
Gaming worth more than video and music combined - adzicg
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-46746593
======
tokyodude
And yet AFAIK little of that money makes it back to the creators. In the
movies hit products pay millions to the stars, millions to the director. In
games devs might get a small bonus after lots of overtime.

If I understand correctly it used to be the same in movies until the directors
and stars started demanding more. IIRA United Artists was started because of
these issues.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Artists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Artists)

Also few games have the budget of movies. There's a few exceptions like say
GTA5 or RD2 but mostly title for title game budgets are at least an order of
magnitude lower than movies.

~~~
EpicEng
No one is buying a game because Joe Programmer worked on the network stack.
People often see movies simply because they like the lead actor/actress.
Additionally, programmers are not directors, and the vast majority of them are
not akin to movie stars. This analogy fails on many levels.

~~~
metalliqaz
But it doesn't necessarily mean that devs aren't underpaid for what they
produce.

~~~
kbar13
Yes, but devs are a lot more replaceable than stars, whose faces and
performance represent the movie

~~~
stcredzero
Are they, though? It's more that the causal connection is more obvious. The
audience can immediately see the face has changed. However, bugs and missing
features are just as loudly complained about. It just takes longer to notice,
and the audience lingers on in dissatisfaction a bit longer.

People caught onto this in comic books, however. There are savvy readers who
follow writers and artists, not characters. There are savvy fans of Anime who
do this as well. There are even people who do this with books and movies.
There are some gamers who do this with games.

Same old story. There are those fooled by surfaces, and those who try to see
beneath them.

~~~
krapp
>There are savvy readers who follow writers and artists, not characters. There
are savvy fans of Anime who do this as well. There are even people who do this
with books and movies. There are some gamers who do this with games.

Yes, but game developers aren't the ones doing the art, or writing, for games.

~~~
stcredzero
Movie directors aren't necessarily the ones doing the art, or writing for
movies.

~~~
the_duke
But a movie director is akin to a top level management position, not a regular
developer.

~~~
stcredzero
For projects of a comparable size, the lead programmer or VP of development
has a commensurate affect.

~~~
roenxi
We don't pay people based on 'effort'. We pay people based on their output, in
particular their ability to take create situations where money changes hands.

If somebody thinks they can get more money with less effort then we want them
to try working that way instead.

~~~
stcredzero
_We pay people based on their output, in particular their ability to take
create situations where money changes hands._

In other words, corporations make a cost/benefit calculation. In the case of
software developers and lead software developers, my experience is that most
corporations can concretely read the dollar amount as cost, but often
drastically underestimate the potential cost of bad software.

There are situations where many people are valued below market for a long,
long time. Markets aren't omniscient and infinitely fast.

------
leereeves
A good game provides hundreds of hours of entertainment for $60.

That's much better entertainment value than a $20 movie.

~~~
folkrav
I'm a huge Mass Effect fan. I played Mass Effect: Andromeda for about 30h at
launch. For a CAD$80 game, that wasn't a good investment.

I also love System of a Down. Probably paid sub-$100 for their discography.
Must have hundreds of hours of listening pleasure. Isn't this a better value
than ME:A?

I'm also a huge Star Wars fan. The $30 I paid for the movie ticket and the
popcorn combo when I went to see Rogue One brought me much more pleasure than
those 30h of ME:A, so was this a better value?

I know, that's one game, one artist, one movie, but that's just to illustrate
that it's not that clear-cut.

~~~
AchieveLife
Support indie games! There are tons of great ones out there :)

www.humblebundle.com -> Great place to find indie deals

www.factorio.com -> Game I've invested 100s of hours into because building and
number management. Plus Mods!

~~~
folkrav
There are definitely great indie games out there - Binding of Isaac is
excellent, Pillars of Eternity (I & II) are what a modern Baldur's Gate would
feel like - yes, Obsidian was bought by Microsoft but that's after the release
of these two, and they were still considered indie before then - and Into the
Breach is easily in my top 3 for 2018 games.

------
arayh
So this is mostly a confirmation that the "loot box" monetization model has
been resoundingly successful? This controversial model exploits gamer
psychology, is sometimes implemented along the veins of "pay to win", and is
seen by some as a sort of in-game form of gambling.

~~~
goostavos
Other game types exists, friend.

I've collectively dumped hundreds of hours in Factorio, Stardew Valley, and
Kerbal Space Program.

You dont have to look very far to find games which have long play times and no
lootboxes (which is a fairly recent thing). Sometimes, games are just good
without exploitative mechanics

~~~
krisroadruck
I think between factorio, oxygen not included, minecraft, no mans sky and
gemcraft (tower defense game) I'm probably in nearing 10 thousand hours of
collective gameplay for a grand total of under $200. $0.02/hr is a hard number
to beat. I don't think its possible for a movie or a song.

~~~
CraigRood
Even though these numbers are very anecdotal. The amount of money spent on a
game vs the number of hours played shows that extra value could be extracted
from the customer.

Netflix/Spotify model comes to mind. The collective pool of subscriptions fund
creation of AAA titles just like the EA pass.

~~~
krisroadruck
Perhaps, though I notice not a single one of the games I listed is an AAA
title. I'm struggling to think of any AAA title that has held my attention for
longer than 25 hours. I'd hate to subsidize the cost of an AAA title on the
backs of indie developers who seem to be making games with a lot more sticking
power/entertainment value.

------
fareesh
Is it possible that a lot of the money is from microtransactions? and that
there is a gambling addiction that is being taken advantage of by lootboxes
and other such pay-to-gain-random-reward microtransaction mechanics?

I remember reading a post about a Path of Exile gamer who successfully
convinced Grinding Gear Games to put in special rules for his account because
he was a gambling addict.

~~~
jplayer01
> Is it possible that a lot of the money is from microtransactions? and that
> there is a gambling addiction that is being taken advantage of by lootboxes
> and other such pay-to-gain-random-reward microtransaction mechanics?

Where've you been for the past five years? That's what microtransactions are
all about. Hijacking our brain's reward system to extract maximum money.

~~~
fareesh
For me personally I have barely ever performed microtransactions so I can't
relate. I've purchased DOTA2 compendiums mostly every year to fund the prize
pool because I enjoy watching, but that's about it.

My point there was that there is no such equivalent in video & music. I guess
if you factor in "superchats" for video you could count those.

------
gammateam
> He added: "Growth has been fuelled by the dominance of free content and in-
> game monetisation, which expands the adoption of games but also removes the
> cap on spending for those gamers that are really engaged in the
> experiences.”

I always wonder if these experiences can be priced accordingly

Flagship games have been priced at $60 for 25 years and should be priced
higher to reflect a variety of other things, but their primary purchasers dont
have the money for more. People really into games dont have money, and
children’s parents dont respect the medium to want to pay more. (Fortunately
there is the aging demographic of everyone else, who do have money and dont
mind preordering)

But with the price of a game being mentally fixed in the collective conscious
I wodber what the average price per user is now with the in game transactions
factored in

~~~
jjoonathan
Consoles exclusives are the new way to charge >$60 for a AAA single-player
game (some of the game's price is hidden in the hardware purchase).

It's terribly inefficient in every possible way, but it appears to work.

~~~
leddt
Aren't many consoles sold at or near (or even below) cost, on the assumption
that software sales will make up for it? Also, how would a console sold by
Sony or Microsoft subsidize in any way a game sold by a third party publisher?

~~~
jjoonathan
I don't think so.

Evidence #1: The ever-present existence of potato masher PC configurations
(cheaper and more powerful than a console in qty 1) makes me doubt that
consoles are loss leaders. The crypto bubble played with that math but it
seems to generally hold.

Evidence #2: Sony keeps bragging about how many consoles their investments in
first-party game studios have been able to move. Importantly: _that 's how
they phrase it._

Evidence #3: This particular narrative has held true for several people in my
bubble, including myself. People will buy a console to play Bloodborne,
Horizon Zero Dawn, or God of War. The center-of-mass for single-player
narrative-driven AAAs seems to be moving away from the PC, and the ones that
stay on the PC seem to be bogged down with "alternative" monetization models.

------
magic_beans
So where's the game developers' union?

~~~
arayh
You might be looking for this:
[https://www.gameworkersunite.org/](https://www.gameworkersunite.org/)

------
PaulHoule
For one thing, DRM for games actually works.

~~~
izzydata
Almost all of it gets cracked. The key is to make buying it and providing the
content so much more convenient compared to stealing it that people just don't
bother.

DRM only needs to work well enough that people can't copy and paste it to
their friends. Most games have online multiplayer modes now that can endlessly
check for a valid copy from a central server though.

~~~
vernie
Isn't console game piracy effectively dead as of the current generation (Xbox
One, PlayStation 4, etc.)?

~~~
cheeze
PS4 and Switch both have kernel level hacks which have allowed folks to boot
pirated copies of games.

But for the most part, I'd say that yeah priacy is effectively dead. The ease
of hacking the consoles and running pirated games isn't there (IMO) and thus
the percentage of users who are doing it is _very_ small. Much more an
enthusiast community moreso than a community of pirates who want to play
games.

This could all change, but I don't think that the piracy scene for the newest
generation is anywhere close to the last two.

Hell, I remember flashing the firmware on my xbox 360 disk drive within the
first year.

Or soldering a modchip into my OG Xbox. RIP that console, best console ever.

------
sneakernets
Gaming may be "worth more" but culturally it's still frowned upon. With
smartphones, you can "hide" the fact that you're playing. Not so easy to do
that with a Switch in public.

~~~
tzakrajs
What culture are you in?

~~~
sneakernets
Maybe it's not everywhere, but where I live, playing video games are still
seen as a sign of immaturity and lack of social skills. Doesn't matter that
there are mature rated games that require voice communication to play
properly, doesn't matter that tons of gamers are in at least one gaming
community.

Somewhere in the mid 00s, society established a new gamer stereotype as some
lazy man child who prefers to sit around reading comics and playing games to
going out and "grabbing life by the horns" or some other nonsense.

~~~
Pfhreak
What society are you in?

Because gaming is pretty ubiquitous and accepted in American culture (at least
in the coastal areas I've been to).

Playing games and identifying as a 'gamer' are definitely different, however.
I play a lot of core games (PUBG, Overwatch, etc.) but I definitely do not
label myself a 'gamer'.

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Raptor22
I wish Apple got this...

~~~
swarnie_
What exactly would you like Apple to do??

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pm24601
But is it worth more than porn?

