what I am talking about. Say goodbye to the games industry in the long term if that does not change.

The industry is in a pretty good shape, You just can't look at the big budget titles since almost noone will target a niche market with a game that costs several millions to produce. Its also easier to gamble with a smaller budget since the potential profits can be just as large while the risk is much lower.

There are plenty of innovative indie games that has been released in the last couple of years, and also a decent number of indie games that target niche markets.

"Most of what is recognized as great art was commissioned. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was dollar driven."

I guess you never saw "The Agony and the Ecstacy"(1965)

It wasnt 'dollar driven' because there wasnt any profit involved, where there certainly is for the Big game companies.


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MMORPGs have to largely be lower denominator driven to get enough $15 a monthers to make a profit. Unfortunately the up-front costs of single player games require large budgets too, which similarly require selling to a broader audience.

I hope that tool improvement (and cheaper game assets) might alleviate this some, but the man hours involved are still massive.

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Original post by kingy This is a wake up call to games designers. Can you stop pandering to the lowest common denominator before that nightmare scenario occurs, or there will be no games industry left as it will have no room for innovation, just me too clones and dumbed down sequals. This has got to stop.

I would argue that the problem is not that there isn't enough innovation, but there's too much to live up to. In order to create the next big thing, you have to spend tons of money. Innovation requires lots of research and development, and lots of redesigns. It's easy to come up with a crazy idea, but to fully realize it and make it good takes millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of highly skilled man hours. From a business perspective, why wouldn't you try and get your money's worth?

On another note, as far as saying that Deus Ex is being dumbed down and catered to the lowest common denominator, maybe the lowest common denominator is right in this regard? Generally the most popular games are popular for a reason: they exude quality. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Deus Ex isn't great. However maybe it could stand to be sped up a bit? It's entirely possible for a classic series to be reinvented for the betterment of the series in general. This is precisely what Capcom did with Resident Evil 4. I have always despised the Resident Evil series due to its horrible camera and controls. When the first iteration of Resident Evil 4 came to the game designer, he said to himself, "This is too much like all of the other Resident Evil games. Lets make something better". They then proceeded to go through about 4 complete redesigns in order to get the game just right. What was the result? The greatest third person shooter in history in my opinion. They changed a series that was very niche-based and turned it into a very streamlined and awesome game that lots more people enjoy.

The example of Resident Evil 4 is the definition of innovation. It could certainly be argued that Resident Evil 4 was made for the "lowest common denominator". However, in my opinion, in this case the mainstream audience was correct: All of the other Resident Evil games were chock full of flaws that prevented people from having a solid experience. Resident Evil 4 took into account all of the flaws of the original games and fixed them. Is it possible that this is what they're doing with Deux Ex, and you're possibly just too much of a fanboy to realize that what they're doing is for the betterment of the game?

I forgot to mention one thing. Steven Spielberg has made some of the most beloved movies of all time. I would have a hard time believing that anybody here doesn't like Indiana Jones, Jaws, E.T., etc. What's his secret? He makes a movie with as little fluff as possible and as many adventure aspects as possible. The best movies that he has made are the ones that make you feel like you've gone on a journey you could never go on normally. He concentrates on boiling down his movies to the most important ideas and hits those points home.

One example of the above was Jaws. The original book it's based off of has tons of romantic drama and the crew actually go back and forth to land several times before killing the shark. Spielberg thought that these things were boring and made the story lose tension. He cut all of that stuff out and what remained was Jaws, a true action/adventure classic.

Before you ask me or any other employed game designer to "break the mold", I'll ask you to lead by example and do that first.

When a game gets released and the Metacritic average is 60, go buy it, and tell all your friends its wonderful.

When the next 95+ rated game hits shelves, take the hype goggles off and explain to your friends that its fun, but not the best thing EVAR!

When announcement trailers show up on GameTrailers and there are pages and pages and pages of bastard hardcore gamers talking shit and saying things like "this game looks like crap, it's not MGS4!!!" tell them to eat a dick.

Because unless you do all of the above and more...

...games will trend based on the marketplace and there are no two ways about it. If people want sequels, we will make sequels, period. And BTW, sequels are not intrinsically bad. Fable 2 is better than Fable 1, and Fallout 3 is pretty damn amazing, Call of Duty 4 was better than Call of Duty 3, and just to throw a curve ball in there, I enjoyed GTA4 -LESS- than San Andreas, even though everybody else thought it was mindblowing.

You're she sheep. Not us. We break our brains and our backs to bring quality and innovation to the demand that -YOU - THE CONSUMERS- create. The sad truth is that you really don't want the kind of artistic expression and art that you say you do. This is why Ico sold for shit and why Shadow of the Colossus struggled as well. Oh, and don't forget the studio that Okami broke. Hell, people even pulled their eyeballs out because Zelda: Windwaker -DARED- to try something new.

So please... take your so-called wake-up call and shove it up your ass. Hardcore gamers are a bitter bunch of proper jaded morons that shit the bed any time the next game they play isn't the best game ever made. You approach every single box you open with the expectation that it will be better than the last, and you actively look for things to hate. You refuse to open your tiny little mind and simply have fun. You're basically useless.

The gaming industry is expected to grow to a $69 Billion dollar business by the year 2012. That's based on more people buying games. More people playing games. Different people with different tastes, interests, backgrounds, living in different parts of the world. People other than you. Don't fight it. Accept it. Because the more diversity we have in the business and the economic landscape, the more risks we can take, the more things we can try, the more you might actually see the kind of games you like.

But until then, -YOU- are actually part of the problem. So please. Grow up.

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Original post by Promit Quote: Original post by Megahertz It's not about making games, it's about making money. This is a very naive viewpoint. More importantly, it doesn't match up with reality. At the same time, it is not entirely incorrect either. Most games don't turn a profit. How exactly can it be all about making money, if you're not actually making money? That's the weird part about things. The goal is not to make money off any given game, the goal is to take a calculated risk and lose some projected amount of money, on average, for most of the games you publish. Just one of those games needs to make it huge, and as long as your losses on the dozen other titles you put on the market that year were under control, it's fine. World of Warcraft, Guitar Hero, Sims, Halo, GTA, etc -- these games essentially prop up the entire industry on their own. But your risk has to be carefully calculated and controlled, and if that means turning out a couple mid budget shooters that you can be reasonably assured will ship 2.5 million world wide, so be it. Except one of those turns out to be not so generic and now you've got Call of Duty 4 edging towards 10 million. In other words, most of the games out there are merely hedged bets. (And game designers have to live within those boundaries, frankly. Publishers are rarely interested in your more off the wall ideas.) There's also shelf space competition. Did you know that nearly every laundry detergent brand is actually made by the same company, Johnson and Johnson? It doesn't matter what you buy, it's the same damn powder and the money goes to the same people. The reason there's so many is that the brand variety allows them to dominate the shelf space. Games are subject to similar mechanics (albeit not quite as easily). As a publisher it's to your advantage to have MORE games out even if those games are crap and everyone knows that. The visibility alone is worth it. Oh, and sorry to break your pie in the sky game designer ideals (which annoy everyone you people talk to, by the way), but most of these generic games will sell decently as long as they have a modest bit of marketing coin behind them. That's what makes them safe hedge bets.

Actually, your response is naive. I don't mean to be rude, but it is.

It's all about making money. This is a business. The scenario you're describing is portfolio-based risk management, it's common in several industries, and it's only a means of expecting and dealing with failure. It's not an accurate illustration of the way the industry works.

Publishers will never put a game into production that doesn't have an attractive P&L. Even a so-called "hedged bet" has to have an attractive P&L. No game is made to loose money, or make just a little cash. None. THAT is not just naive, that's ignorant.

All of the Publishers in the space are publicly held and they all submit AOP's to their shareholders and in those AOPs they project earnings across their entire portfolio of games. They have to. They're driving shareholder value. They're in business to make money and create growth with everything they do. Anything else means a new CEO after the old one gets fired. Lowering your guidance because people don't want your game and aren't taking pre-orders is not something that anyone tolerates or treats as casually as you're suggesting here.

This industry exists to make money. Entertainment is just how we do it. Period.

Your post is full of so much more misinformation, I don't even know where to start. What is a mid budget? Can you name a mid budget FPS that broke 2.5 million units? I can name plenty of really expensive shooters that never even got close to the number you're just tossing out there. Are you really under the impression that modest marketing spends are enough to propel product into decent returns? Gah! Where do you people get this stuff? Are you just watching the Bonus Round and thinking you've got the inner workings of the industry figured out?

It's maddening how much utter ignorance gets tossed around on these boards as if it were gospel...

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Original post by QuantifyFun No game is made to loose money, or make just a little cash. None. THAT is not just naive, that's ignorant.

The concept of loss leaders is well established as a viable marketing strategy in all areas of industry, and the games industry is no exception. In fact, it's a pretty central component of the marketing strategy of practically every console ever made.