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

[Frenetic Pony]

It's interesting to look at just how engrained the lessons learned from the last go around have become. Rather than innovate both companies have just done their best to avoid failure. And so "avoiding mistakes" has resulted in the few things they've changed from "steady as she goes".

 

Sony got burned by their initial incredibly high price and so this time have gone so far as to undercut Microsoft by a solid margin. MS on the other hand got burned by the Red Ring O'Death, literally in the case of the solder, and so their box is unapologetically huge with a giant fan just to make absolutely sure it doesn't happen again.

 

They also seemed to have gotten better and better at marketing, or at least Sony has, because those sales numbers are damned impressive. I remember hesitant skepticism last time. "What exactly do these consoles offer besides better graphics?" "Didn't Microsoft just put out a console, what if they abandon this next one just as fast?" Stuff like that. Meanwhile the Wii, which seemed to offer something new, got eaten up in droves. Maybe all those dust collecting Wii's sitting next to the heavily used PS3/360 is part of the reason absolutely no pretense of new gameplay has been offered up with this generation; yet people are eating it up anyway. Stick with what works, consumers do it as much as producers.

[Henroid]

We'd need to wait for mid-December to see how the PS4's sales actually went for realsies. (oh my god "realsies" is an actual word according to my spellchecker)

 

In other news, John Carmack just left id Software today. Like for good, no longer splitting his time between it and Oculus Rift. So... Wow that sucks for id!

[JonCole]

Now I can formally have no reason to give a single shit about id Software anymore.

[elmuerte]

Carmack finally leaving is not much of a surprise. Creating games was never Carmacks passion, it was the technology. Id has been failing to deliver worthwhile games, and the new technology has been unsuccessful for years. Carmack has always focused too much on small parts of the bugger picture. This simply doesn't work well in the current size of game engines. Or at least, not when you want to make a successful business out of it.

When Carmack announced he became CTO of Occulus recently it was clear for me his days at id were numbered.

Once the Occulus Rift has matured I'm sure it won't take a long time before Carmack leaves, unless Occulus wants in different technologies. Carmack is a person you should put in a R&D department, that's were he can shine.

 

So with Carmack leaving id, there's nothing holding back Zenimax to assimilate the remains. Given the fact that id software hasn't done much the past years I think the brand will also simply disappear.

[Merus]

...yeah, it is the end of an era, but Oculus really fits Carmack's sensibilities of getting right down to the metal than the field of graphics currently does. It's going to be a long while before new approaches to graphics really become viable.

[Henroid]

Two bits.

 

First, Ghostcrawler (a designer / community manager) is leaving Blizzard. Lotsa people don't like him, but I adore him because he carefully walked that line of telling jackoff community members / babies to sit down and shut up.

 

Second, Sega had some things to say about the Atlus acquisition. Among those things said were that Atlus is retaining autonomy, and also Atlus is free to use any dormant IPs that Sega owns. Any Jet Set Radio fans out there?

http://www.siliconera.com/2013/11/27/atlus-free-use-dormant-sega-ip-says-company-president/

[Sno]

The Sega/Atlus story is quite a nice one, it implies a surprisingly healthy perspective from Sega concerning their Atlus acquisition. At the very least, a brilliant bit of PR, because pretty much exactly the things that needed to be said were said.

Also, i don't think Jet Set Radio was ever very good.

[Merus]

People didn't like GC because he was willing to serve as a representative for WoW's development team, and therefore a focus for people who mistakenly believed they knew anything about how to run a game with millions of players. I think he did a perfectly fine job - there were moments where he could have been more informative, but most of their mistakes seemed to come from trying to fix a larger problem.

 

A lot of players like to blame GC for problems with the game, saying that vanilla/BC/Wrath was the height of the game, depending on their own personal biases and when their personal circumstances best suited playing WoW. WoW's unusual in that there is a very definite point one can say was the peak of the game: subscriptions were highest during the Wrath expansion, when Ulduar, one of their finest raids until very recently, was current. But the decline since then is only partly due to Blizzard's delays in getting Cataclysm out and its strong uptick in difficulty, but mostly due to the game being, what, seven years old at that point? And past its third expansion? (Usually by the third expansion the dev team either starts getting too ambitious or starts churning out content - at that point it's often a better idea to step back and just make a sequel.) We're solidly in the fourth generation of MMOs by this point, and games are coming out that do what WoW does better than it possibly could. (And also Elder Scrolls Online.) Decline is inevitable, and when the game starts declining, network effects make sure that continues.

 

Anyway, players don't know what they want and usually don't understand that what they find fun is not necessarily what other players find fun, which is why MMOs are so hard if you're not doing a PvP focused one.

 

Still, I think he did a pretty fine job with what he was given. Good luck to him in the future.

[TheLastBaron]

Who was that one cm who got really mad a while ago and made a post about how no matter what you do the community just complains? I haven't played Wow for a long time and was never into the forums so the only person I really remember is Caydiem and she left a long time ago.

[Merus]

That was Tseric. Although he probably got fired for telling a customer that he wasn't funny and to get off his internet.

[Henroid]

Sales over in the UK:

 

PS4: 250k units in 48 hours

XBO: 170k units in 2 weeks

Wii U: 150k units all year

 

Edit - As a bonus, here's a compiled list of what it takes to unlock everything in Skylanders Swap Force:

 

Starter Pack - $74.99
Rattle Shake - $14.99
Magna Charge - $14.99
Free Ranger - $14.99
Hoot Loop - $14.99
Stink Bomb - $14.99 (not available at launch)
Rubble Rouser - $14.99 (not available at launch)
Any Giants character - $14.99
Sheep Wreck Adventure Pack - $24.99 (not available at launch)
Tower of Time Adventure Pack - $24.99
Fiery Forge Battle Pack - $24.99

Total: $254.89

 

Source: http://www.ign.com/wikis/skylanders-swap-force/Minimum_Toys_Needed

 

I mentioned this in the "end of the generation" thread, but basically we're going to be going through some tough times regarding micro-transactions as that is the new thing that arose but didn't get a final solution (oh god why did I write that).

[Henroid]

League of Legends players are banned, by Riot games, from streaming competitors' titles.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/12/05/riot-comes-under-fire-for-league-of-legends-pro-contracts

 

League of Legends professional players have been banned from streaming rival titles by developer Riot Games, prompting a backlash from some gamers.

OnGamers revealed last night that players competing in Season 4 of LCS are forbidden from streaming other games including Dota 2, StarCraft 2, Hearthstone, World of Warcraft and World of Tanks. Now, Riot's director of eSports Whalen Rozelle has defended the decision on Reddit.

"We say this all the time: we want League of Legends to be a legitimate sport," he wrote. "There are some cool things that come from that (salaried professional athletes, legitimate revenue streams, visas, Staples Center), but there's also a lot of structural work that needs to be done to ensure a true professional setting.

"We recognise there may be some differences of opinion in the perception of pro players' streams. In the past, pro gamers only had to worry about their personal brands when streaming and, at most, may have had to worry about not using the wrong brand of keyboard to keep their sponsor happy. Now, however, these guys are professionals contracted to a professional sports league. When they're streaming to 50,000 fans, they're also representing the sport itself.

"I can't stress enough how these guys in the LCS are on the road to being real, legitimate athletes. This is new territory for a lot of teams (especially in eSports), because the transition goes from being a group of talented individuals to being real icons of a sport and a league.

"Similarly, you probably wouldn't see an NFL player promoting Arena Football or a Nike-sponsored player wearing Reebok on camera. Pro-players are free to play whatever games they want - we're simply asking them to keep in mind that, on-stream, they're the face of competitive League of Legends."

Welcome to the dumb side of competitive sports, video games.

[Twig]

Other games in the same genre, I can understand, even if I think it's fucking stupid.

 

But then there's, like, Hearthstone, and World of Tanks, and what the fuck?

[Henroid]

Other games in the same genre, I can understand, even if I think it's fucking stupid.

 

But then there's, like, Hearthstone, and World of Tanks, and what the fuck?

The scope is still super limited and it only affects streaming.

 

I'm currently caught up in an argument on this news elsewhere - some people are saying it's mistreatment of employees. I'm of the position that this is fair business. They're paid to promote a specific thing, so don't promote the competition. This isn't a new concept at all.

 

I do agree that some of those games are weird since they aren't the same genre, but as I said it's just a few of them so whatever. There's tons of games to have people watch you play.

[Gormongous]

The scope is still super limited and it only affects streaming.

 

I'm currently caught up in an argument on this news elsewhere - some people are saying it's mistreatment of employees. I'm of the position that this is fair business. They're paid to promote a specific thing, so don't promote the competition. This isn't a new concept at all.

 

I do agree that some of those games are weird since they aren't the same genre, but as I said it's just a few of them so whatever. There's tons of games to have people watch you play.

 

I wonder though, is it just the ones that have been caught streaming already? If one of them streams Rogue Legacy or Call of Duty, does that get put on the list too?

[Henroid]

I wonder though, is it just the ones that have been caught streaming already? If one of them streams Rogue Legacy or Call of Duty, does that get put on the list too?

I imagine that depends on the contract / terms of employment.

[TheLastBaron]

Didn't Kobe play soccer with the US Womens national team?

[Henroid]

Didn't Kobe play soccer with the US Womens national team?

If that's the case, can you cite whatever fallout occurred after, or dealings had to happen beforehand?

[Dewar]

Bo knows both Baseball and Football

[Gormongous]

If that's the case, can you cite whatever fallout occurred after, or dealings had to happen beforehand?

 

To quote some of the better comments from the RPS article on the issue, there are plenty of examples of basketball and football players playing charity golf, baseball, or tennis games. The idea that such an act would weaken their brand and the brand of their team is foolish. Riot has a reason to object to League of Legend players playing DOTA 2, because that is playing for the other team, but the rest is just weird corporate blinders-cum-siege-mentality.

[Henroid]

I really am just having a hard time finding the issue of contention. The players can still play the games, just not stream them.

 

In other news, Bitcoins are now accepted by the Ouya team to buy Ouya devices. That's... well, I don't imagine these people lasting through 2014.

http://www.polygon.com/2013/12/5/5177946/ouya-now-accepts-bitcoin-payments

[TheLastBaron]

I think it's fairly common practice for top players to play other games while searching for matches. For players with a high ELO queues can be pretty long (anywhere from 10 minutes to 45 minutes). A lot of esports players will have a regular streaming schedule where they stream certain days of the week, but then stream other days playing other games (a lot of times with subscribers) to keep up the community in their channel. I'd imagine this has an impact on how successful streamers are. It's also worth pointing out that it's not just the pro players this is affecting, other big streamers are being removed from the list of featured streamers Riot has. I don't ever watched streams of League of Legends (I used to a decent amount though) so I probably won't see any impact from this, but I can't see this as anything other than a bad decision.

[Merus]

Do we know if this applies to the entirety of their channel? Can they have one channel for LoL play and another for 'personal' play? If they're 'off the clock', as it were, can they play other games?

[Twig]

The scope is still super limited and it only affects streaming.

That doesn't make it any less bullshit. Why should a professional player be disallowed from publicly sharing his enjoyment of a game, let alone one that's not even in the same genre? Especially when they're ostensibly not even WORKING for Riot at that time. This is their own personal free time.

 

I really am just having a hard time finding the issue of contention. The players can still play the games, just not stream them.

 

In other news, Bitcoins are now accepted by the Ouya team to buy Ouya devices. That's... well, I don't imagine these people lasting through 2014.

http://www.polygon.com/2013/12/5/5177946/ouya-now-accepts-bitcoin-payments

I'm not sure I see what one has to do with the other. I don't imagine them lasting long, either, but Bitcoins have proven to be a pretty valuable currency so far, AND one that's consistently rising in value.

[tegan]

In other news, Bitcoins are now accepted by the Ouya team to buy Ouya devices. That's... well, I don't imagine these people lasting through 2014.

http://www.polygon.com/2013/12/5/5177946/ouya-now-accepts-bitcoin-payments

 

Man, I've gone from casually mocking the Ouya to "the Ouya still exists?" in no time at all.