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Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention

83 points by beerlord 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
maxsilver 8y ago
This seems like a inaccurate take from folks who are not following the gaming industry closely. Activision just had a record-setting year of high revenue (presumably they are not feeling the impact of peaking attention), in part because the quality of their products is still high-ish. They laid people off because they could, not because of any downturn in business. EA's quarterly results are down, because their product quality has suffered and their pricing has risen, players are somewhat disengaging. Those problems are with EA and internal to EA, not problems with the industry. --- The article is right to claim that too much focus is on "Fortnite", but they miss their own point. These companies are not suffering from "peak attention", so much as they have stumbled into various mismanagement and/or bled out a chunk of their talent and ability to create. These companies problems are impacting the products they ship. If you build a well designed, well crafted product, players will still happily arrive and spend lots of money (as EA's own Apex Legends is showing today, and as Fortnite, Spider-Man, RDR2, Warframe, Path of Exile, Magic Arena, and many others routinely demonstrate.)
- falcolas 8y ago
  > EA's quarterly results are down, And yet they posted pre-tax profits of almost 1.5 billion dollars in 2018 (their highest profit numbers in the last 4 years). That's hardly the mark of a company that's ready to go under. Growth is not the only measure of a companies health.
  - debacle 8y ago
    EA is really struggling with their Star Wars license. If they put out just 1 good Star Wars game they'd see insane revenue. I haven't purchased an AAA title in years and I would buy an okayish Jedi Knight IV.
    - grawprog 8y ago
      Just think of how many different colours of lightsabres would be available through microtransactions. I would have said grey area gambling but you did specify okayish.
    - CydeWeys 8y ago
      My dream is a modern Star Wars/TIE Fighter space shooter. Those were some of my very favorite games back in the late Win 3.1/early Win 95 era. I suspect it wouldn't have the same widespread appeal as an adventure/shooter/RPG like Jedi Knight, but it could be also be made at a pretty low cost, and it's not like the license restricts how many Star Wars games they can release. May as well go make a space shooter with a smaller team while they still have the license. Why does everything have to get the AAA treatment these days?
      - falcolas 8y ago
        > Why does everything have to get the AAA treatment these days? The same thing that causes companies who are making record profits to be considered underperforming: growth at any cost. For EA and Activision/Blizzard (and their big name kin), if a game doesn't have the potential to make significantly more money than its peers, it's not worth making.
        DerDangDerDang 8y ago
        Which has the knock on effect that championing a smaller project through internal green light is not as good for your career as waiting for the chance to lead a AAA title- I’m guessing
      - verisimilidude 8y ago
        My dream is a modern Star Wars TIE Fighter space shooter...in VR. But I doubt the VR market is big enough to justify the investment that’s demanded by the Star Wars license. Like you say, AAA is sometimes a straight-jacket.
        8y ago
- Spooky23 8y ago
  I don’t have a ton of direct insight into gaming, but in general when a business that’s dependent on development is facing headwinds and doubles down on hitting the numbers, that’s a bad sign. It’s often a signal that the firm is not investing in the business. IMO, modern business models for gaming (ie casinos for elementary school kids) are problematic and are turning kids off. There will be a harsh reckoning as more and more people figure that out.
  - Macha 8y ago
    Or even accelerating the rate at which players age out of their target market. There's only so many games you can be subjected to the loot box marketing spree before you start turning away from major publishers all together. I like to sit down and enjoy my video games, not have carrots dangled to open my wallet after every chunk of gameplay.
    - majewsky 8y ago
      Amen. I just got a Switch and Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and it's really nice to just sit down and play, knowing that since I have already payed everything upfront, the next 100 hours of gameplay are mine to enjoy without any business transactions interrupting it.
  - didibus 8y ago
    Wow, this is the first time I hear this argument, and it is a really good one. To enjoy and play games require some initiation to it as a kid. And the kind of games marketed at kids today I don't think do a good job at creating this interest. That could really hurt the industry long term.
  - tokyodude 8y ago
    Confused about this response. The person it's responding to says Activision is doubling down on development by saving money in non-development. That's sounds like the opposite of "doubling down on hitting the numbers" and more like putting the money in the correct place, R&D, while saving it in others.
- tokai 8y ago
  >If you build a well designed, well crafted product Not a strong suit for triple-a developers.
  - 0xcde4c3db 8y ago
    I'm not sure developers are really the problem. It seems like over the past 10-15 years the video game publishing industry has adopted Hollywood turd-polishing tactics (late review embargo dates, extremely frontloaded marketing blitzes with almost no useful/accurate information) to try to sell troubled productions as-is instead of overhauling them. Anthem absolutely reeks of this, for example.
    - hnick 8y ago
      Developers aren't the root cause but when you're making a AAA game the required team size alone pretty much means you're not going to have an all-star team of devs.
- 1123581321 8y ago
  The best reporting on Activision I’ve seen has been from outside the games industry and games journalism (I’ve preferred writing from this link, Variety, Bloomberg, etc.) Activision is not concerned about whether they are making money now. They are concerned about whether they can continue to make money. They have profitable, mature lines but nothing in the battle royale genre that is quickly growing and a threat to both Call of Duty and Overwatch, not to mention what’s next after that. They need to invest heavily in acquisitions and development of new titles using their existing brands. The layoffs came from areas of the company that wouldn’t be able to help with that. The morality of layoffs can be debated, of course, but analysis of the reasoning has been too absent from close followers of the games industry.
  - falcolas 8y ago
    > but nothing in the battle royale genre that is quickly growing and a threat to both Call of Duty and Overwatch This makes the assumption that if they make it, the market will obviously move to their product. The genre has a fairly fixed market, and taking away players from their previous investments (time and money) will take an exceptionally good game. Ironically, making good, interesting games is the one thing that Activision/Blizzard are/have been shifting their focus away from, ever since the iconic "I want to take the fun out of making video games" statement from their CEO.
    - dleslie 8y ago
      > I want to take the fun out of making video games Which is just insane. Part of the compensation for game developers is the love of their trade; without that, or undermining that, then it's just a low paying, high stress, and life wrecking tech job.
      - chii 8y ago
        Making a video game is not fun. Designing one is, but there's so much elbow grease needed to get a design to production that most people who want to make one don't ever complete. Companies like Activision wants to reduce the risks of failure (where failure means sales don't reach target). Therefore, they cannot trust experimentation (where all the fun in game making comes from). Anyone looking for this should instead turn indie!
- PeterisP 8y ago
  I mean, they aren't saying that players don't products, the point is that when "players will still happily arrive and spend lots of money" then (unlike earlier years) those players are leaving some other product (quite likely also made by one of the same few major publishers!) and spending less money there, so building that well-crafted product didn't bring new sales but cannibalized existing sales; and if the industry builds twice as much well-crafted products, the total revenue for the industry will be pretty much the same, with the only difference being that maybe one publisher will gain slightly more sales at the expense of another.
crsv 8y ago
An interesting thing that's happening right now with the release and rise of Apex Legends is seeing how these now stale numbers are already starting to move around in regards to the level of engagement that Fortnite now commands versus what it commanded only weeks ago. The pace that the market is moving is pretty incredible in direct contrast to the landscape even just 5 years ago when MOBA's owned the world. This in conjunction with other nimble, highly accessible entertainment experiences (Tiktok, HQ and its clones, etc) make for vast and extremely fickle landscape vying for attention. It's really fascinating to zoom out and watch it unfold. Personally I'm just thrilled to see the level of production around eSports really kick off. Games that have been around for a decade plus now (CS:GO, Dota 2, Street Fighter) now have these incredibly high quality events and online coverage that for me have shifted my attention away from many traditional sports I used to watch. Exciting times for sure.
- billfruit 8y ago
  I do think Esports is let down by bad production quality of the telecasts, for eg: Most Rocket League telecasts seem show most of the match from each players camera, quickly switching from one player to another, but showing the whole action from a roof-top or sky camera or atleast traditional football broadcast like camera would make it more watchable. Even with CSGO and Overwatch, similar problems, the game designers and sportscaster should promote such more viewer friendly production of telecasts. Also most esports telecasts have too much fluff and too little gameplay, hours of pregame chats and pettifloggery for very short actual gameplay, they should take a hint from football(Soccer for Americans), esp EPL broadcasts, very less fluff. I think the content would be richer if one could spectate the tournaments in-engine rather than watch them as video streams, atleast then viewers can take full potential of such telecasts, see things from any angle / perspective desired.
  - debacle 8y ago
    Rocket League hosts both high tier and low tier events. The production quality reflects this - their high tier events are very professional and have a completely different talent lineup than lower tier events, including the observer (camera man).
abakker 8y ago
It's been years since I played any games really. I enjoyed D3 and really committed for a while to WoW. personally, I don't really like free to play as it distorts the gaming experience too much. Take WoW for example: when it started, it was legitimately slow and hard to get to level 20. Now that level 20 is the free to play cap, it only takes a few hours. All the fun that came from exploration and "play" of the game in that early level set is now gone, replaced by speed grinding, achievements, and constant rewards. I feel like leveling used to be a consequence of playing, now, since they've basically decided that there is no play until endgame, leveling is a chore that is meant to be rushed through. I mean, I get that endgame play is fun, and that the big raids are fun, but, they've so distorted the solo-questability that as a part time player there is virtually no point. There was a point in there where they could have focused on the long-term viability of the game and doubled down on mid-game content - better quests with complicated storylines, better low-level raids, better "role playing game" mechanics. Instead, they focused on endgame, where WoW and Fortnite start to look a lot more similar. One just takes a ton of work to be competitive and one is easy any free. I guess if I had one point to make it would be that all the big titles focus a lot on endgame rather than making the mid-game deeper and more fun.
- mipmap04 8y ago
  This is why Everquest was so great for me. Leveling took a long time and you really got to explore the world. It would take teaming up with people just to make perilous journeys - this is something I don't think exists anymore in games. Additionally, gear lasted much longer. You could be using the same piece of armor for months potentially as you leveled in EQ. It really felt like you were building your character. Now in MMOs, it often feels like you are just checking boxes to get best-in-slot items so you can be like every other high level $build $class character.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    Some of my very favorite moments in videogaming ever occurred during the EverQuest closed beta. That game was so great. It would get dark at night, to the point where if you didn't have a torch (which cost money) you'd be bumping into the trees in Kelethin in pitch blackness, and shortly get taken down by monsters. I remember spending nearly half of my time playing that game just waiting around in the dark by the town torches of Felwithe or Kelethin, chatting with other players and waiting for the sun to rise again so I could go back out into the world. That game didn't even yet have a minimap, so when you got lost, you got LOST, and it was especially bad when the sun started going down and you still couldn't find a safe haven. The areas were big too, so you'd be playing for hours until you finally started learning how to navigate them. I remember downloading maps and printing them out, and referring to them when I got lost in game trying to figure out where I was.
llukas 8y ago
I'd love to spend money on games. Most games seem to be optimized for younger audience (==dumbed down) or monetized in really dumb ways. So no buy.
- 0xcde4c3db 8y ago
  Yeah, I'm feeling that. It's creeping into more traditional genres and publishers as well. I was kinda hyped for BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle until it was revealed that the base $50 game is a "starter pack"; only half the roster is included. For this kind of game it might be defensible to use DLC to negotiate the addition of more franchises contingent on initial sales, but they actually sliced characters from every included franchise, probably in an attempt to jack up the DLC attach rate. So it goes on the hypothetical "maybe I'll buy a discounted 'Complete Edition' someday" pile.
- Reedx 8y ago
  Here are some worth your time and money. Look to indie games, mostly. Lots of great stuff in that space. - Spelunky - Don't Starve - Factorio - Oxygen Not Included - All Zachtronic's games - Stephen's Sausage Roll - Stardew Valley - Faster than Light - Kerbal Space Program - Dungeon Warfare (if you're a TD fan) - Return of Obra Dinn - Prison Architect - Mini Metro - Cities: Skylines - Frostpunk - RimWorld - Darkest Dungeon - Monument Valley - Portal - Journey - Paper's Please - This War of Mine - The Witness
  - bleezy 8y ago
    There is really not much there with Monument Valley.
  - llukas 8y ago
    Thanks for recommendation! (I already ticked off several titles from the list, will check out the rest)
  - alexgmcm 8y ago
    +1 for Obra Dinn I'd also add strategy games like Civilisation VI etc.
debacle 8y ago
There is intense competition between these battle royale games. Possibly more intense competition than we've ever seen. Being the 2nd WoW or top MOBA pales in comparison. Of the dozen BRs I've played (including mods for existing games), all but 3 already seem somewhat dead. PUBG, which was the leader for what seems like the longest duration, now seems like a distant third, and will likely never recover.
- learc83 8y ago
  I think it might have something to do with a combination of free to play and no matchmaking. Once a BR has saturated the market, the percentage of new to experienced players starts to drop. I think most players will reach a skill peak and the game starts to get harder faster than they are improving. This can be frustrating, and since newer BRs have a higher percentage of less skill players they feel easier. With no money barrier, the players switch.
  - debacle 8y ago
    Matchmaking is a double edged sword. It makes the newer players feel more welcome, but it will make the dedicated players (who likely invest more $$) feel less rewarded. I had written some comments similar to what you are saying. Getting into e.g. PUBG right now would be very difficult.
  - usrusr 8y ago
    That makes a lot of sense. And even matchmaking, if implemented badly, won't help much: when matchmaking is based on monotonic point accumulation, players with sub-average skill growth will be pushed out. Likewise, if the matchmaking rank decays slower (or not at all) than actual skill, players who took a break will leave when they try to return.
    - retsibsi 8y ago
      > even matchmaking, if implemented badly, won't help much: when matchmaking is based on monotonic point accumulation Do any (modern, popular) games implement this kind of matchmaking? I believe there's often a monotonically increasing 'rank' or 'level' displayed to the player, but I'd be surprised if any major games used this kind of score as the sole foundation for matchmaking.
mihaifm 8y ago
The article doesn’t really mention mobile gaming which is a big factor in the attention economy, whether PC/console gamers like it or not. I think companies that handle mobile gaming properly will be at a serious advantage. I think Supercell is one company that does well in this space and understand that attention is a commodity. I’ve been playing their latest game Brawl Stars, and I although the graphics are a bit cartoonish for me, I can see the genious behind their design decisions: the game combines several modes that are simplified versions of today’s popular genres, moba and battle royale. Each game session lasts no longer than 2 minutes and it’s continuous real time gameplay. There is no waiting, no searching for opponents, no setup. You just pickup the phone and play. These 2 minutes of gameplay however are very engaging and fun. This is the kind of sessions a lot people will be looking for in today’s world.
notTyler 8y ago
Investors see something like Fortnite making crazy amounts of money and ask why your game isn't generating that revenue. It's not rocket science.
cwyers 8y ago
I feel like I'm way out of touch with what I read online about game prices, and I don't think that I'm looking at things wrong. Games still cost about what they did when I was a teenager -- which is to say game prices haven't kept price with inflation. Meanwhile, games have added big increased in graphical quality, in the amount of voice acting and mo-cap involved, in the size of maps and whatnot. Meanwhile, for instance, I got Assassin's Creed Odyssey for myself for Christmas, and I've been putting 5-10 hours a week into it ever since and I'm still only about 2/3rd of the way through the main story campaign. There's almost no other entertainment medium where I can go spend $60 and get that much time spent out of it. And by just waiting for the holidays, I didn't have to spend $60, I spent like $30. And yet online I see complaint after complaint about how big AAA games aren't delivering value for the money because of all the DLC available that they feel "should" be part of the base game. I don't get it.
- falcolas 8y ago
  > And yet online I see complaint after complaint about how big AAA games aren't delivering value for the money because of all the DLC available that they feel "should" be part of the base game. I don't get it. My complaint: If I, something of a story completionist, want to ensure I get to play all the story content which was built for, say, Asassain's Creed Odessey, I have to not only pay that up front $100+ (to get the appropriate level of pre-order exclusive content) cost, I have to spend an additional hundred plus for season passes and other DLC. And that's not counting all the extra skins and weapons for sale. I'm glad you feel you're getting your money's worth, but not everyone plays games the same way you do. For some people, the level of content you purchased is a week's worth of entertainment.
  - cwyers 8y ago
    I'm pretty sure the game plus season pass was $80 at launch. Where are you getting $200 from? And what is someone _doing_ if they can burn through a game like Odyssey in a week? According to How Long To Beat, even if you skip the side quests and blow through the main campaign, that's 30 hours. https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=57503 https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=57503
stunt 8y ago
Regarding the video attention, Fortnite is building most of its community around game streamers instead of players! Most of the Fortnite events are heavily focused on big streamers than pro gamers unlike other successful big gaming communities. That leaves a lot of power to streamers hand. But streamers will play any game that they’re get paid to play unlike players from community. Most of their community are following streamers instead of the game or Epic. That is how many of them moved to ApexLegends when top streamers got paid to play ApexLegends.
- ihuman 8y ago
  > But streamers will play any game that they’re get paid to play unlike players from community They're also paid by the community through subscriptions and direct payments (Twitch bits). They'll get more people watching (and more bits/subscriptions) if they play an already popular game that people are interested in watching.
escapecharacter 8y ago
Blatant self-promotion: For us who grew up playing lots of video games but are now adults, we now have: 1. Way less time 2. A higher expectation of quality 3. More money Creating "Quality Time" entertainment is why I founded Escape Character. We're a platform for online experiences with a live actor. Since a paid actor is involved, and we pay them a suitable rate, events are ticketed even though they're online, just like an escape room or theatre show. I have a background in improv theatre (but also a PhD in Comp Sci), and my initial crazy idea was "what if every NPC in a game you were playing was played by a good improvisor who could adjust to you." Economically this is feasible as long as the player:actor ratio is 4:1. Our first online experience released last week - a 45 minute "live action digital adventure" called The Aluminum Cat. Tickets here: https://escape-character.com/ https://escape-character.com/ This content is made in-house, but our goal for Escape Character is to enable actors to work from wherever, to audiences based anywhere. Currently these kind of high-touch responsive experiences are exclusively in-person, e.g. escape rooms, immersive theatre, Disneyland.
- wccrawford 8y ago
  I'm not yet convinced that this is something I'd really like, but I have to admit I'm intrigued. And the prices seem really reasonable. I feel like I'd be more sure (and more likely to purchase tickets) if I had a better idea of how it plays. The description seems to be lacking. Perhaps a short video would help people better understand what they're buying into? To be fair, this is my problem with real "dinner theatre" as well. I simply don't know what to expect, and so I'm not likely to buy tickets.
  - escapecharacter 8y ago
    That's valid! I think communication and setting expectations around immersive events is an unsolved problem. We have a gif here: https://twitter.com/dustinfreeman/status/1096887625779048448 https://twitter.com/dustinfreeman/status/1096887625779048448 And a secret highlight reel from our premiere show: https://escape-character.com/secret/TheAluminumCatHighlights.mp4 https://escape-character.com/secret/TheAluminumCatHighlights... For many immersive events, lots of people are curious, but afraid that they'll be forced to act, or put in an awkward situation. It doesn't help that most "immersive theatre" events are so expensive to run they haven't really tried to expand out of the rich early adopter urbanite demographic. Initially our closed alpha format had audience speaking to the actor, but we repeatedly found out that the average person was intimidated. We recently switched to a mouse-based/ouija-like UI you can see in the highlight reel. This has been surprisingly expressive. We don't use audio or text chat at all for the audience anymore. More info on my blog: https://dustinfreeman.org/blog/immersive-theatre-mice/ https://dustinfreeman.org/blog/immersive-theatre-mice/ If I was to describe these events honestly, I'd called them "streamlined D&D" or "training wheels LARPs", but I think D&D and LARP* are intimidating mediums to the average person. * Live Action Roleplaying.
makecheck 8y ago
The problem for me is that games are rarely designed to be “complete” anymore. I assume there’s some kind of catch with most of them, and it’s tiring. Why spend time on a game only to discover that it’s actually missing entire chapters, or has major bugs, or is curiously un-fun without an oddly expensive “optional” item? (Clearly many people must fall for these schemes, otherwise so many games would not be designed this way.) “Initial price” seems to be the lure. Game revenue would look a lot different if publishers were required to use the term “Submit DOWN PAYMENT of $0.99 (All Content: $200.00)” or “Pay First Month $0.99 (Price Per Month: $3.99)” or “Try Now (All Content: $389.00)” or “Buy Chapters 1-3 ($9.99)”. Similarly, it would be very useful if publishers were required to show statistics on what percentage of people bought each downloadable pack. If you offer different downloadable chapters for instance and I see you have 50,000 downloads of the first chapter at $0.99 and like 10 people buying Chapter 2, I can conclude that maybe your game was not fun enough for people to want to play more. The platform may be able to determine this too, e.g. calculating an “average price per hour” factor that translates app time from those who purchased at least one component of the app, giving you a sense of how much time they were able to spend for their money.
- the-pigeon 8y ago
  There's a ton of modern games that don't do this. Most of the top games your find on metacritic for Switch, PS4, PC and Xbox One don't do that. For example games like Breath of the Wild, Witcher 3, and Read Dead Redemption 2 are complete games without the catch you are talking about.
  - p1necone 8y ago
    Basically just stay away from EA, Activision and Ubisoft and you won't find that much of this stuff. Did I miss any?
    - jhasse 8y ago
      I've played Far Cry 5 from Ubisoft and Destiny 2 from Activision and they both seemed like complete games to me.
shahbaby 8y ago
The rate of technological improvement in video games has also slowed down (i.e, smaller increments in terms of graphics). Graphics are a major part of a video game and the first thing most people notice. With a slow down here it seems inevitable that there will be a slow down across the industry.
glial 8y ago
While we're all complaining about the state of current games, what I really want is for games (especially RTS games, but really any game) to come with an API so I can build and test AIs. For example, I love the game Planetary Annihilation (I played its predecessor Total Annihilation a ton as a kid). But after a few dozen games, I began to think 'I wonder if I could just encode my strategy as a policy' - not even deep-RL necessarily, just a set of rules. But I can't even try because they don't have an API :(
- jquast 8y ago
  Here, here. QuakeC enabled the community to demonstrate the possibility of good AI in 3d shooters in the late 90's. It spawned an era of popular titles being programmable. Some of those early bot authors went on to become lead programmers of further games, why did they forget their origins? It does help a game to live beyond its years -- many previous games could become popular again with community AI improvements, and I'm not comfortable applying binary patches and they're not very portable either..
- PeterisP 8y ago
  If you're into RTS, Starcraft 2 is basis for a bunch of research and has an API available - see https://github.com/deepmind/pysc2 https://github.com/deepmind/pysc2 or a tutorial for getting started https://njustesen.com/2018/01/16/getting-started-with-the-starcraft-2-learning-environment/ https://njustesen.com/2018/01/16/getting-started-with-the-st... DOTA had also decent API links as far as I recall. Also, there's a lot of research on older games, see https://github.com/openai/retro https://github.com/openai/retro for interfacing with NES/SNES/GBA/etc games.
ilaksh 8y ago
To me there are a couple of things going on. Both were touched on by the article to different degrees. One thing is that videos games interest is largely affected by trends. When PUBG blew up I had been out of the loop and I actually thought it was a novel concept. But it wasn't. It was just an improvement to game modes that had existed for years. Now we have seen Fortnite take over interest in PUBG and now with Apex not because it was a totally new thing but because it's a familiar thing with new wrinkles. It's a lot like clothing fashion. We don't really go for totally new ideas because we want to fit in. There is a network affect going on where the hot new thing dominates just because everyone is doing it now. So there is definitely a limited amount of attention. The other thing is the fact that various video streaming services exist and people can get much of the same experience from video or streams as they get from actually playing games. But video or streams are free or inexpensive whereas each new game requires a heavy investment. It is enjoyable to watch someone else play a game. Not quite as fun as playing it yourself necessarily but it also takes much less effort. You can also get various degrees of social benefits from streams or videos depending on how much time or effort. Again, not as good as "real" socialization necessarily, but also usually with much less effort. I would go so far as to say that a lot of the investment into assets, programming, story, content in general is being broadcast out for free or low cost or for the benefit of streaming platforms/streamers and it's possible that the producers of those video games are not able to make as many sales as they would have had their content not been available (albeit in a non-interactive way) on those broadcast platforms. Which is not to say that it's necessarily overall bad for sales or bad for consumers. I just think it has an effect of sales.

83 points by beerlord 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

This seems like a inaccurate take from folks who are not following the gaming industry closely. Activision just had a record-setting year of high revenue (presumably they are not feeling the impact of peaking attention), in part because the quality of their products is still high-ish. They laid people off because they could, not because of any downturn in business. EA's quarterly results are down, because their product quality has suffered and their pricing has risen, players are somewhat disengaging. Those problems are with EA and internal to EA, not problems with the industry. --- The article is right to claim that too much focus is on "Fortnite", but they miss their own point. These companies are not suffering from "peak attention", so much as they have stumbled into various mismanagement and/or bled out a chunk of their talent and ability to create. These companies problems are impacting the products they ship. If you build a well designed, well crafted product, players will still happily arrive and spend lots of money (as EA's own Apex Legends is showing today, and as Fortnite, Spider-Man, RDR2, Warframe, Path of Exile, Magic Arena, and many others routinely demonstrate.)

falcolas 8y ago
> EA's quarterly results are down, And yet they posted pre-tax profits of almost 1.5 billion dollars in 2018 (their highest profit numbers in the last 4 years). That's hardly the mark of a company that's ready to go under. Growth is not the only measure of a companies health.
- debacle 8y ago
  EA is really struggling with their Star Wars license. If they put out just 1 good Star Wars game they'd see insane revenue. I haven't purchased an AAA title in years and I would buy an okayish Jedi Knight IV.
  - grawprog 8y ago
    Just think of how many different colours of lightsabres would be available through microtransactions. I would have said grey area gambling but you did specify okayish.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    My dream is a modern Star Wars/TIE Fighter space shooter. Those were some of my very favorite games back in the late Win 3.1/early Win 95 era. I suspect it wouldn't have the same widespread appeal as an adventure/shooter/RPG like Jedi Knight, but it could be also be made at a pretty low cost, and it's not like the license restricts how many Star Wars games they can release. May as well go make a space shooter with a smaller team while they still have the license. Why does everything have to get the AAA treatment these days?
    - falcolas 8y ago
      > Why does everything have to get the AAA treatment these days? The same thing that causes companies who are making record profits to be considered underperforming: growth at any cost. For EA and Activision/Blizzard (and their big name kin), if a game doesn't have the potential to make significantly more money than its peers, it's not worth making.
      - DerDangDerDang 8y ago
        Which has the knock on effect that championing a smaller project through internal green light is not as good for your career as waiting for the chance to lead a AAA title- I’m guessing
    - verisimilidude 8y ago
      My dream is a modern Star Wars TIE Fighter space shooter...in VR. But I doubt the VR market is big enough to justify the investment that’s demanded by the Star Wars license. Like you say, AAA is sometimes a straight-jacket.
      - 8y ago
Spooky23 8y ago
I don’t have a ton of direct insight into gaming, but in general when a business that’s dependent on development is facing headwinds and doubles down on hitting the numbers, that’s a bad sign. It’s often a signal that the firm is not investing in the business. IMO, modern business models for gaming (ie casinos for elementary school kids) are problematic and are turning kids off. There will be a harsh reckoning as more and more people figure that out.
- Macha 8y ago
  Or even accelerating the rate at which players age out of their target market. There's only so many games you can be subjected to the loot box marketing spree before you start turning away from major publishers all together. I like to sit down and enjoy my video games, not have carrots dangled to open my wallet after every chunk of gameplay.
  - majewsky 8y ago
    Amen. I just got a Switch and Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and it's really nice to just sit down and play, knowing that since I have already payed everything upfront, the next 100 hours of gameplay are mine to enjoy without any business transactions interrupting it.
- didibus 8y ago
  Wow, this is the first time I hear this argument, and it is a really good one. To enjoy and play games require some initiation to it as a kid. And the kind of games marketed at kids today I don't think do a good job at creating this interest. That could really hurt the industry long term.
- tokyodude 8y ago
  Confused about this response. The person it's responding to says Activision is doubling down on development by saving money in non-development. That's sounds like the opposite of "doubling down on hitting the numbers" and more like putting the money in the correct place, R&D, while saving it in others.
tokai 8y ago
>If you build a well designed, well crafted product Not a strong suit for triple-a developers.
- 0xcde4c3db 8y ago
  I'm not sure developers are really the problem. It seems like over the past 10-15 years the video game publishing industry has adopted Hollywood turd-polishing tactics (late review embargo dates, extremely frontloaded marketing blitzes with almost no useful/accurate information) to try to sell troubled productions as-is instead of overhauling them. Anthem absolutely reeks of this, for example.
  - hnick 8y ago
    Developers aren't the root cause but when you're making a AAA game the required team size alone pretty much means you're not going to have an all-star team of devs.
1123581321 8y ago
The best reporting on Activision I’ve seen has been from outside the games industry and games journalism (I’ve preferred writing from this link, Variety, Bloomberg, etc.) Activision is not concerned about whether they are making money now. They are concerned about whether they can continue to make money. They have profitable, mature lines but nothing in the battle royale genre that is quickly growing and a threat to both Call of Duty and Overwatch, not to mention what’s next after that. They need to invest heavily in acquisitions and development of new titles using their existing brands. The layoffs came from areas of the company that wouldn’t be able to help with that. The morality of layoffs can be debated, of course, but analysis of the reasoning has been too absent from close followers of the games industry.
- falcolas 8y ago
  > but nothing in the battle royale genre that is quickly growing and a threat to both Call of Duty and Overwatch This makes the assumption that if they make it, the market will obviously move to their product. The genre has a fairly fixed market, and taking away players from their previous investments (time and money) will take an exceptionally good game. Ironically, making good, interesting games is the one thing that Activision/Blizzard are/have been shifting their focus away from, ever since the iconic "I want to take the fun out of making video games" statement from their CEO.
  - dleslie 8y ago
    > I want to take the fun out of making video games Which is just insane. Part of the compensation for game developers is the love of their trade; without that, or undermining that, then it's just a low paying, high stress, and life wrecking tech job.
    - chii 8y ago
      Making a video game is not fun. Designing one is, but there's so much elbow grease needed to get a design to production that most people who want to make one don't ever complete. Companies like Activision wants to reduce the risks of failure (where failure means sales don't reach target). Therefore, they cannot trust experimentation (where all the fun in game making comes from). Anyone looking for this should instead turn indie!
PeterisP 8y ago
I mean, they aren't saying that players don't products, the point is that when "players will still happily arrive and spend lots of money" then (unlike earlier years) those players are leaving some other product (quite likely also made by one of the same few major publishers!) and spending less money there, so building that well-crafted product didn't bring new sales but cannibalized existing sales; and if the industry builds twice as much well-crafted products, the total revenue for the industry will be pretty much the same, with the only difference being that maybe one publisher will gain slightly more sales at the expense of another.

crsv 8y ago

An interesting thing that's happening right now with the release and rise of Apex Legends is seeing how these now stale numbers are already starting to move around in regards to the level of engagement that Fortnite now commands versus what it commanded only weeks ago. The pace that the market is moving is pretty incredible in direct contrast to the landscape even just 5 years ago when MOBA's owned the world. This in conjunction with other nimble, highly accessible entertainment experiences (Tiktok, HQ and its clones, etc) make for vast and extremely fickle landscape vying for attention. It's really fascinating to zoom out and watch it unfold. Personally I'm just thrilled to see the level of production around eSports really kick off. Games that have been around for a decade plus now (CS:GO, Dota 2, Street Fighter) now have these incredibly high quality events and online coverage that for me have shifted my attention away from many traditional sports I used to watch. Exciting times for sure.

billfruit 8y ago
I do think Esports is let down by bad production quality of the telecasts, for eg: Most Rocket League telecasts seem show most of the match from each players camera, quickly switching from one player to another, but showing the whole action from a roof-top or sky camera or atleast traditional football broadcast like camera would make it more watchable. Even with CSGO and Overwatch, similar problems, the game designers and sportscaster should promote such more viewer friendly production of telecasts. Also most esports telecasts have too much fluff and too little gameplay, hours of pregame chats and pettifloggery for very short actual gameplay, they should take a hint from football(Soccer for Americans), esp EPL broadcasts, very less fluff. I think the content would be richer if one could spectate the tournaments in-engine rather than watch them as video streams, atleast then viewers can take full potential of such telecasts, see things from any angle / perspective desired.
- debacle 8y ago
  Rocket League hosts both high tier and low tier events. The production quality reflects this - their high tier events are very professional and have a completely different talent lineup than lower tier events, including the observer (camera man).

abakker 8y ago

It's been years since I played any games really. I enjoyed D3 and really committed for a while to WoW. personally, I don't really like free to play as it distorts the gaming experience too much. Take WoW for example: when it started, it was legitimately slow and hard to get to level 20. Now that level 20 is the free to play cap, it only takes a few hours. All the fun that came from exploration and "play" of the game in that early level set is now gone, replaced by speed grinding, achievements, and constant rewards. I feel like leveling used to be a consequence of playing, now, since they've basically decided that there is no play until endgame, leveling is a chore that is meant to be rushed through. I mean, I get that endgame play is fun, and that the big raids are fun, but, they've so distorted the solo-questability that as a part time player there is virtually no point. There was a point in there where they could have focused on the long-term viability of the game and doubled down on mid-game content - better quests with complicated storylines, better low-level raids, better "role playing game" mechanics. Instead, they focused on endgame, where WoW and Fortnite start to look a lot more similar. One just takes a ton of work to be competitive and one is easy any free. I guess if I had one point to make it would be that all the big titles focus a lot on endgame rather than making the mid-game deeper and more fun.

mipmap04 8y ago
This is why Everquest was so great for me. Leveling took a long time and you really got to explore the world. It would take teaming up with people just to make perilous journeys - this is something I don't think exists anymore in games. Additionally, gear lasted much longer. You could be using the same piece of armor for months potentially as you leveled in EQ. It really felt like you were building your character. Now in MMOs, it often feels like you are just checking boxes to get best-in-slot items so you can be like every other high level $build $class character.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  Some of my very favorite moments in videogaming ever occurred during the EverQuest closed beta. That game was so great. It would get dark at night, to the point where if you didn't have a torch (which cost money) you'd be bumping into the trees in Kelethin in pitch blackness, and shortly get taken down by monsters. I remember spending nearly half of my time playing that game just waiting around in the dark by the town torches of Felwithe or Kelethin, chatting with other players and waiting for the sun to rise again so I could go back out into the world. That game didn't even yet have a minimap, so when you got lost, you got LOST, and it was especially bad when the sun started going down and you still couldn't find a safe haven. The areas were big too, so you'd be playing for hours until you finally started learning how to navigate them. I remember downloading maps and printing them out, and referring to them when I got lost in game trying to figure out where I was.

llukas 8y ago

I'd love to spend money on games. Most games seem to be optimized for younger audience (==dumbed down) or monetized in really dumb ways. So no buy.

0xcde4c3db 8y ago
Yeah, I'm feeling that. It's creeping into more traditional genres and publishers as well. I was kinda hyped for BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle until it was revealed that the base $50 game is a "starter pack"; only half the roster is included. For this kind of game it might be defensible to use DLC to negotiate the addition of more franchises contingent on initial sales, but they actually sliced characters from every included franchise, probably in an attempt to jack up the DLC attach rate. So it goes on the hypothetical "maybe I'll buy a discounted 'Complete Edition' someday" pile.
Reedx 8y ago
Here are some worth your time and money. Look to indie games, mostly. Lots of great stuff in that space. - Spelunky - Don't Starve - Factorio - Oxygen Not Included - All Zachtronic's games - Stephen's Sausage Roll - Stardew Valley - Faster than Light - Kerbal Space Program - Dungeon Warfare (if you're a TD fan) - Return of Obra Dinn - Prison Architect - Mini Metro - Cities: Skylines - Frostpunk - RimWorld - Darkest Dungeon - Monument Valley - Portal - Journey - Paper's Please - This War of Mine - The Witness
- bleezy 8y ago
  There is really not much there with Monument Valley.
- llukas 8y ago
  Thanks for recommendation! (I already ticked off several titles from the list, will check out the rest)
- alexgmcm 8y ago
  +1 for Obra Dinn I'd also add strategy games like Civilisation VI etc.

debacle 8y ago

There is intense competition between these battle royale games. Possibly more intense competition than we've ever seen. Being the 2nd WoW or top MOBA pales in comparison. Of the dozen BRs I've played (including mods for existing games), all but 3 already seem somewhat dead. PUBG, which was the leader for what seems like the longest duration, now seems like a distant third, and will likely never recover.

learc83 8y ago
I think it might have something to do with a combination of free to play and no matchmaking. Once a BR has saturated the market, the percentage of new to experienced players starts to drop. I think most players will reach a skill peak and the game starts to get harder faster than they are improving. This can be frustrating, and since newer BRs have a higher percentage of less skill players they feel easier. With no money barrier, the players switch.
- debacle 8y ago
  Matchmaking is a double edged sword. It makes the newer players feel more welcome, but it will make the dedicated players (who likely invest more $$) feel less rewarded. I had written some comments similar to what you are saying. Getting into e.g. PUBG right now would be very difficult.
- usrusr 8y ago
  That makes a lot of sense. And even matchmaking, if implemented badly, won't help much: when matchmaking is based on monotonic point accumulation, players with sub-average skill growth will be pushed out. Likewise, if the matchmaking rank decays slower (or not at all) than actual skill, players who took a break will leave when they try to return.
  - retsibsi 8y ago
    > even matchmaking, if implemented badly, won't help much: when matchmaking is based on monotonic point accumulation Do any (modern, popular) games implement this kind of matchmaking? I believe there's often a monotonically increasing 'rank' or 'level' displayed to the player, but I'd be surprised if any major games used this kind of score as the sole foundation for matchmaking.

mihaifm 8y ago

The article doesn’t really mention mobile gaming which is a big factor in the attention economy, whether PC/console gamers like it or not. I think companies that handle mobile gaming properly will be at a serious advantage. I think Supercell is one company that does well in this space and understand that attention is a commodity. I’ve been playing their latest game Brawl Stars, and I although the graphics are a bit cartoonish for me, I can see the genious behind their design decisions: the game combines several modes that are simplified versions of today’s popular genres, moba and battle royale. Each game session lasts no longer than 2 minutes and it’s continuous real time gameplay. There is no waiting, no searching for opponents, no setup. You just pickup the phone and play. These 2 minutes of gameplay however are very engaging and fun. This is the kind of sessions a lot people will be looking for in today’s world.

notTyler 8y ago

Investors see something like Fortnite making crazy amounts of money and ask why your game isn't generating that revenue. It's not rocket science.

cwyers 8y ago

I feel like I'm way out of touch with what I read online about game prices, and I don't think that I'm looking at things wrong. Games still cost about what they did when I was a teenager -- which is to say game prices haven't kept price with inflation. Meanwhile, games have added big increased in graphical quality, in the amount of voice acting and mo-cap involved, in the size of maps and whatnot. Meanwhile, for instance, I got Assassin's Creed Odyssey for myself for Christmas, and I've been putting 5-10 hours a week into it ever since and I'm still only about 2/3rd of the way through the main story campaign. There's almost no other entertainment medium where I can go spend $60 and get that much time spent out of it. And by just waiting for the holidays, I didn't have to spend $60, I spent like $30. And yet online I see complaint after complaint about how big AAA games aren't delivering value for the money because of all the DLC available that they feel "should" be part of the base game. I don't get it.

falcolas 8y ago
> And yet online I see complaint after complaint about how big AAA games aren't delivering value for the money because of all the DLC available that they feel "should" be part of the base game. I don't get it. My complaint: If I, something of a story completionist, want to ensure I get to play all the story content which was built for, say, Asassain's Creed Odessey, I have to not only pay that up front $100+ (to get the appropriate level of pre-order exclusive content) cost, I have to spend an additional hundred plus for season passes and other DLC. And that's not counting all the extra skins and weapons for sale. I'm glad you feel you're getting your money's worth, but not everyone plays games the same way you do. For some people, the level of content you purchased is a week's worth of entertainment.
- cwyers 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure the game plus season pass was $80 at launch. Where are you getting $200 from? And what is someone _doing_ if they can burn through a game like Odyssey in a week? According to How Long To Beat, even if you skip the side quests and blow through the main campaign, that's 30 hours. https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=57503 https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=57503

stunt 8y ago

Regarding the video attention, Fortnite is building most of its community around game streamers instead of players! Most of the Fortnite events are heavily focused on big streamers than pro gamers unlike other successful big gaming communities. That leaves a lot of power to streamers hand. But streamers will play any game that they’re get paid to play unlike players from community. Most of their community are following streamers instead of the game or Epic. That is how many of them moved to ApexLegends when top streamers got paid to play ApexLegends.

ihuman 8y ago
> But streamers will play any game that they’re get paid to play unlike players from community They're also paid by the community through subscriptions and direct payments (Twitch bits). They'll get more people watching (and more bits/subscriptions) if they play an already popular game that people are interested in watching.

escapecharacter 8y ago

Blatant self-promotion: For us who grew up playing lots of video games but are now adults, we now have: 1. Way less time 2. A higher expectation of quality 3. More money Creating "Quality Time" entertainment is why I founded Escape Character. We're a platform for online experiences with a live actor. Since a paid actor is involved, and we pay them a suitable rate, events are ticketed even though they're online, just like an escape room or theatre show. I have a background in improv theatre (but also a PhD in Comp Sci), and my initial crazy idea was "what if every NPC in a game you were playing was played by a good improvisor who could adjust to you." Economically this is feasible as long as the player:actor ratio is 4:1. Our first online experience released last week - a 45 minute "live action digital adventure" called The Aluminum Cat. Tickets here: https://escape-character.com/ https://escape-character.com/ This content is made in-house, but our goal for Escape Character is to enable actors to work from wherever, to audiences based anywhere. Currently these kind of high-touch responsive experiences are exclusively in-person, e.g. escape rooms, immersive theatre, Disneyland.

wccrawford 8y ago
I'm not yet convinced that this is something I'd really like, but I have to admit I'm intrigued. And the prices seem really reasonable. I feel like I'd be more sure (and more likely to purchase tickets) if I had a better idea of how it plays. The description seems to be lacking. Perhaps a short video would help people better understand what they're buying into? To be fair, this is my problem with real "dinner theatre" as well. I simply don't know what to expect, and so I'm not likely to buy tickets.
- escapecharacter 8y ago
  That's valid! I think communication and setting expectations around immersive events is an unsolved problem. We have a gif here: https://twitter.com/dustinfreeman/status/1096887625779048448 https://twitter.com/dustinfreeman/status/1096887625779048448 And a secret highlight reel from our premiere show: https://escape-character.com/secret/TheAluminumCatHighlights.mp4 https://escape-character.com/secret/TheAluminumCatHighlights... For many immersive events, lots of people are curious, but afraid that they'll be forced to act, or put in an awkward situation. It doesn't help that most "immersive theatre" events are so expensive to run they haven't really tried to expand out of the rich early adopter urbanite demographic. Initially our closed alpha format had audience speaking to the actor, but we repeatedly found out that the average person was intimidated. We recently switched to a mouse-based/ouija-like UI you can see in the highlight reel. This has been surprisingly expressive. We don't use audio or text chat at all for the audience anymore. More info on my blog: https://dustinfreeman.org/blog/immersive-theatre-mice/ https://dustinfreeman.org/blog/immersive-theatre-mice/ If I was to describe these events honestly, I'd called them "streamlined D&D" or "training wheels LARPs", but I think D&D and LARP* are intimidating mediums to the average person. * Live Action Roleplaying.

makecheck 8y ago

The problem for me is that games are rarely designed to be “complete” anymore. I assume there’s some kind of catch with most of them, and it’s tiring. Why spend time on a game only to discover that it’s actually missing entire chapters, or has major bugs, or is curiously un-fun without an oddly expensive “optional” item? (Clearly many people must fall for these schemes, otherwise so many games would not be designed this way.) “Initial price” seems to be the lure. Game revenue would look a lot different if publishers were required to use the term “Submit DOWN PAYMENT of $0.99 (All Content: $200.00)” or “Pay First Month $0.99 (Price Per Month: $3.99)” or “Try Now (All Content: $389.00)” or “Buy Chapters 1-3 ($9.99)”. Similarly, it would be very useful if publishers were required to show statistics on what percentage of people bought each downloadable pack. If you offer different downloadable chapters for instance and I see you have 50,000 downloads of the first chapter at $0.99 and like 10 people buying Chapter 2, I can conclude that maybe your game was not fun enough for people to want to play more. The platform may be able to determine this too, e.g. calculating an “average price per hour” factor that translates app time from those who purchased at least one component of the app, giving you a sense of how much time they were able to spend for their money.

the-pigeon 8y ago
There's a ton of modern games that don't do this. Most of the top games your find on metacritic for Switch, PS4, PC and Xbox One don't do that. For example games like Breath of the Wild, Witcher 3, and Read Dead Redemption 2 are complete games without the catch you are talking about.
- p1necone 8y ago
  Basically just stay away from EA, Activision and Ubisoft and you won't find that much of this stuff. Did I miss any?
  - jhasse 8y ago
    I've played Far Cry 5 from Ubisoft and Destiny 2 from Activision and they both seemed like complete games to me.

shahbaby 8y ago

The rate of technological improvement in video games has also slowed down (i.e, smaller increments in terms of graphics). Graphics are a major part of a video game and the first thing most people notice. With a slow down here it seems inevitable that there will be a slow down across the industry.

glial 8y ago

While we're all complaining about the state of current games, what I really want is for games (especially RTS games, but really any game) to come with an API so I can build and test AIs. For example, I love the game Planetary Annihilation (I played its predecessor Total Annihilation a ton as a kid). But after a few dozen games, I began to think 'I wonder if I could just encode my strategy as a policy' - not even deep-RL necessarily, just a set of rules. But I can't even try because they don't have an API :(

jquast 8y ago
Here, here. QuakeC enabled the community to demonstrate the possibility of good AI in 3d shooters in the late 90's. It spawned an era of popular titles being programmable. Some of those early bot authors went on to become lead programmers of further games, why did they forget their origins? It does help a game to live beyond its years -- many previous games could become popular again with community AI improvements, and I'm not comfortable applying binary patches and they're not very portable either..
PeterisP 8y ago
If you're into RTS, Starcraft 2 is basis for a bunch of research and has an API available - see https://github.com/deepmind/pysc2 https://github.com/deepmind/pysc2 or a tutorial for getting started https://njustesen.com/2018/01/16/getting-started-with-the-starcraft-2-learning-environment/ https://njustesen.com/2018/01/16/getting-started-with-the-st... DOTA had also decent API links as far as I recall. Also, there's a lot of research on older games, see https://github.com/openai/retro https://github.com/openai/retro for interfacing with NES/SNES/GBA/etc games.

ilaksh 8y ago

To me there are a couple of things going on. Both were touched on by the article to different degrees. One thing is that videos games interest is largely affected by trends. When PUBG blew up I had been out of the loop and I actually thought it was a novel concept. But it wasn't. It was just an improvement to game modes that had existed for years. Now we have seen Fortnite take over interest in PUBG and now with Apex not because it was a totally new thing but because it's a familiar thing with new wrinkles. It's a lot like clothing fashion. We don't really go for totally new ideas because we want to fit in. There is a network affect going on where the hot new thing dominates just because everyone is doing it now. So there is definitely a limited amount of attention. The other thing is the fact that various video streaming services exist and people can get much of the same experience from video or streams as they get from actually playing games. But video or streams are free or inexpensive whereas each new game requires a heavy investment. It is enjoyable to watch someone else play a game. Not quite as fun as playing it yourself necessarily but it also takes much less effort. You can also get various degrees of social benefits from streams or videos depending on how much time or effort. Again, not as good as "real" socialization necessarily, but also usually with much less effort. I would go so far as to say that a lot of the investment into assets, programming, story, content in general is being broadcast out for free or low cost or for the benefit of streaming platforms/streamers and it's possible that the producers of those video games are not able to make as many sales as they would have had their content not been available (albeit in a non-interactive way) on those broadcast platforms. Which is not to say that it's necessarily overall bad for sales or bad for consumers. I just think it has an effect of sales.