Interview Feargus Urquhart Interview on IGN Unfiltered

[l3loodAngel]

The whole system is bad. The game journalists are bad, because their work has little value and they must support Triple-A games for revenue. The triple-A (or double-A?) games are bad, because they are designed for the lowest common denominator.

Yeah, but AAA game costs are have spiraled out of control. Mass Effect andromeda cost USD 55 mm, COD: Infinite warfare USD 60 mm costs. Basically you have to have everyone onboard including housewives and senile people for it to even have a chance to payoff. At this point the number of AAA games will like diminish, because two or 3 failures and you are out of business. To even have a chance to break even you have to throw everything including the kitchen sink, because to hit break even you have to sell 1.6 mm copies (at full price). A 30% discount means that you need to sell USD 2.2 mm (20% USD 2 mm) to thit break even. It's a big boy business now.

 

[Excidium II]

shut up

 

[l3loodAngel]

shut up

Did I hurt your "geelings"?

 

[Lurker King]

Yeah, but AAA game costs are have spiraled out of control. Mass Effect andromeda cost USD 55 mm, COD: Infinite warfare USD 60 mm costs. Basically you have to have everyone onboard including housewives and senile people for it to even have a chance to payoff. At this point the number of AAA games will like diminish, because two or 3 failures and you are out of business. To even have a chance to break even you have to throw everything including the kitchen sink, because to hit break even you have to sell 1.6 mm copies (at full price). A 30% discount means that you need to sell USD 2.2 mm (20% USD 2 mm) to thit break even. It's a big boy business now.

You are delusional. Nothing is out of control. They make research, have a powerful marketing approach, big teams, their game design principles are simple, etc. Triple-A development is a well-oiled machine that work like clockwork.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Yeah, but AAA game costs are have spiraled out of control. Mass Effect andromeda cost USD 55 mm, COD: Infinite warfare USD 60 mm costs. Basically you have to have everyone onboard including housewives and senile people for it to even have a chance to payoff. At this point the number of AAA games will like diminish, because two or 3 failures and you are out of business. To even have a chance to break even you have to throw everything including the kitchen sink, because to hit break even you have to sell 1.6 mm copies (at full price). A 30% discount means that you need to sell USD 2.2 mm (20% USD 2 mm) to thit break even. It's a big boy business now.

You are delusional. Nothing is out of control. They make research, have a powerful marketing approach, big teams, their game design principles are simple, etc. Triple-A development is a well-oiled machine that work like clockwork.

Focus marketing is the bane of modern entertainment.

 

[Apexeon]

Intelligent players should support decent developers and stop throwing money at studios that don’t give a shit about them.

There is a solution. And this type of wisdom makes the Codex the only insane/sane place on the net. The last outpost of incline.

 

[Lurker King]

Focus marketing is the bane of modern entertainment.

I disagree. It’s as if we are poking our noses into areas which are none of our business only because it has the “game” word on it. Entertainment for the masses was always disappointing for a small group. For some short period, publishers funded the games we like, in the same way that jazz bands were fashionable. That time is gone because the game industry now is a much more profitable business. To insist on the analogy and make it more accurate, is as if now fans of jazz stop listening to it because they grow up and we don’t have a new generation to keep buying new records. That is the real problem. Not the publishers, the casuals or the MMOs. The real problem is the lack of connection between the old target audience and good developers, the lack of foment for a new generation of connoisseurs, the lack of coherence and values of the connoisseurs themselves, etc. The system is still inefficient because the grognards are all over the place, divided, instead of fomenting the same things.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Focus marketing is the bane of modern entertainment.

I disagree. It’s as if we are poking our noses into areas which are none of our business only because it has the “game” word on it. Entertainment for the masses was always disappointing for a small group. For some short period, publishers funded the games we like, in the same way that jazz bands were fashionable. That time is gone because the game industry now is a much more profitable business. To insist on the analogy and make it more accurate, is as if now fans of jazz stop listening to it because they grow up and we don’t have a new generation to keep buying new records. That is the real problem. Not the publishers, the causals or the MMOs. The real problem is the lack of connection between the old target audience and good developers, the lack of foment for a new generation of connoisseurs, the lack of coherence and values of the connoisseurs themselves, etc. The system is still inefficient because the grognards are all over the place, divided, instead of fomenting the same things.

Half true. You must understand that big entertainment companies are underestimating the intelligence of the masses. Lowest common denominator is higher than what we are served right now. By constantly bombarding the audience with low quality movies/games/musics they are reinforcing the race to the bottom and the expectations of the audience are lowered. Big studios use big marketing money or/and well known IP to to make enough noise, so they can silence any small competition.
The sad thing is that most of the geek culture is submissive towards big companies and instead of searching for good things to promote, it waste most of the time discussing big properties.

 

[Lurker King]

Half true. You must understand that big entertainment companies are underestimating the intelligence of the masses. Lowest common denominator is higher than what we are served right now. By constantly bombarding the audience with low quality movies/games/musics they are reinforcing the race to the bottom and the expectations of the audience are lowered. Big studios use big marketing money or/and well known IP to to make enough noise, so they can silence any small competition.

Maybe or maybe this “games that look like Hollywood movies” reflects perfectly what most people want.

The sad thing is that most of the geek culture is submissive towards big companies and instead of searching for good things to promote, it waste most of the time discussing big properties.

No kidding. We quibble about everything. The good games are viewed in the most uncharitable manner and somehow are never good enough. People avoid great games with all kind of excuses like having many rats in it, or teleports, or MMO art, or RPG maker look, or is Japanese, etc. It is curious that the same people will buy all the shittiest games recently released because everyone is talking about them or because they have good graphics. We can’t put our game ideological disagreements aside for a common cause that is support good developers, but we can unanimously support who doesn’t need our support for the most stupid reasons.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Maybe or maybe this “games that look like Hollywood movies” reflects perfectly what most people want.

Throw the same kind of product at the general audience many times, add aggressive marketing, press campaigns, peer pressure and repeat it over and over and you will mold customers into your liking. Wouldn't be surprised if many gamers were pressured into liking certain games to the point they believed they actually liked it. If you try to root out critical thinking, so called "negativity" and have marketing and press tellyou what to buy instead of having your own curiosity lead research decide it for you, you will end up consuming only big budget trash.