quote: Original post by LordKronos

What I am interested in is their idea of "dont buy any games for a whole week...that will show them". Does that type of thing actually work?

It does, but the real questions are, to what extent, what will it show them, and will they care.

The game business right now is sort of like looking like the film industry before the Laughton Act.


Does EA really care that you bought John Madden 3012 next week instead of this week?

>Probably only in terms of cost of sales in a few areas going up. If the effort is not repeated on a continuous or selective manner, like all consumer boycott efforts in the past have, it will barely be a blip on the radar screen. What was done here was an effort to make something policital out of a percieved bad situation by offering the public not to have to lift a finger for a week for some percieved effect. How effective can it be?

Does that type of thing concern them at all (assuming enough poeple participate for it to even show up on the radar). To me, I would think all it would say is "Hey, I tried really hard not to buy your game, but you guys got me hooked. When John Madden 3013 comes out, you can have my first born son".

>Or, they will say, "heh, just like the old film days, we got em by the short ones."


If you want to show them and teach them a lesson, then do it the right way...don''t buy their games at all.

This will never happen.


They say they want reasonable prices for games, but we indies already have reasonable prices. Don''t buy your next game from a mega-publisher.

>Can you say the indie titles are as fun to play as the big house titles? What criteria, as objective as you can create them, will you use to substantiate this?

Buy from Kronos Software, or Dexterity, or Positech, or Hamumu, or one of the many other developers that are creating great games at low prices.

>Have you created a blue ribbon panel of players to rate the indie games against the big house games so you have objective credibility to press your market case with the consumer from the substatiated position? This would be my move were I in your shoes, it can''t be that expensive.

Of course, people complain that you can''t get good RPGs or FPSs from the indie market, but thats only because nobody buys them.

>Is that really true? Or is it more a result of changing consumer tastes for different kinds of gameplay now that we''ve been FPS''d and RPG''d in extremis. All of which was valid because it was simple manufacturer response to market demand. But market demand is changing, if simply for the reason that the preference of the consumer has been sated, overfed by previous genres, and simply wants something new they don''t know what is, but knows it when they see it. If I were ''the council of indies'' councilmembers, I''d be thinking about stealing the big house''s thunder in the consumer demand preference category.

There are would-be indies making great FPS games, but nobody wants to buy them, so they are forced to sign with a publisher to get anywhere.

>Making what? More FPS''s? To get what? Perhaps a decent paycheck to feed their families and pay their mortgages?

quote: Original post by Akura
Do you guys even know how the industry works?? Do you know what pbulcihers pay for ads/shelve space? And if you defend less money on this, then how will the game sell?

Shelf space costs are irrelevant. Retailers only charge for shelf space because they can get away with it. If publishers had smaller budgets, they wouldn''t be able to pay for shelf space, and retailers wouldn''t be able to expect these bonuses. But those retailers wouldn''t sit there with empty shelves. The status quo is just an example of big retailers and big publishers working together against those with less money. Removing such shelf-space premiums would find the shelves filled with higher-quality games, as retailers would adjust their display to accommodate games that are selling better (usually through good reviews and word of mouth) rather than on what they are paid to display.

quote: Do you think the average joe will know of Quake 8392749832742389 if he doesn''t see it in magazines, tv, internet sites, whatever? Just because you don''t have a life and know the exact release dates of every game from today till 5 of September 2052, most people don''t. They don''t know when its out, what is out or how much it costs.

Ads are largely useless in the computer game world. There are more than enough articles, previews, and reviews in magazines already. Again, all that expensive advertising does is serve to unfairly widen the gap between good games released by big publishers and good games released by little publishers. It raises awareness of expensive games at the expense of awareness of good games.

quote: And do you know the freaking ammoount developers spend on developing?

Yep, but since they''re only paid something like 10-30% of the price of each game, a small reduction in game prices wouldn''t necessarily have to affect them. Additionally, game development could be getting cheaper if people do it properly. There are more stable libraries, engines, and development kits now than ever before.

quote: What pisses me off is that you get people complaining about games not having 32897429387 hours of FMV, super realistic graphics, etc etc, but noooooooo still you think games should have this and cost a thousand bucks to develop.

I used to buy spectrum games at about 1.5 bucks. You know what, I would buy most of those games instead of the ones in the market now, but 99.999999999999% of the people wouldn''t.

The whole point of campaigns such as this one is that they''re designed to change mass opinion. The majority is not always right. A reduction in price could force a change in direction for the industry where they have to compete on gameplay rather than appearance.

quote: If those idiots are so smart as to plan games to be sold at 10 bucks and make a profit.. why dont they make games??

Because there are different kinds of ''smart''. A nuclear physicist and a business expert are both ''smart'' and know a lot about what they do, but probably couldn''t do each other''s jobs, and probably couldn''t write a computer game either.

quote: Those idiots are so smart that apparently they know better than thousands of researchers with degrees in marketing and sales on how to run development more efficently. 1 out of 10 big games that come out dont have a fu**ing profit you idiots!

You really need to be more polite. For starters, marketing is like psychology in many ways, but the most important one is that it''s all educated guesswork. You can put up 1000 ads and sales may rise 3%, but you can''t easily know whether that 3% was caused by the content of the ads, the size of the ads, the mere existence of the ads, the absence of a competitor''s ads, or any number of other factors.

As for the "1 in 10 games make a profit" argument, that also works the other way - development is obviously too expensive to be profitable and costs need to be cut. You say "more money in", others would say "less money out". No need to be insulting about it.

quote: And lets not forget Tech Support costs.

Actually, let''s forget them, since most of these things are done via expensive phone numbers these days where you pay far more than it costs to man the phones.

quote: Game Companies go down every freaking day, do you really think you have the solution to this industry ???

Do you? Lots of games companies go down or are virtually eviscerated because of greedy publishers who pay more attention to marketing than to games. (See also: Looking Glass Studios, Origin.) I''m not saying that I agree with everything FairPlay have said, but the other side of the coin is that the current situation is not sustainable, and at this rate will end up polarising the market into the big players who only release branded or licensed games, and the tiny players who can barely get any exposure whatsoever. Anything that brings attention to this problem is useful.

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Well said Kylotan, I totally agree.

The crazy thing is that loads of people in the industry agreed with them but were unhappy because the figures they quote on who gets what etc are simply wrong. When these errors were pointed out instead of taking them on board they reacted in a ridiculously agressive manner - thus driving away would-be supporters.

Then they go and use 6 year old quotes and others taken out of contexts and even use quotes that are simply taken from articles they wrote themselves - not balanced or honest argument.

What it finally boils down to is that they want the hardware makers to reduce their $6-8 license fee on games. The problem with that is that the companies lose money on selling consoles and make it on the sale of the games. Reducing the license fee would result in the console price going way up so no one would buy it. No console sales = no publisher support so there would be no cheaper games for that system.

Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions

quote: Original post by Kylotan

Shelf space costs are irrelevant.

>I must disagree. Shelf space costs are relevant evidenced by the very fact they exist in the first place. The fact publishers have to pay these costs to get shelf space premium placement is what we call in business "the cost of sales."

Retailers only charge for shelf space because they can get away with it.

>And, resultantly, because they are getting away with it, the publisher must pay it. Are you suggesting the publisher not pay it, not get shelf space, thusly not selling enough units and folding?


If publishers had smaller budgets, they wouldn''t be able to pay for shelf space, and retailers wouldn''t be able to expect these bonuses.

>Where the did the price of making games magically just go down? Salaries for programmers, modelers, animators and artists are salaries for programmers, modelers, animators and artists, asset costs are assets costs, any game devver putting together a budget knows he can''t pare very much anywhere, so where is the budget going to get smaller? And the sad fact is, if a publisher does have a smaller budget, and can''t apy for shelf space, somebody else will. That is the reality you can''t change for now, until you change the distribution model, which is moving right along now, actually. These costs may disappear in awhile, but they are with us now, and simply cannot be dismissed as if huge software retailers are going to change their ''expectations.''


But those retailers wouldn''t sit there with empty shelves. The status quo is just an example of big retailers and big publishers working together against those with less money.

>Since when is it a requirement of game devving to have a small budget? One of the first rules of business planning is to budget all the money you need, and then pare it down from there. Funders with experience in your area will be just as aware of the costs of mounting a publishing production as you are, likely more. They will give you the money you need if they think you will turn a profit cause your concept is sound and will fill demand in the marketplace. It''s what these guys do for a living, and trust me, they are better at it than you. Since when did the mentality pervade this business that the smaller the budget you have, the more money you will make in the long run. There are dozens of businesses I can name that front loaded their initial funding with hundreds of millions of dollars that ran in the red for months and years who ended up making billions of dollars. Home Depot, USA Today, CNN, AOL, uh...


Removing such shelf-space premiums would find the shelves filled with higher-quality games, as retailers would adjust their display to accommodate games that are selling better (usually through good reviews and word of mouth) rather than on what they are paid to display.

>you assume the consumer has as great a power of brand discretion as you do, when they don''t. Customers are cattle for the most part, and they will buy what you shove at them if you sugar coat it enough. Only a minority percentage of game buyers display the level of discretion in brand selection you assume. The rest will go, "wow, did you see that monster!?! I want that. Now. Mooo-m"


Ads are largely useless in the computer game world. There are more than enough articles, previews, and reviews in magazines already.

>Advertising rules. It delivers three dollars back for every dollar spent, you can look it up in any book you want. Ads drive brand preference. Brand preference equates to market share. Ad placement creates initial impression, where in some tiny little compartment in our mind, we decide to buy it or not without our even knowing it yet. Ads are emotions, and have relatively little to do with rationale. If this were not the case, why is so much junk sold to the tune of trillions of dollars annually, when in retrospect, any rational and intelligent person would say, "Man, all that money, and so little value?" Ads are for manipulating your feelings, so you will wander over to the phone like a zombie, pull out your credit card, and call the 800 number and place your order basically in stupor. Ads drive it all. The only place where more money is wasted than in advertising is in government, and that is because most advertising is focused on the arcane notion of proving value perception by price, quality or service, like we were selling soap from the era of radio. But a few sexy ads of laura croft''s ass running over the camera towards the jungle can drive sales through the roof. Did we miss remedial something or other?


Again, all that expensive advertising does is serve to unfairly widen the gap between good games released by big publishers and good games released by little publishers. It raises awareness of expensive games at the expense of awareness of good games.

>How noblesse oblige, but horsecrap! If you want to make it in this industry, you have to simply do a better job than the big guys, you make a better game and you market it more powerfully. There is no law that says you cannot ask for a significant percentage of funding in your budget for advertising. Most american companies budget up to 40% of their annual budgets on advertising and marketing costs, the majority of that going to media costs alone. If you want to beat the big boys, you have to play better than them. That does not sound like a scenario for conservatism to me. If you spend 40% of your budget on advertising, and your creatives kicked bhudda, your going to get your three dollars back, which means you cleard 120% annually, and anybody who is in business anywhere will tell you that 20% annual gross profits is very, very respectable business management prowess.

And do you know the freaking ammoount developers spend on developing?

Yep, but since they''re only paid something like 10-30% of the price of each game, a small reduction in game prices wouldn''t necessarily have to affect them. Additionally, game development could be getting cheaper if people do it properly. There are more stable libraries, engines, and development kits now than ever before.

>Then you sold yourself down the river voluntarily, and have no right to whine. Did anybody ever hear the old axiom that, "Sometimes the best deal is no deal?" With internet distribution, consolidation in a shrinking market, and maturing demand for games among non-traditional purchasers, you''d think you could be a little aggressive, and get that game out there into your customer''s hands, even if you had to rent a u-haul with a converter in the ashtray, and take it on the road, and build some word of mouth the good old fashioned way.





As for the "1 in 10 games make a profit" argument, that also works the other way - development is obviously too expensive to be profitable and costs need to be cut. You say "more money in", others would say "less money out".

>This is more like, 1 in 10 is a high profit margin, 2 in 10 performed as expected, 4 in ten broke even, but increased our market share against shrinking competitors, and three lost money, all in all, a decent year.

Do you? Lots of games companies go down or are virtually eviscerated because of greedy publishers who pay more attention to marketing than to games.

>oh, that''s just naive. If you don''t pay severe, critical and massive attention to marketing, you''re pipe dreaming about the magic drawing power of your game, no matter how good it is. Publisher probably have to make tough choices between which games they think will sell, and which games they like, but don''t think will sell. This is business, not art. They are going to be around next year, and they don''t usually forget somebody that came up with something that was great, but they couldn''t use at the time. This is memory management of the, "I can still get him on the phone for my next concept" kind. The thing with devvers who get passed over is they think that the bridge is burned, when if they just acknowledged after eliciting the ''why'' of "why didn''t you publish it?" from their publisher contacts, that it indeed wasn''t the right title at the right time (something they could have fixed in their research and concept proofing stage, based on the assumption they really wanted to fly) then at least they have the relationship intact, and the guy on the other end of the phone who can green light a project next time, will understand they are dealing with a mature professional, who maybe won''t make the same mistake next time.

I bet you didn''t know that there is a rule in marketing where admitting a negative is almost always percieved as the truth, whereas a positive statement is almost always percieved as a lie (it''s not about products or services, it''s about perceptions??) So when you call that publisher back in six, nine months, and you say, "Hey, I made a mistake from my last submission, by not paying attention to this market factor or that factor, but I''ve learned from that, and have accounted for that in this new design. What do you say we sit down and talk about it next week?" Every business is a people business.

quote: Original post by adventuredesign
And, resultantly, because they are getting away with it, the publisher must pay it. Are you suggesting the publisher not pay it, not get shelf space, thusly not selling enough units and folding?

Not ''the publisher''... ''publishers''. There''s a big difference between 1 person making a personal stand and an industry changing its practices. Just because it is unlikely to happen, doesn''t mean it''s not worth thinking about. Sometimes correctly-applied pressure does bring about the required result.

quote: >Where the did the price of making games magically just go down?

Better tools and libraries means development time should shorten. Thus the major outlay - salaries, as you rightly point out - should fall on a per-game basis.

quote: Since when is it a requirement of game devving to have a small budget? One of the first rules of business planning is to budget all the money you need, and then pare it down from there.

How does any of this relate to what I said? I think you''re forgetting that a very large proportion of games in development are not set up with some venture capitalist and a business plan, but as a collaborative effort that later turns professional. Even established industry veterans have trouble getting funding. But that doesn''t mean their game wouldn''t sell. It often just reflects myopia on the part of those who control the funds. They know how to make money, and aren''t interested in a new way that will probably still make money but will improve the industry. That''s fair enough - it''s their money, their choice. But it means that developers have to take matters into their own hands.

quote: >you assume the consumer has as great a power of brand discretion as you do, when they don''t. Customers are cattle for the most part, and they will buy what you shove at them if you sugar coat it enough.

No, I don''t assume that at all. I agree with you. But the point is that if we can remove the sugar coating, the customer will get more discerning by default. If they weren''t indoctrinated with ads and so on they will look at the packaging, or read magazine reviews. If there was some way to discourage the publishers from investing in games that are 90% ''sugar coating'' which then soak up consumer money that might otherwise have been spent on games with actual gameplay, then the quality of games as a whole will improve. In turn, this will lead to a long term feedback effect that will increase sales... but publishers don''t like looking at the long term because they tend to be publicly listed and have to worry about the next financial quarter. Their idea of ''long term'' is to buy a license and sell sequels every 6 months.

quote: >How noblesse oblige, but horsecrap! If you want to make it in this industry, you have to simply do a better job than the big guys, you make a better game and you market it more powerfully. There is no law that says you cannot ask for a significant percentage of funding in your budget for advertising.

Look... you are obviously having a very different argument to the one I am having.

I am not debating that advertising, marketing etc is the way to make the most money.

I am not interested in how to make the most money.

I am interested in making the market more self-sustaining and of a higher quality.

The status quo, and your attitude of "if you want to beat the big boys, you have to play better than them" basically just pushes out the smaller teams in favour of those who can get the big funding... which in turn are usually those who have a big brand to sell. (Where the brand might be a license, or even a famous developer''s name like the Sid Meier games.) Is this what we really want? There''s no point arguing with me that it works and to say otherwise is naive - I know damn well that it works, because we see it every day. But it''s not what we want. It''s not good for game quality. It''s not good for developers who become little more than factory workers on a sequel production line. It''s not good for anyone except a few small corporations who end up controlling everything. If all you want to say is, "that''s how it is - get used to it" then you''re contributing nothing of value. Go and enjoy it. But things can - and do - change when people who care spend time and effort on an issue.

quote: With internet distribution, consolidation in a shrinking market, and maturing demand for games among non-traditional purchasers, you''d think you could be a little aggressive, and get that game out there into your customer''s hands, even if you had to rent a u-haul with a converter in the ashtray, and take it on the road, and build some word of mouth the good old fashioned way.

Wait... a minute ago, I thought you were saying that marketing is king and that to compete, you need to spend more on advertising than the big boys?

What was the most popular online game of recent times? Quake? Doom? Warcraft? Diablo? No. It was Counterstrike, which got popular because with the internet being so all-pervasive now, word of mouth and quality is more important than advertising. As Gabe Newell from Valve Software said, "It''s not marketing or distribution or anything like that. It''s popular because it''s a great game that gets better all the time." This is the way of the future... it would just be nice to have publishers working with us in funding a variety of good games rather than against us in trying to milk licenses and brand names.

quote: This is more like, 1 in 10 is a high profit margin, 2 in 10 performed as expected, 4 in ten broke even, but increased our market share against shrinking competitors, and three lost money, all in all, a decent year.

I strongly disagree with your figures, but have no proof to back up my claim. I can quote Warren Spector who said that "Fewer and fewer titles make money every year, or so it seems, and you have to do everything you can to make sure you''re one of the triple-A titles that turns a profit." Note that he is referring to the triple-A games, which presumably spend a lot on marketing and advertising.

quote: Do you? Lots of games companies go down or are virtually eviscerated because of greedy publishers who pay more attention to marketing than to games.

>oh, that''s just naive. If you don''t pay severe, critical and massive attention to marketing, you''re pipe dreaming about the magic drawing power of your game, no matter how good it is.

It''s not just game developers that are naive. Remember Daikatana? Remember how many millions of dollars were sunk into that project, marketing, hype and all? Yet it ended up being the game equivalent of ''straight to video''. Plunging more and more money into the marketing budget is not always going to work! The problem here, is that some publishers know little about games but know a lot about business. When gamers were telling Eidos that Daikatana was going to be a flop, they didn''t listen. They lost tens of millions of dollars because they thought enough hype and advertising would sell it. Wrong. The majority of gamers who buy the AAA games either read reviews, or websites, or have friends who do, and word of mouth means far more to them than advertising does. Advertising raises awareness but word of quality - or lack of it - spreads equally fast. That''s what makes the difference between a Daikatana and a Counterstrike.

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Daikatana is not a good example of a marketing failure - that game was savaged by the press and had serious development problems. Even though it wasn''t a great game, I''m guessing that if it had come out on time the marketing would have helped it to sell far more than if sales were based on merit alone.

Essentially once you think you have an almost-completed game you can''t listen to what the public is saying because you *have to sell it*. You can''t just say, "oh well I guess we better write-off those 3 years of development".

CS may be the most played game in the world but remember that it is free if you have HL. I''m quite certain that any mass-marketed blizzard game made much, much more money - even the pre-expansion Diablo 2 which was imho utter crap.

Marketing pays as long as games are half-decent. Very few industries have no marketing - how can one expect the computer game industry to be any different?

A) idiots means the guy(s) behing fair play, not you people (just in case someone was offended by that)

B) kylotan shelve space happens in all industries. Well, at least in Portugal (and I suspect others also). You know that the eye level shelve on your local hyper market (walmart) can cost as much as twice the price of the top most shelve? And this is for clothes washing products that cost 2 bucks (of course, they outsell games in the house of 1000''s to one )

c) Do you know that indirectly, getting reviews, previews, exclusives, demos, etc etc costs money right? And ads do account for a boost of sales unfortunally. While I belive most in these boards don''t care for ads, the average person does. Hell, I even bet some would buy a ton of dog hair if TV said it had power to attract women.

D) developers costs is usually put by publishers, thus requiring the money (2 million dollars budget for developing is standard now) + marketing + pproduction + everything else.

E) "Because there are different kinds of ''smart''. A nuclear physicist and a business expert are both ''smart'' and know a lot about what they do, but probably couldn''t do each other''s jobs, and probably couldn''t write a computer game either." I doubt that a former PCW writer is smarter then people with 21 degrees on business managing and marketing.

F) Lets not forget about the validity of all the quotes. Either by using self written quotes *but not mention anything to readers* or using 6 yrs old quotes.

G) I''m not stating the industry is perfect, but this isn''t the solution. We can all agree that 97% of the products out there are over priced and could be made cheaper, with profits to manufacturers, but not as much. And this (and any) industry is about making money, the more the merrier. Not about consumers satisfaction. Sure, if cons. satisfaction boosts profits (more sales), lets do it, if it doesn''t, scr*w them.

H) "You can put up 1000 ads and sales may rise 3%, but you can''t easily know whether that 3% was caused by the content of the ads, the size of the ads, the mere existence of the ads, the absence of a competitor''s ads, or any number of other factors." I think millions of previous spent dollars on research have proven they do.

Sorry for the lack of structure, just in a rush

Not ''the publisher''... ''publishers''. There''s a big difference between 1 person making a personal stand and an industry changing its practices. Just because it is unlikely to happen, doesn''t mean it''s not worth thinking about. Sometimes correctly-applied pressure does bring about the required result.

>That is a nice ideal, but historically, the most they can squeeze out of you, that is the route they will take. Nobody is going to give up an advantage. The real changes in this industry lie in beating them at their own game, and I mean that figuratively; make better games.

quote: >Where the did the price of making games magically just go down?

Better tools and libraries means development time should shorten. Thus the major outlay - salaries, as you rightly point out - should fall on a per-game basis.

>This is absolutely, unequivocably true. However, games are going to get bigger (in every respect) and more complex just to meet consumer demands. Manufacturers always plan to meet consumer demand. The richest ones manufacture the demand, ala Lucas.

quote: Since when is it a requirement of game devving to have a small budget? One of the first rules of business planning is to budget all the money you need, and then pare it down from there.

How does any of this relate to what I said? I think you''re forgetting that a very large proportion of games in development are not set up with some venture capitalist and a business plan, but as a collaborative effort that later turns professional.

>This may be true that many games start this way. In the near future in this industry, this will all but disappear.


Even established industry veterans have trouble getting funding.

>In entertainment, they call that ''not being able to top your best'' an affliction only success brings. Which is why the famous and rich who don''t have the mojo to bring it anymore work their rep to the bitter end, if only to keep their status in the worth column.


But that doesn''t mean their game wouldn''t sell. It often just reflects myopia on the part of those who control the funds.

>Or, it could reflect their time has past in the driver''s seat of creativity, and their not recognizing what would sell in today''s market, like a person who sold in it all day long would. The most common form of fame and fortune is the one hit wonder. In the game industry, this is less widespread because formulaic design was palatable as commodity for so long in the new medium, now, in case you''ve noticed, big, big hits, and major major innovations are rarer and rarer, and they inevitably come from houses who invested massive funding. It''s a new playing field, and the investment level is rising. The game developer of the future needs to realize they have to have as good a hat as a businessperson as they do designer. The suits already made it go this way, we just have to beat them, literally, at their own game.

They know how to make money, and aren''t interested in a new way that will probably still make money but will improve the industry. That''s fair enough - it''s their money, their choice. But it means that developers have to take matters into their own hands.

>They must, and to a greater and more complex scale and breadth than ever.

quote: >you assume the consumer has as great a power of brand discretion as you do, when they don''t. Customers are cattle for the most part, and they will buy what you shove at them if you sugar coat it enough.

No, I don''t assume that at all. I agree with you. But the point is that if we can remove the sugar coating, the customer will get more discerning by default.

Or disenchanted. This medium is too powerful, too engaging and too potentialized. This industry, it''s product, and it''s future are one of the most potentially impactive I can remember at my ripe (and forgive my crankiness in my last post, I should have spoken to you with more respect, and I apologize) old age of 43.


If they weren''t indoctrinated with ads and so on they will look at the packaging, or read magazine reviews.

But the indoctrination is generations old, it''s just a current version of selling soap from the days of radio. Millions wanted it because it was sugar coated, it was lubricated, it was personalitized (is that a word? I''m talking about celebrity endorsement of course), you''re not going to solve that indoctrination in this industry until you solve that indoctrination in society. Though I thoroughly encourage you to try, for we need it in society badly. I suggest starting with Religion Deprogramming v.1.0

If there was some way to discourage the publishers from investing in games that are 90% ''sugar coating'' which then soak up consumer money that might otherwise have been spent on games with actual gameplay, then the quality of games as a whole will improve. In turn, this will lead to a long term feedback effect that will increase sales... but publishers don''t like looking at the long term because they tend to be publicly listed and have to worry about the next financial quarter. Their idea of ''long term'' is to buy a license and sell sequels every 6 months.

>This may be because things are seen in terms of product sales life, or shelf life, the lifeblood of pulse for a company. You''d have to do some major corporate reprogramming at the mission and philosophy levels to change that POV. It''s very existance (realistic and unpalatable as it is) led me to opening my own game company with the philosophy of "doing good is good business" and a mission principle of sustainable reinvestment. It may sound like trendy buzzwords, but it''s actually aeons old, and the planet needs more of it.



Look... you are obviously having a very different argument to the one I am having.

>Perhaps, but I actually think we have the same objective, just two different approaches on how to solve the problem.

I am not debating that advertising, marketing etc is the way to make the most money.

I am not interested in how to make the most money.

>That is, however, the paradigm with which we must contend to sell our games. It''s unavoidable and undeniable.

I am interested in making the market more self-sustaining and of a higher quality.

>Me too. And boy, did I have to get radical to begin to think I have a chance. You can''t change this industry, I think, but you can create a whole new kind of game industry. I''m just going about it differently than others, including you.

The status quo, and your attitude of "if you want to beat the big boys, you have to play better than them" basically just pushes out the smaller teams in favour of those who can get the big funding...


which in turn are usually those who have a big brand to sell.

>There is never a day when the right idea cannot get the strict attention of the big boys.

(Where the brand might be a license, or even a famous developer''s name like the Sid Meier games.) Is this what we really want?

>It may not be what we want, but it''s what we might get anyway. Look at the film industry, perhaps the only industry where we could make even a minimal simile: It''s a "James Cameron" film, or it''s made by "Sidney Lumet" or "Jonathan Demme"; is this not what that industry considers ''bankable''? Those budgets are sometimes on the order of upwards of a hundred million dollars, and they make the majority of it back in the first six weeks of the run, or they''d better anyway. It''s analogous to the first month on the endcap of Babbages or Gamestop. We have piracy that can effect sales not long after that, perhaps more extensively than in film, though they have it too.

The point is, the industry and the public rely in bankability, because of the homogeneity that big business has programmed into consumers with *decades* of advertising backed by research to the eyeteeth on how ppl decide to buy, and we cannot break them of that habit, frankly, otherwise we will be tromped on by the big business people protecting their interests, there is only one way, and that is to lead them away from it voluntarily, with something more appealing and desireable, something that the old form of business can''t compete with, or more accurately, can''t change quickly enough to reaccomodate, so they obsolesce.

But then, we''re talking about something majorly significant, perhaps something significant enough that only a medium as multicapable as this one is able to produce. Hmmm, I wonder if devvers sometimes really know what they''ve got.


There''s no point arguing with me that it works and to say otherwise is naive - I know damn well that it works, because we see it every day.

>I apologize for being so boorish. I will endeavor to treat your opinions with more respect in the future.

But it''s not what we want. It''s not good for game quality. It''s not good for developers who become little more than factory workers on a sequel production line. It''s not good for anyone except a few small corporations who end up controlling everything.

>I agree. That has to change, somehow.

If all you want to say is, "that''s how it is - get used to it" then you''re contributing nothing of value.

I did contribute something of value, I said what needed to be said, devvers have to beat them at their own game, and there are only a couple of areas in which the playing field can tilt by the hand of both parties, one of them being design itself and the other being in advertising, a majorly creative apparatus. Read up on how genentech actually came about, and you will learn about a quite a bit of gamesmanship. The coke formula change is another wonderful example of this type of intelligent risking.

Go and enjoy it. But things can - and do - change when people who care spend time and effort on an issue.

>It is for this very reason I formed my company, you must understand, I am actually on your side of the issue, I just don''t think the tools some people are choosing, such as a purchase boycott, will work. Historically, they haven''t. In this industry, with core gamers, who may have more discipline than the average consumer, it will have a more pronouced effect, but the industry is looking to make mass market games, and leave the core gamer behind when they are no longer useful for word of mouth. What business doesn''t eventually dispose of it''s liabilities.

quote: With internet distribution, consolidation in a shrinking market, and maturing demand for games among non-traditional purchasers, you''d think you could be a little aggressive, and get that game out there into your customer''s hands, even if you had to rent a u-haul with a converter in the ashtray, and take it on the road, and build some word of mouth the good old fashioned way.

Wait... a minute ago, I thought you were saying that marketing is king and that to compete, you need to spend more on advertising than the big boys?

>No, I said you needed to spend significantly on advertising, I made no contextual implications to a larger industry entity, that I can draw from my previous statements, if I did, let me know, and I will address it. What I did say was that you can use your creatives more effectively, and you media will be more effective resultantly, so you can in effect, make more sales for less dollars spent if you do that aspect of marketing correctly.

I was part of the marketing team for the original thighmaster. When the guy came to us with his product, it was called "The Home Gym Abdominizer" He was -800,000 in debt, on his third mortgage. I am not going to tell you what we told him, obviously history proves us to have recommended the right things, but what I do want to say (and I do not draw this illustration to project I am in any way a marketing expert in games, I am experienced in marketing, across hundreds of products in hundreds of markets, all consumables directly sold to consumers; aka direct marketing; not the same a retail marketing, which games are mostly sold through [sell-through]) but in the end, he renamed it "Thighmaster" and over three years made 180,000,000 dollars, 73% of which went to media costs alone. He bough more media for his message everytime a check from a customer cleared. In the end, he made his millions, but frankly, that is all he made. He spent dozens of times that more on marketing. And he did is with multiple media integration, as fast and as far and as loud as he could get his message out there.

There is not much difference in the game business. The key differences are the size of the market (which will change and get really, really huge, bigger than any of us thought), the influence core gamers have within the market (very strong now, but will change for the worse), the distribution channel (which will change, for the better of devver who self publish), and yet, we will still use the tools of getting the message out there that have always been used, media, messaging and repetition, until society itself weans away from that.

What was the most popular online game of recent times? Quake? Doom? Warcraft? Diablo? No. It was Counterstrike, which got popular because with the internet being so all-pervasive now, word of mouth and quality is more important than advertising.

>That was the exception, and not the rule. It was a fortuitous conversion of time, medium and product appeal circumstances. It cannot be cited as an example of general trends, unfortunately.

As Gabe Newell from Valve Software said, "It''s not marketing or distribution or anything like that. It''s popular because it''s a great game that gets better all the time."

Again, an exceptional game, not the average game, yet the average devver has given it his all just as valve did, they just didn''t hit the right combo, which is an intelligence and creativity factor adjustable in pre-production planning.


This is the way of the future... it would just be nice to have publishers working with us in funding a variety of good games rather than against us in trying to milk licenses and brand names.

quote: This is more like, 1 in 10 is a high profit margin, 2 in 10 performed as expected, 4 in ten broke even, but increased our market share against shrinking competitors, and three lost money, all in all, a decent year.

I strongly disagree with your figures, but have no proof to back up my claim.

>Place a call to the marketing department at EA, or another major publisher who puts out multiple titles annually, and ask them if their sales mix is similar to the film producers, who have been working this way for decades. Litmus test it.


I can quote Warren Spector who said that "Fewer and fewer titles make money every year, or so it seems, and you have to do everything you can to make sure you''re one of the triple-A titles that turns a profit." Note that he is referring to the triple-A games, which presumably spend a lot on marketing and advertising.


>That is Warren Spector''s POV, who is in that very trap I cited above, where he has to top his very last offering every time to maintain his rep. Anybody famous you know, no matter what discipline, will relate the same paradox of success.

quote: Do you? Lots of games companies go down or are virtually eviscerated because of greedy publishers who pay more attention to marketing than to games.

>oh, that''s just naive. If you don''t pay severe, critical and massive attention to marketing, you''re pipe dreaming about the magic drawing power of your game, no matter how good it is.

It''s not just game developers that are naive. Remember Daikatana? Remember how many millions of dollars were sunk into that project, marketing, hype and all? Yet it ended up being the game equivalent of ''straight to video''. Plunging more and more money into the marketing budget is not always going to work!

That was not an instance of bad marketing, the media was probably pretty good. It was an instance of bad marketing planning, where good money was thrown after bad. It is an old rule of thumb that you can spend yourself broke trying to change somebody''s mind after they''ve made it up that your product or service was lousy. Moreover, Daikatana may have been a classic instance of bad product planning, where they simply got a great idea, and convinced someone else it was a great idea and subsequently got money, but it turned out to be simply a bad idea, and a lot of people with their ass on the line will not admit they blew it, instead, they think more money will solve the problem. Marketing cannot solve bad product planning, but it can do miracles in the market with good product planning.


The problem here, is that some publishers know little about games but know a lot about business.

>Amen. Yet, they have the position of advantage at this time. That calls for some pretty plucky strategy to level the playing field, as you advocate, much less delivering something they can''t compete against because their idea of the business is not the idea of the business some point in time x from now in the future.

I think strategically, you are better off not trying to compete on the field they own, but creating a new field alltogether, and then get their first with the goods that deliver the best consumer satisfaction. That''s really what people want, and they will spend endlessly and insanely for it. We both know that.
I am reminded of my favorite business axiom, "In any given market at any given time, only one bold stroke will work." Purchasing boycotts, while smacking of retro-progressivism, is simply not a bold stroke, so by definition, it''s not got much of a chance, imo.

When gamers were telling Eidos that Daikatana was going to be a flop, they didn''t listen.

>Wonder why? Did they already have millions invested that some head honcho who was at the head of it thought they could spend their way out of. "Marketing will save me," these ppl think sometimes. You have to remember, the first thing a leader loses is objectivity, the second thing a leader loses is the ability to think they can do wrong. This happens a lot more than you would think, but if you can accept that we live in a dysfunctional society to begin with, it''s not so hard to see why it happened.

They lost tens of millions of dollars because they thought enough hype and advertising would sell it. Wrong.

>See the above.

The majority of gamers who buy the AAA games either read reviews, or websites, or have friends who do, and word of mouth means far more to them than advertising does.

>I would say a significant percentage, but not more than 40%

Advertising raises awareness but word of quality - or lack of it - spreads equally fast. That''s what makes the difference between a Daikatana and a Counterstrike.

>It''s a comparison of apples and oranges tho.



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Holy crap, Akura, that''s got to be the biggest post I have ever seen in my life!