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Feels Villeneuve posted:isn't the gacha stuff in FIFA a giant money machine? I was spending dozens of pounds of my pocket money on Premier League football stickers years before monetization hit gaming, it's always been a thing here
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Jan 3, 2023 22:28
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:Did they? How is Genshin's monetization model different than the thousands of other wildly successful gacha whale games that preceded it? Yeah the timeline seems off here. Even off the top of my head Puzzles and Dragons, Granblue, Fate/Go are all ~10 years old. And there still aren't THAT many Genshin copycats, all things considered. Probably because it's a way more expensive genre to develop compared to another JPEGfest.
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Jan 3, 2023 22:32
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:Did they? How is Genshin's monetization model different than the thousands of other wildly successful gacha whale games that preceded it? Its monetization model is not any different, I'm talking about development strategy. For a long time the common wisdom was "spend as little money as possible making a game and rely on low costs + large margins", even from huge companies with plenty of budget to spare like Square Enix as mentioned above. The industry is slowly changing and more mobile developers are seeing potential profits in the "high budget AAA mobile game" model, using the same monetization as the earlier low-cost-high-margin games but a much larger initial investment in development.
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Jan 3, 2023 22:33
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:Did they? How is Genshin's monetization model different than the thousands of other wildly successful gacha whale games that preceded it? The monetization is the same, the game around it is what is different. It's a fairly high budget action RPG pulling obvious cues from Breath of the Wild and the Tales series while using all the hooks folks are uses to for these kinds of game, combining Dungeon Fighter style gating for content for the relevant top end upgrades, lootbox-style gacha for the actual characters and weapons, all while making the core experience completely free while teasing constantly what you COULD also have. You basically have a high quality game with a thousand ways to sell you the promise of an even better experience. It's insidious, genuis, and will probably be the next game to cause a wave of clones of inferiour quality.
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Jan 3, 2023 22:45
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Feels Villeneuve posted:isn't the gacha stuff in FIFA a giant money machine? Bluntly? Yes. Like, here's a video on the growth of monetization in gaming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g16heGLKlTA If you don't feel like watching it, just be aware that Genshin made ~$1.3 billion in 2022 as of whatever monetary statements were available in December. FIFA? No numbers for 2022 yet, but in 2021 it made over $1.6 billion. Genshin's obviously printing massive amounts of money, but it still doesn't touch that. Lord Koth fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Jan 3, 2023 |
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Jan 3, 2023 22:47
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Call of Duty's mobile version is also enormous, and that's Activision-published (albeit developed by Chinese mobile devs). Western publishers are by no means not aware of how big online MTX-based stuff is.
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Jan 3, 2023 22:49
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leper khan posted:So you're upset that companies are attempting to make money, and focusing their efforts where they'll better be able to continue employing their staff and maintaining shareholder value? Is Square Enix, because aside from a couple of consistencies not a whole lot seems to be working out that they've tried lately seemingly just due to stubbornness of wanting to go after certain markets or ideas (NFT's and Games As A Service come to mind) seemingly regardless of whether there's a confirmed market for them or not. That company seems absolutely dead set on those two things so when they say announcements I just kind of presume that it primarily has a lot to do with that. Atlus it's hard to say, but they seem to be getting pulled into whatever Sega has planned for them more and more is the vibe I've been getting lately. Basically I can still vaguely remember a time when such a forecast from those two companies in particular (as a JRPG guy) would be something to unequivocally look forward too as opposed to considering how and why the monkey's paw fingers might start curling again. I'm not expecting like full on candy land FFVIII and/or IX gets remade with an FFVII Remake budget and production value or Persona 6 gets announced type scenarios, so much I would hope to not have to say I somehow have net zero interest or wondering how something relates to core gaming or left scratching my head as to how it's supposed to please anyone in that hobby circle in terms of whatever they end up hawking and knowing I'm not alone.
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Jan 3, 2023 23:06
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RPATDO_LAMD posted:Its monetization model is not any different, I'm talking about development strategy. This seems like a much nicer and more technical way of saying "someone realized they'd make more money if the gacha were attached to actually good games and not low-effort shovelware garbage." Kale posted:Is Square Enix, because aside from a couple of consistencies not a whole lot seems to be working out that they've tried lately seemingly just due to stubbornness of wanting to go after certain markets or ideas (NFT's and Games As A Service come to mind) seemingly regardless of whether there's a confirmed market for them or not. That company seems absolutely dead set on those two things so when they say announcements I just kind of presume that it primarily has a lot to do with that. Atlus it's hard to say, but they seem to be getting pulled into whatever Sega has planned for them more and more is the vibe I've been getting lately. This one, I think, is because of the idea that most of these games will fail, but the ones that succeed will make more than enough money to cover the others with enough left over for a tidy profit besides. But I think that's ultimately self defeating, because if a company gets into the habit of releasing products and killing them relatively soon after, nobody's going to want to bother getting invested in it. Growing a "Google Graveyard" style reputation is not super great!
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Jan 3, 2023 23:18
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RPATDO_LAMD posted:Its monetization model is not any different, I'm talking about development strategy. No offense, truly, but I'm not sure why I should believe you about any of the stuff you're saying.
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Jan 3, 2023 23:29
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Square Enix has also been releasing a lot of low to mid-budget experimental releases lately, like Harvistella, Voice of The Cards or Dungeon Encounters which apart from VOTC's massive DLC packs is precisely the opposite of the GaS and blockbuster strategies. They also haven't done all that well commercially. fez_machine fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Jan 4, 2023 |
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Jan 3, 2023 23:59
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Kale posted:
this is a wild-rear end qualifying line to just shadow-drop in lol
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Jan 4, 2023 00:06
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secretly best girl posted:Speaking of cool developments. I'm no big dick billionaire business rear end in a top hat, but I never understood why so many places refuse to recognize a union. Like, by definition at least half and probably more of your employees want this enough to do the hard work of organizing and holding a vote and forming a union. The kind of person who can do that is pretty much guaranteed to be a skilled employee. You're already a billionaire and that's never going to be taken away from you. Surely you stand to lose way more by pissing off more than half of your best employees, than you do by just cooperating with them and working out a contract. Especially when the alternative is to recognize their hard work and give them more reasons to like working for you. I guess this is why I'm not a big dick billionaire business rear end in a top hat.
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Jan 4, 2023 00:13
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ColdPie posted:I'm no big dick billionaire business rear end in a top hat, but I never understood why so many places refuse to recognize a union. Like, by definition at least half and probably more of your employees want this enough to do the hard work of organizing and holding a vote and forming a union. The kind of person who can do that is pretty much guaranteed to be a skilled employee. You're already a billionaire and that's never going to be taken away from you. Surely you stand to lose way more by pissing off more than half of your best employees, than you do by just cooperating with them and working out a contract. Especially when the alternative is to recognize their hard work and give them more reasons to like working for you. Being a big dick billionaire business rear end in a top hat breaks your brain. The cynical side of me suspects that Microsofts lack of a fight against unionization is some sort of dodge to help their anti-trust care in regards to buying AB.
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Jan 4, 2023 00:37
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ColdPie posted:I'm no big dick billionaire business rear end in a top hat, but I never understood why so many places refuse to recognize a union. Like, by definition at least half and probably more of your employees want this enough to do the hard work of organizing and holding a vote and forming a union. The kind of person who can do that is pretty much guaranteed to be a skilled employee. You're already a billionaire and that's never going to be taken away from you. Surely you stand to lose way more by pissing off more than half of your best employees, than you do by just cooperating with them and working out a contract. Especially when the alternative is to recognize their hard work and give them more reasons to like working for you. Lots of reasons. One big one is that all the big dick billionaire assholes want to low key cooperate to prevent unions wherever possible. Strong unions tend to lead to more strong unions. So, maybe it would actually cost you less long term to not fight the union and toss the employees a few concessions, but you fight it tooth and nail because you golf with all the other CEO's and they don't want it to spread. Also, if you have multiple offices/locations/factories, you fight to the bitter end against a union forming in one of them. Even if it costs way more to fight it, you do it to demonstrate to the other locations exactly how miserable you will make them and how unlikely it is to succeed. Even if the original location succeeds in organizing, the others are much less likely upon seeing the example you made.
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Jan 4, 2023 00:47
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Also power is in many cases worth more to managers and CEOs than actual profits are. Unions are always a way to transfer power from the business to the workers, so even if it was guaranteed to increase profits most businesses would still oppose the formation of a union.
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Jan 4, 2023 01:05
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I am reminded of some stuff I saw once regarding factory worker unions in Germany. As it was described, most factories there specifically want the employees to be in a union. It means they don't have deal with tracking thousands of individual contracts or much staffing stuff at all really. If you need some new staff, you can just go to the union and say "we need 20 new guys that have the professional certs to do x job." Then the union just sends them some dudes under the existing collective agreement. Just simplifies everyone's lives.
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Jan 4, 2023 01:17
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RPATDO_LAMD posted:Also power is in many cases worth more to managers and CEOs than actual profits are. It's mostly this, yes. Management ceding power to the employees means less power for management and is thus anathema. It means that management loses the ability to treat employees as expendable powerless slaves and introduces the concept of accountability to managerial actions, which is one thing that they cannot stand or stomach under any circumstances. A lot of fuckhead management/c-suite types would rather burn the company down and salt the ruins than admit for a single breath that employees deserve a say in how it's run.
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Jan 4, 2023 02:15
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Mr. Locke posted:The monetization is the same, the game around it is what is different. It's a fairly high budget action RPG pulling obvious cues from Breath of the Wild and the Tales series while using all the hooks folks are uses to for these kinds of game, combining Dungeon Fighter style gating for content for the relevant top end upgrades, lootbox-style gacha for the actual characters and weapons, all while making the core experience completely free while teasing constantly what you COULD also have. You basically have a high quality game with a thousand ways to sell you the promise of an even better experience. Most of that is just generic gacha stuff, just higher budget. MechaCrash posted:This seems like a much nicer and more technical way of saying "someone realized they'd make more money if the gacha were attached to actually good games and not low-effort shovelware garbage." IE: This. There is literally nothing unique about Genshin other than the fact that it has the appearance of a more respected category of game, bringing in a wave of people who would otherwise never touch a gacha game. Even if it does get clones though, they will all fail miserably because Genshin is already there.
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Jan 4, 2023 02:16
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Kale posted:I'm still interested in Japanese multimedia output What speed CD-ROM drive do you have?
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Jan 4, 2023 02:35
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Clarste posted:Most of that is just generic gacha stuff, just higher budget. Yes that's what I've been trying to say. It's not the game design or monetization that was innovative, I'm purely talking about the industry level business decisions. The thing that set it out was that it had a 200 million dollar dev budget in an industry (gacha mobile games) where the status quo was making many low-budget games for a niche audience, even from AAA publishers who happily invest that amount in a console game. I'm only talking about budget and scale here, not design. e: Like this conversation started from Square Enix, a company many times larger than Mihoyo which has published (according to this list) 227 separate mobile games. But if you add all 227 of those budgets together it's probably less than half the budget of Final Fantasy 16. The industry just didn't see the money in making big-budget games for mobile. RPATDO_LAMD fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Jan 4, 2023 |
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Jan 4, 2023 02:41
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How much is it to unlock the bulk of Genshin Impact vs buying a full-price AAA game? If it’s similar then the dunking on GI doesn’t make much sense to me.
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Jan 4, 2023 03:01
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Vegetable posted:How much is it to unlock the bulk of Genshin Impact vs buying a full-price AAA game? If it’s similar then the dunking on GI doesn’t make much sense to me. Depends on what you define as unlocking the bulk of it. Having the majority of the characters? Thousands and thousands of dollars. Playing like the Actual Game Content? Free.
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Jan 4, 2023 03:02
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Vegetable posted:How much is it to unlock the bulk of Genshin Impact vs buying a full-price AAA game? If it’s similar then the dunking on GI doesn’t make much sense to me. To unlock all the characters would be prohibitively expensive. You get some amount of 'premium currency' for free just by playing the game and doing your dailies or whatever, but not nearly enough to get every character as they release. And the exchange rate of real money to premium currency is ruinously bad. To guarantee getting one new highest-rarity (5-star) character, it'll take you between 70 and 180 "wishes" (it's possible to get it in less, because gambling, but 180 is the hard maximum limit). The highest price package in the cash shop is $100 for 50 wishes. They release a new 5* character about once or twice per month. But also, there is a mechanic geared specifically towards high realmoney spenders where a unit unlocks extra new passive skills that make them more powerful based on how many duplicates of them you've obtained. So to fully power up a new unit, multiply those prices by 7. And then there's a second wish system for equippable weapons that do nothing but boost attack stats, and again get more powerful based on the number of duplicates. And each 5-star character has a tailor made 5-star weapon that specifically synergizes with them. IDK if this counts as "unlocking content" since it's just spending hundreds of dollars to boost your DPS and there's nothing that even remotely requires stats that high, but it's definitely pay-to-win. RPATDO_LAMD fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Jan 4, 2023 |
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Jan 4, 2023 03:08
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Vegetable posted:How much is it to unlock the bulk of Genshin Impact vs buying a full-price AAA game? If it’s similar then the dunking on GI doesn’t make much sense to me. Personally I only buy the 5$ a month welkin pass and I have every single character in the game except three of them. (Xiao, Albedo and Tartaglia) That said, I've been playing since the game released which helps a lot with getting to unlock the bulk of Genshin Impact. And I don't care about weapons or constellations (passives unlocked with extra copies of the same character for bigger numbers for the most part zzzzz) If someone wanted to unlock everything just straight-up starting today, well for starter you can't do that because they do the FOMO thing of most of the 5* characters only being available during their own banner but it'd also be a lot more expensive for sure. They release new banners (including reruns) every 3 weeks and new 5* characters usually come out every other banner cycle. So all in all, the answer is that you can get surprisingly far even with a 'small' budget but the potential to whale for thousands of dollars is very much still there and how they make the bulk of their money. Genshin is not the worst of its ilk by any measure but the fact is that the model of the gacha lottery/lootbox itself deserves to be dunked on relentlessly regardless because it still preys on people.
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Jan 4, 2023 03:19
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RPATDO_LAMD posted:The industry is slowly changing and more mobile developers are seeing potential profits in the "high budget AAA mobile game" model, using the same monetization as the earlier low-cost-high-margin games but a much larger initial investment in development. Can you provide either your own industry experience or some links to articles that go into what you're talking about? You keep making broad, definitive statements about the state of the gaming industry and I can't tell how you're coming to your conclusions. Who, specifically, is investing in high budget mobile games right now and how does it represent an industry trend? What are the games in development that are trying to take a slice of the Genshin audience, and who's publishing them?
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Jan 4, 2023 03:49
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Mobile games budgets increasing has nothing to do with Genshin Impact. The devices are more powerful and can support better graphics, the consumers are more mature and have higher expectations, so the top tier games are more expensive to produce. This has been going on for years.
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Jan 4, 2023 04:22
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:Can you provide either your own industry experience or some links to articles that go into what you're talking about? You keep making broad, definitive statements about the state of the gaming industry and I can't tell how you're coming to your conclusions. Who, specifically, is investing in high budget mobile games right now and how does it represent an industry trend? What are the games in development that are trying to take a slice of the Genshin audience, and who's publishing them? to clarify I am just Some Guy posting my perspective in a forum thread about industry news and discussion, I am not some kind of insider but for a very long time 99% of the mobile 'gacha game' market was basically just jpeg collectors with some simple jrpgs attached, I am just describing what I'm seeing with changes in the market as developers spend more and more on gameplay here are some examples of relatively-much-higher budget mobile games currently in development (afaik none are close to the hundred-million mark from genshin, but they're still a huge difference in terms of money spent developing actual gameplay compared to something like (for example) some of Square Enix's games like Final Fantasy Brave Exvius and Nier Reincarnation (which has 3d graphics but is still a super simplified 'mash-attack' turn based rpg / jpeg collector at heart)  or  Girls Frontline 2: Exilium, a game in development which appears to be a nu-XCOM clone Project Snow, a Chinese mobile game which is a full 3d third person shooter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afrNZdBopV8 Punishing Gray Raven, a weird bossfight focused game that I don't understand, also CN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGAa0x3VB-k Many Genshin Impact clones are announced / in development, with most seemingly being from Chinese devs, like: Arknights Endfield (CN) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h85NtIwduY Wuthering Waves, (CN, from the same developer as Project Gray Raven above): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-PYsFGOV8E Tower of Fantasy (CN). This one has already released and is reportedly buggy and not very good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFXlwnVbf4A Also I was a bit confused and thought this trailer for Stellar Blade from the Playstation State of Play 2022 was going to be a mobile game, since the dev Shiftup (from Korea) is otherwise a purely mobile developer, but after looking into it, it sounds like it is actually only releasing on Playstation and PC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T12zGRyMEsg Diablo Immortal is also a prominent recent example of a super high budget mobile game but I couldn't blame Genshin on that even if I wanted to since they announced it in 2018. RPATDO_LAMD fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Jan 4, 2023 |
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Jan 4, 2023 04:31
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GFL is Chinese btw, so your list is entirely Chinese games edit: and one Korean game Tarezax fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Jan 4, 2023 |
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Jan 4, 2023 04:34
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drat you're right. I didn't realize these games were 99% Chinese until I typed up that post.
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Jan 4, 2023 04:40
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RPATDO_LAMD posted:to clarify I am just Some Guy posting my perspective in a forum thread about industry news and discussion, I am not some kind of insider okay, well don't you think it's easily plausible that game systems keep getting more powerful and large conglomerates have discovered that mobile gaming is a cash faucet, and that's why a bunch more money has been pumping in? isn't it just as likely that genshin is simply a product of that phenomenon that happened to catch on, and not some revolutionary new concept in game production? if you're stating an opinion, fine, but if you're going to state it as if it's an indelible fact, you should actually bring some evidence.
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Jan 4, 2023 04:44
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:okay, well don't you think it's easily plausible that game systems keep getting more powerful and large conglomerates have discovered that mobile gaming is a cash faucet, and that's why a bunch more money has been pumping in? isn't it just as likely that genshin is simply a product of that phenomenon that happened to catch on, and not some revolutionary new concept in game production? I don't think more powerful systems necessarily lead to more complex gameplay, because even recent releases from big companies like square enix like the Nier game I mentioned above, released Feb 2021, or Echoes of Mana released April 2022, still have the same low-budget feel with the same amount of time & money dedicated to gameplay as a mobile game from 5 or 10 years ago, just with more technically demanding graphics.  As far as I can see, actually spending money on gameplay development is a more recent thing that has suddenly become more trendy in the past few years and hasn't scaled up linearly with processing power at all. Like the iPhone 6 in 2014 had a processor 5x faster than the Playstation 2 but I never saw anyone release Metal Gear Solid 3 on it. (No clue what the 3d graphics specs on it are like though, maybe that would've been infeasible) But I'll stop posting about this now because yeah this is all just one poster's opinion and I don't wanna derail the thread too much more. Take what I say with a grain of salt unless I'm linking an article from someone more knowledgeable than me.
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Jan 4, 2023 05:01
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I will admit that historically Square-Enix has been kind of dumb about literally everything but Final Fantasy XIV.
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Jan 4, 2023 05:16
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Clarste posted:I will admit that historically Square-Enix has been kind of dumb about literally everything but Final Fantasy XIV. They're industry leaders in repackaging their back catalog. A lot of the remasters are a little scuffed but quantity is its own quality.
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Jan 4, 2023 05:21
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my favorite current squeenix thing is how they talk up NFTs every week but they arent actually making NFTs theyre just selling JPGs online without any of the actual blockchain tech, or making arcade games that spit out cards that save your data on them so you can continue at a different machine in a different arcade. but 'NFT' is a buzzword in japan so they just call all this stuff that already existed NFTs, and then westerners get insanely mad at them.
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Jan 4, 2023 05:23
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Clarste posted:I will admit that historically Square-Enix has been kind of dumb about literally everything but Final Fantasy XIV. I'd hate to give them too much credit since it implies they're actively doing things with FFXIV, as opposed to "yoship took this thing that we also fumbled hard out of the gate and turned it around so we're just going to throw our hands up and say 'Okay, it's all yours, we won't gently caress with it too much' and call it a day" Knowing when to let the people who know what they're doing do the thing is good, and the effort it must take them to not shoot themselves must be herculean given everything else they're loving up, but...yeah. Randallteal posted:They're industry leaders in repackaging their back catalog. A lot of the remasters are a little scuffed but quantity is its own quality. Anyways they filed a new Gex trademark so I'm sure they'll turn it around with the remake Ursine Catastrophe fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Jan 4, 2023 |
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Jan 4, 2023 05:32
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Clarste posted:I will admit that historically Square-Enix has been kind of dumb about literally everything but Final Fantasy XIV. They were dumb about that too. Legendary trash before they gutted it and used the innards for a different better game.
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Jan 4, 2023 05:33
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Square Enix has published an absolute ton of games this year that range from a FMV murder mystery game to SRPGs, to a remake of a cult hit SNES game that I never thought would get anything but a fan translation i mean some of those games were bad/mediocre but actually publishing a varied quantity of games puts them above like most major publishers these days. like what the poo poo did Bethesda even release in 2022
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Jan 4, 2023 05:42
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fez_machine posted:They were dumb about that too. Legendary trash before they gutted it and used the innards for a different better game.
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Jan 4, 2023 05:45
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Endorph posted:my favorite current squeenix thing is how they talk up NFTs every week but they arent actually making NFTs theyre just selling JPGs online without any of the actual blockchain tech, or making arcade games that spit out cards that save your data on them so you can continue at a different machine in a different arcade.
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Jan 4, 2023 05:47
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Square Enix 2022 releases (bad, sold off the Tomb Raider studio to buy two apes) Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden Babylon's Fall Triangle Strategy Chocobo GP Stranger of Paradise Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers The Centennial Case Live A Live Voice of Cards: Beasts of Burden Various Daylife Diofeld Chronicle Valkyrie Elysium Star Ocean: The Divine Force Harvestella Tactics Ogre Reborn Dragon Quest Treasures Crisis Core Games published by Bethesda in 2022 (good company) Ghostwire Tokyo I mean some of those games range from absolutely horrible to mediocre to amazing but I'd unequivocally rather have that than the AAA dripfeed schedule, and also I just wanted to laugh that Bethesda has published one game in 2022
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Jan 4, 2023 05:57
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