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

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Oh yeah, it was the Prey 2 stuff that I was thinking of. That whole situation seemed like a lot of BS.

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So hot on the heels of Sega announcing their plans to shrink up as a business and focus on PC / mobile development only, Sonic Boom's opening sales performance has come out. It's bad news. The game sold just 490k copies, and is the worst performing game in the series to date.

 

There's people talking about killing off the franchise, but that's ridiculous. People aren't sick of Sonic. They're sick of Sega's inability to handle franchises. Look at what they did to Phantasy Star, Shining Force, and Valkyria Chronicles for example.

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Yes, it was a snide comment about this. I could swear I'd heard news before that Bethesda was screwing with people using strange publishing deals, but I can find anything to link. 

I've definitely heard this floating around. Something about failing devs on milestones, requiring them to lengthen development, only for Zenimax to swoop in and purchase the devs outright.

 

Ah yes, it had to do with some dust-up over the cancellation of Prey 2. Jason Blair, a writer at Volition, aired some grievances about Bethesda during his tenure at Human Head on Twitter. This was followed up by another post alleging Bethesda's predatory business practices with contracted devs. These claims, while not entirely verified, were lent some credibility when Kotaku editor Jason Schreier said that the scathing post "echoes things I've heard a few times before, and things I'd already been doing reporting work on. I can also tell you that those claims are exceptionally difficult to prove, and that the gaming press should certainly not be reporting accusations like that without significant evidence."

 

Two months later, Schreier went on to later confirm that Bethesda and Arkane had outright lied about Prey 2's developmental switcheroo.

 

Obviously it's hard to suss out the full story, but a lot of the evidence points to Zenimax being fairly nasty in its backroom dealings.

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Obviously it's hard to suss out the full story, but a lot of the evidence points to Zenimax being fairly nasty in its backroom dealings.

 

Yeah, those rumors have definitely been going around for a few years at this point.

 

So hot on the heels of Sega announcing their plans to shrink up as a business and focus on PC / mobile development only, Sonic Boom's opening sales performance has come out. It's bad news. The game sold just 490k copies, and is the worst performing game in the series to date.

 

There's people talking about killing off the franchise, but that's ridiculous. People aren't sick of Sonic. They're sick of Sega's inability to handle franchises. Look at what they did to Phantasy Star, Shining Force, and Valkyria Chronicles for example.

It's anecdotal evidence, to be sure, but there seemed to be a window where there was incredible anticipation for a western launch of PSO2. I personally even had the experience of being approached by multiple people who were quite casual about their gaming habits and most certainly did not follow gaming news, but were asking questions about PSO2. It feels like such a bungled, awful case of a missed opportunity that it never materialized in english. I mean, people actually really like that game, right? That's what i kept hearing about it.

It seems to be a common trait in japanese publishers right now, a kind of obliviousness towards the potential of their own products and brands, i don't really understand it.

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It seems to be a common trait in japanese publishers right now, a kind of obliviousness towards the potential of their own products and brands, i don't really understand it.

It's definitely something going on, but I dunno how universal it is. And even in the cases where it's going on, it's expressed in either a soft or aggressive manner. Korea is doing it too. Look at how Nexon does business vs. NCSoft, for example. The former embraces its foreign markets, or at least is willing to give them a handshake, while the latter made drastic measures starting in 2012 to close up to only its native market (the exception being Guild Wars 2; though I suspect when GW2's time comes it will be abrupt and early and make no sense) (that's a topic for another time).

 

Sega specifically played to the wrong audience with Valkyria Chronicles' sequels. The first game was beloved in both east and west markets, but for different reasons. Rather than continue with the same formula though, they made the sequel cater to what the Japanese market wanted (maximum anime-bullshit, rather than the subtler anime-bullshit that was acceptable in the first) (I say "bullshit" lovingly). Plus, they put it on the PSP, which was a WAY smaller market. Granted the first game didn't sell like gangbusters, but word of mouth would have carried its strength. When the 2nd game was described as a big let-down, the swung the pendulum back too far with part 3 - but it was still a PSP title, and they released it in Japan first, giving that market what it didn't want. Which they then used as an excuse to never localize the game for the west (it would've been better received than part 2, ironically).

 

Another example of weird business from the east is something I think I brought up here before a long time ago, which is how Square handles its sales expectations. When one of their titles fails to meet their insanely high projections, they add that defecit to the next big title. So while Tomb Raider (the remake) for example got some pretty damn good sales, in Square's eyes it was a failure because it didn't sell 7 million in its first month - a figure that was high because previous Final Fantasy games failed to sell well. TR was on the chopping block instead of FF because, again, native market > foreign market.

 

Why do you think Other M totally destroyed Metroid?

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It's definitely something going on, but I dunno how universal it is. And even in the cases where it's going on, it's expressed in either a soft or aggressive manner. Korea is doing it too. Look at how Nexon does business vs. NCSoft, for example. The former embraces its foreign markets, or at least is willing to give them a handshake, while the latter made drastic measures starting in 2012 to close up to only its native market (the exception being Guild Wars 2; though I suspect when GW2's time comes it will be abrupt and early and make no sense) (that's a topic for another time).

 

It's a little more complicated than that. NCSoft doesn't seem to trust its development staff to operate outside of their native market, and they work in a space as a public company that is notoriously difficult to get games established - too different, and people won't give it a chance, but too similar and you've made a knock-off, not a successor. There's intense pressure for NCSoft to prove that they can make new MMOs that are hits, because they have traditionally relied on Lineage money and Lineage money won't last forever.

 

Their most notorious decision was to shutter City of Heroes, a profitable game. From NCSoft's perspective, they had two games, long in development that were coming out with huge anticipation that appeared to be big hits, Guild Wars 2 and WildStar. GW2 was made by a 'proven' MMO company, and their talk about making sweeping changes to the MMORPG formula suggested they might be able to find that sweet spot where it was just different enough to be viable without alienating players. WildStar had a great art style, a confident space opera direction, and a team that knew MMOs. City of Heroes made money, but it was a good game with a theme that struggled to grab attention, the Northern California studio was expensive to run, and they'd made a loss that year and had to show they were willing to invest money wisely to make those new IP hits.

 

That only sorta worked out - GW2 makes money hand over fist, which gives ArenaNet a long leash - the studio's been delaying an expansion for years to try out an expansive live update model - and Washington State's somewhat cheaper than NorCal. Moreover, it's an NCSoft-developed game, which gives NCSoft a way to go to the shareholders and say that they're not a one-trick pony. WildStar... is not doing well, and is unlikely to make its money back.

 

Why do you think Other M totally destroyed Metroid?

 

Is this a rhetorical question? I don't think it's totally destroyed because Nintendo seems to believe Metroid is a key franchise for them, but I do think they've realised they don't know how to handle it.

 

Next Level Games actually made a pitch for a Metroid title which sadly got rejected, which is a shame because I'd love to see those guys take a crack at it. They feel like a real animation-driven studio, which would be a really interesting take on a Metroid game.

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It wasn't rhetorical. Metroid was a series that was always strongest in its fandom (and business) in the USA, and it was ho-hum in Japanese reaction. Other M was the only remaining series' creator's attempt to make Metroid a Japanese favorite. It resulted in alienating the western audience.

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It's definitely something going on, but I dunno how universal it is. And even in the cases where it's going on, it's expressed in either a soft or aggressive manner. Korea is doing it too. Look at how Nexon does business vs. NCSoft, for example. The former embraces its foreign markets, or at least is willing to give them a handshake, while the latter made drastic measures starting in 2012 to close up to only its native market (the exception being Guild Wars 2; though I suspect when GW2's time comes it will be abrupt and early and make no sense) (that's a topic for another time).

Sega specifically played to the wrong audience with Valkyria Chronicles' sequels. The first game was beloved in both east and west markets, but for different reasons. Rather than continue with the same formula though, they made the sequel cater to what the Japanese market wanted (maximum anime-bullshit, rather than the subtler anime-bullshit that was acceptable in the first) (I say "bullshit" lovingly). Plus, they put it on the PSP, which was a WAY smaller market. Granted the first game didn't sell like gangbusters, but word of mouth would have carried its strength. When the 2nd game was described as a big let-down, the swung the pendulum back too far with part 3 - but it was still a PSP title, and they released it in Japan first, giving that market what it didn't want. Which they then used as an excuse to never localize the game for the west (it would've been better received than part 2, ironically).

Another example of weird business from the east is something I think I brought up here before a long time ago, which is how Square handles its sales expectations. When one of their titles fails to meet their insanely high projections, they add that defecit to the next big title. So while Tomb Raider (the remake) for example got some pretty damn good sales, in Square's eyes it was a failure because it didn't sell 7 million in its first month - a figure that was high because previous Final Fantasy games failed to sell well. TR was on the chopping block instead of FF because, again, native market > foreign market.

Why do you think Other M totally destroyed Metroid?

I actually just linked this up with a conversation a week or two ago in the Anime thread. Aniplex is determined to use its knowledge of the Japanese anime market to sell its products in the West, which means selling shows for fifty dollars a disc and trying to impart the extra value by including posters, pencil boards, and stickers. It's not terribly successful, but their primary goal is to keep foreign markets full of high-priced but legitimate versions of their product, so that neither piracy nor reverse importation threatens sales in their home market. It's definitely shitty, but it feels like most Japanese companies aren't really able to have different strategic plans for multiple markets. Even when they do, like Bandai in the late nineties and early naughties, it involves forcing their American branch to sell DVDs as loss-leaders for a plastic model market that made money hand over fist in Japan but never appeared in the West.

It seems to be a universal thing with Japanese (and Korean) media companies, at least. I wonder if it's the same with car manufacturers and consumer electronics, too?

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It seems to be a universal thing with Japanese (and Korean) media companies, at least. I wonder if it's the same with car manufacturers and consumer electronics, too?

Back in the 90s something was actually going on regarding Japanese cars being sold in foreign markets (or maybe it was foreign cars being sold in Japan). I'm not sure exactly what though, I heard vague talks about it from an old clip from a radio show I listen to. I mean, being a multi-national business is tricky, that's for sure.

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That's been going on for a while now, it's always been this weird way for Squeenix to have the crowdfunding cake while also eating it - but on the other hand at least Squeenix are actually airing out their IP instead of letting it rot in a cupboard somewhere, and at least it means that they get to judge for themselves if a new take on any of these franchises is actually going to be worth the effort.

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Keep in mind, this doesn't mean they will actually push out new games for those IPs. They may reject all ideas for any (or all) of them.

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Ah yes, the coveted Gex property.

 

Perhaps Naughty Dog should follow suit and resurrect their 3DO property, Way of the Warrior.

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Lord help me, I realised I had a Gex pitch.

 

I'm not going to make it, because I don't have the time, skill or inclination to make a Gex game to the standard expected of the market, but the idea of Gex as a TV version of Thursday Next, hopping through TV show realities and bringing parts of them with him, might actually be interesting in 2015.

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We could only hope more outlets decide to leave Metacritic and drop review scores.

 

I never understood why Metacritic is so universally reviled. I've gotten a lot of use out of it as simply a list of reviews, where when I research a game, I'll pull up both the highest and lowest scoring review to figure out what people love and hate about the game. And for all the talk of how an average review score is a terrible metric to base your game purchases on, it provides a very useful function in "Ooh, that game looks interesting. Let's check on Metac- 63/100, maybe not."

 

Would people be happier if we moved to a Rotten Tomatoes system where each review is deemed only positive or negative, and the percentage of positive reviews is displayed? Surely we all acknowledge that it's useful to have some kind of system that gives an idea of whether or not a game is good without having to read pages and pages of reviews. Is the problem just that some people like to take the Metacritic score as completely representative of a game's quality, rather than vaguely indicative? If so, it seems unfair to criticize a tool based on how it's misused by people.

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Someone correct me if I'm wrong but there are publishers that specifically mandate they want a game to achieve a certain Metacritic score, they make it a particular goal.

In one way that's an unfair metric to Base assessment of a game on (you can't just be popular, you must be popular among the gaming press across the board), it also makes me wonder if it's possible that it does have that significant a sway over the market if publishers care so much.

It feeds into the GamerGate idea of determine whether a game is good or not, which is highly reductionist and makes any kind of different game at risk of being overlooked for its untraditional nature.

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There have been several publicized instances where bonus pay or job retention is dependent on Metacritic scores, which certainly isn't Metacritic's fault, but started this weird hate spiral.

 

Also, it encourages stratification of gaming press (who's on Metacritic and who isn't, and also who gets top billing,) as well as forces companies to keep around review scores who would rather get rid of them.

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Moreover, review scores aren't used particularly well by most game publications, you're asking people to judge an experience that is largely personal to them, and you're treating individual writers for a publication as being representative of the tastes of the publication as a whole. Movie review aggregators largely work because they're comparing apples to apples - most publications only have one movie reviewer, they all more or less saw the same movie, and they all more or less agree that what they call a 3-star film is a solidly competent film. Danielle Riendeau and Justin McElroy will have very different takes on the same game, and this does not matter to Metacritic. Two reviewers will have wildly different experiences based on their choices, and often those experiences don't match what players will have because the review process is to a deadline before the general public have access to it. Most publications have their own ideas on what their scores mean - at one publication, a 5 is a solidly competent game, while at another, a 5 is a game that's broken.

 

The number that Metacritic arrives at is solidly misleading, thanks to the old maxim of garbage in, garbage out.

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I personally despise Polygon's scoring system, specifically this portion of it:

 

Games are not scored until a review is written and finalized. Once a review is complete, the reviewer meets with a group of senior editors to determine which score on our scale properly reflects the text as written. We do not write with scores in mind.

 

It just rubs me the wrong way. The US Gamer staff went over their review scoring policy on a recent podcast, and it seemed prudent--they rate games on a five-point scale (with half points being removed) and each reviewer is allowed to award the game's score based on his instinctive feelings.

 

I also think with a 20-point scale (such as Polygon's) veers too closely to IGN's 100-point monstrosity and leads to a near-useless granularity when considering scores. I think review scores and Metacritic can be helpful to take a quick pulse of the industry-at-large, but I am not inclined to visit Metacritic on a regular basis. I'm much more likely to cycle through the handful of places I trust and read their reviews, or--as has become increasingly common--I'll listen to their associated podcasts which usually suss out a lot more relevant information.

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I think that Polygon's system is basically an institutionalized reaction to Metacritic. If Metacritic wants to take a score from Polgyon and say "this is what Polygon thinks", then having staff rank it based on the written text of a specific writer makes sense to me. Not only that, but Justin McElroy has stated on the Quality Control podcast that this score selection process is not a one-way street. The review staff comes to a conclusion and the writer then vets it. If the reviewer thinks that the score doesn't reflect the writing, she/he can choose to revise the writing to suit the score in mind. To me the staff scoring accomplishes two things - 1) it brings the score and written text more closely in line with each other 2) it allows the score to be representative of what "Polygon thinks", so to speak.

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The review staff comes to a conclusion and the writer then vets it. If the reviewer thinks that the score doesn't reflect the writing, she/he can choose to revise the writing to suit the score in mind.

 

Woah! That seems super gross. "We've read your review, game seems good, we're going to call this an 80%." "That seems awfully high, I wouldn't say it was that good." "Well then maybe you should make your review more positive."

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Woah! That seems super gross. "We've read your review, game seems good, we're going to call this an 80%." "That seems awfully high, I wouldn't say it was that good." "Well then maybe you should make your review more positive."

 

Maybe I didn't word that correctly. I think that the writer essentially has veto power. If they say that it's an 80% and the writer disagrees, they could temper some stuff that might seem overly positive to a potential reader to enforce something lower.

 

I dunno, I theoretically agree with the general blue sky attitude of "a writer should be able to write whatever they want and it doesn't need to be the voice of the publication they write for" but in a world where publications want to be included in Metacritic that attitude needs to be somewhat compromised. 

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Maybe I didn't word that correctly. I think that the writer essentially has veto power. If they say that it's an 80% and the writer disagrees, they could temper some stuff that might seem overly positive to a potential reader to enforce something lower.

 

I dunno, I theoretically agree with the general blue sky attitude of "a writer should be able to write whatever they want and it doesn't need to be the voice of the publication they write for" but in a world where publications want to be included in Metacritic that attitude needs to be somewhat compromised. 

 

This still seems pretty gross to me. Why are we putting the number for what Polygon-as-a-Whole thinks of the game, on the review written entirely by one reviewer? If we want the number to match the review, just ask the writer to make a number they think reflects the text written, instead of some board. If we want to know what Polygon-as-a-Whole thinks, then why not have Polygon-as-a-Whole do a review, instead of tacking their number on somewhere else?

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