Sales figures on non blockbuster games?
March 13, 2002 04:51 PM
Howdy,
I''m wondering if folks have a good source to find hard sales data. I''ve found a few sources, but they all seem to require a rather substantial fee so i can''t even check if they have the actual information I''m looking for. What I''m really interested in are the sales for console games that didn''t do so hot. Games that sell X million copies have their sales figures posted all over the place, but i''m interested in trying to find out how many copies those sorta average ho hum games sell. Like how many copies of Generic Gameboy Platformer #47 are sold? I''m not sure if this is the kind of info companies are willing to pass out over the phone/email so i thought i''d ask around before i started running up my phone bill. Anyways any help or a nudge in the right direction would be appreciated. Thanks
March 14, 2002 03:13 AM
there is a company who investigates this kind of things.
http://www.intelectmt.com/corp/intelectmt/software/software_categories.htm
http://www.intelectmt.com/corp/intelectmt/aboutdata/about_data_datacollect.htm#projections
http://www.intelectmt.com/corp/intelectmt/software/software_categories.htm
http://www.intelectmt.com/corp/intelectmt/aboutdata/about_data_datacollect.htm#projections
March 14, 2002 11:55 AM
Well thanks for the reply...the NPD data seems to be the standard for what I''m looking for, unfortunatly their site is password protected for corporate clients which i can only assume means its gonna be a little over my head pricewise. If folks have other sources I''d love to hear them, but if this is the only show in town I guess i''ll have to suck it up.
122
March 14, 2002 01:03 PM
Some discouraging truisms.
For the PC
- if you hit 100,000, consider yourself successful.
- if you hit 200,000 consider yourself wildly successful.
- Your average big-name-game-from-big-name-company-that-doesn''t-sell-well will typically do 50,000 units lifetime (figure, 4 years and including all international sku''s)
- Don''t be surprised to find that the overwhelming majority of games sell <= 20,000.
For the PC
- if you hit 100,000, consider yourself successful.
- if you hit 200,000 consider yourself wildly successful.
- Your average big-name-game-from-big-name-company-that-doesn''t-sell-well will typically do 50,000 units lifetime (figure, 4 years and including all international sku''s)
- Don''t be surprised to find that the overwhelming majority of games sell <= 20,000.
Volition, Inc.
March 14, 2002 01:56 PM
PC Gaming As An Industry
Part II: The Industry At This Moment
Written by: Brad Wardell
Published: March 6, 2001
Our Story So Far
In the last article I basically painted a bleak picture of the reality of today''s game industry and how it got that way. I received a ton of email about it and the email was shocking. Why? Because the developers typically felt I was too optimistic.
Let me summarize the emails I got:
Game publishers lie about their sales stats. Not little lies. Whoppers. That game that shipped 500,000 units turns out to only sell 30,000 copies. Most people don''t have access to things like PC Data; that''s where the truth is and in PC Data we learn that games that sell more than 50,000 copies annually are extremely rare (like 1% of the titles released each year on the PC).
What This Means
This has detrimental effects on developers because they often go into making a project thinking that their cool game is going to go out and sell 500,000 copies. If they sign up with a publisher, they may get an advance (if they''re lucky, it might even be for over $100,000), but odds are that advance is all you''re ever going to get. Even if your game sells very well, based on the emails I got (and from personal experience) publishers seem to find a way to justify not paying royalties. I''m sure not all of them are that way but a lot of them seem to be. Bottom line, if you make a game and want someone else to publish it, get the maximum advance you can get and assume that''s all you''ll ever see.
If you don''t sign up with a publisher and do it on your own, things get even grimmer: Getting a title onto the shelves is very difficult. As if to help me with this column, our game, The Corporate Machine, which has had (so far) universally positive reviews from magazines and gamers, is currently the 8th most popular game download on download.com. It has thousands of people currently playing each other on our Stardock.net game service every day but was rejected for distribution by Navarre (one of the few remaining retail distributors). The reason? The graphics aren''t fancy enough. The reason why the graphics aren''t "fancy?" Because it''s a business strategy game, so we have to make sure the program will run on a P-100 without any problems (when you make a niche title, you can''t leave any potential players out unless you have a really good reason). Only in the game industry would potential sales volume be relegated to a secondary position (the graphics are simplified in order to increase sales). In our case, The Corporate Machine is what we''re using to set up channel partners, distribution agreements, etc. This way when our main gaming project, Galactic Civilizations, is ready, we can get it out into the channels quickly (luckily it has "fancy" graphics).
Okay, So You Don''t Get Your Game Into Retail.…
So if you don''t get your game onto retail shelves you''re left with electronic distribution. Here''s the flat out numbers based on experience and talking to other publishers and developers. If you put your game on a download site, you can expect it to get about a 1% conversion rate -- downloads converted to an actual sale.
Try it for fun: Go find a game that displays how many downloads it''s received. Let''s say it got 100,000 downloads. That means the demo generated around 1,000 sales on that site. Sounds unbelievable? Probably but it''s true, ask any game developer.
That doesn''t mean that a title with only 100,000 downloads only sold 1,000 units. It means that those particular downloads only generated 1,000 sales. There are lots of other ways to increase your impressions, such as getting it into retail (which is the main way to sell lots of units). Get lots of publicity online, in game magazines and other magazines and that will increase the number of people who know of your product. But getting media coverage is tricky, getting your game on a download site is easy.
We sold 75,000 copies of Entrepreneur mainly because we got it into retail but also because we got a ton of publicity in places like The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Information Week, Forbes, etc. That''s how we knew when we wrote its sequel, The Corporate Machine, that it had to work on that Pentium 100 Packard Bell -- because those people make up a lot of sales of games in general and business strategy games in particular.
But if you don''t get your title into retail, then getting media coverage becomes much trickier. Game magazine editors are human beings and let''s face it, getting a shrink-wrapped box in the mail is going to send a much better signal to an editor than sending a home burned CD-ROM. If you want your game to get covered, you better have a shrink-wrapped box (unless you want to be one of those token 22% reviews in PC Gamer). It''s subconscious, but we all expect good games to have a nice box and a nice manual. It''s human nature.
The Nuts and Bolts
Your only hope to sell large quantities of your game presently is to get it into retail. It''s that simple. If your product isn''t in retail, you''ll be lucky (very lucky) to sell 10,000 units of your game. In fact, based on the email I received, most of the game developers sold fewer than 1,000 copies of their title; many sold less than 100. Admittedly, these products weren''t necessarily going to give Blizzard any competition but even the lamest card game is going to sell a few thousand units if it gets into retail.
How Do You Get Into Retail?
So you''ve just made Super Destroyer; now you want to have it in all the stores. How do you get it there?
You don''t actually sell to stores: CompUSA is not going to buy your game from you. You will have to decide whether you want someone to "publish" your game or have a company distribute it. If someone else publishes your title, you will need to make sure you get that hefty advance up front. And be aware that the publisher is the guy who makes the box, so don''t be surprised if your company''s logo become a tiny little thing on the back.
If you let someone distribute your software there are two routes: There are companies who will basically take your product and use their connections with the wholesale distributors around the world and other channel partners to get your product out there. You can manufacture the box and such (though distributors often will do that for you); just be aware that getting paid can still be quite tricky -- you''re several layers down now in the payment process. The second route is to call up one of the major wholesale distributors (Ingram Micro, Navarre, Merisel) and submit your game to them. But the difference is that a wholesale distributor doesn''t care about your game -- they''re basically a warehouse. It''s up to you to get CompUSA or Best Buy to put in their order (the first kind of distributor will take care of that for you).
Most stores will require market development funds to be paid by someone. CompUSA typically asks for $30,000 to have an advertisement in the Sunday newspaper, for example. So you probably don''t want to be in retail unless you really think your game is going to sell large quantities.
If you get into retail, then you have the opportunity to potentially sell lots of copies of your product. But most games die and sell less than 10,000 units anyway, even if they''re at retail. Plus, if you pay $100,000 to the stores just to get on the shelves and your game only sells 5,000 units at $23 wholesale with the box costing $3 per unit, well you get the idea.
So What''s The Solution? Are We All Just Screwed?
The good news is that the PC game industry is about to change dramatically thanks to the Internet. As the Internet proliferates and people become more comfortable buying games online, things will get much better. As if on cue for the next article, Amazon.com is getting into the action by having games that you can order, download and receive the box later -- that is the "Wave of the future."
When millions of titles are sold off the net each year, then the retailers will lose their clout, and the game magazines will have to actually cover offerings that aren''t at retail. That may mean coverage of the latest Blizzard expansion pack, but it will mean gamers will see a lot of coverage of lots of other titles as the playing field will be evened out a bit.
So what it will mean is that there will be a lot more games that sell more than 10,000 units but probably fewer that sell more than 200,000 units because there will be more products to choose from. I think that, overall, sales will go up because the instant gratification issue. (If I could go to EA''s website and simply purchase and download one of their games right now, I would. I''m bored and want to play something but I''m too lazy to drag my rear to the local mall to buy something.)
But how will this affect game design, game distribution and the publisher/developer relationship? How will games be distributed?
Well that''s a good topic for the next part -- The Game Industry Part III: The Future!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brad Wardell is the designer of such games as Galactic Civilizations, Entrepreneur & The Corporate Machine. He is also the Product Manager and co-designer of such Windows products as WindowBlinds, DesktopX, Object Desktop, and more at Stardock. Wardell''s home page is http://people.mw.mediaone.net/bwardell.
Part II: The Industry At This Moment
Written by: Brad Wardell
Published: March 6, 2001
Our Story So Far
In the last article I basically painted a bleak picture of the reality of today''s game industry and how it got that way. I received a ton of email about it and the email was shocking. Why? Because the developers typically felt I was too optimistic.
Let me summarize the emails I got:
Game publishers lie about their sales stats. Not little lies. Whoppers. That game that shipped 500,000 units turns out to only sell 30,000 copies. Most people don''t have access to things like PC Data; that''s where the truth is and in PC Data we learn that games that sell more than 50,000 copies annually are extremely rare (like 1% of the titles released each year on the PC).
What This Means
This has detrimental effects on developers because they often go into making a project thinking that their cool game is going to go out and sell 500,000 copies. If they sign up with a publisher, they may get an advance (if they''re lucky, it might even be for over $100,000), but odds are that advance is all you''re ever going to get. Even if your game sells very well, based on the emails I got (and from personal experience) publishers seem to find a way to justify not paying royalties. I''m sure not all of them are that way but a lot of them seem to be. Bottom line, if you make a game and want someone else to publish it, get the maximum advance you can get and assume that''s all you''ll ever see.
If you don''t sign up with a publisher and do it on your own, things get even grimmer: Getting a title onto the shelves is very difficult. As if to help me with this column, our game, The Corporate Machine, which has had (so far) universally positive reviews from magazines and gamers, is currently the 8th most popular game download on download.com. It has thousands of people currently playing each other on our Stardock.net game service every day but was rejected for distribution by Navarre (one of the few remaining retail distributors). The reason? The graphics aren''t fancy enough. The reason why the graphics aren''t "fancy?" Because it''s a business strategy game, so we have to make sure the program will run on a P-100 without any problems (when you make a niche title, you can''t leave any potential players out unless you have a really good reason). Only in the game industry would potential sales volume be relegated to a secondary position (the graphics are simplified in order to increase sales). In our case, The Corporate Machine is what we''re using to set up channel partners, distribution agreements, etc. This way when our main gaming project, Galactic Civilizations, is ready, we can get it out into the channels quickly (luckily it has "fancy" graphics).
Okay, So You Don''t Get Your Game Into Retail.…
So if you don''t get your game onto retail shelves you''re left with electronic distribution. Here''s the flat out numbers based on experience and talking to other publishers and developers. If you put your game on a download site, you can expect it to get about a 1% conversion rate -- downloads converted to an actual sale.
Try it for fun: Go find a game that displays how many downloads it''s received. Let''s say it got 100,000 downloads. That means the demo generated around 1,000 sales on that site. Sounds unbelievable? Probably but it''s true, ask any game developer.
That doesn''t mean that a title with only 100,000 downloads only sold 1,000 units. It means that those particular downloads only generated 1,000 sales. There are lots of other ways to increase your impressions, such as getting it into retail (which is the main way to sell lots of units). Get lots of publicity online, in game magazines and other magazines and that will increase the number of people who know of your product. But getting media coverage is tricky, getting your game on a download site is easy.
We sold 75,000 copies of Entrepreneur mainly because we got it into retail but also because we got a ton of publicity in places like The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Information Week, Forbes, etc. That''s how we knew when we wrote its sequel, The Corporate Machine, that it had to work on that Pentium 100 Packard Bell -- because those people make up a lot of sales of games in general and business strategy games in particular.
But if you don''t get your title into retail, then getting media coverage becomes much trickier. Game magazine editors are human beings and let''s face it, getting a shrink-wrapped box in the mail is going to send a much better signal to an editor than sending a home burned CD-ROM. If you want your game to get covered, you better have a shrink-wrapped box (unless you want to be one of those token 22% reviews in PC Gamer). It''s subconscious, but we all expect good games to have a nice box and a nice manual. It''s human nature.
The Nuts and Bolts
Your only hope to sell large quantities of your game presently is to get it into retail. It''s that simple. If your product isn''t in retail, you''ll be lucky (very lucky) to sell 10,000 units of your game. In fact, based on the email I received, most of the game developers sold fewer than 1,000 copies of their title; many sold less than 100. Admittedly, these products weren''t necessarily going to give Blizzard any competition but even the lamest card game is going to sell a few thousand units if it gets into retail.
How Do You Get Into Retail?
So you''ve just made Super Destroyer; now you want to have it in all the stores. How do you get it there?
You don''t actually sell to stores: CompUSA is not going to buy your game from you. You will have to decide whether you want someone to "publish" your game or have a company distribute it. If someone else publishes your title, you will need to make sure you get that hefty advance up front. And be aware that the publisher is the guy who makes the box, so don''t be surprised if your company''s logo become a tiny little thing on the back.
If you let someone distribute your software there are two routes: There are companies who will basically take your product and use their connections with the wholesale distributors around the world and other channel partners to get your product out there. You can manufacture the box and such (though distributors often will do that for you); just be aware that getting paid can still be quite tricky -- you''re several layers down now in the payment process. The second route is to call up one of the major wholesale distributors (Ingram Micro, Navarre, Merisel) and submit your game to them. But the difference is that a wholesale distributor doesn''t care about your game -- they''re basically a warehouse. It''s up to you to get CompUSA or Best Buy to put in their order (the first kind of distributor will take care of that for you).
Most stores will require market development funds to be paid by someone. CompUSA typically asks for $30,000 to have an advertisement in the Sunday newspaper, for example. So you probably don''t want to be in retail unless you really think your game is going to sell large quantities.
If you get into retail, then you have the opportunity to potentially sell lots of copies of your product. But most games die and sell less than 10,000 units anyway, even if they''re at retail. Plus, if you pay $100,000 to the stores just to get on the shelves and your game only sells 5,000 units at $23 wholesale with the box costing $3 per unit, well you get the idea.
So What''s The Solution? Are We All Just Screwed?
The good news is that the PC game industry is about to change dramatically thanks to the Internet. As the Internet proliferates and people become more comfortable buying games online, things will get much better. As if on cue for the next article, Amazon.com is getting into the action by having games that you can order, download and receive the box later -- that is the "Wave of the future."
When millions of titles are sold off the net each year, then the retailers will lose their clout, and the game magazines will have to actually cover offerings that aren''t at retail. That may mean coverage of the latest Blizzard expansion pack, but it will mean gamers will see a lot of coverage of lots of other titles as the playing field will be evened out a bit.
So what it will mean is that there will be a lot more games that sell more than 10,000 units but probably fewer that sell more than 200,000 units because there will be more products to choose from. I think that, overall, sales will go up because the instant gratification issue. (If I could go to EA''s website and simply purchase and download one of their games right now, I would. I''m bored and want to play something but I''m too lazy to drag my rear to the local mall to buy something.)
But how will this affect game design, game distribution and the publisher/developer relationship? How will games be distributed?
Well that''s a good topic for the next part -- The Game Industry Part III: The Future!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brad Wardell is the designer of such games as Galactic Civilizations, Entrepreneur & The Corporate Machine. He is also the Product Manager and co-designer of such Windows products as WindowBlinds, DesktopX, Object Desktop, and more at Stardock. Wardell''s home page is http://people.mw.mediaone.net/bwardell.
118
March 14, 2002 03:39 PM
Hey Brad,
That was an interesting article you wrote. I''m quite surprised you think the P100 market is an important one. After my P200 burned out I figured there wouldn''t be many left that still work.
I''m also interested what you think of the pirate problem. How are we going to beat it when people can swap huge games easily. A company posted here recently saying that they wrote their product so it would require new codes every few months. They found that well over half of the people trying to register were using pirate copies. I''m sure any good hacker cfould disable this feature and upload the game to the internet.
That was an interesting article you wrote. I''m quite surprised you think the P100 market is an important one. After my P200 burned out I figured there wouldn''t be many left that still work.
I''m also interested what you think of the pirate problem. How are we going to beat it when people can swap huge games easily. A company posted here recently saying that they wrote their product so it would require new codes every few months. They found that well over half of the people trying to register were using pirate copies. I''m sure any good hacker cfould disable this feature and upload the game to the internet.
"I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity."George W. Bush
122
March 15, 2002 03:36 AM
I agreee, a very intersting article and I am also interested in solving the piracy problem. right now I dont think its a big deal, a lot of AOL users and other web newbeis arent going to go to IRC or warez sites to get hacks, but that will change over time.
The first person to make truly uncrackable copy protection work over the net is going to make megabucks.
And I vouch for those sales figures too. I am still hovering around (about to break) the thousand sales figure.
I cant understand the mindlessness of the ''fancy graphics'' idea either. Fancy graphics are so overrated. I just saw Halo for the first time yesterday and wasn''t that impressed. I will choose cool gameplay (wolfenstein) over Halos amazing inverse kinematics anyday.
And stardock do some cool stuff. windowblinds is great. keep up the good work!
http://www.positech.co.uk
The first person to make truly uncrackable copy protection work over the net is going to make megabucks.
And I vouch for those sales figures too. I am still hovering around (about to break) the thousand sales figure.
I cant understand the mindlessness of the ''fancy graphics'' idea either. Fancy graphics are so overrated. I just saw Halo for the first time yesterday and wasn''t that impressed. I will choose cool gameplay (wolfenstein) over Halos amazing inverse kinematics anyday.
And stardock do some cool stuff. windowblinds is great. keep up the good work!
http://www.positech.co.uk
March 15, 2002 09:42 AM
PC Gaming As An Industry
Part III: Ideas on what''s coming next…
Written by: Brad Wardell
Published: April 9, 2001
Our Story So Far...
In parts I and II we have discussed that the PC gaming industry is growing rapidly (over 20% last year). But it is not growing fast enough to support all of the new games and their big budgets.
As a result:
There is limited shelf space available for PC games but lots of games to fill them; thus retailers can charge a premium for shelf space.
Even games that make it into retail typically sell less than 20,000 copies. A "Hot" game will sell 50,000 copies and a top 10 title only has to break 150,000 copies.
Games that don''t get into retail tend to do very low numbers -- less than 10,000 units sold (most products doing far less than that even).
So if you''re thinking of making a "big budget" game, you need to sign up with one of the very few companies that can get your title into massive distribution. A small publisher just doesn''t have the resources or clout to get that scarce shelf space, and right now, retail shelf space is the only way to sell lots of copies of your work.
Because so many people want to make games, publishers get tons of submissions but only a tiny fraction are selected for funding. Even if you come up with a really cool idea, it might be very difficult to get a significant advance. So those of you thinking of getting some friends together, quitting your day jobs to make a $2 million title with a big advance from say, Electronic Arts, think again.
After my last column, I got a lot of email from game developers who had gotten together with friends, designed and wrote up a good portion of their title and then submitted it to all the major publishers only to get blown off. The typical scenario was that they wrote a prototype, sent it to say, Activision, telling them how they could finish the whole thing for only an $800,000 advance and then never heard anything back. You can''t do that. You have to be able to show you''ve completed games first to even have a remote chance.
This will remain the case as long as the current system is in place -- i.e., only games at retail selling lots of copies. But it appears that the current system is beginning to change: Utility software used to be the same way as PC games -- get it into retail or die. Now you can sell large quantities of utility software on the net. Are games next?
PC Gaming: The Next Generation
Even assuming strong growth each year of 20%, a $1.4 billion industry isn''t going to become a $20 billion industry any time soon. So if you want to make games, you need to be aware of the options in front of you. However, new options are coming online that even-out the playing field. The retail issue is the biggest obstacle: if there were somehow a way to make a profit selling your game electronically and bypassing retail entirely that would be the way to go. Here are some concepts in development:
Electronic Impulse
One system I think you''ll see be adopted is that game publishers will let you buy and download the title right then and there.
Picture this: DOOM 3 comes out, you go to Id''s website and you can buy it. They''ll send you the box but you''re also given a link to download either the installable game or a CD-ROM image to download and burn your own CD -- the ultimate impulse buy. Just a brief moment of weakness and click, you have just purchased a title. Dragging my butt to the store and buying a product requires a lot more "impulse" than getting a game without having to even get up out of my chair.
Watch for Amazon.com to take over this segment. So you go to Id software, click on "Buy" and it takes you to an Amazon.com page or something with a 1-click buy; they ship it and make it available for download right there. Everyone trusts Amazon.com already right? They already have your credit card info.
But what about piracy? Okay, let''s talk about software piracy. The industry''s quiet dirty secret is it''s overblown. Yeah, supposedly we lose billions of dollars in piracy. But do we? How do we know? In my mind, the amount we "lose" are sales that we otherwise would have made. Or the well accepted tried and true, "Uncle Bill" factor. Everyone has an Uncle Bill. He''s the guy you see every Thanksgiving and calls you a "Computer Genius." If he''s playing a game regularly and he pirated it, that developer lost a sale. Uncle Bill is the one who discovered Napster last year and talked it up at Thanksgiving dinner which is why the record companies are so afraid of it.
It''s not the 16 year old warez kiddies that you have to worry about, it''s the Uncle Bills. Uncle Bill only pirates when it''s more convenient. [Side note: He also typically has a three year old machine (i.e., a PII 166 with 32 megs of RAM); this will be the subject of a future column about how game developers miss out on lots of sales by making their title unplayable on the bulk of systems
So how do you get Uncle Bill to buy your game rather than pirating it? Value-add: You make the game you purchase be the beginning, not the end, of your service to your customers. Game players become customers again. It''s a term many game publishers have forgotten about.
So what you do is you continually add updates to your product, but you only allow users who have purchased from you to have access to them. As an example and a nice free plug, I''ll use what we''re doing with The Corporate Machine: You buy The Corporate Machine, we ship you the box but you are also given a link to download it. Because the game was designed for electronic distribution, the initial download size is rather small. Once you have the software downloaded, you can play it but there are also links to get additional maps and markets which do add up to considerable size if you grab them all at once.
So how do we deal with piracy? Value-add: We''re creating additional maps and markets for the game. To get them, just put in the email address you used when you purchased the software, it then finds you in the database and emails you back a randomly generated link to the market or map or whatever. If you bought the title at the store, you can instantly register with us by putting in your unique serial number and email address.
So now there''s a good reason to buy the program -- you get free, real updates. Typically even your favorite game has a few nits you''d like fixed. While patches for bugs and significant problems are generally made available after release, new features are a rarity.
But if your game is available electronically and you want to reward people for purchasing it instead of pirating it, you keep enhancing their gaming experience long after release.
For instance, let''s say you buy a game and you really like it but there are just a few features you wish it had. Will the developer/publisher add those features? You don''t know with a normal title but with a game from a subscription service or one that''s sold with the value-add system, the customer will expect additional features for an extended period of time.
Would this stop all piracy? Probably not, but for people who actually buy software, convenience matters. Uncle Bill isn''t going to waste his evening searching Warez sites when for $30 he can get the game instantly and get all the updates without hassles. The more updates and free additions you do, the lower your piracy rate.
This system provides an incentive for game developers to be more responsive to their customers -- and make no mistake, paying game players are customers and should be treated with that kind of respect.
Episodic Gaming
Another route already being tried is episodic gaming. This is where you either "subscribe" to a game or purchase the initial program and have a very easy way to get new episodes for it.
Arush Games is doing this now with their Monkey Brains product. They give you the first level for free and then for very small amounts (I think it''s $5 or something like that) you can purchase additional levels. It''s almost like shareware but ongoing. If you really like an episodic game, you can hope to play new episodes for years to come (assuming enough other people like the title to keep purchasing enough episodes to pay for it).
We''re doing this too with LightWeight Ninja, though we''re doing it a bit differently -- you don''t buy the game level by level, you buy it episode by episode. The title is broken up by chapters which are comprised of three levels each: We give the first chapter away and if you buy the game you get the full episode (12 levels). After release, we continue to provide additional chapters for players until episode 2 is ready which would be an inexpensive purchase.
Subscription Gaming
Before EverQuest, many users would have scoffed at paying a monthly or yearly fee for a game, but EverQuest and Ultima Online have paved the way for others. Now it''s ready to expand beyond just massively multiplayer games.
What hardcore Total Annihilation player wouldn''t have been willing to pay $9.95 to Boneyards.net per month to keep that service going? Probably a good 10,000 players for starters; that''s $100,000 per month. More than enough to pay for an IT person and a developer to keep providing new maps and units to the service.
Subscription games can be an offshoot of the value-add system. So when a person "buys" a title at $49.95, what they''re really doing is getting the game plus a year''s access to new "stuff" for it. Using Starcraft as an example, users would pay $49.95 for Starcraft and get a year''s access to Battle.net. During that time, they would be able to get new units and features. At the end of that time, the user could then continue to get Battle.net for $9.95 per month. The user would then receive a higher quality of service as well as additional units, maps, etc. How many core Starcraft players are there out there? Tens of thousands, not even counting Korea.
As more gamers get high speed connections along with "Standardizing" on games for long periods of time (How many people reading this have played Counterstrike in the past month?), an opportunity presents itself -- encourage users to keep playing your title year after year by providing them with new features, units, weapons, maps, whatever in exchange for a small monthly or yearly fee.
What we''re doing at Stardock is all of the above: We created a service called Drengin.net which is where all our games are going to be; and a user can "buy" (i.e., subscribe to) it for $49.95 a year. The user then gets, right off the bat, all the games on there, but then they get everything updated or enhanced for an additional year. The games on there are also sold standalone at slightly lower prices but they too continue to get updates to the games they''ve purchased long after release because we''re providing them on Drengin.net as part of the service and then releasing them standalone as part of the value-add system I mentioned earlier.
To use the upcoming Galactic Civilizations as an example:
A user subscribes to Drengin.net for $49.95; they get, amongst other titles, Galactic Civilizations. They get updates to it, new ships, new scenarios, new events, etc. for the subsequent year. A person could also buy Galactic Civilizations for a slightly lower cost and they get the changes, improvements, etc., for awhile afterwards as well. At some point, we wrap up all those changes, improvements, etc. and release Galactic Civilizations II, then III and so on as standalone games available via multiple channels.
Either way though, instead of users being stuck with their favorite game never really changing, they come to realize that their purchase is just the beginning of the service they''ll be getting. And because of that service, they can provide feedback and suggestions that are much more likely to show up on the next monthly build of the program or as a new map or a new unit or what have you.
In the long run, the gamer ends up way ahead and so does the game developer because it''s a lot better (and less expensive) to keep improving an existing title than to rewrite the whole thing for each sequel.
That''s how non-games do it: When you run Office 2000, there is plenty of code in there from Word 95 and Excel 3.0 -- they evolve over time, getting better and better. Microsoft does this because it''s a lot cheaper to do it that way but it''s also because the customer ends up with a better product. Why doesn''t some upstart create a program that competes with say Quark Express or Page Maker? Because it would take them years to get all the features, fine tuning, and usability of those two mature programs. Can you imagine how good games could be if they evolved over years, incorporating new technologies along the way instead of reinventing the wheel each time? Next time you play some super cool new offering, think about how much cooler it would have been if they could have concentrated specifically on stuff that takes advantage of new gaming technologies and usability improvements, rather than having to code load/save game mechanisms and sprites (you already see this in 1st person shooters with the licensing of 3D engines) or debug handling or GUI controls.
With subscriptions, gamers -- who have often standardized on a "favorite" game for years at a time -- can keep getting new updates and know the title is going to continue to improve. As you read this, do you know anyone who would pay say, $4.99 per month, to "Counterstrike.net" in which each month they automatically get new weapons, new maps and new enhancements to the engine? I know lots of people who would. As I said earlier, I''d kill for a Boneyards.net subscription network.
But such subscription systems require a lot of infrastructure to be created. Gaming as a service has to be reliable and at first, the value has to be so overwhelming that the gamer has to say, "How in the heck can they afford to do this?" in order to win over skeptical consumers.
For the player that is getting increasingly tired of buying a product, liking it but wishing that it was just a little better or could keep improving over time, subscription gaming is for you. And for developers and publishers who would like be able to deliver games right to their users avoiding the expense of retail, subscriptions, episodic gaming and value-add is the way to go. Heck, we spent over $200,000 just on shelf space when we released Entrepreneur back in 1998. $200,000 would pay for a developer to keep enhancing the program for years. And you, reading this, probably haven''t even heard of that game. Imagine the bucks being paid by the big guys to get their title into the local megastore? We trade ongoing improvements to our games for being able to buy a box at a store.
Putting It In Perspective
Retail isn''t dying for gaming yet. It won''t die, it''ll merely decline in its relative importance as a distribution mechanism for games. Five years ago, the only way to sell a lot of copies of your software utility was at retail. Now, as the head buyer at a major retail chain told me, "non-game PC software is dying at retail." Will people in five years predominately buy their PC games electronically and gain instant access to them? I think to a large extent yes.
At some point, it''ll simply be too convenient to be reading a review of "MegaGame IV" at AVault, click on the link to the MegaGame IV website, and click on a "Buy now" link that lets you get the game right then and there (box sent separately). Maybe when the box comes it has a little coupon that says, "Upgrade to the MegaGame Network for only $9.95 per month and get all our games and sequels as they''re made!" Perhaps you''ll hold onto that coupon when MegaGame V comes out.
Or maybe it''ll be MegaGame Episode I, you''ll buy it and when it installs a link comes up on how you can subscribe for $2.99 per month to keep getting new episodes as they''re made (or a link to simply outright purchase additional episodes).
When this happens, you''ll see a lot more variety in games because the distribution costs just won''t be so massive anymore. So taking on a risky venture won''t be so devastating if the risk doesn''t pay off. It''ll also open the door to lots of new developers who can either try their hand at making their title electronically distributable or team up with one of the various gaming subscription networks to e-publish their product. (Check out what real.com is doing, they''re moving in this direction now.) How will this affect the big name game publishers? Not at all, the EA''s and Activision''s of the world will simply have an EA.net and an Activision.net.
When buying a game becomes a true impulse buy, you''ll see a lot more titles purchased; this will help the developers and publishers. And because they''ll be electronically available as subscriptions or in episodic form, users will get a lot more value for their purchase than the present vain hope of a patch after release. Even if they''re not available as subscriptions or episodes, they''ll need to provide more value after release to thwart convenient piracy.
What do you think? You can email me directly at: bwardell@stardock.com or discuss on: news://news.avault.com/avault.developer
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brad Wardell is the Project Manager of The Corporate Machine and Galactic Civilizations at Stardock (www.stardock.com). He also is the Product Manager of Object Desktop (which includes WindowBlinds, DesktopX, IconPackager, WindowFX, and more) which is provided as a subscription network today with over four million users of the various components. His home page is http://people.mw.mediaone.net/bwardell
Part III: Ideas on what''s coming next…
Written by: Brad Wardell
Published: April 9, 2001
Our Story So Far...
In parts I and II we have discussed that the PC gaming industry is growing rapidly (over 20% last year). But it is not growing fast enough to support all of the new games and their big budgets.
As a result:
There is limited shelf space available for PC games but lots of games to fill them; thus retailers can charge a premium for shelf space.
Even games that make it into retail typically sell less than 20,000 copies. A "Hot" game will sell 50,000 copies and a top 10 title only has to break 150,000 copies.
Games that don''t get into retail tend to do very low numbers -- less than 10,000 units sold (most products doing far less than that even).
So if you''re thinking of making a "big budget" game, you need to sign up with one of the very few companies that can get your title into massive distribution. A small publisher just doesn''t have the resources or clout to get that scarce shelf space, and right now, retail shelf space is the only way to sell lots of copies of your work.
Because so many people want to make games, publishers get tons of submissions but only a tiny fraction are selected for funding. Even if you come up with a really cool idea, it might be very difficult to get a significant advance. So those of you thinking of getting some friends together, quitting your day jobs to make a $2 million title with a big advance from say, Electronic Arts, think again.
After my last column, I got a lot of email from game developers who had gotten together with friends, designed and wrote up a good portion of their title and then submitted it to all the major publishers only to get blown off. The typical scenario was that they wrote a prototype, sent it to say, Activision, telling them how they could finish the whole thing for only an $800,000 advance and then never heard anything back. You can''t do that. You have to be able to show you''ve completed games first to even have a remote chance.
This will remain the case as long as the current system is in place -- i.e., only games at retail selling lots of copies. But it appears that the current system is beginning to change: Utility software used to be the same way as PC games -- get it into retail or die. Now you can sell large quantities of utility software on the net. Are games next?
PC Gaming: The Next Generation
Even assuming strong growth each year of 20%, a $1.4 billion industry isn''t going to become a $20 billion industry any time soon. So if you want to make games, you need to be aware of the options in front of you. However, new options are coming online that even-out the playing field. The retail issue is the biggest obstacle: if there were somehow a way to make a profit selling your game electronically and bypassing retail entirely that would be the way to go. Here are some concepts in development:
Electronic Impulse
One system I think you''ll see be adopted is that game publishers will let you buy and download the title right then and there.
Picture this: DOOM 3 comes out, you go to Id''s website and you can buy it. They''ll send you the box but you''re also given a link to download either the installable game or a CD-ROM image to download and burn your own CD -- the ultimate impulse buy. Just a brief moment of weakness and click, you have just purchased a title. Dragging my butt to the store and buying a product requires a lot more "impulse" than getting a game without having to even get up out of my chair.
Watch for Amazon.com to take over this segment. So you go to Id software, click on "Buy" and it takes you to an Amazon.com page or something with a 1-click buy; they ship it and make it available for download right there. Everyone trusts Amazon.com already right? They already have your credit card info.
But what about piracy? Okay, let''s talk about software piracy. The industry''s quiet dirty secret is it''s overblown. Yeah, supposedly we lose billions of dollars in piracy. But do we? How do we know? In my mind, the amount we "lose" are sales that we otherwise would have made. Or the well accepted tried and true, "Uncle Bill" factor. Everyone has an Uncle Bill. He''s the guy you see every Thanksgiving and calls you a "Computer Genius." If he''s playing a game regularly and he pirated it, that developer lost a sale. Uncle Bill is the one who discovered Napster last year and talked it up at Thanksgiving dinner which is why the record companies are so afraid of it.
It''s not the 16 year old warez kiddies that you have to worry about, it''s the Uncle Bills. Uncle Bill only pirates when it''s more convenient. [Side note: He also typically has a three year old machine (i.e., a PII 166 with 32 megs of RAM); this will be the subject of a future column about how game developers miss out on lots of sales by making their title unplayable on the bulk of systems
So how do you get Uncle Bill to buy your game rather than pirating it? Value-add: You make the game you purchase be the beginning, not the end, of your service to your customers. Game players become customers again. It''s a term many game publishers have forgotten about.
So what you do is you continually add updates to your product, but you only allow users who have purchased from you to have access to them. As an example and a nice free plug, I''ll use what we''re doing with The Corporate Machine: You buy The Corporate Machine, we ship you the box but you are also given a link to download it. Because the game was designed for electronic distribution, the initial download size is rather small. Once you have the software downloaded, you can play it but there are also links to get additional maps and markets which do add up to considerable size if you grab them all at once.
So how do we deal with piracy? Value-add: We''re creating additional maps and markets for the game. To get them, just put in the email address you used when you purchased the software, it then finds you in the database and emails you back a randomly generated link to the market or map or whatever. If you bought the title at the store, you can instantly register with us by putting in your unique serial number and email address.
So now there''s a good reason to buy the program -- you get free, real updates. Typically even your favorite game has a few nits you''d like fixed. While patches for bugs and significant problems are generally made available after release, new features are a rarity.
But if your game is available electronically and you want to reward people for purchasing it instead of pirating it, you keep enhancing their gaming experience long after release.
For instance, let''s say you buy a game and you really like it but there are just a few features you wish it had. Will the developer/publisher add those features? You don''t know with a normal title but with a game from a subscription service or one that''s sold with the value-add system, the customer will expect additional features for an extended period of time.
Would this stop all piracy? Probably not, but for people who actually buy software, convenience matters. Uncle Bill isn''t going to waste his evening searching Warez sites when for $30 he can get the game instantly and get all the updates without hassles. The more updates and free additions you do, the lower your piracy rate.
This system provides an incentive for game developers to be more responsive to their customers -- and make no mistake, paying game players are customers and should be treated with that kind of respect.
Episodic Gaming
Another route already being tried is episodic gaming. This is where you either "subscribe" to a game or purchase the initial program and have a very easy way to get new episodes for it.
Arush Games is doing this now with their Monkey Brains product. They give you the first level for free and then for very small amounts (I think it''s $5 or something like that) you can purchase additional levels. It''s almost like shareware but ongoing. If you really like an episodic game, you can hope to play new episodes for years to come (assuming enough other people like the title to keep purchasing enough episodes to pay for it).
We''re doing this too with LightWeight Ninja, though we''re doing it a bit differently -- you don''t buy the game level by level, you buy it episode by episode. The title is broken up by chapters which are comprised of three levels each: We give the first chapter away and if you buy the game you get the full episode (12 levels). After release, we continue to provide additional chapters for players until episode 2 is ready which would be an inexpensive purchase.
Subscription Gaming
Before EverQuest, many users would have scoffed at paying a monthly or yearly fee for a game, but EverQuest and Ultima Online have paved the way for others. Now it''s ready to expand beyond just massively multiplayer games.
What hardcore Total Annihilation player wouldn''t have been willing to pay $9.95 to Boneyards.net per month to keep that service going? Probably a good 10,000 players for starters; that''s $100,000 per month. More than enough to pay for an IT person and a developer to keep providing new maps and units to the service.
Subscription games can be an offshoot of the value-add system. So when a person "buys" a title at $49.95, what they''re really doing is getting the game plus a year''s access to new "stuff" for it. Using Starcraft as an example, users would pay $49.95 for Starcraft and get a year''s access to Battle.net. During that time, they would be able to get new units and features. At the end of that time, the user could then continue to get Battle.net for $9.95 per month. The user would then receive a higher quality of service as well as additional units, maps, etc. How many core Starcraft players are there out there? Tens of thousands, not even counting Korea.
As more gamers get high speed connections along with "Standardizing" on games for long periods of time (How many people reading this have played Counterstrike in the past month?), an opportunity presents itself -- encourage users to keep playing your title year after year by providing them with new features, units, weapons, maps, whatever in exchange for a small monthly or yearly fee.
What we''re doing at Stardock is all of the above: We created a service called Drengin.net which is where all our games are going to be; and a user can "buy" (i.e., subscribe to) it for $49.95 a year. The user then gets, right off the bat, all the games on there, but then they get everything updated or enhanced for an additional year. The games on there are also sold standalone at slightly lower prices but they too continue to get updates to the games they''ve purchased long after release because we''re providing them on Drengin.net as part of the service and then releasing them standalone as part of the value-add system I mentioned earlier.
To use the upcoming Galactic Civilizations as an example:
A user subscribes to Drengin.net for $49.95; they get, amongst other titles, Galactic Civilizations. They get updates to it, new ships, new scenarios, new events, etc. for the subsequent year. A person could also buy Galactic Civilizations for a slightly lower cost and they get the changes, improvements, etc., for awhile afterwards as well. At some point, we wrap up all those changes, improvements, etc. and release Galactic Civilizations II, then III and so on as standalone games available via multiple channels.
Either way though, instead of users being stuck with their favorite game never really changing, they come to realize that their purchase is just the beginning of the service they''ll be getting. And because of that service, they can provide feedback and suggestions that are much more likely to show up on the next monthly build of the program or as a new map or a new unit or what have you.
In the long run, the gamer ends up way ahead and so does the game developer because it''s a lot better (and less expensive) to keep improving an existing title than to rewrite the whole thing for each sequel.
That''s how non-games do it: When you run Office 2000, there is plenty of code in there from Word 95 and Excel 3.0 -- they evolve over time, getting better and better. Microsoft does this because it''s a lot cheaper to do it that way but it''s also because the customer ends up with a better product. Why doesn''t some upstart create a program that competes with say Quark Express or Page Maker? Because it would take them years to get all the features, fine tuning, and usability of those two mature programs. Can you imagine how good games could be if they evolved over years, incorporating new technologies along the way instead of reinventing the wheel each time? Next time you play some super cool new offering, think about how much cooler it would have been if they could have concentrated specifically on stuff that takes advantage of new gaming technologies and usability improvements, rather than having to code load/save game mechanisms and sprites (you already see this in 1st person shooters with the licensing of 3D engines) or debug handling or GUI controls.
With subscriptions, gamers -- who have often standardized on a "favorite" game for years at a time -- can keep getting new updates and know the title is going to continue to improve. As you read this, do you know anyone who would pay say, $4.99 per month, to "Counterstrike.net" in which each month they automatically get new weapons, new maps and new enhancements to the engine? I know lots of people who would. As I said earlier, I''d kill for a Boneyards.net subscription network.
But such subscription systems require a lot of infrastructure to be created. Gaming as a service has to be reliable and at first, the value has to be so overwhelming that the gamer has to say, "How in the heck can they afford to do this?" in order to win over skeptical consumers.
For the player that is getting increasingly tired of buying a product, liking it but wishing that it was just a little better or could keep improving over time, subscription gaming is for you. And for developers and publishers who would like be able to deliver games right to their users avoiding the expense of retail, subscriptions, episodic gaming and value-add is the way to go. Heck, we spent over $200,000 just on shelf space when we released Entrepreneur back in 1998. $200,000 would pay for a developer to keep enhancing the program for years. And you, reading this, probably haven''t even heard of that game. Imagine the bucks being paid by the big guys to get their title into the local megastore? We trade ongoing improvements to our games for being able to buy a box at a store.
Putting It In Perspective
Retail isn''t dying for gaming yet. It won''t die, it''ll merely decline in its relative importance as a distribution mechanism for games. Five years ago, the only way to sell a lot of copies of your software utility was at retail. Now, as the head buyer at a major retail chain told me, "non-game PC software is dying at retail." Will people in five years predominately buy their PC games electronically and gain instant access to them? I think to a large extent yes.
At some point, it''ll simply be too convenient to be reading a review of "MegaGame IV" at AVault, click on the link to the MegaGame IV website, and click on a "Buy now" link that lets you get the game right then and there (box sent separately). Maybe when the box comes it has a little coupon that says, "Upgrade to the MegaGame Network for only $9.95 per month and get all our games and sequels as they''re made!" Perhaps you''ll hold onto that coupon when MegaGame V comes out.
Or maybe it''ll be MegaGame Episode I, you''ll buy it and when it installs a link comes up on how you can subscribe for $2.99 per month to keep getting new episodes as they''re made (or a link to simply outright purchase additional episodes).
When this happens, you''ll see a lot more variety in games because the distribution costs just won''t be so massive anymore. So taking on a risky venture won''t be so devastating if the risk doesn''t pay off. It''ll also open the door to lots of new developers who can either try their hand at making their title electronically distributable or team up with one of the various gaming subscription networks to e-publish their product. (Check out what real.com is doing, they''re moving in this direction now.) How will this affect the big name game publishers? Not at all, the EA''s and Activision''s of the world will simply have an EA.net and an Activision.net.
When buying a game becomes a true impulse buy, you''ll see a lot more titles purchased; this will help the developers and publishers. And because they''ll be electronically available as subscriptions or in episodic form, users will get a lot more value for their purchase than the present vain hope of a patch after release. Even if they''re not available as subscriptions or episodes, they''ll need to provide more value after release to thwart convenient piracy.
What do you think? You can email me directly at: bwardell@stardock.com or discuss on: news://news.avault.com/avault.developer
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brad Wardell is the Project Manager of The Corporate Machine and Galactic Civilizations at Stardock (www.stardock.com). He also is the Product Manager of Object Desktop (which includes WindowBlinds, DesktopX, IconPackager, WindowFX, and more) which is provided as a subscription network today with over four million users of the various components. His home page is http://people.mw.mediaone.net/bwardell
March 15, 2002 02:59 PM
Wow, those articles were really great. Any thoughts on the difference between the PC and Console markets? The console markets have always appealed to me, mainly because I have always thought of there being so much quality content from independent sources in the PC world and competing with that would be quite a challenge. Console games seem to get away with much simpler and shorter gameplay than their PC counterparts but typically sell for as much or more on the store shelves. Plus the level of innovation (in the sense of content) on console seems pathetic to the variety of games you see on the pc. What exactly makes having 5 different versions of Tomb Raider clones appealing?
The downside of console development to me seems that you have a much smaller playerbase and much higher distribution costs (propriety discs/cartriges, no online distribution available as of yet). But my expectation is that even the poorest selling titles on consoles sell many more copies than their pc counterparts. Is this a valid expectation?
At any rate this is a nice discussion, thanks again for your input.
The downside of console development to me seems that you have a much smaller playerbase and much higher distribution costs (propriety discs/cartriges, no online distribution available as of yet). But my expectation is that even the poorest selling titles on consoles sell many more copies than their pc counterparts. Is this a valid expectation?
At any rate this is a nice discussion, thanks again for your input.
122
March 18, 2002 09:35 AM
Hmm...why don''t you link to the articles on Adrenaline Vault rather than post them in their entirety here??
_________________________The Idea Foundry
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