The Business Side of Video (Space) Games EXCLUSIVELY ON IDLE THUMBS

[SuperBiasedMan]

The new rules and clarifications look great to me.  It looks like they've taken the things that good Kickstarters already do, and mandated that everyone do some of those things (regular communication, honest communication, transparency about how funds are being spent).  And it sets clearer expectations of what people should expect in the case that a project fails.

 

I think encouraging them as guidelines would be great, but my issue is it seems to obligate the creators. Instead of it being encouraging to the creators it feels like it's a way to direct the ire of the backers from Kickstarter themselves to the creator, who then needs to prove their innocence. Obviously that's very much an impression thing and whether it actually goes that way remains to be seen but I'm sceptical that this is the best way to improve the situation.

[syntheticgerbil]

I guess by these new guidelines the people that feel they were ripped off by John K.'s cartoon short that was never finished would have no recourse. He did post updates of a half finished cartoon. The animatic was finished in full. It's a shame, it looked good.

 

What I wish Kickstarter would let you do is become a late backer no matter what and at least let you see all of the hidden updates (not necessarily put you into a rewards category).

[Henroid]

Potato Salad makes me angry because people were mushc more willing to throw money at a joke than any of the actual valid causes that people start Kickstarters, IndieGogos etc. for.

I actually agree, but the saving grace for that was the charity stuff the guy setup in the wake of the success of what was meant to be a joke. So at least it wasn't a waste.

[Merus]

I also kind of feel like that Potato Salad guy launched a comedy career off the back of that effort.

[Prentice]

I saw this tweeted by IGN

 

 

 

Mojang's revenues in 2013 were about $330 million, and it's got a terrific margin - its profit was $129 million. Lucasfilm's merchandising revenue, as a point of comparison, in 2012 was a little over $200 million - although that was in a year where nothing much happened in the franchise creatively (insert "just like every since Return of the Jedi" joke here). At the time of the acquisition, Disney's CFO estimated that the adjusted Box Office revenues for the prequels would be $1.5bn in the present day (i.e. if they had entered a world with 3D glasses and 2012 cinemagoing levels in the BRIC nations). However, the cost of making those films is pretty huge as well. Mojang, relatively speaking, is cheap money, if not big money, and relatively low-risk. It's hard to blow $500 million on a 50-person studio.

 

In the longer term, I suspect Microsoft is gambling that Minecraft/Minecraft-shared-on-the-Azure-cloud will end up as the equivalent of Angry Birds/Farmville on the mobiles of the future... so, huge scaling across every device, maybe with extra goodies for Windows 8/WinPhone versions...

Yeah -- I think there are two important things to realize about Mojang's acquisition:

1) Mojang is an extremely high-margin company while most game studios have consistent operating costs and inconsistent revenue (i.e., inconsistent product releases and very high burn rates). Microsoft has to invest nothing in Mojang to see a return while Disney more or less bought a low-margin, cap-ex heavy company with Lucasfilm. 

2) Valuations in the M&A markets have risen steeply in the last year and a half. If many of these deals were to happen today, the multiples would be much, much higher. 

[Ucantalas]

Although that bullshit Penny Arcade Kickstarter would definitely not be allowed under these new terms. God that still pisses me off, maybe even more than potato salad. I suppose if they had posted play by play updates of them removing ads from their site they would be eligible though.

I feel a bit out of the loop, there was a Penny Arcade Kickstarter? What happened?

[Gormongous]

I feel a bit out of the loop, there was a Penny Arcade Kickstarter? What happened?

 

They did a million-dollar kickstarter to have no ads on their site for a year. All the rewards were pointedly useless and typically described with a certain crudeness. Many people found it an abuse of Kickstarter.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Essentially the Penny Arcade kickstarter seemed like a parody kickstarter, except they actually took a ton of money and at no point offered more than their parody reward tiers described.

[SecretAsianMan]

I can only remember one backer reward which was that Mike Krahulik would walk around and yell your name at a duck.  I watched that video for about 5 seconds (I did not back the kickstarter btw).  My impression of their kickstarter was that they were being completely serious about it but it came off like a parody to the rest of the world.

[Dewar]

*shrug* I donated and was happy with what I got.

 

Edit: Nevermind, I guess I put in money to the Podcast kickstarter that came by later.

 

Edit2: Really, only the first two tiers were "silly" and chasing a duck is about equal to the usual $1 pledges (thank you on a webpage or "our eternal gratitude") https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pennyarcade/penny-arcade-sells-out

[Twig]

I think it's fair to expect Something Better from Penny Arcade in regards to that Kickstarter (I know I did, which is why I didn't "back" 'em), but also clearly people like them enough to give money, so what's the problem? You don't give them money. Other people do. Not really worth getting up in arms about, in my opinion!

 

I think they should've just run it on their own website, though. Putting it on Kickstarter seemed kind of pointless. Not like anyone who didn't already like them was going to give money, so why not just have a donation drive instead of pretending it's something else.

[tegan]

Don't forget the second Kickstarter, which was for something they were going to do anyway and had a project goal of five dollars (and raised five hundred thousand). Both PA Kickstarters have just been Penny Arcade exploiting a system meant for something completely different purposes because they know it will garner more press attention than a fundraiser would.

[Wordherder]

Well, this is a little depressing. Earlier this year, longtime Castlevania guy Koji Igarashi left Konami to make his "dream game." Long story short, publishers didn't bite, and now he's making (drum roll) mobile games.

 

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/09/19/tgs-2014-castlevania-symphony-of-the-nights-koji-igarashi-puts-independent-dream-game-on-hold

 

Granted, the article says the deal will "eventually" let him make the game, and it could be the guy's a pain to work with. That said, it doesn't exactly fill me with confidence toward the current direction of AAA game development that the man who made a huge string of great games can't get anyone to fund his next work.

[Henroid]

Well, this is a little depressing. Earlier this year, longtime Castlevania guy Koji Igarashi left Konami to make his "dream game." Long story short, publishers didn't bite, and now he's making (drum roll) mobile games.

 

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/09/19/tgs-2014-castlevania-symphony-of-the-nights-koji-igarashi-puts-independent-dream-game-on-hold

 

Granted, the article says the deal will "eventually" let him make the game, and it could be the guy's a pain to work with. That said, it doesn't exactly fill me with confidence toward the current direction of AAA game development that the man who made a huge string of great games can't get anyone to fund his next work.

There's one argument (that I don't agree with) as to why he probably couldn't get publishers to bite; the Castlevania series, as popular as it is, isn't popular enough on the business end. The series has always struggled to recoup costs if I remember right. But still, that's a shame that the guy's clout alone couldn't work out. But hey, mobile games mean he can bring in money still and maybe get to work on what he really wants to. I see it as a delay of plan rather than his plan ending.

 

Speaking of delays, the XB1 was supposed to launch tomorrow in China. But apparently MS decided to push back the launch without a concrete explanation, nor a new release date. That's as last minute as it gets. Sucks for China!

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/226144/Xbox_One_delayed_in_China_the_day_before_launch.php

 

Another bit of news I wanted to come here with is a report on Nexon; I dunno how people know the company, if at all (I know them as the publisher of Dungeon Fighter Online), but basically it's a Korean company that does Korean business style games. But they're making a big push for western developers to sign on board, starting a new division called Nexon XP. It's literally their western branch of business. They have Cliffy B working on something for them, and Splash Damage, Turbo, and some others. So keep your eyes peeled over the next year or two.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/226192/With_big_names_signed_Nexon_guns_for_Western_players_with_new_division.php

 

I'm not going to say I'm the biggest fan of Nexon (not to say I don't like them) but I think they can pull this off with some dignity.

[Ucantalas]

I've played a few Nexon games, they were kinda fun.(For a little while I got really into Combat Arms, and MapleStory was neat as far as a sidescrolling MMO goes, but I tired of it quickly.) Glad to see that they're opening up a bit.

[Henroid]

I got worried about them when they decided to close down the North American version of DFO. Granted, it didn't help that its pay-for options were staggeringly expensive. As a free game its the most open among F2P as far as not paying money at all goes. But if you do decide to pay money, it actually punishes you for not investing as much as possible.

 

Specifically, your characters had two sets of items; regular equippables like any RPG has, and then "avatar" items which actually affect your character's look (they also had some stat bonuses). The avatar items had three payment options for any of them; I believe it was 2 months, 6 months, and permanent. Which, yes, suggests what you'd think - if you didn't buy the permanent one, after time ran out, you wouldn't have the item anymore. But you weren't spending $5 on a hat or whatever, it was like $15 for 2 months of a hat (if I remember right) while the permanent version was $40 or something. Though I may be thinking about the cost for full avatar sets (aesthetically matching) and not a single item's cost.

 

It was a strange, strange business plan.

[tegan]

Anyone else here not really feeling the new Steam store?

 

Become a taste maker yourself. Are you an expert in what makes a really good 2D Platformer? Or, maybe you’re really in to Survival Horror games and want to help others find the best. It’s easy with Steam Curators. Anyone can be a Steam Curator by simply making some recommendations via a Steam Community Group.

 

I don't know how much you know about 2D Platformers (I'm an expert)

[Henroid]

A friend of mine was telling me the Steam store front changed but I haven't seen it myself yet (my PC is still broken). Apparently there's both a "Popular New Releases" tab, which may be redundant because there's a "Top Sellers" category? The only way I can think to justify that is they want to attract better attention to new releases rather than have them compete with long-released stuff maybe having a sales surge.

[Merus]

See, the whole point of the Steam Curators system is that Steam Curators would greenlight games instead of Valve or Greenlight.

[SecretAsianMan]

In case anyone was wondering, here's the Idle Thumbs curator page

 

http://store.steampowered.com/curator/9561/

[Henroid]

It's the end of an era - Playstation Home is closing in March next year. This November will mark the last content update (paid for I believe), and December will be the last time anyone can download from / on the service (whatever that means, which is weird because:). Until closing time, Sony will be publishing new content for free.

 

I don't know anyone that used the service that had a positive response to it. I remember years ago they would talk about added functionality to games like lobbies where you and your team could devise strategies, but the reaction that got was, "Hey, why not put that kinda content in the game itself and not twist our arms to use this service?"

 

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/226579/After_six_years_PlayStations_virtual_world_is_closing_its_doors.php

[Henroid]

We're a couple of weeks away from getting September NPD numbers but there's a few things to note, all via Gamasutra;

 

First is that to date, the XB1 has sold less than 30k units in Japan, and while MS isn't happy with that they're still determined to let people know how important the XB1 is (yes, they said important).

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/226896/Microsoft_comments_on_poor_Xbox_One_sales_in_Japan.php

 

Next, Tencent (the Chinese mobile app company) apparently trumps the likes of EA, Apple, Sony, etc. in gross income. "The report is based on game sales data culled from public earnings statements from January through June of 2014, and sees Tencent's revenues jumping 40 percent year-over-year to $3.5 billion for the first half of the year -- over a billion more than EA, which takes second place in Newzoo's revenue ranking."

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/226849/Report_Tencent_trumps_EA_Sony_and_Apple_in_terms_of_game_revenue.php

 

Last and most Idle Thumbs relevant news is that Star Citizen has surpassed $55 million in funding, and its dev staff is now more than 280 people (outsourced and internal). Chris Roberts said in response to questions about the funding that Star Citizen isn't a normal game, not being developed normally nor funded normally. Whatever that means.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/226871/Star_Citizen_hits_55_million_and_280_devs_as_funding_rolls_on.php

[Wordherder]

And Rovio's cutting 130 jobs:

 

Rovio Entertainment, the company that brought Angry Birds to smartphones, toy stores and theme parks, said on Thursday it plans to cut up to 130 employees, or 16% of its workforce, “towards a simplified organization.”

Cue puns of the Finnish gaming company’s clipped wings and prematurely counted chickens.

Rovio announced in March that its 2013 net profit dropped by 50% from the prior year and, in August, the company replaced its chief executive.

“We have been building our team on assumptions of faster growth than have materialized,” Rovio said in a statement Thursday. But, maintaining a light tone, Rovio added, “as we consider these painful measures, we keep our eye on always delighting our fans with products they love.”

 

Rovio did well for a while, but there's some that easily trumped them:

 

 

Of course two of them did that by milking microtransactions like mad, something Rovio never did (until recently).

[Henroid]

I was just going to say, Rovio actually took the long-term success and trustworthy route. Which is important, because after the bubble bursts people will want to come back. Like according to that chart, do you really think things will last like that for King and Supercell forever? Fuuuuuuuuck no. Those guys are gonna crash and burn hard. See: Zynga.

 

Rovio cutting 16% of its workforce is not insignificant, but it also isn't a sign of end times or whatever.

 

The companies that abuse the new frontiers in video games are the ones that gross me out.

[tegan]

I've noticed that mobile developers seem to only ever have one hit game, and never recapture the audience once they're lost. Angry Birds is the only one that's ever had any significant staying power and I'm pretty sure that at least a solid chunk of that is probably just sheer inertia from being one of the first in and thus always having a place on the "most popular" list.