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On June 08 2013 02:37 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 02:31 Cereb wrote:On June 08 2013 01:39 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 01:29 Blacktion wrote:On June 08 2013 00:57 maartendq wrote:
I don't see the issue with having to be online every 24 hours. In all honesty, I can't imagine a gamer anno 2013 who does not have an internet connection. People who don't have internet connections are generally people who lack the money to buy expensive luxury products like consoles or gaming PCs anyway.
The fact that buying second hand games is going to be severely limited sucks though, even though we had it coming. Publishers aren't gaining anything from people who buy secondhand games, on the contrary. They've been lobbying against the second hand market for a while now.
I do find it a bit hypocritical that PC gamers are complaining about always-online requirements and the inability to resell a bought game. Steam, starcraft 2, diablo 3 and many other games require you to either log in online every few days or require you to be online at all times, and ever since steam became popular it's been downright impossible to sell PC games on the second hand market, unless they're 10 years old.
If the Xbone has this kind of DRM, you can be sure that the PS4 will have it as well. I'm actually a bit worried about the lack of communication by Sony. They probably want to ride the hate-wave a bit, but at the same time I feel like they're hiding something. The issue is big companies creating restrictions that screw over the user just to save a few bucks on piracy, and it wont work anyway. Also im not sure where your getting that info from, but steams offline mode doesnt require you to go online at all, and i played WoL for about 2 weeks without connecting to the internet, never played D3 so cant comment on that. Steam's offline mode works for 30 days and then shuts down. Microsoft will likely adjust the time required from 24 hours as things go on. And lets be clear, the DRM isn't about pirated games. That was a problem with the Xbox and PS2, yet the 360 and PS3 didn't have super DRM. The DRM is about used games and the publishers being undercut by Gamestop. There is overwhelming data to back up that the used game market is crushing sections of the video game industry, causing studios to go out of business. Microsoft does not give a shit about pirated games. But publisher do give a shit about used games being sold one day after the release of the 20 million dollar title. Ever stopped to think why companies such as GameStop sell used games? It's because publishers barely share any of the revenue with distributors. It wouldn't have to if publishers weren't so greedy to take everything for themselves. If it was more profitable for GameStop to sell new games, then guess what? They wouldn't even waste time in the used game market. Another way to confirm this point is the online prices of games. They cost exactly the same as in at the stores!!! This is insane! If distributors actually got a noticeable part of the revenue then this wouldn't make sense at all. Selling your product online is even much preferable because it's cheaper for publishers and offers them total control and yet somehow they still charge the full retail price for products online. It really goes to show the level of greed of these guys. Day one DLC with basic in game elements, games being released way before they are actually ready and lots of anti consumer features - the list goes on and on. These guys will do anything to squeeze every last bit of dime out of customers (and distributors) and they are not afraid to sacrifice the product's quality to do so. And now, in the midst of this, Microsoft is for some reason hell bent on helping these greedy **** The used game issue is a problem created by developers and publishers themselves and so is it if they can't make ends meet. If they didn't all have these ridiculous bloated development cost to produce the next generic rip off of what is currently the most popular game they wouldn't be in this situation. EA for instance needed to sell 5 000 000 copies of Dead Space 3(which has become more and more generic as the series goes on) in order to find profit in continuing the series! And has this ridiculous production cost made it any more of a better game than so many others? If these are the criteria for success then of course some people are going to fail! We see many examples of where games marked to niche audiences achieve great success but somehow it still seems like a battle for so many to create the most expensive game with the "broadest appeal" ever... :/ Games are hard to make and cost money. Look at the Skull Girls Kickstarter if you want to see exactly how much it cost. None of this stuff is easy, it all takes smart, talented people to make those games. People who claim game budgets are bloated, or that online sales should be cheaper(because CDs somehow got expensive to stamp) don't really have a firm understanding as to how hard making games is. Its like people who thing making a website is easy and can happen instantly. Or that Game of Thrones could be sold to people on a per viewer basis at cost by HBO. People undervalue the cost making making things they can't hold in their hands.
For one who have absolutely no idea how making a game works, you sure like to boast that you do. If big triple A titles with massive amount of marketing doesn't work, then something is surely wrong with the budget, no? Yes, making a game costs money. But making a below average game with slightly better graphics costs a lot more money. People rather have a decent game than a bad one with foto realistic brown elements with twice the development money spent on marketing (looking at you EA).
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On June 08 2013 02:40 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 02:37 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:31 Cereb wrote:On June 08 2013 01:39 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 01:29 Blacktion wrote:On June 08 2013 00:57 maartendq wrote:
I don't see the issue with having to be online every 24 hours. In all honesty, I can't imagine a gamer anno 2013 who does not have an internet connection. People who don't have internet connections are generally people who lack the money to buy expensive luxury products like consoles or gaming PCs anyway.
The fact that buying second hand games is going to be severely limited sucks though, even though we had it coming. Publishers aren't gaining anything from people who buy secondhand games, on the contrary. They've been lobbying against the second hand market for a while now.
I do find it a bit hypocritical that PC gamers are complaining about always-online requirements and the inability to resell a bought game. Steam, starcraft 2, diablo 3 and many other games require you to either log in online every few days or require you to be online at all times, and ever since steam became popular it's been downright impossible to sell PC games on the second hand market, unless they're 10 years old.
If the Xbone has this kind of DRM, you can be sure that the PS4 will have it as well. I'm actually a bit worried about the lack of communication by Sony. They probably want to ride the hate-wave a bit, but at the same time I feel like they're hiding something. The issue is big companies creating restrictions that screw over the user just to save a few bucks on piracy, and it wont work anyway. Also im not sure where your getting that info from, but steams offline mode doesnt require you to go online at all, and i played WoL for about 2 weeks without connecting to the internet, never played D3 so cant comment on that. Steam's offline mode works for 30 days and then shuts down. Microsoft will likely adjust the time required from 24 hours as things go on. And lets be clear, the DRM isn't about pirated games. That was a problem with the Xbox and PS2, yet the 360 and PS3 didn't have super DRM. The DRM is about used games and the publishers being undercut by Gamestop. There is overwhelming data to back up that the used game market is crushing sections of the video game industry, causing studios to go out of business. Microsoft does not give a shit about pirated games. But publisher do give a shit about used games being sold one day after the release of the 20 million dollar title. Ever stopped to think why companies such as GameStop sell used games? It's because publishers barely share any of the revenue with distributors. It wouldn't have to if publishers weren't so greedy to take everything for themselves. If it was more profitable for GameStop to sell new games, then guess what? They wouldn't even waste time in the used game market. Another way to confirm this point is the online prices of games. They cost exactly the same as in at the stores!!! This is insane! If distributors actually got a noticeable part of the revenue then this wouldn't make sense at all. Selling your product online is even much preferable because it's cheaper for publishers and offers them total control and yet somehow they still charge the full retail price for products online. It really goes to show the level of greed of these guys. Day one DLC with basic in game elements, games being released way before they are actually ready and lots of anti consumer features - the list goes on and on. These guys will do anything to squeeze every last bit of dime out of customers (and distributors) and they are not afraid to sacrifice the product's quality to do so. And now, in the midst of this, Microsoft is for some reason hell bent on helping these greedy **** The used game issue is a problem created by developers and publishers themselves and so is it if they can't make ends meet. If they didn't all have these ridiculous bloated development cost to produce the next generic rip off of what is currently the most popular game they wouldn't be in this situation. EA for instance needed to sell 5 000 000 copies of Dead Space 3(which has become more and more generic as the series goes on) in order to find profit in continuing the series! And has this ridiculous production cost made it any more of a better game than so many others? If these are the criteria for success then of course some people are going to fail! We see many examples of where games marked to niche audiences achieve great success but somehow it still seems like a battle for so many to create the most expensive game with the "broadest appeal" ever... :/ Games are hard to make and cost money. Look at the Skull Girls Kickstarter if you want to see exactly how much it cost. None of this stuff is easy, it all takes smart, talented people to make those games. People who claim game budgets are bloated, or that online sales should be cheaper(because CDs somehow got expensive to stamp) don't really have a firm understanding as to how hard making games is. Its like people who thing making a website is easy and can happen instantly. Or that Game of Thrones could be sold to people on a per viewer basis at cost by HBO. People undervalue the cost making making things they can't hold in their hands. For one who have absolutely no idea how making a game works, you sure like to boast that you do. If big triple A titles with massive amount of marketing doesn't work, then something is surely wrong with the budget, no? Yes, making a game costs money. But making a below average game with slightly better graphics costs a lot more money. People rather have a decent game than a bad one with foto realistic brown elements with twice the development money spent on marketing (looking at you EA).
If you traffic sites like Giant Bomb, who has game developers on their site almost weekly, you learn a lot about how games are made. Their videos of Bastion is amazing to watch and learn how the build that game from the ground up. And learning how things are made is a hobby of mine and I like games a lot.
But the Skull Girls kickstarter is a good place just to see how much it cost to make one 2d fighting game characters. The price, $150,000 per character. And people who worked on games did the math during the whole discussion and determined that the guys making the characters were getting paid less than $8 an hour.
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On June 08 2013 02:37 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 02:31 Cereb wrote:On June 08 2013 01:39 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 01:29 Blacktion wrote:On June 08 2013 00:57 maartendq wrote:
I don't see the issue with having to be online every 24 hours. In all honesty, I can't imagine a gamer anno 2013 who does not have an internet connection. People who don't have internet connections are generally people who lack the money to buy expensive luxury products like consoles or gaming PCs anyway.
The fact that buying second hand games is going to be severely limited sucks though, even though we had it coming. Publishers aren't gaining anything from people who buy secondhand games, on the contrary. They've been lobbying against the second hand market for a while now.
I do find it a bit hypocritical that PC gamers are complaining about always-online requirements and the inability to resell a bought game. Steam, starcraft 2, diablo 3 and many other games require you to either log in online every few days or require you to be online at all times, and ever since steam became popular it's been downright impossible to sell PC games on the second hand market, unless they're 10 years old.
If the Xbone has this kind of DRM, you can be sure that the PS4 will have it as well. I'm actually a bit worried about the lack of communication by Sony. They probably want to ride the hate-wave a bit, but at the same time I feel like they're hiding something. The issue is big companies creating restrictions that screw over the user just to save a few bucks on piracy, and it wont work anyway. Also im not sure where your getting that info from, but steams offline mode doesnt require you to go online at all, and i played WoL for about 2 weeks without connecting to the internet, never played D3 so cant comment on that. Steam's offline mode works for 30 days and then shuts down. Microsoft will likely adjust the time required from 24 hours as things go on. And lets be clear, the DRM isn't about pirated games. That was a problem with the Xbox and PS2, yet the 360 and PS3 didn't have super DRM. The DRM is about used games and the publishers being undercut by Gamestop. There is overwhelming data to back up that the used game market is crushing sections of the video game industry, causing studios to go out of business. Microsoft does not give a shit about pirated games. But publisher do give a shit about used games being sold one day after the release of the 20 million dollar title. Ever stopped to think why companies such as GameStop sell used games? It's because publishers barely share any of the revenue with distributors. It wouldn't have to if publishers weren't so greedy to take everything for themselves. If it was more profitable for GameStop to sell new games, then guess what? They wouldn't even waste time in the used game market. Another way to confirm this point is the online prices of games. They cost exactly the same as in at the stores!!! This is insane! If distributors actually got a noticeable part of the revenue then this wouldn't make sense at all. Selling your product online is even much preferable because it's cheaper for publishers and offers them total control and yet somehow they still charge the full retail price for products online. It really goes to show the level of greed of these guys. Day one DLC with basic in game elements, games being released way before they are actually ready and lots of anti consumer features - the list goes on and on. These guys will do anything to squeeze every last bit of dime out of customers (and distributors) and they are not afraid to sacrifice the product's quality to do so. And now, in the midst of this, Microsoft is for some reason hell bent on helping these greedy **** The used game issue is a problem created by developers and publishers themselves and so is it if they can't make ends meet. If they didn't all have these ridiculous bloated development cost to produce the next generic rip off of what is currently the most popular game they wouldn't be in this situation. EA for instance needed to sell 5 000 000 copies of Dead Space 3(which has become more and more generic as the series goes on) in order to find profit in continuing the series! And has this ridiculous production cost made it any more of a better game than so many others? If these are the criteria for success then of course some people are going to fail! We see many examples of where games marked to niche audiences achieve great success but somehow it still seems like a battle for so many to create the most expensive game with the "broadest appeal" ever... :/ Games are hard to make and cost money. Look at the Skull Girls Kickstarter if you want to see exactly how much it cost. None of this stuff is easy, it all takes smart, talented people to make those games. People who claim game budgets are bloated, or that online sales should be cheaper(because CDs somehow got expensive to stamp) don't really have a firm understanding as to how hard making games is. Its like people who thing making a website is easy and can happen instantly. Or that Game of Thrones could be sold to people on a per viewer basis at cost by HBO. People undervalue the cost making making things they can't hold in their hands.
You don't have to know about the cost of developing games, at all, to know that there are differences in production cost for games. That’s basic business. You are not actually going to try and tell me that Battlefield or Dead Space or whatever has the same production cost as some random indie game... Even if you just generically say that "it's expensive", it's going to be more or less "expensive" depending on how you develop your game.
But if you also think that "smart and talented" people are behind these ridiculous business models and productions then I don't think we have much more to talk about.
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On June 08 2013 02:28 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 02:21 TheRabidDeer wrote:On June 08 2013 02:11 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 01:59 s4rk wrote:There is overwhelming data to back up that the used game market is crushing sections of the video game industry, causing studios to go out of business. Source? and what game studios were closed directly because of used game sales? There is no data that directly reports that used games sales closed a studio like a smoking gun. But industry experts like Giant Bomb, Joystiq and Michael Pachter have been saying for over two years now that the reason video games are such high risk is partly because of the huge up front investment and used games cutting directly and instantly into the profits of publishers and studios. The fact that Tomb Raider sold over 3 million copies in two 2 weeks and was considered a failure showed how insane the expectations are for these games. 3 million copies in 2 weeks and being considered a failure doesnt mean they didnt make money, it just means they were expecting more. The gaming market is HUGE now, and sales are higher. When you release a AAA title with a huge backstory like Tomb Raider, you expect big sales numbers off of brand name alone. I mean, games like CoD/BF/Diablo sold double that in like the first DAY... so yea 3 million is comparably lackluster. This is not an indication of profit though. Everyone in the industry, including other developers said that Square's expectations were unreasonable if 3 million is considering a failure. SC2 has only sold slightly less that 5 million world wide in 2 years. And the other games you referenced are not the standard in the industry at all. A game with 8-14 million in sales is not standard or reasonable for all titles. Dead Space three, which sold as well as Dead Space 2, was considered a failure by the publisher. It is a problem with the industry and everyone in it is saying that used games are part of the problem. They prevent games from having a long tale in sales or ongoing income and force the publisher to do thing to make sure people buy the game day one, or preorder.
So you're telling me that it WASNT a failure, it was just Square that thought it was a failure? How is that considered a failure then?
How did used games play a role in these cases?
http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/111869
An interesting article on used game sales that shows the impact of used games is small.
Also, DLC was the original implementation for developers to make money even off of used games. If we can't buy games for cheaper used, then are we still charged for DLC? For what reason?
Actually, looking at this... turns me off of consoles even more. PC has way cheaper games, mods, tons of free DLC, awesome free to play games, etc. Why the hell should I invest in a new console?
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On June 08 2013 02:44 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 02:40 Excludos wrote:On June 08 2013 02:37 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:31 Cereb wrote:On June 08 2013 01:39 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 01:29 Blacktion wrote:On June 08 2013 00:57 maartendq wrote:
I don't see the issue with having to be online every 24 hours. In all honesty, I can't imagine a gamer anno 2013 who does not have an internet connection. People who don't have internet connections are generally people who lack the money to buy expensive luxury products like consoles or gaming PCs anyway.
The fact that buying second hand games is going to be severely limited sucks though, even though we had it coming. Publishers aren't gaining anything from people who buy secondhand games, on the contrary. They've been lobbying against the second hand market for a while now.
I do find it a bit hypocritical that PC gamers are complaining about always-online requirements and the inability to resell a bought game. Steam, starcraft 2, diablo 3 and many other games require you to either log in online every few days or require you to be online at all times, and ever since steam became popular it's been downright impossible to sell PC games on the second hand market, unless they're 10 years old.
If the Xbone has this kind of DRM, you can be sure that the PS4 will have it as well. I'm actually a bit worried about the lack of communication by Sony. They probably want to ride the hate-wave a bit, but at the same time I feel like they're hiding something. The issue is big companies creating restrictions that screw over the user just to save a few bucks on piracy, and it wont work anyway. Also im not sure where your getting that info from, but steams offline mode doesnt require you to go online at all, and i played WoL for about 2 weeks without connecting to the internet, never played D3 so cant comment on that. Steam's offline mode works for 30 days and then shuts down. Microsoft will likely adjust the time required from 24 hours as things go on. And lets be clear, the DRM isn't about pirated games. That was a problem with the Xbox and PS2, yet the 360 and PS3 didn't have super DRM. The DRM is about used games and the publishers being undercut by Gamestop. There is overwhelming data to back up that the used game market is crushing sections of the video game industry, causing studios to go out of business. Microsoft does not give a shit about pirated games. But publisher do give a shit about used games being sold one day after the release of the 20 million dollar title. Ever stopped to think why companies such as GameStop sell used games? It's because publishers barely share any of the revenue with distributors. It wouldn't have to if publishers weren't so greedy to take everything for themselves. If it was more profitable for GameStop to sell new games, then guess what? They wouldn't even waste time in the used game market. Another way to confirm this point is the online prices of games. They cost exactly the same as in at the stores!!! This is insane! If distributors actually got a noticeable part of the revenue then this wouldn't make sense at all. Selling your product online is even much preferable because it's cheaper for publishers and offers them total control and yet somehow they still charge the full retail price for products online. It really goes to show the level of greed of these guys. Day one DLC with basic in game elements, games being released way before they are actually ready and lots of anti consumer features - the list goes on and on. These guys will do anything to squeeze every last bit of dime out of customers (and distributors) and they are not afraid to sacrifice the product's quality to do so. And now, in the midst of this, Microsoft is for some reason hell bent on helping these greedy **** The used game issue is a problem created by developers and publishers themselves and so is it if they can't make ends meet. If they didn't all have these ridiculous bloated development cost to produce the next generic rip off of what is currently the most popular game they wouldn't be in this situation. EA for instance needed to sell 5 000 000 copies of Dead Space 3(which has become more and more generic as the series goes on) in order to find profit in continuing the series! And has this ridiculous production cost made it any more of a better game than so many others? If these are the criteria for success then of course some people are going to fail! We see many examples of where games marked to niche audiences achieve great success but somehow it still seems like a battle for so many to create the most expensive game with the "broadest appeal" ever... :/ Games are hard to make and cost money. Look at the Skull Girls Kickstarter if you want to see exactly how much it cost. None of this stuff is easy, it all takes smart, talented people to make those games. People who claim game budgets are bloated, or that online sales should be cheaper(because CDs somehow got expensive to stamp) don't really have a firm understanding as to how hard making games is. Its like people who thing making a website is easy and can happen instantly. Or that Game of Thrones could be sold to people on a per viewer basis at cost by HBO. People undervalue the cost making making things they can't hold in their hands. For one who have absolutely no idea how making a game works, you sure like to boast that you do. If big triple A titles with massive amount of marketing doesn't work, then something is surely wrong with the budget, no? Yes, making a game costs money. But making a below average game with slightly better graphics costs a lot more money. People rather have a decent game than a bad one with foto realistic brown elements with twice the development money spent on marketing (looking at you EA). If you traffic sites like Giant Bomb, who has game developers on their site almost weekly, you learn a lot about how games are made. Their videos of Bastion is amazing to watch and learn how the build that game from the ground up. And learning how things are made is a hobby of mine and I like games a lot. But the Skull Girls kickstarter is a good place just to see how much it cost to make one 2d fighting game characters. The price, $150,000 per character. And people who worked on games did the math during the whole discussion and determined that the guys making the characters were getting paid less than $8 an hour.
Are you serious? So this information you have on "how hard it is to be a publisher and developmenter" is from the publishers and developmenters themselves? Okay...
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On June 08 2013 02:47 Cereb wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 02:37 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:31 Cereb wrote:On June 08 2013 01:39 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 01:29 Blacktion wrote:On June 08 2013 00:57 maartendq wrote:
I don't see the issue with having to be online every 24 hours. In all honesty, I can't imagine a gamer anno 2013 who does not have an internet connection. People who don't have internet connections are generally people who lack the money to buy expensive luxury products like consoles or gaming PCs anyway.
The fact that buying second hand games is going to be severely limited sucks though, even though we had it coming. Publishers aren't gaining anything from people who buy secondhand games, on the contrary. They've been lobbying against the second hand market for a while now.
I do find it a bit hypocritical that PC gamers are complaining about always-online requirements and the inability to resell a bought game. Steam, starcraft 2, diablo 3 and many other games require you to either log in online every few days or require you to be online at all times, and ever since steam became popular it's been downright impossible to sell PC games on the second hand market, unless they're 10 years old.
If the Xbone has this kind of DRM, you can be sure that the PS4 will have it as well. I'm actually a bit worried about the lack of communication by Sony. They probably want to ride the hate-wave a bit, but at the same time I feel like they're hiding something. The issue is big companies creating restrictions that screw over the user just to save a few bucks on piracy, and it wont work anyway. Also im not sure where your getting that info from, but steams offline mode doesnt require you to go online at all, and i played WoL for about 2 weeks without connecting to the internet, never played D3 so cant comment on that. Steam's offline mode works for 30 days and then shuts down. Microsoft will likely adjust the time required from 24 hours as things go on. And lets be clear, the DRM isn't about pirated games. That was a problem with the Xbox and PS2, yet the 360 and PS3 didn't have super DRM. The DRM is about used games and the publishers being undercut by Gamestop. There is overwhelming data to back up that the used game market is crushing sections of the video game industry, causing studios to go out of business. Microsoft does not give a shit about pirated games. But publisher do give a shit about used games being sold one day after the release of the 20 million dollar title. Ever stopped to think why companies such as GameStop sell used games? It's because publishers barely share any of the revenue with distributors. It wouldn't have to if publishers weren't so greedy to take everything for themselves. If it was more profitable for GameStop to sell new games, then guess what? They wouldn't even waste time in the used game market. Another way to confirm this point is the online prices of games. They cost exactly the same as in at the stores!!! This is insane! If distributors actually got a noticeable part of the revenue then this wouldn't make sense at all. Selling your product online is even much preferable because it's cheaper for publishers and offers them total control and yet somehow they still charge the full retail price for products online. It really goes to show the level of greed of these guys. Day one DLC with basic in game elements, games being released way before they are actually ready and lots of anti consumer features - the list goes on and on. These guys will do anything to squeeze every last bit of dime out of customers (and distributors) and they are not afraid to sacrifice the product's quality to do so. And now, in the midst of this, Microsoft is for some reason hell bent on helping these greedy **** The used game issue is a problem created by developers and publishers themselves and so is it if they can't make ends meet. If they didn't all have these ridiculous bloated development cost to produce the next generic rip off of what is currently the most popular game they wouldn't be in this situation. EA for instance needed to sell 5 000 000 copies of Dead Space 3(which has become more and more generic as the series goes on) in order to find profit in continuing the series! And has this ridiculous production cost made it any more of a better game than so many others? If these are the criteria for success then of course some people are going to fail! We see many examples of where games marked to niche audiences achieve great success but somehow it still seems like a battle for so many to create the most expensive game with the "broadest appeal" ever... :/ Games are hard to make and cost money. Look at the Skull Girls Kickstarter if you want to see exactly how much it cost. None of this stuff is easy, it all takes smart, talented people to make those games. People who claim game budgets are bloated, or that online sales should be cheaper(because CDs somehow got expensive to stamp) don't really have a firm understanding as to how hard making games is. Its like people who thing making a website is easy and can happen instantly. Or that Game of Thrones could be sold to people on a per viewer basis at cost by HBO. People undervalue the cost making making things they can't hold in their hands. You don't have to know about the cost of developing games, at all, to know that there are differences in production cost for games. That’s basic business. You are not actually going to try and tell me that Battlefield or Dead Space or whatever has the same production cost as some random indie game... Even if you just generically say that "it's expensive", it's going to be more or less "expensive" depending on how you develop your game. But if you also think that "smart and talented" people are behind these ridiculous business models and productions then I don't think we have much more to talk about.
Indy games sell for less that triple A games, to the model works out. And there is room for both in the market. As I stated above, the indy game fighting game Skull Girls, did a kick starter for a single DLC character for $150,000. Its a 2D game with minimal voice work, but it still cost them $150,000 for one character. When people said that the amount was to much and their budget was bloated, other indy devs like the guy who made Dust, said the amount were correct.
That and the whole time they were spending $150,000 to make one fighting game character, they were getting paid less than $8 an hour with no health care.
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On June 08 2013 02:44 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 02:40 Excludos wrote:On June 08 2013 02:37 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:31 Cereb wrote:On June 08 2013 01:39 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 01:29 Blacktion wrote:On June 08 2013 00:57 maartendq wrote:
I don't see the issue with having to be online every 24 hours. In all honesty, I can't imagine a gamer anno 2013 who does not have an internet connection. People who don't have internet connections are generally people who lack the money to buy expensive luxury products like consoles or gaming PCs anyway.
The fact that buying second hand games is going to be severely limited sucks though, even though we had it coming. Publishers aren't gaining anything from people who buy secondhand games, on the contrary. They've been lobbying against the second hand market for a while now.
I do find it a bit hypocritical that PC gamers are complaining about always-online requirements and the inability to resell a bought game. Steam, starcraft 2, diablo 3 and many other games require you to either log in online every few days or require you to be online at all times, and ever since steam became popular it's been downright impossible to sell PC games on the second hand market, unless they're 10 years old.
If the Xbone has this kind of DRM, you can be sure that the PS4 will have it as well. I'm actually a bit worried about the lack of communication by Sony. They probably want to ride the hate-wave a bit, but at the same time I feel like they're hiding something. The issue is big companies creating restrictions that screw over the user just to save a few bucks on piracy, and it wont work anyway. Also im not sure where your getting that info from, but steams offline mode doesnt require you to go online at all, and i played WoL for about 2 weeks without connecting to the internet, never played D3 so cant comment on that. Steam's offline mode works for 30 days and then shuts down. Microsoft will likely adjust the time required from 24 hours as things go on. And lets be clear, the DRM isn't about pirated games. That was a problem with the Xbox and PS2, yet the 360 and PS3 didn't have super DRM. The DRM is about used games and the publishers being undercut by Gamestop. There is overwhelming data to back up that the used game market is crushing sections of the video game industry, causing studios to go out of business. Microsoft does not give a shit about pirated games. But publisher do give a shit about used games being sold one day after the release of the 20 million dollar title. Ever stopped to think why companies such as GameStop sell used games? It's because publishers barely share any of the revenue with distributors. It wouldn't have to if publishers weren't so greedy to take everything for themselves. If it was more profitable for GameStop to sell new games, then guess what? They wouldn't even waste time in the used game market. Another way to confirm this point is the online prices of games. They cost exactly the same as in at the stores!!! This is insane! If distributors actually got a noticeable part of the revenue then this wouldn't make sense at all. Selling your product online is even much preferable because it's cheaper for publishers and offers them total control and yet somehow they still charge the full retail price for products online. It really goes to show the level of greed of these guys. Day one DLC with basic in game elements, games being released way before they are actually ready and lots of anti consumer features - the list goes on and on. These guys will do anything to squeeze every last bit of dime out of customers (and distributors) and they are not afraid to sacrifice the product's quality to do so. And now, in the midst of this, Microsoft is for some reason hell bent on helping these greedy **** The used game issue is a problem created by developers and publishers themselves and so is it if they can't make ends meet. If they didn't all have these ridiculous bloated development cost to produce the next generic rip off of what is currently the most popular game they wouldn't be in this situation. EA for instance needed to sell 5 000 000 copies of Dead Space 3(which has become more and more generic as the series goes on) in order to find profit in continuing the series! And has this ridiculous production cost made it any more of a better game than so many others? If these are the criteria for success then of course some people are going to fail! We see many examples of where games marked to niche audiences achieve great success but somehow it still seems like a battle for so many to create the most expensive game with the "broadest appeal" ever... :/ Games are hard to make and cost money. Look at the Skull Girls Kickstarter if you want to see exactly how much it cost. None of this stuff is easy, it all takes smart, talented people to make those games. People who claim game budgets are bloated, or that online sales should be cheaper(because CDs somehow got expensive to stamp) don't really have a firm understanding as to how hard making games is. Its like people who thing making a website is easy and can happen instantly. Or that Game of Thrones could be sold to people on a per viewer basis at cost by HBO. People undervalue the cost making making things they can't hold in their hands. For one who have absolutely no idea how making a game works, you sure like to boast that you do. If big triple A titles with massive amount of marketing doesn't work, then something is surely wrong with the budget, no? Yes, making a game costs money. But making a below average game with slightly better graphics costs a lot more money. People rather have a decent game than a bad one with foto realistic brown elements with twice the development money spent on marketing (looking at you EA). If you traffic sites like Giant Bomb, who has game developers on their site almost weekly, you learn a lot about how games are made. Their videos of Bastion is amazing to watch and learn how the build that game from the ground up. And learning how things are made is a hobby of mine and I like games a lot. But the Skull Girls kickstarter is a good place just to see how much it cost to make one 2d fighting game characters. The price, $150,000 per character. And people who worked on games did the math during the whole discussion and determined that the guys making the characters were getting paid less than $8 an hour.
Kickstarter is for developers without publishers (and I can't find anything on skull girls except a calendar). its not a good indication what it costs to make a game in real life. It also depends heavily on what type of game you're making, what you're focusing on, amount of cutscenes, graphics, game mechanics, level design, etc. It can cost anything from hundred thousand to many many millions of dollars.
edit: What does this have to do with the new XBone again?
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On June 08 2013 02:50 Cereb wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 02:44 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:40 Excludos wrote:On June 08 2013 02:37 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:31 Cereb wrote:On June 08 2013 01:39 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 01:29 Blacktion wrote:On June 08 2013 00:57 maartendq wrote:
I don't see the issue with having to be online every 24 hours. In all honesty, I can't imagine a gamer anno 2013 who does not have an internet connection. People who don't have internet connections are generally people who lack the money to buy expensive luxury products like consoles or gaming PCs anyway.
The fact that buying second hand games is going to be severely limited sucks though, even though we had it coming. Publishers aren't gaining anything from people who buy secondhand games, on the contrary. They've been lobbying against the second hand market for a while now.
I do find it a bit hypocritical that PC gamers are complaining about always-online requirements and the inability to resell a bought game. Steam, starcraft 2, diablo 3 and many other games require you to either log in online every few days or require you to be online at all times, and ever since steam became popular it's been downright impossible to sell PC games on the second hand market, unless they're 10 years old.
If the Xbone has this kind of DRM, you can be sure that the PS4 will have it as well. I'm actually a bit worried about the lack of communication by Sony. They probably want to ride the hate-wave a bit, but at the same time I feel like they're hiding something. The issue is big companies creating restrictions that screw over the user just to save a few bucks on piracy, and it wont work anyway. Also im not sure where your getting that info from, but steams offline mode doesnt require you to go online at all, and i played WoL for about 2 weeks without connecting to the internet, never played D3 so cant comment on that. Steam's offline mode works for 30 days and then shuts down. Microsoft will likely adjust the time required from 24 hours as things go on. And lets be clear, the DRM isn't about pirated games. That was a problem with the Xbox and PS2, yet the 360 and PS3 didn't have super DRM. The DRM is about used games and the publishers being undercut by Gamestop. There is overwhelming data to back up that the used game market is crushing sections of the video game industry, causing studios to go out of business. Microsoft does not give a shit about pirated games. But publisher do give a shit about used games being sold one day after the release of the 20 million dollar title. Ever stopped to think why companies such as GameStop sell used games? It's because publishers barely share any of the revenue with distributors. It wouldn't have to if publishers weren't so greedy to take everything for themselves. If it was more profitable for GameStop to sell new games, then guess what? They wouldn't even waste time in the used game market. Another way to confirm this point is the online prices of games. They cost exactly the same as in at the stores!!! This is insane! If distributors actually got a noticeable part of the revenue then this wouldn't make sense at all. Selling your product online is even much preferable because it's cheaper for publishers and offers them total control and yet somehow they still charge the full retail price for products online. It really goes to show the level of greed of these guys. Day one DLC with basic in game elements, games being released way before they are actually ready and lots of anti consumer features - the list goes on and on. These guys will do anything to squeeze every last bit of dime out of customers (and distributors) and they are not afraid to sacrifice the product's quality to do so. And now, in the midst of this, Microsoft is for some reason hell bent on helping these greedy **** The used game issue is a problem created by developers and publishers themselves and so is it if they can't make ends meet. If they didn't all have these ridiculous bloated development cost to produce the next generic rip off of what is currently the most popular game they wouldn't be in this situation. EA for instance needed to sell 5 000 000 copies of Dead Space 3(which has become more and more generic as the series goes on) in order to find profit in continuing the series! And has this ridiculous production cost made it any more of a better game than so many others? If these are the criteria for success then of course some people are going to fail! We see many examples of where games marked to niche audiences achieve great success but somehow it still seems like a battle for so many to create the most expensive game with the "broadest appeal" ever... :/ Games are hard to make and cost money. Look at the Skull Girls Kickstarter if you want to see exactly how much it cost. None of this stuff is easy, it all takes smart, talented people to make those games. People who claim game budgets are bloated, or that online sales should be cheaper(because CDs somehow got expensive to stamp) don't really have a firm understanding as to how hard making games is. Its like people who thing making a website is easy and can happen instantly. Or that Game of Thrones could be sold to people on a per viewer basis at cost by HBO. People undervalue the cost making making things they can't hold in their hands. For one who have absolutely no idea how making a game works, you sure like to boast that you do. If big triple A titles with massive amount of marketing doesn't work, then something is surely wrong with the budget, no? Yes, making a game costs money. But making a below average game with slightly better graphics costs a lot more money. People rather have a decent game than a bad one with foto realistic brown elements with twice the development money spent on marketing (looking at you EA). If you traffic sites like Giant Bomb, who has game developers on their site almost weekly, you learn a lot about how games are made. Their videos of Bastion is amazing to watch and learn how the build that game from the ground up. And learning how things are made is a hobby of mine and I like games a lot. But the Skull Girls kickstarter is a good place just to see how much it cost to make one 2d fighting game characters. The price, $150,000 per character. And people who worked on games did the math during the whole discussion and determined that the guys making the characters were getting paid less than $8 an hour. Are you serious? So this information you have on "how hard it is to be a publisher and developmenter" is from the publishers and developmenters themselves? Okay...
Where else would you get information but from people who work in the industry talking to people who report on the industry? I mean, who else is there but people who work on games and report on games?
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On June 08 2013 02:51 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 02:47 Cereb wrote:On June 08 2013 02:37 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:31 Cereb wrote:On June 08 2013 01:39 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 01:29 Blacktion wrote:On June 08 2013 00:57 maartendq wrote:
I don't see the issue with having to be online every 24 hours. In all honesty, I can't imagine a gamer anno 2013 who does not have an internet connection. People who don't have internet connections are generally people who lack the money to buy expensive luxury products like consoles or gaming PCs anyway.
The fact that buying second hand games is going to be severely limited sucks though, even though we had it coming. Publishers aren't gaining anything from people who buy secondhand games, on the contrary. They've been lobbying against the second hand market for a while now.
I do find it a bit hypocritical that PC gamers are complaining about always-online requirements and the inability to resell a bought game. Steam, starcraft 2, diablo 3 and many other games require you to either log in online every few days or require you to be online at all times, and ever since steam became popular it's been downright impossible to sell PC games on the second hand market, unless they're 10 years old.
If the Xbone has this kind of DRM, you can be sure that the PS4 will have it as well. I'm actually a bit worried about the lack of communication by Sony. They probably want to ride the hate-wave a bit, but at the same time I feel like they're hiding something. The issue is big companies creating restrictions that screw over the user just to save a few bucks on piracy, and it wont work anyway. Also im not sure where your getting that info from, but steams offline mode doesnt require you to go online at all, and i played WoL for about 2 weeks without connecting to the internet, never played D3 so cant comment on that. Steam's offline mode works for 30 days and then shuts down. Microsoft will likely adjust the time required from 24 hours as things go on. And lets be clear, the DRM isn't about pirated games. That was a problem with the Xbox and PS2, yet the 360 and PS3 didn't have super DRM. The DRM is about used games and the publishers being undercut by Gamestop. There is overwhelming data to back up that the used game market is crushing sections of the video game industry, causing studios to go out of business. Microsoft does not give a shit about pirated games. But publisher do give a shit about used games being sold one day after the release of the 20 million dollar title. Ever stopped to think why companies such as GameStop sell used games? It's because publishers barely share any of the revenue with distributors. It wouldn't have to if publishers weren't so greedy to take everything for themselves. If it was more profitable for GameStop to sell new games, then guess what? They wouldn't even waste time in the used game market. Another way to confirm this point is the online prices of games. They cost exactly the same as in at the stores!!! This is insane! If distributors actually got a noticeable part of the revenue then this wouldn't make sense at all. Selling your product online is even much preferable because it's cheaper for publishers and offers them total control and yet somehow they still charge the full retail price for products online. It really goes to show the level of greed of these guys. Day one DLC with basic in game elements, games being released way before they are actually ready and lots of anti consumer features - the list goes on and on. These guys will do anything to squeeze every last bit of dime out of customers (and distributors) and they are not afraid to sacrifice the product's quality to do so. And now, in the midst of this, Microsoft is for some reason hell bent on helping these greedy **** The used game issue is a problem created by developers and publishers themselves and so is it if they can't make ends meet. If they didn't all have these ridiculous bloated development cost to produce the next generic rip off of what is currently the most popular game they wouldn't be in this situation. EA for instance needed to sell 5 000 000 copies of Dead Space 3(which has become more and more generic as the series goes on) in order to find profit in continuing the series! And has this ridiculous production cost made it any more of a better game than so many others? If these are the criteria for success then of course some people are going to fail! We see many examples of where games marked to niche audiences achieve great success but somehow it still seems like a battle for so many to create the most expensive game with the "broadest appeal" ever... :/ Games are hard to make and cost money. Look at the Skull Girls Kickstarter if you want to see exactly how much it cost. None of this stuff is easy, it all takes smart, talented people to make those games. People who claim game budgets are bloated, or that online sales should be cheaper(because CDs somehow got expensive to stamp) don't really have a firm understanding as to how hard making games is. Its like people who thing making a website is easy and can happen instantly. Or that Game of Thrones could be sold to people on a per viewer basis at cost by HBO. People undervalue the cost making making things they can't hold in their hands. You don't have to know about the cost of developing games, at all, to know that there are differences in production cost for games. That’s basic business. You are not actually going to try and tell me that Battlefield or Dead Space or whatever has the same production cost as some random indie game... Even if you just generically say that "it's expensive", it's going to be more or less "expensive" depending on how you develop your game. But if you also think that "smart and talented" people are behind these ridiculous business models and productions then I don't think we have much more to talk about. Indy games sell for less that triple A games, to the model works out. And there is room for both in the market. As I stated above, the indy game fighting game Skull Girls, did a kick starter for a single DLC character for $150,000. Its a 2D game with minimal voice work, but it still cost them $150,000 for one character. When people said that the amount was to much and their budget was bloated, other indy devs like the guy who made Dust, said the amount were correct. That and the whole time they were spending $150,000 to make one fighting game character, they were getting paid less than $8 an hour with no health care.
They are claiming it takes 8 people 10 weeks to make one character. Then they also appear to outsource the animation for $30k, then $20k for QA testing (I dont see how it could cost that much for one character), then $10k for 1st party cert (why it needs that I dont know), 10k for payment and processing fees (?), 20k goes to the physical rewards for funding the kickstarter.
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On June 08 2013 02:52 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 02:44 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:40 Excludos wrote:On June 08 2013 02:37 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:31 Cereb wrote:On June 08 2013 01:39 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 01:29 Blacktion wrote:On June 08 2013 00:57 maartendq wrote:
I don't see the issue with having to be online every 24 hours. In all honesty, I can't imagine a gamer anno 2013 who does not have an internet connection. People who don't have internet connections are generally people who lack the money to buy expensive luxury products like consoles or gaming PCs anyway.
The fact that buying second hand games is going to be severely limited sucks though, even though we had it coming. Publishers aren't gaining anything from people who buy secondhand games, on the contrary. They've been lobbying against the second hand market for a while now.
I do find it a bit hypocritical that PC gamers are complaining about always-online requirements and the inability to resell a bought game. Steam, starcraft 2, diablo 3 and many other games require you to either log in online every few days or require you to be online at all times, and ever since steam became popular it's been downright impossible to sell PC games on the second hand market, unless they're 10 years old.
If the Xbone has this kind of DRM, you can be sure that the PS4 will have it as well. I'm actually a bit worried about the lack of communication by Sony. They probably want to ride the hate-wave a bit, but at the same time I feel like they're hiding something. The issue is big companies creating restrictions that screw over the user just to save a few bucks on piracy, and it wont work anyway. Also im not sure where your getting that info from, but steams offline mode doesnt require you to go online at all, and i played WoL for about 2 weeks without connecting to the internet, never played D3 so cant comment on that. Steam's offline mode works for 30 days and then shuts down. Microsoft will likely adjust the time required from 24 hours as things go on. And lets be clear, the DRM isn't about pirated games. That was a problem with the Xbox and PS2, yet the 360 and PS3 didn't have super DRM. The DRM is about used games and the publishers being undercut by Gamestop. There is overwhelming data to back up that the used game market is crushing sections of the video game industry, causing studios to go out of business. Microsoft does not give a shit about pirated games. But publisher do give a shit about used games being sold one day after the release of the 20 million dollar title. Ever stopped to think why companies such as GameStop sell used games? It's because publishers barely share any of the revenue with distributors. It wouldn't have to if publishers weren't so greedy to take everything for themselves. If it was more profitable for GameStop to sell new games, then guess what? They wouldn't even waste time in the used game market. Another way to confirm this point is the online prices of games. They cost exactly the same as in at the stores!!! This is insane! If distributors actually got a noticeable part of the revenue then this wouldn't make sense at all. Selling your product online is even much preferable because it's cheaper for publishers and offers them total control and yet somehow they still charge the full retail price for products online. It really goes to show the level of greed of these guys. Day one DLC with basic in game elements, games being released way before they are actually ready and lots of anti consumer features - the list goes on and on. These guys will do anything to squeeze every last bit of dime out of customers (and distributors) and they are not afraid to sacrifice the product's quality to do so. And now, in the midst of this, Microsoft is for some reason hell bent on helping these greedy **** The used game issue is a problem created by developers and publishers themselves and so is it if they can't make ends meet. If they didn't all have these ridiculous bloated development cost to produce the next generic rip off of what is currently the most popular game they wouldn't be in this situation. EA for instance needed to sell 5 000 000 copies of Dead Space 3(which has become more and more generic as the series goes on) in order to find profit in continuing the series! And has this ridiculous production cost made it any more of a better game than so many others? If these are the criteria for success then of course some people are going to fail! We see many examples of where games marked to niche audiences achieve great success but somehow it still seems like a battle for so many to create the most expensive game with the "broadest appeal" ever... :/ Games are hard to make and cost money. Look at the Skull Girls Kickstarter if you want to see exactly how much it cost. None of this stuff is easy, it all takes smart, talented people to make those games. People who claim game budgets are bloated, or that online sales should be cheaper(because CDs somehow got expensive to stamp) don't really have a firm understanding as to how hard making games is. Its like people who thing making a website is easy and can happen instantly. Or that Game of Thrones could be sold to people on a per viewer basis at cost by HBO. People undervalue the cost making making things they can't hold in their hands. For one who have absolutely no idea how making a game works, you sure like to boast that you do. If big triple A titles with massive amount of marketing doesn't work, then something is surely wrong with the budget, no? Yes, making a game costs money. But making a below average game with slightly better graphics costs a lot more money. People rather have a decent game than a bad one with foto realistic brown elements with twice the development money spent on marketing (looking at you EA). If you traffic sites like Giant Bomb, who has game developers on their site almost weekly, you learn a lot about how games are made. Their videos of Bastion is amazing to watch and learn how the build that game from the ground up. And learning how things are made is a hobby of mine and I like games a lot. But the Skull Girls kickstarter is a good place just to see how much it cost to make one 2d fighting game characters. The price, $150,000 per character. And people who worked on games did the math during the whole discussion and determined that the guys making the characters were getting paid less than $8 an hour. Kickstarter is for developers without publishers (and I can't find anything on skull girls except a calendar). its not a good indication what it costs to make a game in real life. It also depends heavily on what type of game you're making, what you're focusing on, amount of cutscenes, graphics, game mechanics, level design, etc. It can cost anything from hundred thousand to many many millions of dollars. edit: What does this have to do with the new XBone again?
You claimed publishers were greedy. I said the games cost a lot and they would like to make money off used game sales. Pointed out that I don't work in games and I admitted as much, but I follow the industry very closely, including development.
And you can find a good write up on the Skull Girls thing on Giant Bomb. Just type in Skull Girls and looking for the actical write by Patrick Cleping.
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On June 08 2013 02:57 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 02:52 Excludos wrote:On June 08 2013 02:44 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:40 Excludos wrote:On June 08 2013 02:37 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:31 Cereb wrote:On June 08 2013 01:39 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 01:29 Blacktion wrote:On June 08 2013 00:57 maartendq wrote:
I don't see the issue with having to be online every 24 hours. In all honesty, I can't imagine a gamer anno 2013 who does not have an internet connection. People who don't have internet connections are generally people who lack the money to buy expensive luxury products like consoles or gaming PCs anyway.
The fact that buying second hand games is going to be severely limited sucks though, even though we had it coming. Publishers aren't gaining anything from people who buy secondhand games, on the contrary. They've been lobbying against the second hand market for a while now.
I do find it a bit hypocritical that PC gamers are complaining about always-online requirements and the inability to resell a bought game. Steam, starcraft 2, diablo 3 and many other games require you to either log in online every few days or require you to be online at all times, and ever since steam became popular it's been downright impossible to sell PC games on the second hand market, unless they're 10 years old.
If the Xbone has this kind of DRM, you can be sure that the PS4 will have it as well. I'm actually a bit worried about the lack of communication by Sony. They probably want to ride the hate-wave a bit, but at the same time I feel like they're hiding something. The issue is big companies creating restrictions that screw over the user just to save a few bucks on piracy, and it wont work anyway. Also im not sure where your getting that info from, but steams offline mode doesnt require you to go online at all, and i played WoL for about 2 weeks without connecting to the internet, never played D3 so cant comment on that. Steam's offline mode works for 30 days and then shuts down. Microsoft will likely adjust the time required from 24 hours as things go on. And lets be clear, the DRM isn't about pirated games. That was a problem with the Xbox and PS2, yet the 360 and PS3 didn't have super DRM. The DRM is about used games and the publishers being undercut by Gamestop. There is overwhelming data to back up that the used game market is crushing sections of the video game industry, causing studios to go out of business. Microsoft does not give a shit about pirated games. But publisher do give a shit about used games being sold one day after the release of the 20 million dollar title. Ever stopped to think why companies such as GameStop sell used games? It's because publishers barely share any of the revenue with distributors. It wouldn't have to if publishers weren't so greedy to take everything for themselves. If it was more profitable for GameStop to sell new games, then guess what? They wouldn't even waste time in the used game market. Another way to confirm this point is the online prices of games. They cost exactly the same as in at the stores!!! This is insane! If distributors actually got a noticeable part of the revenue then this wouldn't make sense at all. Selling your product online is even much preferable because it's cheaper for publishers and offers them total control and yet somehow they still charge the full retail price for products online. It really goes to show the level of greed of these guys. Day one DLC with basic in game elements, games being released way before they are actually ready and lots of anti consumer features - the list goes on and on. These guys will do anything to squeeze every last bit of dime out of customers (and distributors) and they are not afraid to sacrifice the product's quality to do so. And now, in the midst of this, Microsoft is for some reason hell bent on helping these greedy **** The used game issue is a problem created by developers and publishers themselves and so is it if they can't make ends meet. If they didn't all have these ridiculous bloated development cost to produce the next generic rip off of what is currently the most popular game they wouldn't be in this situation. EA for instance needed to sell 5 000 000 copies of Dead Space 3(which has become more and more generic as the series goes on) in order to find profit in continuing the series! And has this ridiculous production cost made it any more of a better game than so many others? If these are the criteria for success then of course some people are going to fail! We see many examples of where games marked to niche audiences achieve great success but somehow it still seems like a battle for so many to create the most expensive game with the "broadest appeal" ever... :/ Games are hard to make and cost money. Look at the Skull Girls Kickstarter if you want to see exactly how much it cost. None of this stuff is easy, it all takes smart, talented people to make those games. People who claim game budgets are bloated, or that online sales should be cheaper(because CDs somehow got expensive to stamp) don't really have a firm understanding as to how hard making games is. Its like people who thing making a website is easy and can happen instantly. Or that Game of Thrones could be sold to people on a per viewer basis at cost by HBO. People undervalue the cost making making things they can't hold in their hands. For one who have absolutely no idea how making a game works, you sure like to boast that you do. If big triple A titles with massive amount of marketing doesn't work, then something is surely wrong with the budget, no? Yes, making a game costs money. But making a below average game with slightly better graphics costs a lot more money. People rather have a decent game than a bad one with foto realistic brown elements with twice the development money spent on marketing (looking at you EA). If you traffic sites like Giant Bomb, who has game developers on their site almost weekly, you learn a lot about how games are made. Their videos of Bastion is amazing to watch and learn how the build that game from the ground up. And learning how things are made is a hobby of mine and I like games a lot. But the Skull Girls kickstarter is a good place just to see how much it cost to make one 2d fighting game characters. The price, $150,000 per character. And people who worked on games did the math during the whole discussion and determined that the guys making the characters were getting paid less than $8 an hour. Kickstarter is for developers without publishers (and I can't find anything on skull girls except a calendar). its not a good indication what it costs to make a game in real life. It also depends heavily on what type of game you're making, what you're focusing on, amount of cutscenes, graphics, game mechanics, level design, etc. It can cost anything from hundred thousand to many many millions of dollars. edit: What does this have to do with the new XBone again? You claimed publishers were greedy. I said the games cost a lot and they would like to make money off used game sales. Pointed out that I don't work in games and I admitted as much, but I follow the industry very closely, including development. And you can find a good write up on the Skull Girls thing on Giant Bomb. Just type in Skull Girls and looking for the actical write by Patrick Cleping.
I've never claimed publishers are greedy. Everyone is greedy. Valve included. Everyone just want to make money. I'm claiming that the majority of publishers are pants on head retarded.
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On June 08 2013 02:57 TheRabidDeer wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 02:51 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:47 Cereb wrote:On June 08 2013 02:37 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:31 Cereb wrote:On June 08 2013 01:39 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 01:29 Blacktion wrote:On June 08 2013 00:57 maartendq wrote:
I don't see the issue with having to be online every 24 hours. In all honesty, I can't imagine a gamer anno 2013 who does not have an internet connection. People who don't have internet connections are generally people who lack the money to buy expensive luxury products like consoles or gaming PCs anyway.
The fact that buying second hand games is going to be severely limited sucks though, even though we had it coming. Publishers aren't gaining anything from people who buy secondhand games, on the contrary. They've been lobbying against the second hand market for a while now.
I do find it a bit hypocritical that PC gamers are complaining about always-online requirements and the inability to resell a bought game. Steam, starcraft 2, diablo 3 and many other games require you to either log in online every few days or require you to be online at all times, and ever since steam became popular it's been downright impossible to sell PC games on the second hand market, unless they're 10 years old.
If the Xbone has this kind of DRM, you can be sure that the PS4 will have it as well. I'm actually a bit worried about the lack of communication by Sony. They probably want to ride the hate-wave a bit, but at the same time I feel like they're hiding something. The issue is big companies creating restrictions that screw over the user just to save a few bucks on piracy, and it wont work anyway. Also im not sure where your getting that info from, but steams offline mode doesnt require you to go online at all, and i played WoL for about 2 weeks without connecting to the internet, never played D3 so cant comment on that. Steam's offline mode works for 30 days and then shuts down. Microsoft will likely adjust the time required from 24 hours as things go on. And lets be clear, the DRM isn't about pirated games. That was a problem with the Xbox and PS2, yet the 360 and PS3 didn't have super DRM. The DRM is about used games and the publishers being undercut by Gamestop. There is overwhelming data to back up that the used game market is crushing sections of the video game industry, causing studios to go out of business. Microsoft does not give a shit about pirated games. But publisher do give a shit about used games being sold one day after the release of the 20 million dollar title. Ever stopped to think why companies such as GameStop sell used games? It's because publishers barely share any of the revenue with distributors. It wouldn't have to if publishers weren't so greedy to take everything for themselves. If it was more profitable for GameStop to sell new games, then guess what? They wouldn't even waste time in the used game market. Another way to confirm this point is the online prices of games. They cost exactly the same as in at the stores!!! This is insane! If distributors actually got a noticeable part of the revenue then this wouldn't make sense at all. Selling your product online is even much preferable because it's cheaper for publishers and offers them total control and yet somehow they still charge the full retail price for products online. It really goes to show the level of greed of these guys. Day one DLC with basic in game elements, games being released way before they are actually ready and lots of anti consumer features - the list goes on and on. These guys will do anything to squeeze every last bit of dime out of customers (and distributors) and they are not afraid to sacrifice the product's quality to do so. And now, in the midst of this, Microsoft is for some reason hell bent on helping these greedy **** The used game issue is a problem created by developers and publishers themselves and so is it if they can't make ends meet. If they didn't all have these ridiculous bloated development cost to produce the next generic rip off of what is currently the most popular game they wouldn't be in this situation. EA for instance needed to sell 5 000 000 copies of Dead Space 3(which has become more and more generic as the series goes on) in order to find profit in continuing the series! And has this ridiculous production cost made it any more of a better game than so many others? If these are the criteria for success then of course some people are going to fail! We see many examples of where games marked to niche audiences achieve great success but somehow it still seems like a battle for so many to create the most expensive game with the "broadest appeal" ever... :/ Games are hard to make and cost money. Look at the Skull Girls Kickstarter if you want to see exactly how much it cost. None of this stuff is easy, it all takes smart, talented people to make those games. People who claim game budgets are bloated, or that online sales should be cheaper(because CDs somehow got expensive to stamp) don't really have a firm understanding as to how hard making games is. Its like people who thing making a website is easy and can happen instantly. Or that Game of Thrones could be sold to people on a per viewer basis at cost by HBO. People undervalue the cost making making things they can't hold in their hands. You don't have to know about the cost of developing games, at all, to know that there are differences in production cost for games. That’s basic business. You are not actually going to try and tell me that Battlefield or Dead Space or whatever has the same production cost as some random indie game... Even if you just generically say that "it's expensive", it's going to be more or less "expensive" depending on how you develop your game. But if you also think that "smart and talented" people are behind these ridiculous business models and productions then I don't think we have much more to talk about. Indy games sell for less that triple A games, to the model works out. And there is room for both in the market. As I stated above, the indy game fighting game Skull Girls, did a kick starter for a single DLC character for $150,000. Its a 2D game with minimal voice work, but it still cost them $150,000 for one character. When people said that the amount was to much and their budget was bloated, other indy devs like the guy who made Dust, said the amount were correct. That and the whole time they were spending $150,000 to make one fighting game character, they were getting paid less than $8 an hour with no health care. They are claiming it takes 8 people 10 weeks to make one character. Then they also appear to outsource the animation for $30k, then $20k for QA testing (I dont see how it could cost that much for one character), then $10k for 1st party cert (why it needs that I dont know), 10k for payment and processing fees (?), 20k goes to the physical rewards for funding the kickstarter.
And other Indy devs backed up those claims and said that it would cost that much to make a character of that quality. QA testing is done by an outside firm that they have to pay and animation is the most costly part of the process. All of this was going to be released on Xbox, so they need to certify it, which also costs money that Microsoft charges.
Once again, it seems like a huge amount of money, but everyone who has worked on games backed up these amounts. There is a huge reddit thread about it. The guy who made "Dust" all on his own, broke down the costs and said that all of it seemed on par with what he way doing when he was making his game.
It costs a fuck ton of money to make even a simple 2d fighting game.
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On June 08 2013 02:57 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 02:52 Excludos wrote:On June 08 2013 02:44 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:40 Excludos wrote:On June 08 2013 02:37 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:31 Cereb wrote:On June 08 2013 01:39 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 01:29 Blacktion wrote:On June 08 2013 00:57 maartendq wrote:
I don't see the issue with having to be online every 24 hours. In all honesty, I can't imagine a gamer anno 2013 who does not have an internet connection. People who don't have internet connections are generally people who lack the money to buy expensive luxury products like consoles or gaming PCs anyway.
The fact that buying second hand games is going to be severely limited sucks though, even though we had it coming. Publishers aren't gaining anything from people who buy secondhand games, on the contrary. They've been lobbying against the second hand market for a while now.
I do find it a bit hypocritical that PC gamers are complaining about always-online requirements and the inability to resell a bought game. Steam, starcraft 2, diablo 3 and many other games require you to either log in online every few days or require you to be online at all times, and ever since steam became popular it's been downright impossible to sell PC games on the second hand market, unless they're 10 years old.
If the Xbone has this kind of DRM, you can be sure that the PS4 will have it as well. I'm actually a bit worried about the lack of communication by Sony. They probably want to ride the hate-wave a bit, but at the same time I feel like they're hiding something. The issue is big companies creating restrictions that screw over the user just to save a few bucks on piracy, and it wont work anyway. Also im not sure where your getting that info from, but steams offline mode doesnt require you to go online at all, and i played WoL for about 2 weeks without connecting to the internet, never played D3 so cant comment on that. Steam's offline mode works for 30 days and then shuts down. Microsoft will likely adjust the time required from 24 hours as things go on. And lets be clear, the DRM isn't about pirated games. That was a problem with the Xbox and PS2, yet the 360 and PS3 didn't have super DRM. The DRM is about used games and the publishers being undercut by Gamestop. There is overwhelming data to back up that the used game market is crushing sections of the video game industry, causing studios to go out of business. Microsoft does not give a shit about pirated games. But publisher do give a shit about used games being sold one day after the release of the 20 million dollar title. Ever stopped to think why companies such as GameStop sell used games? It's because publishers barely share any of the revenue with distributors. It wouldn't have to if publishers weren't so greedy to take everything for themselves. If it was more profitable for GameStop to sell new games, then guess what? They wouldn't even waste time in the used game market. Another way to confirm this point is the online prices of games. They cost exactly the same as in at the stores!!! This is insane! If distributors actually got a noticeable part of the revenue then this wouldn't make sense at all. Selling your product online is even much preferable because it's cheaper for publishers and offers them total control and yet somehow they still charge the full retail price for products online. It really goes to show the level of greed of these guys. Day one DLC with basic in game elements, games being released way before they are actually ready and lots of anti consumer features - the list goes on and on. These guys will do anything to squeeze every last bit of dime out of customers (and distributors) and they are not afraid to sacrifice the product's quality to do so. And now, in the midst of this, Microsoft is for some reason hell bent on helping these greedy **** The used game issue is a problem created by developers and publishers themselves and so is it if they can't make ends meet. If they didn't all have these ridiculous bloated development cost to produce the next generic rip off of what is currently the most popular game they wouldn't be in this situation. EA for instance needed to sell 5 000 000 copies of Dead Space 3(which has become more and more generic as the series goes on) in order to find profit in continuing the series! And has this ridiculous production cost made it any more of a better game than so many others? If these are the criteria for success then of course some people are going to fail! We see many examples of where games marked to niche audiences achieve great success but somehow it still seems like a battle for so many to create the most expensive game with the "broadest appeal" ever... :/ Games are hard to make and cost money. Look at the Skull Girls Kickstarter if you want to see exactly how much it cost. None of this stuff is easy, it all takes smart, talented people to make those games. People who claim game budgets are bloated, or that online sales should be cheaper(because CDs somehow got expensive to stamp) don't really have a firm understanding as to how hard making games is. Its like people who thing making a website is easy and can happen instantly. Or that Game of Thrones could be sold to people on a per viewer basis at cost by HBO. People undervalue the cost making making things they can't hold in their hands. For one who have absolutely no idea how making a game works, you sure like to boast that you do. If big triple A titles with massive amount of marketing doesn't work, then something is surely wrong with the budget, no? Yes, making a game costs money. But making a below average game with slightly better graphics costs a lot more money. People rather have a decent game than a bad one with foto realistic brown elements with twice the development money spent on marketing (looking at you EA). If you traffic sites like Giant Bomb, who has game developers on their site almost weekly, you learn a lot about how games are made. Their videos of Bastion is amazing to watch and learn how the build that game from the ground up. And learning how things are made is a hobby of mine and I like games a lot. But the Skull Girls kickstarter is a good place just to see how much it cost to make one 2d fighting game characters. The price, $150,000 per character. And people who worked on games did the math during the whole discussion and determined that the guys making the characters were getting paid less than $8 an hour. Kickstarter is for developers without publishers (and I can't find anything on skull girls except a calendar). its not a good indication what it costs to make a game in real life. It also depends heavily on what type of game you're making, what you're focusing on, amount of cutscenes, graphics, game mechanics, level design, etc. It can cost anything from hundred thousand to many many millions of dollars. edit: What does this have to do with the new XBone again? You claimed publishers were greedy. I said the games cost a lot and they would like to make money off used game sales. Pointed out that I don't work in games and I admitted as much, but I follow the industry very closely, including development. And you can find a good write up on the Skull Girls thing on Giant Bomb. Just type in Skull Girls and looking for the actical write by Patrick Cleping.
150k/char is excessive. SF4 has like 30-35 characters... even just using the same 10 week development time from the skullgirls campaign that would be over 5 years to develop... I see no reason for it to take 10 weeks to make one character. I also dont see what they are being paid for if they arent doing the animation in house.
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On June 08 2013 03:01 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 02:57 TheRabidDeer wrote:On June 08 2013 02:51 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:47 Cereb wrote:On June 08 2013 02:37 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:31 Cereb wrote:On June 08 2013 01:39 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 01:29 Blacktion wrote:On June 08 2013 00:57 maartendq wrote:
I don't see the issue with having to be online every 24 hours. In all honesty, I can't imagine a gamer anno 2013 who does not have an internet connection. People who don't have internet connections are generally people who lack the money to buy expensive luxury products like consoles or gaming PCs anyway.
The fact that buying second hand games is going to be severely limited sucks though, even though we had it coming. Publishers aren't gaining anything from people who buy secondhand games, on the contrary. They've been lobbying against the second hand market for a while now.
I do find it a bit hypocritical that PC gamers are complaining about always-online requirements and the inability to resell a bought game. Steam, starcraft 2, diablo 3 and many other games require you to either log in online every few days or require you to be online at all times, and ever since steam became popular it's been downright impossible to sell PC games on the second hand market, unless they're 10 years old.
If the Xbone has this kind of DRM, you can be sure that the PS4 will have it as well. I'm actually a bit worried about the lack of communication by Sony. They probably want to ride the hate-wave a bit, but at the same time I feel like they're hiding something. The issue is big companies creating restrictions that screw over the user just to save a few bucks on piracy, and it wont work anyway. Also im not sure where your getting that info from, but steams offline mode doesnt require you to go online at all, and i played WoL for about 2 weeks without connecting to the internet, never played D3 so cant comment on that. Steam's offline mode works for 30 days and then shuts down. Microsoft will likely adjust the time required from 24 hours as things go on. And lets be clear, the DRM isn't about pirated games. That was a problem with the Xbox and PS2, yet the 360 and PS3 didn't have super DRM. The DRM is about used games and the publishers being undercut by Gamestop. There is overwhelming data to back up that the used game market is crushing sections of the video game industry, causing studios to go out of business. Microsoft does not give a shit about pirated games. But publisher do give a shit about used games being sold one day after the release of the 20 million dollar title. Ever stopped to think why companies such as GameStop sell used games? It's because publishers barely share any of the revenue with distributors. It wouldn't have to if publishers weren't so greedy to take everything for themselves. If it was more profitable for GameStop to sell new games, then guess what? They wouldn't even waste time in the used game market. Another way to confirm this point is the online prices of games. They cost exactly the same as in at the stores!!! This is insane! If distributors actually got a noticeable part of the revenue then this wouldn't make sense at all. Selling your product online is even much preferable because it's cheaper for publishers and offers them total control and yet somehow they still charge the full retail price for products online. It really goes to show the level of greed of these guys. Day one DLC with basic in game elements, games being released way before they are actually ready and lots of anti consumer features - the list goes on and on. These guys will do anything to squeeze every last bit of dime out of customers (and distributors) and they are not afraid to sacrifice the product's quality to do so. And now, in the midst of this, Microsoft is for some reason hell bent on helping these greedy **** The used game issue is a problem created by developers and publishers themselves and so is it if they can't make ends meet. If they didn't all have these ridiculous bloated development cost to produce the next generic rip off of what is currently the most popular game they wouldn't be in this situation. EA for instance needed to sell 5 000 000 copies of Dead Space 3(which has become more and more generic as the series goes on) in order to find profit in continuing the series! And has this ridiculous production cost made it any more of a better game than so many others? If these are the criteria for success then of course some people are going to fail! We see many examples of where games marked to niche audiences achieve great success but somehow it still seems like a battle for so many to create the most expensive game with the "broadest appeal" ever... :/ Games are hard to make and cost money. Look at the Skull Girls Kickstarter if you want to see exactly how much it cost. None of this stuff is easy, it all takes smart, talented people to make those games. People who claim game budgets are bloated, or that online sales should be cheaper(because CDs somehow got expensive to stamp) don't really have a firm understanding as to how hard making games is. Its like people who thing making a website is easy and can happen instantly. Or that Game of Thrones could be sold to people on a per viewer basis at cost by HBO. People undervalue the cost making making things they can't hold in their hands. You don't have to know about the cost of developing games, at all, to know that there are differences in production cost for games. That’s basic business. You are not actually going to try and tell me that Battlefield or Dead Space or whatever has the same production cost as some random indie game... Even if you just generically say that "it's expensive", it's going to be more or less "expensive" depending on how you develop your game. But if you also think that "smart and talented" people are behind these ridiculous business models and productions then I don't think we have much more to talk about. Indy games sell for less that triple A games, to the model works out. And there is room for both in the market. As I stated above, the indy game fighting game Skull Girls, did a kick starter for a single DLC character for $150,000. Its a 2D game with minimal voice work, but it still cost them $150,000 for one character. When people said that the amount was to much and their budget was bloated, other indy devs like the guy who made Dust, said the amount were correct. That and the whole time they were spending $150,000 to make one fighting game character, they were getting paid less than $8 an hour with no health care. They are claiming it takes 8 people 10 weeks to make one character. Then they also appear to outsource the animation for $30k, then $20k for QA testing (I dont see how it could cost that much for one character), then $10k for 1st party cert (why it needs that I dont know), 10k for payment and processing fees (?), 20k goes to the physical rewards for funding the kickstarter. And other Indy devs backed up those claims and said that it would cost that much to make a character of that quality. QA testing is done by an outside firm that they have to pay and animation is the most costly part of the process. All of this was going to be released on Xbox, so they need to certify it, which also costs money that Microsoft charges. Once again, it seems like a huge amount of money, but everyone who has worked on games backed up these amounts. There is a huge reddit thread about it. The guy who made "Dust" all on his own, broke down the costs and said that all of it seemed on par with what he way doing when he was making his game. It costs a fuck ton of money to make even a simple 2d fighting game.
The major issue that I have is the development time. Also, how did a single guy make Dust with no funding? Is he rich? I mean, I know he is rich now, but BEFORE he made the game? What about the guys behind Bastion?
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On June 08 2013 02:04 Plansix wrote:
Prices will go down as quickly as they do on amazon and steam, have no doubt.
No chance. If microsoft get rid of store distribution the live store will have a complete monopoly on xbox games. Why let the price drop when you can hold it up and make more money, what are gamers gonna do? Boycott your games? Remember the MW2 boycott group on steam? The one full of people playing MW2, well that was one game, now imagine trying to get people to boycott all games. Amazon and steam prices drop because of competition.
Console online store already charge way more than steam/amazon, imagine if they had the chance to charge even more without customers having the chance to take their money elsewhere.
Heres an example btw. PS3 version of Red Dead Redemption. Remember the online price should be lower because the cost of physically making and delivering a game is much higher than delivering digitally.
Amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-Dead-Redemption-Game-Edition/dp/B005EPHVMQ/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1370617840&sr=8-3&keywords=red dead redemption
£17.28, delivered, includes all DLC (GotY edition)
PSN:
Cant take a screenshot because i dont have a capture card, but its £31.99, including the game + Undead nightmare DLC (dont know if theres any other DLC, but if there is its not included in this price, so on amazon you might even get more product for less money)
Online store, which should be cheaper is £14.71 more expensive for a comparable product. Hell even the base game is dearer on PSN (23.99) than Game+DLC on amazon.
Think this is a PSN only phenomenon? Guess again.
SC2:
https://eu.battle.net/account/management/sc2/services/upgrade.html
Upgrade online, Already have fully updated WoL so no product to deliver, should be the cheapest way to get the product. £32.99
Amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Starcraft-II-Heart-Swarm-Mac/dp/B00A6OP29E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370628154&sr=8-1&keywords=HotS
£25.99, delivered
I dont have a WiiU/360, but those of you who do can look at their store, willing to bet you find 10 games on there that are more expensive in their stores than they are from amazon or most other retailers for every 1 you find cheaper.
And people seem to think this will get better if these companies have monopolies over there games sales?
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On June 08 2013 03:03 TheRabidDeer wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 02:57 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:52 Excludos wrote:On June 08 2013 02:44 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:40 Excludos wrote:On June 08 2013 02:37 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:31 Cereb wrote:On June 08 2013 01:39 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 01:29 Blacktion wrote:On June 08 2013 00:57 maartendq wrote:
I don't see the issue with having to be online every 24 hours. In all honesty, I can't imagine a gamer anno 2013 who does not have an internet connection. People who don't have internet connections are generally people who lack the money to buy expensive luxury products like consoles or gaming PCs anyway.
The fact that buying second hand games is going to be severely limited sucks though, even though we had it coming. Publishers aren't gaining anything from people who buy secondhand games, on the contrary. They've been lobbying against the second hand market for a while now.
I do find it a bit hypocritical that PC gamers are complaining about always-online requirements and the inability to resell a bought game. Steam, starcraft 2, diablo 3 and many other games require you to either log in online every few days or require you to be online at all times, and ever since steam became popular it's been downright impossible to sell PC games on the second hand market, unless they're 10 years old.
If the Xbone has this kind of DRM, you can be sure that the PS4 will have it as well. I'm actually a bit worried about the lack of communication by Sony. They probably want to ride the hate-wave a bit, but at the same time I feel like they're hiding something. The issue is big companies creating restrictions that screw over the user just to save a few bucks on piracy, and it wont work anyway. Also im not sure where your getting that info from, but steams offline mode doesnt require you to go online at all, and i played WoL for about 2 weeks without connecting to the internet, never played D3 so cant comment on that. Steam's offline mode works for 30 days and then shuts down. Microsoft will likely adjust the time required from 24 hours as things go on. And lets be clear, the DRM isn't about pirated games. That was a problem with the Xbox and PS2, yet the 360 and PS3 didn't have super DRM. The DRM is about used games and the publishers being undercut by Gamestop. There is overwhelming data to back up that the used game market is crushing sections of the video game industry, causing studios to go out of business. Microsoft does not give a shit about pirated games. But publisher do give a shit about used games being sold one day after the release of the 20 million dollar title. Ever stopped to think why companies such as GameStop sell used games? It's because publishers barely share any of the revenue with distributors. It wouldn't have to if publishers weren't so greedy to take everything for themselves. If it was more profitable for GameStop to sell new games, then guess what? They wouldn't even waste time in the used game market. Another way to confirm this point is the online prices of games. They cost exactly the same as in at the stores!!! This is insane! If distributors actually got a noticeable part of the revenue then this wouldn't make sense at all. Selling your product online is even much preferable because it's cheaper for publishers and offers them total control and yet somehow they still charge the full retail price for products online. It really goes to show the level of greed of these guys. Day one DLC with basic in game elements, games being released way before they are actually ready and lots of anti consumer features - the list goes on and on. These guys will do anything to squeeze every last bit of dime out of customers (and distributors) and they are not afraid to sacrifice the product's quality to do so. And now, in the midst of this, Microsoft is for some reason hell bent on helping these greedy **** The used game issue is a problem created by developers and publishers themselves and so is it if they can't make ends meet. If they didn't all have these ridiculous bloated development cost to produce the next generic rip off of what is currently the most popular game they wouldn't be in this situation. EA for instance needed to sell 5 000 000 copies of Dead Space 3(which has become more and more generic as the series goes on) in order to find profit in continuing the series! And has this ridiculous production cost made it any more of a better game than so many others? If these are the criteria for success then of course some people are going to fail! We see many examples of where games marked to niche audiences achieve great success but somehow it still seems like a battle for so many to create the most expensive game with the "broadest appeal" ever... :/ Games are hard to make and cost money. Look at the Skull Girls Kickstarter if you want to see exactly how much it cost. None of this stuff is easy, it all takes smart, talented people to make those games. People who claim game budgets are bloated, or that online sales should be cheaper(because CDs somehow got expensive to stamp) don't really have a firm understanding as to how hard making games is. Its like people who thing making a website is easy and can happen instantly. Or that Game of Thrones could be sold to people on a per viewer basis at cost by HBO. People undervalue the cost making making things they can't hold in their hands. For one who have absolutely no idea how making a game works, you sure like to boast that you do. If big triple A titles with massive amount of marketing doesn't work, then something is surely wrong with the budget, no? Yes, making a game costs money. But making a below average game with slightly better graphics costs a lot more money. People rather have a decent game than a bad one with foto realistic brown elements with twice the development money spent on marketing (looking at you EA). If you traffic sites like Giant Bomb, who has game developers on their site almost weekly, you learn a lot about how games are made. Their videos of Bastion is amazing to watch and learn how the build that game from the ground up. And learning how things are made is a hobby of mine and I like games a lot. But the Skull Girls kickstarter is a good place just to see how much it cost to make one 2d fighting game characters. The price, $150,000 per character. And people who worked on games did the math during the whole discussion and determined that the guys making the characters were getting paid less than $8 an hour. Kickstarter is for developers without publishers (and I can't find anything on skull girls except a calendar). its not a good indication what it costs to make a game in real life. It also depends heavily on what type of game you're making, what you're focusing on, amount of cutscenes, graphics, game mechanics, level design, etc. It can cost anything from hundred thousand to many many millions of dollars. edit: What does this have to do with the new XBone again? You claimed publishers were greedy. I said the games cost a lot and they would like to make money off used game sales. Pointed out that I don't work in games and I admitted as much, but I follow the industry very closely, including development. And you can find a good write up on the Skull Girls thing on Giant Bomb. Just type in Skull Girls and looking for the actical write by Patrick Cleping. 150k/char is excessive. SF4 has like 30-35 characters... even just using the same 10 week development time from the skullgirls campaign that would be over 5 years to develop... I see no reason for it to take 10 weeks to make one character. I also dont see what they are being paid for if they arent doing the animation in house.
Well they are a four man show, while SF4 was made by Capcom.
Also, people who work in the industry and have made games disagree with and say this is on par with what they have to pay to create their games. Seriously, go look up the reddit thread on it. Its a great read, but this stuff costs a lot more that most people think.
Or to put it another way, look up the cost of a hand made, hard wood table. It cost a lot and all it does is sit their and let you put food on it. Everything in a video game is hand made and build by very skilled people. They also cost a lot.
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On June 08 2013 03:04 TheRabidDeer wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 03:01 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:57 TheRabidDeer wrote:On June 08 2013 02:51 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:47 Cereb wrote:On June 08 2013 02:37 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:31 Cereb wrote:On June 08 2013 01:39 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 01:29 Blacktion wrote:On June 08 2013 00:57 maartendq wrote:
I don't see the issue with having to be online every 24 hours. In all honesty, I can't imagine a gamer anno 2013 who does not have an internet connection. People who don't have internet connections are generally people who lack the money to buy expensive luxury products like consoles or gaming PCs anyway.
The fact that buying second hand games is going to be severely limited sucks though, even though we had it coming. Publishers aren't gaining anything from people who buy secondhand games, on the contrary. They've been lobbying against the second hand market for a while now.
I do find it a bit hypocritical that PC gamers are complaining about always-online requirements and the inability to resell a bought game. Steam, starcraft 2, diablo 3 and many other games require you to either log in online every few days or require you to be online at all times, and ever since steam became popular it's been downright impossible to sell PC games on the second hand market, unless they're 10 years old.
If the Xbone has this kind of DRM, you can be sure that the PS4 will have it as well. I'm actually a bit worried about the lack of communication by Sony. They probably want to ride the hate-wave a bit, but at the same time I feel like they're hiding something. The issue is big companies creating restrictions that screw over the user just to save a few bucks on piracy, and it wont work anyway. Also im not sure where your getting that info from, but steams offline mode doesnt require you to go online at all, and i played WoL for about 2 weeks without connecting to the internet, never played D3 so cant comment on that. Steam's offline mode works for 30 days and then shuts down. Microsoft will likely adjust the time required from 24 hours as things go on. And lets be clear, the DRM isn't about pirated games. That was a problem with the Xbox and PS2, yet the 360 and PS3 didn't have super DRM. The DRM is about used games and the publishers being undercut by Gamestop. There is overwhelming data to back up that the used game market is crushing sections of the video game industry, causing studios to go out of business. Microsoft does not give a shit about pirated games. But publisher do give a shit about used games being sold one day after the release of the 20 million dollar title. Ever stopped to think why companies such as GameStop sell used games? It's because publishers barely share any of the revenue with distributors. It wouldn't have to if publishers weren't so greedy to take everything for themselves. If it was more profitable for GameStop to sell new games, then guess what? They wouldn't even waste time in the used game market. Another way to confirm this point is the online prices of games. They cost exactly the same as in at the stores!!! This is insane! If distributors actually got a noticeable part of the revenue then this wouldn't make sense at all. Selling your product online is even much preferable because it's cheaper for publishers and offers them total control and yet somehow they still charge the full retail price for products online. It really goes to show the level of greed of these guys. Day one DLC with basic in game elements, games being released way before they are actually ready and lots of anti consumer features - the list goes on and on. These guys will do anything to squeeze every last bit of dime out of customers (and distributors) and they are not afraid to sacrifice the product's quality to do so. And now, in the midst of this, Microsoft is for some reason hell bent on helping these greedy **** The used game issue is a problem created by developers and publishers themselves and so is it if they can't make ends meet. If they didn't all have these ridiculous bloated development cost to produce the next generic rip off of what is currently the most popular game they wouldn't be in this situation. EA for instance needed to sell 5 000 000 copies of Dead Space 3(which has become more and more generic as the series goes on) in order to find profit in continuing the series! And has this ridiculous production cost made it any more of a better game than so many others? If these are the criteria for success then of course some people are going to fail! We see many examples of where games marked to niche audiences achieve great success but somehow it still seems like a battle for so many to create the most expensive game with the "broadest appeal" ever... :/ Games are hard to make and cost money. Look at the Skull Girls Kickstarter if you want to see exactly how much it cost. None of this stuff is easy, it all takes smart, talented people to make those games. People who claim game budgets are bloated, or that online sales should be cheaper(because CDs somehow got expensive to stamp) don't really have a firm understanding as to how hard making games is. Its like people who thing making a website is easy and can happen instantly. Or that Game of Thrones could be sold to people on a per viewer basis at cost by HBO. People undervalue the cost making making things they can't hold in their hands. You don't have to know about the cost of developing games, at all, to know that there are differences in production cost for games. That’s basic business. You are not actually going to try and tell me that Battlefield or Dead Space or whatever has the same production cost as some random indie game... Even if you just generically say that "it's expensive", it's going to be more or less "expensive" depending on how you develop your game. But if you also think that "smart and talented" people are behind these ridiculous business models and productions then I don't think we have much more to talk about. Indy games sell for less that triple A games, to the model works out. And there is room for both in the market. As I stated above, the indy game fighting game Skull Girls, did a kick starter for a single DLC character for $150,000. Its a 2D game with minimal voice work, but it still cost them $150,000 for one character. When people said that the amount was to much and their budget was bloated, other indy devs like the guy who made Dust, said the amount were correct. That and the whole time they were spending $150,000 to make one fighting game character, they were getting paid less than $8 an hour with no health care. They are claiming it takes 8 people 10 weeks to make one character. Then they also appear to outsource the animation for $30k, then $20k for QA testing (I dont see how it could cost that much for one character), then $10k for 1st party cert (why it needs that I dont know), 10k for payment and processing fees (?), 20k goes to the physical rewards for funding the kickstarter. And other Indy devs backed up those claims and said that it would cost that much to make a character of that quality. QA testing is done by an outside firm that they have to pay and animation is the most costly part of the process. All of this was going to be released on Xbox, so they need to certify it, which also costs money that Microsoft charges. Once again, it seems like a huge amount of money, but everyone who has worked on games backed up these amounts. There is a huge reddit thread about it. The guy who made "Dust" all on his own, broke down the costs and said that all of it seemed on par with what he way doing when he was making his game. It costs a fuck ton of money to make even a simple 2d fighting game. The major issue that I have is the development time. Also, how did a single guy make Dust with no funding? Is he rich? I mean, I know he is rich now, but BEFORE he made the game? What about the guys behind Bastion?
Dust was funded by Microsoft, he won a contest to develop the game and was funded. But he handled the process of getting the game to market. It took him over 2 years to make the game. Its pretty great and cost $15 steam.
Bastion was made by 4 people and it was published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. It took them around 2 years as well, maybe less. Two years to make a good game is pretty standard for the industry.
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United States22883 Posts
On June 08 2013 03:03 TheRabidDeer wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 02:57 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:52 Excludos wrote:On June 08 2013 02:44 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:40 Excludos wrote:On June 08 2013 02:37 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:31 Cereb wrote:On June 08 2013 01:39 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 01:29 Blacktion wrote:On June 08 2013 00:57 maartendq wrote:
I don't see the issue with having to be online every 24 hours. In all honesty, I can't imagine a gamer anno 2013 who does not have an internet connection. People who don't have internet connections are generally people who lack the money to buy expensive luxury products like consoles or gaming PCs anyway.
The fact that buying second hand games is going to be severely limited sucks though, even though we had it coming. Publishers aren't gaining anything from people who buy secondhand games, on the contrary. They've been lobbying against the second hand market for a while now.
I do find it a bit hypocritical that PC gamers are complaining about always-online requirements and the inability to resell a bought game. Steam, starcraft 2, diablo 3 and many other games require you to either log in online every few days or require you to be online at all times, and ever since steam became popular it's been downright impossible to sell PC games on the second hand market, unless they're 10 years old.
If the Xbone has this kind of DRM, you can be sure that the PS4 will have it as well. I'm actually a bit worried about the lack of communication by Sony. They probably want to ride the hate-wave a bit, but at the same time I feel like they're hiding something. The issue is big companies creating restrictions that screw over the user just to save a few bucks on piracy, and it wont work anyway. Also im not sure where your getting that info from, but steams offline mode doesnt require you to go online at all, and i played WoL for about 2 weeks without connecting to the internet, never played D3 so cant comment on that. Steam's offline mode works for 30 days and then shuts down. Microsoft will likely adjust the time required from 24 hours as things go on. And lets be clear, the DRM isn't about pirated games. That was a problem with the Xbox and PS2, yet the 360 and PS3 didn't have super DRM. The DRM is about used games and the publishers being undercut by Gamestop. There is overwhelming data to back up that the used game market is crushing sections of the video game industry, causing studios to go out of business. Microsoft does not give a shit about pirated games. But publisher do give a shit about used games being sold one day after the release of the 20 million dollar title. Ever stopped to think why companies such as GameStop sell used games? It's because publishers barely share any of the revenue with distributors. It wouldn't have to if publishers weren't so greedy to take everything for themselves. If it was more profitable for GameStop to sell new games, then guess what? They wouldn't even waste time in the used game market. Another way to confirm this point is the online prices of games. They cost exactly the same as in at the stores!!! This is insane! If distributors actually got a noticeable part of the revenue then this wouldn't make sense at all. Selling your product online is even much preferable because it's cheaper for publishers and offers them total control and yet somehow they still charge the full retail price for products online. It really goes to show the level of greed of these guys. Day one DLC with basic in game elements, games being released way before they are actually ready and lots of anti consumer features - the list goes on and on. These guys will do anything to squeeze every last bit of dime out of customers (and distributors) and they are not afraid to sacrifice the product's quality to do so. And now, in the midst of this, Microsoft is for some reason hell bent on helping these greedy **** The used game issue is a problem created by developers and publishers themselves and so is it if they can't make ends meet. If they didn't all have these ridiculous bloated development cost to produce the next generic rip off of what is currently the most popular game they wouldn't be in this situation. EA for instance needed to sell 5 000 000 copies of Dead Space 3(which has become more and more generic as the series goes on) in order to find profit in continuing the series! And has this ridiculous production cost made it any more of a better game than so many others? If these are the criteria for success then of course some people are going to fail! We see many examples of where games marked to niche audiences achieve great success but somehow it still seems like a battle for so many to create the most expensive game with the "broadest appeal" ever... :/ Games are hard to make and cost money. Look at the Skull Girls Kickstarter if you want to see exactly how much it cost. None of this stuff is easy, it all takes smart, talented people to make those games. People who claim game budgets are bloated, or that online sales should be cheaper(because CDs somehow got expensive to stamp) don't really have a firm understanding as to how hard making games is. Its like people who thing making a website is easy and can happen instantly. Or that Game of Thrones could be sold to people on a per viewer basis at cost by HBO. People undervalue the cost making making things they can't hold in their hands. For one who have absolutely no idea how making a game works, you sure like to boast that you do. If big triple A titles with massive amount of marketing doesn't work, then something is surely wrong with the budget, no? Yes, making a game costs money. But making a below average game with slightly better graphics costs a lot more money. People rather have a decent game than a bad one with foto realistic brown elements with twice the development money spent on marketing (looking at you EA). If you traffic sites like Giant Bomb, who has game developers on their site almost weekly, you learn a lot about how games are made. Their videos of Bastion is amazing to watch and learn how the build that game from the ground up. And learning how things are made is a hobby of mine and I like games a lot. But the Skull Girls kickstarter is a good place just to see how much it cost to make one 2d fighting game characters. The price, $150,000 per character. And people who worked on games did the math during the whole discussion and determined that the guys making the characters were getting paid less than $8 an hour. Kickstarter is for developers without publishers (and I can't find anything on skull girls except a calendar). its not a good indication what it costs to make a game in real life. It also depends heavily on what type of game you're making, what you're focusing on, amount of cutscenes, graphics, game mechanics, level design, etc. It can cost anything from hundred thousand to many many millions of dollars. edit: What does this have to do with the new XBone again? You claimed publishers were greedy. I said the games cost a lot and they would like to make money off used game sales. Pointed out that I don't work in games and I admitted as much, but I follow the industry very closely, including development. And you can find a good write up on the Skull Girls thing on Giant Bomb. Just type in Skull Girls and looking for the actical write by Patrick Cleping. 150k/char is excessive. SF4 has like 30-35 characters... even just using the same 10 week development time from the skullgirls campaign that would be over 5 years to develop... I see no reason for it to take 10 weeks to make one character. I also dont see what they are being paid for if they arent doing the animation in house.
What? The teams and systems they're using are very, very different. Skull girls is very high framerate hand drawn animation, SF4 uses 3D models. The animation involved in Skull Girls is way more complex than Bastion or Dust, plus there's a lot of balancing and things that had to go into it as well.
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On June 08 2013 03:13 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 03:03 TheRabidDeer wrote:On June 08 2013 02:57 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:52 Excludos wrote:On June 08 2013 02:44 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:40 Excludos wrote:On June 08 2013 02:37 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 02:31 Cereb wrote:On June 08 2013 01:39 Plansix wrote:On June 08 2013 01:29 Blacktion wrote:
[quote]
The issue is big companies creating restrictions that screw over the user just to save a few bucks on piracy, and it wont work anyway. Also im not sure where your getting that info from, but steams offline mode doesnt require you to go online at all, and i played WoL for about 2 weeks without connecting to the internet, never played D3 so cant comment on that. Steam's offline mode works for 30 days and then shuts down. Microsoft will likely adjust the time required from 24 hours as things go on. And lets be clear, the DRM isn't about pirated games. That was a problem with the Xbox and PS2, yet the 360 and PS3 didn't have super DRM. The DRM is about used games and the publishers being undercut by Gamestop. There is overwhelming data to back up that the used game market is crushing sections of the video game industry, causing studios to go out of business. Microsoft does not give a shit about pirated games. But publisher do give a shit about used games being sold one day after the release of the 20 million dollar title. Ever stopped to think why companies such as GameStop sell used games? It's because publishers barely share any of the revenue with distributors. It wouldn't have to if publishers weren't so greedy to take everything for themselves. If it was more profitable for GameStop to sell new games, then guess what? They wouldn't even waste time in the used game market. Another way to confirm this point is the online prices of games. They cost exactly the same as in at the stores!!! This is insane! If distributors actually got a noticeable part of the revenue then this wouldn't make sense at all. Selling your product online is even much preferable because it's cheaper for publishers and offers them total control and yet somehow they still charge the full retail price for products online. It really goes to show the level of greed of these guys. Day one DLC with basic in game elements, games being released way before they are actually ready and lots of anti consumer features - the list goes on and on. These guys will do anything to squeeze every last bit of dime out of customers (and distributors) and they are not afraid to sacrifice the product's quality to do so. And now, in the midst of this, Microsoft is for some reason hell bent on helping these greedy **** The used game issue is a problem created by developers and publishers themselves and so is it if they can't make ends meet. If they didn't all have these ridiculous bloated development cost to produce the next generic rip off of what is currently the most popular game they wouldn't be in this situation. EA for instance needed to sell 5 000 000 copies of Dead Space 3(which has become more and more generic as the series goes on) in order to find profit in continuing the series! And has this ridiculous production cost made it any more of a better game than so many others? If these are the criteria for success then of course some people are going to fail! We see many examples of where games marked to niche audiences achieve great success but somehow it still seems like a battle for so many to create the most expensive game with the "broadest appeal" ever... :/ Games are hard to make and cost money. Look at the Skull Girls Kickstarter if you want to see exactly how much it cost. None of this stuff is easy, it all takes smart, talented people to make those games. People who claim game budgets are bloated, or that online sales should be cheaper(because CDs somehow got expensive to stamp) don't really have a firm understanding as to how hard making games is. Its like people who thing making a website is easy and can happen instantly. Or that Game of Thrones could be sold to people on a per viewer basis at cost by HBO. People undervalue the cost making making things they can't hold in their hands. For one who have absolutely no idea how making a game works, you sure like to boast that you do. If big triple A titles with massive amount of marketing doesn't work, then something is surely wrong with the budget, no? Yes, making a game costs money. But making a below average game with slightly better graphics costs a lot more money. People rather have a decent game than a bad one with foto realistic brown elements with twice the development money spent on marketing (looking at you EA). If you traffic sites like Giant Bomb, who has game developers on their site almost weekly, you learn a lot about how games are made. Their videos of Bastion is amazing to watch and learn how the build that game from the ground up. And learning how things are made is a hobby of mine and I like games a lot. But the Skull Girls kickstarter is a good place just to see how much it cost to make one 2d fighting game characters. The price, $150,000 per character. And people who worked on games did the math during the whole discussion and determined that the guys making the characters were getting paid less than $8 an hour. Kickstarter is for developers without publishers (and I can't find anything on skull girls except a calendar). its not a good indication what it costs to make a game in real life. It also depends heavily on what type of game you're making, what you're focusing on, amount of cutscenes, graphics, game mechanics, level design, etc. It can cost anything from hundred thousand to many many millions of dollars. edit: What does this have to do with the new XBone again? You claimed publishers were greedy. I said the games cost a lot and they would like to make money off used game sales. Pointed out that I don't work in games and I admitted as much, but I follow the industry very closely, including development. And you can find a good write up on the Skull Girls thing on Giant Bomb. Just type in Skull Girls and looking for the actical write by Patrick Cleping. 150k/char is excessive. SF4 has like 30-35 characters... even just using the same 10 week development time from the skullgirls campaign that would be over 5 years to develop... I see no reason for it to take 10 weeks to make one character. I also dont see what they are being paid for if they arent doing the animation in house. What? The teams and systems they're using are very, very different. Skull girls is very high framerate hand drawn animation, SF4 uses 3D models. The animation involved in Skull Girls is way more complex than Bastion or Dust, plus there's a lot of balancing and things that had to go into it as well.
That is understandable and would explain the animation costs... but what are the developers doing for 10 weeks if the animation is outsourced? What are the developers doing that takes 10 weeks?
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On June 08 2013 03:06 Blacktion wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 02:04 Plansix wrote:
Prices will go down as quickly as they do on amazon and steam, have no doubt.
No chance. If microsoft get rid of store distribution the live store will have a complete monopoly on xbox games. Why let the price drop when you can hold it up and make more money, what are gamers gonna do? Boycott your games? Remember the MW2 boycott group on steam? The one full of people playing MW2, well that was one game, now imagine trying to get people to boycott all games. Amazon and steam prices drop because of competition. Console online store already charge way more than steam/amazon, imagine if they had the chance to charge even more without customers having the chance to take their money elsewhere. Heres an example btw. PS3 version of Red Dead Redemption. Remember the online price should be lower because the cost of physically making and delivering a game is much higher than delivering digitally. Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-Dead-Redemption-Game-Edition/dp/B005EPHVMQ/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1370617840&sr=8-3&keywords=red dead redemption£17.28, delivered, includes all DLC (GotY edition) PSN: Cant take a screenshot because i dont have a capture card, but its £31.99, including the game + Undead nightmare DLC (dont know if theres any other DLC, but if there is its not included in this price, so on amazon you might even get more product for less money) Online store, which should be cheaper is £14.71 more expensive for a comparable product. Hell even the base game is dearer on PSN (23.99) than Game+DLC on amazon. Think this is a PSN only phenomenon? Guess again. SC2: https://eu.battle.net/account/management/sc2/services/upgrade.htmlUpgrade online, Already have fully updated WoL so no product to deliver, should be the cheapest way to get the product. £32.99 Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Starcraft-II-Heart-Swarm-Mac/dp/B00A6OP29E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370628154&sr=8-1&keywords=HotS£25.99, delivered I dont have a WiiU/360, but those of you who do can look at their store, willing to bet you find 10 games on there that are more expensive in their stores than they are from amazon or most other retailers for every 1 you find cheaper. And people seem to think this will get better if these companies have monopolies over there games sales?
Pretty much this . The digital sales platform for both the PS3/Xbox 360 charge ludicrous prices. 60€ for Catherine ( LINK ) on PSN which is 2 year old mind you while i can get a retail copy for 15-20€ .
The only way for prices to drop is competetion which just doesn't exist wth digital markets for console. There's no PNS or Xbix-love or whatever that sells the same product and is in competition with the official stores.
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