[Poll] A New business model for game development? poll

[Texashiker]

a basic law of economics says that as price goes down, demand goes up.

uh, where'd you get this from?

Any grade school economics class?

How about I crap in a paper bag and give it to you for free? Would demand for my crap go up?

For demand to go up, the consumer has to get something of value in return.

When game developers squat over a dvd, and drop a load of crap on it, there is no demand for it. Its not worth the consumers time to mess with that kind of product.

Look at brink as an example, it was not even play tested with ATI video cards. I am not even going to waste my time with a game like that.

 

[Ancalagon44]

I do think we might one day see the end of the massive big budget $60 games. Its becoming an unfeasible model as development costs rise and the market gets saturated. The risk involved rises because the costs are so high and the margins are becoming thin, leaving it quite possible for big budget titles to not make profits. Put a dent in consumer confidence in a few of the major gaming brands and we'll have another video game crash.

As it is I think indie gaming has made huge strides because of cheaper development costs, cheaper prices to consumers, easy access to markets with digital distribution and consumers realizing that graphics are not all that make a game.

 

[jackstar7]

How's about focusing on delivering a quality experience to the player and then price appropriately for the market?

 

[darkewaffle]

Bastion was a 10 hour $15 game which was just about the best thing I've played this year. But how long it was didn't matter. Game length pales in comparison to game experience, though if you can take a great experience and give me more of it than by all means go right ahead.

 

[crownjules]

Demand drives price, not the other way around.

Why do you think when there are good Steam/D2D/etc sales there are suddenly tons of sales? In the digital distribution market, there is no supply since you can download the data an infinite amount of times. Lower prices generally increase demand.

 

[darkewaffle]

Why do you think when there are good Steam/D2D/etc sales there are suddenly tons of sales? In the digital distribution market, there is no supply since you can download the data an infinite amount of times. Lower prices generally increase demand.

You're mistaking demand and quantity demanded.

asdf.

 

[Slew Foot]

asdf.

http://www.differencebetween.net/business/difference-between-quantity-demanded-and-demand/



Quantity demanded is simply a point on the demand curve. Changing the price, DOES NOT change the shape of the curve, and does not change the fundamental demand

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

Why do you think when there are good Steam/D2D/etc sales there are suddenly tons of sales? In the digital distribution market, there is no supply since you can download the data an infinite amount of times. Lower prices generally increase demand.

We are getting tangential here. I understand what you are saying, but in economic models supply and demand are driven off price and quantity. Even with "infinite" supply, it'd still be plotted, not an axis component.

 

[darkewaffle]

http://www.differencebetween.net/business/difference-between-quantity-demanded-and-demand/



Quantity demanded is simply a point on the demand curve. Changing the price, DOES NOT change the shape of the curve, and does not change the fundamental demand

Kind of my point all along.

Demand changes when quantity demanded shifts without a shift in price (well not exclusively, but that's how it'll look on a graph at least). If 50 people would buy product X at price Y, and then a month later 60 people would buy product X at price Y, other factors equal, demand has increased.

If 50 people would buy product X at price Y, and then 60 people would buy product X at price Y-10, only the quantity demanded has changed. The people who buy at a lower price have not changed their demand, the price has simply shifted so that it meets the qualifications of their demand.

 

[magomago]

There are some companies trying this already with episodic games.

One would think it works well when you have a really well developed engine that you literally can create the game much faster because everything in drop and go. But then most PC gamers (well on forums) will bitch about it.

Look at Bioware and their recent spate of RPGs. Even though the graphics are different, game play for each differs slightly, and the scripts and the environments are radically unique, people complain that it is a cookie-cutter formula they apply to same engine and that it is 'the same game with a different skin' not thinking that just applying different 'skins' is a lot of effort!.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

one of the basic axioms of economics is that people act rationally in order to "gain" as much as possible relative to the "cost" of doing so.

However, people do not always act rationally and often times the "gains" are not those that can be measured as neatly as dollars and cents. Which is why economics will probably never be 'perfect'. But something that is imperfect can still be accurate and meaningful.

This is what I was getting at. Why economists still base their models on an axiom we know to be false baffles me. This is why they're not doing real science.

FWIW there are people out there trying to change this ridiculous paradigm, see 'behavioural economics'.

Economists are basically mental masturbators.

 

[BoberFett]

One would think it works well when you have a really well developed engine that you literally can create the game much faster because everything in drop and go. But then most PC gamers (well on forums) will bitch about it.

Look at Bioware and their recent spate of RPGs. Even though the graphics are different, game play for each differs slightly, and the scripts and the environments are radically unique, people complain that it is a cookie-cutter formula they apply to same engine and that it is 'the same game with a different skin' not thinking that just applying different 'skins' is a lot of effort!.

They're also full price games, and then they start unleashing DLC.

Notice that many of the episodic games are those with simpler engines that don't require tons of upfront investment. Quite a few are adventure games or RPG style games.

 

[Sureshot324]

This. Typical indie game is $5-$20 and has 1-4 hours of gameplay. Call of Duty games now have 4-8 hour single player that most people don't even play, and they rely on multiplayer for replay value. Sadly, a lot of games are going in that direction, leaving single player as an afterthought and trying to capitalize on the large MP-only crowd. Of course that just results in a lot of shitty, shitty games that aren't worth the $60.

Actually Infinity Ward said a while back that the majority of COD buyers never play MP. Furthermore, most of them don't even finish the already short SP campaign. A AAA SP FPS game is like an interactive action movie and 8-10 hours is too long for that IMO. 3-4 hours for $20-30 sounds about right to me.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

It seems to me like we're already there, the Portal 2 singleplayer for me was a hair over 4 hours, games like MW2 are 5-6 hours, we've got episodic content and DLC which is usually only a few hours of gameplay.

I applaud games that manage to deliver many hours of gameplay without being too grindy or repetitive, the 60-70 hours you can sink in to games like Dragons Age: Origins or Fallout New Vegas are well worth their launch day asking price in my opinion. Whereas games like Portal 2 which are less than a tenth of that should be priced accordingly, Portal 2 launching at a full game price point was quite frankly disgusting.

 

[thespyder]

It seems to me like we're already there, the Portal 2 singleplayer for me was a hair over 4 hours, games like MW2 are 5-6 hours, we've got episodic content and DLC which is usually only a few hours of gameplay.

I applaud games that manage to deliver many hours of gameplay without being too grindy or repetitive, the 60-70 hours you can sink in to games like Dragons Age: Origins or Fallout New Vegas are well worth their launch day asking price in my opinion. Whereas games like Portal 2 which are less than a tenth of that should be priced accordingly, Portal 2 launching at a full game price point was quite frankly disgusting.

It's what the market will bear. If people are willing to purchase at full ($60) price, why not sell it at that. Even if it isn't necessary to make profit margins.

 

[Northern Lawn]

I thought 9 hours for Bad Company 2 was short enough - once you're getting into the story and setting it's all over.

I must be terrible at that game. I played it for 500 hours before I got bored of it

1.72 frag rate Best damn online shooter I ever played, even better then America's Army 2.

 

[Sulaco]

Freddy, er...Northern...have you tried Arma II (or better yet Operation Arrowhead)?

Not a competitive, death match style shooter, but if you like realistic military sims, there's nothing better.

 

[Northern Lawn]

When I tried Arma (not sure which one) I had incredible lag issues, I couldn't shoot anything. I'm waiting for Battle Field 3 and praying my computer can handle this. I'm so sick of spending money on computers, I even tried to buy an xbox, I have about 7 games but I only played Halo 3, haven't turned the xbox on in about 2 years. Useless crap. My video card costs more then the xbox and all my games, LOL.