Hello and welcome to the fourth edition of this experiment called ”Dialogue Options”. Here we put our collective minds together and share our toughts on a single issue each time. Hope is that by presenting wide spectrum of opinions like this we can leave our personal biases behind and think about the issues with an open mind. Without further ado, I present to you today's topic:

This weeks issue is a kind of follow-up to the ”why does the good guy always have to win?”. It just the simple question of ”does the player have to win?”.

It's What We're Here For

by Vinny_Says

Be it sports, board games, video games or just fun at recess, we play games to have fun but we also play them to win. Yeah we might brush off a loss and claim “I still had a good time” but that time would have been so much sweeter had you been the winning party.

Video games are meant to be won and give the player a sense of accomplishment. This is their inherent purpose. This is why so many games today are incorporating elements of progress in games where there is traditionally none. For some people nothing felt as good as dominating Facing Worlds or de_dust over and over but not everyone can be like Jeff Gerstmann, so why not reward some of the lesser players too? You might ask why should losers be rewarded, but as I said, reward is the purpose of a video game.We play arcade games to get the highest score, we play online shooters to be number one on the leaderboards, we play character focused adventures to see our heroes win, we play RPGs for 1500 hours to be the strongest and have the best gear, we do all this because we want that sense of winning and accomplishment, it’s like a drug and we are all addicts. If we didn’t have this, we wouldn’t bother with any of this.

You’ll hear a lot of people say that games today are meant to be finished and that they used to be harder. I myself am guilty of this; I often feel like most boss fights in video games today are just graphics showpieces and not a test of the player’s skill. But I see games as a commodity, and like most commodities they are meant to be as simple to use for as wide an audience as possible.We want our appliances trouble-free and our phones easy to understand, why should video games be any different? You might call me a blasphemer for comparing video games to toasters but that’s an entirely different topic of conversation.

The feeling of accomplishment, or winning as the case may be, is probably what drives so many people to play video games. They are a simple way to achieve that feeling of success and they are perhaps one of the most rewarding forms of entertainment on the market. The best part is that success and reward can be completely subjective when it comes to video games. Players can feel rewarded by experiencing a good story, levelling up or beating a tough boss. While most mediums will subject an individual to only one form of recompense, video games will take it one step further.

You say Win I say What?

by Pezen

Remember that really good book, that one you sat with for hours and just couldn't put down? Remember how you savored every moment and truly emerged yourself in the narration of this adventure? Do you recall, once finished, how you bragged to all your friends how fast you blew through the book and that you probably read 50 pages in less than 30 minutes. Of course you don't (and if you do, you're a horrible human being), because what would that gain you other than the satisfaction that either your friends are slow readers or you skimmed past something important in your hurry to be the number one finisher of that book.

Game is in the branding of the hobby, and by all accounts it's roots are in a setting where the High Score were the apex of achievement. Because at one point, games didn't necessarily contain all the complex narratives we have today. It was mechanics first. As the years have passed, and the medium evolved, we've reached a point where the mechanics isn't the only thing anymore. And since we have reached this point, why keep harping the same philosphy regarding design?

When we "win" a game, we get a sense of accomplishment and the high score lists are our bragging rights. But do we really need bragging rights in a story driven experience? I remember playing through Heavy Rain and trying my damndest to get "the best" ending only to have it blow up in my face, and once the sense of disappontment over my own short-comings subsided, I was happy that it happened. I don't need to win at enjoying a well written tale (Yes, Heavy Rain had huge plot holes, but for the sake of this example and topic, let's just ignore that), I just need to enjoy it. But gamers in general are a fickle bunch of entitled brats, if we don't get what we expect out of our calculated version of the game, we freak out. Because in a complete state of irony, we yearn for new ideas, but we fear change.

Walt Williams (head writer for Spec-Ops: The Line) said in a spoilercast on Gamespot (Here, well worth your time) that one of the things they wanted to do was play with player expectations versus the reality of the situation. As players doesn't always have the full information when they enter a specifc situation in order to make a well educated decision. And the end results might not come out the way they anticipated. I think that is something games need more, ignoring player entitlement and look at the bigger picture instead. We're so used to being the masters that we're sometimes forgetting what it is like not to have all the answers and even then, that things will play out the way we expect them to. Because in most of life, it's harder to calculate those things. And why should games be so simple as to cater to our every whim?

But the question remains then, do I as a player need to feel I won? How do we define winning in games where the end goal is less clear? Is reaching the end of the road within an experience enough to be a "win" or does the end have to be a cathartic orgasm of closure and success? I say no. I don't need to feel I won, as long as I feel the road to the end was worth my time. And that the end justifies that journey, whether I am sitting there in complete and utter defeat or joy. However, if winning would imply that the end was satisfactory no matter it's implications on the game world, I could agree with such a proposition. But I don't need to "be the winner."

I Want to Not Lose

by Rappelsin

Games are designed to be beaten, and in that sense the player always needs to ”win”. Most of the time this involves player triumphing over a final boss, which says a lot about how basic the storytelling in games is most of the time. Though you can't blame the makers of these simplistic narratives since majority of gamers reward these by buying them. It's the same way as it is with the movies, people come to be entertained and a happy ending where the protagonist wins is going to be the easiest way to achieve that.

Multiplayer games are a different story because there has to be a loser. That's why you get that XP pop-up everytime after a match. You might have not won the match, but you will win the war. There needs to be a feeling that the match that you just lost wasn't just a waste of time and rewarding you in some form of pseudo-achievement is the key to that.

It all boils down to the fact that player doesn't need to win, he/she just needs not to lose. That applies both to single player and multiplayer games and it doesn't really matter how it is conveyed that you really didn't lose, even though you really-really did. In single player story telling, where at least I did feel like a winner at the end, The Walking Dead is a great example where you, the player, actually didn't win. During that bittersweet ending I felt like I had given my all to protect this little innocent girl and everything it that story was leading up to that point. I had done the impossible: Protected and raised this little girl to be a survivor in a post-apocalyptic world where danger lurks at every corner.

Stories in games need to grow a bit more but it's as much in the hands of the player as it is in the developers'. The Walking Dead did some incredible things and showed that stories in games do matter and in couple of years' time we'll be seeing a lot more great stories in games that just don't end by player defeating the final boss.

Games as an Experience

by ImmortalSayian

The philosophy behind how difficulty should be handled in games has changed drastically over the years. Modern games are designed in such a way to make them beatable, by the average player; offering little resistance. Checkpoints are offered every other step so death becomes a minor inconvenience instead of something the player fears. Instead we now fear death for what it will do to pace of a pre determined set piece as dying on the plane sequence makes it inherently less enjoyable. Many big budget games are now going towards this spectacle, set piece type of game design. Where the game is linear to a fault as you are meant to be guided to the things the designers painstakingly crafted to be impressive. These set pieces are appealing due to the sheer awe of them.

Contrast this mentality with the way games were designed in the 8 and 16 bit eras. At the time games like Contra and Mega Man were popular and respected. These games were punishing and would require a combination of trial and error and quick reflexes to succeed. The desire to conquer the game was what drove player to finish it and doing so was the reward in itself.

I often hear game described as a quality “experience” Something I never heard tell of just a few years ago. Games are no longer just systems meant to be understood. Games engage in a variety of ways now, something that has increased this generation. A game like Call of Duty I feel has simple mechanics and is not hard but people like it for the spectacle of it all. The same thrill of riding a rollercoaster or watching a bombastic action movie.

Duder, It's Over

That's all for this time and I would like to thank you for reading this. I'd also like to thank Pezen for creating again that awesome banner and everyone else in our small group who got interested in this idea in the first place.

For now we have crew big enough to accomplish things I've set to the horizon, but if you are really interested to joining in, PM me. Also if you have ideas for new topics of discussion just post them here or send a PM.

Hello and welcome to the third edition of this experiment called ”Dialogue Options”. Here we put our collective minds together and share our toughts on a single issue each time. Hope is that by presenting wide spectrum of opinions like this we can leave our personal biases behind and think about the issues with an open mind. Without further ado, I present to you today's topic:

This time we are talking about ”why does the good guy always have to win?”. A simple question really and isn't worth asking in gaming but all forms of story telling. It's a subject worth talking about for multiple reasons.

Why the Good Guy?

by Gamer_152

Of course the good guys don’t literally always win, and some games don’t have good guys or bad guys at all, but where possible, there is a clear trend towards the good guy triumphing over the bad guy. To some degree this is obviously a wider pattern in entertainment. When it comes to the real world, we have a fundamental desire to see good win out over evil, and that manifests in our fiction. Stories which end on a high note also seem to be more palatable to the general population.

There do seem to be some motivators for games specifically to end with the good guy winning though. For one, the protagonist is often the good guy, or at very least has the option to be, partly because of the reasons mentioned above and because we empathise with them, and in games the actions of the protagonist and player are inextricably linked. If the protagonist falls to the bad guy in the end, it’s the game in a way telling the player “You know all that work you did over the last X hours? That counts for nothing”. Not a pleasant experience.

Games also generally depict conflicts of a kind and on a scale where the bad guy winning would have pretty undesirable implications. If a piece of fiction is about something like the protagonist trying to win the heart of the person they love, or someone trying to escape the criminal underworld, when the “bad guy” wins we can empathise with the protagonist because the story works on a personal level. Games however, often have stories with more focus on the fate of the world as a whole. If the terrorists win at the end of a modern military shooter, or the world ends at the conclusion of an action-adventure, there’s generally little emotional appeal to that in itself.

However, what games specifically can do is provide us with “bad endings” alongside the “good” ones, so even if it’s less enjoyable for many, there’s still the option there to see what happens if the bad guy wins. With their focus on destruction and gameplay, games are also better poised to show us the fun of being evil. Ultimately though, I think the fact so many games see things in terms of this simple black-and-white good/bad dichotomy says something about how mature this medium is in terms of storytelling.

The Art of Storytelling in Games is Young

by mosespippy

Narrative in games is not usually complex. The simplest plot structure consists of two opposing sides and a conflict. Luckily, conflict is what games can do easily, so the authors only need to come up with two sides to oppose each other. Antiheroes typically have heroic objectives but have unheroic or villainous characteristics or commit immoral actions to achieve their moral goals. Good guy fights evil and prevails is a very easy story to write. Good guy with character flaws fights evil requires a bit more work to do well.

Developing characters through gameplay is still a rare occurrence. The design of games is often more important than the writing of plot or character development. A game developer’s resources get spent on making the interactive parts of games function properly because it is crucial to the game’s success. The writing is almost secondary. Frequently features will change or be removed part way through a game’s development and that can force late changes to the script. The writing has to be flexible enough that changes can happen if something doesn’t work properly. That means it has to either be irrelevant of the gameplay or it has to be simple enough that rewrites can be easily made.

One of the most important aspects of games is their ability to place the player in a role where they have more power than is possible in the real world. Games are power fantasies. There needs to be narrative reasons why the protagonist has all this power. Forcing the player to do actions with these powers that are indicative of character flaws can make players feel uncomfortable. If they have to play in a way that is juxtaposed to the narrative then it can make the game feel off.

Grand Theft Auto IV has been criticized for this problem a lot. The narrative is of an immigrant with a dark past who wants a peaceful future. The gameplay has him mowing down waves of enemies and kidnapping civilians. The gameplay necessitated an immoral character while the plot required a moral character. The end result is a character that feels schizophrenic.

Narratives and game mechanics are starting to be integrated together in more meaningful ways as the games industry matures. Developers will put more thought into how flawed characters should play and how that impacts plot structure. It’s still a very early industry and it has a long way to go but it’s ability to tell stories is improving with every release.

Not Very Often

by SexyToad

So why does the good guys always have to win? Well the good guy doesn't always win. There are examples of games where the player is a "bad guy." GTA is one of those examples. In GTA IV, for example, you play as Niko Bellic. Nico is essentially a "gangster." In the game you can, and urged to, steal cars, shoot people, and just be a menace. Most RPGs let the player be the "bad guy" and win as well. Let's take Fable 2 for example. Fable 2 is a Action RPG, in Fable you are the "hero". Throughout the game you can make choices which moves your karma meter in one way or the other. You can choose to be the bad guy by killing, sacrificing innocents, stealing, and so on. The point I'm trying to make is there are games that let the bad guy win. But there is a tons more games that let the good guy win. Why is that? I would say because, people play games to be a winner. The player, as the good guys, will do all these missions and quests, and spend so much time to get the final boss. What fun would it be if the boss just killed the good guy? After all that time you put into that game just to lose at the end, seems like a huge waste. Imagine Ocarina of Time where Ganondorf just kills Link at the end. The players would be disappointed and wouldn't want to play again.

Heroes, Brutus and Princesses

by Winternet

Our hero faces a long and seemingly impossible journey. He will encounter innumerous and highly difficult challenges. Commanded by a mighty and unreasonable evil villain, his foes are fearless, ruthless, merciless and they will stop at nothing to prevent our hero from “saving his princess”. The odds are stacked against our hero, but despite all of these he can take solace in one thing: he will win, in the end, he will win.

This almost undisputed fact is the center of our argumentation in this week’s blog. It is however something that isn't exclusive to video games. The “good guy always win” is one of the most common tropes, not only in video games, but also in TV, movies, comics, etc. There are many ways to explain this phenomenon and you can approach it by many different angles, be it from a philosophical standpoint or from a business standpoint, just to name a couple of examples. But, I want to raise a different question and therefore intend to leave the good guy behind and go a little off-script, in the hope of finding something more intrinsic to video games: “Why does the player have to win?” This is a more interesting question, in my opinion. If we focus solely on the story and the narrative aspect of the video game, we can draw some parallels to other creative works where we find examples that negate this question. For instance, in literature, we have the tragedy genre, where the main character goes through various levels of suffering and does not succeed in the end. Tragedy as a literature genre was very popular in the Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, being later revived in the Renaissance period.

As an example, we can look at William Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar. In very crude terms, the main character (Marcus Brutus) leads a conspiracy to assassinate his close friend Julius Caesar, in order to stop republican Rome turning into a monarchy. Brutus and his co-conspirators succeed in assassinating Caesar, but are later driven away from Rome and have to battle Augustus (Caesar’s adopted son) and Marcus Antonius (Caesar’s right-hand man). The battle does not go in Brutus favor and he ends up committing suicide. As we can see, Brutus does not “win” in the end, not only because he loses his battle and suicides, but also because he fails to prevent Rome turning into an autocracy, as Augustus is later proclaimed the 1 emperor of Rome.

So, what is stopping video games from having similar stories? Is the industry just not at that level of maturity yet? Or do the developers lack the panache to go for more bold and audacious storytelling and therefore prefer to follow more well-known and popular structures? Sure, we have our own bash of antiheroes, character deaths and film-noir-esque video games, but nothing that truly goes for a sense of defeat when the credits roll. Is the sense of failure even something that players would feel ok with? It’s probably something we won’t have to worry about in the near future as we continue to search castles and rescue princesses.

Duder, It's Over

That's all for this time and I would like to thank you for reading this. I'd also like to thank Pezen for creating again that awesome banner and everyone else in our small group who got interested in this idea in the first place.

For now we have crew big enough to accomplish things I've set to the horizon, but if you are really interested to joining in, PM me. Also if you have ideas for new topics of discussion just post them here or send a PM.

Hello and welcome to the second edition of this experiment called ”Dialogue Options”. Here we put our collective minds together and share our toughts on a single issue each time. Hope is that by presenting wide spectrum of opinions like this we can leave our personal biases behind and think about the issues with an open mind. Without further ado, I present to you today's topic:

This weeks question, ”Why are remakes and re-releases adored, but annualized games despised?”, actually sprang to life after Nintendo announced Wind Waker remake and that lead to the question why a Wind Waker remake is a good thing but a yearly CoD a bad thing. From that we decided just to broaden the topic to concern all remakes and annualization of games from which, as a rough universalisation, remakes are seen as a good thing but annualized games as bad.

Nostalgia and Fatigue

by ImmortalSaiyan

Two weeks ago Nintendo announced some games they were working on. Including Wind Waker HD, which was met with a hugely positive reception. So big in fact, you could of sworn it was new game. This was surprising to me; Wind Waker may be one of my favorite games but this HD remakes did nothing for me.

Nintendo is in the market of nostalgia. They stick to their core franchises and with each installment try to appeal to our first experience with a given series. Rarely do they rethink what those series are. Some people grow out of them but they are pulling new people in. Others may see them as comfort food of sorts to play the new but familiar Zelda. So a direct remake speaks directly to people around my age. People who I bet make up a large portion of the internet gaming audience. This is why I feel Wind Waker made such a splash with people when other HD remakes don’t get the same reaction. Sure Devil May Cry or Ico have nostalgia around them, but not to that Nintendo level. Windwaker was for many people their first Zelda game. A game they played at a young and impressionable age.

When it comes to annualized games it’s a whole other ball game. Those are frowned upon because they become stagnant and risk oversaturation of the market. The several games chasing Call of Duty sales this generation is testament to that. Also they can be seen as corporate interests destroying a quality series. Such as the rapid decline of Assassin’s Creed after it become annualized. I personally don’t want to play another one of those games after 3 and many others feel the same. There is not really a good model for this type of rapid release sequel. Neversoft being the prime example of a cautionary tale.

Zelda has become complacent as a series, but we only get a new one every three or four years. A fry cry from the clockwork release schedule of Call of Duty. Nintendo has made claims to shake up Zelda with the next installment, alluding to non-linear progression and multiplayer. I bet Call of Duty will remain the largely the same as it has since the first modern warfare. Whether or not these series will be well regarded In the future or passé is anyone’s guess but i'm looking forward to finding out.

HD remake, who are you?

By Winternet

Remake, remaster, revival, reboot, re-imagining, re-release, HD, update, port, version, release. There is a very thin line that separates all of these concepts and, at some point, we can’t even differentiate them anymore. But, for the sake of this argument, let’s turn these concepts into short-term and long-term scenario. Short-term scenario is when a developer continues working, tweaking and improving a video game they’ve recently created. An example of this are the Street Fighter II and III games, which kept seeing re-releases and updates in the following years of their release. This short-term scenario has been, in recent years, almost completely transformed into DLC, which has its own set of ethically questionable issues, but that’s for another blog.

Our focus here is, of course, the long-term scenario which is when a developer/publisher goes back to work on a video game released many years ago and is now considered old. “Old” is a funny concept in the video game industry, actually. Is it about the age of the game or is it about the generation of the game? It’s fair to say that “old” has often more to do with platform generations than actual age. For instance, Bionic Commando Rearmed is a remake of a game released 20 years prior, but Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes is a remake of a game released just 5 ½ years prior. Generation cycles are what make a video game old.

So, what does an HD remake bring to the table? Improved visuals are a given. But there should be more to it, right? Gameplay mechanics, level design, audio, game modes should also be considered in the remake of a game. Otherwise how it would be different from a remastered or HD release? Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD is a good example of a game which it would more fitting to call a remastered version than an actual remake. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary also makes few and small things to differentiate it from a simple HD release. On the other side of the spectrum there are games like Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Anniversary or the previously mentioned Bionic Commando Rearmed. Both made significant changes to the gameplay, visuals, audio of their predecessors and can be truly called remakes.

Despite me talking mostly about remakes, their quality and how should they should be treated, remember that most of them are used as business instruments. As much you may like these games, don’t let yourself be illuded, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary was made to raise interest for Halo 4 (even the brief things added in the campaign were there as a tease for Halo 4), Tony Hawk’s pro Skater HD was made as an attempt to mask the bad rep the previous games have gathered, Bionic Commando Rearmed was made to raise interest for the “real” Bionic Commando that came out a year after. One can say that Wind Waker HD is just a way for Nintendo to get some breathing room for them to make a proper new Zelda game. HD remakes are as money and business orientated as annualized franchises, which people tend to hate for that same reason, and remakes can sometimes be seen as one big marketing campaign for another game. Now, tell me if that doesn't sound dirty as hell?

Playing a Different Game

By AmatureIdiot

At the core of this argument is the divergence between games as the traditional fixed experience, which is played, enjoyed and put away, and a new generation of games which are an ongoing service, where the same core game (usually mainly multiplayer) is altered and adapted over years. When it comes to most annualised experiences such as Call of Duty and all sports games, where the draw is the mechanics of the experience, it is wrong to treat them as discrete games, but rather updates to the same core game. In fact they have less in common with the games which sit on the shelves next to them, and more in common with service games like Tribes Vengeance or Minecraft.

Most annually released games fall in the awkward middle ground between the two types of games, they have the same incremental updates of the service games, and yet rely on the traditional boxed $60 yearly purchase. So you may ask why they warrant a yearly $60 release. Of course there is the profit motive, this delivery mechanism does net the publishers massive profits; but MMOs will also charge for expansion packs of various sizes, and other service games are heavily invested in free to play models, so I do not believe annual releases are unduly exploitative. Also they would struggle to reach the same market penetration with their mainstream audience without the ability to put a marketing push behind one big tent pole release, and a good portion of the audience may not be savvy enough to get non-traditional distribution. So when you see the latest Call of Duty on the shelf, maybe look kindlier on them, as they are an imperfect solution in a sector in its infancy. This does not however excuse single player annual releases such as the Assassin’s Creed franchise, where it is undoubtedly detrimental to the franchise.

While annual releases are part of gaming’s future, HD remakes represent gaming’s past. It is no surprise that they are met with a favourable response, they usually belong to beloved franchises and nostalgia is a powerful force. I believe remakes are a positive development, they allow for people to replay classic games easily, and ideally provide a best version for posterity. At their best they provide the definitive version of the game like Halo: Anniversary and can open up some older games to new audience, like the rare Radiant Slivergun or the previously Japan-only Persona 2: Innocent Sin. However lazy ports like the Silent Hill will quickly tarnish the reputation of remakes, and damage what is a pretty cool idea.

So maybe in the constant tide of evolution we have lost the fact, like rewatching a favourite film or playing a board game again with friends, we don’t need to be constantly reaching for a brand new experience in every game. Sometimes what you know is all you need.

Selling Short, Selling Long

by Fattony12000

Fond memories of great gaming experiences that have long since passed are the fuel that allows the great pyre of high definition remakes to burn so brilliantly. It’s usually good games that get “HDified” or “remastered” these days (at least since around 2007, when we saw HD upgrades of games such as Bionic Commando appear on XBLA), but only after many years have passed since the original release. It’s that large gap of time provided by the passing of many moons, combined with the residual want to satiate our nostalgia, that leaves most of us mostly happy to accept most of the HD Mega Editions that we see nowadays.

Of course there is a monetary drive behind the idea of creating a remastered version of an ancient game, it’s still pretty tricky to spit much vitriol at those companies who do travel down that path. After all, you do still have the original game, nothing is being taken away from you simply because a 720p version has been created as well.

However, it’s that feeling of nothing being actively taken/withheld from you that is felt in the inverse when it comes to the majority of the Next Big Annual Blockbuster Video Games. A piece of content to be consumed rather than appreciated, often looked at as being cynically churned out on a factory floor assembly line, created merely to appeal to the finely honed demographics that the Gods of Marketing seek to hold sway over. It costs a lot to make a big game these days, so you’d best be sure that your investment pays off. Money becomes a bigger controlling, and warping, factor as more money is needed to create that game.

It’s these kinds of thoughts that stand out in the minds of gamers, that makes us stand up and shout out when we see these repeated ‘cheap shots’ at making a quick corporate buck. In general we all want to see something good in the games that we play, and it’s our memory of games past, and the passage of time from one game to next that colours our opinion on the latest hot jam.

There’s a reason why the best books, films and landmarks of entertainment take a little while longer to make than your run-of-the-mill products. It’s down to how much effort and ability is put into the endeavour at the creative level, alongside having enough time to spend in actually constructing that final piece of art.

Duder, It's Over

That's all for this time and I would like to thank you for reading this. I'd also like to thank Pezen for creating again that awesome banner and everyone else in our small group who got interested in this idea in the first place.

For now we have crew big enough to accomplish things I've set to the horizon, but if you are really interested to joining in, PM me. Also if you have ideas for new topics of discussion just post them here or send a PM.

Hello and welcome to the first edition of this experiment called ”Dialogue Options”. Here we put our collective minds together and share our toughts on a single issue each time. Hope is that by presenting wide spectrum of opinions like this we can leave our personal biases behind and think about the issues with an open mind. Without further ado, I present to you today's topic:

How to create successful new AAA IP? Boring terms ”AAA” and ”IP” are used here to express that we're answering this question from the publisher's point of view. Both commercial and critical success can be considered, but this question is mostly about when a publisher spends a huge amount of money, how does it get even more out?

Courting the Enthusiast

by mosespippy

Creating successful IPs takes time. New franchises are rarely ever a huge success at the start. The first instalment is usually the worst selling in a franchise. Franchises gain success over multiple instalments as they build upon repeat customers and attract new consumers. Those who purchase brand new IPs are the very informed gamer; they are the leading edge consumers. They will try any type of game as long as there is something to hook them. That hook can be good reviews, a good developer pedigree, previews that show off promising gameplay (whether it’s something old that is really well done or something new that we haven’t seen before) or something else entirely. Casual observers don’t see those sorts of hooks because they aren’t looking at the sorts of media that would expose them to it. The enthusiasts eat it up though.

If a company can sell the first entry of a series to these evangelical gamers then they’ve got a shot at having enough interest in a sequel that it isn’t a huge risk. The first game in a franchise doesn’t have to be the greatest thing ever. If the core of the game is fun or the writing is well done then there is a tolerance for the small annoyances from these seasoned gamers. They’ll want more of the good parts of the game. Streamlined improvements are expected to smooth out the small problems in sequels.

Games like Saint’s Row and Uncharted: Drakes Fortune were moderately successful in their sales but their sequels greatly surpassed the originals. They weren’t the greatest games but they were good enough that people would buy a second one. These return customers are also tastemakers. Their friends wait longer into a generation to purchase systems and aren’t familiar with the range of franchises and developers that their tastemaker friends are. When their friend tells them that they should try Game X then they will likely give it a shot. That’s why the second game in a series needs to be great. The return customers can more easily sell their friends on a game if it is so amazing that everyone is talking about it.

Ultimately the developers need to deliver a product that is as good as what they are showing. If you get a crowd excited with previews, trailers and demos but don’t make a game that lives up to the expectations then customers can feel burned or deceived. Enthusiasts will try new things but this hobby is expensive; they aren’t likely to give you a second chance.

Franchise the Makers

by Rappelsiini

To solve this problem we first have to understand why the big publishers are relying on the same names year after year. Answer can summed into two words: Reliable revenue. To elaborate a little further, consumers keep throwing money to the same things over and over again because there is trust towards that game series. From buyers point of view it can't possibly be more than marginally worse than the previous entry in the series (which they loved) and what if it's even better? There are numerous examples of this like CoD and Halo.

That said, the simplest, and I'd argue most riskless, way to sell a metric shit-ton is to utilize a known brand name. You know, in the vein of Sid Meier's SimGolf, Bioshock Infinite. Just slap something people recognize on the cover and they'll buy it, right?

Actually implementing that idea isn't going to happen in a snap of finger because to be recognized you have to have done something from where people can recognize you from. Recognition has to be earned by producing something good, hopely even great. And like that wasn't hard enough there has to be the confidence to brand that game from day one so people can start to relating your name with quality. It's not enough to be Peter Molyneux or Ken Levine – your name has to be also recognized and move masses same way as Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp.

All that jazz also applies to development companies but that goes with out saying.

This talk doesn't obviously concern gamers and that's why I was using words like ”consumer”. Like Ken Levine explained in Wired's interview why the cover of the upcoming Bioshock Infinite is like it is, a badass dude on the cover will sell more copies than something more ”artsy”. Fact is that bigger public, who aren't hobbyist or experts, don't have a good level of knowledge about games and are ignorant about that ”nerdy” stuff. It applies to games and everything else, though games have it worse compared to movies for example since they have a lot smaller coverage in mass media. To get wider recognition beyond just gamers new, original games have to be stamped with a brand name which works like a seal of quality.

AAAs Doing More Harm Than Good

by Mirado

Would it be better if we didn't have AAA releases at all? Sure, I love big budget, blockbuster movies as much as anyone, but are massive CoD-like releases doing more harm than good for the games industry as a whole? For one, companies are starting to sink more and more money into each release; some estimates had Kingdoms of Amalur going through $5M a month. That type of budget carries a massive level of risk, and that kind of risk forces these publishers to only green-light games that are (in their eyes, at least) sure bets. This can help put a vice-grip on creativity; Double Fine's Adventure couldn't get published through the traditional model, and games that do make it through can sink a company if they fail to make sales targets or can be subjected to massive amounts of executive meddling, which is exactly what happened to Psychonauts and Homefront.

Psychonauts is, by most metrics, universally loved. A quirky platformer with a unique story, great voice acting and solid mechanics, it should have done well in the market...or it least showed no signs of winding up as a massive, monumental failure Publisher Majesco banked heavily on both it and Advent Rising to help them post an expected $18M profit and wound up posting a $18M dollar loss. This crippled the publisher, forcing them to cut projects (including the nearly complete AAA title Black 9), caused their shareholders to sue, and eventually pushed Majesco into the "casual" games market. Psychonauts would eventually go on to sell in greater numbers on Steam, but by that point Majesco no longer held the rights.

Homefront was another example of AAA dreams gone wrong. THQ's gated green-lighting process forced developers to keep sending them prototypes without their committal to full development, so developer Kaos (already teetering on the brink of closure due to Frontlines) kept cramming as many bullet points as they could onto the back of the box until they won THQ over. When CoD hit, it started the tailspin. Orignally pitched as "Lost meets Red Dawn" to the THQ management (who loved the concept) Kaos spent eight months building throwaway code for a five minute E3 demo. The team didn't gel, the THQ audits went bad, the GM got thrown out...trying to keep up with the Joneses resulted in a mediocre shooter that killed a studio and ultimately contributed to THQ's demise. I encourage everyone to read Polygon's Homefront post-mortem; it goes into far greater detail and describes the incredible amount of pressure that a game of this size places on all parties involved.

Could these studios and publishes have survived if they aimed for smaller releases? Could we see more creativity at the top if these games didn't have $50M dollar budgets and executive babysitting? In the case of Kaos and Majesco, we'll never know. They were smitten by the AAA dream and were killed for it. That doesn't make AAA titles inherently bad, but I'd argue that this eternal drive for bigger budgets and larger releases is trampling too many studios (and recently, publishers) underfoot.

The Multi-Million Dollar Question

by Gamer_152

Perhaps it’s rather blunt, but I think the basic answer is that there is essentially no way to say “Here’s what will make a new AAA IP successful for publishers”. You can suggest methods of creating, marketing, publishing, or doing whatever else with games that may be potentially safer options than others, but even these often carry a far greater risk than I think they’re given credit for by most of the gaming audience.

On its surface, creating a new IP may not seem that difficult a feat, but a lot of the gaming community seem to look at the popularity of games or the number of units sold, and take these alone as reflections of how successful the game was for the publisher. We have to remember that this data must always be balanced against how much money is put into developing the game in the first place.

According to a 2010 report from Ibis Capital, the average Xbox 360 or PS3 game costs $15-30 million to develop, meaning that they would have to sell 500,000 to 1 million copies to break even. To put that in perspective the population of Luxembourg is only 524,900 people. If Polygon is to be believed, budgets for AAA games often spiral into the hundreds of millions (thanks to @Fattony12000 for bringing that article back to my attention, it’s well worth reading), and a game that cost $100 million to develop and sold at $60 a pop, would need to sell 1.6 million copies to break even. These costs aren’t going to go down either, they’re going to rise.

This is exactly why there have been so many people recently worried about the state of AAA gaming, and the practicality of even continuing to fund and develop what we know as AAA games. When a publisher like THQ can go bankrupt, when Ubisoft can lose $67 million in a year, or when EA can lose $276 million in a year, I think it’s clear that we’re very far from publishers finding a sure-fire formula for creating successful games full stop, let alone when you add the risk of trying to introduce something new to the market, and I remain sceptical of our ability to fully answer this question when it’s clear much of the industry have been falling over themselves because they’ve not had definite answers to this question.

Duder, It's Over

That's all for this time and I would like to thank you for reading this. Note that this is still an experiment in development so some changes might happen in the format in the upcoming weeks. If you are interested in reading more about this @JJWeatherman has a couple days old blog post of his own which loosely touches this topic as well.

Also I'd like to thank @Pezen for creating that awesome banner and everyone else in our small group who got interested in this idea in the first place.

For now we have crew big enough to accomplish things I've set to the horizon, but if you are really interested to joining in, PM me. Also if you have ideas for new topics of discussion just post them here or send a PM.