7 ms·

The AAA side of the industry is fucked up much like the big money side of movies and other stuff is often fucked up; because it not only has to pay all the crea

by ebbv 14y ago

The AAA side of the industry is fucked up much like the big money side of movies and other stuff is often fucked up; because it not only has to pay all the creative folks but it has to pay for a slew of empty suits and massive, massive marketing campaigns. I think that's why we're seeing such a rise of indie developers. People credit Kickstarter but I think Kickstarter's popularity and success is a result of the move to indie development rather than a cause of it (or maybe a little of both.) There will always be talented people who want to make games and they will find a way to do it. Look at the old days that Commander Keen, Wolf3D, DOOM and many other shareware games came from. A bunch of independent BBSes where the shareware games where passed around and talked about purely through word of mouth. Rampant piracy, far worse than today, and yet those games made money for their creators. You may be right, the EAs, the Activisions and other bloated monstrosities may be fucked. And to them I say good riddance. I love, love, love Bioshock Infinite, but if the $100 million dollar budget games are a dinosaur on its way out, I won't mourn it too much.

AJ007 14y ago
Add to it the impact mobile has had on consumers who are increasingly used to getting games for somewhere between free and 99 cents. There is a mad rush to free to play right now in order to capture that audience. Although the market is much bigger, I fully expect the attempt to squeeze as much money possible out of the players will results in more and more painfully annoying games (most free to play already fit in that category.)
- hatchoo 14y ago
  On the upside, free to play allows you to try out the game before fully investing on it. On the downside, if it's good enough, you will probably be milked more than the typical $60 retail in DLCs and in game items. I personally don't buy games at launch anymore. I just wait for it to go on sale on Steam.
justinhj 14y ago
Been a video game programmer since 93 and I totally agree with your comparison with the movie industry. If you're going to make a AAA game you need a huge budget both for development and for marketing, which means that only the 'sure thing' will get the green light. That means the same games over and over with greater graphical fidelity, just like the big budget action movies don't stray too far from the accepted formula.
- talmand 14y ago
  Interesting that the groups that get to define what makes an "AAA" game are the groups that can afford making such games as defined. Gamers need to get away from the AAA quality labeling as it means next to nothing these days. For instance, what's an A or AA game? Seems to me these days the number of A's only suggests the retail price but not the quality of the game. Personally, I would put Super Meatboy or Mark of the Ninja up against any of these so-called AAA blockbuster games any time.
  - samspot 14y ago
    As far as I'm concerned "AAA" refers only to the development budget.
    - Jare 14y ago
      That's the general consensus, yeah. AAA gets lots of press, but it is not a direct reflection of quality: as has been mentioned, the large budget also includes marketing $$$. AAA also refers sometimes to overall production values, which tends to mean amount of features and coverage of areas of experience: story, cinematics, voiceover, variety, realism, etc. Without a AAA budget you can't afford all of that and must focus on doing one or two things right and ignore the rest. This plethora of features can sometimes be mistaken for 'quality'.
      - talmand 14y ago
        I think this makes my point in more/better detail than I managed to do. This is more or less what I mean by wishing gamers would get away from using AAA as some kind of symbol of quality.
just2n 14y ago
This. I remember the days of NES/Gameboy/DOS/PS games, even the case for a lot of games in other earlier consoles like SNES, Genesis, Dreamcast, etc. These markets were literally flooded with massive volume in games. You went to the store and could literally not decide what you wanted to play, because there were 30+ games you had never seen, you wanted to play them all, and another 30+ for a console you didn't own. And then a few months later, there were 20+ new ones. All of these games were relatively simple, creative, outside the box, not hyped nor mentioned in any advertising anywhere. And almost all of them kicked ass. Because they were still analog cartridge-ey and/or required a CD to play, you didn't want to own hundreds of games (even though you could because most were priced very reasonably), so it was amazing when things like Sega Channel came out. That was one of the truly awesome things I remember as a kid, even though it was short lived. I miss those days. Now it's AAA title that took 3+ years to make that looks good but has almost nothing to it. Back then, a $5 game that took a company 1 programmer, 1 artist, 1 sound engineer, and about 2 weeks to make had significantly more playability to it. What happened to the industry?
- talmand 14y ago
  Some call it progress. EDIT: downvotes suggest I should wrap this in a sarcasm tag.
  - just2n 14y ago
    I think this is a highly contentious opinion (primarily mine, and any view that modern high-budget games mostly suck, which resonates with myself and a lot of once-gamers I know). It might be that way because of the technical nature of this community and probably because many readers of these comments might actually be involved in that industry, and so it comes off as offensive. I don't really mean it to be offensive. We know a lot more about development today, and have a lot better tools, and I know what kinds of amazing creativity some of these designers have, so it personally bothers me to see the lion's share of investment in the gaming industry go into reproducing the same games over and over. Those of you who are in the industry: what do you think about starting your own shops, or building kick-ass games in your free time? If you work at one of these large companies and are pursuing things like this, I'd love to see your work.
talmand 14y ago
Your movie industry comparison is probably spot on in many ways. Especially the part about the number of non-developers at a company that actually increase the cost of development even though they are not directly involved. The other aspect I'm curious over is if these AAA titles don't meet their sales quota is an attempt by publishers to get out paying royalties and bonuses to developers. It's a common tactic in Hollywood and there's evidence of it in the gaming industry already.
- Shivetya 14y ago
  if your a publicly traded company your pretty much bound to have scads of people who do not contribute directly to the end product but merely exist to deal with all the regulations and laws that said companies must adhere too. It is frightening how much is spent to maintain compliance. It is not uncommon for large companies to have both internal and external auditors to ensure it. Then toss is all the people needed to support the developers, artists, and their managing teams. Ever read the credits at the end of a movie, count the people. Some video games have the same or bury it in a manual if your so lucky.
  - talmand 14y ago
    While what you say is true, those people should not be rolled into the development costs of the game. Their costs are the burden of the company, not the the developers whether they are an internal group or external studio. Most developers, well I believe this still holds true, have projects that are financed by publishers. The money handed over to the developers is the true cost of development. There will be people in the development group that won't have a hand in the project directly but are paid for through such funds, there's no way around that. But the people that work at a publisher that funds an external development project should not be included in any way in the credits of the game. That's stupid and deceiving, I consider it an insult to the people who actually worked on the game. Much like those never-ending credits at the end of a movie that lowers the value of having your name in the credits in the first place. If a publisher is rolling all those costs into the reported development costs of a game then they are inflating that number for some reason and I'm willing to bet it benefits no one but the publisher. As I stated elsewhere, it heavily feels of the Hollywood tactic of claiming a project never makes money to avoid having to make payments based on profit required by contract. A developer never gets royalties if the game never makes money. Remember, Return of the Jedi is yet to turn a profit.
BHSPitMonkey 14y ago
"and yet those games made money for their creators." Did they make enough money to offset what would be fair salaries for their creators throughout the time they were being made? If not, then the comparison isn't very valid since the creators would have been working for free.
- samspot 14y ago
  I'm sure they did, since those games were humongous hits and the developers are still famous for them.
ohashi 14y ago
What about Blizzard? They seem to be the exception to the rule. They deliver very few titles but they seem to be raking in cash on each of them.
- Phlarp 14y ago
  I highly doubt Diablo 3 has been the cash cow they had hoped for, and with the first Starcraft expansion launched with no sign of a monetization route with custom games I can't imagine their ROI on it is anything breath-taking, given the developmental resources required for a game as widely played as SC2. All of this is set the back-drop of a rapidly waning WoW playerbase and revenue. Blizzard is the exception to the rule in that they typically deliver very high quality games, actually making enough money to fund that level of quality has not been consistent, while making strategic moves toward more money has consistently ended up burning them (WoW paid pets and mounts showed up about the time the player base started to get bored and diffuse to other things, the D3 RMAH has been an utter disaster since it launched)
  - Strom 14y ago
    Diablo 3 has sold over 12 million copies on PC. That's an extremely high sales number for a single platform. Also, the RMAH has been a success as far as I can tell. I don't have access to any major statistics, but anecdotally speaking I know several people who make a nice profit in the RMAH, and Blizzard takes a juicy cut all the time.
- ericd 14y ago
  I think they rely heavily on their sterling brand for that consistency. Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 have done very well commercially, but most of the enthusiasts I talked to were fairly disappointed, and some of them even remarked that Blizzard has left their "autobuy" list. They were one of maybe two developers on that list for me, but I think that explains their very consistently massive success - they used to turn out games that were consistently much better than the competition's, especially in terms of replay value, and so they got on that list for a lot of people.
AlexandrB 14y ago
One of my absolute favourite games bootstrapped themselves on the basis of pre-orders before Kickstarter was available. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Selection_2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Selection_2 I think they pulled it off because of the strong reputation of the original Natural Selection (which was a Half Life mod). Still pretty amazing, especially considering they developed the 3D engine from scratch.
- intended 14y ago
  I forget where, but the entire story of how NS2 came to life is a paean to the dedication of its fans. IIRC they had a build out and no one cared too much - until one of their fans started putting out gameplay videos on youtube, every single day. The firm recruited him to be their head of marketing after that. I suspect rock paper shotgun had done the story.
ijk 14y ago
This year at the Game Developer Conference, Chris Hecker had an entirely wordless rant about the state of creativity in the AAA space, essentially using AAA's PR to point out how little real innovation is happening in that space. [1] It's received quite a bit of attention and agreement in the industry. [1] http://chrishecker.com/Fair_Use http://chrishecker.com/Fair_Use
vacri 14y ago
Kickstarter hasn't done a lot of delivery yet. It's captured people's imaginations, but due to the relative lack of tangible output at this stage, the warts are yet to be seen.
intended 14y ago
While synergistic, Kickstarter is definitely on the right side of the indie dev movement. If there were no kickstarter, there would still be an increasing amount of indie devs. Of course their life would be much harder, and we would not be seeing the new Torment game.

by ebbv 14y ago

AJ007 14y ago

Add to it the impact mobile has had on consumers who are increasingly used to getting games for somewhere between free and 99 cents. There is a mad rush to free to play right now in order to capture that audience. Although the market is much bigger, I fully expect the attempt to squeeze as much money possible out of the players will results in more and more painfully annoying games (most free to play already fit in that category.)

hatchoo 14y ago
On the upside, free to play allows you to try out the game before fully investing on it. On the downside, if it's good enough, you will probably be milked more than the typical $60 retail in DLCs and in game items. I personally don't buy games at launch anymore. I just wait for it to go on sale on Steam.

justinhj 14y ago

Been a video game programmer since 93 and I totally agree with your comparison with the movie industry. If you're going to make a AAA game you need a huge budget both for development and for marketing, which means that only the 'sure thing' will get the green light. That means the same games over and over with greater graphical fidelity, just like the big budget action movies don't stray too far from the accepted formula.

talmand 14y ago
Interesting that the groups that get to define what makes an "AAA" game are the groups that can afford making such games as defined. Gamers need to get away from the AAA quality labeling as it means next to nothing these days. For instance, what's an A or AA game? Seems to me these days the number of A's only suggests the retail price but not the quality of the game. Personally, I would put Super Meatboy or Mark of the Ninja up against any of these so-called AAA blockbuster games any time.
- samspot 14y ago
  As far as I'm concerned "AAA" refers only to the development budget.
  - Jare 14y ago
    That's the general consensus, yeah. AAA gets lots of press, but it is not a direct reflection of quality: as has been mentioned, the large budget also includes marketing $$$. AAA also refers sometimes to overall production values, which tends to mean amount of features and coverage of areas of experience: story, cinematics, voiceover, variety, realism, etc. Without a AAA budget you can't afford all of that and must focus on doing one or two things right and ignore the rest. This plethora of features can sometimes be mistaken for 'quality'.
    - talmand 14y ago
      I think this makes my point in more/better detail than I managed to do. This is more or less what I mean by wishing gamers would get away from using AAA as some kind of symbol of quality.

just2n 14y ago

This. I remember the days of NES/Gameboy/DOS/PS games, even the case for a lot of games in other earlier consoles like SNES, Genesis, Dreamcast, etc. These markets were literally flooded with massive volume in games. You went to the store and could literally not decide what you wanted to play, because there were 30+ games you had never seen, you wanted to play them all, and another 30+ for a console you didn't own. And then a few months later, there were 20+ new ones. All of these games were relatively simple, creative, outside the box, not hyped nor mentioned in any advertising anywhere. And almost all of them kicked ass. Because they were still analog cartridge-ey and/or required a CD to play, you didn't want to own hundreds of games (even though you could because most were priced very reasonably), so it was amazing when things like Sega Channel came out. That was one of the truly awesome things I remember as a kid, even though it was short lived. I miss those days. Now it's AAA title that took 3+ years to make that looks good but has almost nothing to it. Back then, a $5 game that took a company 1 programmer, 1 artist, 1 sound engineer, and about 2 weeks to make had significantly more playability to it. What happened to the industry?

talmand 14y ago
Some call it progress. EDIT: downvotes suggest I should wrap this in a sarcasm tag.
- just2n 14y ago
  I think this is a highly contentious opinion (primarily mine, and any view that modern high-budget games mostly suck, which resonates with myself and a lot of once-gamers I know). It might be that way because of the technical nature of this community and probably because many readers of these comments might actually be involved in that industry, and so it comes off as offensive. I don't really mean it to be offensive. We know a lot more about development today, and have a lot better tools, and I know what kinds of amazing creativity some of these designers have, so it personally bothers me to see the lion's share of investment in the gaming industry go into reproducing the same games over and over. Those of you who are in the industry: what do you think about starting your own shops, or building kick-ass games in your free time? If you work at one of these large companies and are pursuing things like this, I'd love to see your work.

talmand 14y ago

Your movie industry comparison is probably spot on in many ways. Especially the part about the number of non-developers at a company that actually increase the cost of development even though they are not directly involved. The other aspect I'm curious over is if these AAA titles don't meet their sales quota is an attempt by publishers to get out paying royalties and bonuses to developers. It's a common tactic in Hollywood and there's evidence of it in the gaming industry already.

Shivetya 14y ago
if your a publicly traded company your pretty much bound to have scads of people who do not contribute directly to the end product but merely exist to deal with all the regulations and laws that said companies must adhere too. It is frightening how much is spent to maintain compliance. It is not uncommon for large companies to have both internal and external auditors to ensure it. Then toss is all the people needed to support the developers, artists, and their managing teams. Ever read the credits at the end of a movie, count the people. Some video games have the same or bury it in a manual if your so lucky.
- talmand 14y ago
  While what you say is true, those people should not be rolled into the development costs of the game. Their costs are the burden of the company, not the the developers whether they are an internal group or external studio. Most developers, well I believe this still holds true, have projects that are financed by publishers. The money handed over to the developers is the true cost of development. There will be people in the development group that won't have a hand in the project directly but are paid for through such funds, there's no way around that. But the people that work at a publisher that funds an external development project should not be included in any way in the credits of the game. That's stupid and deceiving, I consider it an insult to the people who actually worked on the game. Much like those never-ending credits at the end of a movie that lowers the value of having your name in the credits in the first place. If a publisher is rolling all those costs into the reported development costs of a game then they are inflating that number for some reason and I'm willing to bet it benefits no one but the publisher. As I stated elsewhere, it heavily feels of the Hollywood tactic of claiming a project never makes money to avoid having to make payments based on profit required by contract. A developer never gets royalties if the game never makes money. Remember, Return of the Jedi is yet to turn a profit.

BHSPitMonkey 14y ago

"and yet those games made money for their creators." Did they make enough money to offset what would be fair salaries for their creators throughout the time they were being made? If not, then the comparison isn't very valid since the creators would have been working for free.

samspot 14y ago
I'm sure they did, since those games were humongous hits and the developers are still famous for them.

ohashi 14y ago

What about Blizzard? They seem to be the exception to the rule. They deliver very few titles but they seem to be raking in cash on each of them.

Phlarp 14y ago
I highly doubt Diablo 3 has been the cash cow they had hoped for, and with the first Starcraft expansion launched with no sign of a monetization route with custom games I can't imagine their ROI on it is anything breath-taking, given the developmental resources required for a game as widely played as SC2. All of this is set the back-drop of a rapidly waning WoW playerbase and revenue. Blizzard is the exception to the rule in that they typically deliver very high quality games, actually making enough money to fund that level of quality has not been consistent, while making strategic moves toward more money has consistently ended up burning them (WoW paid pets and mounts showed up about the time the player base started to get bored and diffuse to other things, the D3 RMAH has been an utter disaster since it launched)
- Strom 14y ago
  Diablo 3 has sold over 12 million copies on PC. That's an extremely high sales number for a single platform. Also, the RMAH has been a success as far as I can tell. I don't have access to any major statistics, but anecdotally speaking I know several people who make a nice profit in the RMAH, and Blizzard takes a juicy cut all the time.
ericd 14y ago
I think they rely heavily on their sterling brand for that consistency. Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 have done very well commercially, but most of the enthusiasts I talked to were fairly disappointed, and some of them even remarked that Blizzard has left their "autobuy" list. They were one of maybe two developers on that list for me, but I think that explains their very consistently massive success - they used to turn out games that were consistently much better than the competition's, especially in terms of replay value, and so they got on that list for a lot of people.

AlexandrB 14y ago

One of my absolute favourite games bootstrapped themselves on the basis of pre-orders before Kickstarter was available. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Selection_2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Selection_2 I think they pulled it off because of the strong reputation of the original Natural Selection (which was a Half Life mod). Still pretty amazing, especially considering they developed the 3D engine from scratch.

intended 14y ago
I forget where, but the entire story of how NS2 came to life is a paean to the dedication of its fans. IIRC they had a build out and no one cared too much - until one of their fans started putting out gameplay videos on youtube, every single day. The firm recruited him to be their head of marketing after that. I suspect rock paper shotgun had done the story.

ijk 14y ago

This year at the Game Developer Conference, Chris Hecker had an entirely wordless rant about the state of creativity in the AAA space, essentially using AAA's PR to point out how little real innovation is happening in that space. [1] It's received quite a bit of attention and agreement in the industry. [1] http://chrishecker.com/Fair_Use http://chrishecker.com/Fair_Use

vacri 14y ago

Kickstarter hasn't done a lot of delivery yet. It's captured people's imaginations, but due to the relative lack of tangible output at this stage, the warts are yet to be seen.

intended 14y ago

While synergistic, Kickstarter is definitely on the right side of the indie dev movement. If there were no kickstarter, there would still be an increasing amount of indie devs. Of course their life would be much harder, and we would not be seeing the new Torment game.