We showed up in the Austin American-Statesman for Tech Monday (out on the web this evening). Digg it. Spread the word. Check it out. Pretty good write-up.
UPDATE: I didn’t notice this, but there’s also a video clip. Interesting…
Collin Campbell recently wrote an editorial on used games. He makes the argument that used games sales at stores like GameSpot hurt the game industry as a whole because publishers (and by extension developers) don’t receive a dime of used game sales. I think he makes a poor argument, though.
He neatly dodges the question of why the used market doesn’t seem to be the ruin of other industries, such as books, movies or music, or as one commenter suggested, cars. He says this about these other products:
Unlike books and other media, games have a short life in the hands of consumers. Books, DVDs and CDs are keep-ables, sometimes for years. Games, once they’re played out, are often not.
Here he actually reveals the problem, and it’s not with the used game market. The problem is that “games have a short life.” Which is horribly ironic considering how games compare as a medium to books, music or movies. Games are interactive and dynamic, the others are passive and static. Games are generative, the others are fixed. To “complete” a game ranges from 8 to 10 hours (for “short” games) to 30, 40, or more (for “long” games). Compare that to 1 hour for a CD, 2 hours for a movie, or 6 to 8 hours for a book.
The use game market is so strong because games are so expensive. I’ve got a large collection of DVDs, three or four hundred last time I counted. I could easily have twice that if I actually had a decent place to stick all of them. I’ve got a similar collection of CDs. I can look at these large collections and calculate how much money I’ve dumped into them: $6,000 on DVDs, $5,000 on CDs, roughly speaking. Considering I’ve been collecting them over the last decade, and many of them have been gifts, that all seems pretty reasonable (relatively speaking).
Now, what if I had 200 PS2 games that I had bought new? $10,000. And that’s assuming a $49.95 price point. And how many of them would I want to pop in and play today? I’ll let you guess… and then compare that number to how many of my movies I’d want to pop in and play today, let alone next year or 10 years from now.
I can only justify spending $60 on a console game because I know I can trade it in and recoup half that. I didn’t do that for a long time: I only bought new and I kept all the games I bought. At one point I realized that I simply didn’t care to play 90% of those games ever again. I traded them all in to a Gamespot and I’m sitting on nearly $400 in credit… credit that I’ll most likely spend on new games, though honestly I’ll spend it on a used copy if its available.
Because of the way our industry creates games we create the “problem” that Collin is arguing. We create sequels, we create derivatives in a genre, we create clones. I’m actually all for that: games are tricky design problems, and they’re software to boot, so all of this copying and cloning and making of sequels is simply evolution at work. Call of Duty 4 is a spectacular FPS, why would I go back to Call of Duty 3 (except for the WWII themes)? SimCity 4 is a near-perfect rendition of SimCity in my opinion, why would I want to play SimCity 3000 or SimCity 2000? The opposite is most often true in movies: “the only sequel that doesn’t make money is the last one,” therefore would can conclude that movies “devolve” with successive generations (of the same movie, not the medium as a whole).
All that’s too say is Collin’s comparison to other used markets is false, or at least using the comparison to bolster his argument fails. All it does it point the finger right back at the publishers. As one of the comments points out, the used game market forces publishers to create the best “first run” title, i.e. titles that demand to be purchased the day of release. Or, titles that demand to be kept long enough to dry up the used games market.
That’s the real problem. Publishers think that “units sold” should equate to the number of people who play/own their product. That’s why they hated rentals. It’s exactly how the “business” software industry likes to think, and it’s exactly what every DRM solutions attempts to enforce (including digital distribution). But this market perspective is only true for “consumables,” i.e. products whose purchase leads immediately (or nearly so) to their consumption, and thus removal from the market. Examples would be food, gas, printer ink, paper, or more abstractly (contractually) movie tickets, rent, utility bills.
Publishers want their market to be one of consumables. But it’s not. It’s a product-oriented market, like toys or cars or houses. Ownership is invested into something tangible and (relatively) permanent. Ownership only ever changes hands, even if it’s to toss the product into the trash. It’s property.
Basically, you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. If you want your product to be “property” then you can basically charge a very high cost beyond manufacturing, basically whatever the market will bare, but your market size is based upon how many people at any point in time want to own your product. So for example, if 500 people want to own your product today and a year from now 500 people want to own your product but it’s a different 500 people, your market size is still 500 people, and in an idealized market economy you may end up with only 500 total sales, even though 1000 people at one time or another “owned” or “used” your product.
Now, if you want your product to be a “consumable” it basically, or inevitably, becomes a commodity, i.e. it’s cost is driven by incredibly slim margins on the manufacturing cost, not the research and development cost. In the case of video games, a “consumable” cost would be very close to what CDs, DVDs and books cost, roughly $15 to $20. Instead, publishers try to factor all costs into the product cost, including research, development, marketing, manufacturing and distribution. It’s simply a luxury that the market will no longer tolerate.
Publishers will argue that there’s no way they could develop games if their retail price was $15 or $20. And they’d be right, if they continued to do business as usual. But as we should all realize — and if the web hasn’t taught you this I don’t know what will — the only constant is change, and if a business doesn’t change when its market changes it will become irrelevant (see music industry). The industry must change. Either the budgets have to be smaller or the market has to be larger. Pointing the finger at used games is no different than the music industry pointing the finger at a housewife sharing music on a P2P network (other than the strict legality of the respective practices): something is wrong with either the business model or the product if the market doesn’t desire one enough to put up with the other.
Another suit (from Jack Thompson) against Take-Two/Rockstar regarding GTA and a murder. The standard “informed” rebuttal: games don’t make people killers… if he didn’t have access to guns… it’s the parent’s responsibility… he was a 13yrold playing a 17+ M rated game…
The problem: arguing that he’s a 13yrold playing a 17yrold’s game kinda concedes the point that the game may have caused the problem. While that may be possible, I kinda doubt it…
Another problem: arguing that playing a game can’t have a negative impact on you (can’t make you a killer) kinda goes against the assertion that games are art and can have impacts on the audience, express emotion, etc.
We can’t have our cake and eat it, too: games either have emotional/psychological impacts or they don’t. And if they do, the question is whether the game in particular has a positive or negative one (or if its even related to the case). Of course games have emotional impacts. The best ones aim for it. That does not mean they bear responsibility for its audience’s actions.
Games, like all media, broaden the consumer’s palette of experience. It’s experience-by-proxy. I wasn’t alive during WWII, but I feel as though I have some degree (incredibly slight, to be sure) of experiential understanding of it due to movies like Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List, or video games like Medal of Honor. We have to admit, though, that 2 hours of Saving Private Ryan delivers a far deeper emotional impact than 20 hours of Medal of Honor.
Of course, most video game players focus on the mechanics, with the thematic elements being secondary. Thematic elements become repetitive. Much like a movie may revolve around its characters and their development, a game revolves around the mechanics and their application.
Of course, someone predisposed toward violence or who is desensitized to it or amoral for whatever reason may focus on the thematic elements. In fact, they may be attracted to the game because of the thematic elements, as opposed to the mechanics. And if they play obsessively, it may be a kind of “wallowing” in the themes, as opposed to “exercising” the mechanics.
Porn is an apt comparison, a slightly more socially acceptable pursuit that most males will (hopefully) have more experience with than violence. It’s base, just like violence, and is considered a socially undesirable (if not wholly unacceptable) recourse for certain “urges”. One can probably see the distinction between viewing porn “to get your rocks off” as opposed to becoming obsessed and entrenched in it. There’s a difference between getting aroused by hearing a woman moaning as she’s brought to (a likely faked) climax and being aroused by the male-dominating, misogynistic “fake rape” that can be found in some dark corners. It may be a thin line from some perspectives, and their may be no distinction in the eyes of others, but I’d guess most guys can see the difference.
The same applies to video games… the vast majority of the consumers are relishing the mechanics primarily and the themes secondarily. It’s not the life of a real mob assassin that we’re enjoying thematically, it’s the idealized, sanitized version. And we know it’s different. Hell, a 13yrold should know its different. If he can’t make that distinction, then there’s something wrong. A parent shouldn’t be oblivious to that.
So the parents do bare some responsibility, not so much for the child’s actions, but for the contributing factors to those actions. Now, if Rockstar was advertising GTA during Saturday morning cartoons, including it in cereal boxes, and distributing demos at elementary schools, then they’d be doing something wrong (though still not *responsible* for the actions of the players). But rating a game as M, selling it for $60 for a $200 game machine puts reasonable barriers to entry up, particularly for a 13yrold.
In other words, I’ve got absolutely no problem with the existence of pornography. I would absolutely have a problem with my 13yrdold son watching pornography. But if I bought it for him, and let him watch it, could I really turn around and sue Vivid when he got a girl pregnant? Could I honestly blame the makers of the porn for that?
Please note my comparison between porn and video games: the comparison is apt because in the eyes of those defaming video games they are on equal footing, yet they would never think of suing the porn makers (or maybe they would, but no lawyer would give them the time of day ’cause they’d lose). They are not the same thing, though. Porn is like a documentary: it is real people having real sex. GTA is crudely modeled and animated, very clearly not real people doing very clearly not real things (like running from one end of a city to another, and dying, and being resurrected, and getting hit by cars and not getting hurt, etc…).
So, the next time you witness a “games don’t kill people, people kill people” kind of debate, be clear about the point you’re arguing. Don’t diminish games by arguing they don’t have the emotive substance to effect their audience. Its a double-edged sword that we must be quite careful in wielding.
Socialism (or Communism?) is famously a political system that works, in theory. When I previously used the redundant metaphor of Manifesto Games as socialism, I think I may have given the wrong impression — I blame it on my exposure to Slashdot groupthink — that I somehow thought indie games being sold through fair and equitable channels was a bad idea. I clearly do not.
What turns me cold to Manifesto Games is the attitude that surrounds it, the “Fuck the publishers!” writ large in every message, memo, ad, logo and interview. I understand the sentiment, and I appreciate that most of these folks have some sincere experience that justifies their feelings. I just feel as though the image this portrays to those folks beyond our current audiences is one of brash, juvenille angst — in other words, exactly the negative stereotype we regularly defend ourselves against.
Ironically, these are exactly the creators who call for innovations in gameplay that lead to broader appeal. And they largely delivers on the call, at least in a raw indie film kind of way. The problem is that they then go and wrap it in a public image that accomplishes the same goal.
Sugar attracts more than salt… even if the bitterness is not directed toward your audience, the result is the same: when people who don’t live and breath games get a snapshot of this they get that same chill you get when your best “couple” friends have an argument in front of you. Coincidentally, the same feeling I got when I played Facade. 
Jeff had an excellent write-up addressing the doubters of XNA Studio Express. And he’s go into an excellent example of exactly what I’ve been trying to explain in all of my recent defenses of the idea. Perhaps his words are a bit more convincing? Let’s hope so…
Well, like it or not, the Manifesto Games website is open to the public. And Slashdot is already knocking on its door. The comments on Slashdot are a little low on the supportive side, but actually very similar to my thoughts as well. In addition, some of the comments over on Greg’s blog are serving to point out some obvious technical/aesthetic/usability issues.
Of course, as Greg points out, it should be considered beta. But one lesson everyone should learn from “Web 2.0″ is that you often only get one shot at a first impression with “the masses,” even if it is your beta. Folks like Google and Flickr have really upped the ante on what quality people expect in a “beta.” (Beta, the new 1.0.)
I hope Greg listens to some of the initial complaints. I agree that the site design and aesthetic aren’t competitive with other online shopping portals, nor is the usability. The registration requirement for downloading a demo is a killer that I’m sure he’ll have to change if we wants any success; these are already “high risk” titles to dedicate any time to — asking the user to jump through one more hoop is easily the nail in the coffin.
And, as I expected, the whole “sticking it to the man” attitude wears thin very quickly. I find it hard enough to swallow all the open source machismo I get from the Linux crowd, et al, and this utterly won’t work for gathering a larger audience for games. It may work for street culture like music, fashion or art, but that’s only because there’s some sincerity behind it (and some deep roots) — this feels shallow and parroted (though I do know that Greg’s hatred of mainstream game development is pretty sincere). As I described it elsehwere, it’s just your classic emo/angst/rebel shit that only serves to attract the least desirable (i.e., pennyless) customer. Do you think folks with $20 burning a hole in their pocket and some spare time are looking to stick it to the man? More likely torrenters and folks like myself satisfied with just a demo…
Like most angst-driven aesthetics, it will wither under its own pretenciousness. It happened to socialism, it happened to the grunge scene, it’s happening/happened to emo, and I’m guessing it’ll happen to Manifesto. But, there was one comment that was absolutely on target: Greg is absolutely putting his money (and time and effort) where his mouth is, and I applaud that.
I’m really surprised by some of the negative comments on Microsoft’s decision to open up Xbox 360 to indie development. I would have expected a great fanfare from the indie crowd, but most of what I’ve heard has been suspicion and derision.
For example, Greg’s thoughts on the subject. Sure, it was basically what I expected, but that still doesn’t mean I wasn’t disappointed to hear it. I realize that his bread is buttered these days by indie *PC* game developers, but he does seem to miss the f*cking point… as do many of the commentors on that post. Here’s what I had to say (carried over from my comments on his blog):
First, Greg attributed the Net Yaroze to Sega. Of course, it was actually Sony. And it was an incredible pain to work with. And it was basically like having a cheap-ass devkit. And it severely limited the resources you could access on the machine. On, and your game had to run completely in-memory. Details @ Wikipedia.
Second, several folks suggested that the service should be completely opened up, truly a “YouTube of Video Games.” Of course, MS (and the media, hook-line-and-sinker) loves a soundbite like that, but what they’re offering really isn’t YouTube (yet). The obvious caveat is that MS has to keep the quality bar high for “official” titles (as I explained in my previous post on the topic). Folks pointed at Amazon.com as an example of an “open system with filtering,” but they are being disingenous (or naive) if they think the barriers to getting a book listed on Amazon are equivalent to me uploading some random code to a website (or a video to YouTube). Perhaps, with the recent growth of on-demand publishing, perhaps the barrier is a bit lower, but there’s still an incredible amount of relative filtering that happens.
Besides, how do you make money off of that? There’s several, several orders of magnitude more videos out there on YouTube and they still don’t have a clear path for monetizing that. Do you really think it’d be easier on the Xbox with code?
Oh, and I really like the excellent point someone made: “Greg, will Manifesto be publishing any title that comes their way, regardless of quality?”
Of course, Greg’s (and some commentors’) perspectives are very different than that of the consumer MS is targetting. MS is targetting that high school kid who knows some programming and wants to do some stuff on the console in his living room. They’re targetting hobbyists who want to “play” on a console. Of course, these same people already know (and already do) this stuff on PC’s.
Craig Perko echoed this misconception I’ve seen elsewhere (which demonstrates GarageGames’ very effective marketing surrounding this):
I had the same reaction as Greg, especially since the actual software you get to use is literally a port of GarageGame’s existing middleware.
GarageGames is offering the Torque X package on top of MS’s XNA framework. It is a separate purchase, just like if I sold you a C# class library for you to use. Users are welcome to use Managed DirectX and C# to their fullest (and basically have full access to the hardware).
Unbelievably, someone actually raised the “but C# is crap” objection:
XNA Express only works with C#. Whilst it isn’t a bad language it certainly isn’t going to go up against C++/asm for performance. [...] You have to create your game on a PC first, erm, at that point you can either distribute it to lots of ppl on PC, or a few ppl on the 360. This is much less 360 development then PC development with 360 development tacked on. But then WTF you develop games with C# and managed directX when you could just develop with C++ and directX, with only a tiny loss in your potential audience? [...] XNA is a solution looking for a problem IMHO.
Let’s dispense with the whole C# vs. C++ crap. I applaud finished product, not the tools used. I could give a flying fuck if some kid in his bedroom (or the guy in the office next to me) used VisualBasic or assembler to craft his Pong clone (or his WWII FPS or his epic fantasy MMO). We’d all be so lucky as to be able to use a nice high level language like C# to make all of our games. Besides, the performance is as good or better than most programmers can do in C++ anyway. I only wish that the performance difference between C# and C++ was the barrier to indie gamedev nirvana…
I was excited when I heard about this, but that’s because until I read this post by Greg, I didn’t realize that the developers wouldn’t be seeing a cent of the game’s sales. Why couldn’t M$ just split the profits 50/50 with the developer? (Of course any such arrangement is probably confused by the fact that the games will be bought with M$ “credits” or whatever they call them, rather than with any real-world currency.)
Which is utterly, completely false. While you can’t make any money off your games, neither does MS. Folks pay a flat fee to have the opportunity to download and run managed code on their console. That’s the only financial transaction. You can’t charge for your game, MS doesn’t charge for your game. If they like it and want to distribute it on XBLA, then count your blessings, because you just got a spectacular calling card for your next title. Oh, and some steady income (based on the current conversion rates). (BTW, credits have a linear exchange rate with US dollars, so there’s absolutely no confusion there even if they were in play.)
I think that if M$ was mostly staying out of the revenue side, and letting people just use XBLA as a market to sell their games at whatever price they wanted, and M$ was just taking a relatively small cut, then Greg would have an extreme positive positive reaction to this. Instead the pricing is still screwed up, and he has an extreme negative about it. (If you haven’t figured it out by now, he’s very rarely lukewarm about anything.
As I mentioned in my previous post on the subject, there’s no way that it would be fiscally sensible for MS to open up the Xbox like this. Not yet. There’s not enough high quality software to stand out from the crap. They make money off of software sales. If there’s a huge market for software that they don’t get a piece of, then they’ll have to shift their profit to the hardware, which would mean consoles would become even more expensive than they already are. If they just took a fixed percentage off of each sale (like eBay, for example), there’s a whole bunch of responsibility that lands in their lap in regards to quality and support. Basically, opening up the Xbox as requested at this time would be a huge liability and money sink for MS, and would really gain very little for the indie gamedev crowd.
And finally, to sum up Greg’s (notably biased) opinion on the matter:
Whoop ti fuckin doo.
Be fucking happy for this new opportunity for indies, hobbyists and amateurs! No one is forcing you to make Xbox games, no one is focing you to sign-up for the Creator’s Club. But previously, it wasn’t even an option. Now, there is another door open, another platform to develop for, one that is significantly different in context than the traditional PC. This will only make the indie gamedev community stronger, and will serve to increase the numbers of game developers out there with some decent skills.
Why waste the effort on tearing it down? Why all the hate?
People would think strange of me if I failed to mention Microsoft’s new XNA Studio Express and Creator’s Club. I’m excited to see DIY gamedev brought to the consoles, and it looks like Microsoft is doing everything right.
Sure, folks will say that Sony did it first with the Net Yaroze. But if you think they’re the same thing then you just don’t get it. XNA Studio Express will allow C# developers to target the Xbox360. Retail Xbox360’s. That’s the first big difference between this and Net Yaroze (which required a custom console). The second is the XNA toolset is a really high quality toolset (unlike the usual half-baked Sony developer tools). Visual Studio is arguably the best IDE (undisputed for C# in my book). The C# language is a wonderful compromise between C++, Java and higher-level dynamic languages like Python. The Managed DirectX API (which is the hardware API for XNA) basically eliminates all of the irritations of the traditional C++ DirectX API (which is already orders of magnitude better than any API Sony has ever released), leaving you with an ideal system library to work. The .NET Framework is very, very full-featured (much more so than the STL, and more appropriately so for games than something like BOOST).
In fact, I’m already in line to get this beta, and look forward to writing C# on the Xbox360. I think we’ll see a spectacular influx of indie gamedev. Seriously, the only drawback for C# for indie gamedev on the PC was always the client machine: fluctuating hardware specs and the requirment for a bulky framework download (potentially). Lots of barriers on top of the built-in indie gamedev barriers (for distribution). But C# on the 360 eliminates that: guaranteed hardware. And with the addition of automatic resource management in C#, you’ve practically eliminated all of the low-level programming worries. All of the focus is on creating the game.
Bravo, Microsoft. Bravo.
Patrick Dugan just made a recent post continuing the thread of the realities of indie gamedev. There’s been a recent rash of parade raining for the indie gamedev scene, starting with Jeff Vogel’s idie lament that I commented on earlier (and was recently linked to from Grand Text Auto). Patrick quickly recaps the observations made by Jeff Tunnell on what the proper expectations of success should be for indies. Jeff properly points out that average titles can only hope to break even, while only the really successful ones are profitable. The result: the market is actually not that different from nearly every other mature creative market where craftsmanship is plentiful (see movies, websites, books, music).
Big news this morning. It came as a suprise to all of us foot soldiers at Criterion. We’ve been working with EA for the last several months, fairly intensely. I guess this means that they liked what we were doing…
GamesIndustry.biz has an excellent article about the acquisition. Of all of the articles I’ve seen so far, it is the most in-depth and interesting to read (seems they actually did the footwork of interviewing those involved as opposed to just quoting the press release).
I’ll be curious to see how, if at all, this will impact by day-to-day life. It is definitely an interesting twist in the middleware saga, and like the above article mentions, a potentially major event in the industry as a whole.