Because gamers are worthless

the incredible pudding

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Again, the fear I think is being expressed is that the race to the bottom might not be sustainable in the long term, and could have a negative impact on some developers or certain games. Theoretical more than anything, barring in the few cases where developers have spoken out about it. Above all, I think the central frustration that prices are being driven ever downwards is a reasonable one that can't be dismissed, and that in some respects the model has unfortunately distorted what is deemed a 'reasonable' price by many consumers.

It certainly is a problem. Those developers who've made decent games but haven't quite made as big a name for themselves as the most popular indie developers will struggle. I don't think the bust is going to be as bad as something like the crash in the early eighties, there are many reasons for this, the primary one being the comparative ease of creating and publishing the games, but I do think there will be some kind of crash where a lot of developers go out of business. It is likely that some pretty creative people are being badly affected by this.

I actually think the race to the bottom has helped keep some treading water though, if you think of the humble bundles for example, one could get the bundle for one game only, and thus support (even a tiny bit) the publisher of another game in the bundle. 100,000 people do this and you've got a small cash injection that pays the rent and puts food on the table.

It's not a glamorous occupation, that's for sure. I doubt many but the most cynical free-to-play, pay-to-win bull**** developers (I'm looking at you King) are in it for the money. It's like being a musician, in that it's a creative art that requires a degree of technical skill that you'll likely just get by on. Some will see the famous group get rich from playing and think why don't I get rich like that? Whilst others will be doing what they love and doing okay will be enough.

I'd actually say Sony are shooting themselves and developers in the foot far more than Steam or Humble Bundles are. The 'it'll be free on Plus' attitude means many will buy the big games and wait until the more unusual ones are completely free. I'd love to know what kind of 'compensation' developers receive when their games are up on the service (not all of them can make up the difference with boosted DLC sales), because I think the Plus model - for its incredible benefits - is also eating into future revenues for everyone involved. Sadly we can only speculate as the specifics of the service seem as secretive as can be! Sony must offer something really appealing, but I'm at a loss as to how they sustain that for six games a month given they have a finite fund to work with. But then I suppose even 50c from all subscribers is a serious chunk of change.

Yeah the Sony model is pretty strange. It would be curious to see some information on the deals they have with the publishers alright. They've sold a pretty ridiculous number of consoles now though and I guess if they choose some games whose sales have trailed off (and that is something that happens to pretty much every game) then the math must work, financially for them at least. It's a pretty logical step in some ways if you think about it. I'd argue that it's placating to the switch in our consumer culture, the fact that now people wants everything! They want the choice regardless of whether they'll use it all or not. They can use Netflix to see every tv show, spotify to listen to music and Sony's service to get some games that they might not have gotten to play otherwise. Okay, it's not the exact same thing and the lack of success of those playing live-stream games goes against the argument but I think people expect to be spoiled for choice these days. We're all greedy bastards!

Interested Observer

You just cost us money

I find this line absolutely bizarre. Nobody put a gun to anyones head and forced them to make an indie game. Just smacks of entitlement or something.

So many industries work on incredibly tight margins. If a game costs $10 and the developer makes a clear profit of $1 then that sounds reasonable enough. Want a lot of sales? Make a good game.

richymcdermott

Bruce campbell said it best , if you want things to change vote with your wallet. The industry has shaped because on how we consumers spend our money. I do not think we will see a drastic change because alot of people do not like the concept of paying 400-500 for a next gen system just to play indie games and rather prefer the most realistic facial models and grass over new concept and breathe of fresh air gameplay. Its sad but its reality.

So instead of doing the right thing and long time coming releasing the shakles for small protojeys With so much potential to come in we sort of allowed some studios to be the sound of keys to these big dogs that have the loudest bark to wild up people to join services like psn and xbla.

I still firmly stand by what I said previous if you expect coming to an industry thinking its all roses because you made one game you are going to be ****ed before you even step in the door.

What I hate most is the entitled some may seem that because we did not support there game we are to blame.

Have to bring up phil fish again cause since he is the pinnacle of everything I despise in a person , to treat your consumer base the way he has deserves nothing imo. Recently telling people to **** off and calling a person entitled gamer for simply addressing call your fans who made you and fez something all the names in the world deserve to go to the abyss and never return.

You find these people everywhere you go but like fish , Johnathan blow , cliff blenzinski , David jaffe etc.. You treat us like we are worthless you get nothing off me.

I would not even pirate fez , thats how much fish gets on my nerves.

ressem

Interested Observer wrote: »

I find this line absolutely bizarre. Nobody put a gun to anyones head and forced them to make an indie game. Just smacks of entitlement or something.

So many industries work on incredibly tight margins. If a game costs $10 and the developer makes a clear profit of $1 then that sounds reasonable enough. Want a lot of sales? Make a good game.

His article is about people expecting support for the product that they've got from a steam sale / humble bundle for the price of a cup of coffee, and that if the customer is going to give them grief, the 3 person indie dev team should be able to just put them on ignore, as realistically the cost of answering greatly exceeds their value as a potential future customer.

johnny_ultimate

richymcdermott wrote:

You find these people everywhere you go but like fish , Johnathan blow , cliff blenzinski , David jaffe etc.. You treat us like we are worthless you get nothing off me.

Artists should be free to defend their work, their livelihood and themselves. As long as they don't step over lines of reason and decency - sadly something Phil Fish is not always able to do, although some of the personal abuse and vitriol directed at him is also absolutely disgraceful - they should feel free to be outspoken as much as they want.

Gaming needs more Jonathan Blows to be frank, and not just because he's a brilliant game maker - we need more talented artists willing to articulate and confront some of the deep rooted hypocrisies, problems and limitations of the young medium they're working in. Games aren't going anywhere fast if we're willing to accept the status quo, and certainly not if the developers are. Nobody gets it right all the time, and some people get it wrong more than they get it right. But outspoken, provocative creators are to be encouraged, as long as they don't actively insult everyone in the process and their provocations have genuine worth. I'm sure most are very, very grateful to players that they have been successful, but they shouldn't be afraid to critique and criticise either.

And any accusations of 'entitlement'* we can direct at developers can be directed just as much if not considerably more so at many players for their crazy demands and often unreasonable expectations. I know if I had to suffer through the level of ignorance, abuse and nonsense many developers do I'd seriously struggle to keep quiet about it. The opening blog is absolutely right - it's almost as if the gaming community or more accurately incredibly vocal sections of it (let's call it The Mob) have a collective rage fit whenever someone dares question consensus. I recoil in horror every time I see the responses to anyone who tries to rationally discuss the role of women in games, for example. The most vocal gamers are sometimes the cruelest, the most ignorant and the most obnoxious. They don't deserve any one's respect.

*whatever you do, don't use the 'e' word in certain parts of the Internet unless you want a world of pain :pac:

richymcdermott

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Artists should be free to defend their work, their livelihood and themselves. As long as they don't step over lines of reason and decency - sadly something Phil Fish is not always able to do, although some of the personal abuse and vitriol directed at him is also absolutely disgraceful - they should feel free to be outspoken as much as they want.

Gaming needs more Jonathan Blows to be frank, and not just because he's a brilliant game maker - we need more talented artists willing to articulate and confront some of the deep rooted hypocrisies, problems and limitations of the young medium they're working in. Games aren't going anywhere fast if we're willing to accept the status quo, and certainly not if the developers are. Nobody gets it right all the time, and some people get it wrong more than they get it right. But outspoken, provocative creators are to be encouraged, as long as they don't actively insult everyone in the process and their provocations have genuine worth. I'm sure most are very, very grateful to players that they have been successful, but they shouldn't be afraid to critique and criticise either.

And any accusations of 'entitlement' we can direct at developers can be directed just as much if not considerably more so at many players for their crazy demands and often unreasonable expectations. I know if I had to suffer through the level of ignorance, abuse and nonsense many developers do I'd seriously struggle to keep quiet about it. The opening blog is absolutely right - it's almost as if the gaming community or more accurately incredibly vocal sections of it (let's call it The Mob) have a collective rage fit whenever someone dares question consensus. I recoil in horror every time I see the responses to anyone who tries to rationally discuss the role of women in games, for example. The most vocal gamers are sometimes the cruelest, the most ignorant and the most obnoxious. They don't deserve any one's respect.

Unrealistic expectations from gamers is matched by the millions and millions of dollars publishers or developers pump into marketing. How many times have we seen something like a dead island trailer and people go wow i cannot wait till this game comes out then when the product comes out it flops so studios close because on the martketing is fake.

This goes with movies industry aswell , they cannot be honest to its audience so when all the marketing money they never recoup because slow word of mouth just how poor a game is admittely we see season passes and dlc.

I have no problem with people defending there game but when it comes to attacking the people that make you a living by all means keep digging that hole.


Difference between a 15 year old kid who demands and a 30 so called professional fightning instead of ignoring and staying quiet and being professional as the industry is a business we see two immature idiots fighting that just pisses off then a group of consumers.

Normally I am very passive but fish deserves everything he gets imo ,he quit twitter and now is back to fight with more people instead of being the bigger man. Remember also he took peoples money and in his own words ran instead of making fez 2 which is basically just like every other game we seen in the past by japanese developers like echochrome but fish think japanese developers suck apprently.

gizmo

richymcdermott wrote: »

Unrealistic expectations from gamers is matched by the millions and millions of dollars publishers or developers pump into marketing. How many times have we seen something like a dead island trailer and people go wow i cannot wait till this game comes out then when the product comes out it flops so studios close because on the martketing is fake.

I can't think of any to be fair?

Specifically in the case of Dead Island, Deep Silver wouldn't have paid huge money to Axis to make that trailer, the game itself was pretty well received and both the developer and publisher are still going relatively strong.

More generally speaking, I would have thought the purpose of the more vague CGI trailers was fairly obvious. Get the general feel of the game across, get people talking about the game and get the hype machine rolling. Hate it or not, the problem is, it has been proven to work with sales of heavily marketed games nearly consistently pushing sales figures upwards.

richymcdermott wrote: »

Difference between a 15 year old kid who demands and a 30 so called professional fightning instead of ignoring and staying quiet and being professional as the industry is a business we see two immature idiots fighting that just pisses off then a group of consumers.

One of the problems with being an independent developer is that you're inevitably going to be much closer to the front line when dealing with customers (or gamers, if you will) than your usual studio dev. As a result, you're probably going to be getting a lot more horrific **** thrown at you. If you follow some of them on Twitter you'll see even the nicest indie devs occasionally comment on some of the horrible abuse they've received or how they've had to simply block people and filter emails because it got too much. You can call it being professional or having thick skin but at some point, everyone cracks, whether it's replying directly to some of their more unsavoury critics or simply walking away completely. In either case, I find it hard to blame them as a person and can only be glad I'm not in a similar position simply because I want to make video games for a living.

richymcdermott wrote: »

Normally I am very passive but fish deserves everything he gets imo ,he quit twitter and now is back to fight with more people instead of being the bigger man. Remember also he took peoples money and in his own words ran instead of making fez 2 which is basically just like every other game we seen in the past by japanese developers like echochrome but fish think japanese developers suck apprently.

As for Fish, I whole heartedly disagree, no one deserves the kind of **** that's gotten thrown at him, no one. For every ignorant comment he's made in the abrasive manner in which he occasionally makes them, and there's been quite a few, the amount of vitriol that's been directed at him has been returned tenfold. As for his most recent return, that was clearly for very different and far more horrible reasons than the Fez 2 tweet.

richymcdermott

Telling people to go kill themselves , gamers are the worse than serial killers , rapist and child abusers you are clearly asking for it. We all suffered from verbal abuse one time or another in our lives , you do not get a free pass for being a douche to what a million of the people who bought fez and made you successful.

There are people out there in jobs that they do not even get credit for doing , no one will remember there name and work just as much ****ty hours and prob be paid less and the only accomplishment they have is putting a roof over there head and food on the table.

Now does that make developers job any less difficult ? No I am sure coding is very difficult task to do and meeting deadlines might be a right bitch but I prefer to support a company like cd projekt than a ego man child like fish.

If he was really get that much **** then there was no need to come back to twitter.


I dont See G.R.R. Martin calling game of thrones fans all the name in the world and he gets more abuse

Christopher nolan fans gave so much abuse to journalist who did not give dark knight rises a 10/10

Ben affleck got alot of abuse for being batman in the new batman v superman movie. He handled it like a professional.


I can understand seeing someone speaking there minds and appaulding it but ego overstep boundaries when I listen to him everytime.
I do not mind if he structured his words in a better manner than simply fcuk you all you owe me attitude

Kirby

Well said.

There is a difference between entitlement and expecting a certain standard. If a person acts and says things like Fish did, it speaks more to their character than any nameless troll. He's supposed to be an professional and an adult. He acts like neither.

gizmo

richymcdermott wrote: »

Telling people to go kill themselves , gamers are the worse than serial killers , rapist and child abusers you are clearly asking for it. We all suffered from verbal abuse one time or another in our lives , you do not get a free pass for being a douche to what a million of the people who bought fez and made you successful.

Generally speaking I'd strongly agree with you on the first point alone except in this case it was a quote from Futurama.

richymcdermott wrote: »

There are people out there in jobs that they do not even get credit for doing , no one will remember there name and work just as much ****ty hours and prob be paid less and the only accomplishment they have is putting a roof over there head and food on the table.

Now does that make developers job any less difficult ? No I am sure coding is very difficult task to do and meeting deadlines might be a right bitch but I prefer to support a company like cd projekt than a ego man child like fish.

Personally I'd prefer to get no recognition for my work than get some recognition and be inundated with abuse from people over a number of years while working on a project. To make matters worse if I was to respond to these people in anything approaching a similar manner I would be deemed "unprofessional".

richymcdermott wrote: »

If he was really get that much **** then there was no need to come back to twitter.

Again, he came back for a very different reason. If you're unaware of the nonsense that's gone on over the last day or so with another indie dev then consider yourself lucky.

richymcdermott wrote: »

I dont See G.R.R. Martin calling game of thrones fans all the name in the world and he gets more abuse

Actually Martin recently said of fans who were concerned he would die before finishing the GoT series of books, "**** you to those people".

richymcdermott wrote: »

Christopher nolan fans gave so much abuse to journalist who did not give dark knight rises a 10/10

Ben affleck got alot of abuse for being batman in the new batman v superman movie. He handled it like a professional.

Do these people have a presence online though? Were their twitter and email addresses bombarded with abuse and hate mail? On one hand it's easy to not engage these people when you can't see it, but with indie developers needing exposure for their games given the nature of the industry and budgets at their disposal, they quote often don't have the luxury to detach themselves in such a manner.

richymcdermott wrote: »

I can understand seeing someone speaking there minds and appaulding it but ego overstep boundaries when I listen to him everytime.
I do not mind if he structured his words in a better manner than simply fcuk you all you owe me attitude

I do agree with you here, I'd much prefer if he worded his retorts in a more civil manner but as I said, given the nature and volume of abuse he got I guess it got to the point where he didn't feel that would work anymore. Not that his current approach proved much more effective. I'm certainly not defending him, for instance if you'll look back you'll see I was the one who created the thread criticising him for his comments on Japanese games. To reiterate though, just because he says a couple of things I don't agree with or I find abrasively worded doesn't mean I think it's okay to verbally abuse him personally.

nesf

To veer back on topic, I found an interesting blog post by Chris Park (AI War) that is talking about sales numbers back in 2010. The most interesting part is what indie companies were being told to expect for low/medium/high sales back in 2009. A high selling game might ship out 50,000 copies, a low selling one would expect under 1,000. Note this was before the big indie push by Steam, Impulse, Gamersgate etc and the ignition of the industry.

http://christophermpark.blogspot.ie/2010/03/q-pc-indie-game-sales-numbers.html

You can contrast it to what I linked on the first page by him. In 2010 Steam accounted for just 30% of the AI War sales, by 2013 it accounted for over 90% and sales figures had massively increased (he talks of making 180,000 dollars in 24 hours during a flash sale during a Steam Sale in 2011, which was unimaginable in 2009 where total sales of 50k were considered to be doing very well for yourself).


There are definitely some lost sales with the deep discounting that happens but don't let any developer fool you into thinking it was some kind of utopia before the discounters started marketing and selling these games at low prices. The market for Indie games is undoubtedly bigger in 2014 but it wouldn't surprise if me if the average new game by a new developer would have similar realistic expectations to that game coming out in 2009. A rare few would exceed these expectations but the average developer should have been happy to see 20k or 30k sales on their first game. They were a moderate indie success at that stage even though those numbers don't cover much of a budget.

richymcdermott

gizmo wrote: »

Generally speaking I'd strongly agree with you on the first point alone except in this case it was a quote from Futurama.



Personally I'd prefer to get no recognition for my work than get some recognition and be inundated with abuse from people over a number of years while working on a project. To make matters worse if I was to respond to these people in anything approaching a similar manner I would be deemed "unprofessional".



Again, he came back for a very different reason. If you're unaware of the nonsense that's gone on over the last day or so with another indie dev then consider yourself lucky.



Actually Martin recently said of fans who were concerned he would die before finishing the GoT series of books, "**** you to those people".



Do these people have a presence online though? Were their twitter and email addresses bombarded with abuse and hate mail? On one hand it's easy to not engage these people when you can't see it, but with indie developers needing exposure for their games given the nature of the industry and budgets at their disposal, they quote often don't have the luxury to detach themselves in such a manner.



I do agree with you here, I'd much prefer if he worded his retorts in a more civil manner but as I said, given the nature and volume of abuse he got I guess it got to the point where he didn't feel that would work anymore. Not that his current approach proved much more effective. I'm certainly not defending him, for instance if you'll look back you'll see I was the one who created the thread criticising him for his comments on Japanese games. To reiterate though, just because he says a couple of things I don't agree with or I find abrasively worded doesn't mean I think it's okay to verbally abuse him personally.

If I remember correctly with the nolan fans some were given loads of journalist abuse over there review on twitter and some tried to get them fired.

If his reasons for coming back to twitter were more than just to pick a fight with people then there should be better places to go to thats more behind the scenes.

I know you gave your fair share of critisim towards fish as just as most of us but I just have less sympathy For the man after all the outlandish things he comes out with.

But hes not the only one , cliff , david jaffe are other people who have to much to say but with jaffe.

This topic bringing up these developers ties in with this thread. Gamers are worthless why are we made out to be the plauge ? I would of thought developers being more humble to there consumerbase to get fans than just throwing insults at us. Should these people deserve our money in the end ?

It seems to me its the rockstar mentality with some of these guys.


Going back to the thing about waiting for deals that make games value worthless I do not think its that black and white.

I see it as its broken down to 3 brackets.

1. Are the people who will buy it day 1 as they are most excited for your game , they are the core base that will buy it regardless of price.

2. Are the ones that are interested but cannot justify the price in case they may not like it or they are willing to buy something else thats right beside the (a) game and can only afford the one so they wait for a price drop.

3. are the ones who have no interest but when over time the game is about year or two years old and see a deal they have a good chance of getting it.


The amount of the developer gets might be less over time but it gathers more Id imagine than having a game still sit on its full cost and no one buying it after its first or second week.

gizmo

richymcdermott wrote: »

This topic bringing up these developers ties in with this thread. Gamers are worthless why are we made out to be the plauge ? I would of thought developers being more humble to there consumerbase to get fans than just throwing insults at us. Should these people deserve our money in the end ?

It seems to me its the rockstar mentality with some of these guys.

It's worth pointing out that the Puppygames guys weren't ripping on customers in this manner, nor were they throwing insults at them, in fact they said the complete opposite.

Customers all think they’re worth everything in the entire world to us. The funny thing is, you are. Without customers, we’re dead in the water, homeless and living in a cardboard box outside Berko sewage plant.

He then goes on to talk about customers individually but again this should be treated in the context of the article and that means the customers who have paid $1 for their games. In this case, when he talks about post-purchase support, there is a financial argument that those customers aren't "worth" supporting, in the sense that the value of the support offered outweighs the revenue generated from the purchase. That is not to say, however, that he says developers shouldn't or don't support them, there is still a responsibility on their behalf to do so so regardless of the economic sense behind it.

As for whether developers should be humbled by fans? No, I don't think they should. Nor do I think developers owe them anything extra, by default, other than a quality product. If you have fans of a game posting about it on various sites, pre-ordering or buying on Day 1 etc... then yes, that's certainly worthy of thanks from a developer but the idea that the developers "owe" customers or vice-versa is a fundamentally flawed idea imo.

richymcdermott wrote: »

Going back to the thing about waiting for deals that make games value worthless I do not think its that black and white.

I completely agree! I wouldn't for a second say it was black and white. The evidence behind my opinion is, after all, entirely anecdotal and simply based on observations of not just gamers but the reactions of publishers and studios alike to them. None of your subsequent points are hard to argue with either, as I outlined in my original posts I completely recognise there are different kinds of customers with different purchasing habits for different kinds of games and markets. My concern is solely related to the longer term implications of the race to the bottom, price wise, for the "core" games market and, as an extension, for the studios which make games for it.

nesf

It's also worth pointing out that Puppygames have very odd ideas about costs: http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1369

"7 man years" development time and $420,000 development cost for Revenge of the Titans with a 3 man team? If that's a real figure they must like the idea of going bankrupt. Needing over 20,000 copies sold at $20 just to break even on your first low-fi tower defense game? Just, eh, some people were made to be employees.

gizmo

nesf wrote: »

It's also worth pointing out that Puppygames have very odd ideas about costs: http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1369

Their later project choices are questionable too by their own admission. Again though, I don't really think this is relevant to the original blog post since they're not talking specifically talking about themselves.

nesf wrote: »

"7 man years" development time and $420,000 development cost for Revenge of the Titans with a 3 man team? If that's a real figure they must like the idea of going bankrupt. Needing over 20,000 copies sold at $20 just to break even on your first low-fi tower defense game? Just, eh, some people were made to be employees.

Not sure why you're surprised by this figure to be honest. He states that they funded early development while working as an IT contractor so that figure will represent the money spent by the team during its development which, by its very nature will be more protracted since they weren't on it full time. The above blog post actually mentions something relevant to this also.

We needed another 8 months’ cash (which in Puppyland amounts to about £64,000)...

So assuming they kept the team size at three for Battledroid that works out as £2666 gross per month per person or ~£32k per year. This isn't a particularly large amount for a dev in their late 30s or early 40s. It's also worth reading the comments in that article, he's pretty upfront about the whole thing; the reasons they're not on mobile, general sales expectations and their delight when some of their titles did well, how Humble Bundles work, how they go about making their actual games, etc... Perhaps the most relevant reply, however, is this...

hm I am afeared that this blog post may even be taken as whining or whinging; it’s not meant to be. I just thought I should share some of the numbers for people who don’t know anything about the industry after I asked some fans how long they thought Ultratron took to make and got some answers like “3 months” etc. I realised that there was probably some disconnect between the perception of the value of video games and the actual work that goes into making them.

As for Revenge of the Titans itself, to call it just a Tower Defense game is doing it a disservice as the rather neat RTS elements also present certainly make it stand out from other titles in the genre. The visuals too, while being sprite based, are still extremely well done, especially when combined with the other effects on display. All of which, it should be added, is running on their own tech. Not that it really matters in the overall context but it's worth pointing out since there seem to be a good few comments surrounding the article referring to the simplistic look of their games.

nesf

gizmo wrote: »

So assuming they kept the team size at three for Battledroid that works out as £2666 gross per month per person or ~£32k per year. This isn't a particularly large amount for a dev in their late 30s or early 40s.

You don't estimate costs based on how you'd like to be paid. There's an issue here in that the cost to develop something is never the amount of hours you spent on it multiplied by what you think your time is worth per hour.

gizmo wrote: »

As for Revenge of the Titans itself, to call it just a Tower Defense game is doing it a disservice as the rather neat RTS elements also present certainly make it stand out from other titles in the genre. The visuals too, while being sprite based, are still extremely well done, especially when combined with the other effects on display. All of which, it should be added, is running on their own tech. Not that it really matters in the overall context but it's worth pointing out since there seem to be a good few comments surrounding the article referring to the simplistic look of their games.

I'm a rather large tower defense fan, I don't view it as disservice to call it one. :P

gizmo

nesf wrote: »

You don't estimate costs based on how you'd like to be paid. There's an issue here in that the cost to develop something is never the amount of hours you spent on it multiplied by what you think your time is worth per hour.

Oh no, but in the case of an indie developer such as Puppygames, you work it out on how much you need to survive and pay your staff. They've estimated this as £8k per month, I'm the one breaking that down into a figure that, if it were to be taken as a salary alone without any additional studio overheads, wouldn't be particularly unreasonable.

Even the term "budget" can even be difficult to apply in the case of Revenge of the Titans since they had no real investment or cash reserves. They worked externally to support its development so when someone asks "how much did it cost to develop the game", an estimation of the cost based on the time put in is more reasonable than saying it cost nothing because they weren't working on it full time.

nesf

gizmo wrote: »

Oh no, but in the case of an indie developer such as Puppygames, you work it out on how much you need to survive and pay your staff. They've estimated this as £8k per month, I'm the one breaking that down into a figure that, if it were to be taken as a salary alone without any additional studio overheads, wouldn't be particularly unreasonable.

Even the term "budget" can even be difficult to apply in the case of Revenge of the Titans since they had no real investment or cash reserves. They worked externally to support its development so when someone asks "how much did it cost to develop the game", an estimation of the cost based on the time put in is more reasonable than saying it cost nothing because they weren't working on it full time.

Yes, but it begs the question whether they can be doing this full time or not. There seems to be a cohort of indie developers who think they should be able to live doing this but they aren't generating anywhere near the sales numbers needed to do this and they lay the blame at the feet of Steam and Humble Bundle and similar. The thing is it's never been common or even vaguely the norm for indie developers to be able to work at their games full time due to sales volumes being too low, so this doesn't really stand up to scrutiny very well.

Are they entitled to make their money off video games simply because they make them? Obviously the answer is no, so similar to how the vast, vast majority of people who've published a book don't get to write full time and need to make their rent/food money some other way. If the sales aren't there then they simply can't expect to be able to do this full time. It's just that simple unfortunately.

richymcdermott

gizmo wrote: »

It's worth pointing out that the Puppygames guys weren't ripping on customers in this manner, nor were they throwing insults at them, in fact they said the complete opposite.


He then goes on to talk about customers individually but again this should be treated in the context of the article and that means the customers who have paid $1 for their games. In this case, when he talks about post-purchase support, there is a financial argument that those customers aren't "worth" supporting, in the sense that the value of the support offered outweighs the revenue generated from the purchase. That is not to say, however, that he says developers shouldn't or don't support them, there is still a responsibility on their behalf to do so so regardless of the economic sense behind it.

As for whether developers should be humbled by fans? No, I don't think they should. Nor do I think developers owe them anything extra, by default, other than a quality product. If you have fans of a game posting about it on various sites, pre-ordering or buying on Day 1 etc... then yes, that's certainly worthy of thanks from a developer but the idea that the developers "owe" customers or vice-versa is a fundamentally flawed idea imo.



I completely agree! I wouldn't for a second say it was black and white. The evidence behind my opinion is, after all, entirely anecdotal and simply based on observations of not just gamers but the reactions of publishers and studios alike to them. None of your subsequent points are hard to argue with either, as I outlined in my original posts I completely recognise there are different kinds of customers with different purchasing habits for different kinds of games and markets. My concern is solely related to the longer term implications of the race to the bottom, price wise, for the "core" games market and, as an extension, for the studios which make games for it.

when I meant humble I meant in a sense of being grateful and thankful of the support we give these studios which I assume alot started of with two computers and an Ideal goal in mind after they left university, nothing to suggest that we consumers deserve free stuff but I would like to see more developers be more respectful is the word I would rightfully choose.

the bottom comment you mentioned is most rightfully should be take to caution but that's more of a industry problem than a consumer problem.
Indie shackles have been removed and we seen the likes of Nintendo you have to own a building than work in your own home to put your games on our system to a unity base where Indie are been treated almost equal to big publishers but we are far from being in the perfect place for it yet.
the downside is now is indie games are the free buffets to enhance people for buying into services like PSN and Xbla to sign up for a service.

does not help sony have been very quiet how does free psn plus games work so its hard know exactly and the only thing we know about how it works was from retro city rampage developer.

I am the last person to talk about game cost or how steam and other services work but I can only talk about myself as a consumer.

Generic Dreadhead

My face reading Boards.ie "Most words per post Thread 2014" while finding all these interesting points/opinions

mewso

gizmo wrote: »

Again, he came back for a very different reason. If you're unaware of the nonsense that's gone on over the last day or so with another indie dev then consider yourself lucky.

The point still stands though that he probably would've been better off saying nothing about that matter either. Still I've had the figurative popcorn out for the last few days. Great entertainment.

Potatoeman

I think its hard to justify paying even 20 quid for a small indi game when you have AAA games on sale on steam for 5 quid. I got paper please on sale but I also got risen for 3 euro and the darkness for a fiver.
No offense to indi devs but I do think 'is it worth it?' is a valid arguement. Most indi games are only worth a fiver. They should be going for low price large volume. Though they are not making huge money they are not spending huge amounts either and we usually overlook some of the flaws we would have if a AAA title had them.

johnny_ultimate

That's making the judgement that independently developed titles are 'lesser' games than their bigger counterparts. Which I for one couldn't disagree with more. Very few top tier AAA releases match the quality and ambition of the best independent titles. Far from ignoring flaws, I feel the best indie releases highlight the common limitations and design issues of most big budget titles (not that there aren't some excellent ones, of course). Papers Please was by far my favourite release last year, and I say that having played a significant chunk of the most acclaimed 'big' releases. Mario 3D World maybe, and even then I wouldn't say it pushed boundaries to the same degree as the little game about stamping passports. But then that's my own subjective concept of quality, and I interpret 'value' accordingly - I got a lot of big blockbuster releases effectively free on PS Plus, but that didn't change the fact I felt Papers Please was worth every euro I paid at launch. It doesn't bother me in the slightest that I could have gotten a 100 hour RPG for the same price.

I find it interesting to compare the way independent film gets distributed. Fans of low budget and world cinema don't expect a lower price to access them than they'd pay for a blockbuster, and in fact will very often happily pay a premium to watch 'niche' content (although there are also probable socio-economic factors at play there too that aren't as prevalent in gaming yet). The enduring success of the high-end DVD and BluRay market is testament to that, right alongside the emergence of Netflix and the like. There's a 'prestige' factor attached to independent cinema compared to gaming where smaller releases are very often deemed to be of lesser value, regardless of quality. I'll be curious to see if that attitude shifts as the gaming market matures over the next decade.

richymcdermott

independent studios have been around for a long time but its only now they can be free to express and be apart along with aaa studios than being in the background but I do not see it ever happening the industry maturing.

what happened in the sony vs xbox thread ? instead of talking about games people were ranting over resolution and framerate , I was under the impression we would move past graphics after the ps3 and 360 lifecycle ended but nope its all about how many polygons and pixels you see on screen and gameplay and freshness of innovative gameplay design.


I simply can never see indie scene achieving the same level or more praise from the majority of the public with limited budget they have to work with.

it will remain niche as people would rather spend there money on yearly sports, cod, assassin creeds than given other games a chance.

Retr0gamer

richymcdermott wrote: »

I simply can never see indie scene achieving the same level or more praise from the majority of the public with limited budget they have to work with.

Not to sound a bit hipster but the majority of the public are braindead morons. It's not worth paying attention to what they think unless you want your game to reach a big audience to be popular.

nesf

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

I find it interesting to compare the way independent film gets distributed. Fans of low budget and world cinema don't expect a lower price to access them than they'd pay for a blockbuster, and in fact will very often happily pay a premium to watch 'niche' content (although there are also probable socio-economic factors at play there too that aren't as prevalent in gaming yet). The enduring success of the high-end DVD and BluRay market is testament to that, right alongside the emergence of Netflix and the like. There's a 'prestige' factor attached to independent cinema compared to gaming where smaller releases are very often deemed to be of lesser value, regardless of quality. I'll be curious to see if that attitude shifts as the gaming market matures over the next decade.

Indie films average budgets in the 500-750 thousand range. Indie games are usually around 20-40 thousand and considered "big bucks" if they're over 100. Independent film is not distributed digitally on a massive scale. Indie films need to give many more parties a cut than any self published indie game has to. You're really comparing apples to oranges there.

A better comparison is to non-bestseller author fiction being sold through digital distribution. Or digital music distribution.

johnny_ultimate

nesf wrote: »

Indie films average budgets in the 500-750 thousand range. Indie games are usually around 20-40 thousand and considered "big bucks" if they're over 100. Independent film is not distributed digitally on a massive scale. Indie films need to give many more parties a cut than any self published indie game has to. You're really comparing apples to oranges there.

A better comparison is to non-bestseller author fiction being sold through digital distribution. Or digital music distribution.

We'd be here all day if we're counting the differences between the gaming and film markets, that's for sure. And yes, all your points are accurate - I'm raising the point more out of a general comparison than a direct and definitive 'like-to-like' analysis

But I do think there are some similarities. In gaming, definitions of indie gaming is stretching to include the likes of Broken Age, Elite Dangerous, Planetary Annihilation, The Witness, Wasteland 2 etc... Games whose budgets waltz into the seven figure mark easily and have a much longer credit list. I'd say these are comparable in terms of budget to a lot of high profile foreign and independent film releases. It is curious to see the pricing of these 'high budget' independent efforts - particularly the way the Planetary Annihilation developers are taking a gamble and releasing their game at a price comparable to a AAA release.

I'd also say that even as digital distribution in film has become much more prominent, independent and mainstream fare have generally remained on equal footing in terms of cost to the viewer - definitely nowhere near the discrepancies we see in games, even accounting for the differences in budgets. I said it in the thread about Japanese gaming recently, but it wouldn't surprise me if we see more pronounced 'arthouse' markets pop up in gaming to support niche releases, and if the quality is there I can see them getting away with charging a more stable 'premium' price as opposed to a race for the bottom.

There's a certain amount of ambiguity to the word 'indie', perhaps - maybe we should only directly compare one-person games to the no budget fare we occasionally see released in arthouse cinemas or self published authors. To be fair, I'd actually say a comparably decent amount of solo game developers have achieved massive financial success in gaming (even if I'm sure they are the 1% compared to the 99% of penniless indie developers :pac:) - probably more cases off the top of my head than in film or books.

nesf

Here's an example for you: http://steamcharts.com/app/226840

Age of Wonders III was a full price (€40) niche strategy game from an Independent Developer. Not a small outfit by any means, the budget topped the 1 million mark apparently though no official numbers exist (Notch of Minecraft fame backed it quite heavily).

11k concurrent players? Not big by blockbuster games standards but compare it to the 700 odd garnered by Revenge of the Titans or the 1,600 players of Defense Grid, both considered good but not stellar Indie successes. These numbers are at best a proxy of course but peak concurrent gives you some idea of the size of the biggest incoming wave of players into a game.