If only there was a way to get a taste of what that “new” model might look like, say if they had F2P game out on the market… like they do right now.
I mean this was an earnings call designed to make investors feel good. Which investor isn’t going to want to hear about long-term revenue and the potential to make more money. If it was that easy to make money with F2P, we wouldn’t be seeing so many trying to chase Fortnite’s shadow and not actually pull in the big bucks. Ubisoft chasing the wave, fine, we’ve seen these companies do this chase thing before with MMO, mobile, F2P and everyone, even them wants a piece of Battle Royale pie… which they’re already doing. Nothing new there.
Optimistically it could be read as scaling down from chasing the next mega blockbuster and its corresponding huge risk in favor of more “regular” blockbuster instead. Sort of a AA or A title instead which doesn’t bring in the big bucks but the lower dev costs means it would hurt less if it flops.
That said it is more likely they’ll chase that “guaranteed steady income” wave of F2P micro transactions and these are nebulous words of a backup plan to keep the shareholders happy.
Agreed, it seemed like Fanatical deals got more interesting all the time. I bought a bunch of programming books from them, and they recently put up a nice bundle of true crime graphic novels by Rick Geary, whose work I really like. And they were constantly putting up deals on classics and middle aged games.
Not sure what this means going forward, guess we’ll just have to keep fingers crossed.
Lots of big changes at EA recently. I feel bad for the team at Motive. That’s a long time to work on a project.
Video game publisher Electronic Arts Inc. has canceled a game that was in development at its Montreal office for nearly six years, according to people familiar with the matter.
The game, code named Gaia, was first hinted at in 2015, but was never officially announced or given a title. Since then, EA executives have released a drip feed of information, sharing tidbits every few years on what it described as a brand new franchise.
Last summer in a video showcasing future games, EA provided a few seconds of footage from Gaia, describing it as “a highly ambitious, innovative new game that puts the power and creativity in your hands.”
The cancellation is part of a recent resource shift by the company as it evaluates projects and decides which ones will move forward. Earlier this month, the publisher reviewed in-progress games including Gaia and a new iteration of the poorly received online game Anthem, which was also canceled. Gaia’s development was turbulent and the game went through at least one major reboot, which may have been a factor behind its demise, according to the people, who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk to the press.
Serious question here. Is there a different way these companies develop a game if they think it will be a franchise as opposed to releasing just a single game that is successful and deciding it will then be a franchise? I mean I understand why movie studios approach trilogies differently but does gaming have to make that decision right out the door too?
I’d say this question can’t be really answered anymore at this point because I somehow don’t think any big publisher will greenlight a game pitch that doesn’t include the roadmap for potential sequels or spin-offs.
AAA publishers think exactly the same way about franchises as big movie studios do: The long-term reliability of revenue off a successful franchise is practically the only thing that makes investment in a new single-player title at AAA scale not stupidly risky. So, no, you will probably not get any new AAA games that aren’t designed from the outset to be ongoing franchises (or multiplayer games with microtransactions). It’s the only way AAA works.
Yeah, pretty much this. At big publishers the real decision makers are the ones who create the P&Ls, and unless you assume your game is going to be a break-out hit (which everyone hopes for, but is risky to plan against), there’s virtually no way to make a one-off AAA game financially successful anymore, at least in the planning stages.
So you have to plan for follow-on sequels or microtransactions to make money.
What are they doing differently though with games? Is it the assets, the way the teams are organized to shift from 1 to two immediately, DLC?
With movies I understand there are extended contracts, the various movies might be all or are being written, some planned at being shot at the same time. Some of that doesn’t sound exactly like something games would do. I can see them mapping out outlines for 2-3 games but what else?
I think it’s more about the design and planning. During the greenlight process there are going to be a lot of questions about whether the design makes room for sequels or other ways to make money.
Valheim is a great example of a game that would never get made at a big publisher. It’s a one-time $20 game in a crowded market of cheap survival and building games, with no microtransactions.
Then it goes on to sell 4 million copies in like 3 weeks and shows no signs of stopping.
The iconic developer behind Ape Escape, Gravity Rush and Knack has seen the vast majority of its development staff let go, the sources said, after their annual contracts were not renewed ahead of the company’s next business year, which begins April 1.
Localisation and business staff will remain in place and ASOBI Team – the group responsible for the Astro Bot games – will continue as a standalone studio within Sony Japan, it’s claimed.
Some Japan Studio staff will join ASOBI, we were told, while others have followed Silent Hill and Gravity Rush director Keiichiro Toyama – who left Japan Studio last year – to his new studio Bokeh.
It’s not entirely clear if the restructure has affected the studio’s External Development Department, which collaborated on games such as last year’s Demon’s Souls, but one person VGC spoke to suggested it would continue.
Besides just designing something that they know can accommodate future titles, like Menzo said, they can bank on at least some team continuity–depending on how badly they kill the team getting each game done. And if they’re smart, they can build on a single core engine for at least a few iterations.
When you assume that you’ll be making more titles in the franchise (or extending the title via support), you’re amortizing some cost of development over the lifetime of that franchise. Generally, even if using “off the shelf” components via an engine, middleware, etc., you’re still creating some subset of tools and pipelines that are bespoke to the game you’re making. By saying “Well, we’ll be doing at least one or two more of these” you’re saying that the initial r&d and setup costs can be applied more generously across several titles.
That also applies to the human element; even two games from a similar studio using similar tools\engine will have different expertise applied against a specific title. So you’re rolling over that knowledge and know-how.
So it’s less about planning out the narrative or anything, and more about planning out the budget, and how that budget can give you more bang for your buck on a follow up.
This was easier to see way back in the earlier days of gaming, where titles often had sequels (sometimes with as little turnaround time as a year!) that were more or less feature identical, only with different content.
Nowadays, we expect more from a sequel, so a bunch of that cost spreading is done via expansion content.
At an even higher level, you can see a company like Ubi thinking this way across all franchises. They’ll introduce engine and design features in Franchise A in a limited capacity, then apply those learnings to bring those things into Franchise B more front and center. I know it sometimes makes their games feel a little samey, but I’ll admit to being intimidated by the sheer scope of planning that that company is able to effect.
It really does… or in some cases it makes B play like it’s not… quite right, and you kind of wonder why it’s like that.
So when we talk about how old we all are and sigh about the past, we can add I remember when mainstream developers/publishers focused on making a good quality game they hoped to sell like gangbusters and now they want an MCU run instead and won’t bank anything that won’t give them that.
I mean I always knew the Mario games and the COD and any sports game was like that, but I didn’t think we got to the point where all these games are supposed to be a new darling trilogy.
I guess that might explain why Anthem had some weird stuff in there it didn’t need.
I think it’s always somewhat been in mind for larger publishers. The difference now is that, yeah, like films, we’re seeing less original content in the bigger space. A lot of that is shoved into the indie scene (although sometimes into what my boss affectionately calls the Triple I indies - indies with some budget).
Like, look at the good 'ol Sierra titles. Those were definitely cranked out, taking advantage of a stable engine to pump out multiple sequels across multiple franchises. Early CRPGs were definitely franchise machines.
edit One thing here that excites me, though, is the democratization of game making via some great efforts being made towards standardization of tools, easy access to assets and asset creation, and more. Like with film, I’m hoping this means that in short order we’ll see more indie efforts that hit quality levels that make them at least more competitive with bigger companies. Epic leads the charge here, but there are a lot of companies and individuals involved in this uplift.
I think it’s easy to get depressed about the current state of gaming if you just look at the big publishers, but when you look at the industry as a whole I think there’s never been a better time to be a gamer. Making and publishing games is the most accessible its ever been, and we’re seeing some truly great stuff come from small and unknown teams.
I’ll just use Valheim as an example again. This is a game made by a team of 5 people! But in general the indie and small publishing scene is super vibrant and turning out high quality games.
And that’s totally ignoring the incredible diversity of experiences you can get on mobile.
I’m pretty close to just buying my whole group this game. It’s only 20 so 4 of those is almost the cost of a new PS5 game, and it will be fun for at least a few months.
I agree it’s just that… there are really great creators and individuals in the bigger, large companies, part of the industry and some favorite series/franchises/ characters… I’d hate to see all those get lost because they can’t turn it into a a yearly output with microtrans on top of endless DLC. I don’t have instant hate for AAA like some do (a fair amount of streamers), but I do hate what we’re losing due to some of the mentality there.
Stardew Valley is a great example that came out when Harvest Moon was kind of flopping around, but I still dream of Rune Factory too! Also if Stardew Valley hadn’t show up in Social Media… still not sure how I would’ve found it in a sea of games.
