
The Financial Future of Game Developers - captaincrowbar
http://www.raphkoster.com/2014/05/07/the-financial-future-of-game-developers/
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Negitivefrags
[http://i1.wp.com/www.raphkoster.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/...](http://i1.wp.com/www.raphkoster.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/05/whatmobilepubs.png)

This image from the article is so true it actually hurts. The number of times
our company has had a conversation like this would boggle the mind. We are not
even a mobile game. We are a free to play PC title and we still get this
garbage.

It's interesting that publishers for Asia don't have this mindset. They are
willing to actually put money up front, something that no non-asian publisher
has ever offered us.

~~~
socialist_coder
You get those shitty publisher terms because the publisher has no idea if your
game will be good or not. Why would they commit to spending anything before
they know what kind of revenue & retention your game will have?

If you release your game yourself to a limited market, prove it has good
revenue & retention stats, then shop around for a publisher, you get much
better terms.

~~~
Negitivefrags
We did release the game ourselves and generated good revenue and retention.
I'm certainly not complaining about our current level of success.

The (non-asian) publishers still come out of the woodwork to offer you these
kinds of garbage deals. We just don't take them. The fact that we were already
successful is why these leeches turn up in the first place.

These "publishers" are essentially glorified and very expensive user referral
programs.

------
dsirijus
I think the main issue here is that people don't clearly delineate _making
games_ from _making money_.

You wanna make games? No one's stopping you from creating the most whackier
experimental game this world has ever seen.

You wanna make money off that? You gotta wade through all kinds of shit, as is
usual in most businesses. And before someone mentions Minecraft - it is such
an outlier that it's not usable as argument in any discussion.

I don't subscribe to the self-entitled tone of the article that making games
in itself is something virtuous and should be basically subsidized. I love
Koster though, _Theory of Fun for Game Design_ is what made me really
interested in game development.

~~~
RKoster
You're misreading the issue. The issue is whether _anyone_ can make money
other than the few oligarchs who got in early. Whether anyone can make money
unless they are pandering to the lowest common denominator for the sake of
mere profitability. Whether even the top quality titles can make money given
the need to spend at insane rates in order to be visible.

It's absolutely true you can do it for the love of it. Not questioning that.
But the above is a recipe for a crash.

~~~
dsirijus
So what?

Do one for the money, the second for the show, third to get ready, and then
make proper games. That's exactly what I'm doing now. Quite literally.

I can't wait to start doing games I'd like to play! Just few more months.

------
zanny
How about just not selling your soul to soul sucking distributors like Apple
or Valve?

The real question is do you want fame and industry class "success" (ie, your
game sells millions) or do you want to be creative. Terrible example, yada
yada, but Minecraft is still being sold from the Mojang site where the company
(and originally Notch) gets 100% of proceeds.

If you want to see millions of people play your games, with millions of copies
sold, with front page storefront ads, then yeah, you sell your soul to the
entrenched interests. But you don't have to play their game - you just need:

1\. An Audience who likes your content. 2\. A way to eat as a result of that
content.

Really, the obvious answer is the audience plays patron as the article denoted
funder. That, in the long term, is the macroscopic way this is all trending
anyway.

And I'm not talking kickstarter style get-a-bunch-of-money-at-once-and-blow-
it-all. I mean you have an (open) product, put it out there, advertise it
however you want (personally or outsourced) and hope that those that
experience it think its worth continued funding.

Also, metaconsoles is kind of a misnomer - you have a platform spectrum, from
open accessible platforms to walled gardens with padlocks. On one side, you
have the wild west of self-hosted downloads for free platforms like Android
(without the play store, think fdroid) or desktop Linux, and you progress from
there through Windows, the Play Store, OSX, and finally the iOS / old console
locked down ecosystem where you need a developers license, development tools
from the source, etc.

Yeah, Steam is barely better than a console - they act as gatekeeper and takes
a huge cut - but on the platforms Steam supports, you at least have the
_option_ to use other platforms as well, like gog, the humble store, desura,
or self hosting. When there is whole stack lock down like on the traditional
consoles and iOS, you are literally praying at the alter of the corporate
owner that they give you a blessing.

~~~
jlees
_I mean you have an (open) product, put it out there, advertise it however you
want (personally or outsourced) and hope that those that experience it think
its worth continued funding._

It sounds so easy in theory, doesn't it?

Getting a game in front of people who enjoy it enough to give you money is
hard. Very hard. Raph's ideas from 2006 around direct relationships and
celebrity are still very much on target today -- that's how most successful
creators seem to manage it, beyond the randomness of viral outbreaks. (I count
entering/winning the IGF as a form of celebrity.)

Beyond that, advertising it is a spray-and-pray that will likely suck up more
of your money than you'll ever make, and net you a bunch of high-churn players
who don't give a toss about what you've created. Not every game has an obvious
niche audience to go after, not every creator welcomes or invites celebrity,
and sometimes the weirdest, most un-game-like things hit a nerve nobody was
expecting.

My mind keeps circling back to the 'people who bought x also liked..' problem,
as mentioned by Greg Costikyan [1]. Discovery is broken, and so on, but it's
not discovery - as in players actively seeking out games - I open any store on
any platform and I'm inundated with choices. It's _being discovered_ that's
broken, being discovered by an audience who will truly appreciate what you've
created.

The hard part is slicing the gaming landscape, and individuals' different
experiences of the same game, to such depth that a Pandora-like algorithm
could work effectively -- or relying on independent curation and journalism to
step in and highlight the gems among a sea of overwhelming noise.

(If anyone wants to hack on the recommendations side of things, let me know!)

[1]
[http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/GregCostikyan/20140324/213784...](http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/GregCostikyan/20140324/213784/2014_GDC_Rant_We_Had_a_Good_10_Years_But_the_Walls_are_Closing_In.php)

~~~
waterlesscloud
Google Play Store does do "people who bought this also bought...". It's useful
to me in discovering things I want.

I'm a little skeptical of that rant you linked. Anyone blaming the audience's
"lack of taste" is going to have a hard time of it, in games or music or books
or movies or whatever. You just don't get to do that. You have to make things
that satisfy you and the audience both. If you don't, that's _your_ failure,
not anyone else's.

~~~
kevingadd
It _is_ true that the audience has no taste, though. We haven't made any
concerted effort, as an industry, to help them cultivate taste. Games are
still too new and too generally mediocre/same-y for the typical player to
develop anything resembling taste - they very rarely encounter an example of a
game that's truly worthy of respect or enthusiasm.

If the only games you've ever played are shitty clones at the top of the free
list on iOS, how would you possibly know enough to spot a high quality game at
a glance? It's not a failing of the players, it's a failing of the industry.

Companies operating storefronts have a responsibility to do better, by
offering more useful data that's less vulnerable to these issues. For example,
instead of basing recommendations on the masses, prioritize recommendations
from what your friends play, so that people can benefit from each others'
experiences with the few less-popular games they play. Prioritize games with
overall low sales that have high average ratings, are played by a large number
of your friends, or are in the same genre as many of the games you play.
Randomly show them games that don't match in any sense (or only match in one
or two categories), and gather that data to identify 'hidden gems' that you
can push up the rankings.

These are all random ideas that might help bring low-ranking games up towards
the top, increasing variety in the top lists and increasing engagement (not to
mention revenue). It's embarassing that all 3 major store operators (Apple,
Google, and Valve) have an utterly lazy approach to discovery, where they
literally just do a sort based on one or two values and dump a list onto your
screen.

------
gedrap
While fairly offtopic, this reminded me of Game Dev Tycoon (
[http://www.greenheartgames.com/app/game-dev-
tycoon/](http://www.greenheartgames.com/app/game-dev-tycoon/) ) which seems to
be written using HTML5 + JS + Chromium.

I like this game, and I equally like the way they got traction. They released
a restricted version on The Pirate Bay, although the description of the
torrent was as if it was a full game. Not very usual, but nothing new either.
But a well written blog post about it
([http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-
when-...](http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-pirates-
play-a-game-development-simulator-and-then-go-bankrupt-because-of-piracy/))
got them homepage of HN and loads of other press coverage, which helped to
take off.

Well done.

~~~
tiquorsj
Importantly, the posted version would let you play the game until your
software (in the game) was ready to sell and then it would put up a shamer
message about how you couldn't make money because everyone was pirating your
game.

------
tom_jones
One solution. Stay out of the app store. Develop on the web in HTML 5.0. No
businesses between you and the players there. Once you are a bit hit, you cut
your own deal to go onto other platforms like Facebook and the app stores.

------
tdaltonc
What is Humble Bundle in his ontology of 'the supply chain of creative work'?

it looks like they fill all of the same roles as Apple. I feel like this might
not be the right way to divide the industry.

~~~
RKoster
Humble Bundle is basically a publisher with a web storefront. They leverage
other distribution channels, and critically, have what's left of the gaming
press as a very fruitful marketing channel.

They also mostly only publish things that are already hits, so in a lot of
ways they are a re-user outlet.

------
ausjke
I wish they all go broke, 95% of the games whoever produced are mental drugs
to the society, especially to young kids.

I hope one day that most games are illegal, just like the drugs.

If you have kids, you know what I mean.

~~~
angersock
Maybe people should try parenting instead of letting their kids play games? Or
giving them cell phones?

Computer gaming is a hugely important industry, and the reason that we even
have powerful computers and graphics cards today.

You need to defend your opinion a bit more if you want it treated as anything
other than that, an opinion.

~~~
ausjke
My kids rarely play games, but I have seen too many kids doing that these
days, obsessively.

one reason there are less boys in college than girls, guess what, games. I
actually read this somewhere.

My piano teacher, whose two kids are still at home playing games, at their
20s.

You don't just blame drug abusers, you do also blame the drug dealers. In
_most_ cases, game designers are doing the same thing as a drug dealer who
sells the drug, wearing an IT hat. Parenting can not do this alone when gaming
is now becoming a culture/fashion/addictive, due to our genius developers.

~~~
pknight
Games are a way to play. Life without play is = devoid of joy. You can get
play from lots of different things (work/music/improv etc), but it's human
nature to want to play.

Games _are_ a part of culture, just like music is. Music serves no intrinsic
utilitarian purpose. You wouldn't want to cut a person of culture any less you
would want a person to never listen to music.

Of course, anything in excess tends to be bad. And some games are engineered
in diabolical ways and only live to make money. But games in an of itself are
a natural and important part of a normal human beings life. And in this
generation, computer games are.

~~~
ausjke
This comparison is a brush that is too wide. We do play games, such as board
games, pokers, chess, some math related flash games. I'm saying _most_ games
are too addictive(especially for kids) and are money-driving.

~~~
gambiting
But kids can get addicted to anything - alcohol, cigarettes, sex,
skateboarding, nail biting, abstract painting, classical music, or yes, video
games. It's your role as a parent to regulate how much time they can spend on
activities, and if your kids get "addicted" then it's your own fault, not the
child's. Most games are rated for adults - that means only adults should play
them. And those that are not - it's still the parent's responsibility that
they are used in moderation. In some countries you can give your kid alcohol
legally at the age of 14 - that doesn't mean that you can legally get your
children black out drunk - there is moderation required in everything.

~~~
ausjke
violent adult games are also cancers to the society. that's another topic.

As parents we're doing our best, I'm just saying gaming is in the most part, a
bad thing, I'm not saying every game is bad, as some drugs are useful for
medical reasons too.

it's a shame to compare most games to music and painting, that does not make
the game industry looks artistic in any way. it's more in the ballpark of
alcohol, cigars and drugs, yes they're all popular, same as games, but they do
not get the positive images in the society, games should be treated the same.
Games do not deserve anything more positive than drugs, again, for the most
part in general.

I am fine to be down voted to zero, though I hope some of you game developers
know that, there are other ways to make a living than being a game developer.

I'm interested in knowing, in general, how games help kids, teenagers, even
adults to be a better person to the society, by reading more, working harder,
be less voilent, and staying touch with the real world? There are indeed some
good games, again for the most part, they're the opposite.

