Right now, core gaming has a very high budget demand because of a particular core gamer culture.

This is your “core” mistake. You ascribe to core gamers what is really a facet of all mature markets. We see the same in game shows. We see the same in reality shows too by the way — with more reality shows focusing on celebrities, on building $100,000+ houses and doing other things that generally outspend other competitors. The key difference between reality TV and gameshows is, again, that the Reality TV market is a far less mature market. Instead of assuming that “cheap” is intrinsic in reality TV it makes far more sense to simply say that reality TV is a new format that has started with a low, but ever-increasing cost of entry.

Here is the market cycle for all of these things:

1) Innovation — a new product, idea or technology creates a new market. Anyone with the capability to enter the market at this point is likely to make money.

2) Saturation — the market begins to fill up and new entrants increasingly need to distinguish themselves. The amount of time it requires to reach saturation varies greatly depending on the product/idea/technology in question and its market. Video games took a long time to saturate because there was a lot of potential for growth. To substitute for the initial advantage of innovation, companies will continue to spend more and more money increasing the value of the product so as to stay ahead of the curve. This is what has caused overall growth in budgets in the core gaming market (and not anything that is peculiar about core gamers).

3) Aggregation — after the market reaches saturation, the market continues to shrink as a few key players take it over and learn how to “monetize” the market once it has peaked (from the standpoint of innovating the idea). At this point the overall number of brands tends to shrink and the overall market may appear to shrink even though it’s overall revenue may be healthy or even growing very quickly (because of factors other than innovation). Aggregation usually involves even greater outlays of money as companies find even bigger ways to outspend and buyout the competition. A good example of this is EA buying the license for the NFL or companies hiring famous voice talent for games. These do not increase production value but do differentiate product. The winning companies at this point do everything in their power to make the market about spending money because that is what they are good at. Going back to the saturation or innovation phase means that they have to learn to compete on different merits.

Gaming cycles between innovation, saturation and aggregation with its different genres, with new genres and with new ways of presenting genres.

Bits of core gaming come out of the innovation phase but most of the market is in the saturation and aggregation phases. New licenses are very valuable, if successful, but the market is at a point where a successful license can only come out of a very large investment.

Casual gaming is still in between innovation and saturation. The market, being not fully saturated, especially in niches such as casual MMO’s, has a lot of room for basically any new entrant to put up shop and make some money. That won’t last. Budgets will go up and will continue to go up. Soccer mom’s want a special experience at least as much as their kids do and gaming companies will find a way to give it to them. It may not be cutting edge 3d technology but celebrity tie-in’s or other shenanigans but we will get there.

Some of these market trends may be partially or fully curtailed by digital distribution, “infite shelf space” and the “long tail” effect. These things tend to act against the strength of spending money to differentiate a product. I.e. digitial music distribution allows indie bands to get a better share of the audience attention allowing them to sell better without having celebrity musicians who people regularly see on TV. However, again, this has nothing to do with any intrinsic property of the core or casual markets. Digital distribution currently has a greater effect on casual markets but that is only because traditional brick & mortar distribution is historically entrenched in the core market.

1: The “watch a ton of movies” for story
2: Optimize character performance through making selections in lists
3a: Kill enemies through twitchy control scheme
3b: Kill enemies through turn based strategy puzzles
4: Navigate 3D mazes with traps that make you start over
5: Grind XP for hours to get enough power to beat every other boss

The full list was shorter a few years ago. But the trend is to make it grow. I honestly doubt that the “core” gamer desire all these aspects of the RPG. My main personal gripe with this genre evolution is point 4 and 5 in this list, they make me quit the game and eventually the genre.

From the things I have been able to read on this topic I get the ipression that the flight sims, wargames, adventure games, etc died from lack of new players rather than steep increase of development costs.

Whenever the developer of an RPG slaps on another trapped 3D maze to increase the playtime on their next title they bring the genre closer to extinction. It gets more expensive to make and fewer players will enjoy the game. I would blame this problem on the designer.

A small number of players will get a great kick from breaking free from the maze, but arnt these players hardcore rather than core?

For example: being dismissive of percentage of marketshare is a mistake, IMHO. Market share determines publisher spend on different segments and number of bets in a segment, for example. If the whole pie gets bigger, that’s great — unless the costs also rise commensurately, or grow faster for some segments than others.

At that point, we’re in a multivariable discussion. Marketshare might be inconsequential, it might not be. Dismissing it out of hand is insufficient.

“RPGs have move moved online, doesn’t mean they aren’t RPGs.” MMORPGs have been a distinct segment for a LONG time now. It isn’t a “move.” A supplanting, perhaps. That’s fine, supplanting happens all the time. But they are not servicing the same market segment. Show me the online version of Final Fantasy VII or Oblivion, maybe I will change my mind.

“You’re fine with casual games going online and still being casual but if core games go online you suddenly think they aren’t core anymore.” — where do you get that from?

“If you seriously consider making 100 $1 million titles you quickly realize this is a piss-poor strategy.” — Nor did i suggest anyone go do that.

The real money is in innovation whether it’s in casual or core form. See Nintendo. After you innovate you make your money off of production values. That’s how these markets work. All the stuff about budgets is missing the point. High budgets aren’t an attribute that is particular in any sense to the core market. The only reason why high budgets are attributed to the core market is that it is the most mature gaming market. Give casual gaming 10 years to catch up and its budgets will be well on the way to the $50m mark.

I agree with just about all of this. I am not attempting to describe markets in general — I am talking about this market, in the near-term future. Right now, core gaming has a very high budget demand because of a particular core gamer culture. If that culture shifts — which I have asserted it will for a variety of reasons — then current members of that culture may be disappointed. That was all I was saying.

None of that means that other segments and audiences might not demand high budgets as well.

Want a good comparison? Let’s look at a mature Mom gaming market: gameshows. What do you see? Tons of money paid out to get recognizable talent to run the show (this just in, Drew Carrie is hosting the Price is Right). Ridiculous displays of gaudy sets and computer graphics. Exponentially increasing prizes. It’s the same thing. As the market matures, companies learn to compete by outspending the competition. Margins decrease but that’s just what happens in a mature market. Merely mediocre content becomes essentially worthless and the market becomes a few big players willing to spend out large amounts of money trying for the next hit.

All of this is true. But the comparison I am making is more like “reality shows may chase out a lot of scripted shows because they are much cheaper to make, and can be monetized well enough.”

I didn’t, for example, claim that PC gaming was doing that great. I claimed that core gaming is doing fantastic.

As we measure the market, certainly. At the same time, I am saying that the games on consoles are less “core” than they used to be, in the name of broadening audiences. We are still calling them “core” because the nature of “core” is moving. To go back to the perhaps risky Mass Effect example — it barely has an inventory system and barely has stats. Bioshock, if derived from shooters, has virtually no requirement for 3d spatial awareness, taking place in a series of highly constrained “bubbles.” And it has almost as much RPG as Mass Effect — no branching convos, but a lot more backstory! And so on.

And if you think that you aren’t making an odd statement here I think you need to listen to a few people more people who don’t agree with you by default. The terminology that most players use is MMORPG which contains “RPG”. No one uses the terminology CRPG anymore unless it suits an argument that is fundamentally just a play on semantics.

Heh, most people don’t agree with me by default. Yes, of course MMORPG uses the letters RPG in sequence, and yes, of course they share a heck of a lot of common ancestry. If anything, though, CRPGs had lost quite a lot of classic RPGness to them, and that current was diverted to MMORPGs. They aren’t the same market segment, though they have overlap, and in the process, the sort of people who used to play, say, Icewind Dale are out of luck. Or consider what happened to the Legacy of Kain series.

With respect to the # of RPG’s per year, again you are confusing market maturity for market death. This cycle isn’t endemic to core games, it’s something that casual games will experience too.

Technically, it IS endemic to core games AND casual games. It’s just not exclusive to core games — nor did i say that it was. The whole Match-3 genre is a great example.

RPGs have always been one of the most expensive genres to develop because of the sheer volume of content. Walls started getting hit on this years ago, and the games began to shrink in scope as a result. The size of the audience did not justify the spend required to make something competitive. The number of RPGs released grew fewer (compare the number of JRPGs in 1998 to today, for example) and the ones that did survive tended to have big franchises behind them that could bear the cost and deliver the larger audience to justify it. This, as you say, is a sign of market maturity.

What we have seen before is the outright abandonment of segments by publishers — flight sims, wargames, adventure games, etc — when this happens.

It’s something that we already see in Mom-gaming markets like game shows where we tend to have one big gameshow per year that people actually talk about (Millionaire one year, Deal or No Deal the next year) and a few ancient franchises that chug along.

The difference is that although there’s one big hit gameshow, there’s a half dozen launched each year. Most of them fail. That is different from what has happened in the past in the games market, and different from what I am predicting.

Core gaming has hit its blockbuster state because it is an older market

Personally, I find this a reductionist analysis. After all, many older markets do not hit blockbuster states. The pace of budget rises, the advances on technology, are an integral part of the equation that cannot be ignored. Casual gaming is on a different curve in part because of the limitations on the platform for its chief delivery mechanisms.

Core gaming is only having “casualties” if you want to consider %’age of mindshare as the only useful statistic.

I think this is just inaccurate. We can look at dev studios folding or being acquired, genres once available and now not, numbers of titles released in given genres, and so on, and I think we will find that it isn’t just % mindshare that we’re talking about.

In fact the growth of casual gaming has a purely complementary effect on core gaming as casual gamers have more and more exposure to core gaming experiences and are more likely to join the market. Casual gaming is just a stepping stone to the harder stuff.

Historically, this effect has been minor to non-existent, but I made the same claim in my post.

In a lot of ways (i.e. revenue) casual gaming is still way behind core gaming and that’s something that you will likely admit to when pressed

When pressed? When have I ever avoided this issue?

The same person might play one game at an entirely different frequency and level of engagement than another. The difference is in both time available to play and how much the game actually interests them. Through half a dozen major MMOs now I’ve been all over the spectrum. I get just as turned off by game companies that chase whatever is ‘popular’ today as I do with friends who change personalities depending on who they’re with. Be what you are, attract your audience and stop looking for greener pastures. Can the powers that be get a clue that everyone rushing into the next new thing leaves that much less competition for the market segment they’re already serving and joining in means risking everything on a segment that is unproven in sustainability and saturated with offerings already?

As a long time gamer right now my biggest concern is if the industry is going to start turning out models of games where paying more money means getting more free reign to dominate competitive fields of play with endorsed superiority. Its already partly this way when it comes to time-sinks, I was hoping for a way to move further from these issues. Most people aren’t going to enjoy being someone else’s entertainment. Sure, some folks will be pressured into blowing more money to keep up with the joneses, but just as likely they’ll say screw it and go back to playing Bejeweled where they at least have the option of ignoring their rank on the ladder and just enjoying playing the game. Most people won’t bother drawing a distinction between being completely locked out of enjoyable gameplay (keys, reps, lockouts, etc) and being effectively locked out (can’t compete with the folks who paid big money, spent more time, etc), either way, the model isn’t serving their interests.

I’ve seen quite a few complaints of these supposedly ‘casual’ RMT driven games where if you don’t have an ‘appropriately’ decked out avatar ($$$) that a good portion of the playerbase will shy away from grouping or associating with you. There’s hardly any difference between that and being denied a raid invite because I need more gear from heroics and badges first. One involves time, the other money; neither proves or disproves aptitude, so both suck.

Is that emergent behavior? Yes.

That doesn’t change it from being a reality that designers need to take into account.

This honestly blows my mind.

For a post that blows your mind you really didn’t seem to read it or actually replied to most of its points. I didn’t, for example, claim that PC gaming was doing that great. I claimed that core gaming is doing fantastic. The death of PC gaming, while exaggerated, has far more to do with fierce competition from core gaming alternatives on consoles. Value propositions for core gamers have shifted significantly over the past few years and that has meant a lot of attention on consoles. I myself, while having changed little as a gamer, find myself playing a lot more on consoles because I can have the top-of-the-line system for $300 instead of spending $2,000 to upgrade a computer that I don’t really feel the need to upgrade otherwise.

1) No, you cannot compare standalone CRPGs to MMORPGs. They have audience overlap, certainly, but one is not the replacement for the other and the audience mapping is not one to one. In particular, the narrative element that is the core draw for the CRPG market is mostly missing.

This just shows that your rhetoric is couched in old terminology. You’re fine with casual games going online and still being casual but if core games go online you suddenly think they aren’t core anymore. And if you think that you aren’t making an odd statement here I think you need to listen to a few people more people who don’t agree with you by default. The terminology that most players use is MMORPG which contains “RPG”. No one uses the terminology CRPG anymore unless it suits an argument that is fundamentally just a play on semantics.

With respect to the # of RPG’s per year, again you are confusing market maturity for market death. This cycle isn’t endemic to core games, it’s something that casual games will experience too. It’s something that we already see in Mom-gaming markets like game shows where we tend to have one big gameshow per year that people actually talk about (Millionaire one year, Deal or No Deal the next year) and a few ancient franchises that chug along.

Basically you’re just confusing trends and investing far too much in whatever trends most validate your claims. Core gaming has hit its blockbuster state because it is an older market, not because of any other differences between casual gaming. Casual gaming will end up in the same place. Core gaming is only having “casualties” if you want to consider %’age of mindshare as the only useful statistic. Even the way you approach mindshare has a very strong bias to casual gaming (for example considering search hits instead of considering overall web content created for different products or considering people who have played as opposed to the amount of time or money they spend playing). In reality, core gaming is selling better than ever, getting far more media coverage, and far more mindshare with a huge amount of growth potential. That casual gaming has even more growth potential is completely beside the point. In fact the growth of casual gaming has a purely complementary effect on core gaming as casual gamers have more and more exposure to core gaming experiences and are more likely to join the market. Casual gaming is just a stepping stone to the harder stuff. In a lot of ways (i.e. revenue) casual gaming is still way behind core gaming and that’s something that you will likely admit to when pressed but won’t stop you from claiming that core gaming is “dead” or “suffering casualties” or whatever hyperbolic headline you want to push this month.

- Total cost ~$50M
- Average player lifetime ~1 year
- Average /played per week ~25 hours

Development cost per hour of content gets to be about $0.5M.

Ok, Runescape will have a lower cost. As would probably any successful MMORPG. But almost all other modern AAA productions will have a higher cost per content hour, or am I totally off?

The game I was working on last year would have been at about 0.1M per content hour using the same reasoning. Altho single player, knowingly aimed at a rather narrow niche audience and far far below any AAA classification. And we were aiming at a level of art direction which would be functional and likeable, but nothing more fancy. That Blizzard could do the quality of WoW six years ago at only a five times greater cost is at least to my perspective remarkable.

Yes, there used to be a lot more than 2 major RPGs in a year. In fact, something like Witcher wouldn’t have BEEN a “major” RPG a few years ago. Does no one remember when we had studios like Interplay around?

It’s probably obvious, but I am not relying on Gamestop’s top ten on the front page to derive my conclusions — it was just handy and visible.

Finally, very few core gamers buy Sims 2 expansion packs. I view that entry as supporting evidence for my points.

1) No, you cannot compare standalone CRPGs to MMORPGs. They have audience overlap, certainly, but one is not the replacement for the other and the audience mapping is not one to one. In particular, the narrative element that is the core draw for the CRPG market is mostly missing.

2) PC gaming is healthy because NPD is including MMOs. Take out MMOs, and PC gaming as a segment is nearly dead. Top ten titles moving less than 10k units in their launch month sort of dead. Market size of retail PC gaming is in clear decline and has been for years. And the segments that are growing, again excluding MMOs, are not games sold in Gamestop or to core gamers, but games sold in Wal-Mart and Target to moms.

Again, neither of these are outre or odd statements, and I find it odd to even have to defend them.

That said, I agree that budgets are on the rise for casual games.

Want a good comparison? Let’s look at a mature Mom gaming market: gameshows. What do you see? Tons of money paid out to get recognizable talent to run the show (this just in, Drew Carrie is hosting the Price is Right). Ridiculous displays of gaudy sets and computer graphics. Exponentially increasing prizes. It’s the same thing. As the market matures, companies learn to compete by outspending the competition. Margins decrease but that’s just what happens in a mature market. Merely mediocre content becomes essentially worthless and the market becomes a few big players willing to spend out large amounts of money trying for the next hit.

So now we have a quickly growing casual market. Awesome. Gaming is now mainstream. And that just means a lot more exposure to core gaming as well which is doing fantastic these days. My Mom does know what WoW is and not because I told her about it but rather because there are 2 million people playing it in the US, commercials with recognizable stars, etc., and far more conversation and content being created worldwide than for any of the casual titles (despite what the methodologically dubious metric of “search hits” might tell us — no one needs to search for WoW, Halo or Zelda content because they’re far too well known and discussed, there are far more WoW web pages on the ‘net than all the pages combined for any other casual title out there). As I mentioned on a different site: searching for “World of Warcraft” in MySpace profiles will give you about 5 times more hits than all the hits combined for Runescape, Penguin Club, Habbo Hotel, etc. Raph may argue that this is because the demos are young (note, the MySpace demo is young too) but it’s at least as relevant a stat as search hits which is methodologically extremely poor.

It’s alright to just say that casual gaming is booming. You don’t need to drum up “core casualties” when that’s anything but reality. Go long tail! Go electronic distribution! Just remember that these things will affect our markets but really have nothing to do with casual or core gaming either (except to the extent that “core” gaming, as an older market, is more historically entrenched in brick & mortar retail).

Hmm… neither was what I was saying. I was saying that core gamers demand a level of production values and complexity to their games; that the business calculus may drive away from that towards markets that do not demand that for various reasons; and that core gamers may therefore get fewer titles aimed at them.

Interesting. So, to put it another way (I think): in the future, games will be complex or expensive, but not both. (There will be occasional exceptions.) I’ve thought this was the case for a while, but games like MGS2 come out and ruin the calculation.

One think I’ve wondered about for a long time is the fate of the FPS. Non-gamers can’t jump into an FPS: the dual-analog control system takes a lot of practice. So even something like Portal requires some sophistication from its audience. Will there always be a big enough audience for the blockbuster FPS? Will dual-stick control simply remain an acquired skill for legions of core gamers? Or will the blockbuster FPS fade away, replaced among AAA titles by simpler control schemes?

WoW is not simpler than EverQuest.

I agree 100%, despite having just said the opposite. It’s easy to confuse “less punishing” with “simpler”.

“I’ve been making predictions about how publishers will shift, and I think it means fewer games released per year aimed at the hardcore, but that this will evolve over time because the supposedly casual games will grow more hardcore over time.”

I’m really interested to see this progression: where it leads, and how quickly. When I look at casual game top 10 lists, I see plenty of games remaining extremely simple, but some seem to be adding hard core elements. I’ve been surprised by how quickly persistence has been embraced (in games like Virtual Villagers), when I remember some people predicting this as decidedly non-casual.