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

[Ucantalas]

I kind of wanted to play a Mass Effect game during the whole Rachni/Krogan/Genophage era.

[elmuerte]

Or a gumshoe Mass Effect

[Gormongous]

All these suggestions sound different, therefore scary and bad. As a fan of the series, I'm just hoping for a game where I'm the chosen one or something, but in space, and there's an ancient evil about to awaken, like the Reapers again but we can call them something else, maybe Reavers or Reamers, to mix things up.

[Justin Leego]

A prequel where you are John Riccitello and you have 1,000 dialogue trees to explore in the Electronic Arts corridors of power. Each one has the potential to have a massive effect on both video and stock market gamers, so that the title is accurate.

[SecretAsianMan]

All these suggestions sound different, therefore scary and bad. As a fan of the series, I'm just hoping for a game where I'm the chosen one or something, but in space, and there's an ancient evil about to awaken, like the Reapers again but we can call them something else, maybe Reavers or Reamers, to mix things up.

Maybe your parents can be the King and Queen of Space.

 

 

Or a gumshoe Mass Effect

A Mass Effect game where you play as a member of C-Sec and solve Citadel intrigue could be fun.

[Justin Leego]

Manz, is that an intentional reference to http://idlethumbs.wikia.com/wiki/Space_Cop ?

[Justin Leego]

Bloomin' mobiles

[SecretAsianMan]

Manz, is that an intentional reference to http://idlethumbs.wikia.com/wiki/Space_Cop ?

Let's say yes.

[tegan]

I want a Mass Effect where you play as a space cop who specifically drives a space DeSoto.

 

 

EDIT:

 

[Henroid]

I didn't know this but apparently Gamestop managers get gifts sometimes from video game developers / manufacturers. It was announced recently in Vegas that managers will be receiving free PS4s and XB1s and some games for each. Talk about sweet job perks I guess.

 

In other news, Peter Moore has double-downed on EA's business philosophy that is "we don't do offline experiences anymore." Which means you can expect more SimCity type shenanigans from them.

[Dewar]

When they announced that project $10 was over, they had to have something even more stupid to take its place.

[Merus]

Valve have been saying this for a while, and I suspect other developers think this as well. Everybody's eyeing Blizzard jealously with their games that have absurdly long shelf-lifes and massive post-release revenue.

 

I mean Starcraft and Diablo II here. WoW monetises that shit but so do all their other games.

 

And then Notch went and did it with a game that wasn't even complete! Getting early adopters to help you fund the development of the actual game is like manna from heaven for developers that are forced to release half-finished games because the money ran out.

 

The days of releasing a single, complete product, to then drown on store shelves and disappear entirely after three months, is one most developers want to bury as soon as possible. Certainly, some companies are in it for the DLC moolah but there's perfectly innocent reasons to want to kill the full package boxed product.

[Sno]

I feel like the "games as a service" future is a dark road.

Good for publishers and good for developers doesn't necessarily equate to being good for consumers.

[Merus]

I don't know, I think there are advantages to consumers: it means games are made that wouldn't be because it's easier to sustain yourself on the backs of a small group of passionate players, and games that are successful have a business case to provide players with free updates. Minecraft is the perennial example; I ran across it a few times, and the first few times I saw it, it was pretty lame. It took a while to find the fun of that game, something that maybe it wouldn't have had the resources to find if it relied on making a big impact upon release.

 

Or take Psychonauts, which failed at retail because it was too weird. Word of mouth is what sold that game. The hit-driven model is terrible for games like Psychonauts, so you need another model that allows the game to build a head of steam on it. The long tail model is possibly good for consumers but discoverability is a real problem, which is basically equivalent to the hit-driven model in that games aren't finding success relative to their merit.

 

Or take Guild Wars 2, which is patching every two weeks pretty much because they can. The implication is that players are going to be paying subscription fees for basic functionality and then nickle and dimed to death, but when a developer does it right then the standards are raised for everyone else.

[Nachimir]

Players seem to be developing an okay understanding of alpha/beta, and setting their expectations accordingly. I think early access is a really good thing; it doesn't just smooth cashflow for developers but give them an indication of interest. I bet if enough developers share figures, that'll become relatively predictable over time too.

Enough developers hate free to play models (or any merging of business model and game design) that I don't think we're being plunged into a murky future.

[Sno]

So Sega bought Atlus.

Also, EA has a new CEO, but i don't care about that.

Holy shit, Sega bought Atlus.

[Ucantalas]

...well, I'm glad that Atlus will continue exist. I have no opinion one way or the other about SEGA specifically purchasing them.

[Sno]

Sega has, by most accounts, allowed Creative Assembly pretty much total freedom to operate as they please, so that might be a hopeful indication of how things go with Atlus.

 

If you want to talk about Sega's own tendencies towards localizing niche games, things have been pretty bleak in recent years.

 

I mean, Atlus has built its western fanbase on being willing to localize and release games that sell multiple millions less than games another company would decide are still not profitable enough to localize.

[Gormongous]

Sega has, by most accounts, allowed Creative Assembly pretty much total freedom to operate as they please, so that might be a hopeful indication of how things go with Atlus.

 

This is actually not the case at all, in my experience. SEGA is said to be responsible for the ugly, rushed launches for Empire: Total War and Total War: Rome II, as well as the nickel-and-dime DLC design for all games since Empire. And if you include other companies, Obsidian got the shaft pretty bad with Alpha Protocol, being forced to hit a release date they knew it couldn't, allegedly on the promise of patches that SEGA never let them release.

 

The story may be different with a Japanese developer or a console-oriented developer -- and in fact I hope it is, because Atlus is great stuff -- but SEGA has not been a very good friend to the PC, at least not in the past decade.

[Sno]

Well then i guess i'll go ahead and start my wild, frantic panicking about the future of Atlus.

[Ucantalas]

Not sure where to mention it, so I'll just put this here:

Hiroshi Yamauchi died today. 

http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/hiroshi-yamauchi-who-ran-nintendo-for-5-decades-dies-1.1461305

RIP

[Henroid]

I've been away for a while trying to get situated back in the Bay Area. Fell behind Idle Thumbs episodes, and bleh.

 

SO NEWS! This is sorta press related but the implications (well, possible implications) make it business side. So, from the editor-in-chief at Polygon:

 

"You're going to see a lot of PS4 game reviews for next-gen stuff in the next two weeks, but not because we haven't seen Xbox One versions. The reasoning is far more stupid than platform differences, I assure you. The absence of xbox one reviews initially has little or nothing to do with sony, power differences, or co-marketing."

I wonder what it means! Possibilities:

1) Microsoft hasn't sent out review copies / hardware. If not at all, in a timely manner.

2) MS has some sort of embargo going on. Why though?

3) Maybe Polygon specifically hasn't gotten anything from MS. Which means MS was scorned somehow.

 

My guess is on the embargo though. They either want to have a deluge on XB1's launch day to flood the press for awareness' sake. Or maybe they have an embargo in place because the review hardware they sent out was incomplete (MS has been working on the hardware as late as August), and they don't want reviews to be noting poor performance or glitches or whatever.

[Justin Leego]

So yesterday was a bit of an EA day then.

 

Definitely no PGA Tour Golf in 2014, definitely no Tiger Woods partnership thereafter, Titanfall 1 confirmed as a Microsoft lifetime exclusive, Simpsons: Tapped Out passing $100m but other mobile properties not given hard figures, and no Origin chat whatsoever.

 

Oh, apart from that heavily circulated mystery Battlefield 3 code that appeared to allow unlimited activations for a number of hours.

[Gormongous]

So yesterday was a bit of an EA day then.

 

Definitely no PGA Tour Golf in 2014, definitely no Tiger Woods partnership thereafter, Titanfall 1 confirmed as a Microsoft lifetime exclusive, Simpsons: Tapped Out passing $100m but other mobile properties not given hard figures, and no Origin chat whatsoever.

 

Oh, apart from that heavily circulated mystery Battlefield 3 code that appeared to allow unlimited activations for a number of hours.

 

Also, the Command & Conquer reboot scrapped and the studio developing it closed.

[Dewar]

Oooh, Titanfall as a console exclusive to Xbox is a big grab for Microsoft. That's pretty much one of two next gen properties that really intrests me at the moment.