Brad Wardell thinks Game Developers are full of shit

[Astromarine]

Here's an article by Brad Wardell, leader of Stardock, about piracy. Among other things, he points out that Sins of a Solar Empire reached the number 1 in the sales charts with NO piracy protection whatsoever.

http://draginol.joeuser.com/article/303 ... _PC_Gaming

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Pretty interesting.

Now quick, someone post it in the other 4 threads about piracy.

 

[Jeff Graw]

While I disagree with a lot (more like most) of Wardell's design decisions, I think his approach to piracy, distribution, and fanbase building is pure genius.

 

[Herbert West]

That was a very interesting read. It does confirm what I think about "the death of pc gaming". Namely, that it's not piracy at fault, but the motherfukin' devs [CliffyB you fag] themselves who fail at making a game and blame it on Teh Piracy or on the idiocy of their audience [that iron lore guy].
There's doom and gloom precisely because of doomsayers, not because the end is nigh.

 

[Lord Chambers]

That was a very uninteresting read. What did he say that was insightful, controversial, or new?

He says that the audience his company develops for aren't pirates, which may be true, and I'm happy for him. But he's implying then that if you develop for demographics that aren't aging, technologically illiterate, strategy gamers then you're not making good business decisions.

Fair enough. But...how exactly are you supposed to know what percentage of your chosen demographic arr pirates? We know it's not his audience...but...*counts on fingers* I don't exactly understand how the mistaken developers are supposed to learn their lesson and start appropriating more reasonable budgets for games.

Moreover, without any numbers to back up his claims, I'm not inlcined to think that developing only for older machines is the sole answer to a decline in sales. My experience says that the people with the BFG cards are the ones most interested in buying games, and while it might be a smaller demographic than the kinds of games Wardell is making, I think they may be proportionately more inclined to spend money on computer games.

So his two major points, don't develop for pirates or cutting edge technology, amount to an excuse to write an article people will link to that has him pitching his own games.

 

[Azarkon]

I think the key point to take away from his article is don't make expensive cutting-edge-technology games for PCs. Make cheap games with good gameplay, instead, and target genres that aren't evaluated on the basis of next-gen graphics (turn-based strategy, 4X, etc.) Piracy will still affect your game, but hopefully there are enough enthusiasts around that you'll still make a profit. Certainly, it seems reasonable that the chances of you breaking even goes down the more expensive and high-tech your game is. Of course, certain companies are exempt from this rule due to long-standing fan-bases, but if you're trying to break into the PC gaming industry, that's probably good advice.

 

[The_Pope]

Don't develop for pirates is a big difference from how the game industry behaves. Who pirates games? 14-18 year olds with no income and the technical savvy to do so. Who is the target audience of every smash hit AAA blockbuster next gen experience?

14-18 year olds with no income and the technical knowledge required to pirate games.

 

[Dhruin]

Yeah, awesome. Piracy is irrelevant as long as you only make Peggle and small strat games. Hooray!

 

[Burning Bridges]

Don't develop for pirates is a big difference from how the game industry behaves. Who pirates games? 14-18 year olds with no income and the technical savvy to do so. Who is the target audience of every smash hit AAA blockbuster next gen experience?

Well said! Instead of complain that there are too many pirates, why not make games for people who can afford them?

Btw am I the only one who thinks Stardock Central sucks? I recently bought the two expansions and now I have to go online and download them every time I want to install. I am sick and tired of hearing only praise for that lack of copy protection in stardock games, never had any problems with the usual copy protection.

Well in the end I must live with that. The game is too good.

 

[Astromarine]

oh bullshit. there's nothing small about galciv2 and soase. You guys keep missing the point, which is strange because it's the same goddamn point you bitches are always making.

Galciv2's budget was one million. It sold seven figures. Any fucker with a 5 year old pc could play it, which is why from that huge market he managed to get 300k people interested in buying it. It was HUGELY profitable.

COmpare that with Crysis. Just exactly how many graphics cards that can run it do you think are out there? How many millions? I know the installed base for "performance" and "enthusiast" cards from Nvidia is 60 million. Considering most of those are on the low end of Performance, I'd say the enthusiast end (which are the people that can run crysis) are maybe 10 or 15 million. The budget for Crysis was over 30 million dollars. THIRTY. Just what percentage of that enthusiast market do you think crytek was targeting? They'd need 500k just to break even if they had 100% of box price on their bank, which they of course don't. That's insane. Especially because contrary to all the "I pirate cuz I'm poor" bullshit, a large part of the pirating demographic is the stupid fucking kiddies that can afford a $600 graphics card but want to play all games they can on it because the games they like last 8 hours each and have zero replayability.

So all the guy was saying is to make fucking realistic expectation for games, and sell to the bigger market. Remember that likely 10 or 15 million enthusiasts number? That's from a total installed base of GeForce chips of 190 million. If you're willingly targeting your game to only 10% of the market, and making it so flashy that you need to pay 30 million dollars to fill up 10 hours of gameplay? You're a retard.

 

[Astromarine]

Btw am I the only one who thinks Stardock Central sucks? I recently bought the two expansions and now I have to go online and download them every time I want to install. I am sick and tired of hearing only praise for that lack of copy protection in stardock games, never had any problems with the usual copy protection.

Well in the end I must live with that. The game is too good.

SDC has an archive function, which allows you to save your games and back them up / install them on other machines.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Crytek said a month ago that they already sold 1 million copies of Crysis. That's quite amazing for a PC exclusive.

 

[Annonchinil]

OMG! GC2 sold 300,000 with no copy protection! EA and Activision begin to invest all their money in small, hardcore projects with no copy protection scheme!

Seriously what is he trying to state? Editors cover games that their readers want to know about, if they actually buy them or not does not matter to them. Since CoD4 is back to #1 I think it is hard to state who the actual 'pirates' are or to argue that if your game is pirated you should target a different market, as CoD4 is pirated rather often. Even The Witcher was in the top 20 at Minova. I think it’s rather obvious that more popular games will get pirated more often. His numbers are also off, the gaming market is not windows blinds market; people are expected to buy multiple products and achieve higher attachment rates. Finally Sins is primary an online game with no campaign and a skirmish component, is anybody surprised that piracy is not going to be what makes or breaks this game?

BTW Crytek makes money on engine licenses, I believe they already have already licensed it out around 10 times, and now that its console compatible I would expect more. And yeah Crysis did sell one million in ’07.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Why are you so critical with Brad? All he's saying is that you don't have to dumb down your games to make a profit, because there is still a market for complex games. I would be glad if certain people would take notice.

Come to think of it, I am also enjoying the fact that I can play GalCiv2 on the sort of low middle range computer that I have right now. All the newer games are on hold until the next upgrade.

 

[Destroid]

Id like to point out that Galciv2 was pirated 10 times for every 1 copy sold (according to patch downloads). Cant find the source though :S

 

[Annonchinil]

Id like to point out that Galciv2 was pirated 10 times for every 1 copy sold (according to patch downloads). Cant find the source though :S

I thought that the patching system of Stardock is ultra secure?

 

[WanderingThrough2]

The weakness of Wardell's argument is that it relies on three questionable premises: (1) Game developers primarily are interested in making money. (2) Game developers are equally able to make any sort of game. (3) Game developers want to make games for the PC.

The second and third premises are demonstrably false -- development teams, like any other segments of the workforce, develop skillsets based on prior work experience and most developers are now moving to consoles.

The first premise is at least debatable (indeed, it seems directly contradicted by his own argument that developers are not behaving in a profit-maximizing fashion). I suspect a lot of developers (particularly at the employee level rather than the capital level) are mostly interested in making a certain kind of game, not in making money. Talented artists can make more money in movies or commercials, talented coders can make more money in business applications, and talented producers can get some other corporate asshole job. (Designers and writers are probably SOL.)

But even if you assume that developers just want to make money, wouldn't a developer making games like Crysis be better served switching platforms and making the same sort of games it is experienced with than switching game genres and staying with the PC? Code is reasonably portable these days. Is Wardell's suggestion that Epic lay off its artists and three quarters of its remaining staff and make turn based strategy games? Surely that doesn't even pass the straight-face test.

The other presumption underlying the whole post is that it was more profitable to make Sins of a Solar Empire or GalCiv 2 for the PC rather than make a simplified version for the DS or next gen consoles. But is there any reason to think that's true? In the race to the bottom, hasn't Infinite Interactive proven that mass-marketing simple games like Puzzle Quest is the way to go?

Superficially the post is pretty compelling but the more I looked at it the more ridiculous it seemed.

As for copy protection, my sense is that it does encourage some sales and I'm quite skeptical that it actually loses many sales except in rare cases. There are some threshold consumers who will pirate a game if it's easy to do so but buy it if it's a pain in the ass, especially if the pricepoint is fairly low and if it's available on a direct download service like Steam. Games are going through a similar convulsion to the music industry where there was a period where instant gratification was easier to get illegally than legally, which may explain the jump in piracy.

Also, I think Wardell overlooks that a lot of second-tier developers do make games with low system requirements than the top-tier developers.

I like GalCiv and Wardell seems like a decent guy, but I'm unconvinced.

(There's also a degree of trying to generalize a theory from an exceptional case. Maybe it's just the case that there's a small, underserved, but relatively loyal fanbase for 4X games that leads to market irregularities in that genre.)

 

[Joe Krow]

So all the guy was saying is to make fucking realistic expectation for games, and sell to the bigger market. Remember that likely 10 or 15 million enthusiasts number? That's from a total installed base of GeForce chips of 190 million. If you're willingly targeting your game to only 10% of the market, and making it so flashy that you need to pay 30 million dollars to fill up 10 hours of gameplay? You're a retard.

Quite right.

The irony kicked in when they started believing their own PR. Some where along the line it went from "we're selling graphics" to "only graphics sell." Gameplay went out the window. They've cornered the market on shallow hardware enthusiasts. Now they just need to realize that that market was never very big.

 

[MetalCraze]

Crytek said a month ago that they already sold 1 million copies of Crysis. That's quite amazing for a PC exclusive.

you can say anything you want. and you can never truly tell how many copies they are truly sold. because publishers tend to exaggerate selling figures - why? to make their game look like something successful - while it isn't. plus - while EA/Crytek tells us how much popularity their game has - the situation at the consumer front is quite the opposite. really - nobody wants to risk paying money for a game they won't be able to play - especially when internet is covered by complaints because of Crysis' system requirements.

 

[Sovy Kurosei]

Crytek said a month ago that they already sold 1 million copies of Crysis. That's quite amazing for a PC exclusive.

you can say anything you want. and you can never truly tell how many copies they are truly sold. because publishers tend to exaggerate selling figures - why? to make their game look like something successful - while it isn't. plus - while EA/Crytek tells us how much popularity their game has - the situation at the consumer front is quite the opposite. really - nobody wants to risk paying money for a game they won't be able to play - especially when internet is covered by complaints because of Crysis' system requirements.

The 90,000 units sold figure that came out a month after Crysis shipped only accounted for boxed sales in North America.

 

[MetalCraze]

yes - and that isn't surprising. a) because of a hype, b) nobody really knew how the game will go on their systems at the time of release. so I can pretty much presume that after the first month the sales could go down considerably.

 

[The Dude]

I just wish that "The Big Boys" would leave the PC alone already, and leave the market totally open for Indie and Semi-Indie companies. (Like Stardock and Paradox. Both who I could see branching out more into different genres if the competition was less cutthroat and the area of focus was something else than expansive grafix and big budget actors.) I couldn't care less about people whining about not selling tens of millions of copies, instead of the death of PC gaming, it would be a reinvigoration.

 

[Sovy Kurosei]

yes - and that isn't surprising. a) because of a hype, b) nobody really knew how the game will go on their systems at the time of release. so I can pretty much presume that after the first month the sales could go down considerably.

Yes, but it was just boxed sales in North America that the oft quoted 90K figure came from. It ignored both online sales in North America and the worldwide market. The worldwide sales would have been much higher back then which makes EA claim that they sold over a million units of Crysis believable.

 

[Digitalos]

Pretty interesting.

Now quick, someone post it in the other 4 threads about piracy.

I did way before this post.

 

[Destroid]

Id like to point out that Galciv2 was pirated 10 times for every 1 copy sold (according to patch downloads). Cant find the source though :S

I thought that the patching system of Stardock is ultra secure?

Good point... maybe it was galciv 1.