Design Outside The Box

Because I talk about the subject a lot, this year's DICE presentation on the future of the gaming industry by Jesse Schnell of Carnegie Mellon: why gaming studios are dumping traditional games and MMOs en masse and going to casual/social games, and what it means for the future of the medium.

I saw "DICE" and was hoping for a Mirror's Edge II. D:

Good luck with that.

Folks don't realize how seriously in trouble the gaming industry is right now, and how absolutely awful the AAA market has become.

It's really pretty terrifying out there.

I think that's just EA. I was reading something a few months ago about how they're cutting like 4 or 5 different franchises because nothing sells except sports games.

I don't think games as a whole are suffering, considering we just had the best-selling game of all time two months ago.

I getting tired of every "AAA" title being a FPS shooter or another wii motion gimmck game. Would like to see more adventure games like Shadow of the Colossus to be made.

You don't need 1500 game developers when you are a company who lacks originality and content. Simply buy out another gaming company that's doing a good job, copy + paste the series a few times until you're at NBA 2K10 and call it win.

The saddest tragedy for me was when EA bought out Westwood Studios, the birth place of the Command & Conquer series with titles like Command & Conquer, Red Alert, C&C Tiberian Sun. Possibly some of the best made and most fun RTS of all time.

Now look at the series after EA bought it out: C&C Generals, RA3, etc. All clones of the same things and total trash.

I hope EA continues to lose profit and buys these online social gaming companies. Maybe then the "real" developers won't feel the pressure of being bought out by a corporate giant that destroys games of any worthwhile playable content.

After seeing that chart, the first thing that came to mind was this -_-

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Sales don't matter if the game costs more to develop than you make. Blizzard lost $286M last quarter. EA lost $680M last year. Namco is also in trouble.

Call of Duty 2 may have sold 55M units, but if the company fails to turn a profit... well, you're in trouble.

I don't think AAA is going to die. I would be sad if so, because I like big titles as much as anyone. But you might see (and have already seen) a major decrease in the number and length of such games coming out every year. The percent of releases that manage to make money is decreasing rapidly. Development costs are growing faster than revenues.

You can't blame the developers for jumping en masse to dinky social games like Farmville, though. Zynga had 241,229,304 monthly active users last month. For a crappy Flash game with almost no overhead, no need for developers to crunch long hours, and bringing in swimming pools full of cash.

Tiberian sun much love for that game :D. As for games in the past that have thought outside the box to attract the more casual gamer, or even new gamers SSX, NBA street and Viewtiful Joe and Mirrors edge are few i can think off top of head but I guess making a sequel to these games isnt design outside the box.

that was amazing jaerik!!!!!!!!!!

Jaerik, as awesome as this post was, my OCD-senses were tingling--wrong forum. D;

So rather than lower expectations and manage budgets better, developers jump to simple/casual games? I really hope we just see people wise up on AAA games than jump to the dinky stuff.

That analogy he used for the experience points in a grading system was spot on. It really stuck out to me because my friend and I were talking about this last night.

I don't know what it is about points points points, but people eat that ***up.

I hope he was right about it turning us into better people if it were designed intelligently.

Seems kinda invasion though no? How many points do I get for having safe sex?

I actually did not watch that video at first because it was like half an hour long and I was doing some Campaign, but then I stopped that, and watched the video, and it was actually really cool. I never even thought about most of that stuff.

You banged your friend after talking about experience points? lawl

Traditional gamers refuse to have their expectations lowered. If the next game doesn't have better graphics, better physics, better everything, they won't buy it.

In most cases it's not about managing budgets. Things like graphics are pure cash buys: a lot of texture work and graphics in games are all outsourced to sweatshops in China these days. You choose how good you want your graphics to be by how big of a check you write.

It's sort of like how gamers all scoffed at the Wii, because it had crappy graphics and what was widely considered a gimicky controller. Except it's vastly outsold both the PS3 and the 360, and has something like 6 or 7 of the 10 best-selling titles in the past year, yet people still don't take it seriously.

If you're a suit sitting up in an office somewhere looking at the bottom line, and your games are breaking all kinds of sales records yet your company is still hemorrhaging money, you can't blame them for panicking.

What this guy is saying though, is that this change is headed in a very cool direction that will likely merge traditional AAA games and this new social/casual space, in ways that might be quite cool and impossible to really predict. It's interesting to think about.

Harhar, no lol
It was just an example. If we were really part of a system where educating your children would give you points you could use for tax exemption or to further your childs college education... what WOULDN'T be monitored.

Do I get negative points for not having safe sex (AS AN EXAMPLE)? If my neighbor mistreats animals... what's that? -5000 points? Well ***, those points are all that matter.

Invasive or not, I hope it helps us turn into better people.

As the president of the USA you avoided a Nuclear war with china... +10000 points.

I suppose with traditional gamers its all about visual eye candy, but to me the redeeming quality and substance comes from within. I still find FF6 to be one of the greatest games ever, despite being two dimensional, midi soundtrack and simplistic gameplay. Yet it had one of the most epic stories, in depth character development, and incredible soundtracks ever. At least to me it did.

Well...I personally miss the times when only 1 maybe two AAA games came out per year instead of everymonth.

Well this isn't about the quality of games really... it's about how close to reality games are getting and why the closer they get, the better they sell.

Bad Company 2 gives me points for every kill that unlocks new weapons, etc etc. Points... its makes the game closer to reality because I get the feeling of achievement.

But other games come even closer... smaller games that go beneath the notice of a lot of "traditional" or "hardcore" gamers. His example of Facebook games for instance... scoring higher than friends you know, or people from your college days has a stronger and more addictive pull than playing Mass Effect 2 or something because it hits closer to reality.

I guess you could say it is closer to adding value to real life accomplishments. Can you imagine how it might change people if we were scored on our real life accomplishments like it were a game? People might come to work everyday just for those extra points that could be used for... who knows what...

Aye, it made them all the more worthwhile when they weren't shoved down your throat every week. Doesn't take long to notice they all tend to have recycled garbage pushed through the grinder with a fresh coat of paint.

Honestly, it would help if EA made some games that were quality, other than their sports titles. Which by the way, since they're now the only ones with rights to the NFL, they have to make sure its a quality game.

I remember, working at gamestop and when a game would come out, (i.e a james bond game) we'd all hope it would be great, then see the "EA". then go meh.

Any more, companies just think that if they make a game, put their name, or a famous character on its cover; it'll sell. Lots of companies don't put any thought into the dynamics, story or anything. People kept asking me why I'd play FFXI for 6 years straight, and my response was: "Other than the occasional 1 good game per 2 months, its the only good game around right now..."

Super smash bros brawl, is a good example, of a very anticipated game that was not that good. Melee was a lot better. It was small differences that they put into it that could have been an easy fix, such as game speed. Even the online play is horrendous, then companies and manufacturers wonder: "Why isn't it doing great?".

Another good look is the Sonic the Hedgehog series... Flushed.

Part of the problem is that "depth" and such, the things that make a "good" game, are risky. Most games that have really took off were a surprise to their developers because they struck a chord that was not anticipated, and turned into a major franchise. (Look at Final Fantasy.)

The trouble is, as budgets go up (the average title now costs $38-40M in development costs alone, not to mention half that or more in marketing), companies become more risk averse. Nobody wants to be the guy who pitches a $40M game that sounds really innovative and new, but flops and loses a buncha money -- they'll never get a job in the industry again.

So companies look at what's already successful, and copy it. They make a sequel, or a knock-off, and just write a bigger check for graphics or whatever because their internal calculations have shown that it's a sure-fire investment. Usually the game sucks, but sometimes it makes an absurd amount of money. (World of Warcraft, for example, is only slightly different from every other MMO ever made, if you think about it.)

I mean really, do you guys think FF14 is going to do anything particularly innovative or surprising? It's going to be FF11 with the proven successful parts of other MMO's grafted in, with a SquareEnix intellectual property stamp, and a much bigger graphics budget. I'm not saying that's bad -- I already signed up for the beta too! I'm jus' sayin'.

So companies are reaching ever farther for that brass ring, but failing more often, because there really isn't a whole lot new that's out there and they're terrified to try it if so. For every Call of Duty 2, there's at least 30 games with similar budgets that killed their respective studios, and folks gotta eat and pay their rent.

I got to agree, that this could be an issue.
But i m taking Ludoggy's side and hoping it actually slows the market down.

Would be alot nicer to have some god damn time to enjoy the games and play through them a couple times before i have to go rush out and get the next game.
With our current trend, you have to rush through the game and try to beat it before he next one comes, or you fall behind. Your left with only enjoying half the content, half the fun and most likely not fully enjoying the story or depth.

Also Jaerik, its SE.
They try somethign new with every game.

Theyre not affraid to take a chance.

FFXIV is going to have new battle system, new leveling system. So on and so forth. SAme with XIII, they do everythign fresh out of the box with only the Base core to build around.

Predator on television atm channel 4 9:40pm onwards, on their 1st commerical break theres a feature long special on the avp game. Thought id mention it, the commerical just ended right now, bout 2min long.

Those changes aren't really the changes the presentation talks about though.

If SE went with SE-sponsored RMT, that would be closer what was covered. Using real money in a game for accomplishments. I'm not sure how close to reality playing FFXIV will hit though. Rewarding players for accomplishments with something they can more easily understand (like a point system) might have a positive effect on income for SE if they could sell points, gil, whatever to players for real cash.

This puts a value on the time you spend in game more comparable to real hard cash, and more and more players might be willing to pay extra cash for those points.

WAit wait wait, so they would be rewarding players points for playing theyre game per hour as an example? And you would redeem these points for Real cash?

So turning SE into RMT's and giving people even more reason to not work and stay home on a game?

Thats a scary thought.

no no no, I didn't mean that exactly lol

Players would be rewarded ingame with whatever... points, gil, etc for accomplishments. Prehaps they would have a log of their accomplishments to see all they've done.

Players could ALSO pay real cash for more of these points, or gil, or whatever to further themselves.

SE would act as RMT. Games that use a formula similar to this are pretty successful and since (some)players invest real money into the game besides just a monthly fee, their accomplishments in game hit closer to home and have a real value to them.