Electronic Arts says indie won't cut it

#61 The point was that noone creates original games... Not EA, not Sony, not me, not you... No one.

Dusitn - Yes, you have a point with the sports games. That is incredibly rediculous.

But don't rag on them for the rest of there games. There games are as original as the games you and I are making :)

Its a fact of life, get over it :P

#62 Bridge Construction Set
Orbz
Robot Battle
Rez
Katamari Damacy

Those are 5 games in the last 5 years which are all risk takers ... basically none of them fit into a pre-defined genre. Show me 5 games which EA created in the last 5 years that don't fit into some pre-defined niche? That's what's really important. It's impossible to think of something completely original ... everything is the combination of 2 or more ideas. Yet you can still be inventive and create an experience which is unlike any other before it. There are plenty more as well. However, you won't see them coming from EA, everything they will produce in the next year will either be a sequel, a licensed property, or something which fits right into a predefined genre ... nothing different at all.

#63 Wow - hadn't realized this post got rezz'd. (C;

Suffice it to say, there's really nothing to get to upset over here... this is the opinion of (IMO) a short sighted individual.

Who cares if the powers that be console themselves with the idea that we can't cut it. Let them.

We are, as independent developers, the "Mongols" of the game industry - and just like the real life Mongols, we won't be beating down the "Great Wall" through force, individually or as a group - instead we'll get the subjects of the empire (in this case, consumers) to simply open up the doors and let us in. Sometimes historical repetition is a good thing. (C;

I could care less what some stuffed shirt executive has to say on the matter - consumers make the real decisions. I'll wait and see what they have to say.

#64 Jeremy - I just realized that we are completely off topic... Not that I really care that much :)

Anyways... Every game is a risk taker. Some have more risk then others.... There is no sense hashing out points that have been hashed out thousands of times.

The real root of the discussion is that we (indies) can't compete.

And the truth of the matter is that people don't really care how pretty a game looks or how much it cost to make. If it is fun they will play it. And there is absolutely nothing stopping our games from being as fun as EA's... Actually our unique positions generally enable us to create funner games, as your last post so appropriately pointed out :)

I was oging to argue that those games aren't unique.... but it's ot worth it :)

EDIT: kirby - I do agree ;)

#65 "And the truth of the matter is that people don't really care how pretty a game looks or how much it cost to make. If it is fun they will play it."

If only that were entirely true... There is a certain percentage of gamers who base their game decisions largely on how good a games graphics are. It is also theorized that $20 games tend to sell less than $50 games because we have subconsciously related cost and quality. (We know it's not REALLY better... Right?)

Really though, if games inflate to $60, that just means budget titles can inflate to $30. They'll still maintain budget status at half the competitors price while breaking the $20 "cheapie" mark. As stated elsewhere in this thread, the higher up the mainstream goes, the more marketshare the indie developers will claim.

#66 Dustin - And a small percentage pick there games using ennie meenie minee moe.

Just think about your 10 favourite games. Are they your favourites because they are pretty, or because they are fun? Would you have played them if you thought they would suck but look good ?

We can argue till we're blue in the face, but it won't mean shit to anyone. :)

#67 @ Dustin & Chris:

It isn't necessarily about having the lastest, greatest gollygeewhizbang graphics tricks to come down the pike lately, it's about polish.

Sure, there's a small percentage of gamers out there that won't buy anything that doesn't have the latest and greatest - what do they account for? 0.1% of the total market? Who cares.

Polish, on the other hand is a different issue. Polished graphics and presentation show a potential customer quality in craftsmanship - an attractive product. You could (theoretically) make the greatest game ever, but with crap (meaning poor quality) graphics, how many people would bother to play it?

On the flip side, how many crap games have you purchased because they looked like a quality title? Honestly... I've bought a few.

Behold the power of perception.

Right now, the power of perception weighs on the side of the corporate monolith, but that is changing as time wears on.

#68 The latest and greatest technology definitely has a large effect on gamers. Games must be fun ... but you cannot take the technology out of the equation. Here's a decent example:

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=60366

This reviews the Xbox Live titles. Now I think Marble Blast and Think Tanks are good games and fairly equivalent. The reviewer here gives Marble Blast a 5/10 and Think Tanks a 1/10 citing the graphics of Marble Blast as being good (notice the bump mapping) and the graphics of Think Tanks being bad. Personally, I think both have decent graphics but Think Tanks has more character and detail and I really like the tanks and some of the landscapes ... yet the exclusion of bumpmapping seems to have hindered the Think Tanks score because other than that both games are fairly comparable ... and Think Tanks also has multiplayer.

#69 Well then I guess we can just look forward to the same stuff over and over and over with no original ideas and no new gaming concepts.
Well at lest from his company.

They're just mad that Indies can charge less for a game that can be just as fun

#70 I personally think Think Tanks looks better than Marble Blast. Though the bump mapping in MB is impressive, like Jeremy said, Think Tanks has more character. The levels I've played lack structures like buildings. It was just opened fields and hills. Pretty boring but it had nice cartoony detail. I have no idea what the later levels hold. But the reviewer was definatley on crack. He must have been expecting Halo or Unreal or something. It's an indie game. You wouldn't review a Game Boy Advance game and give it a 1 out of 10 because it doesn't display normal mapping, motion captured animation, and an orchestral soundtrack in 5.1 surround sound.
-Ajari-

#71 I'm new on the block, but I remember hearing the same thing a long time ago from the Lord British guy.. Richard someone.... (sorry can't remember his name) He stated that one or two people are not going to make a good game...

I would have to disagree with the graphics. Graphics do sell games..in this case people do judge a book by its cover. The graphics are all people see in reviews and on the box. You can't see gameplay or the fun factor. (I could be wrong there).

Unfortunately people do purchase products backed by a big name. EA, Sony, Panasonic. etc .etc.. Mostly because people believe that 'it came from a big company it has to be good/better .etc'

Take us Indie developers, alot of us started out modding other games, some of the mods become a big thing (counter strike, Day of Defeat, TFC (which started out along time ago as a mod for QUake). ok they are all based on a good engine... Helloo.. look at what we have right here.. Torque.. unlike the modders we have the full source code, and a licence to sell products based on that. All it takes is a good idea, dedication, determination and a good idea...(good idea is mentioned twice, once for a good idea, and the second time as you need a good idea that you can realistically do).

#72 Fortunately EA made a loss for the first time since god knows when. Always nice to see :)

Quote:EA: We Suck Again

From the Wall Street Journal Online:
Electronic Arts Inc. posted a loss and said revenue declined in its fiscal first quarter because of a weaker lineup of videogame releases in comparison with a year ago.

The videogame publisher also lowered financial forecasts for the rest of its fiscal year largely because of a delay in the release of an eagerly anticipated game based on "The Godfather" movie.

After regular trading hours, EA, of Redwood City, Calif., reported a loss for the quarter ended June 30 of $58 million, or 19 cents a share, compared with net income of $24 million, or eight cents a share, a year ago. EA's loss was narrower than the 22 cents a share to 28 cents a share the company had forecast and the 24 cents expected on average by analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call.

Revenue declined 16% to $365 million from $432 million. EA said it had a number of strongly performing games during the quarter, including "Battlefield 2" and "Medal of Honor European Assault," each of which sold more than a million copies. However, EA's slate of titles didn't fare as well when compared with the blockbuster titles out in the same quarter last year, including one based on a "Harry Potter" movie.

It's getting a bit surreal to see earnings announcements like this from Electronic Arts. It's a company with an absolutely incredible amount of leverage in the gaming industry, a behemoth of a marketing marchine, and they still aren't making money. Just six months ago they seemed to be dominant. Now, they're seriously struggling, and I don't believe this is a temporary condition.

One theory: instead of trying to make great games, EA seems to be focusing more and more on obtaining exclusive licenses, and those licenses are expensive. The games being produced with those exclusive licenses, though, generally haven't been that good. Combine expensive licensing with less than outstanding sales and it becomes a real problem.

Another theory is that EA is choking on its size. When a game needs to sell over a million copies to be considered "strongly performing," that is a huge, huge burden. They can't afford to release anything fresh (unless Will Wright designs it) because it might blow up in their faces. So a huge portion of their catalog now consists of licensed games and annual rehashes of their sports titles.

Even as I write that, it doesn't sound very interesting. Or fun.

#73 I reckon Publishers are going down. They only thing Indies need to do is convince the big shops like Wall Mart that our products are just as good as the AAA companies. It's all about shelf space man!!!!

Mind you if we follow the Steam method of delivery or something similar to what Valve did with HL2 then we wont need shelves anyway - just download and play!

Does GG have any ties with retail outlets? They might be a way forward for Indie games.

#74

Quote:a behemoth of a marketing marchine

Maybe THAT's the problem the big boys have been having lately(seems like all the major publishers have had a rough first couple of quarters this year)... They're spending more on the games 'marketing' than making the games good, and your average gamer has wised up a bit to it.

#75 Well i think he is wrong, what makes a game....poeple yeah yo need skill in coding and have a nice big cash flow helps you get what you want done faster by our sourcing part of your project. I think he is to small minded to understand Indie. Look at his point of view. A huge company that needs to turn out X amount of projects per year so it can pay his wages and other wages. Indie does not really have that cost to worry about the dev time is going to be at least as twice as long and the prof Devs have all the latest and greatest software. But all those guru dev guys started where we all are.

If you ask me for him to make a statment like that if very short sighted after all if no one starts like we are they are going to run out new up and comming Devs to replace the ones that move on or retire. the guy is clearly out of his tree.

John
:o)

#76 There are plenty of good engines, not many good ones in the $0 - $500 range. but if you have $10,000 you can have a license for lithtech and have the same tech as F.E.A.R if you really want it. $10,000 isn't all that much money if you have established yourself and have a steady income for your business.

Truth is most people don't need a cuting edge engine to make a commercial quality game, just time and more skill than your average amature game developer wanting to develop independent games. A lot of games are well within reach if you can provide enough media for10+ hours of gameplay (single player) and keep it interesting and varied. MP is much easier so long as you can afford the servers you can cut back on media and AI quite a lot. 2 of the most time confusing and difficult things to get right.

#77 Quit yer yappin and prove it, everyone!

:)

#78 I knew EA was headed for a loss ... I could tell just by all the typical gamers' attitudes. They're tired of gaming ... because everything's the same. Most of the people I know who were into games at some point really don't care anymore except for a few decent games ... whereas they used to want to check out everything ... because everything used to be a different experience.

Anyway, we're doin' it!

#79 EA is generally right, but technically WRONG.
Syberia and Syberia II met with significant commercial success. These games were built by just a couple of guys. I think using Virtools helped them quite a bit in terms of development time. But still it was an indie game and very popular in the PC market.

#80 One thing you cant deny though if you look at the top 10 or 20 game publishers, EA is number 1, and not by a little but by a huge devide, they are number 1 by miles and miles, number 2 is a very distant number 2.

No indication that they are going down, in fact they increase revenue and there stock value every year.

i mean who has 600 or 700 million just to do research and development in the game industry? no one except EA.

who has over a billion in cash reserves in the bank? (name another publisher with that kind of capital) none.

what does this have to do with making good games? not much, its about capitalizing what you have and what you know sells.

if millions of players wouldnt buy madden year after year with 2 new features added to them then EA wouldnt stop doing it. EA is not driving the market, they market is telling them that if they add two features millions of people will buy Madden AGAIN.

hey with that kind of cash cow you jump all over it. maybe its main stream game players that are the problem?

why do you keep buying the same damn game when you know there is nothing new in it?

and you guys complain about rehashed games and yet lets look at WoW, what is that? a watered down version
of everquest plain and simple, nothing innovative, nothing that really contributed to pushing the genre in new directions, nope, a bugless, well balanced version of what was already out there *yawn*.

and yet its has millions of players? WTF? rehash an old concept and make millions, go figure.

original games, games that push boundaries in new directions, etc have a tendency to not do very well.
dont see many, TheSims maybe being one of the only exceptions (but how many failures before this one exception)

as for original games in the past 15 years or so there have been a bunch (just pc, way more for consoles)

majestic - very cool, definite risk, total failure
earth and beyond - cool space game not based on any known fiction, cool, pretty, different, failed
black and white - god game, pretty cool, not a big seller
grim fandango - very fun, unique adventure game, not a big seller arguably original
10six - first mmo, fps/rts, very unique game play, not promoted well, original concept
deus ex - fps/adventure, fun, arguably original, some other similar games but not many
doom (original version) - nothing like it, although demons are not original it was put together and presented in an original manner
Drakkan - riding on dragons nuff said
undying - first sorta decent attempt at a "scary" game, pretty fun although simple, but different
myst - pretty original story and concept, although there had been some other slideshow games
Ultima - any of them its own story, its own franchise which let to UO.
Heroes and Heroes of might and magic - very good games, original? hmm depends on your interpretation

timing is also important by todays standards you might not consider something like pole position original but in the time it came out, its was the only game like it, making it an original title not really built on or from anything else.

there are also lots of neat combinations of games like puzzle pirates, city of heroes, battlezoneII, american mcgees alice, etc.

of course you could easily debate originality because it depends on your interpretation and the context in which some of these game came out.

everytime someone tries a new idea, a new concept and fails misearbly, the big boys go see. and when one looks like it might do well someone snatches them up. good examples are city of heroes picked up by ncsoft and battlefield 1942 picked up by ea. Big companies dont necessarily need to take the risk they let you do that and snatch up the good ones. just a reality of how things work.

so hurry up and go make a cool original game, you never know might get lucky and pick up a few million when you sell it to one of those big publishers you hate so much.