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What will the gamers do?

January 18th, 2008 (Visited 4129 times) Tags:

As I have spent the last couple of years yelling loudly that the game industry (despite record years) is actually in dire trouble in a business sense (not just creatively), I have repeatedly run into one comment from core gamers. You see, I keep saying that the rising landscape has a lot more lower-budget, asynchronous, low time investment, web-based games. And the response is usually,

“But the landscape you are describing doesn’t sound like games I would like.”

And that is absolutely right. I don’t know what happens to the core gamer in that scenario. Maybe sometimes, they are made very happy by a title like Rock Band, which frankly isn’t designed for them, but which epitomizes many of the characteristics I have been talking about (including the microtransaction business model — 2.5 million songs sold!).

iQ212 has a great post about how the 300m user mass market is making games for Your Hypothetical Mom.

Your Mom has a household annual income of $48,201 and lives in the state where she was born. She listens to CDs by Carrie Underwood, or Daughtry, or some other American Idol. She watches four hours of TV a day, and her favorite shows are Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, CSI, Grey’s Anatomy, Wheel of Fortune and Oprah. Mom drives a white or silver Japanese car, but almost half of her friends own big American trucks or SUVs. She saw most of the Spider-Man, Shrek, and Pirates of the Caribbean movies in the theater. Odds are she is Christian, owns a Bible, and prays almost once a day. She reads Nora Roberts, James Patterson, Mitch Albom, and anything Oprah suggests. Mommy talks on her Motorola cell phone about 25 minutes a day, but has never downloaded a game to it. (By the way, did you know her ringtone is “My Humps” by the Black Eyed Peas?) Her favorite restaurants are Outback, Red Lobster and Ruby Tuesday. Your mom shops at Walmart, Sears and Costco. She websurfs 30 minutes a day on her dial up connection (though she uses broadband at work and will upgrade to broadband at home next month) and visits Yahoo, Ebay and Pogo. She has no idea what a WoW Guild, XBLA, Free BSD, BlueRay, or Podcast is. Oh yeah, she wants you to call her more.

Yah, that’s not us, now is it? I’ve used some pretty provocative language in the past to describe this problem, including the catchy phrase “numbers talk, niches walk,” which got some folks mad. But is hard to argue with the numbers.

The thing about niches is that businesses try to monetize them more. Basic math: if you are making a title for a passionate minority who loves their hobby, you charge them more to cover the costs of operating in a smaller market. And, well, because you can.

This often manifests in things like ongoing premium service fees, or tiered service plans, or some form of premium upsell. Look at TV, for example. Sure, you have an antenna signal. No, wait, you have basic cable. But if you’re serious about TV watching, you upgrade to one of the nicer packages. If you’re really really serious about it, you want stuff like HD signals. Or pay-per-view. If you’re a phone nut, you start getting not just a better phone, but stuff like all-you-can-eat data plans, and buying things like ringtones, apps, etc. Or maybe you live in Beaumont, Texas, where Time Warner is testing this sort of plan for your high-speed Internet.

This is really common across all sorts of industries. The reason is that while everyone may want a given service or product, they often want it to different degrees, and they often have very different price thresholds for what they want. Me, I’m willing to buy the full-on Rock Band set and even some downloaded songs, or a DDR mat, or whatever, but I am not going to buy a $250 dance mat from Red Octane (though if they send me one, I’ll gladly try it out ).

This is a huge part of why I have been saying that microtransactions are the rising business model. Unlike the single flat fee, they allow users and businesses to arrive at the price point they feel comfortable with for the service they get.

But if the offerings from the businesses shift direction overall, then what? Like, there’s not much on Facebook for the core gamer. If stuff like Facebook becomes the dominant model, then what does the core gamer do? Under circumstances like that, you’d expect prices to rise for core games.

In some ways, that’s exactly what is happening, using microtransactions and premiums as the way to do it. Is the fancy metal tin on a collector’s edition actually worth an extra $30? Not to most people — it’s for the niche. The same goes for selling you dashboard themes and gamer pictures on XBLA. You’re paying real money for an icon or a desktop background — and nobody else can even see the latter.

The question of what sort of offerings need to be in the overall portfolio is a tricky one, when you look at it this way. For some, chasing after the mass market is very hard, because their expertise is simply not in that area. They have lots of experience at making core gamer titles, and are entirely geared towards high-budget titles.

For others, it’s sort of a bird in the hand, and the question is whether they double down on it or whether they service their traditional audience. Consider the dilemma Nintendo faces, where they are actually facing a fair amount of anger from core gamer loyalists wondering if they are being abandoned.

This has hit home in the MMO world recently as everyone watches the painful process that the Star Trek Online title has gone through. Consider Robert “Apache” Howarth’s reaction to the reports that the game was going to refocus to aim for a more casual audience, when he covered the news over at Voodoo Extreme.

Set phasers to suck.

Whoa. One could say quite easily that World of Warcraft is “EverQuest done more casual.” Suckage is not a mandatory consequence in the least. And one of the darling titles of the last year among core gamers was Puzzle Quest.

Core gamers are almost certainly going to have to adapt to a world in which a lot of developer attention is going towards a much broader array of titles than in the past. The bookstore is changing from having mostly genre stuff and pulps, to having nonfiction aisles, music aisles, coffeetable books, and so on.

The fat fantasy, sci-fi, and military novels are going to end up relegated to a section of the store, where once they owned all the shelf space. We’re already seeing burgeoning growth in areas like non-fiction (Like with Wolfquest, perhaps), self-help (hello Brain Age 2), personal essays (such as Passage), and so on. And the growth here will, to some extent, distract developers from making stuff aimed at the core gamers.

Who will also have to get used to being dinged repeatedly for their love of their hobby, buying ever nicer editions of stuff they already have (yes, I mean you, Absolute Sandman).

Overall, I think this is a good thing for the core gamer, not a bad thing. But it’s definitely an adjustment.

The flip side that is equally interesting, of course, is that the mainstream will get tugged in the direction of the niche. As the world has become more science-fictional, we have seen the memes of SF appear in everyday life. Stuff from James Bond and Lord of the Rings is now common currency. The boundary lines between niche and mass market are very thin these days, and will likely get thinner. So even the casual stuff is going to have a heavy tinge of the stuff that we the geeks love.

Given the nature of games, I’d expect to see a continuation of the trend to complexify the casual, because that’s what games do: grow more complex as people master the basics. The high-end casual market isn’t very casual anymore (some match-3 games are not only expensive to make, but downright esoteric in their rules).

In other words — gamers may not want to become like Your Mom. But Your Mom is gradually becoming more of a gamer.

What will the gamers do? Complain, then play on, probably.

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Wolfgang Wozniak said on January 18th, 2008 at 11:08 am:

Interesting,
I had actually just gotten to the part of your book where you talk about Niches and mass market.

I’ve decided that Niche games remain classic to some people (Blade Runner), while mass market media is quickly forgotten (Spiderman 3). Classic games are like classic movies, and are/were all Niche games.

Silona said on January 18th, 2008 at 11:43 am:

Hey raph - have you seen malcolm’s talk at TED about spaghetti sauce!

http://tedblog.typepad.com/tedblog/2006/09/malcolm_gladwel.html

danwilkins said on January 18th, 2008 at 11:45 am:

Hopefully there will still be a strong effort to make games that are considered for the more core demo in the future.

Understandably, right now there is the realization that designers can make games for a more casual audience, and reach more people in this way. Many of the core gamer games are much more involved than the used to be, and rake up much time and effort, and only seem to come out with 12 to 15 hours of game time; which a core gamer is going to blaze through and then want to move on to the next title.

Perhaps that is why there is an overall rise in the MMO market right now across the board. Casual and hardcore gamers alike are moving over there, and continue to play their normal games. Some focus mostly on the MMO of their choice and use other games as a break, some use the MMO as a consistent break from their other games.

Hopefully there is some more creativity involved in future development for the core model gamer as well; many are complaining about how unoriginal many games are, and with the growth of facebook games and a fall back to board game roots beginning to heat up again, perhaps we can appease casual and hardcore gamers alike, and still boom.

Yeah, we’re talking about a utopia, haha.

Matt said on January 18th, 2008 at 11:55 am:

So as the mainstream of games become CSI and Law and Order on CBS and NBC, the unfortunate core gamers get stuck with The Wire and Dexter on HBO and Showtime? Dark days for gamers, indeed.

Raph said on January 18th, 2008 at 11:57 am:

I haven’t… will check it out.

Raph said on January 18th, 2008 at 11:59 am:

It’s dark days if you factor in the fact that you have to pay for HBO or Showtime… higher costs. And the fact that The Wire and Dexter aren’t anywhere near as high-budget as the hit TV shows for the broader audience. There ARE tradeoffs.

Solok said on January 18th, 2008 at 12:10 pm:

I think the current core of gamers is so large that the “niche” in this case probably won’t have the downsides of say what automobile companies have. In the case of automobiles you pay money for the product and for the fact that the company is addressing the niche need because niche in this case also means very low volume.

Hopefully, in the case of games the niche for current gamers will be so large that the extra “niche tax” will be sufficiently low enough as to not make a difference.

I have a feeling that the as the technology and knowledge for creating games becomes pervasive that the barriers to entry will become low enough to offset the increasing cost of games through other options like open-source. That may be 5-10 years away, but I doubt that substantial cost increases to “core gamers” are going to happen before then anyway.

Len Bullard said on January 18th, 2008 at 1:05 pm:

You’re business analysis is perspicacious: translate, dead on. You may or may not have been there for the early web when a really bad browser (Mozilla cum Netscape) caught fire. The disgruntled among the pioneers who had developed systems that were far superior was very real.

And almost totally irrelevant to what would follow. The market recycles simpler designs as soon as the needs make it profitatble. Consider that a Tata Nano is almost precisely an Izetta from 55 years ago. My Dad had one. They were great.

http://www.worldcarfans.com/5050328.001

Tier one markets collapse into tier two and even tier three markets as they commodify. Lots of forces cause that and you can even model it using low-energy orbital transfer systems (vs a Hohman transfer). It is hard on the company economics because legacy businesses have set their costs and salaries in the tier one times. They become ripe for buy-outs. Talent whines but they adapt unless they want to take up another trade. Core gamers begin to be perceived like big ticket items: too expensive a business to be in.

On the other hand, as the market commodifies, the quality comes back after one or two cycles depending on the costs of resources. So cheap gets better and better gets cheaper. As much as it frosts the early adopters, it is a good thing overall.

Rick said on January 18th, 2008 at 1:22 pm:

Raph, Thanks for the link and iQ212 mention. Nice to know that someone reads my rants! Do you think they will port Panzergruppe Tactics 4: Eastern Front to the Wii?

Matt Mihaly said on January 18th, 2008 at 1:34 pm:

I’m with you about 99% of the way here Raph, but this bothers me:

How is it a trade-off that the Wire’s budget is lower than CSI (for instance) from the audience point of view? CSI could pay their stars $50 mil/episode and cater the shoots with caviar and peacock tongue, but that doesn’t give us as viewers anything extra. It still sucks.

Perhaps in theory the Wire could be better with a larger budget, but I don’t think that claim is any more or less likely to be true than saying it’d be better if the producers were forced to get even more creative by a smaller budget.

–matt

Morgan Ramsay said on January 18th, 2008 at 1:38 pm:

Raph wrote:

The bookstore is changing from having mostly genre stuff and pulps, to having nonfiction aisles, music aisles, coffeetable books, and so on.

With regard to music aisles at bookstores, that offering could be attributed to the decreasing space for music at major retailers. Digital distribution, as well as microtransactions, in the music industry is greatly affecting music sales at retail. The games industry will probably be more affected at retail in the future when games can be more easily digitally distributed.

Core gamers are almost certainly going to have to adapt … But it’s definitely an adjustment.

While Kristen undoubtedly has a better grasp on economics than I do, I don’t think the “core gamer” market will have to adapt or adjust. They represent a demand and there will be, and are, businesses out there to meet that demand.

I don’t see the “new landscape” in terms of doom-and-gloom for the “core gamer” market. What’s happening is really typical to any sort of product life cycle: a niche becomes a mass market and that mass market eventually becomes a niche again. There are just more products and services in the marketplace and a lot more businesses ready to take the places that were once occupied by the majors. Life goes on, basically.

JuJutsu said on January 18th, 2008 at 1:57 pm:

Hmmm. The landscape you’re describing still doesn’t like games I would like. Shrug. If there are no online games I want to play I guess I won’t play online games. I managed to have fun before mmorpgs came along, I’ll still find ways to have fun if they go by the wayside.

You can lead a core gamer to the mass market but you can’t make him[her] play

Raph said on January 18th, 2008 at 2:13 pm:

Kind of a combo response to both Matt and Morgan:

It matters because the businesses (content developers) are nt operating in a vacuum. They have to assess which markets to target, and how much to spend. It matters for The Wire that they may have less budget to work with, because they do have to hit a connoisseur market — that is the market they are targeting. It also matters that if they try to hit a bar, and cannot justify it with sufficient advertiser dollars, then they may not be as profitable as if they were doing something else — there’s an opportunity cost issue there.

Even if there is a core market demand, it doesn’t mean that the economics of it for a given content developer will make sense, versus oher possible market opportunities.

TheAmazin said on January 18th, 2008 at 2:18 pm:

I’d just like to say that I don’t think the Wire could possibly be any better than it already is.

Morgan Ramsay said on January 18th, 2008 at 3:32 pm:

It matters because the businesses (content developers) are not operating in a vacuum.

…but that’s what I’m saying. I’m also saying that when you talk about how a certain category of consumer will either have to adapt to new products or exit the market completely, you’re sort of approaching the issue from a “businesses are operating in a vacuum” perspective.

Although companies are creating new markets and focusing on those markets, that doesn’t mean there will no longer be a place for that particular category of consumer. There will be more more entrepreneurs, more new products and services, and simply more effort to create supply to meet existing demand. For example, consumers still buy The Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and The Mamas & The Papas.

I don’t think everyone will be centering their attention on only the next generation of entertainment because the fact of the matter is that businesspeople tend to go where there’s green to be had. If the “core gamer” doesn’t want to “get with the program” than clearly there will be opportunists who step up to service their needs.

Not all businesses seek to be innovative. There are lucrative, sensible opportunities in resale, refurbished goods, and middleman services. You don’t have to “challenge conventions” to be successful. That’s just one way… and it’s a lot more fun. ;p

Raph said on January 18th, 2008 at 3:50 pm:

Right…so we’re in agreement there. All I am saying is that the cost of servicing the core gamer is pretty high, so that process you describe may result in less choices for core gamers.

Morgan Ramsay said on January 18th, 2008 at 4:22 pm:

… so that process you describe may result in less choices for core gamers.

Yeah, that’s probably true, but I think what some people forget is that less quantity doesn’t always mean less quality. There might be less choices, at least less preferred choices, for that category of consumer; however, who’s to say that big value can’t come in a small package?

Bart Stewart said on January 18th, 2008 at 5:03 pm:

I think we can see the value of this from the business side. For the producer, it’s “just-in-time” servicing, which is more efficient. For the consumer, pay-as-you-go seems more in tune with an unfettered capitalist vibe; you can have whatever you want right now if you can pay for it. So the business case for mictrotransactions seems strong.

My problem is the gameplay side: microtransactions are intrusive. They break the magic circle.

Having a monthly subscription fee deducted nearly invisibly on my credit card leaves me free to immerse myself completely in a gameworld (or at least as completely as the game’s obsession with rules-based play allows). The grimy commercial details are out of sight, and so out of mind.

Not so with microtransactions; they interrupt the kind of exercise of imagination I enjoy by forcing me repeatedly to make decisions about real-world money. That pops me right out of the play experience. So why should I pay anything at all to play such games, since they’re guaranteed to shred the immersiveness I prize as entertainment?

Maybe there’s a gameplay-driven way to contextualize spending little bits of real money inside a game world that it’ll feel like a fun way to spend play money, thus not breaking immersiveness too much. (But imagine the field day the anti-game people would have with that… “Bob here lost $20,000 in one month in World of Barcraft without even realizing it!”)

More likely, I’m simply not representative enough of the big field of gamers (including Mom tomorrow) to justify setting aside the business advantages of microtransactions to preserve gameplay advantages. Maybe the edge of the magic circle is somehow sharper to me than to most other people. Or maybe there are gameplay advantages to microtransactions to which my own interests are blinding me. If so, then my concerns about gameplay probably aren’t strong enough to warrant second thoughts about moving to microtransactions.

Just a thought.

Funny; this is almost exactly what Eric Heimburg, former systems designer for Star Trek Online, said in his “Advice for Cryptic’s Star Trek Team” blog entry.

It hasn’t gone over well with the fans.

I wish there were a single site that gamers could go to that showed them — with great clarity — just how hard it is to create a conventional MMORPG of any depth….

–Bart

Morgan Ramsay said on January 18th, 2008 at 8:37 pm:

Bart Stewart wrote:

The actual problem, Bart, is that you (along with many others) have conceived of a single notion of microtransactions that imagining anything involving microtransactions beyond that notion is, well, unimaginable.

Plus, I love the pro-immersion argument because that argument is, quite frankly, ridiculous. Ever been to a casino? Ever watched all those zombies at the slots? They’re plenty immersed in the games they’re playing, regardless of what sitting at one stool, pulling a lever, for hours upon hours does to their health. At best, the pro-immersion argument is idealistic, even noble. People love to write about and poetically criticize the “unfettered capitalist vibe.” In practice though, the argument is irrelevant because nobody blinks an eye—figuratively and literally speaking. But again, that’s just one version of microtransactions.

I’ll give you another version: subscriptions. Yes, subscriptions are a form of microtransaction. You pay a fixed fee every month (or whatever terms you agreed upon) for access to a service. The only difference between subscriptions and the popular notion of microtransactions is that subscriptions are automated. Unfortunately, subscriptions are on their way out. Most people don’t want everything that a service offers. Most people don’t want to develop their character to Level 80, spending thousands of hours in a game world, just so they can play the almighty End Game with their friends or guildmates or whoever. Most just want bits and bytes here and there for the brief time they’ve allotted themselves to playing games in their busy lives.

That’s where microtransactions as personalization comes into play. If I wanted to resolve the pro-immersion argument, I’d probably look to balancing the overwhelming demand for transparency and the desire for privacy, or what might be called freedom from so-called “real-world elements.”

Microtransactions don’t have to take place in-game; that would just make microtransactions more convenient. Microtransactions don’t have to be upfront and in-your-face; they can be just as invisible as a recurring subscription fee. Unlike a single, fixed and recurring subscription fee, microtransactions empower consumers with the freedom to personalize their entertainment experiences, enabling consumers to get what they want whenever they want. I could probably go on to write an article on microtransaction myths, and probably will as part of a new venture I’m working on, but I think you get my point.

If not, my point is simple: use your imagination. If you were responsible for making microtransactions “work” in accordance with your criteria for acceptable implementation, and you could not simply say “no microtransactions,” what would you do? In this day and age where everyone is held up high as a content creator, I should be seeing more and more people trying to solve problems instead of merely excusing themselves from the effort with simple “just don’t do it” and “it’s not my job” quips.

PurpleCar said on January 18th, 2008 at 9:57 pm:

I am the Mom. I have a lot to say about this. In fact, I could go on for hours about how I feel that the gaming industry is ignoring me and my family. For one thing, my husband and I, both in our mid 30’s, have a hell of a time trying to find an E or Teen rated multiplayer quest game to play with our 7 year old girl (we’ve played every playstation 2 game there is that remotely fits that description). For another thing, I have no real games of interest for me. Sims was too un-end-user friendly, and generally stupid/boring. The rest have too much fighting, which is again, boring.

Don’t give me that crap that there ‘isn’t a market’ for me and my family. I’m not the only mom out here who grew up in the arcades and see nothing wrong with a little family game play. And don’t tell me to buy the Wii - we don’t want tennis. We want more shrek, teen titans, spongebob, etc. 4 player adventure games where we work as a team against bad guys and not against each other. And throw in a few games for just me, ya head-in-the-sand-prejudiced-blind-stupid-arrogant fucks.

(sorry, that last bit wasn’t very ‘mom’ of me. I’m seriously pissed off, though)

Raph said on January 18th, 2008 at 11:35 pm:

I just read Moroagh’s reply post to this… where there’s the mistaken assumption that *I* am worried about the moms taking over. As I said in the opening to the article, I’m commenting on something I get a lot from core gamers. Me personally, I’m not particularly worried.

Bart Stewart said on January 19th, 2008 at 12:50 am:

Morgan, I think you may be reacting a little too strongly to how I actually feel on this subject. I expressed a concern that I haven’t seen discussed much (the gameplay impact of a microtransaction-based revenue model); I tried to explain the reasons for my concern; I even acknowledged that my understanding could be limited. I used some relatively strong adjectives but I didn’t froth or rave to the point of needing a smackdown. Even so, I take your objections seriously. I won’t be making any “it’s not my job” quips.

(Sorry for the wall of text, though. Taking your objections seriously means addressing them.)

First (and least), I’m actually a happy and committed capitalist. I’ll take Hayek and Mises over Marx and Keynes any day. And you probably don’t want to know who I’ll be voting for in November. But that doesn’t render me incapable of seeing the pathologies that can emerge from barely-restrained free-market capitalism in a semi-anonymous setting… for which I think a good argument could be made that this is precisely what we have in most MMORPGs. Pay-as-you-go may indeed be a better fit for that kind of fast economy. In fact, I don’t really disagree with you that it probably is a very good fit for the casual gamer. The question I don’t hear asked much is whether the typical very free-market game economy needs to become even more so at the expense of other game effects I believe are also valuable, namely, immersiveness. So I asked. Maybe the question isn’t worth asking. But I’d hate to just assume that.

More importantly, I hope you won’t mind too much if, after careful consideration, I disagree with your assertion that the common subscription model is a special case of microtransactions. Firstly, there’s nothing “micro-” about a monthly bill. Secondly, monthly subscriptions that get debited almost invisibly to the gamer (and definitely invisibly to the character) are functionally different from paying a small fee of real-world money for numerous individual items from inside a gameworld (especially an RPG gameworld). To equate these two kinds of payment activities is to balloon the concept of “microtransactions” so far that it no longer means what even the people who like it think it means.

Next, do “most people” (most Americans? Westerners?) really reject flat-rate revenue collection models in favor of a more frequent per-usage collection system? I’m old enough to remember when BBS systems charged by the hour of usage… and I remember that this per-usage model got dropped like a glowing ingot of death by service users as soon as online service providers started offering flat-rate agreements. Yes, we could argue that these aren’t perfectly analogous situations (perhaps because of pricing), and of course they’re not perfectly equivalent. But they’re close enough to suggest to me that per-usage revenue collection is unlikely to be anywhere near as popular among service users as you appear to believe will happen.

Finally, as I already admitted, it’s possible that I really am suffering from a lack of imagination on this subject. I honestly don’t see any truly good way to encourage microtransactions that don’t run afoul of my current view that they can’t help but intrude into the fiction of the gameworld. Still, I want to give you the benefit of the doubt that there are obvious solutions to this problem (if it really is a problem, as seems to me to be the case).

So to answer your “how would you do it if you had to” challenge, the best I can come up with is segregating microtransactions to the vicinity of the character login screen. That’s low on convenience. It badly lowers the likelihood of players actually making a micropurchase as an “I need it now!” impulse buy. (Presumably I’d have to try to make the available items really, really desirable somehow.) So I wouldn’t call it a great solution. But at least this approach has the virtue of moving decision-making about real-world stuff out of the gameworld proper which, if not one of your goals, is one of mine.

I won’t go the childish route of now demanding that you in turn show me how you’d implement a subscription system that was satisfactory to you. Instead, I sincerely hope you will write an article on what you believe are myths about microtransactions. I’d like to read it. Dismissing as merely “ridiculous” concerns about in-game immersiveness versus the business value of the microtransaction model is not persuasive, but I’m open to fact- and logic-based arguments, and I’m capable of admitting error and (like Keynes) changing my mind given good reasons for doing so.

In particular, I’d enjoy seeing some ideas for how microtransactions — real microtransactions as commonly understood, not monthly subscriptions — could be implemented that intrude only minimally on a gameworld’s fiction. If such solutions really are obvious, I have no problem bonking myself on the head and publicly declaring, “Now why didn’t I think of that?”

But I don’t think I should be expected to go there based just on someone’s exasperated say-so. (I can appreciate an “I’ve already said this a million times and don’t feel like saying it all again,” though. God knows I’ve said that one myself more than once….)

Rik said on January 19th, 2008 at 2:54 am:

We’re not going to be taken seriously until there are games for everyone.

Moroagh said on January 19th, 2008 at 4:12 am:

Raph, thanks for your clarification. I wrote a postscript to my post to try clarify the scope of what I wanted to get at and a brief reaction to the main drive of your blog entry above. I think we both in some sense misunderstand because my article really wasn’t meant as a response to this one, certainly not exclusively.

Your article along with other sources does however give nice context to what I am trying to get at. Certainly I think that the stuff that we tend to pay attention to or consider important are rather different, but that’s fine.

Steven "PlayNoEvil" Davis said on January 19th, 2008 at 9:02 am:

This does not need to be true. The bulk of the items sold in Asian “free-to-play” MMOs are purely decorative - they have no game function at all. They increase immersion by increasing personalization.

Game balance is a key issue in this games. Virtual items have to be designed so that they do not unduly unbalance the game. I actually think this can be more immersive than level-based games. The relative power of a Level 70 character to a Level 1 character is highly “unrealistic” (is a General that much more powerful than a Private?), segregating (new players literally can’t play with more “senior” players, even if they are friends), and sloppy (careful game design and balance is dodged by simply dividing the game world into numerous level-based sub-worlds).

Andy Havens said on January 19th, 2008 at 9:28 am:

I think what we’re seeing is that the game industry itself has moved, over the past 20 years, from itself being a niche, into being a mainstream industry. When that happens, you get all kinds of opportunities for different models.

When I was in college (mid 80’s), we “core gamers” would wait and wait and wait for one or two new titles a month to come out for the PC, and play them no matter how bad they were. We’d play ‘em to death. And play ‘em again. Because we loved “to game.” We were the computer geeks and D&D nerds etc.

Who are the “core gamers” now? Well, it’s still me and my 30-45 year old compadres. But it also now includes college kids who grew up with the PS2 and a whole world of PC games. Sid Meier’s original Civilization came out in 1991, eh? Kids born that year are now in college.

So I find talk of “core gamers” vs. “moms” a bit… odd. My wife is a “mom” (though her reading and TV habits are vastly different than the “core mom” mentioned above). She plays online “casual” games, but does so for more hours than I play hardcore RTS and RPG games. What makes her games “casual” whereas mine are “hard core?” Is it that they’re lower budget? Have fewer rules? Can be played in shorter increments?

It’s pretty simple to me. As the equipment to play games has become more ubiquitous (PCs) and inexpensive (PCs and consoles), more people have taken the opportunity to play them, because the barriers to entry are lower. As more people began to play games, it became clear that there were more markets than just geek games (RTS, RPG, simulation) and sports games.

We now have the case where my three favorite games recently for myself are “Super Mario Galaxy” for the Wii, “The Witcher,” for the PC and “Desktop Tower Defense.” I play Mario w/ my son for 1/2 to 2 hours at a time. I play Witcher on my own for a couple hours now and then. I play DTD when I need a fix.

Games aren’t any one thing anymore, or even any ten things. They are as “out there” as books and game titles will reflect a growing base of players who are exposed to a variety of games on various platforms. I think it’s a GREAT thing for old-school, hard-core gamers like me, because a bigger pie will generally mean more people in the industry with more resources, and that will lead to better games.

My son plays Mario and Chuzzles. Is he a “core” gamer or a “casual” gamer? He’s just a gamer.

At PurpleCar… “…For another thing, I have no real games of interest for me.” What kind of game are *you* looking for?

Gene Endrody said on January 19th, 2008 at 12:06 pm:

Purple car said:

And throw in a few games for just me, ya head-in-the-sand-prejudiced-blind-stupid-arrogant….

I’m not sure this deserves a response, however there are plenty of designers here who, with Raph, are trying their best to look at this industry from different angles. We don’t deserve that, particularly not here in a place where conventional wisdom is challenged and alternative perspectives are accepted. If you are in a demographic who’s gaming needs are currently unfulfilled, it sounds like a business opportunity. So get on with it then and stop whining. Perhaps you will succeed in having success in a market that we, apparently, don’t understand or don’t respect.

Morgan Ramsay said on January 19th, 2008 at 12:29 pm:

I think you may be reacting a little too strongly to how I actually feel on this subject.

I’m more or less reacting to general resentment of a narrow idea of microtransactions, and not necessarily to you.

I disagree with your assertion that the common subscription model is a special case of microtransactions.

A subscription is the exchange of commitment for access to a service. (Compare conscription.) The typical subscription term is 12 months. A subscription fee is often charged monthly, for the term to which you agreed to commit, with billing automated for convenience. Automation is not an integral characteristic of subscription. The fee could be charged with your knowledge and consent. In fact, most governments charge transparent subscription fees. We just call their fees “taxes.”

A microtransaction is also the exchange of commitment for access to a service. Microtransactions usually occur instantly, like subscription fees, except more often with your knowledge and consent. Over time, microtransactions add up, as pieces of a whole, to comprise a larger total non-economic exchange of commitment for access to a service. If payment of that total non-economic exchange was made upfront, then what would be received would not be a service; instead, what would be received would be either a good or a result.

Microtransactions are often (mis-)characterized as being too small of exchanges to be “affordably processed by credit card or other electronic transaction processing mechanisms.” This characterization relies on an arbitrary optimal minimum set by the operators of credit card and electronic transaction processing mechanisms. I say arbitrary because this minimum could change in time with either technological innovation or policy; thus, in my opinion, this attribution is not integral to microtransactions.

What does not change is that microtransactions are parts of a whole, where the whole is the goal of the commercial activity. Microtransactions exist, regardless of form, to provide consumers a means to opt out of a long-term commitment (e.g., a subscription) or to benefit from a service without a long-term commitment (e.g., a subscription.)

… a small fee … for numerous individual items from inside a gameworld (especially an RPG gameworld).

As an addendum, virtual items are not property; they are data that serve as keycards (access) that open doors within the game world (service). These doors represent opportunities for entertainment, social interaction, etc. When your character acquires a virtual item, your account gains access or expanded access to the service, not property.

Also, as I wrote before, microtransactions are not required to be intrusive. They are “intrusive” because the law requires transparency; however, if fixed fees were agreed upon prior to engaging the service, then the billing process could take place just as invisibly as automated subscription fees. (Note: I’m not a lawyer, so for the most part, I’m assuming that this is and would be the case.)

Zomboe said on January 19th, 2008 at 1:32 pm:

So would you say this “niche tax” is the reason that this generation’s consoles (including the Wii, but especially the PS3) cost more than last generation’s? And that many games now cost $60 instead of $50? I suppose you could say that even though the niche is growing, the cost of pleasing the niche is rising even faster. Would it be safe to say that the next generation’s core gamer consoles and games will cost even more?

About microtransactions, my only real concern is that they will be added on top of the typical costs and not actually save the player any money. Isn’t this how it’s typically done on XBox Live, where you will have microtransactions on top of the game’s $60 price? I even remember reading about some game that would charge you a microtransaction fee to unlock cheat codes! I am not happy paying for something that used to be free. It’s the same thing with advertising in games (and even in movie theaters). In my experience, it never actually lowers the price for the consumer.

Moroagh said on January 19th, 2008 at 1:32 pm:

I’m not sure this deserves a response

Yes it does. But there is an ever more important part of what she writes that deserves a response! Rather than telling her to “stop whining” you could actually ask what she’d like! Something that Andy has managed. Andy and Purple very much reflect a rather real problem, namely that some game devs, even if they consider themselves as those looking at things from a different angle, they actually don’t. You never actually look at things from the gamer’s angle. For that you’d need to be curious about their needs.

Every time I hear “stop whining” from a game dev I want to get a penny. I’d be having a great income and on top of having an actually gross sum of how many game devs failed at the most basic thing: Listening.

Rather than this post about how supposed “core gamer crowd” will complain, why isn’t there a discussion that many gamers have been complaining for a very long time that designers design games away from their gaming needs? And why isn’t there a discussion that all too often the only response they get is a variation of “stop whining” or “you deserved to fail” or “you are just lazy” or “this never was meant for you” and changes only coming reluctantly and often initiated by others.

Not asking the question or caring about gamers’ needs but telling to STFU may well justify a nice hyphen chain like “head-in-the-sand-prejudiced-blind-stupid-arrogant f*cks”. I think she got that not all that wrong at all. At least I can completely sympathize with the underlying frustration.

Also she has been poorly stereotyped to begin with, which justifies some solid anger in my book.

Basically your response has exactly justified her point.

The day game devs start asking a lot of questions rather than making grand statements about how things supposedly are or will or should be and how massively open-minded they are, will be a rather very happy day for gamers because suddenly game devs want to learn from and understand their gamers rather than suppose things (and stop being prejudiced-multi-hyphenated f*cks thanks to the change).

And it’s so easy too: Just ask loads of questions.

Like the simple question: Purple, what kind of games would tickle your fancy?

Oddly enough only another gamer on here has managed to ask that basic but all-important question. So only the gamer but not the devs managed to even care, understands and respects Purple’s needs.

Another intriguing question would be: Why do my opinions make people angry? And be sincere and not opinionated about discovering an answer…

But the answer may be as simple as “I didn’t understand, I didn’t manage to ask the right questions, and I didn’t manage to care”. The insight is simple: “I care and I can ask some good questions!” or you can stay multi-hyphenated.

Can someone post the link to Malcolm Gladwell’s TED talk again? Folks still fail to listen to it or just fail at listening, period. Purple just said she doesn’t want traditional Italian style sauce even though you said she should be or feel otherwise.

I second Andy’s question and would be really curious what Purple enjoys in a game.

Morgan Ramsay said on January 19th, 2008 at 3:01 pm:

Zomboe wrote:

About microtransactions, my only real concern is that they will be added on top of the typical costs and not actually save the player any money. … In my experience, it never actually lowers the price for the consumer.

I don’t know how the idea that businesses should help consumers save money came about, but helping consumers save money is not the goal of any for-profit venture. Decreasing prices by either decreasing costs or value only becomes important when affordability is a point of interest to the market for which the venture is concerned. The ultimate goal of a for-profit venture is to help consumers spend more money, particularly on that venture’s offerings, over and over.

With microtransactions, the idea is to empower consumers with customization, enabling them to derive more value from their purchase decisions, and thereby increase their overall satisfaction, which can lead to increased brand preference and loyalty. Consumers of luxury goods and services are not motivated by cost savings. When cost savings becomes an issue for those consumers, the actual value derived from their purchase decisions needs to be evaluated and corrected.

Raph said on January 19th, 2008 at 3:01 pm:

The idea that designers don’t listen is as pernicious and flawed as designers not listening. This is a conversation, but there are people shouting past each other insisting that the other doesn’t listen, and I’ve never seen a conversation go well that way.

To start with, there is the obvious. Plenty of designers are asking questions, all over the place, all the time. We hang out on forums. We have comment threads on the blog. We post asking “what sort of game are you looking for?” Even a casual search would turn that up.

Beyond that, there’s the work itself. Every game a designer puts out there IS a question. “Do you like this?” “How about this?” “Or this?” Do you think designers do not learn from, or listen to the answers? The “grand pronouncements” you decry are our best summary of the answers we have gotten.

The answers are often not very useful, by the way. We speak different languages. Purple Car probably cannot tell us the precise amount of garlic or mushroom or what breed of tomato she wants in the spaghetti sauce. She knows she wants something sweeter, with more bite, and a smoky undertone. Well, a smoky undertone until she tastes one with a high overnote of oregano and decides she likes that instead.

Grant games the same complexity as spaghetti sauce — often people cannot tell you why they like what they like, and why they dislike what they like, no matter how much we ask.

None of that detracts one whit from Purple’s anger. She is poorly stereotyped? That was data from the census - an average, not a stereotype. Nobody is average, everyone is right to complain that stuff is aimed at the average and not at them. It does not render averages less useful, but her anger is still justified.

As an aside — sometimes a chef just wants to invent a new kind of spaghetti sauce, and he does not care what people want. Yelling at him over that may be counterproductive, at least until you get to try the sauce. Sometimes someone wants to talk to one group (say, core gamers that they have seen upset), and another group overhears and says “why aren’t you talking to me instead?” In conversations, this is usually considered rude. This is why people get angry at your posts.

Rik said on January 19th, 2008 at 5:39 pm:

I don’t know how the idea that businesses should help consumers save money came about …

Isn’t that the main argument in favor of Laissez-Faire Capitalism? That it leads to innovation and low prices due to competion?

I’d point to Kart rider or Neopets as an example of how micropayments can be a benefit for the end user. In the US, micropayments do seem to function normally as an “added revenue stream” instead. So you do see people paying full price for the game and then pay again for extras.

Darniaq said on January 19th, 2008 at 6:06 pm:

Even the core gamers who pay a monthly fee already pay more on occasion… willingly (RMT mostly, though other services to support their social circle as well like web hosting for various tools).

This discussion is interesting mostly in that it implies that categorization matters as much today as it did previously, and that one category (Moms/Kids, or “casual”) will replace another (18-34 guys, or “core/enthusiast”).

What is being missed is the fact that there’s plenty of room for both, not because of the huge amount of money out there, but because they’re entirely different markets fed by entirely different companies with entirely different needs.

Everything is up for grabs. Traditional barriers are shifting. People are already making money talking to different markets. A lot of what is ignored by enthusiast-focused developers and gamers is due almost entirely to the revenue involved and how it is collected (pay = revenue). Less actual money is made for other types of models (microtrans, embedded advertising, etc), but they hit a lot more actual eyeballs (people) so are at least compelling for very different reasons.

Then there’s the cultural revolution that’s been underway for some time, at least in the U.S, the shedding of Industrial Revolution one-size-fits-all in favor of more personalization/customization. It’s not just about your songs ofr your iPod, but your portable device of choice at all, and from there the entire business that delivered it to you and makes money from it. The nichification of America is well underway.

Games are just part of it.

People like to talk about “anytime, anywhere” gaming as some new thing. Not really.

Moroagh said on January 19th, 2008 at 6:22 pm:

Raph said:

Purple Cow probably cannot tell us

PurpleCar said:

For one thing, my husband and I, both in our mid 30’s, have a hell of a time trying to find an E or Teen rated multiplayer quest game to play with our 7 year old girl [..] We want more shrek, teen titans, spongebob, etc. 4 player adventure games where we work as a team against bad guys and not against each other.

I think she’s perfectly capable if telling you, because she did! I don’t think it’s all that important to worry about nuance, because the needs are rather specific.

People are not so bad at identifying their needs, specifically if they are chronically underserved.

To go back to your original post I actually think that its main trust and outlook is extremely casual-friendly and I really enjoy and support that.

I also think that some attitudes around some “core” gamers should change, but it’ll remain to be seen how that develops.

I think the main source of possible misunderstanding is the specific ordering of quoting the “average” mom and then following it by “That’s not us now is it?” and after that the prose wanders. It’s really easy to read this as you aligning yourself with “core” players and differentiating the core and yourself from that “average” picture of the Mom.

It certainly got me and I can only second guess that it got Purple as well.

But reading the whole post there certainly is a strong sense that your sympathies are with rising casual gaming and asking core gamers to adjust.

I do find Purple’s post particularly interesting in the light of your bookshelf analogy. Basically Purple says in a sense: “I go in the book store now and there is hardly any selection for me. What are you on about worrying about the folks who currently have most of the store catering to their needs. Aren’t you a book writer, why don’t you address the shortage?”

This may seem like an unwarrented “but what about me” post. But another way of looking at it is this: The real concern is how the bookstore will specifically be stocked, how big the bookstore will be and what kinds of audiences it will serve.

Purple is expressing the need to rethink the bookstore offerings, and the struggle to get these books in against a dominant “core” culture and the feeling that many game devs share and are part of that dominant culture (and are actually not interested in her gaming needs).

I think that is very legit also as a topic and I see the anger more as the frustration about the current book store stocking and the lack of visible signs that it’ll improve (I haven’t heard many cooperative-heavy MMORPG announcements recently, WAR, Conan, etc all emphasize gore and/or PVP, so I can sympathize with Purple actually pointing to the fact that the book store isn’t actually changing in specific ways). If Startrek Online actually turns out to be 7-year old friendly (unlikely) it might be an example of an appropriate game. I very rarely see game dev discussion that start with “what would a family with veteran gamer parents and pre-teen children enjoy as a computer game to play together” discussed heavily.

Some of the solutions are rather dull, like yet another disney movie themed jump&run.

I do see heavy discussion how to keep the core happy in a changing gaming landscape and I do see heavy discussion about the “casual games”. Even the discussion about “casual games” is funny because it has certain assumptions. For example take the Simpsons and make a full fledged MMO ala WoW out of it, with reduced gore (E or worst Teen rating), and accessible gameplay so that a 6-year old can meaningfully participate in a PVE type collaborative gameplay. This is not what we usually mean by “casual games” which are typically fairly low budget, small team developments (exceptions to the stereotype granted). Some games are geared towards the casual (Sims comes to mind) but is fairly high budget, but does completely diverge from a typical collaborative gaming idea that would be MMO PVE. Purple actually very legitimately points at the fact that there are many niches that are underserved and poorly understood and hers in particular. I can’t help but agree that running into a game store I will find many many war simulation games but few interesting collaborative games. Even sports games often only allow people to play on opposing teams. If a family looks for a game to play together you are kind of challenged running into a gaming store, even if you browse for “casual games”. Or they may be forced to play Wii, but not specifically enjoy the Wii paradigm, like Purple evidently doesn’t.

And while that may not be the main topic of your initial post, it is, I think very interesting and very worthwhile. And the fact that it’s underserved and poorly understood, warrants some frustration.

It’s also very worthwhile because the main wave of current casual gaming isn’t actually appearing to adressing Purple’s (or I mentioned Wolfhead’s on my blog) concerns and these are very good ones. Yet some of it is very predictable, because basically we are talking about the ever growing demographics of former core players coming of age and hence forming new outlooks as they enter new stages in their lives.

This demographics, rather than resisting the change that you call and predict for current “core” players, have already embrace it and completed it (thanks to changed RL circumstances) but find limited support in the gaming landscape for the change they have already made. The crowd to look forward to addressing that changed need are the game devs of course.

Michelle D'israeli said on January 19th, 2008 at 7:10 pm:

Some good debate happening around this issue! It’s been a while since I’ve chimed in here, but I thought I’d return to make a few points:

Your Mom is actually one of my main motivators for being interested in game design. One of my goals is to work towards a game that My Mum will be interested in playing. As a mid-20’s designer, I find my mid-50’s parents to be a wonderful playtesting resource. They have far fewer preconceptions about games, and tend to be less forgiving of a waste of time. If your parents are intelligent and up for new experiences, no matter what their age, try out a few games on them, even just getting them to watch and comment.

Regarding Bart Stewart’s point of micro-transactions being intrusive and breaking the magic circle, others have covered this better than I could, however I would like to present my personal observations. My partner plays Albatross 18, a micro-transaction funded game. She typically purchases ‘astros’ in bulk, and spends them as she needs. The rule here is that it is all highly implementation dependant. If you make completing visible micro-transactions a requirement of continuing to enjoy the game, you are placing barriers in front of the gamer, which causes distress. Whereas, if you were to make visible micro-transactions able to extend and enhance your existing enjoyment rights, players will tend to actively pay for them. Players select the easiest path to enjoyment (returns on investment in terms of time), as a rule. It seems to me that a lot of the theory discussion about micro-transactions happen without considering how to design in the user experience, something I will return to later.

Micro-transaction implementations vary so much that lumping them into a single category is not always fair. Consider the cases of direct payment for an item (visible micro-transaction), Payment via a ‘currency’ (less visible) and payment that simply automatically happens through your credit card account (invisible). The last design is perhaps unethical, but fits well with modern culture, it feels. If a ‘currency’ is involved, the manner by which this is paid for and its cost change the nature of the system further. If the currency happened to be a right to farm golds, and you set up an automatic regular purchase of this currency, you effectively have a subscription model.

Now, turning to Raph’s post on the changing future of the industry, it is useful to note that typically break down the current games market into five categories (ignoring MMOs, for they complicate matters and are really on a separate axis):

Blockbuster games - extremely high budget productions, often marketed for their lavish production values. Comparable to blockbuster films, we have now entered the 70’s in game design terms (Jaws, regarded as the first blockbuster by many, was released in 1975).
Franchise games - Although these can often have blockbuster value, franchise games typically have guaranteed success through their name alone. Yearly sports games are often within this category, as are those games that use film titles. SimCity Societies is a good example of the use of a game franchise being used for this effect.
Arthouse games - Katamari, Okami, The Sims, and some strategy games are what I would call Arthouse games. Although production values may be high, it is the gameplay that drives development, more than attempting to showcase other production values. They often explore novel game designs and topologies, and their success is not always predictable. These are generally rare, much like their cinematic counterparts. However, film publishers know to directly fund these, for it gives them a good name, and hence are better able to attract talent.
Serious games - The documentaries of the gaming world, this also includes simulations and other games that drive sales based on the accuracy of their systems (an appropriate lumping, since you can get books on converting FSX skills into a real pilot’s licence). My personal speciality over the last year.
Casual games - A poor category for the lumping together of shorter, less detailed games that focus on providing a ‘hit’ of fun. Although some studios are investing a lot of money into casual games now, they are still seen as having very low production values, as appealing to a different type of player to other games, being very short in length, and very easy to drop and pick up again. There is no film analogy for these!
With the above, we have effectively divided up the games market to neatly fit into the categories used by the motion picture industry. Films exist that fall a little outside of these groupings, but once you correct for their typical audience, they can then be categorised by this scheme within the group of similar films.

Now, hopefully, you will have noticed two problems with the above. Firstly, that casual games really don’t relate to films at all. And secondly, that films are only one form of alternative entertainment. We seem to be producing all games to be marketed and sold as if they were films, one-off hits available only from special outlets. In many respects, games are being viewed as a genre, or an entirely separate and inseparable technology, not simply a medium.

We have become locked into this view of being a genre, of meaning seven hours of gameplay priced at £40. Yet casual games are trying to show us that there is more than just that to gaming. In terms of comparable media, they are really more like magazines than films.

In terms of the film analogy, most games still aspire for blockbuster production costs. Sets are built as needed, torn down again after filming has finished. Custom props are produced rather than sourced. Scripts may be worked on for years.

I’ve been playing through season 1 of TellTale Games’ Sam & Max episodic series, and I am full of praise for the design process I have seen so far. Objects, locations, characters and sound samples are heavily reused (although annoyingly redistributed each time).

Movies that are not aiming to be ‘blockbusters’ (and especially made-for-tv and straight-to-DVD) tend to use exterior locations with few changes, may source an existing house to be used for filming, and often make do with spray-painting props or gluing things together in interesting ways to make a ‘bomb’. As you move from film to television, this gets pronounced even further. Sets are even sold on and shared between productions, and set dressers end up with large collections of devices to re-use. TV shows have typically no more than a three week rolling production cycle (a writing team, a filming and acting team, and post production team if needed, all working in parallel), and costs have to be kept down.

Magazine production is somewhat different again, with some articles having a regular format that is easy to produce new content for, others being written by freelancers, and some parts even the result of the readers themselves (print 2.0? :P). Photographs often come from archives, or are purchased as needed. They are a lot of work, but no more so than other forms of information.

Of course, magazines are technically a change of medium from visual film. Visual non-interactive recordings is really medium that collects together movie films, DVD films, and television shows. But it is worth still considering magazines, as they are still part of the entertainment industry.

I’ll let others extend this detailing to books, or to radio, or for even websites.

The big point here is that films still exist, despite the other forms of visual non-interactive recording. And even with their competition from other mediums, we still have blockbuster films each and every year, and audiences have not seemed to decrease. Production quality of television shows has markedly increased even in just the last decade, yet movies are thriving. Similarly, games will adapt, change, cost less and be more casual, but we will still have blockbusters. The easy money for blockbuster games might dry up, and the industry’s sales methods may change, but the supply of blockbuster and other film-like games certainly will not.

And the good news is, those blockbuster games will be better than ever, I’d bet. As promised, I wish to touch on User Experience, something I have been involved with research in heavily over the last month. I’ve found that most serious game projects tend to take for granted the nature of their user experience (or rather, assume a user interface, and by doing this dictate a user experience). Very little consider the design of their interface worthy of consideration in publications about their project. Gamasutra thankfully has quite a few features on UE design, but few seem to have been taken to heart by many developers. In this respect, the games industry is certainly not “in the 70’s”. Although we have figured out set pieces, only a few developers manage to pull off effects like pacing (I actually swore when I realised that Valve did this in HL2: episode 2, I was that impressed!), like considering unique methods of interaction, like making any real use of their physics engine (and I’m not even sure I fully count Valve’s see-saws as this, either). Very much, the focus is often still on the technology, and not the human factors that should be at the heart of the design. That’s why micro-transactions often suck - they are simply slapped on without consideration.

The move towards Your Mom games is a wonderful one, in my opinion, for the effects it will have on game design. Your Mom is less impressed by particle effects, and more impressed by the experience of playing the game. The experience of playing the game can only be designed by considering first and foremost the most important part of that experience - the user. We are beginning to see moves towards this (Portal, for example, has had some major changes done to it from it’s initial design stage because of what they found the user actually needed), but the move to make more Your Mom games will require that all such developers put her first. And let’s face it, you probably like some of the things your mom is interested in (Ok, so perhaps it was just me who had a mum who listed “Conan” and “Aliens” as her favourite films, but you probably appreciate what she likes, at least). Your mom games are also smaller and quicker to produce than classic games, meaning it becomes actually possible to experiment with design concepts, providing us with valuable data on real players. Those same production skills and values will naturally then find their way back into your blockbuster games, with their new skills at being able to direct the user experience resulting in the most compelling product yet.

Bart Stewart said on January 19th, 2008 at 9:47 pm:

It seems to me that a lot of the theory discussion about micro-transactions happen without considering how to design in the user experience, something I will return to later.

That’s precisely the concern I was trying to express. Thank you for putting it as succinctly as I should have, Michelle.

Most of the pro developer discussions I’ve seen on this subject have focused on the biz aspects of microtransactions (however implemented). But I can’t recall seeing much commentary at all on what a microtransation model does to the play experience of the actual gamer, in particular the gamers accustomed to a more “pay and forget” model. I’d enjoy seeing more serious discussion by experienced game developers from the gameplay-effect perspective. I’d like to have a better understanding of why some developers feel that Western gamers are likely to happily embrace the possible changes to “their” gameplay driven by more frequent decision-making about payment choices.

(I put “their” gameplay in quotes to point out that I personally am not stuck on any particular model, but I think many gamers are. If anything, I’m most frequently on the “try never to be blinded to what might be by what currently is” side of any development discussion! Just wanted to mention it, since I can see how I might have come across as dogmatically defending the subscription model. That’s not the case; I just haven’t yet seen good support for the claim that microtransactions may offer more satisfying gameplay than a subscription model. The possibility that it might be better for casual gameplay — and thus bring in more people who don’t currently game online — is the most persuasive argument I’ve seen so far. But I’d like to see that possibility given a good critical airing to see if it holds up.)

Michelle D'israeli said on January 19th, 2008 at 10:36 pm:

As someone currently in academia, I’d like to also suggest that we don’t just want serious discussion by experienced game developers, but we also need trawling of academic research for related studies. Off the top of my head, I know that a lot of studies have been done into the psychology of payment, so perhaps one of those directly relates to this topic.

If I wasn’t busy with other things right now, I’d look into it. Remind me in a few weeks, perhaps

The lack of detailed involvement and communication between trivial game developers and academia is something that has become a personal irritation in my research, as there are some lovely examples in trivial games (as in the opposite of ’serious’, no negative cogitations intended) of user interface and interaction design, but I cannot use them in bulk due to their lack of documentation in trusted journals, and I see all kinds of academic research that the game development community would strongly benefit from.

(but that’s all going off on a tangent)

Gene Endrody said on January 20th, 2008 at 1:23 am:

Moroagh said,

Really? I thought I invited her to roll up her sleeves and help fill the void. In retrospect I’m regretting my choice of words, however if she is felling frustrated that her needs are not being met, then swearing at all of us seems like an odd approach. Designers fill niches based on where we see opportunity and we are often in the niches we serve. If we are getting it wrong then it may to take designers from her demographic to fill her needs. The games industry doesn’t listen to players per se. It can’t listen to feedback in a forum because it’s not homogeneous. The industry is filled with companies and individuals with vastly different approaches and opinions. Some of these are good listeners, some rely on focus groups, some rely on the vision and entrepreneurship of their designers. It’s impossible for any one of us to respond to your critism because none of us can claim to represent the entire games industry - certainly not me. For this same reason, PurpleCar’s comments, besides being rude, are difficult to respond too. I’m making games for a niche I understand and believe in. Am I suppose to feel bad that I’m not making games for her demographic? Who here is in a position to take responsibility for the fact that she can’t find the types of games she wants? At the end of the day, if there is a true market need it will eventually be filled, likely by someone who has the same needs as Purplecar and had the guts to take the plunge.

BadMisterFrosty said on January 20th, 2008 at 4:34 am:

I think there is accessability and pricing policy in the mix as well. Okay, Mom won’t play the blood and gore FPS core gamer games, but maybe Dad would. But these games won’t work on his office computers and it’s still too early that he considers a console for their living room. He may not even consider playing games as an activity. Not because of dislike. There are folks out there who won’t go into the theaters, not because they don’t like to, but because they haven’t this sort of activity in their »book of activities«.

Moroagh said on January 20th, 2008 at 5:07 am:

Really? I thought I invited her to roll up her sleeves and help fill the void.

Yes, you did and I grant you that I think you were very well intended.

But: Say you go to a restaurant and inform the cook that certain choices of dishes are lacking from the menu. Now the cook turns around and tells you: Stop whining and cook those yourself, you’ll make a buck or two!

Do you understand what the problem is there?

PurpleCar’s comments, besides being rude, are difficult to respond too.

Not at all, but rather than trying to read what is behind her anger statement (the only thing you cared to quote) you could have cared to read what she wrote and requested and you could have asked more questions.

You basically didn’t which basically means you don’t care.

Don’t get me wrong: You have the perfect right to not care. Like a cook has the perfect right to not add a dish to his selection. But that’s different from being dismissive by telling his client they should cook stuff they need themselves and stop whining.

If the client thinks of the cook in multi-hyphenated terms afterwards, I for one, am not the least surprised, because actually the cook was rude too, though possibly well-meaning.

I’m just surprised how much effort there is to justify how hard it is to listen to people and how many market potentials there are but how little effort there is to actually do something - from game devs like yourself.

I do learn this though: Some game devs basically make games for themselves. Sid Meier was already so smart to express that devs should make games for gamers.

Am I suppose to feel bad that I’m not making games for her demographic?

No, but you could feel bad for telling a non-cook, a potential client, to go cook themselves. And you could feel bad for telling them to “stop whining” rather than “I understand your concern”.

Your whole post could have been as simple as:

“While this is an angry outburst, I see the need. Someone really should pick this up and develop games for that niche. It’s not my interest but it’s a worthwhile direction.”

That’s a completely different response because you suddenly don’t tell people off.

In the end the problem with your response was exactly that you felt insulted by her rant more than reading her needs. She complained that her needs weren’t respected, and indeed your response exactly displayed that.

But you have the right to not wanting to serve her needs and not understanding that you can still care and display that care.

If the hypothetical cook said: “Yeah I see your point. I can’t really accommodate that need but these dishes should be served somewhere” the client feels much better (the cook does’t have his head in the sand), because the “whining” was justified (and the cook has sympathy for her complaint, rather than being dismissive).

The really smart cook even realizes behind the rant the gift: There is earning potential here and the client was so graceful to inform me of it.

You can take the gift or not. That’s totally free. But regardless, the client did something good and helpful by addressing the cook, even if they don’t find the best words or the best mood for it.

And a professional cook understands a simple service-economy principle: The client is king. Which is as simple as saying that the client’s needs are important and the client’s shortcomings are to be overlooked gracefully.

Again, I want a penny for a dev to use that “whining” word… it really is a bad sign, because it displays disregard for the gamer’s concern.

Orrey said on January 20th, 2008 at 7:55 am:

Some people go to film school and - go out and make Star Wars or Lord of the Rings or the Godfather.

Some people go to film school and - go out and make commercials and spots for salesmen conventions.

Some people learn to write and they write - Stranger in a Strangland or The Hunt for Red October or The Princess Bride.

Some People learn to write and they write for the Tabloids or US magazine

The first discover that it takes a long time and they rarely ever ever get rich ( there is a lot of swings and misses for a Success )

The second discovers that there is a constant demand for the work and its quicker and easier and they always have a pay check and that a lot more housewives read US than do hardback novels.

This is just what is being discussed as the “big shift” in gaming. The same old truth in just a newer medium.

Here’s hoping by shifting to the quick pop marketplace this medium can be different and take some of the craft and creativity with it. History says NO in the vast vast majority of cases. Maybe gaming can be the first to bring quality to the wider audience.

…remeber the hopes for TV as a tool for mankind

Michelle D'israeli said on January 20th, 2008 at 9:41 am:

This is just what is being discussed as the “big shift” in gaming. The same old truth in just a newer medium.

Here’s hoping by shifting to the quick pop marketplace this medium can be different and take some of the craft and creativity with it. History says NO in the vast vast majority of cases. Maybe gaming can be the first to bring quality to the wider audience.

The thing is, I don’t think it is so much of a shift, but rather an expansion.

Recent years have seen more university “game design” courses come into being, vast numbers of self-help books and websites exist, and the industry is slowly gaining a degree of wide credibility. Labour to make the games looks to be easily available.

Your Mom and even Your Dad are getting into games, and marketing companies now are seeing games as the useful tool they are. Businesses are slowly experimenting with serious games, and this sector (once it gets it head out of technology and into actually dealing with the users) is really set to boom. There is also the fact that most games we see do not even begin to cover the emerging middle eastern and indian markets! As such, the market for games will also grow.

The part were it becomes to get less optimistic is with respect to financing. We shall ignore issues of general economics, for those are far outside our scope here. With the gaming market maturing and becoming increasingly able to produce polished products, VC for experimental concepts may well dry up. Serious games are also expected to have their funding tightened, as many of the technology based projects fail to show results. VCs and publishers are likely to want to see evidence of designs generally appealing at a wider demographic than a lot of current titles aim for, also. On the bright side, however, the potential market will be bigger (and hence a concept that hits the market well will have more money), and business and marketeers may directly fund projects.

The question you need to ask yourself is “did the emergence and increasing adoption of alternative media and easier access to forms of that media (tv versus film) result in a decrease in craft and creativity?”

In my opinion, the opposite has actually occurred. We have become better skilled at crafting each moment of video footage to have meaning. Although the average length these quality productions may have decreased, their satisfaction value has increased. We generally accept this reduction in length, as the perceived cost has also decreased (until you see the price of a series on DVD, but that’s another huge rant :P).

Of course, not all modern video non-interactive recordings are better than their older counterparts. But the director’s skill at crafting pace, at drawing the viewer’s attention, at misdirection, at designing set pieces generally seems to have increased. Although one can’t do flashy car chases in a sedate suburban soap opera, one can focus on how to write scripts well, frame shots, and so on. Action series with high budgets provide ample opportunities to hone action scenes, whilst those with low budgets (more important for this example) force experimentation with pacing, setting and script writing.

Indeed, if anything is wrong with the current film industry, it is that far too much money is often being thrown around. This was very much the case in the 90’s, were raw explosion was often seen as a suitable replacement for dialogue (remind you of anything?)

Tim said on January 20th, 2008 at 10:23 am:

I guess I’m not clear on the question here. Is the implication that gamers will go away and game developers need to shift their target, or is it that there is a much bigger target (market) out there just waiting to be plucked?

Gene Endrody said on January 20th, 2008 at 10:23 am:

Your right, I really don’t. I don’t make the rules here, however I always assumed that players come to this type of forum to hear about the craft, learn about the process and get involved with the issues at another level. Do I expect to be doing customer service here? No. If I’m responding to email from my players, the reponses have to be carefully crafted. There are sessions on communicating with players at GDC - Raph did one a few years back. But I’m not in my kitchen here. I’m at the local bar talking to other cooks and conesours of food interested in cooking. Would you really want designers here to be in customer service mode?

Gene Endrody said on January 20th, 2008 at 11:21 am:

The really smart cook even realizes behind the rant the gift

Also right, but why here in neutral territory? I think there are places where equal standards of civility apply to both players and designers. Th

What will the gamers do?

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