Worried about the direction the AAA industry is taking.

#1 Disclaimer: The information, views, and opinions of Joseph Thomas do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of GarageGames.

I was wondering writing a blog about something related to this, and I don't really consider it to just be a AAA industry problem, but what is being considered "AAA"/"Good Games"/"Fun Games".

What is being said at recent conferences, such as Unite 11 the other day is somewhat disturbing to me. Where the next "Golden Age" of video games is being considered "Console quality browser games", "Tablets and phones", "Cloud and multi-device gaming" and "Free-to-play" (Source: http://gamasutra.com/view/news/37546/Unite_11_Gazillions_Brevik_Asks_What_Would_Nintendo_Do.php ). Now while I believe "Free-to-play" is a great idea, and same with "Cloud and multi-device gaming", I do find "Tablets and phones" to be part of the next "Golden Age" to be ridiculous, or at least, not my interpretation of a "Golden Age". Where the game industry is headed, there is going to be a great expansion with the amount of people playing games thanks to tablets and phone, however, I typically see that these are people that would not play games. It is great that people are playing games, however, how many people do you know are playing some iPhone game rather than their XBox/PS3/PC? I know there is a few, but not as many as we are being lead to believe. The reason for this is not just quality (which mobile games these days do clearly lack), but also because of terrible controls and the fact lack of immersion. These people joining the game industry will be seen as the phone/tablet market as "exploding" with growth. However, the bubble can burst on that very clearly http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/09/27/2048235/social-media-bubble-pops-before-it-fully-inflates .

The bottom line to me is, I just don't find tablet/mobile/browser games to be fun. Maybe I am looking for the wrong game, but I have tried most of what other people called "great games" and they just lack the ability to be fun for more than say, 15 minutes. Which is understandable though, if you look at Zygna, they know that most people play their games in five minute intervals, so the games are targeted to keep your attention for that amount of time. In my eyes, with the way these games are now, I just don't want to play them, I have no desire to play them and I have no want to directly work on one. What happen to wanting to make games that were immersive, and that told a story? What happen was those games are risky, and people would rather make a game where you point and click to grow crops than take a risk in an industry that should clearly be taking risks.

There is also the clear lack of quality games coming out now. Mostly because it is sequels. This is due to many reasons for what is wrong with game development. The managers/producers want a sequel because it will make the studio more money and the programmers/artists want a sequel because it is job security (and visa versa). However, in my opinion, the game industry shouldn't be the sort of "get rich, cash out" type of industry. It should be more of something more of industry of passion. Sure with some of these sequels people are legitimately passionate about them (even Call of Duty 8), but there is a constant stream of "AAA" sequels coming out that are clearly just churned butter that keep selling. I have talked to people that have worked on these games (not naming games/persons/studios) and they clearly know the game is a sequel that has just be turned out so they can rake in ridiculous money for the same of knowing consumers will just eat it up. They do it because of two reasons. 1) You have to make money 2) Everyone else is doing it, so why not?. Though thankfully there are "big name" people who against making sequels. such as David Cage ( http://kotaku.com/5844954/heavy-rains-creator-doesnt-sound-stupid-at-all ).

There are some really good new ip's coming out and not all sequels are bad. A great example of that is Mirrors Edge. Most people loved that game, they would love a sequel for that game. However, it did not make as much money as say a sequel from another series, so there for it will not get one yet (Note: I understand that DICE made Mirrors Edge and were working on BF3, however, EA has shown they can have multiple studios work on different ips. So I am just "assuming" this would be the case if they really wanted to make one sooner. Even though they are saying the sequel is now "Under Development", the fact remains, if it printed more money before, they would have made it sooner). People really wanted to see Halo 3 finish the story from Halo 2. But how many people rolled their eyes when Halo 4 was announced? ( ... but if they really believe they have a great story, and it is actually a really good story and not just a way to milk the series, then sure, make another. But I don't think sequels should be made just for the sake of making money). There are clearly sequels people want though, like Uncharted3 and Batman: Arkham City that do not look to be cookie cutter sequels, and that the game industry would need more of (ie, a brand new story).

In my opinion, it all comes down to companies wanting to nickle and dime customers for what use to be free, or should be free (free because we, the consumer have to use the service to play the game that we clearly do want to use). It seems that companies just want to sell portions of a game rather than the entire thing as it will indeed make them more money, and thats great, if they want to make money go right ahead. But they should try to do it in a way that does not seem so ridiculous. Case in point, on disc DLC. This has been a problem for a while, and Gears of War 3 has it with their on disc weapon skins. Companies would rather sell small portions of the game after it is released and what would then be the "full game experience". Also, just look at some of the preorder bonus' you get. In a racing game, if you preorder it, you typically get some really nice cards right off the bat. This breaks multiplayer as soon as the game comes out, because those who preordered will have better cars immediately compared to those who just went to the store and picked it up.

I am currently running into the BF3 situation where it is just a mess. I can see why they want to do what they are doing. I mean if they have it this way, it is another way to advertise games through their website. However, the problem for me comes it two points. 1) It is just unnecessary. 2) Having constant stat tracking is annoying. You can go to "unranked" servers, but those servers are typically terrible and empty. What would be great is if you could just go into a "silent mode" (mentioned below). Back to BF3 for a second, you know what the most annoying thing is? Say you join a server, and later, one of your friends see you are playing and joins you. Isn't that the point of all of this "social gaming"? Well guess what, for some reason you can not join different squads, you can only leave or join a random one. I sure hope this is just because of the beta ...

It seems that everyone wants to force "social gaming" on to you, even if you don't want it. Consider PSN for example, there is no "silent" mode. Say you just want to play a multiplayer game without being messaged about people on your friends list contacting you and wanting to join (I am unsure if Live is like this, but if it is, they are a problem too). Now easily you could just not have these people on your friends list, but maybe you enjoy having them on your friends list for certain games, and maybe sometimes, you just don't want to play with other friends online (it happens). Steam does this perfectly well by appearing "offline". But what ever happen to just being able to game in peace, or say fooling around in a server? I know people that don't want to play certain games and just say, fool around for a little while, because they know their stats are being recorded for every single bullet they fire. Sure they could just stop caring about stats, but it is the situation that is ridiculous, not the person (at least, in my eyes). I actually have two PSN accounts for when I want to play games, simply because some times, I just want to play by my self against random strangers.

I was talking to someone yesterday, and they described a situation to me that will actually probably happen in the near future. It is such as scary idea of what will probably happen, that I think it should be nuked from orbit. However, some people love this kind of stuff. It comes down to a video streaming service (though it could be for games too) where you gain points just for playing them. Therefor, turning even movie watching into a social game. You can then earn points for watching, that way you can compare you movie points against your other friends movie points. Then you can get points for reviewing them, and writing reviews, you can then unlock movies and prizes for doing this. Now this may not sounds like a terrible idea to someone, and in actuality, it make not be a terrible idea. The problem is that this will get forced onto people that really do not care. Kind of like requiring facebook to reply on certain websites now ... (Who wants to be a mobile company soon anyway http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/27/facebooks-mobile-chief-within-1-2-years-were-going-to-be-a-mobile-company/ ).

Anyway, I think this has gone on long enough. The TL;DR version of it is this, people are just jumping on the gravy train of mobile development because they see it printing money. The problem with that is that there is too much staleness going on in the industry. This should be an industry that greats fun and exciting projects. Not the kind of industry that mindless turns out knowingly terrible games to the mindless masses that will buy them.

I am not saying people should not make money in the game industry, because clearly that is a ludicrous suggestion, but if you ask someone what would they rather be in, the game industry or the software industry. If they say the game industry, it clearly is not for the money (the game industry is notorious for paying less than the software industry). This is because the game industry is(/"was") an industry of passion. And hopefully people got into the game industry because they wanted to make something fun, exciting and immersive.

A good example of how bad things have become, http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-ghost-story/

#2 Yay skinner box from hell. There is a reason I do not play mmorpgs or supposedly "free" games.

#3 Its not just about hiding algoritms, it's all about tying the consumers to your comapny, and giving them the Computer Aided Everything (CAE) experience. And at the same time data mine and analyze their behaviour... Sort of what Yahoo did, but failed to support.

The reason they all are talking about handhelds as the next golden age, is because consumer behaviour and entertainment are changing. Yuo entertain, edutain, and inform yourself while on the move in modern society. Swift in and out -while micropaying for content, information and producets on the fly.

Saying these 'front end tools' lack the quality served by the heavier 'back end bunkers' is misleading in my book, and only display a subjective view on what is 'quality'. Consumer usage figures clearly speaks its own cause.

Innovative quality a'la the early 80's could be met with a engine support for the indie environment. What is clearly shown by great engines like Unreal, CryEngine, Unity, T3D, Android and many more targeting the 'idea man'. Only thing some of these lack, for the idea man, is either a eased up pipeline, or a proper toolset. Some of these engine suppliers try to deliver a cradle for innovation to be seen, and in some cased bought up/supported. it will in my book be the grasslands of innovation, and major studios either dying out, owing the communities or keep at gorgeous 'bunker enjoyment'.

Anyways -it's all about them making money for delivering a product to you.

#4 ...don't worry, directions change; often. Just wait for it. From my observation, this 'social' trend will begin to fade like all 'fads'.

The next big thing is just around the corner.

Opportunists jump in, make their cash, saturate the market, exit with highest margin attainable. Leaving those holding a 'long position' to pick up the pieces...

Video games are just another vehicle.

#5 It isn't the part about the social networking that is worrying me the most, the part that does is the rabid control on the video game licensing system.

It feels like we pretty much saw the end of abandonware, because with those structures, when the company stops supporting a game, the game die.

It's both the player and the game designer in me that scream from those marketing decisions, i feel this is simply not fair to the customer to sell games full price and at the same time move toward a structure where the game publisher decides when the game is "over" .

#6 The trend of "software as a service" has been coming for a long time now. Not just in games, but all software.

For some games, especially online games, it makes a lot of sense. The operating costs to run an MMO like WoW is in the millions. There is no way they can recoup those costs by selling a single license that can be used, rent free, for a decade.

#7 Yes but MMOS are essentially true sevices, persistent world and all that stuff (or rather what it USED to be before the instance craze took off)

But a lot of games are masquerading as mmos when they are not, tethering you by force to an online service wether you need it or not. BF3 is an example of what is at the core a classic fps game where clients connect for free on servers provided, for free by the community.

What EA is doing is forcing themselve as a middleman and extending their control of the game beyond the initial sale. All we really need is a master server, which is as maintenance free as a sort of simple DNS service (i'm not saying that it's not a large system, but it's nothing compared to the backend of an MMO game).

But instead of doing just that, which would give the option of someone to takeover once they decide to drop it (tribes2 use now a community owned master server since sierra pulled the plug), they made this highly intricate system that let them control everything from the client to the servers.

This architecture cost a lot of money for doing things that could be handled individually by the server you play on (not everyone need global stats and global leveling) and since there is no monthly fee to be allowed to use it, it means it's existence in time is limited by a fixed chunk of EA's budget for the game.

#8 A lot of this all depends on your outlook and what you expect, you are also confusing multiple different aspects into one thread, which is i suppose a little indicative of how unclear the gaming industry has been about implementing these things.

Most of these fall under the DRM banner as a method for protecting their income, and while i dislike many implementations of DRM i can see why theres a necessity from a business point of view, personally i dont even like online activations for single player games, however so long as this isnt a broken system it really doesnt bother me much. Having to be online to play single player games? well that is abhorrent imo, and pretty much driven by the console gaming systems.

Other things that dont effect me, online FPS and servers, i dont play online FPS, i dont care where the servers are and i dont care that you cant make your own servers, as an RPG gamer ive been screwed over by lack of decent lan or private servers for over a decade now, screw the FPS gamers the whole gaming sector has been dominated by the FPS genre for too long imo i dont really care what happens to online FPS gaming.

Really, what this comes down to is what gamers pay for, and whether you really like it or not, the notalgic gamer is a very small minority. While it would be easy to say that games should be about gamers, the fact is that since the turn of the millenium game designers and game developers are becoming a smaller and smaller part of the gaming industry to dare i say it, almost and insignificant part of the gaming industry. Add to this fact that the majority of players will buy 'new shiney' and drop 'old rusty' almost at will, the argument for keeping old services online is severely watered down, but again, i speak as a person who doesnt actually care about FPS games/gamers as a general rule.

I think that gamers should pay for their services, $5 a month to play your favourite online FPS game and so forth, RPG gamers have been pretty much forced to play MMO subscriptions to play online RPGs for over a decade.

#9 As a gamer, my concerns are in line with this thread. I thought Diablo II did the best job of walking the line of having a secure server with the Realm or hosting your own unsecured games on your LAN. I did both because I needed both because I hosted LAN games at my house.

However, I also see the need for publishers to engage their customers and there has always been an uncomfortable line with how to advertise to customers. To be fair, a lot of "wild ideas" have succeeded. Look at Google and Facebook, talk about aggressive marketing. The benefits are so high, most live with their "social" marketing campaigns.

Gaming needs economic models that will sustain all levels of games. Most of us will still buy Battlefield 3 and Diablo III regardless of the DRM, social marketing and hosting requirements. For $60 bucks, most of us will get 100s of hours of gaming out of these products. If some marketing and DRM supports this level of quality in products, I am along for the ride for now.

#10 There's a silver-lining in all of that: As the big companies walk away from FPS (or whatnot) games that can be hosted privately, that opens the field to Indies who can go in and fill that void. As Bloodknight said, it's mainly about DRM and trying to stem those losses (not that I actually know what kinds of losses they sustain, as that's been debated for years and years now).

For an Indie, you can look at that news and say "well, if Diablo III doesn't host private servers, I have this idea that I've been wanting to try, and adding LAN and private master server support would give me some good features to advertise...".

Don't bemoan what the AAA studios are doing- take advantage of it.

#11 well, losses dont have to be real, all it takes is one beancounter to percieve a $100 loss and they will spend $50 to get that loss back.

So if they think they are losing $10million, they will spend $5million to get it back, of course they will add the projected unit cost to the retail price as backup... bastards :p

But ted is absolutely right, theres a reason indie games are picking up more sales now than ever, some of this is more indies, but i think that the more the AAA studios follow trends, the more niches there are for indies to fill.


Ive been operating on this premise for a long time, my intended game was always more about having LAN co-op element than an online element, tho obviously the online part becomes trivial after adding a LAN coop element so it would be silly not to add it, but ive had a hard time finding games to play with my son, so i'm making one :p

#12 TO me this trend is to basically , under the cover of fighting piracy, sell games that are not complete. They sell you the right to play and a client, but you never get all the parts to get the game running alone.

It's fine if it's a subscription based game because you buy a service, but games that are bought should come with everything that is required to run the game.

I just checked, BF2142 had a lan mode... good times.

#13 Also, this makes me reconsider the possible business model for my own game...

#14 This very reason is what I am on using for taking a very large advantage over the "big name" companies.

I've noticed that many games are lacking user driven input to make them more suited to what a community wants to see.

I guess that's where "cue the customization" comes into play. Most of my games I'm working on will literally offer customization in pretty much any and every aspect possible (Game Options, Settings, Ect. [obviously minus ranked MP though]).

But yeah, definitely something us indie developers can take a massive advantage over.

#15

Quote:But yeah, definitely something us indie developers can take a massive advantage over.

Well said. I like to think of the AAA's as those huge fast food chains: Massive corporations that want to make the best product that they can within the parameters of their business, which is to squeeze as much profit out while being as safe as possible. Thus, they limit their menus, and while people buy up their food and they make a fortune, people complain about the taste and nutrition value.

Indies here would be more akin to the smaller restaurant chains or one-off restaurants that serve higher quality food, even allowing customers to switch things up on their plates, and addressing their smaller, yet more loyal group or customers. And while you know they go and grab fast food once in a while, you also know your hearty food will keep them coming back.

And just like restaurants, plenty of the small -and big- places shut down due to not operating correctly, so make sure what you serve up is tasty!

no idea why I talk about food when I have a stomach virus

#16 And then there is this news, which can basically summarize everything

http://kotaku.com/5845866/origin-account-bans-threatened-for-playing-on-modded-battlefield-3-beta-servers

EA can your account entire Origin account, making it unavailable to play any game on there.

Sure, you should not be playing on "modified" servers, but this is still bad news.

#17 @Joseph Thomas I like the cut of your jib.

The Golden Age of games is going away, I feel the best quality (fun, well done etc) games where in the late 90's and early 2000's.

Games where starting to expand out and become more then they ever where but then I think FPS games started to go big on consoles and they decided to have games made for all platforms which lead to a lack of quality for PC gamers, as they had come to expect more. Things had to be dumbed down and made more simple the controls and the audience.

This also seemed to show that they could make the same game year after year and still make the same money if not more, with very little changes.

As game development moved from small companies to larger companies buying everyone out the passion to develop games was lost and developers are forced to pump out games and go down this line.

With phones and stuff having games, this mostly opened a new market, a larger market maybe? Then the original gamers? And so even cheaper to make games are profitable.

Blizzard has said already hinted that there next MMO will have "social" components.

I played Iron Grip: Marauders recently its like a fancy facebook game in many ways. I think its fairly good but once I noticed that each unit is a level and I have to keep researching and just buying newer versions of units I lost interest for the social game portion.

When I played BF2 and BFBC2, I felt pressure to do my best all the time and not really given a chance to explore or enjoy it as much as it could be, as I was forced to focus on unlocks and always trying to progress.

#18 >> Games where starting to expand out and become more then they ever where but then I think FPS games started to go big on consoles and they decided to have games made for all platforms which lead to a lack of quality for PC gamers, as they had come to expect more. Things had to be dumbed down and made more simple the controls and the audience.

The recent example of this is Crysis2, though there are other non FPS games doing this. If you take a look at Shift2, the entire UI is all made for console. It works for PC, but it is awkward and does not really fit the platform.

>> When I played BF2 and BFBC2, I felt pressure to do my best all the time and not really given a chance to explore or enjoy it as much as it could be, as I was forced to focus on unlocks and always trying to progress.

I sort of felt this way too. Every once in a while I just wanted to drive around in the jeep running people over, or with C4 strapped to my jeep. However, people did not want to participate because it would "hurt their stats", even though they thought it would be fun to do.

>> This also seemed to show that they could make the same game year after year and still make the same money if not more, with very little changes.

Next to forced "social" aspects of games, this is the biggest problem in games right now (in my opinion).

#19

Quote:However, people did not want to participate because it would "hurt their stats", even though they thought it would be fun to do.

I was playing the CoD:Black Ops back in springtime, and there was one day where I ran across one of those rage-players who insisted on mocking everyone, and then of course it was my turn to be yelled at because I put a round or three in him (and it does infuriate those guys when you say something like "yeah, maybe I suck, but I laughed as I blew up your chopper"). The thing was that it wasn't the usual 13-year-old equivalent. This guy was looking up all kinds of stats- stats I never even cared to look up, never mind figure out how to look up during a match.

So, this guy is going off and I'm thinking about how sad he is to go off on everyone and base it on stats. After all, everyone plays at their own rate, but I've been hearing more and more people talking smack about stats, and it makes you wonder what we're doing throwing all these numbers at people that really shouldn't matter.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love me some CoD. But one of the things I think they're going in the wrong direction with is charting match performance and drilling down so far into stats that the gameplay is becoming just a way to grind out those stat numbers. Sort of reminds me of Level Quest in a way, except applied to FPS games...

#20

Quote:But one of the things I think they're going in the wrong direction with is charting match performance and drilling down so far into stats that the gameplay is becoming just a way to grind out those stat numbers.

It's only that way if you make it so. I love BFBC2. That game is amazingly fun with or without the griefers, base rapists, and campers. If you don't like them you can play a lowbie server, or jump on an empty one with your buddies, or just play the single player.

I agree that pay to play and gaming as a service is a crappy idea, but you see, I don't have to play those games. No one is forcing me to play WoW. When they upped the rates and I was thoroughly bored of "the grind" I closed my account. What cracks me up is how people gripe about it, yet continue to play it. There's lots of games out there, guys. I love Splotto! and Minis March Again on my Nintendo DS, and I love Cut The Rope on my iPod.