234 réponses à ce sujet

[JoltDealer]

 

Synergizer wrote...
If games cost less, I think people would be less inclined to trade old games. I am no expert though, perhaps economists believe that if the price was lower they wouldn't sell more. If "Mass Effect: Untitled" was cheaper at release time, would they sell more copies, enough to cover the cost, and the risk?
Anyway, I'm becoming a supporter of the "chapter" based model, like telltale games uses. You get the first chapter free, if the game isn't your thing you won't buy more. If you like it you buy the next chapter and so on.

Let's say you have a game that cost six million dollars to produce and advertise.  If half of the people who play the game buy it used (in other words, you don't see half of the money made from your game), what's easier?  If they sell at $60 a pop, they only need to sell new 100,000 copies to break even.  This reduces risk as financial return is better assured and it compensates for half of your audience not paying for the game (yes, you pay the store for a used game, but that money ONLY goes to the store).  However if you take used games out of the picture in one way or another, then one could sell his or her game without worrying about not seeing a certain portion of money made from these sales.  Even if 200,000 people played your game, if half bought used then you would have only appeared to have sold 100,000 copies.  Without this factor, you could then aim to sell at $30 a pop, selling 200,000 copies to break even in theory.  I hope that makes sense.  I'm not an enconomist, but I try my best haha.

Maybe if there was a program in place that ensured that publishers and developers received their fair share of the money made from used game sales, we could allow things to keep going.  However as the current system is, that money only goes to the stores that sell them.  Now if you're asking yourself, "Why should I care?  These guys [EA] make enough money as it is!"  Well think about it like this:  Aside from selling the games made by developers (both new and used), places like Gamestop have done nothing to earn your money.  They are a retailer and while you might see some various games sold in their stores, not a single one was made by Gamestop themselves.  If you buy new, Gamestop gets their cut for selling the game and the developers/publishers get their share for making the game.  If you buy used, Gamestop gets every last cent of it.  So who would you rather give your money to?  The guys who bombard you with magazine subscriptions and pre-order bonuses, or the people who actually made the game you're about to purchase?  For me, this seems like a no-brainer.

Also, I agree with you there.  Telltale has a great way of selling games.  A lot of video games try to be like films, including Mass Effect 3.  However, video games work much better if treated like seasons of a television show.  Mass Effect 2 was more episodic in this respect.  If you treat every mission like an episode of a sci fi tv show, it really works.  You have the season premiere (i.e. everything from Shepard's return to getting on the Normandy SR-2), one episode per squadmate introduced, plot centered episodes like Horizon and the Collector Ship, one episode per squadmate loyalty mission/character development, and finally the Collector Homeworld as the season finale.  I know demos are supposed to be a "demonstration" of the best parts of a game, but they don't work that well.  After playing the first chapter of the Walking Dead, I had to have more.  Most games would benefit from letting us play the "season premiere," and leave us wanting more.  

Modifié par Crimson Sound, 23 juillet 2013 - 01:24 .

[Ninja Stan]

Crimson Sound wrote...
Let's say you have a game that cost six million dollars to produce and advertise.  If half of the people who play the game buy it used (in other words, you don't see half of the money made from your game), what's easier?  If they sell at $60 a pop, they only need to sell new 100,000 copies to break even.  This reduces risk as financial return is better assured and it compensates for half of your audience not paying for the game (yes, you pay the store for a used game, but that money ONLY goes to the store).  However if you take used games out of the picture in one way or another, then one could sell his or her game without worrying about not seeing a certain portion of money made from these sales.  Even if 200,000 people played your game, if half bought used then you would have only appeared to have sold 100,000 copies.  Without this factor, you could then aim to sell at $30 a pop, selling 200,000 copies to break even in theory.  I hope that makes sense.  I'm not an enconomist, but I try my best haha.

This only works if the game's producer receives every cent of the retail price. Keep in mind that the retail outlets will want to make money off of the sale, not to mention any wholesale distribution companies that service multiple companies in a given area.

Maybe if there was a program in place that ensured that publishers and developers received their fair share of the money made from used game sales, we could allow things to keep going.  However as the current system is, that money only goes to the stores that sell them.  Now if you're asking yourself, "Why should I care?  These guys [EA] make enough money as it is!"  Well think about it like this:  Aside from selling the games made by developers (both new and used), places like Gamestop have done nothing to earn your money.  They are a retailer and while you might see some various games sold in their stores, not a single one was made by Gamestop themselves.  If you buy new, Gamestop gets their cut for selling the game and the developers/publishers get their share for making the game.  If you buy used, Gamestop gets every last cent of it.  So who would you rather give your money to?  The guys who bombard you with magazine subscriptions and pre-order bonuses, or the people who actually made the game you're about to purchase?  For me, this seems like a no-brainer.

To be fair, no one company can be everything to everyone. While EA may do well in the games publishing business, I don't believe they operate any branded brick-and-mortar retail outlets. If they did, it'd be a whole different set of costs, personnel, and administration to deal with.

I used to work for a Sony branded retail store, and there were no end of troubles. We couldn't sell Sony products for less money than comparable stores because that would be anti-competitive (I know, I didn't get it, either). Other big product buyers would likely stop purchasing from Sony the manufacturer, and they represented a far bigger set of numbers than Sony the retail chain did.

Also, I agree with you there.  Telltale has a great way of selling games.  A lot of video games try to be like films, including Mass Effect 3.  However, video games work much better if treated like seasons of a television show.  Mass Effect 2 was more episodic in this respect.  If you treat every mission like an episode of a sci fi tv show, it really works.  You have the season premiere (i.e. everything from Shepard's return to getting on the Normandy SR-2), one episode per squadmate introduced, plot centered episodes like Horizon and the Collector Ship, one episode per squadmate loyalty mission/character development, and finally the Collector Homeworld as the season finale.  I know demos are supposed to be a "demonstration" of the best parts of a game, but they don't work that well.  After playing the first chapter of the Walking Dead, I had to have more.  Most games would benefit from letting us play the "season premiere," and leave us wanting more.

I'm going to be a dissenting voice here. While I admire and appreciate episodic games, I don't particularly want to wait another 3 months to play the next chapter. Sure, it might work for me, since I don't play games very often, but some folks binge on games when they come out so they can finish them quickly.

Some people also like to wait until the entire season of a TV show is available on video before starting it. Just saying.

[shingara]

Well technically EA do run a bricks and mortar retail outlet in this day and ages sense with origin.

Modifié par shingara, 24 juillet 2013 - 02:39 .

[hoorayforicecream]

Ninja Stan wrote...

Also, I agree with you there.  Telltale has a great way of selling games.  A lot of video games try to be like films, including Mass Effect 3.  However, video games work much better if treated like seasons of a television show.  Mass Effect 2 was more episodic in this respect.  If you treat every mission like an episode of a sci fi tv show, it really works.  You have the season premiere (i.e. everything from Shepard's return to getting on the Normandy SR-2), one episode per squadmate introduced, plot centered episodes like Horizon and the Collector Ship, one episode per squadmate loyalty mission/character development, and finally the Collector Homeworld as the season finale.  I know demos are supposed to be a "demonstration" of the best parts of a game, but they don't work that well.  After playing the first chapter of the Walking Dead, I had to have more.  Most games would benefit from letting us play the "season premiere," and leave us wanting more.

I'm going to be a dissenting voice here. While I admire and appreciate episodic games, I don't particularly want to wait another 3 months to play the next chapter. Sure, it might work for me, since I don't play games very often, but some folks binge on games when they come out so they can finish them quickly.

Some people also like to wait until the entire season of a TV show is available on video before starting it. Just saying.

I think I'll chime in, since I actually worked for Telltale for about a year and have some insight into the episodic development model. There's a huge barrier to entry for making episodic content, and it requires a lot of technical issues to be handled just right for it to work. It's also why Telltale is pretty much the only developer in the episodic arena.

#1, everything has to be on the same engine, and any changes to that engine needs to be ready to ship within the span of a single episode's cycle. It's very tough if you want more/better tech. A lot of what I saw at Telltale was extremely limited simply because the engine couldn't do it, and the engineers didn't have the time to develop it further before the next episode had to ship. The engine is basically locked in place until the season ends, and it has to be entirely ready to ship before the season begins. Most games allow engine development to continue throughout most of the project, allowing new tech and new features to be added as you go.

#2, all your content has to lend itself to episodic-sized chunks and cliffhangers each time. It limits the sort of stories and gameplay you can do - exploration, for example, is almost impossible because of how much content you'd need to crank out within your time frame. What episodic does well is fan reactivity. Things that people liked about episode 1 can be addressed or expanded on later in episode 3 because of fan reaction and fast turnaround time. 

#3, due to the nature of the shortened dev cycle and quality requirements of the players, you are extremely limited in the scope of things you can make. You're going to have fewer environments and locations, and the maps you do use are likely going to be recycled several times with small cosmetic changes, and minimal lighting/detail passes. Making environments takes a long time and a lot of people. You can't feasibly cobble that together in a month or two. It's the same with characters and model detail. Telltale games tend to be very stylized in visuals because they have to be - there's no way that they can make high res or high quality visuals with the budget and time they have for an episode.

Episodic content is basically about leveraging existing assets and tech as much as you can because you just don't have the zots to make brand new content for each episode. It won't work unless you constantly put out episodes with common data, tech, and assets. If you have an entire team working on episode 1, then they won't have enough time to make episode 2 with sufficient quality and content. If you have two teams working in tandem on every other episode, then the cost becomes prohibitive and people won't buy the product. Telltale got by with a very versatile engine, small teams working on the specific content for each episode, and the rest working on common and reusable assets and technology. That's the reason I think SiN Episodes and Episodic Half-Life died on the vine - the content production zots to schedule ratio just couldn't keep up.

Modifié par hoorayforicecream, 24 juillet 2013 - 04:03 .

[JoltDealer]

Ninja Stan wrote...
This only works if the game's producer receives every cent of the retail price. Keep in mind that the retail outlets will want to make money off of the sale, not to mention any wholesale distribution companies that service multiple companies in a given area.

Well some money going back to the development team and publisher is better than none at all.  There's a pictograph out there on the interwebs that breaks down exactly how much money goes where when you buy a game.  As it stands though, the only money spent on selling a used games is refurbishing (if needed), the tags they slap on the cover, and the money used to pay the employee who does all this.

Ninja Stan wrote...
To be fair, no one company can be everything to everyone. While EA may do well in the games publishing business, I don't believe they operate any branded brick-and-mortar retail outlets. If they did, it'd be a whole different set of costs, personnel, and administration to deal with.


I used to work for a Sony branded retail store, and there were no end of troubles. We couldn't sell Sony products for less money than comparable stores because that would be anti-competitive (I know, I didn't get it, either). Other big product buyers would likely stop purchasing from Sony the manufacturer, and they represented a far bigger set of numbers than Sony the retail chain did.

Of course not.  I don't intend for my posts to seem like they're excluding facts, but some things I assume are common knowledge.  However, the big issue here is that at the end of the day, places like Gamestop did nothing to make the games they sell aside from being the ones who sell it (and all of the finer operations entailed).  The fact that they can profit off of someone's else's work without having to pay them a single cent is ethically wrong, but legally allowed in this instance.  I think there needs to be some kind of program in place that ensures that the money goes back to everyone involved, not just that particular store.  EA branded stores are an option, but not what I had in mind.  Just something that requires places like Gamestop to give a certain percentage of a used game sale back to its respective developer/publisher.

Ninja Stan wrote...
I'm going to be a dissenting voice here. While I admire and appreciate episodic games, I don't particularly want to wait another 3 months to play the next chapter. Sure, it might work for me, since I don't play games very often, but some folks binge on games when they come out so they can finish them quickly.

Some people also like to wait until the entire season of a TV show is available on video before starting it. Just saying.

Well that's not what I meant, but then again, I'm at fault for not clairfying.  I mean the narrative structure.  Alan Wake, Phantasy Star Universe, and Mass Effect 2 all had campaigns that followed an episodic structure.  Some of them even had opening titles and end credits!  Smaller self contained stories that followed a larger overarching plot without the pressure of having to move on.  To me, it seemed like, "Okay this 'episode' is over.  Nothing is going to happen until I start the next one."  I feel video games are better if they're treated like the seasons of a television show instead of a big movie.  It's a subtle change, but one that has far reaching consequences.  All I was saying is, games could benefit from having the first "episode" be free like a demo and if you like what you see, you're welcome to buy the game and see the rest.

But of course have the entire "season" available when you purchase it.  Waiting for chapters or episodes to come out is annoying!

[tanisha__unknown]

Ninja Stan wrote...

This only works if the game's producer receives every cent of the retail price. Keep in mind that the retail outlets will want to make money off of the sale, not to mention any wholesale distribution companies that service multiple companies in a given area.

True, but with distribution becoming digital, the producer and distributor are indentical. Origin is owned by EA and distribution surely is not what is driving production costs. I rather expect this to go down immensely - you do not need to find partners that you have to negotiate prices with, and you do not need siomeone to burn CDs, package and ship them, all you need is some server time.

[Bleachrude]

Jinx1720 wrote...

Ninja Stan wrote...

This only works if the game's producer receives every cent of the retail price. Keep in mind that the retail outlets will want to make money off of the sale, not to mention any wholesale distribution companies that service multiple companies in a given area.

True, but with distribution becoming digital, the producer and distributor are indentical. Origin is owned by EA and distribution surely is not what is driving production costs. I rather expect this to go down immensely - you do not need to find partners that you have to negotiate prices with, and you do not need siomeone to burn CDs, package and ship them, all you need is some server time.

That's only for PC though....At least for consoles for the next generation, most of EA sales will be through brick and mortar stores. EA's best selling titles are probably the console focused sports titles and while EA may or may not be able to dictate prices with gamestop....they sure as hell can't with Walmart.

And Walmart is probably a bigger seller in terms of sheer volume than gamestop...sure, won't have nearly as wide a selection but when Madden comes out, I'm quite willing to bet that Walmart sells more to customers than gamestop.

[Zakuspec089]

I think the prices are wrong because The Games will be the same amount the way it is today, that what I been hearing and seeing.

[Rixatrix]

$80 games and $15 DLC, huh?

Odds are, there won't be more "content" for $80 than there was for $60 (just like there isn't more from the days when games were $50 or $30). DLC won't go away, and it certainly won't be "larger," but it'll be $15 (no longer $10, or $5). All you're getting for that extra money is a chance to pay EA more (overhead costs FTL).

For those who buy games all the time, they're going to have to make a choice to vote with their wallets and just buy used when they can. For books, music, and games, the used market has likely contributed to keeping prices steady for a long time. There's no reason games should be different - unless, of course, they go the "new games only" route.

It's a good thing we only buy a few AAA games per year (Indies ftw).

[Tonymac]

I got no problem with $80.00 games.

I have a problem with games that cost $80.00 and suck! *cough, cough *ME3*, cough.

I'm willing to pay, but will never pre-order anything from Bioware again. I'm not abandoning you, Bioware, but I am leery. Understand that you have raised the bar with a few really good games - set the standard for the whole industry. Get back on track with some quality writing and no more hype/lies, and we will be cool.

I'd rather have paid $100.00 and get good endings than pre-order the CE and get SC, no boss-fight, and this torch it and run jazz.