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Fergus Mac Roich posted:Got it from here: Hanlon's Razor applies here: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Doing otherwise just makes people your enemies at worst and gives you stomach ulcers at best.
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Sep 20, 2012 07:56
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Urdnot Fire posted:Not for PC games, comparatively. I'd like to see numbers for actual physical retail sales vs digital download sales, for a AAA game. Seems like the arguments that they're irrelevant are based on just wild speculation and anecdotal evidence.
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Sep 20, 2012 07:56
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:I'd like to see numbers for actual physical retail sales vs digital download sales, for a AAA game. Seems like the arguments that they're irrelevant are based on just wild speculation and anecdotal evidence. Physical sales matter, quite a bit. Digital is increasing significantly though. If I remember thequarterly earnings reports right, ea currently has 1/3 of its revenue from digitally distributed content (games, DLC, etc) and it's increasing quite a bit every year. It won't be long before digital outstrips physical at this rate. The last aaa game I worked on had far more sales physical than digital, but if you ony look at the pc sku over the long run the digital version far outsold the physical due to steam sales and the like, not sure if that bat the physical sales in revenue though.
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Sep 20, 2012 08:23
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Urdnot Fire posted:Not for PC games, comparatively. All the PC game shelves in the stores I go to now a days basically only have Diablo 2 collector's discs on them or something. Very rare they get more than a single isle. Kind of weird. I do kind of miss the ability to browse boxes for new releases that can catch my eye though. It's just not the same to go looking online, because the hidden gems are just not visible.
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Sep 20, 2012 08:49
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:I'd like to see numbers for actual physical retail sales vs digital download sales, for a AAA game. Seems like the arguments that they're irrelevant are based on just wild speculation and anecdotal evidence. 10% of PC is boxed sales, with 10-15% of your sales being PC for a AAA game. Battlefield is probably the most successful AAA PC release of a multi-platform title in the past 5 years or so, and it owes it to the tremendous amount of pushing they did of the PC version to PC gamers, building a "next-gen" type game available on PC and leveraging anti-CoD fanboyism and a strong formerly PC brand - I don't think anyone on the market could replicate that. For a non-Battlefield game those numbers are likely pretty accurate though. Their console sales still outsold PC combined but at least PC wasn't an afterthought there. Outside of pack-in goods there is literally no reason to buy boxed PC and the people who want a physical copy buy it on consoles most of the time anyways - PC gamers don't casually walk into stores to buy PC games, and if they're seeking out a purchase it is just easier to download it. e: removed numbers on piracy telemetry because I don't even want to start that derail Sigma-X fucked around with this message at 09:16 on Sep 20, 2012 |
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Sep 20, 2012 09:02
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Sigma-X posted:10% of PC is boxed sales, with 10-15% of your sales being PC for a AAA game. Battlefield is probably the most successful AAA PC release of a multi-platform title in the past 5 years or so, and it owes it to the tremendous amount of pushing they did of the PC version to PC gamers, building a "next-gen" type game available on PC and leveraging anti-CoD fanboyism and a strong formerly PC brand - I don't think anyone on the market could replicate that. For a non-Battlefield game those numbers are likely pretty accurate though. What was up with the Witcher 2 sales then? IIRC it was skewed like 75% through retail. Was that all eastern europe?
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Sep 20, 2012 09:40
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Fergus Mac Roich posted:What was up with the Witcher 2 sales then? IIRC it was skewed like 75% through retail. Was that all eastern europe? http://www.wbj.pl/article-55824-the-witcher-2-nearly-1-million-copies-sold.html "The Witcher 2 game, released on May 17, proved a great success, with sales of 940,000 copies, out of which 200,000 were downloaded online by gamers."
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Sep 20, 2012 09:45
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Sigma-X posted:10% of PC is boxed sales, with 10-15% of your sales being PC for a AAA game. Battlefield is probably the most successful AAA PC release of a multi-platform title in the past 5 years or so, and it owes it to the tremendous amount of pushing they did of the PC version to PC gamers, building a "next-gen" type game available on PC and leveraging anti-CoD fanboyism and a strong formerly PC brand - I don't think anyone on the market could replicate that. For a non-Battlefield game those numbers are likely pretty accurate though. Where are you getting these percentages from?
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Sep 20, 2012 10:01
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Fergus Mac Roich posted:What was up with the Witcher 2 sales then? IIRC it was skewed like 75% through retail. Was that all eastern europe? No idea, although i would imagine that a lot of it has to do with European sales. For example, German editions of games sell very low numbers but Germans typically import non-German versions if possible, so the German version is created so you can advertise in germany and have your German folks import your efigs sku. I would imagine being eastern European there is a different distribution chain than with American games with similar import and sals oddities. the numbers I've seen come from us publishers directly. I don't believe the games was available on steam at release, was it? Steam has a huge install ase compared to other digital distro.
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Sep 20, 2012 10:02
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Sigma-X posted:No idea, although i would imagine that a lot of it has to do with European sales. For example, German editions of games sell very low numbers but Germans typically import non-German versions if possible, so the German version is created so you can advertise in germany and have your German folks import your efigs sku. I would imagine being eastern European there is a different distribution chain than with American games with similar import and sals oddities. the numbers I've seen come from us publishers directly. I don't believe the games was available on steam at release, was it? Steam has a huge install ase compared to other digital distro. It did come out on Steam day and date I think, they even took preorders. The Steam version vastly outsold all the other digital distros though including CDPR's own gog.com.
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Sep 20, 2012 10:03
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The trouble with trying to get percentage of digital sales versus retail sales is that the majority of download stores (like Steam) don't publish their numbers, while physical retailers do. Pretty much everything that isn't a direct statement from a publisher about sales figures is meaningless conjecture. While I don't know enough about other regions to say though, it's not hard to see just how poor PC retail is these days (gamestop barely bothers since there's no resale potential, and in large retailers you're lucky if you find Blizzard games, some Sims, and a handful of AAA releases). Most vaguely reliable estimates I've seen have put PC gaming as a minority of the market, but larger than any individual console share; about $18 billion out of a $65bn market in 2012 (it's hard to find a consistent source on total console share, and there's things like phone gaming that skews it), and continues to grow despite a decline in console hardware sales. And how much of that is download... well, Steam alone is estimated at about three billion, and best source I could find quickly was around 48% of PC game sales being downloads... in 2010. I imagine it hasn't dropped any since. So it's not exactly an insignificant percentage here, and a literal billion-dollar industry on its own.
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Sep 20, 2012 14:50
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After reading that Feargus interview where some dummy didn't clearly think about what they were asking Obsidian, this has given me a possible idea for publishers. If they don't want to risk good money developing an IP they haven't touched in years, they can kickstart it. Get a smaller team, preferably the people who worked on the previous games and have them develop the game. The kickstarter would basically be the equivalent of pre-orders of the game and since they are a publisher too, the distribution chain would be much simpler for them. There are several IPs that could brought back. The Strike Series (owned by EA), The Flashback series (owned by Delphine software), Chrono series (owned by Squaresoft), the Mana series (owned and misused by Squaresoft), Streets of Rage (there is already a remake but Sega threw lawyers at them) and there are many more. Some of these are pretty niche but that's where kickstarter would help. Accrue a solid amount of pledges to cover for dev costs and then when the game is released, every sale will be profits. This would need commitment from the publisher not to pressure the dev to release the game with bugs and cut content.
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Sep 20, 2012 15:57
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Fergus Mac Roich posted:What was up with the Witcher 2 sales then? IIRC it was skewed like 75% through retail. Was that all eastern europe? A lot of copies were sold in Poland, where digital sales make up 5% of all sales at most. The most obvious reason is that retail copies in Poland are 60-75% the price of digital copies, which until recently were only available from Steam at Western European prices. The pricing is totally hosed up here really, console games can be 2x more expensive than PC versions.
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Sep 20, 2012 16:24
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Shalinor posted:EDIT2: Unrelated, Pamplemousse is getting blog updates now. I'm really digging the style. I found the previous one interesting. With more crowdfunding postmortems, hopefully there will be better quality crowdfunding campaigns in the future, although I realise that may be a little optimistic.
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Sep 20, 2012 18:05
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:I'd like to see numbers for actual physical retail sales vs digital download sales, for a AAA game. Seems like the arguments that they're irrelevant are based on just wild speculation and anecdotal evidence. Retail is pretty much on the go. Mobiles are all digital and PCs are moving that way, consoles are probably the only ones that are gonna keep it around. It might take a while, but in 5-10 years you'll probably see a noticeable difference. Around here you'd be hard-pressed to find a general computers store with a PC games shelf at most (and even then they're mostly filled with 90s titles nobody can get rid of). I imagine this is common in any country with a good internet infrastructure, since waiting for stuff to arrive in retail from the AAA countries (US etc.) is a joke, and digital download (or  ) pretty much has it completely beat. Every non-AAA PC developer is going "digital first, retail later maybe". It's just a matter of time.
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Sep 20, 2012 19:48
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I don't doubt physical sales are on the decline. Eventually digital sales will overcome them, but we aren't there yet, and we're hardly to the point where physical sales are irrelevant. I'm sure there are lots of indie developers who would love to have a box on store shelves if it was at all possible for them. But then they'd probably have to stop being indie, wouldn't they? A bit of a paradox.
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Sep 20, 2012 20:06
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As long as we are talking PC and not including consoles, I think we are almost there already. I'm not saying box copies are irrelevant, though they probably are too, but getting them in a retail store certainly is. Go into a Wal-Mart, GameStop, or Best Buy and shop their PC sections. It's terrible (Full disclosure, I haven't been to a Best Buy in years, so I may be wrong on that count.) and the selection is largely budget ware, Sims titles, or WoW stuff. If a person is going to buy a boxed copy anywhere, it seems more likely they'd buy it from Amazon, GameStop, or Best Buys online store. Even then it's just as likely that they will forgo the box copy to have it immediately on DD. Eventually, publishers are going to go DD only, I think, but they might offer a special boxed version for that niche at a premium price. Charge $50-60 for the game, then tack on an extra $15-20 if you want to be shipped a disc+ case.
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Sep 20, 2012 20:24
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Asimo posted:and best source I could find quickly was around 48% of PC game sales being downloads... in 2010. I imagine it hasn't dropped any since. So it's not exactly an insignificant percentage here, and a literal billion-dollar industry on its own. I remember even in like 2004 I started freaking out at how it was becoming increasingly hard to actually find PC games in physical locations without pre-ordering, though I would not have argued until around 2009 that digital service had gotten to the point that physical stores were no longer needed for PC gaming. And if you seriously do not think physical gaming space is on the decline, I guess you may have more anecdotal evidence in your life to support this idea, but the only place I ever see a decent PC game selection is Best Buy, and not even all Best Buys, just some of them--and Best Buy is not itself doing that well overall these days, either, and it would hardly be surprising for the PC game selection to end up disappearing there just like it does everywhere else. Oh, Dragonrah basically beat me to some of this stuff, but yeah, that is basically how I feel. None of my real-life PC gaming friends have bought a physical game (outside of Kickstarter) in years, to my knowledge, other than hilarious retro things we find at auctions or whatever.
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Sep 20, 2012 20:53
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Quarex posted:Oh, Dragonrah basically beat me to some of this stuff, but yeah, that is basically how I feel. None of my real-life PC gaming friends have bought a physical game (outside of Kickstarter) in years, to my knowledge, other than hilarious retro things we find at auctions or whatever. I'm at an interesting point where I'm willing to pay a little extra (couple of dollars) for digital rather than physical product so I don't have to dispose of the box + content.
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Sep 20, 2012 21:54
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Axegrinder posted:Here's a very promising project: Well holy poo poo, sign me up on this. Outpost was basically my go-to PC game for years and this looks like an amazingly progressed version of that.
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Sep 20, 2012 22:02
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Ran in to this gem on craigslist:quote:Hi. Thanks, idea guy.
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Sep 21, 2012 16:13
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Yo dawg, I made a product to gauge interest in a campaign to gauge interest in a product. It's like the Inception of game design.
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Sep 21, 2012 16:36
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It's a bit early to call, but Sword of Fargoal 2 is trending a bit low. Hopefully, it succeeds - I'd love more Roguelikes on mobile.
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Sep 21, 2012 18:03
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macnbc posted:Yo dawg, I made a product to gauge interest in a campaign to gauge interest in a product. He should go deeper and make a kickstarter for this
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Sep 21, 2012 18:25
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Pyromancer posted:He should go deeper and make a kickstarter for this Only after he gauges the interest in such a kickstarter first. Isn't the whole point of kickstarter to be an interest check? I don't quite get what purpose that app would actually serve - does it cost anything to put up a kickstarter? I thought the only cost involved was that they take a cut if you're successful.
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Sep 21, 2012 18:30
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The Cheshire Cat posted:Isn't the whole point of kickstarter to be an interest check? I don't quite get what purpose that app would actually serve - does it cost anything to put up a kickstarter? I thought the only cost involved was that they take a cut if you're successful. Yep. There is no listing fee on Kickstarter. There is no fee if your project doesn't hit its goal either. Which is why the idea behind the app is stupid.
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Sep 21, 2012 18:50
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Just heard about this through Slashdot: http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store The upshot is, if you're going to be selling hardware, you need to have a functional prototype: no renders, no simulations, no promises of what else your wonder-widget will eventually be able to do, just what it's capable of now. The Slashdorks were busy wringing their hands over the semantics of the word 'store', but I have a feeling this will prevent a lot of well meaning (and downright scammy) vaporware from cluttering the place up. That is, until they go over to Indiegogo. Unrelated, the Alien Swarm mod I poked fun at in an earlier post has twelve days and 93% to go. Looks like someone's lazy grab for 'easy' money isn't going to work out. Alas! Bieeanshee fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Sep 22, 2012 |
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Sep 22, 2012 06:02
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The Broken Sword Kickstarter wrapped up today. Including Paypal donations they got just shy of $820k. Not a bad haul at all.
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Sep 22, 2012 20:35
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Someone is trying to make fun / non-sim sports games again. It's like the NBA Jam of football: Football Heroes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDZV_Sh_aS8 ... somehow, this missed all the indie / game news channels I follow, and I only caught it thanks to a stray tweet for VentureBeats of all things. Whoever you are running PR on this, uh, tell some games press about it too.
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Sep 23, 2012 00:36
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Bieeardo posted:Just heard about this through Slashdot: http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store This might be good for hardware and tech, but it's freaking draconian ridiculous for any other physical product like plastic phone covers or holders or stuffed animals or whatever. For those projects, the whole idea is to fund the cost 80% of which is molds or initial setup costs. Seems like a "baby with the bathwater" situation.
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Sep 23, 2012 04:07
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mutata posted:This might be good for hardware and tech, but it's freaking draconian ridiculous for any other physical product like plastic phone covers or holders or stuffed animals or whatever. For those projects, the whole idea is to fund the cost 80% of which is molds or initial setup costs. Seems like a "baby with the bathwater" situation. In a way I do agree with you, but there are things you can do to get around it. For instance, as you say getting molds created so that you can create the item is one of the things you might want to use KS to fund, but even without that, you can create a hand-built prototype. In most situations there's going to be something physical that you could create without a heavy cost.
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Sep 23, 2012 04:24
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XboxPants posted:In a way I do agree with you, but there are things you can do to get around it. For instance, as you say getting molds created so that you can create the item is one of the things you might want to use KS to fund, but even without that, you can create a hand-built prototype. In most situations there's going to be something physical that you could create without a heavy cost. Maybe in some cases, but not nearly all. Plus, the wording outlaws ALL renders, so you can't even post mockups of what you're shooting for. They should've just put a big red text disclaimer wall on pledging that said "THIS PRODUCT MIGHT NEVER BE DELIVERED" and put the decision in the backers' hands, not cripple physical product makers. I'm only angry because I've been putting a physical product project together that will be impossible to make a prototype for without throwing down for mold making so suddenly Kickstarter is out. I guess there's always other sites...
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Sep 23, 2012 04:40
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mutata posted:Maybe in some cases, but not nearly all. Plus, the wording outlaws ALL renders, so you can't even post mockups of what you're shooting for. They should've just put a big red text disclaimer wall on pledging that said "THIS PRODUCT MIGHT NEVER BE DELIVERED" and put the decision in the backers' hands, not cripple physical product makers. Ooh, interesting, any hints as to what kind of project it is? Couldn't you at least order a 3D print from somewhere? The way I read the new rules, it's only digital mock-ups that are prohibited. I mean, hell, seems to me like you could build a 1/10 scale wooden refrigerator model and use photos of that for your project, claiming it's a design prototype, just so long as it's not a 3D render. I'm interested in what you'd make that it will be truly impossible to make a model like that for.
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Sep 23, 2012 05:11
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I'm designing some glass stemware (drinking glasses), but with elements on them that rules out traditional glass blowing methods, so they'd need to be poured. I'm playing with design while researching production and legal junk, just to see if it's even reasonably possible, so it's not like I'm getting ready to launch anything. I guess a 3D print would be feasible, I suppose, although clunky and not really at all indicative of the final product. More importantly, I think it would hurt the visual appeal that potential backers would respond to. To produce a prototype in real glass would essentially require molds and crap to be made, which is big bucks which is why I was considering Kickstarter to begin with. Anyway, this is a kind-of-derail. Basically, I disagree with their new rules and while it may discourage some less clever scammers, I think it mostly just needlessly forces legitimate projects to jump through silly hoops.
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Sep 23, 2012 07:44
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mutata posted:I'm designing some glass stemware (drinking glasses), but with elements on them that rules out traditional glass blowing methods, so they'd need to be poured. I'm playing with design while researching production and legal junk, just to see if it's even reasonably possible, so it's not like I'm getting ready to launch anything. Ah. That actually makes a lot of sense. I didn't even consider that some materials are harder to simulate than others. Like, in this instance, you could make something out of a cheap transparent plastic but it would kind of look like poo poo (in comparison, anyway) and if a large part of the point of your project is to look very much UNshit, well, like you said, it'd be somewhere between useless and actually harmful. So, in a way this is a derail, but it's also a good demonstration of how these rules could negatively effect people that actually have a legitimate project. I think that these guidelines would more or less make sense, so long as Kickstarter was willing to talk to project people and grant exemptions where appropriate. Man, it's all a bit of a mess, eh?
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Sep 23, 2012 08:53
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The Rhythm Destruction team just updated their demo to make things a bit more fair and to increase compatibility. They really seem to be seriously working on things, so I hope they make it (but worry as their low end projection on Kicktraq is below their goal).
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Sep 23, 2012 22:35
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Someone did a sort of Let's Play of the current build of Scrumble Ship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaNUGg5ZZJA ... amongst other things, it shows off the destruction / heat simulation end of things. Around 28 minutes in, you can see the organic components. The veins in particular look quite... drippy. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Sep 24, 2012 |
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Sep 24, 2012 00:12
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Chunjee posted:Am I the only one a little disgusted that Project: Eternity got $1,100,000+ with zero game footage? They have an impressive resume and I really need an RPG to recover from Diablo III but come on. Yes, you are.  Learning that Obsidian is finally going to get to make a game without constant publisher fuckery is like learning that Santa Claus is real, and he's bringing you a threesome for Christmas. And Christmas is every day starting tomorrow.Al! posted:It will certainly be interesting to see what Obsidian produces without publisher pressure but also without a publisher's deep pockets, resources and deadlines. Could go either way in my estimation, especially since they have a reputation for producing buggy games with a lot of planned content cut out. They have a reputation for producing buggy games with a lot of planned content cut because publishers keep handing them poo poo engines to use, adding stuff, cutting stuff, skimping on QA, and then shoving their games out the door half a year before originally planned. To date I think they've only had one game where none of that happened, Dungeon Siege 3, and while I happen to like it least of all their games it's also solid as a rock. Shalinor posted:Someone did a sort of Let's Play of the current build of Scrumble Ship: Scrumble Ship looks pretty cool, but it kind of feels like every year about a really cool upcoming voxel-based space combat game very much like this, and some screenshots and videos are posted, and maybe a demo, and then nothing ever materializes and a few months later I can't even remember its name.  I hope this one bucks the trend.
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Sep 24, 2012 01:03
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Krenzo posted:The Hanfree iPad accessory was funded over a year ago and never delivered, and they never explained what happened to their backers nor issued refunds. Some backers sued saying they bought a product alleging Kickstarter is a store, and the creator of the Hanfree declared bankruptcy. It looks like it still would have made it through Kickstarter's new rules, after a glance through the project description. I see real, functional prototypes and everything there, not just renders. They could have continued updating it though and maybe that's not how it started.
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Sep 24, 2012 02:16
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