Good Games are Bad Business
I mentioned in a comment on my post yesterday that we need to start ignoring the hype machine. Here’s why. It’s all a load of crap. Triple-A titles are not good games (in this case I am using the term “good” to actually mean “innovative”.) Innovation is bad for business. If a person isn’t familiar with something they usually don’t like it. I, for instance, am not a big fan of EVE. I agree it is very cool sounding, but I don’t like it. That’s because I’ve only spent the 14 day trial in the game and I couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. It was new to me and would require an investment of time. I was playing WoW then and had been for a while, I didn’t feel I wanted to wait to experience my fun, I could get it immediately every time I logged into my tiny gnomish tank.
EVE, of course, is still good business. With a subscriber base smaller than several other games out there (all of which were put out by major developers/publishers) it manages to work well and make a profit obviously but let’s face it, the subscriber base still is smaller. They aren’t yet competing with Blizzard, NCsoft, SOE, etc. All the next-gen games (for the sake of argument I’ll refer to the “big 3″ in this as my basis those being Tabula Rasa, Age of Conan and Warhammer Online) are not innovative. Or rather they aren’t really taking things to the next level. They are improving on a few things, changing a few things and calling it a new game but it isn’t any more realistic or interactive than my sock drawer.
That’s because, when it comes down to it, they want to make money and the best way to do that is low barriers to entry. In this case those low barriers are not system specs but the ability to pick up the game and play it. To do that you need to be familiar or you need to be very, very good. Guess which is easier?
August 24th, 2007 at 10:20 am
I don’t care too much about hype. I can filter that.
I typically wait for the demo before purchasing.
I play 8-10 game demos a year looking to replace the last game I was playing. I only have so much game time a week. A game has to beat the last one I was playing or it’s not considered.
Things like DRM, in game ads, or required other support apps needed tend to turn me off before the demo is even downloaded.
October 1st, 2007 at 9:15 am
[...] It is still a problem. I’ve mentioned before how designing an innovative game, one that has depth, would not be a formula for success. It is [...]