The "what is a successful game?"/"are exclusives worth it?" cost/benefit thread

[Carl B]

I doubt there was an average of 100 employees working on KZ2 for 4 years. It was probably much less in the first 2 years than the last 2.

From posts #243 and 246 in the thread:

http://www.linkedin.com/companies/guerrilla-games

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4019/development_lessons_from_killzone_.php

My first link shows that even today, GG continues to employee 130 employees. Obviously KZ3 related, along with maybe a secondary project probably leveraging the internal tech.

Shifty's second link shows that when KZ2 development began, they were at 55. When it ended, they had peaked at 190 and were operating for the duration at around 140.

but what about the "propaganda value" of showing what the PS3 can do and gain a foothold in the hardcore gamer crowd?

Discussed at length already, I'm sure you'll agree. (Posts #215-216 for my own take on it though)

 

[Prophecy2k]

Shifty's second link shows that when KZ2 development began, they were at 55. When it ended, they had peaked at 190 and were operating for the duration at around 140.

Carl B,

Weren't they also working on KZ: liberation Front for the PSP during that period also, or am I mixing up the timelines?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Carl B,

Weren't they also working on KZ: liberation Front for the PSP during that period also, or am I mixing up the timelines?

The figures quoted, 55 at start and peak of 190, were in relation to the developement of KZ2, not the studio as a whole, I believe.

Regards,
SB

 

[dobwal]

Is not the level of critical acclaim sharing very little causation to the sales of a game? Nintendo games tend to get a lot less critical acclaim but high sales whilst Sony games tend to get a lot of critical acclaim but lower sales than you would expect and Microsoft games tend to vary.

A title being critical acclaimed doesn't gaurantee high sales, but more often than not crappy titles have crappy sales and good games tend to have good sales. The top 100 selling games of all time can not be equally divided into a crappy games and great games.

There are outliers but critically acclaim games that don't sale well tend to be undermarketed or in a genre thats not typically well accepted by mainstream gamers. Furthermore, I'm sure that your typical game reviewer tends to more hardcore. Thereby, ensuring that their tastes and taste of mainstream gamers don't always line up correctly.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

A title being critical acclaimed doesn't gaurantee high sales, but more often than not crappy titles have crappy sales and good games tend to have good sales. The top 100 selling games of all time can not be equally divided into a crappy games and great games.

There are outliers but critically acclaim games that don't sale well tend to be undermarketed or in a genre thats not typically well accepted by mainstream gamers. Furthermore, I'm sure that your typical game reviewer tends to more hardcore. Thereby, ensuring that their tastes and taste of mainstream gamers don't always line up correctly.

There are also cases where a game is critically acclaimed because it has no mass market appeal. IE - a game that tries something different will often get rewarded even if the majority of people can't stand using the new mechanics.

Regards,
SB

 

[DrJay24]

There are also cases where a game is critically acclaimed because it has no mass market appeal. IE - a game that tries something different will often get rewarded even if the majority of people can't stand using the new mechanics.

Regards,
SB

An example being? Typically critical acclaim comes from being universally liked by reviewers. How can something be universally liked and at the same time a 'majority of people can't stand using the new mechanics'?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Coming from a mostly PC background, I'll have to use a PC game as reference. But one of the biggest ones I can think of was the original System Shock on PC. Critically acclaimed by many reviewers, panned by most consumers.

Thief 1. Again critically acclaimed. Again lackluster sales as the average consumer just wasn't all that interested.

It's sorta like the Oscars. You don't win an Oscar because a lot of people like the movie. You win an Oscar because the right people like the movie.

You see the same thing in games, it's just a lower level of snobbery. Where critical acclaim doesn't always match up with consumer interest. Which isn't to say that it never matches up.

Regards,
SB

 

[DrJay24]

That's completely different point than your previous post. Low sales can mean any number of things, but they do not indicate "majority of people can't stand using the new mechanics." How can the consumer know they hate something if they did not buy it and play it?

People buy or do not buy based on any number of reasons. Reviews, word of mouth, marketing, franchise name, hype, etc. I would argue people buy lots of mediocre games and shovelware titles because it's like junk food, it's what they know. The smaller, possibly higher quality games just go under the radar, not that they do something people hate.

 

[Squilliam]

A title being critical acclaimed doesn't gaurantee high sales, but more often than not crappy titles have crappy sales and good games tend to have good sales. The top 100 selling games of all time can not be equally divided into a crappy games and great games.

There are outliers but critically acclaim games that don't sale well tend to be undermarketed or in a genre thats not typically well accepted by mainstream gamers. Furthermore, I'm sure that your typical game reviewer tends to more hardcore. Thereby, ensuring that their tastes and taste of mainstream gamers don't always line up correctly.

I said causation, not correlation just FYI. There are many different correllations between high sales and high reviews for example but its hard to say even then it directly correlates between them. You could argue even that high reviews just means a wide variety of people enjoyed a certain title a lot and that translates to the general public at large.

In addition to this, whats a 'crappy title'? The idea of what constitutes a quality title hasn't exactly been defined!

 

[obonicus]

System Shock I might give you, but Thief had 2 sequels, with a third planned.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

System Shock had a sequel to, didn't have much to do with its (lack of) success.
Just as we have a Deus Ex 3 coming, and actually I think Thief 4 is under development as well.

 

[obonicus]

Right, a third sequel.

System Shock is a slightly different story, I think. A single sequel doesn't mean much, we know about quite a few games that were moderate disappointments that nonetheless got sequels (EA has done it a lot) to give the IP another shot. Also it might be telling that Irrational didn't get to do anything like it 'til Bioshock.

I think the first Thief was successful, it got a sequel right away (of course, Eidos isn't shy about sequels). Thief 3 came out 4 years later, which probably tells us something about 2 (giving the IP a second chance, possibly, though LGS' demise was undoubtedly a factor) and 4 will be out 6-7 years after 3, which means 3 probably didn't do too great either.

 

[dobwal]

I said causation, not correlation just FYI. There are many different correllations between high sales and high reviews for example but its hard to say even then it directly correlates between them. You could argue even that high reviews just means a wide variety of people enjoyed a certain title a lot and that translates to the general public at large.

Hence, my first statement, "A title being critical acclaimed doesn't gaurantee high sales". Basically I was trying to infer the fact there exist no deterministic (simple cause and effect) relationship between high reviews and high sales. I was not mistaking the two but rather pointing in the second part of my statement that strong correlations do exist and are readily demonstrated.

Whether this correlation exists because both concepts are a reflection of quality, some other factor or there exist actual causality (high reviews actually positively and directly influencing sales) is something that can only be answered through scientific study. Something that probably no one here has the capability of doing. Furthermore, a capability that seems to escape those in the industry that have the funding and the contacts. Its seems to me the industry has a hard time coming to grip with the concept of scientific method or proper statistical analysis for me to take seriously.

In addition to this, whats a 'crappy title'? The idea of what constitutes a quality title hasn't exactly been defined!

"Crappy" is what ever you define it to be. My definition in this particular case is a quality, or lack there of, that is readily experienced and has created a negative perception for the majority of those that have played the respective title.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

System Shock I might give you, but Thief had 2 sequels, with a third planned.

Aye, Thief did well enough (small budget, modest sales) for Looking Glass to go ahead with a sequel (small studio with generally small budgets). But overall sales came nowhere close to matching the critical acclaim that it received, and many people that tried the game didn't like the mechanics. Stealth + Combat avoidance.

Of course, the flip side is that a minority of people like me absolutely loved it.

Which goes back to what I was saying and responding to. That a game with limited to no mainstream appeal will often get critical acclaim because it has no mainstream appeal. Instead focusing on things it does differently or things it innovates regardless of whether the masses will like it or not.

In other words, your average reviewer is nothing like your average consumer. Your average consumer doesn't play games for a living nor do they generally want to spend all day playing games. It's why something like WoW completely took off. It focused on the masses rather than the core MMORPG gamer. It neither innovated nor tried something new. Instead taking what was already there, simplifying it, removing any difficulty or timesinks, and basically selling a traditional MMO geared towards the mass market of casual gamers.

Well, I suppose making an easy mode RPG could be considered innovative.

Regards,
SB

 

[Crossbar]

Quality means little when it comes to sales, marketing means everything.

Marketing influences game revenue three times more than high scores

Remember how Trial HDs sales boomed once they got a demo up? No matter how much praise the reviewers had given it.

I think a lot of sales discussion is void when the marketing part is left outside.

 

[nintenho]

Well Thief would be considered a success if it made a profit even with a low budget. The developers most likely never expected it to become a blockbuster game and may have even been surprised with the high review scores. 4 years later in 2002 when Splinter Cell came out, it had a high budget and it had high sales, despite having the same stealthy, combat-avoiding gameplay.

Both games are a success from a profit standpoint but obviously having high production values and a large marketing budget are required if you want the game to be really popularmainstream. I really don't think that the "unorthodox" gameplay mechanics are too big of a problem for most gamers. I think Gears of War and Killswitch might also work as another example.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Well Thief would be considered a success if it made a profit even with a low budget. The developers most likely never expected it to become a blockbuster game and may have even been surprised with the high review scores. 4 years later in 2002 when Splinter Cell came out, it had a high budget and it had high sales, despite having the same stealthy, combat-avoiding gameplay.

Both games are a success from a profit standpoint but obviously having high production values and a large marketing budget are required if you want the game to be really popularmainstream. I really don't think that the "unorthodox" gameplay mechanics are too big of a problem for most gamers. I think Gears of War and Killswitch might also work as another example.

Aye, I never said it wasn't a success. Again small budget, modest sales.

But the point was that critical acclaim =\= mass market appeal. And much of critical acclaim (not all) is garnered by doing something "different" or "innovating." Neither of which are always appealing to the mass market which usually (not always) wants tried and true gameplay that they are familiar with and/or gameplay that is simple enough that that they don't have to spend much time learning how to play well.

There are, of course, always exceptions. Castle Wolfenstein which lead to Doom for example.

Regards,
SB

 

[Richard]

If you want an example game that won critical acclaim but sold very poorly then you have the greatest game of all time*: Planescape: Torment. RPG of the year, multiple awards and... fizzled out. The begining of the tl:dr syndrome.

* pssst you, yeah you. It really is the greatest game.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

If you want an example game that won critical acclaim but sold very poorly then you have the greatest game of all time*: Planescape: Torment. RPG of the year, multiple awards and... fizzled out. The begining of the tl:dr syndrome.

* pssst you, yeah you. It really is the greatest game.

Yeah shame on that. Black Isle Studios made so many critically acclaimed titles, yet couldn't muster enough sales to prevent them from going bankrupt.

Regards,
SB

 

[dobwal]

Quality means little when it comes to sales, marketing means everything.

Marketing influences game revenue three times more than high scores

Remember how Trial HDs sales boomed once they got a demo up? No matter how much praise the reviewers had given it.

I think a lot of sales discussion is void when the marketing part is left outside.

This is why I take industry studies with a grain of salt. When I take at look at pdf like this

http://www.eedar.com/images/expose/2009_May.pdf

I go WTF!

How much time and effort (in terms of data collection) did it take to produce a 15 page PDF to highlight one of the most commonly understood aspect of gaming. Games releases are typically timed for a holiday or near holiday release to maximize sales potential.

http://www.eedar.com/images/expose/2009_May.pdf

Has some interesting figures especially topic one where Wii and the 360' average sales for games with both offline and online multiplayers sales are significantly higher than other offerings, while the PS3 userbase doesn't mirror a similar behavior. The problem is I can't quantify the data because they fail to provide numbers (or I have poor comprehension skills and overlooked the numbers). Total # of games included for each console and each group would be very helpful and list of each title would be extraordinary. There is no way to tell if they used a very small sample size. The sample size is important and a list of games would be even more relevant because discrepancy may have been caused by outliers that caused distortion to the data. Knowing the sample size or games included would have denoted the chance of an outlier distortion or the actual outlier themselves.

I don't know if EEDAR "for sale" reports are more detailed and provide a much better statistical analysis but these simplistic free pdf don't readily express the level of scientific standards necessary to provide any level of trust. All I see is the production of correlations with opinions of why such correlations exist but the opinions themselves are back by no evidence.