Posted April 03, 2015
Gilozard: That argument just betrays the author's complete ignorance.
Expected return varies wildly by industry and product. The return on groceries is different from the return on tablets which is different from the return on houses. Each product has its own seasons and market cycles, different types of actors in the market...trying to claim that games should be treated like houses is foolish and ignorant.
Games share a general business model with movies - books, TV shows and music used to work the same way but are transitioning to a new model after market shakeups - where publishers take risks to finance games in the hopes of a megahit that will provide astronomical returns needed to pay off debt accumulated for the 90% of games that bomb. No publisher is willing to take on a proven low-earner game, because they need to sell millions of copies to recoup the cost of the game and then support the 8 other games that didn't make it to market, or didn't sell enough to cover development expenses.
Indies can get away from the megahit model, because they minimize development costs and timeframes (free tools, developing in a basement, etc). But corporate publishers or investors can't stay afloat that way in the current market.
TL;DR The author has no clue about why and how products sell. Why is he being given an article to spout ignorance?
Gnostic: Well, your opinion is based on business model with movies - books, TV shows and music is becoming better when compare to the old way. Expected return varies wildly by industry and product. The return on groceries is different from the return on tablets which is different from the return on houses. Each product has its own seasons and market cycles, different types of actors in the market...trying to claim that games should be treated like houses is foolish and ignorant.
Games share a general business model with movies - books, TV shows and music used to work the same way but are transitioning to a new model after market shakeups - where publishers take risks to finance games in the hopes of a megahit that will provide astronomical returns needed to pay off debt accumulated for the 90% of games that bomb. No publisher is willing to take on a proven low-earner game, because they need to sell millions of copies to recoup the cost of the game and then support the 8 other games that didn't make it to market, or didn't sell enough to cover development expenses.
Indies can get away from the megahit model, because they minimize development costs and timeframes (free tools, developing in a basement, etc). But corporate publishers or investors can't stay afloat that way in the current market.
TL;DR The author has no clue about why and how products sell. Why is he being given an article to spout ignorance?
Are they better?
Does knowing why the new buisness model works equal to agreeing that everyone should embrace the new buisness model and happly being screw?
In my humble opinion, the author hates the new buisness model and is encourage by the rise of digital distribution to go back to the old buisness model.
First, the megahit model the author is complaining about is the old model. That is how books, music and movies and games all worked for decades - huge hits would provide the profits to support all the other products the publisher made. It is still how publishers in all those areas work. The only way to avoid it is to go indie and sacrifice some aspects of the game design. There are no other options, given how difficult AAA or even AA game development is with current technology.
There is no 'new model' for AAA video game publishing. Indies that sacrifice on some parts of game development can avoid relying on megahit models. But those games - while great - are demonstrably of lower quality in many areas and often limited in genre by the developer's capabilities - this is part of the reason so many indies are platformers and not open-world RPGs.
Second - I was pointing out that the author doesn't understand fundamental facts about the history of game development and the video game market. He is complaining from a position of ignorance. That doesn't make his complaints invalid. Video game development is ludicrously expensive, and greedy investors can be a problem. But it does mean that we have to be very careful about what he says, because he really doesn't know what he's talking about.