Anthem and the peculiarities of modern monetization.

Sounds like a golden opportunity for indipendent medium sized studios to produce this more focused games, the sales a big publisher considers a failure are a shower of gold for a smaller studio.

Yeah, at this point this thread has been hijacked as an opportunity to talk about the sheer number of open world games, bad design practices and monetization.

haha nice one @[HP]

Quote from Radu

On 3/1/2019 at 12:39 PM, Radu said:

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Yeah, at this point this thread has been hijacked as an opportunity to talk about the sheer number of open world games, bad design practices and monetization.

I think there is a connection there. You still see some interesting single player games and legacy multiplayer games coming out, but the battle royale trend of racing to the bottom of pricing making everything free, and all going for the same BR audience, everyone chasing that same fad... there is definitely an air of unsustainability IMO.

Seems harder than ever to successfully attract an audience to a lower or mid-size game, and even huge studios are doing the same thing and immediately undercutting each other. I guess that was always the case but it’s really obvious now how the evolution played out in BR and how short each games window of access to the shifting attention span of the community really was. You better hope you can monetize them while they’re around, because otherwise I don’t see how the effort is worth it for these big studios let alone the smaller ones trying to create content outside of the big trend-seeking games.

Seems like a weird time for the market from a pure developer standpoint.

Amy Hennig has some things to say about this subject:

https://venturebeat.com/2019/02/22/amy…omers/view-all/

A quote of the part that specifically mentions Anthem but I'd recommend reading the whole interview:

Quote

Quote GamesBeat: Anthem seems like the opposite, it sounds like.

Hennig: In a lot of ways. It’s more social and open. Everybody’s trying to crack that nut. That’s what I’m saying. Some of this is very personal resolutions or conclusions for me. I want to make sure that I’m still be objective enough that I’m not just imposing my own personal conclusions on the industry. But I feel like the experience I just went through is more symptomatic than isolated. It’s very hard to make this kind of content in a world and an industry that’s trying to crack this other nut, the live service model. How do we have a big game that’s ongoing and monetizable? I’m not trying to put a nasty spin on that word. It’s just a reality.

Then you try to sell this finite, crafted thing. What does that get sidecarred onto so it can exist? I don’t know. Or do you just go into a different area where that content makes more sense? That’s why I was exploring VR. Can you do a deliberate, crafted story in that space, more so than you can in the triple-A console space right now?

Again, when I say “finite,” I still feel like even these big games — single-player is not dead. Look at what’s nominated. But they still bear the burden of being bigger and deeper. We’re still raising the ante all the time. Seeing these games, people are working harder and crunching more. Development is longer and riskier. What if any of these things didn’t hit? If there was nothing there after five years? That would tank a studio. These are massive, terrifying bets.

A new games crash is coming if they keep this up. We are currently in an age where a triple A (and I hate the term triple A) game can sell 7+ million copies and have "under-performed in expectations" slapped on it. That is fucking ridiculous.

Seven Million copies.

Under Performed Expectations.

Seven fucking million.

Take me back to the 90's before corporate suits, SJW's and politics got involved in games and fucked everything up. What happened to the days where the norm was a company for gamers, run by gamers, wanting to make games for gamers (Looking Glass, Ion Storm, Black Isle, Bioware, Blizzard, Valve, Bullfrog, Shiny, Interplay, Irrational Games? Want a game in a style to what these guys used to make? Kickstarter is the best bet because EA and Activision are here to milk the soul out of the games industry. Woo.

In the meantime, ours truly, Jim Sterling, has made yet another video on the matter:

@FrieChamp yeah, that was a good read - long though. After these discussions I'm starting to realise why I wasn't invested in Far Cry 5's story, even though on paper it's a neat story to tell, and was overall a chore to complete. For me it's hard to get into single player games that take more than 12-15 hours to complete. When they start to hit 30 hours it becomes too much.

More on the topic of the game itself, looks like it is causing hard crashes and problems on consoles, with drives that get corrupted by the crashes etc., apparently some machines get bricked even.

Caved and got the game.

The character customization with loot you can get is cool, better than Destiny imho. Fun gameplay.

Only problem right now is that there are so many bugs that force you to restart your mission with progress lost. Also alot of game crashes.

I do understand why some people want to defend it. It has great potential! I hope they fix the issues and release free updates that fix the game. Dont want to see them pull a bungie and release and 'expansion' for another 60 bucks just to get the game to Where it should have been from the beginning.

Quote from Tisky

20 hours ago, Tisky said: . I do understand why some people want to defend it. It has great potential!

Yeah would make for a great film franchise!

Quote from blackdog

7 hours ago, blackdog said: Yeah would make for a great film franchise!

No, just no. I have had it with all these action hero films.

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Yeah im at level 20 now . Encountered loads of bugs, one where the last boss would instakill me instead of being teleported to stage 2. Luckily your super makes you invurnerable so i got pass that shit.

Something keeps me playing and actually wanting to get home and play. Bioware is having a livestream tomorrow i think about whats coming. It has massive potential to be great, it all depends on BioWare now.

Quote from Radu

7 hours ago, Radu said: No, just no. I have had it with all these action hero films.

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I imagine it as sci-fi tho :p

People can hate all they want, but after the last patch the game has been stable and tons of fun.

The component system to build your javelin is great and the actual gameplay is really good imho.

I was onboard the Destiny 2 train, and even if that game was fun for a while it had alot of problems. The big difference i feel , is that BioWare is listning and communicating where Bungie kept silent and left the players clueless on how they were gonna fix the problems.

Bungie fixed it with an expansion that cost bucks. BioWare is patching the problems and communicating. I really look forwards to the future of Anthem after playing it, hoppfully it can redeem itself like No mans sky did.

An overview of the development cycle and why the game was released unbaked

Basically say goodbye to this game, BioWare already reducing manpower on the promised content

"Take-Two reported about $2.929 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2019, which would put those loot box revenues right around $88 million. That’s a lot of money, just not a lot of money on the scale a major corporation operates at."

https://www.pcgamesn.com/take-two-loot-box-revenue

"Across the financial year, ending March 31st, 2019, Ubisoft saw net bookings of €2.028 billion with operating income of €446 million. This is in a year driven by both successful new major game launches in the form of Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, Far Cry: New Dawn and Tom Clancy’s: The Division 2, as well as the success of a number of back catalogue titles."

https://wccftech.com/ubisoft-sees-record-profits/

https://ubistatic19-a.akamaihd.net/comsite_common/en-US/images/57ubisoft fy19 slideshow confcall _tcm99-349885_tcm99-196733-32.pdf

https://www.reddit.com/r/assassinscre…how_it_relates/

"Nintendo is pulling two of its popular mobile games in Belgium due to the nation's anti-gambling laws aimed at loot boxes. Fire Emblem Heroes and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp will be removed from app stores on August 27th, according to an announcement on the company's website. Most game developers like Blizzard, Valve and 2K have satisfied requirements by releasing a version sans loot boxes. Others are pulling the games from Belgium entirely. Last year, Square Enix pulled three mobile games from Belgium: Kingdom Hearts Union X, Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia and Mobius Final Fantasy."

https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/21/nin…-loot-box-laws/

"If this loot box bill passes as proposed, it will make it a fineable offense for publishers to put loot boxes in games that target children or are playedby children. It will also ban “pay-to-win” mechanics in those games."

https://kotaku.com/u-s-senator-sa…ideo-1834905639

"Two Democratic Senators have signed on to Republican Senator Josh Hawley’s anti-loot box bill, providing bipartisan support for the proposed legislation that would fine publishers and game distributors over both blind loot boxes and “pay to win” mechanics."

https://www.pcgamer.com/us-loot-box-ba…-in-the-senate/

Seems like gaming subscriptions are gonna be the next thing going into 2020, with Microsoft and both Ubisoft announcing their models. There's also Stadia that comes into play with the ability to stream play games. I know EA and Humble Bundle had a subscription model prior to this, but I'm not sure how popular that was. I wonder if Valve is going to play ball or just continue to sit quietly in their corner. What do you guys think?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gaming/feature…ext-gen-gaming/

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2019/jun…-is-complicated