DAC does the end of the year

[Saint_Proverbius]

<A href="http://www.duckandcover.cx/">Duck and Cover</a> has posted <A href="http://www.duckandcover.cx/content.php?id=65">their end of the year editorial</a>, written by <b>DorkOverlord</b>. It covers lots of things, like the whole <a href="http://www.interplay.com">Interplay</a> silliness, games requiring patches, something about some Russian vaporware game with mutants, and more. Here's a clip:

<blockquote>Is the solution then, to cut back on features? Instead of 250 spells, how about just 50? Instead of lip-synching, how about just a solid game that works without crashing or voice-overs that don't drop 10 decibels and become inaudible right at the most important bit? Let those things be added with the expansion pack. The other 200 spells, the extra voice-overs that couldn't be completed in time, the great new area you had an idea for, those extra quests. Throw them all in and charge gamers more. Then again, is it really possible to replace one disease with another? Does that fix anything? Is Expansionitis the solution to Patchamitosis?

... or am I as a gamer expecting too much? Am I too demanding of today's developers? Is what I want some unattainable level of gaming bliss that exists only in my mind's eye? Oh sure, we want great physics engines and super-copol graphics but Jesus Christ All Mighty, we're still playing the same games we had back in '92. It's Wolfenstein 3d all over again, only it's not as much fun. Where are the classics of today's era? </blockquote>

Well, you could say that games have cost around $50 for the last twenty years. Meanwhile, production values for games have gone up which require more people working on the game. That would be a great argument for publishers if the game industry wasn't reporting record profits each and every year!

 

[triCritical]

I would just like to point out that Duck and Cover was admitted to library of congress official American film archives to be preserved forever.

 

[Deacdo]

What an idiot.

At least the "End of the Year" article on this site was amusing, for all it's negativity. That was just awful.

 

[Dhruin]

That would be a great argument for publishers if the game industry wasn't reporting record profits each and every year!

Mmm...I'm not sure it's that simple. Sales are increasing -- the market is expanding -- but where's the evidence that profit growth is outpacing sales growth?

If you look at recent results from the top 10 publishers...

Acclaim - Gone
Activision - $77m up from $66m
Atari - First half fiscal 2005 loss of 42.2m Euro
EA - Fiscal 2004 results - $577m, up 82%
Eidos - 2004 fiscal year end - loss of 2m Euro
Midway - First 9 months 2005 loss of $37.6m
Take 2 - 2004 fiscal year (Oct 31st) - $65.4m compared to $98m last year
THQ - Fiscal 2004 results - $35.2m up from $2.5m
Titus in receivership
Ubisoft - First half fiscal 2005 - loss of 10.3m Euro
Vivendi - the press release was confusing...looks like a $1B loss for the first 9 months

...you see that 6 of the 10 made a loss or are in even worse shit (leave Vivendi aside because that looks looks too big ). EA is rolling in money - granted. A couple of others had good increases but apart from EA, the numbers aren't that exciting. For example, Take 2 is living high on Rockstar's income...but the profit of 65m on sales of $1.25B just isn't that great. THQ had a massive increase -- from the near-loss previous profit of a mere 2.5m.

Smaller publishers are too hard to do but Interplay is gone, Strategy First nearly went, Enlight hit trouble...publishing looks pretty hard to me. So where's the year-on-year record profits?

Edit: VU result included all divisions. VU Games only made a loss of $185m for the first 9 months.

 

[Balor]

Ok, let's see what he said about "some Russian vaporware":
>20 square kilometers of the Zone, outdoor areas
No, in fact, there would be more then 30. At least based on what everybody say.
>original creatures and their abilities: group intellect, telepathy, telekinesis
...invisibility, ventriloquism... The latter would be provided by a mutant cat that got larynx capable of mimicking any sounds, including human speech. Fun stuff! I wonder how he'll use it - just by trying to scare you off by mimicking speech of military stalkers and sounds of tough monsters, or by cussing at you while trying to rip your face into shreds?
>unique types of weapons
Well, perhaps - so I know that it just has nice weapon system with proper ballistics (not unique, but rare and very nice feat, along with wear and jamming) and lovingly modelled weapons (but with reversed ejection ports - I curse you, PROF!) with different ammo types and total upgradeability. Not E5, of course, but still not bad.
>strong non-linear plot with several endings
Cannot say something about it, but I hope they'll keep their word.
>realistic communication with any sapient character
Realistic? Well, simply trading and exchanging brief news is realistic, allright - why would I discuss deeply philosophical matters with any passer-by stalker?
>exploring anomalous zones by means of special equipment
Hmm, bolts and Geiger counters, lol. Oh well, adding in a few else is not that much, so I guess there'll be more.
>many types of weapons
See above.
>trade
See above.
>two-hand fire
NO WAY. I heard many times that there would be no macedonian-style shooting... for good, if you ask me. But, who knows...
>strong character intellect
Well, what it's said about it already sounds very nice (if buggy, but that's what they took extra time for). Provided it's not lies - but we'll give them the benefit of presumption of innocence, right?
>changing world of the Zone
Well, yea. Quests, artifacts, anomalies and monsters will 'respawn' and change locations with regular natural cataclysm called the "surge" (or, perhaps, eruption). Nice idea. Animals will also migrate from level to level, hunting - same goes for other stalkers. And I cannot see anything impossible here - exactly that was done in, e.g., Space Rangers. Except there other rangers could not complete the game for you, while stalkers can.
>control of vehicles and robots.
Vehicles - means soviet-era Zhiguli, Mosquichi, Kamaz truck, etc. And BMP(APC).
Robots... hmm... no idea. Perhaps it's impression they got from Oblivion lost. But it may be, as well, my own lack of info.
________
Well, and graphics seem to be somewhere inbetween Doom3 and HL2. But it's the textures from real Chernobyl that will rock - I've played, *ahem* alpha - and even that, very early build of the game, sporting no pixel shading at all, looked very nice. And it give out insanely high framerates - but that can be attributed to above "no pixel shading". But everybody claim that it is very well optimized.
But, I guess many players, Russian or not, waiting for STALKER because of it's post-apocaliptic, eerie atmosphere. And btw, graphics does play it's role here - some screens from Pripyat, if not for some minor glitches, can be easily taken as photos.
I can give both my hands that, once the game will ship, (and dev promised some modding tools) there would be Fallout mods popping up everywhere, heh.
Even if AI will turn out not that brilliant as they claim (btw, how smart can your average mutan boar or brainless zombi can be? ), I'll buy the game just for exploration sake. While it's possible to have a tour in Chernobyl, and not too expensive, ti's not my type of holyday trip, sure.
And, like I mentioned before, it having no trainable stats and skills (but not having traits really suck... oh well, cannot have everything) does not mean it cannot be a good RPG. I doubt it, tho indepth dialogue in game that is positioned as 'survival FPS with RPG elements ' is bad for incomes, heh.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Mmm...I'm not sure it's that simple. Sales are increasing -- the market is expanding -- but where's the evidence that profit growth is outpacing sales growth?

If you look at recent results from the top 10 publishers...

Well, that's one way to look at it, sure. The other way to look at it is that consumers are dumping more and more money at the market each year. It's kind of up to those publishers to make consumers want to give them that money they were going to spend on a game as opposed to buying another publisher's game.

You also have to wonder if some of that production value is worth it, like hiring bigger named voice actors. That eats in to their profit.

 

[MrSmileyFaceDude]

The market is bigger because there are more people playing games. There are more PC's, and there are a LOT more consoles. That is why total video game sales numbers are so huge.

But the cost of producing games keeps going up. Every year, games keep raising the bar -- for example, you have to have amazing graphics simply to fit in, never mind stand out. Teams are getting larger, budgets are getting higher. Analogies to the movie industry are apt, although the production time of games is generally quite a bit longer than for most movies. The big difference is that stars don't charge as much for voice acting as they do for actually appearing in a movie

So the market is larger but costs are higher. Higher costs increase the development studio's reliance on a publisher, which is why games often get rushed, and why some of the largest publishers simply acquire studios (and dispose of them if they're no longer producing).

I don't think one can make a blanket statement and say that game developer profits are increasing. As Dhruin pointed out, we've lost some major players in 2004 alone. It's a tough time to be an independent developer, too. My company is lucky in this regard, being self-published, and Morrowind's success has helped tremendously . But we're also not generating the kind of revenues the BIG publishers do.

One point SP -- voice actors are cheap. Even the big stars. What REALLY eats up production budget are things like salaries, marketing, equipment (including development workstations, console development kits which are VERY expensive, network infrastructure & IT staff, etc), rent, benefits, etc. etc. If you have 45 people working on a project for 3 years, that's a lot of money. So is it worth it? Well, like I said, the bar keeps being raised. If you want your product to stand out, you have to do some raising of your own. Otherwise your game could get lost in the shuffle.

 

[Fresh]

Whadda nice post. Interesting stuff. I know i have a buncha questions and/or smart remarks, but I guess Im too tired right now, so I'll just leave it at that.

 

[Rosh]

One remark is true, the other, unbelievable horseshit.

But the cost of producing games keeps going up. Every year, games keep raising the bar -- for example, you have to have amazing graphics simply to fit in, never mind stand out. Teams are getting larger, budgets are getting higher.

The big difference is that stars don't charge as much for voice acting as they do for actually appearing in a movie

Bigger teams is a funny one, especially when you consider the people who used to work on LucasArts titles, Origin titles, TSR's titles, Bard's Tale...do I REALLY need to go on? Man-hours? About the same, often more as they often didn't have the luxury to create crap code optimization like in Morrowind in an attempt to try to cop most of it onto SafeDisc (and also tell the user to buy more RAM in order to deal with memory leaks and to have some hope of helping with the framerate), and they had to know something about memory in order to have a game approach operational. Technology? Console license costs are the publisher/developer's problem. If they want to develop for the platform, they can swallow the cost. Engine costs are the same.

The real money sink, cut the bullshit, is the superfluous amount spent on media whore outlets and most of it is soaked by the natural bloating of the publishers themselves. Oh, and let's not forget the fat checks for those in charge, more of those in control now are less gaming industry, more like failed businessmen from other markets who see the gaming industry as little more than a cash cow to squeeze. The employees are squeezed and tossed away at the whim of the board members, and we receive developer-sponsored shitfests like the Spike Video Game Awards as well as incessant commercials that prove that the publishers can't rely on word of mouth anymore - they have to try and blast the game like a crappy action figure, and more of the ads have maybe .2 seconds total of in-game play represented in the commercial. Those that do are usually hinging on something else for shallow effect. Especially that shitty Driv3r game, as well as EtM. Oh, then there's Run Like Hell (which did, apparently, have a bit of money go towards talent if certain information is correct about Chuck Cuevas' career). All console games that had SHITLOADS of money wasted on them, for only real marginal worth as video games. Some voice talent, depending upon the actor and the agency hired through, may charge more. Hollywood, DUH! Do I need to go on in that direction, either, or are those examples sufficient enough?

The main fact is, games ARE selling a HELL of a lot more. The other fact is that publishers are wasting money and are at a point throwing it away while the developers starve, much like the record industry. Publishers wouldn't need anywhere near the money they require if someone wasn't soaking heavily somewhere, and yet the developers receive relatively little money. Publishers are either growing too stupid, or there's a hell of a money-laundering scheme going on with shitty development houses like Fizz Factor, publishers like Interplay, and the CEOs with those in charge pocket a nice salary while the company failure is dropped onto the shoulders of the investors.

I wouldd believe you more if the people most companies put in the credits as "Quality Assurance" weren't just a collective of morons trained to raise their hand when the game crashes.

 

[Fresh]

Of course "those in charge" will make the most money. Is this somehow problematic? Why would the game industry be any different from any other industry?

My point (?) being - is there an alternative? If so, plz suggest what it might be.

 

[Rosh]

Of course "those in charge" will make the most money. Is this somehow problematic? Why would the game industry be any different from any other industry?

No, there is no intrinsic problem to people at the top making money. There IS a problem when clueless business majors get into a position at a company through whatever means (usually by investing over others), and then they flood the market with a load of shitty releases when they treat video games like toasters, taking down the company. They arrange to get paid a salary over time that will cover their investments (like Herve did), and then see about making the company run as long as possible so they can continue to keep pulling that fat check. They don't have to care about anyone else, because their inivestments have been covered, and anything else is profit.

If BethSoft turned to someone else for publishing, they wouldn't receive anywhere near the same amount of profit, if it was cut in half, due mainly to publisher soaking.

My point (?) being - is there an alternative? If so, plz suggest what it might be.

Ever see Dogma? :D

It will likely take care of itself, when the bloated publishers go the way of Interplay, and receive more notoreity like Atari's CEO. The wiser publishers will tend to treat their titles with respect and not soak or ruin them, and I see more private publishers becoming more popular with starting developer houses, so maybe the retarded French businessmen wouldn't fuck them up, either. We can only hope, but the publisher losses are caused by their own incompetence, not market disinterest nor "big development teams". "Big development teams" and other development costs are covered by the game selling by either some merit or that it had license recognition.

 

[kris]

Of course "those in charge" will make the most money. Is this somehow problematic? Why would the game industry be any different from any other industry?

My point (?) being - is there an alternative? If so, plz suggest what it might be.

Selfpublishing.

 

[Fresh]

Ye self-publishing a la Bethesda seems to be a sweet receipe. Lez hope it spreads.

 

[Whipporowill]

Bethsoft isn't just self-publishing though. Not sure how much revenue they've gotten for other games, but there sure are some. I wonder when they'll release that fricking "Dark Corners of the Earth"...

 

[MrSmileyFaceDude]

Bethsoft isn't just self-publishing though. Not sure how much revenue they've gotten for other games, but there sure are some. I wonder when they'll release that fricking "Dark Corners of the Earth"...

Yeah we publish outside titles too, like Pirates of the Caribbean and Cthulhu (which is coming out this quarter). There's also two subsidiary publishing arms of the company -- Mud Duck, which publishes only budget titles (like $10 to $20 starting price), and Vir2L, which publishes cell phone games like The Elder Scrolls Travels series, which are all developed by outside companies.

It's one of the reasons we recently added the "Bethesda Game Studios" name & logo, to distinguish games developed in-house from those developed by third party studios.

 

[Whipporowill]

Cthulhu (which is coming out this quarter)

I'll take that as a promise Steve... I've been expecting this baby for what 4 years now? I wonder if I'll even recognize the game from what was shown a few years ago, I'd imagine a lot of the impressive stuff was cut, redone et c. I probably shouldn't expect too much...

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

Cthulhu (which is coming out this quarter)

I'll take that as a promise Steve... I've been expecting this baby for what 4 years now? I wonder if I'll even recognize the game from what was shown a few years ago, I'd imagine a lot of the impressive stuff was cut, redone et c. I probably shouldn't expect too much...

I ditto that, Whip.

 

[Fresh]

So Bethsoft is a publisher like any other?

 

[S4ur0n27]

I'd like to precise something :

Image removed, cut it out OR ELSE! -Spaz

P.S. You meant you'd like to specify something, asshat.

 

[Transcendent One]

That's just ... wrong :shock:

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

wtf spaz, just put a link to the photo instead of getting rid of the whole thing. Exitium does that same shit too

 

[Spazmo]

We're trying to protect innocent minds from offensive material.

 

[Sol Invictus]

We don't need hotlinks to things like these for example.

 

[S4ur0n27]

It's rarer than the goatseman, Rex.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

written by DorkOverlord

I envy you and your punless username.

Ok, let's see what he said about "some Russian vaporware"

Just a point of clarification, that was information given in an interview by the developers of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.