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

[JonCole]

Interesting. I wonder if this will even amount of "crowdfunding" in the conventional way we think about it, it looks to me a lot closer to angel investing via a more automated platform than making pitches over the phone or at events.

[SecretAsianMan]

It's kind of a mix of both.  There's still the "traditional" crowdfunding model where there are backer tiers and rewards.  It looks like maybe it's separate from the investment side although I'd imagine you could do both if you were so inclined.  They also said that developers would be able to choose not to have investment open if they wanted in which case it would be the same as the current crowdfunding model. 

 

What I'm wondering is how much influence investors will have over development.  With backers, they'll often take polls or ask for opinions or offer rewards that affect the game, but usually only in a minor way.  Ultimately they don't actually have to do any of that because they have no legal commitment to what the backers want.  But those rules change once you actually have a financial stake in the product.

[Professor Video Games]

I'm sure if you're interested in being an investor and not a backer, there will be piles of paperwork to go through detailing how things will work and what the various party's obligations are. And I would think that unless you are fronting some majority portion of the game dev cost, the people running the company are the ones who get the final say of the game content as long as they're running things responsibly.

 

And because it's interesting, here's what it takes to be an individual who qualifies as an accredited investor:

 

Any natural person whose individual net worth, or joint net worth with that person's spouse, exceeds $1,000,000.

 

or

 

Any natural person who had an individual income in excess of $200,000 in each of the two most recent years or joint income with that person's spouse in excess of $300,000 in each of those years and has a reasonable expectation of reaching the same income level in the current year;

 

Eesh...

 

[Twig]

So, be rich to get rich is what you're saying!

[SecretAsianMan]

I'm sure if you're interested in being an investor and not a backer, there will be piles of paperwork to go through detailing how things will work and what the various party's obligations are. And I would think that unless you are fronting some majority portion of the game dev cost, the people running the company are the ones who get the final say of the game content as long as they're running things responsibly.

 

I would also imagine that the devs would still (largely) get to make the final call, but it is a little different because investors have a legal recourse they can pursue if they feel they've been misled while backers don't.  Not that I would expect you could sue if they didn't change the character's name to yours or anything like that.  It certainly makes things... trickier though.

[Badfinger]

I imagine they are looking for investors who are going to throw in more than a thousand bucks, in which case being an accredited investor is both just important from the people receiving investment, and also probably important to be legal, n' stuff.

[itsamoose]

This is a cool idea, but I'm skeptical of any investors biting.  Typically what happens now is when an investor wants to make a game they tell the devs to get some percentage of the money with kickstarter (to prove interest), and then fund the remainder themselves.  This may open the field to smaller investors, but I don't think this significantly changes the MO of the larger investors who would rather own a significant portion of the company rather than throwing some money to this group for a small percentage of the company's equity.

[SecretAsianMan]

I'm of the impression that the investors they're looking to attract are somewhat small scale.  I don't think they're looking for a single investor to sink millions of dollars into a game to ensure it gets made.  It seems to me like a higher tier of backer that gets money returned on an investment instead of a t-shirt.

[sclpls]

Clint Hocking has left Amazon.

 

www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/08/18/clint-hocking-has-left-amazon-game-studios/

[Twig]

We talked about this in chat, but man that guy hasn't actually released a game since Far Cry 2. From Ubisoft to LucasArts to Valve to Amazon to ???.

 

I also had no idea the man suffered goddamn memory loss from working on Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. So my guess is he is moving around trying to find the right balance between life and work and he bails at the first sign of a repeated pattern. But obviously I don't really know. Poor guy. ):

[syntheticgerbil]

Someone put this in the comments of that article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html?_r=0

 

If it has anything to do with how games are run there, fuck Amazon. That place sounds miserable to work at. I'll never understand the saps who sacrifice their social lives and families in order to be "peculiar" and generate a bunch of money for a corporation that's already huge.

 

Also I feel sympathetic to Clint saying the effects of working such long hours, there's no way any kind of toil like that will leave people reasonably productive and creative problem solvers in such an exhausting environments. I don't know how some developers do that shit and avoid falling asleep while still producing a good game. I imagine there are some developers out there with bags of cocaine or amphetamines.

[Dewar]

Living in Seattle, Amazon's reputation has gone quickly from dream workplace to absolute hell in the last 5 years or so.

[syntheticgerbil]

I had no idea of the Amazon's practices until a year or so ago when I got a job at the post office (which I didn't show up to) and found out you work 7 days a week thanks to Amazon's new center in Austin which stuck up a deal with the Post Office to deliver packages on Sunday. The one day the already overworked USPS gets off guaranteed is gone. Didn't seem fair to place the burden of Sunday delivery on people over pointless items you could wait longer for.

 

The NY Times article didn't touch on the games division at all, but I get the feeling it's not any different if they are so big on hammering in those principles everywhere you go.

[Gaizokubanou]

Really interesting article that Troy Goodfellow rt just now

 

https://medium.com/steam-spy/your-target-audience-doesn-t-exist-999b78aa77ae

[Brett E]

http://www.engadget.com/2015/08/26/rovio-angry-birds-layoffs/

Is it just me or is this becoming an all too familiar story? Particularly with mobile. Company has mega hit and makes a ton of money, expands rapidly, takes on tons of staff, fails to maintain growth that can sustain expansions and starts to tank. It's happened with Zynga and I think others (but can't remember examples right now so could be wrong) and now Rovio. King.com and that War Game company seem likely to be next. 

[SecretAsianMan]

It's a common tale in any industry.  A company does well and they want to keep the momentum so they quickly try to expand.  If they've judged things correctly, it will pay off but a lot of the time what happens is they overestimate what they're capable of or they misunderstood the reason for their success and can't replicate it.  Then things take a turn and stuff like large layoffs happen.  Video game companies are just as subject to this as any other company.  The biggest difference I'd say is the speed of the turnaround.  With companies that produce physical goods or services it might take a while longer for those repercussions to take effect while a company that deals almost exclusively in digital media is going to feel that impact much faster.

[Brett E]

Ah ok. I guess it seemed notable because it's relatively new for video games but I that's probably as you say due to the change to digital and the rise of mobile, which has opened up larger new audience and I guess increased the revenues and thus the potential for bigger growth and bigger falls.

[brkl]

If you read the Troy Goodfellow article above, that feeds into this IMO. I think games work differently from other products because they suddenly become huge on reasons that cannot be anticipated or replicated. Angry Birds was the right product for when it was released, but its success doesn't mean people will be lining up to buy the next thing the same company makes. Probably the next similarly successful title will come from another company just as unknown as Rovio was at the time. You can spend millions and be outsold by Flappy Bird.

[Brett E]

I have read that one, it is indeed good and I didn't think about it but yeah it is the same phenomenon more or less.  

[tberton]

Clint Hocking is now working at Ubisoft Toronto. Funny, I never actually realized he's Canadian, although it makes sense.

[Twig]

Back at Ubi, huh.

[Dewar]

Far Cry 5 confirmed to have jamming guns and a debilitating disease. Also, it will never come out.

[sclpls]

God it would be great to play a non-stupid Far Cry game again.

[Henroid]

Just a small note: A Shovel Knight amiibo exists, which is lending heavily to rumors that Shovel Knight is going to be a Smash Bros. character. Which is probably going to open a floodgate of people going, "THIS INDIE GAME CHARACTER SHOULD BE IN SMASH BROS." I've already started by saying Dem the Skeleton Knight should be in it.

 

With the way Nintendo is handling Mario Maker content sharing, it makes me wonder if Nintendo is about to really embrace a lot of modern conventions / expectations in the business.

[Twig]

Lots of people have been asking for indie characters in Smash basically since Smash 4 was announced. Shovel Knight of course is a big one, but there's also Shantae and Commander Video.