
Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention - beerlord
https://www.midiaresearch.com/blog/major-games-publishers-are-feeling-the-impact-of-peaking-attention/
======
maxsilver
This seems like a inaccurate take from folks who are not following the gaming
industry closely.

Activision just had a record-setting year of high revenue (presumably they
_are not_ feeling the impact of peaking attention), in part because the
quality of their products is still high-ish. They laid people off because they
could, not because of any downturn in business.

EA's quarterly results are down, because their product quality has suffered
and their pricing has risen, players are somewhat disengaging. Those problems
are with EA and internal to EA, not problems with the industry.

\---

The article is right to claim that too much focus is on "Fortnite", but they
miss their own point. These companies are not suffering from "peak attention",
so much as they have stumbled into various mismanagement and/or bled out a
chunk of their talent and ability to create. These companies problems are
impacting the products they ship.

If you build a well designed, well crafted product, players will still happily
arrive and spend lots of money (as EA's own Apex Legends is showing today, and
as Fortnite, Spider-Man, RDR2, Warframe, Path of Exile, Magic Arena, and many
others routinely demonstrate.)

~~~
1123581321
The best reporting on Activision I’ve seen has been from outside the games
industry and games journalism (I’ve preferred writing from this link, Variety,
Bloomberg, etc.)

Activision is not concerned about whether they are making money now. They are
concerned about whether they can continue to make money. They have profitable,
mature lines but nothing in the battle royale genre that is quickly growing
and a threat to both Call of Duty and Overwatch, not to mention what’s next
after that. They need to invest heavily in acquisitions and development of new
titles using their existing brands. The layoffs came from areas of the company
that wouldn’t be able to help with that.

The morality of layoffs can be debated, of course, but analysis of the
reasoning has been too absent from close followers of the games industry.

~~~
maxsilver
> but nothing in the battle royale genre that is quickly growing and a threat
> to both Call of Duty and Overwatch

That's not really how games work though. Games are mainly emotional purchases
of mass-produced art, not commodities like Corn or Oil. Games are not fungible
like this. Telling Activision "you must make a battle royale game because
Fortnite" is a quick way to watch them burn a lot of money on something that
likely won't be very successful.

It's like saying, "Hey Warner Brothers. Disney just made a bunch of money
making this 'Frozen' film, so you need to also make a movie about Magical
Sisters in some sort of Medieval European Ice Palace". Technically, they can
execute on this, but the result is unlikely to be successful.

> They need to invest heavily in acquisitions and development of new titles
> using their existing brands. The layoffs came from areas of the company that
> wouldn’t be able to help with that.

With all due respect, I believe Activision needs to do the exact opposite of
the above.

They need to invest in their existing successful titles (WoW, Overwatch,
Diablo, Hearthstone), all of which have growth opportunity Activision has
ignored in various amounts. And Activision needs to constantly be developing
_new_ brands with _innovative_ new games behind them to experiment with. This
is a sustainable approach to business in an industry where the market demands
can shift wildly _literally overnight_.

Trying to acquire their way out of this, and recycle their old brands year-
over-year into quick products, is how their product quality dropped in the
first place. It's not a healthy way to handle the market, it's not a
sustainable way to grow their business, and it's why they constantly worry
about "whether they can continue to make money".

~~~
dragontamer
> It's like saying, "Hey Warner Brothers. Disney just made a bunch of money
> making this 'Frozen' film, so you need to also make a movie about Magical
> Sisters in some sort of Medieval European Ice Palace". Technically, they can
> execute on this, but the result is unlikely to be successful.

Maybe a more apt example is "Hey WB, Marvel just made a huge amount of money
making a 'Shared Superhero Movie Universe'. You should do that too".

Although I guess WB is finally starting to make good movies in Wonder Woman,
Aquaman, and maybe Shazam?

\----------------

In any case, I agree with you. Battle Royale games are clearly the hot new
thing at the moment, but Hearthstone (Blizzard / Activision) basically created
the online collectable card game (yeah: MtG is the original game, but it never
had a good and/or profitable video-game version before Hearthstone).

The goal of these game companies should be to discover the NEXT big game
genre. Battle Royale is big today, but it will be years before you can launch
a new Battle Royale game on the same quality as Fortnite.

New Genres pop up all the time: MOBA (League, DOTA, HOTS), MMORPG (WoW, Guild
Wars, Final Fantasy, Eve), and now Battle Royale. Who knows? Maybe the next
major genre will be robot-cars with rockets on them that play soccer. (Rocket
League, except no clones have been made yet!! Think about it...)

~~~
xemdetia
I feel that the structural components of these large gaming publishers are
actively working against them creating an environment to discover any new
thing, let alone a new game genre. For instance I just do not believe that
these large companies have the logistical bandwidth/incentive to not chase a
100MM hit, and these larger publishers have clearly learned from the post-MMO,
post-Kickstarter, F2P/DLC landscape. It was quite a few years ago when I heard
the anecdote that all new proposals should have a DLC/loot box hook for
projects, and it just makes so much sense. Valve and others trailblazed the
concept that you could convince people to part with their money for a chance
of getting something of perceived value. Everything they have been doing is to
create ecosystems of engagement to create those long relationship/impulse
opportunities. To me, this is optimizing for the fact that most consumers in
the market seem to have less free money for the traditional model that they
are used to, but are willing to leak out a few dollars here and there en
masse. From the platform side the console churn/complexity that was there in
the 90's is lessened, slowed, and standardized.

The organizations themselves feel like they can't handle 100 1MM projects
compared to a single 100MM project just from leadership and management but
that's not something I blame wholly on these companies, it's a structural
thing in most public companies right now. From a simple analysis it is so much
less risky for them to just acquire a new development firm with a sure
thing/hit that can be shoved down their sales funnel. You gain the best parts
of the corpse too: the employees, the IP, the proven product, and the future
and recurring sales. Sure they'll lose the employees, but the rest of it will
carry weight until the IP is forgotten. Even right now the IP for both
EA/Activision is probably still worth a ton if they had to part it out.

In a more theory kind of sense I just feel like this is one of the problems
with how public companies work right now. Once you are of a certain size and
exist primarily in the B2C space, the mindset becomes optimize, reduce costs,
and make GAAP profits. While I feel like historically this may have been a
healthy transition from companies at (today's dollars) 50MM-150MM AR to take
them to 500MM+ AR it doesn't translate as well when a 100MM revenue increase
is the only way to even move the needle when the majority of the company's
revenue steals the attention.

------
abakker
It's been years since I played any games really. I enjoyed D3 and really
committed for a while to WoW. personally, I don't really like free to play as
it distorts the gaming experience too much. Take WoW for example: when it
started, it was legitimately slow and hard to get to level 20. Now that level
20 is the free to play cap, it only takes a few hours. All the fun that came
from exploration and "play" of the game in that early level set is now gone,
replaced by speed grinding, achievements, and constant rewards. I feel like
leveling used to be a consequence of playing, now, since they've basically
decided that there is no play until endgame, leveling is a chore that is meant
to be rushed through. I mean, I get that endgame play is fun, and that the big
raids are fun, but, they've so distorted the solo-questability that as a part
time player there is virtually no point. There was a point in there where they
could have focused on the long-term viability of the game and doubled down on
mid-game content - better quests with complicated storylines, better low-level
raids, better "role playing game" mechanics. Instead, they focused on endgame,
where WoW and Fortnite start to look a lot more similar. One just takes a ton
of work to be competitive and one is easy any free.

I guess if I had one point to make it would be that all the big titles focus a
lot on endgame rather than making the mid-game deeper and more fun.

~~~
mipmap04
This is why Everquest was so great for me. Leveling took a long time and you
really got to explore the world. It would take teaming up with people just to
make perilous journeys - this is something I don't think exists anymore in
games. Additionally, gear lasted much longer. You could be using the same
piece of armor for months potentially as you leveled in EQ. It really felt
like you were building your character. Now in MMOs, it often feels like you
are just checking boxes to get best-in-slot items so you can be like every
other high level $build $class character.

~~~
CydeWeys
Some of my very favorite moments in videogaming ever occurred during the
EverQuest closed beta. That game was so great. It would get _dark_ at night,
to the point where if you didn't have a torch (which cost money) you'd be
bumping into the trees in Kelethin in pitch blackness, and shortly get taken
down by monsters. I remember spending nearly half of my time playing that game
just waiting around in the dark by the town torches of Felwithe or Kelethin,
chatting with other players and waiting for the sun to rise again so I could
go back out into the world. That game didn't even yet have a minimap, so when
you got lost, you got _LOST_ , and it was especially bad when the sun started
going down and you still couldn't find a safe haven. The areas were big too,
so you'd be playing for hours until you finally started learning how to
navigate them. I remember downloading maps and printing them out, and
referring to them when I got lost in game trying to figure out where I was.

~~~
abakker
The lack of a minimap is pretty awesome. There is a careful balance between
preserving adventure vs making the game frustrating; between convenient and
immersive.

I very much liked the early days of D2 when you had to legitimately watch out
to always have scrolls of town portal. Or in D1 when your mana didn't auto-
recharge and you had to meter out potions, trips to down for free heal/mana,
and just getting in there and doing physical damage because you were out of
mana and needed to wait for a potion to drop.

Convenient features always take me out of the world a bit, and stuff where you
have to die, try something new, die again, etc to win always makes me feel
like I'm actually learning to play better.

------
escapecharacter
Blatant self-promotion:

For us who grew up playing lots of video games but are now adults, we now
have: 1\. Way less time 2\. A higher expectation of quality 3\. More money

Creating "Quality Time" entertainment is why I founded Escape Character. We're
a platform for online experiences with a live actor. Since a paid actor is
involved, and we pay them a suitable rate, events are ticketed even though
they're online, just like an escape room or theatre show.

I have a background in improv theatre (but also a PhD in Comp Sci), and my
initial crazy idea was "what if every NPC in a game you were playing was
played by a good improvisor who could adjust to you." Economically this is
feasible as long as the player:actor ratio is 4:1.

Our first online experience released last week - a 45 minute "live action
digital adventure" called The Aluminum Cat. Tickets here: [https://escape-
character.com/](https://escape-character.com/)

This content is made in-house, but our goal for Escape Character is to enable
actors to work from wherever, to audiences based anywhere. Currently these
kind of high-touch responsive experiences are exclusively in-person, e.g.
escape rooms, immersive theatre, Disneyland.

~~~
wccrawford
I'm not yet convinced that this is something I'd really like, but I have to
admit I'm intrigued. And the prices seem really reasonable.

I feel like I'd be more sure (and more likely to purchase tickets) if I had a
better idea of how it plays. The description seems to be lacking. Perhaps a
short video would help people better understand what they're buying into?

To be fair, this is my problem with real "dinner theatre" as well. I simply
don't know what to expect, and so I'm not likely to buy tickets.

~~~
escapecharacter
That's valid! I think communication and setting expectations around immersive
events is an unsolved problem.

We have a gif here:
[https://twitter.com/dustinfreeman/status/1096887625779048448](https://twitter.com/dustinfreeman/status/1096887625779048448)

And a secret highlight reel from our premiere show: [https://escape-
character.com/secret/TheAluminumCatHighlights...](https://escape-
character.com/secret/TheAluminumCatHighlights.mp4)

For many immersive events, lots of people are curious, but afraid that they'll
be forced to act, or put in an awkward situation. It doesn't help that most
"immersive theatre" events are so expensive to run they haven't really tried
to expand out of the rich early adopter urbanite demographic.

Initially our closed alpha format had audience speaking to the actor, but we
repeatedly found out that the average person was intimidated. We recently
switched to a mouse-based/ouija-like UI you can see in the highlight reel.
This has been surprisingly expressive. We don't use audio or text chat at all
for the audience anymore. More info on my blog:
[https://dustinfreeman.org/blog/immersive-theatre-
mice/](https://dustinfreeman.org/blog/immersive-theatre-mice/)

If I was to describe these events honestly, I'd called them "streamlined D&D"
or "training wheels LARPs", but I think D&D and LARP* are intimidating mediums
to the average person.

* Live Action Roleplaying.

------
makecheck
The problem for me is that games are rarely designed to be “complete” anymore.
I assume there’s some kind of catch with most of them, and it’s tiring. Why
spend time on a game only to discover that it’s actually missing entire
chapters, or has major bugs, or is curiously un-fun without an oddly expensive
“optional” item? (Clearly many people must fall for these schemes, otherwise
so many games would not be designed this way.)

“Initial price” seems to be the lure. Game revenue would look a lot different
if publishers were required to use the term “Submit DOWN PAYMENT of $0.99 (All
Content: $200.00)” or “Pay First Month $0.99 (Price Per Month: $3.99)” or “Try
Now (All Content: $389.00)” or “Buy Chapters 1-3 ($9.99)”.

Similarly, it would be very useful if publishers were required to show
statistics on what percentage of people bought each downloadable pack. If you
offer different downloadable chapters for instance and I see you have 50,000
downloads of the first chapter at $0.99 and like 10 people buying Chapter 2, I
can conclude that maybe your game was not fun enough for people to want to
play more. The platform may be able to determine this too, e.g. calculating an
“average price per hour” factor that translates app time from those who
purchased at least one component of the app, giving you a sense of how much
time they were able to spend for their money.

~~~
the-pigeon
There's a ton of modern games that don't do this.

Most of the top games your find on metacritic for Switch, PS4, PC and Xbox One
don't do that.

For example games like Breath of the Wild, Witcher 3, and Read Dead Redemption
2 are complete games without the catch you are talking about.

~~~
p1necone
Basically just stay away from EA, Activision and Ubisoft and you won't find
that much of this stuff.

Did I miss any?

~~~
jhasse
I've played Far Cry 5 from Ubisoft and Destiny 2 from Activision and they both
seemed like complete games to me.

~~~
p1necone
Yep, even these big offenders only do it sometimes. EA released Apex Legends
recently too - the key to that seems to be that Respawn owns the IP and EA
didn't actually have any input in the development (allegedly).

------
crsv
An interesting thing that's happening right now with the release and rise of
Apex Legends is seeing how these now stale numbers are already starting to
move around in regards to the level of engagement that Fortnite now commands
versus what it commanded only weeks ago.

The pace that the market is moving is pretty incredible in direct contrast to
the landscape even just 5 years ago when MOBA's owned the world.

This in conjunction with other nimble, highly accessible entertainment
experiences (Tiktok, HQ and its clones, etc) make for vast and extremely
fickle landscape vying for attention. It's really fascinating to zoom out and
watch it unfold.

Personally I'm just thrilled to see the level of production around eSports
really kick off. Games that have been around for a decade plus now (CS:GO,
Dota 2, Street Fighter) now have these incredibly high quality events and
online coverage that for me have shifted my attention away from many
traditional sports I used to watch.

Exciting times for sure.

~~~
billfruit
I do think Esports is let down by bad production quality of the telecasts, for
eg: Most Rocket League telecasts seem show most of the match from each players
camera, quickly switching from one player to another, but showing the whole
action from a roof-top or sky camera or atleast traditional football broadcast
like camera would make it more watchable. Even with CSGO and Overwatch,
similar problems, the game designers and sportscaster should promote such more
viewer friendly production of telecasts.

Also most esports telecasts have too much fluff and too little gameplay, hours
of pregame chats and pettifloggery for very short actual gameplay, they should
take a hint from football(Soccer for Americans), esp EPL broadcasts, very less
fluff.

I think the content would be richer if one could spectate the tournaments in-
engine rather than watch them as video streams, atleast then viewers can take
full potential of such telecasts, see things from any angle / perspective
desired.

~~~
ehsanu1
> but showing the whole action from a roof-top or sky camera or atleast
> traditional football broadcast like camera would make it more watchable

I'm quite sure this is very intentional with Rocket League broadcasts. There's
even a "director cam" that Psyonix built for this purpose, and it is still
used often. It's just that it's not as exciting or impressive when you're not
seeing it from the player's view for whatever reason. Everything looks slower
and you miss all the nuances of the pros' mechanics.

------
cwyers
I feel like I'm way out of touch with what I read online about game prices,
and I don't think that I'm looking at things wrong. Games still cost about
what they did when I was a teenager -- which is to say game prices haven't
kept price with inflation. Meanwhile, games have added big increased in
graphical quality, in the amount of voice acting and mo-cap involved, in the
size of maps and whatnot. Meanwhile, for instance, I got Assassin's Creed
Odyssey for myself for Christmas, and I've been putting 5-10 hours a week into
it ever since and I'm still only about 2/3rd of the way through the main story
campaign. There's almost no other entertainment medium where I can go spend
$60 and get that much time spent out of it. And by just waiting for the
holidays, I didn't have to spend $60, I spent like $30. And yet online I see
complaint after complaint about how big AAA games aren't delivering value for
the money because of all the DLC available that they feel "should" be part of
the base game. I don't get it.

~~~
falcolas
> And yet online I see complaint after complaint about how big AAA games
> aren't delivering value for the money because of all the DLC available that
> they feel "should" be part of the base game. I don't get it.

My complaint: If I, something of a story completionist, want to ensure I get
to play all the story content which was built for, say, Asassain's Creed
Odessey, I have to not only pay that up front $100+ (to get the appropriate
level of pre-order exclusive content) cost, I have to spend an additional
hundred plus for season passes and other DLC. And that's not counting all the
extra skins and weapons for sale.

I'm glad you feel you're getting your money's worth, but not everyone plays
games the same way you do. For some people, the level of content you purchased
is a week's worth of entertainment.

~~~
cwyers
I'm pretty sure the game plus season pass was $80 at launch. Where are you
getting $200 from?

And what is someone _doing_ if they can burn through a game like Odyssey in a
week? According to How Long To Beat, even if you skip the side quests and blow
through the main campaign, that's 30 hours.

[https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=57503](https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=57503)

~~~
falcolas
Gold was $100 (game plus season pass, plus an additional launch-time
storyline), ultimate was $120 (additional skins and gear).

[https://vulkk.com/2018/06/12/assassins-creed-odyssey-pre-
ord...](https://vulkk.com/2018/06/12/assassins-creed-odyssey-pre-order-
details-and-editions-differences/)

30 hours over a week is only 4-5 hours per day. For someone without children,
that's hardly outlandish.

------
stunt
Regarding the video attention, Fortnite is building most of its community
around game streamers instead of players! Most of the Fortnite events are
heavily focused on big streamers than pro gamers unlike other successful big
gaming communities.

That leaves a lot of power to streamers hand. But streamers will play any game
that they’re get paid to play unlike players from community.

Most of their community are following streamers instead of the game or Epic.
That is how many of them moved to ApexLegends when top streamers got paid to
play ApexLegends.

~~~
ihuman
> But streamers will play any game that they’re get paid to play unlike
> players from community

They're also paid by the community through subscriptions and direct payments
(Twitch bits). They'll get more people watching (and more bits/subscriptions)
if they play an already popular game that people are interested in watching.

------
mihaifm
The article doesn’t really mention mobile gaming which is a big factor in the
attention economy, whether PC/console gamers like it or not. I think companies
that handle mobile gaming properly will be at a serious advantage.

I think Supercell is one company that does well in this space and understand
that attention is a commodity. I’ve been playing their latest game Brawl
Stars, and I although the graphics are a bit cartoonish for me, I can see the
genious behind their design decisions: the game combines several modes that
are simplified versions of today’s popular genres, moba and battle royale.
Each game session lasts no longer than 2 minutes and it’s continuous real time
gameplay. There is no waiting, no searching for opponents, no setup. You just
pickup the phone and play. These 2 minutes of gameplay however are very
engaging and fun.

This is the kind of sessions a lot people will be looking for in today’s
world.

------
llukas
I'd love to spend money on games. Most games seem to be optimized for younger
audience (==dumbed down) or monetized in really dumb ways. So no buy.

~~~
Reedx
Here are some worth your time and money. Look to indie games, mostly. Lots of
great stuff in that space.

\- Spelunky

\- Don't Starve

\- Factorio

\- Oxygen Not Included

\- All Zachtronic's games

\- Stephen's Sausage Roll

\- Stardew Valley

\- Faster than Light

\- Kerbal Space Program

\- Dungeon Warfare (if you're a TD fan)

\- Return of Obra Dinn

\- Prison Architect

\- Mini Metro

\- Cities: Skylines

\- Frostpunk

\- RimWorld

\- Darkest Dungeon

\- Monument Valley

\- Portal

\- Journey

\- Paper's Please

\- This War of Mine

\- The Witness

~~~
llukas
Thanks for recommendation! (I already ticked off several titles from the list,
will check out the rest)

------
ilaksh
To me there are a couple of things going on. Both were touched on by the
article to different degrees.

One thing is that videos games interest is largely affected by trends. When
PUBG blew up I had been out of the loop and I actually thought it was a novel
concept. But it wasn't. It was just an improvement to game modes that had
existed for years. Now we have seen Fortnite take over interest in PUBG and
now with Apex not because it was a totally new thing but because it's a
familiar thing with new wrinkles. It's a lot like clothing fashion. We don't
really go for totally new ideas because we want to fit in. There is a network
affect going on where the hot new thing dominates just because everyone is
doing it now. So there is definitely a limited amount of attention.

The other thing is the fact that various video streaming services exist and
people can get much of the same experience from video or streams as they get
from actually playing games. But video or streams are free or inexpensive
whereas each new game requires a heavy investment. It is enjoyable to watch
someone else play a game. Not quite as fun as playing it yourself necessarily
but it also takes much less effort. You can also get various degrees of social
benefits from streams or videos depending on how much time or effort. Again,
not as good as "real" socialization necessarily, but also usually with much
less effort.

I would go so far as to say that a lot of the investment into assets,
programming, story, content in general is being broadcast out for free or low
cost or for the benefit of streaming platforms/streamers and it's possible
that the producers of those video games are not able to make as many sales as
they would have had their content not been available (albeit in a non-
interactive way) on those broadcast platforms. Which is not to say that it's
necessarily overall bad for sales or bad for consumers. I just think it has an
effect of sales.

------
shahbaby
The rate of technological improvement in video games has also slowed down
(i.e, smaller increments in terms of graphics).

Graphics are a major part of a video game and the first thing most people
notice. With a slow down here it seems inevitable that there will be a slow
down across the industry.

------
glial
While we're all complaining about the state of current games, what I really
want is for games (especially RTS games, but really any game) to come with an
API so I can build and test AIs. For example, I love the game Planetary
Annihilation (I played its predecessor Total Annihilation a ton as a kid). But
after a few dozen games, I began to think 'I wonder if I could just encode my
strategy as a policy' \- not even deep-RL necessarily, just a set of rules.
But I can't even try because they don't have an API :(

~~~
PeterisP
If you're into RTS, Starcraft 2 is basis for a bunch of research and has an
API available - see
[https://github.com/deepmind/pysc2](https://github.com/deepmind/pysc2) or a
tutorial for getting started [https://njustesen.com/2018/01/16/getting-
started-with-the-st...](https://njustesen.com/2018/01/16/getting-started-with-
the-starcraft-2-learning-environment/)

DOTA had also decent API links as far as I recall.

Also, there's a lot of research on older games, see
[https://github.com/openai/retro](https://github.com/openai/retro) for
interfacing with NES/SNES/GBA/etc games.

------
notTyler
Investors see something like Fortnite making crazy amounts of money and ask
why your game isn't generating that revenue. It's not rocket science.

------
debacle
There is intense competition between these battle royale games. Possibly more
intense competition than we've ever seen. Being the 2nd WoW or top MOBA pales
in comparison. Of the dozen BRs I've played (including mods for existing
games), all but 3 already seem somewhat dead. PUBG, which was the leader for
what seems like the longest duration, now seems like a distant third, and will
likely never recover.

~~~
learc83
I think it might have something to do with a combination of free to play and
no matchmaking.

Once a BR has saturated the market, the percentage of new to experienced
players starts to drop. I think most players will reach a skill peak and the
game starts to get harder faster than they are improving. This can be
frustrating, and since newer BRs have a higher percentage of less skill
players they feel easier. With no money barrier, the players switch.

~~~
usrusr
That makes a lot of sense. And even matchmaking, if implemented badly, won't
help much: when matchmaking is based on monotonic point accumulation, players
with sub-average skill growth will be pushed out. Likewise, if the matchmaking
rank decays slower (or not at all) than actual skill, players who took a break
will leave when they try to return.

~~~
retsibsi
> even matchmaking, if implemented badly, won't help much: when matchmaking is
> based on monotonic point accumulation

Do any (modern, popular) games implement this kind of matchmaking? I believe
there's often a monotonically increasing 'rank' or 'level' displayed to the
player, but I'd be surprised if any major games used this kind of score as the
sole foundation for matchmaking.

