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Well, when you make a product that's more like a movie than a game (two-hour linear story where you experience everything by watching a video), then the public
by vacri 11y ago
Well, when you make a product that's more like a movie than a game (two-hour linear story where you experience everything by watching a video), then the public will treat it more like a movie than a game. It's even priced like a movie - $15 for 2 hours of content. The problem isn't the Let's Play world, the problem is that the product is an edge case. The article sort of skims right by this issue while recognising it: And for games with more expansive or replayable gameplay, it can directly benefit developers. There's your problem right there - you 'made a movie, not a game', and released it through gaming channels.
Another point is that there are literally tens of thousands of games out there, and people use Let's Play not just for entertainment, but to see if a game is any good before purchasing. Essentially they use it for demo-ing the product, and if your game and your 'demo' are essentially the same thing, then that's a bad business decision, regardless of how much soul you poured into the product. Harsh, but if you're complaining from a business point of view, then you have to deal with harsh realities.
For my own experience, I saw it crop up, and thought "Why would I want to spend $15 for a short game about cancer?". I was curious about it, but not so curious as to drop $15... or even search out a Let's Play myself. I imagine most of the Let's Play audience were similar - suggesting that $1/viewer is somewhat realistic recovery for lost sales... that's nonsense, in my opinion.
Finally, a bonus problem: When your game is two hours long and you distribute through Steam, which has a no-questions-asked refund policy for 2 hours or less of gameplay, then a lot of those casual viewers you're after will just take that money back.
- adnzzzzZ 11y agoNot sure why you're getting downvoted when this is exactly right. If you don't want this problem then don't make something with low amount of content that people can be done with in just a few hours.
- sp332 11y agoSometimes it's not about how long a movie or game is. It can still be really powerful to experience it even if it's short. Anyways $15 seems like a reasonably small amount for a game that took years to develop.
- adnzzzzZ 11y agoClearly not enough people agree with that sentiment, otherwise the author wouldn't have written this blog post. And if you're doing this as a business and you want to succeed you need to take those basic things into account.
- vacri 11y ago> Anyways $15 seems like a reasonably small amount for a game that took years to develop. My point was that it was more like a movie, not that the game was ridiculously expensive. But, if you want to go that way, then yes, you need to look at the competition. In the games world, $15 is a price-point where people expect more than a couple of hours of gametime. 'Interactive movies'/'Kinetic novels' are rarely hugely successful, and almost never go above $10-15. Over in the movie world, $15 gets you a movie that cost hundreds of millions of dollars and took hundreds of people years to create. If you're talking about what something is worth from a business angle, then you can't ignore the playing field and what the product is up against - just saying that it took a long time to make isn't enough.