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General discussion (archive)Game development - Most wasteful industry?(25 posts)(25 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted June 18, 2011
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overread: Ahh but your argument hinges on there being money to patch up the game after release - if the developers miss the marketing boat or messup on the development, of if the game simply does not catch on then chances are the company will see additional development time on patches as a waste of resources - throwing good money after bad.

In short many get axed and the company chooses to invest in a new title instead of still supporting the original game.


In the end we can all wish that every game was made to the best of the developers ability and I'm sure many of those working in the industry would love to polish off the games they work on. However the cold hard fact is we all need income to support of lives - and if a company is to make money it has to focus on the profits - they simply can't all afford to chase after all the bad titles (as much as we all wish they would).

There are options of course, some will release the source code to the community and there are several examples of this (Warzone 2100 and Mech Warrior 4) where the community is then able to support the game further through fan work. However many developers don't want to go down this path. They've invested a lot in the game engine and the game franchise and don't want to jeperdise a future source of income by releasing it for free = so its a very rarely occurring event.
Even for old games the companies will still hold onto the rights if they can
So like in the instance of MTCG they hold onto it in there back files just in case, say two decades from now, they want to pull it out and try marketing it again.
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carnival73: Anyone notice that there are about a million games out there but only 25% of them are actually decent?
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Snickersnack: Amusingly, that 25% of games is different for every gamer. Barbie Fashion Designer is the bestest game evar!
Some of those children's games are highly polished and entertaining to children.

I'm talking about silly stuff that crashes on load up and the developer's closed their company and ran screaming.

Or those multiplayer brain childs were you're the only one in existence to notice the game the only day they were selling it so you have no one else to play with.
Post edited June 18, 2011 by carnival73
Posted June 18, 2011
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link6616: At some point look at the romance section of a large book store...

There is some romance fiction out there that is good, but it's about as hard to find as a good 8/16 bit platformer, a good 32 bit RPG, a good... What was the generic genre of the ps2 era?, and as good a chance of finding a modern good FPS.

I don't think there is as much crap as you'd expect, a lot of what's on (non Wii/DS) shelves is actually quite decent. How you define 'worth full price' is more a reflection on the issues with game cost in general, as opposed to quality of the content.

And then there is probably all the content you are just ignoring... Sure, the EA sports games might not be your thing, but they are hardly worse than say, Fast and the furious 5 or the Sword and the seer chronicles (a very 'just passable' fantasy fiction series).

It's always tempting to say "everything sucks" but mostly, there is a huge amount of good quality stuff that percentages tend to be hide well.

5% of games are truely worthwhile... And with at LEAST 500 games a year released that 25 games, a year, that are truly amazing. Thats one every 2 weeks of a year, almost.

And that's only if you take the very best, which lacks things like monster hunter, Tsukihime, , everything tell tale makes, Segagaga, GunGage, FFX-2, Killer7, King's Field The Ancient city, The Red Star, Eternal Sonata, Folklore, NIER, Resonance of Fate, Z H P, the Ys series, Another Code series, Trauma Centre, and so much more...

Games that aren't the very very best, but are still excellent yet overlooked because they aren't as good overall as some of the 'best games' but excel at what they DO do.
Have some rep for mentioning Trauma Centre! Some of the most amazingly fun games I've ever played. I quite enjoyed Eternal Sonata as well.


Now according to the Marvel Trading Card Game Wikipedia page (which of course could be totally wrong) Konami said they were going to continue to support the online service for as long as there was a strong community demand for it. You can't really blame them for giving up on a game if not many people were interested in it.
Posted June 18, 2011
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carnival73: So like in the instance of MTCG they hold onto it in there back files just in case, say two decades from now, they want to pull it out and try marketing it again.
It depends on the contract - since the game is made from a franchise owned by another company the game itself is made under a licence. That will normally be time limited or product limited and further games may require re-negotiation or the company might have full and exclusive rights - it all depends what was agreed at the time.

In general though yes if a company has a title series they'll hold onto that licence as long as they can; not only is it leaving doors open for future games, but its also a commercial asset. They can sell that licence on; trade with it - sublicence it etc.. If its their own creation then they can do anything they want of course - if its a licence contracted to them then their options are more limited.
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Trangmar: Now according to the Marvel Trading Card Game Wikipedia page (which of course could be totally wrong) Konami said they were going to continue to support the online service for as long as there was a strong community demand for it. You can't really blame them for giving up on a game if not many people were interested in it.
That is a wonderful line because "strong community demand for it" means nothing in real world terms. Not unless they define what (how many) "Strong" is in real world terms. It means the community can be very strong indeed, but they can still drop it if its not "strong enough".

In general though if a company game has a very large following then they will keep it ticking over if they can since they know the fan base will be ripe for a sequel (or these days downloadable addons)
Post edited June 18, 2011 by overread
Posted June 18, 2011
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link6616: At some point look at the romance section of a large book store...

There is some romance fiction out there that is good, but it's about as hard to find as a good 8/16 bit platformer, a good 32 bit RPG, a good... What was the generic genre of the ps2 era?, and as good a chance of finding a modern good FPS.

I don't think there is as much crap as you'd expect, a lot of what's on (non Wii/DS) shelves is actually quite decent. How you define 'worth full price' is more a reflection on the issues with game cost in general, as opposed to quality of the content.

And then there is probably all the content you are just ignoring... Sure, the EA sports games might not be your thing, but they are hardly worse than say, Fast and the furious 5 or the Sword and the seer chronicles (a very 'just passable' fantasy fiction series).

It's always tempting to say "everything sucks" but mostly, there is a huge amount of good quality stuff that percentages tend to be hide well.

5% of games are truely worthwhile... And with at LEAST 500 games a year released that 25 games, a year, that are truly amazing. Thats one every 2 weeks of a year, almost.

And that's only if you take the very best, which lacks things like monster hunter, Tsukihime, , everything tell tale makes, Segagaga, GunGage, FFX-2, Killer7, King's Field The Ancient city, The Red Star, Eternal Sonata, Folklore, NIER, Resonance of Fate, Z H P, the Ys series, Another Code series, Trauma Centre, and so much more...

Games that aren't the very very best, but are still excellent yet overlooked because they aren't as good overall as some of the 'best games' but excel at what they DO do.
My all time favorite game was Monster Hunter for the PS2 but once the community died, so did the game - impossible to play solo...well maybe not impossible but lots of tears and agony attempting to take on the monsters by yourself without access to online the bizarre to purchase your materials and already assembled traps from.

I keep using Marvel Trading Cards as an example.

I have/had the DS rendition and know that it is just as good of a game as Spectormancer and Magic the Gathering (in some ways even better). I also know that Magic and Spectromancer have a decent fan base to warrant making more card games available.

It's not the fault of the game's designer but he gave it to Konami to publish and all of his years of brainstorming and hard work might as well have been a match 3 game that Big Fish only kept on their site for one year.

Nowadays, I never purchase pre-order and I usually wait a good while after the release of a new game and check forums regarding the game to see if anyone actually cares about it or if it's five years of art and programming dumped out for one day of glory to crash, burn, get abandoned and give Steam tech support a headache.
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link6616: At some point look at the romance section of a large book store...

There is some romance fiction out there that is good, but it's about as hard to find as a good 8/16 bit platformer, a good 32 bit RPG, a good... What was the generic genre of the ps2 era?, and as good a chance of finding a modern good FPS.

I don't think there is as much crap as you'd expect, a lot of what's on (non Wii/DS) shelves is actually quite decent. How you define 'worth full price' is more a reflection on the issues with game cost in general, as opposed to quality of the content.

And then there is probably all the content you are just ignoring... Sure, the EA sports games might not be your thing, but they are hardly worse than say, Fast and the furious 5 or the Sword and the seer chronicles (a very 'just passable' fantasy fiction series).

It's always tempting to say "everything sucks" but mostly, there is a huge amount of good quality stuff that percentages tend to be hide well.

5% of games are truely worthwhile... And with at LEAST 500 games a year released that 25 games, a year, that are truly amazing. Thats one every 2 weeks of a year, almost.

And that's only if you take the very best, which lacks things like monster hunter, Tsukihime, , everything tell tale makes, Segagaga, GunGage, FFX-2, Killer7, King's Field The Ancient city, The Red Star, Eternal Sonata, Folklore, NIER, Resonance of Fate, Z H P, the Ys series, Another Code series, Trauma Centre, and so much more...

Games that aren't the very very best, but are still excellent yet overlooked because they aren't as good overall as some of the 'best games' but excel at what they DO do.
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Trangmar: Have some rep for mentioning Trauma Centre! Some of the most amazingly fun games I've ever played. I quite enjoyed Eternal Sonata as well.


Now according to the Marvel Trading Card Game Wikipedia page (which of course could be totally wrong) Konami said they were going to continue to support the online service for as long as there was a strong community demand for it. You can't really blame them for giving up on a game if not many people were interested in it.
I can see them killing the server but not killing the game's availability all together. =/
Post edited June 18, 2011 by carnival73
Posted June 18, 2011
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Roman5: 25% is too generous

Around 10% of games that come out in today's market are worth playing through once

less than 5% are worth paying full price for and keeping in your collection

This might sound a bit harsh but unfortunately it's the truth
It's not harsh. Even major publishers like Ubisoft churn out shovelware crap like their Imagine "games". In fact damn near nothing* Ubisoft does is worth bothering with these days.

*except RUSE.

Essentially the logic seems to be that because so few titles actually make any real profit it's better to throw a lot of titles out there and hope that 10% of them have some success. That will then cover the ones that don't.

They don't seem to realise the fact that it's because they have this attitude that so few titles are actually worth buying. Sure there are many factors that can screw a game's chance of success. Just look at Far Cry 2's enemy spam which they realised too late to resolve.

But producing 3 Far Cry 2s would guarantee a lot more success than churning out 10 crap games.

An example of this would be City Interactive. They churn out FPS like there's no tomorrow. Sniper Ghost Warrior enjoyed some success despite negative reviews so we're getting a sequel to that and probably a whole series based on that. It's like a blind guy playing darts trying to mimic that one throw which actually hit the board.
Posted June 18, 2011
So many games out there that have had massive thought time and effort put into them.

And they just get wasted.

I wish that I could get a job where a developer would send me their game asking "Ok, why isn't this selling?" I could probably rescue a lot of software.
Posted June 18, 2011
The problem with this thread is that pretty much all of carnival's posts apply equally to pretty much every other form of media.
Posted June 18, 2011
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carnival73: So many games out there that have had massive thought time and effort put into them.

And they just get wasted.

I wish that I could get a job where a developer would send me their game asking "Ok, why isn't this selling?" I could probably rescue a lot of software.
its not the developers fault but the discrubers the guys who sell it dev dont sell games,
the one who is selling the games are telling the devopers what they have to make because if the one paying the dev isnt haopy they dont get invested, the investers the people who gonna sell the games have a diffrent perpective and that is making money so they look at other games like this genre and try to make the same formula because it sells, thats how it all goes.
Posted June 18, 2011
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DelusionsBeta: The problem with this thread is that pretty much all of carnival's posts apply equally to pretty much every other form of media.
I've to disagree here. I rarely find a track that I don't like. Heh, I'd say I LOVE 95% of the tracks I have, so that is a 95% success rate, in music.

(quality success rate, not financial success rate)

PS... Don't be so hard on developers, unless you yourself are a developer. Most of the times, they aren't the ones to blame if the games are bad.
Post edited June 18, 2011 by KavazovAngel
Posted June 18, 2011
SO, what's so bad about diversity and loads of various products to choose from? I like it very much because today, there are so many free games to playthat we just dreamed of several years ago.Yes, the drawback is the flooding of products and the lack of time to really browse through the offers and pick the best one. But instead of spending endless time staring in the fish tank to hope to really get the top one, just take a short time to get a good one. In 99% it's not worth the time to wait and see too long in hope to "get the best".

I think the hardware industry will get the price of the most wasteful industry. I hate to see all those smart phones and tablets with a version number. Today you buy a top smart phone for 500 bucks with Android 2.3 and next year you won't get updates anymore. So throw it away and buy a new phone. EVen worse with tablet computers - some even have version numbers in their name (Galaxy Tab 10.1). This is so ridiculous and senseless.
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This is my favourite topic
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General discussion (archive)Game development - Most wasteful industry?(25 posts)(25 posts)
(25 posts)