5 ms·

But once you find it, oh boy, can you make it make money. I'm always astonished at how companies like Activision can make billions per release of Call of Duty.

by dayjah 11y ago

But once you find it, oh boy, can you make it make money. I'm always astonished at how companies like Activision can make billions per release of Call of Duty. EA with their yearly cadence of sports sims is another example.

tixocloud 11y ago
Agreed. EA is just killing it with sports despite it being essentially the same game over and over again. It's such a tough business given that you need to invest in building a full game before you really know if it's going to be a hit. You could put out concept art, etc. but I'd argue that you can't really do "private betas" like what we do with SAAS just yet.
- z3t4 11y ago
  It's too bad Notch's (who made Minecraft) blog got lost. He blogged almost daily when he made Minecraft. It's basically an instruction book on how you should do it!
  - roel_v 11y ago
    What was the main take away? Why did minecraft hit it big and not his previous games? Could he do it again if he tried? I doubt it. At some level, the difference between 'profitable' and 'runaway success' is dumb luck. Why flappy bird?
    - z3t4 11y ago
      He had just worked one week or so when he showed a crude demo/prototype on IRC/forums. And people thought it looked cool. So you do not have to, and should not wait until the game is finished before showing it to ppl and start writing about it on chat and forums. When the game got into a playable state he already got some followers. And the word started to spread. It was still a free Java applet at the time. Then people started to play it on Youtube and it exploded. And that's when he started charging 10 bucks for the game.
- ixtli 11y ago
  I think it's clear, however, that EA's sports games are a bit of a monopoly. It's easier to be successful if you have no competition because they're not legally allowed to use anything related to real professional sports players or team names and iconography. The general world of gaming is different, though, because it's so (comparably) easy to take the fun bits from games you like and throw your own clone up on steam.
emodendroket 11y ago
I think in EA's case what you see is the power of unique licenses. People who buy football games want to play as their favorite real-life players and so 1) in practical terms nobody but EA can make football games 2) even if relatively little changes many people will buy just for roster updates.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  Sports games are like toll bridges: people will grumble and pay. COD is a different beast, a brilliant cash cow that makes Halo pale in comparison. But it's futile to expect any innovation in the mainstream sports game industry, because it's so furiously locked down.
- column 11y ago
  Thing is their only competitor is PES, arguably no better than Fifa
  - emodendroket 11y ago
    I meant American football, where they actually have an exclusive license with the NFL. Whatever you may think about PES, FIFA was forced to evolve a lot to compete with it (everyone used to think PES was better). Progress has been more modest for Madden, which has had no competition for something like a decade.
- smacktoward 11y ago
  EA (and its peer competitors, e.g. Activision & Ubisoft) is also very diversified in terms of its product portfolio, which reduces risk. They publish games for PCs, all the different consoles, and all the different mobile platforms. They publish casual games and also hardcore games. They publish games based on licensed IP and games based on original IP. Etc. This makes them a safer bet than companies like King or Zynga, which bet the farm on one particular quadrant of the overall gaming universe (casual games on mobile devices). If the world stopped playing games on their phone tomorrow, EA could survive that.

by dayjah 11y ago

tixocloud 11y ago

Agreed. EA is just killing it with sports despite it being essentially the same game over and over again. It's such a tough business given that you need to invest in building a full game before you really know if it's going to be a hit. You could put out concept art, etc. but I'd argue that you can't really do "private betas" like what we do with SAAS just yet.

z3t4 11y ago
It's too bad Notch's (who made Minecraft) blog got lost. He blogged almost daily when he made Minecraft. It's basically an instruction book on how you should do it!
- roel_v 11y ago
  What was the main take away? Why did minecraft hit it big and not his previous games? Could he do it again if he tried? I doubt it. At some level, the difference between 'profitable' and 'runaway success' is dumb luck. Why flappy bird?
  - z3t4 11y ago
    He had just worked one week or so when he showed a crude demo/prototype on IRC/forums. And people thought it looked cool. So you do not have to, and should not wait until the game is finished before showing it to ppl and start writing about it on chat and forums. When the game got into a playable state he already got some followers. And the word started to spread. It was still a free Java applet at the time. Then people started to play it on Youtube and it exploded. And that's when he started charging 10 bucks for the game.
ixtli 11y ago
I think it's clear, however, that EA's sports games are a bit of a monopoly. It's easier to be successful if you have no competition because they're not legally allowed to use anything related to real professional sports players or team names and iconography. The general world of gaming is different, though, because it's so (comparably) easy to take the fun bits from games you like and throw your own clone up on steam.

emodendroket 11y ago

I think in EA's case what you see is the power of unique licenses. People who buy football games want to play as their favorite real-life players and so 1) in practical terms nobody but EA can make football games 2) even if relatively little changes many people will buy just for roster updates.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
Sports games are like toll bridges: people will grumble and pay. COD is a different beast, a brilliant cash cow that makes Halo pale in comparison. But it's futile to expect any innovation in the mainstream sports game industry, because it's so furiously locked down.
column 11y ago
Thing is their only competitor is PES, arguably no better than Fifa
- emodendroket 11y ago
  I meant American football, where they actually have an exclusive license with the NFL. Whatever you may think about PES, FIFA was forced to evolve a lot to compete with it (everyone used to think PES was better). Progress has been more modest for Madden, which has had no competition for something like a decade.
smacktoward 11y ago
EA (and its peer competitors, e.g. Activision & Ubisoft) is also very diversified in terms of its product portfolio, which reduces risk. They publish games for PCs, all the different consoles, and all the different mobile platforms. They publish casual games and also hardcore games. They publish games based on licensed IP and games based on original IP. Etc. This makes them a safer bet than companies like King or Zynga, which bet the farm on one particular quadrant of the overall gaming universe (casual games on mobile devices). If the world stopped playing games on their phone tomorrow, EA could survive that.