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[reprinted from my blog]
I recently watched a Kickstarter video by Chris Taylor, a gut wrenching video of a man who has bet the farm on one golden egg. This video is very much a reality for a significant portion of the industry. I have certainly felt this kind of failure in my own life and yes it feels as bad as it looks. In full disclosure, I did choose to support this campaign. Was it the game or the video? I can't really say, but I know that GPG, like so many other studios, is one I hope survives the crash. This video is also the inspiration for much of what I am about to say...
I am feeling somewhat melancholy these days. Companies are having a massive shift right now, one that I'm not sure will result in a stronger industry in the end. Publisher-owned companies are being picked apart, independent development studios are on the verge of closure, and major licensing parties like Disney are starting to retract on their promise to deliver first-party content.
Even the iOS platform, the Shangri La of indie development, seems to be losing steam as developers complain about the saturated markets and lack of revenue potential.
The future may paint a picture with flying cars and brain jacks but right now it's starting to feel a whole lot like 1980 all over again. The Wii U seems to have landed fairly soft and the shelves look to be in full supply. The current generation of consoles are still selling but the adoption rate of games are declining.
More people are using their Xbox and PS3 as glorified Netflix boxes than anything else these days. Gaming media is hungry for anything that will excite them but the biggest news in months has mostly been a handful of $100 Android consoles that aren't likely to reshape the face of video games. Either companies are holding secrets close to their chest or they are as clueless as we think they are about what to do next.
The world may finally be on the upswing of this whole economic collapse, but that might be exactly what turns the knife for games. As the economy improves and people go back to work, they just don't have time that they did when they were sitting around waiting for the phone to ring.
It is entirely possible that many of the people we market to just don't exist anymore. It is entirely possible that the market space has gotten smaller, not bigger. Or maybe; just maybe, people aren't excited about games and their buying habits have shifted to widgets and gizmos that let their brains climax even faster than games can provide.
If people are shifting away from Facebook in favor of even shorter bursts of entertainment like Snapchat then what makes you think they are will to sit through the loading screen of your $1 App? Perhaps what we need is to shift the way we think or take a step back and reconsider who the fans of games are and how we can appeal to them again.
The "safe" bet for the future of video games is to continue on the path of even higher production cycles, resulting in even shorter but more impactful experiences. I have no doubt that EA, Activision, and Ubisoft will continue the tradition but I wonder if the safe bet is the right one to make. THQ was a mid-tier publishing house in a AAA world and it crushed them.
Indie developers are the grunge-bands of the gaming industry, but unfortunately only like 2 bands ever broke out of bar scene and into the main stage. For a myriad of restrictive reasons, it is entirely possible that the same may happen here as well.
We may not want to admit it but we are experiencing a crash. And many of us will cite that the future is online and that NPD is a lie but real companies with real people are shutting down at an alarming rate.
They are shutting down more frequently than you hear about new companies actually producing something unique and special and worth talking about. And that is the real source of my concerns... Does an industry lose its passion when it becomes so large, or is it just too noisy to focus on what excites us as gamers anymore?
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Many people have been complaining about the app store almost since it came about. Many screamed about how amazing it was to have an open platform (though its only semi open) but others saw the dangers in it. In a business sense the app store has done far more damage to the industry than good. People fought so hard to get their game/app noticed and played that they didn't think about the consequences it would have; the inevitable race to free. Consumers just saw this as getting a steal on a product, and as such they've come to expect it. It was a good experiment, but its time to go back to at least mildly curated platforms. We aren't doomed, but it is going to really suck for awhile.
Simultaneously, the barriers to entry been coming down rapidly over the past decade. There's been a gradual accumulation and stabilization of consumer computing standards and cross-platform technologies; the technology for the "basic needs" of games has become mostly commoditized, and prefab asset collections are only going to get bigger. All that, in addition to the digital download revolution. Videogame creation as a hobby is a very realistic aspiration nowadays, and a major part of the industry's reformation seems to revolve around these low barriers. The recent history in other fields is very inspirational in that sense - print publishing, music, etc. have many stories to share. It's definitely not an easy market, but the history elsewhere indicates that creators are usually more empowered by the changes, if not particularly richer.
Maybe the surest bets will come from a combination of tool and service providers who can address the demographic trends or pioneer new ones, and creators who can tap into the traditions again and go "back to basics" on modest budgets - say, $100k to $3m, rather than $10m+.
The problem of time consumption to create is the tools, but it's also the barrier that keeps the developer in a job. The tools aren't creating enough a significantly different experience in comparison to consumer consumption though.
What I don't believe is there isn't enough material out there to work on to create new experiences, what I think is the problem is the experiences already out there are already consuming too much of our lives, and games still have the same relevance they did importance-wise as 50 years ago. They are primarily for relaxation and story telling, learning , or in the case of young adults exercise and learning.
The market is over-saturated, peruse greenlight you'll see.
I think it's wonderful that people create hobby horses and go away with them and there is room for some to actually make a good deal of money in the exchange. But at the end of the day video games are an exchange, you can't eat them, or or build a shelter out of them conventionally, or easily even cloth yourself with them. While they are fascinating, and possibilities quite limitless there is an end capacity for consumption. And video games in particular don't offer enough essential social interaction.
To not bank everyone's livelihood on game production demonstrates wisdom and it may be that not seeing all ends is largely the problem also. Many developers are betting the bank and losing, and not from a lack of polish, but market saturation.
Personally I'm overwhelmed with the amount of choice out there. And I can tell you from what little I have seen of this game, I wouldn't upvote it on greenlight, even with massive amounts of polish. It doesn't stand out, I don't see this game making a difference. There is no amiable story except that of the developer and I don't see that in this labor of love. ~ Just my input, though I also don't see this as a reason to not spend time on his dream. Follow the dream, don't fall over it.
Make a more appealing product and over-saturation doesn't really matter.
This is something we hear all the time but for some reason there is still an arrogance out there and some developers feel if they have the technical skills, work hard on a product and release it, they're entitled to make money off it. It's one step up from the underpants gnome mentality to making money.
Are you saying my gnomes need underpants before they can start making money?
Also saying that over-saturation doesn't matter if you have an appealing product is very simplistic. In fact many appealing products fail in the IOS/Android space because they are lost in the noise. Marketing games on those channels is incredibly expensive and way out of the reach of most small indies
Appealing is obviously subjective, but I guess I'm coming from the simplistic old fashioned thinking that if you build something that is original, fun, high quality, polished or in other words well above average, then they will come.
I just don't think the overwhelming apps that are lost in the noise as you say, meet that criteria. They're kinda just... more noise. As is often said, 90% of everything is...
I never had a bad review, most of my critic reviews are 4/5 ot 5/5, and my average rating in the stores summed is 4.8
Yet right now I am only throwing cash at a black hole, and getting only some hawking radiation back, not even my 100% free (the apps were made to show test some stuff in the market, it is not lite, has zero ads, zero IAP...) content is getting traction, specially on iOS. (on Android where the search system is better, and where a "new" section still exists, we have some downloads, on iOS downloads tanked on iOS6 update + new iTunes).
But you say that you got your inspiration for this discussion after watching Chris Taylor's KickStarter campaign.
So let's talk about Chris Taylor's KickStarter campaign. I couldn't find anything unique or something that really grabbed me and said hey, we're trying to make something that's never been done before. Even though he actually said that during his video, but he never really explained what exactly that something "different" was. It was all vague information.
It wasn't until the Update video #4 that he sat down with his audience and went into a little more detail about what that something new was. That's when my interest really picked up in the project. In my opinion he should have brought this information more to the front instead of completely drowning it with vague terms in the beginning. I realize that you almost have to start out vague, but I think clarity should have come in much sooner than it did.
"It is entirely possible that the market space has gotten smaller, not bigger. Or maybe; just maybe, people aren't excited about games and their buying habits have shifted to widgets and gizmos that let their brains climax even faster than games can provide."
I think people are really excited about games still.
The Games category of KickStarter had the most pledged in 2012 with $83,144,565 pledged. It also had the most pledges at 1,378,143. I realize that encompasses all games and not just video games but it's still substantial figures when compared to the other categories.
On the other hand, I've seen some pretty terrible and boring video pitches that shoot past their goal on reputation alone. I think maybe Chris might have felt a little betrayed perhaps, though I can't speak for him. Supreme Commander and Dungeon Siege have obviously sold more than 7k copies, so where are the fans? Why aren't they supporting this on his reputation alone? I think maybe that is the question that has yet to be answered.
How did Project Eternity or Star Citizen scream past their goals on just a pretty screenshot and a man with a plan? It's a strange world, ya know?
Based upon the pitch video and description, at first I thought it was just another ARPG.
What the game is really about is actually explained better in the Update Video #4. But you really don't want potential backers to have to go through the trouble of finding what the game is really about, when those potential backers already think it is something else.
I realize several KickStarter campaigns have greatly succeeded with reputation alone. But at the same time, there have been others still, who have tried to rely heavily on their reputation to be successful on KickStarter only to find they didn't have the support or backing they were hoping for. Chris wasn't the first.
I do feel badly for both Chris and his team and can't even imagine the disappointment they must be going through.
I'm going to back the project and I really do hope it reaches its goal!
Some of the waves buffeting the game industry right now are:
* More of the general public play games now. The kinds of games that get made are already changing to adapt to the kinds of people who've started playing.
* The economy is improving but still bad, suppressing general sales.
* More new platforms all the time. Success is not guaranteed (PS Vita), but opportunity nearly is.
* There will still be many, many PCs in the foreseeable future. It remains a viable target market.
* The older non-gaming generations are slowly being replaced by younger people who've gamed all their lives.
I don't know which of these is most influential over the next 2-5 years. I'd guess that last one, and would consider making games that parents could feel OK buying for their kids (which does not imply looking or playing like a Teletubbies episode).