What's Killing the Video-Game Business?

[Onkel Neal]

What's Killing the Video-Game Business?

Games weren't always expensive to make: In the early days, a boy with an Apple II could rule the world. While there are still scads of cheaply made games on the market, all of today's big publishers employ hundreds of professional developers per game. These projects take years to complete, as each new generation of hardware allows for unprecedented advances in graphics, sound, and everything else. The greater the complexity of the game, the larger the development team. The larger the development team, the bigger the budget.

While industry leaders anticipated that budgets would creep higher, the shift to high-definition gaming with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 has proved to be more expensive than estimated. At a conference in the spring of 2006, then-Midway developer Cyrus Lum sounded the warning, telling his audience that game development budgets could rise as high as $15 million to $25 million for a single title—previously unheard-of averages. "We need to rethink how we're financing games," Lum concluded.

Yikes, $15 million, that's 200 people at $75,000 each. I don't claim to know what it takes to make a game but, wowee, that's a lot of people.

it cost Rockstar $100 million to produce, 1,000 people worked on the project

A thousand people??

[danlisa]

Yeah, those figures are par for the course these days.

While it may not be generally accepted, the money is in the consoles with studios being given budgets that are close to eclipsing movie studios. This is easy to accept with todays console using HD graphics, 8.1 surround sound, integrated online features & friend tracking, VOIP comms as standard and using media that max out at 50GB (at the moment).

Most big console titles are built & marketed as a blockbusters in every sense of the word.

Contrary to your lead title, the games industry is the only large sales sector to post year on year profits during this global financial crisis. So I can't see it die off.

P.S As for Rockstar employing 1000 people, consider that this figure was spread across 3 different game media, PS3, XBox & PC and not to mention the ongoing DLC and online management features. Aint hard to see where the money goes or where the people are needed.

[AVGWarhawk]

Hey, people are working. Part of the stimulus package. Just like anything else, if the quality is there the game will sell no matter the cost. Years ago I remember paying $19.99 for Jane WWII sim or something like that. Now games are $49.99 or more. I pay the price if it looks good and well done. Look at Grand Theft Auto 2. People were lined up around the block at every retailer to get the game. Lets look at the flip side, perhaps knowing a project must sell to turn a dime, every resource is thrown at it to produce an excellent game and hopefully bug free. Generally an imaginative game that is well polished and replay value is there or online gaming with the disk is there, the price will not matter. For instance, I have COD waw. Just an all around great game. Graphics are excellent. The scenarios are well thought out and imaginative. Personally, I think COD waw is the best of the series but.......it was a very short game. Not much replay value after you have completed it because the player already knows what is coming up and what he needs to do to complete the scenario. How to overcome the short game low replay value...online gaming and frag-fest with your buds. Now your talking! So, the developers need to consider imaginative games with plenty of replay value to garner the forthcoming increase in the cost to purchase. Look at Rise of Flight, from what I see, excellent graphics and they devs are really taking their time to get it right. It will have single play with campaigns and that generates replay value and ultimately online play creates the best replay value for this game. I think future games should be designed and have a theme that lends itself to online gaming with others. I think the future of games garnishing high dollars to purchase are those that offer online gaming (look at Rock Band and Guitar Hero, both hot sellers and online, group play weather sober nor not). As far as complexity of the games and faster hardware to run the games now, I countered by getting a very fast machine. In short, I'm ready for these games and will pay the price to play them if the quality is there along with replay value.

[nikimcbee]

I'd say there is plenty of blame to go around. I think one thing that frustrates me is when a company just slops a game together then releases it.

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by nikimcbee

I'd say there is plenty of blame to go around. I think one thing that frustrates me is when a company just slops a game together then releases it.

Exactly. The quality of games nowadays is piss-poor. They look nice and are most of the time pretty bug-free, but there's no story, a good story that is.

Today's game storylines tend to be just a filler, you know, kinda like commercial breaks in a way. The main part is the action, whereas before, the story and the action were one seamless package.

Luckily, there is still few good games coming out now and then, but they're getting very rare. Brothers in arms: Hell's Highway being the last good game for me.

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by Dowly

Exactly. The quality of games nowadays is piss-poor. They look nice and are most of the time pretty bug-free, but there's no story, a good story that is.

Today's game storylines tend to be just a filler, you know, kinda like commercial breaks in a way. The main part is the action, whereas before, the story and the action were one seamless package.

Luckily, there is still few good games coming out now and then, but they're getting very rare. Brothers in arms: Hell's Highway being the last good game for me.

No, crap has always existed, even in the early eighties.
So that's not the reason why video games businesses are failing.
The number one reason is that publishers invest in multi-milion dollar projects, they bet everything on 1 or 2 such blockbuster games and when the games tank at retail the publishers go poof. You have to learn to develop games on a more sustainable basis, for example Stardock finances games that have a well balanced budget. And most of their games are well received, they sell well enough to offset all the costs and still make a nice profit. Unfortunately no other publisher wants to learn the lesson.
Not every videogame has to have a story, right now I'm enjoying a pretty obscure war game called XIII century death or glory. Its pretty amazing stuff, 100% tactical gameplay without the hassle of resource gathering and strategic thinking. Well you know what ? This game has completely passed under the radar. Its such a pity.
Of course another reason people buy less games is because of intrusive DRM. Limited installs on a game I BUY ? No way, publishers aren't getting my money on such a crap product. Publishers are always babbling about piracy etc... but what they fail to mention is that honest customers learn the lesson and walk away from buying DRM infested games (most EA games for instance).

[NeonSamurai]

Ya the rate of hardware change is certainly a problem and the cost of trying to keep up has been ramping up steadily for the past 5 years or so. It really got bad when they convinced gamers that they didn't need 1 700$ video card, but 2 or 3 700$ video cards. For me its almost gotten to the point where I'm better off not bothering with the new stuff. Heck I got enough games to last me the rest of my life if I fully played them out. Most of the new games aren't much better then what came before, just usualy prettier (ok some are more detailed in the non graphical sense yes).


Now stardock... I don't you can use them as a fair comparison for the rest of the video game industry. You can't compare a 4x game to any other kind of game other then to another 4x. The needs and demands are totaly different. Thats why you can't apply stardocks development model onto those other game types as it wouldn't work or sell. As virtualy all the other ones need decent 3d graphics in addition to everything else.

Otherwise I agree, developers need to back off the bleeding edge some. I meen look at Crysis, is there a system even now that can run that game maxed out at a reasonable (30fps) framerate? And what is the return for all that power? a game that looks somewhat better then Far Cry... The return for the effort sucks and is getting smaller and smaller imho.

[Weiss Pinguin]

Originally Posted by nikimcbee

I'd say there is plenty of blame to go around. I think one thing that frustrates me is when a company just slops a game together then releases it.

One company in particular comes to mind... *cough* EA

They've had some pretty good games... But about 3x as many poor ones.

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by Weiß Pinguin

One company in particular comes to mind... *cough* EA

They've had some pretty good games... But about 3x as many poor ones.

Amen to that.

[HunterICX]

There are many bad ones, but not all is lost as there are still some gems to be found in a while. Good reason to be on a forum like this there might be someone here that finds one

HunterICX