Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Reelya]

idk, it really depends on how much content there is. e.g. if you make an "average" game that costs $60, with a market-average amount of content in it (defined by the cost of development) that's equitable, right?

But what if you spend extra above that? e.g. if you budget for an additional 50% worth of content. You could charge $90 at launch to make your money back, but a higher price will also lower sales, so you end up charging about $110 for that "$90 worth" of content - which means less content per $ for each consumer.

So, no, what they do is make $90 worth of content, charge $60 for it, but then select some content and make that optional / unlockable, to make back the additional development costs. The end result is that the $60 players are getting a game where they spent about 50% more than normal on the overall development, e.g. the game will just look a lot better in general: the players who make the optional purchases are subsidizing the development costs of those who only bought the base game. When people make optional purchases they're actually subsidizing the development costs for everyone else, which lowers the box price. It's not an either/or thing with free-to-play, it's a sliding scale.

Sure, you can say that they should only launch with "$60 worth" of content, and not have any additional content to purchase at launch because that's "unfair". But it would in effect mean they'd be more limited in their overall budget, so you'd be losing core content in exchange for the sense of fairness. Those games with ridiculous amounts of money spent on making them look perfect wouldn't be viable in a box-price-only model: they would only get green-lit with serious cuts to their development goals.

How good video games look doesn't follow Moore's Law: budgets are fucking huge now, bigger than movies. Destiny for example had a development and marketing budget of $500 million. Sure, it sold a lot, but the developer only makes a cut of each sale, not 100% of the sale. The reason they go for buyable stuff at launch is that the post-launch period is when most people buy stuff. They only have a few months to make most of that money back before the next big game hits and the revenue turns into a trickle.

EDIT: Nope. People today expect movie-quality graphics, and at least 5 years worth of after-launch tech support and online servers, but they want it all for a single box-price at launch. It's just not economically do-able. If there is after-market support then the cost of that needs to either be covered in the $60 you paid, or you need to be charged service fees for using the support services, which includes servers. Paying for a game in a box doesn't cover ongoing server costs. And there's no reason to expect that it should. e.g. if you buy a car then the cost of the car doesn't cover all the servicing costs of the car for perpetuity. AAA games that have online pay are more like cars now in that regards, they have ongoing servicing requirements, and that all costs money.

Think about things this way: If I buy the latest CoD boxed game because I want to play the single-player campaign, should the box price I pay subsidize the server costs for everyone who plays online? Or should people who go online with the game be charged for using additional services? Me subsidizing the server costs for everyone else would mean less money was spent on the actual game I wanted, the offline single-player campaign. That is also unfair. What's fair is that the box price covers the game-in-the-box only, giving the SP-only players the best game that their money can afford, and that online play is a separate thing that's paid for separately. And the way they've chosen to pay for that is by having optional purchasable loot.

[BurnedToast]

idk, it really depends on how much content there is. e.g. if you make an "average" game that costs $60, with a market-average amount of content in it (defined by the cost of development) that's equitable, right?

But what if you spend extra above that? e.g. if you budget for an additional 50% worth of content. You could charge $90 at launch to make your money back, but a higher price will also lower sales, so you end up charging about $110 for that "$90 worth" of content - which means less content per $ for each consumer.

So, no, what they do is make $90 worth of content, charge $60 for it, but then select some content and make that optional / unlockable, to make back the additional development costs. The end result is that the $60 players are getting a game where they spent about 50% more than normal on the overall development, e.g. the game will just look a lot better in general: the players who make the optional purchases are subsidizing the development costs of those who only bought the base game. When people make optional purchases they're actually subsidizing the development costs for everyone else, which lowers the box price. It's not an either/or thing with free-to-play, it's a sliding scale.

Sure, you can say that they should only launch with "$60 worth" of content, and not have any additional content to purchase at launch because that's "unfair". But it would in effect mean they'd be more limited in their overall budget, so you'd be losing core content in exchange for the sense of fairness. Those games with ridiculous amounts of money spent on making them look perfect wouldn't be viable in a box-price-only model.

How good video games look doesn't follow Moore's Law: budgets are fucking huge now, bigger than movies. Destiny for example had a development and marketing budget of $500 million. Sure, it sold a lot, but the developer only makes a cut of each sale, not 100% of the sale. The reason they go for buyable stuff at launch is that the post-launch period is when most people buy stuff. They only have a few months to make most of that money back before the next big game hits and the revenue turns into a trickle.

This is such bullshit.

Destiny didn't cost $500 million to make. The contract between bungie and activision was leaked and they budgeted $140 million for it, so the real number is somewhere around there. So what's the $500 million number? marketing.

You're trying to argue poor starving activision has to chop out parts of the game to sell in gambling boxes just to make ends meet because games are so expensive to make when they are spending 280% of the cost to make the game on marketing.

Edit: I misread the part where you were aware part of that was marketing. My point still stands, the overwhelming majority of the cost was marketing.

[Teneb]

Further: if you MUST make more money back to cover stuff like server costs... it still doesn't justify putting that shit behind actual fucking gambling deliberately constructed to reel in people who are impulsive with this sort of thing (aka "whales").

And like BurnedToast implied, Activision-Blizzard ain't no struggling indie developer. They routinely brag about the billions (last year they made 2 of those bad boys) they get from them boxes.

[Reelya]

You're trying to argue poor starving activision has to chop out parts of the game to sell in gambling boxes just to make ends meet because games are so expensive to make when they are spending 280% of the cost to make the game on marketing.

Edit: I misread the part where you were aware part of that was marketing. My point still stands, the overwhelming majority of the cost was marketing.

No, I'm arguing that individual games need to be profitable, or they won't get made in the first place. Activision are a big company, they make lots of games. Each game needs to economically stand on it's own or it won't get made. There's no reason to think they should throw money into games that aren't economically viable in themselves just because they're a big company. e.g. it's like asking why "poor starving Coca Cola corporation" can't afford to give out free coke.

Sure, money goes on marketing, but only because each marketing dollar makes back more in sales than it costs. Marketing doesn't cut into development costs, it provides more freedom to make stuff. It's still money spent that needs to be recouped, and without marketing, less people buy the game meaning less people have to pay for more development each, thus meaning you get less content. So, the thing is they did spend $500 million. It's just silly to ague that "oh but $360 million of that was just marketing" as if spending $360 million on promoting the game "doesn't count" as a cost you need to recoup.

Spending that % of the money on promotion is what's required to make a AAA game and get it bought by enough people to support the development costs. Maybe they could e.g. take the $360 million for marketing and instead spend it on developing the game "even better". But what good would that do if they see a 90% drop in sales because nobody even heard about the game? Without marketing, games would need to shrink their development budgets, not grow them.

Sure, they're a big company so other games could subsidize particular games that are in development. But that would effectively mean they're leeching available resources from one game to build another, which is not a fair thing on it's own to do to the consumers who only want one game and not the other. And "marketing" is demonized, but it's a good thing for the consumer, even though some of your box-price went on marketing. The point is if you proactively market a game you'll sell 10 times as many copies, and the actual development costs gets spread across 10 times as many people.

The thing is: it's a market. When people look at the games on the shelf, they pick the best-looking game that fits their budget, and the marketing component helps create an economy of scale here. e.g. it's not a zero-sum game between physical development and marketing costs, $1 on marketing doesn't means $1 less paying engineers and artists: having a marketing budget means you can hire more artists and programmers.

[Mephisto]

No, I'm arguing that individual games need to be profitable, or they won't get made in the first place. Activision are a big company, they make lots of games. Each game needs to economically stand on it's own or it won't get made. There's no reason to think they should throw money into games that aren't economically viable in themselves just because they're a big company. e.g. it's like asking why "poor starving Coca Cola corporation" can't afford to give out free coke.

Sure, money goes on marketing, but only because each marketing dollar makes back more in sales than it costs. Marketing doesn't cut into development costs, it provides more freedom to make stuff. It's still money spent that needs to be recouped, and without marketing, less people buy the game meaning less people have to pay for more development each, thus meaning you get less content. So, the thing is they did spend $500 million. It's just silly to ague that "oh but $360 million of that was just marketing" as if spending $360 million on promoting the game "doesn't count" as a cost you need to recoup.

Spending that % of the money on promotion is what's required to make a AAA game and get it bought by enough people to support the development costs. Maybe they could e.g. take the $360 million for marketing and instead spend it on developing the game "even better". But what good would that do if they see a 90% drop in sales because nobody even heard about the game? Without marketing, games would need to shrink their development budgets, not grow them.

Sure, they're a big company so other games could subsidize particular games that are in development. But that would effectively mean they're leeching available resources from one game to build another, which is not a fair thing on it's own to do to the consumers who only want one game and not the other. And "marketing" is demonized, but it's a good thing for the consumer, even though some of your box-price went on marketing. The point is if you proactively market a game you'll sell 10 times as many copies, and the actual development costs gets spread across 10 times as many people.

The thing is: it's a market. When people look at the games on the shelf, they pick the best-looking game that fits their budget, and the marketing component helps create an economy of scale here. e.g. it's not a zero-sum game between physical development and marketing costs, $1 on marketing doesn't means $1 less paying engineers and artists: having a marketing budget means you can hire more artists and programmers.

This is so all over the place that I don't know where to start.

Every dollar spent on marketing equals more than one dollar in sales? I guess they don't need gambling boxes, then. The game is automatically profitable.

Not having gambling boxes equals Coca Cola giving out free product?

But hey, this is the sales thread. Mayhap someone should go make a gamble box thread.

[Folly]

I don't think you realize just how much money they make off gamble boxes. Activision/blizzard made over 2 billion (yes, BILLION) dollars off gamble boxes alone in 2017

I feel like this is more indicative of the size of their audience, rather than the efficacy of their choice in cash-shop mechanics.
I would very much like to see a chart that shows the profitability of different successful gamble-box games in terms of ratio of profits to active players.

Mostly because it's a system that's like "Hey, want to support us for continuing to host this game? Here's an option, and you get neat cosmetics for it!"

This only really goes for free games. Destiny and Overwatch are paid games, which means that you should be able to get all launch content without having to pay extra, much less gamble for it.

I think that hybrid-income should also be considered a category.
-High up-front cost, No in-app purchases.
-No up-front cost, Aggressive in-app purchases.
-Low up-front cost, Subtle in-app purchases.

[Rolan7]

Every dollar spent on marketing equals more than one dollar in sales? I guess they don't need gambling boxes, then. The game is automatically profitable.

Wha?  Reelya is saying that marketing pays off through increased sales, that's why they do it.  It's a necessary expense of running a business, and so it should be included in what the game "cost" to make and sell.

Not having gambling boxes equals Coca Cola giving out free product?

Reelya didn't touch loot boxes at all in that post.  Also... no, just no.  Coca Cola giving out free product is like a developer developing DLC and giving it out for free.  There's no profit in that, so companies don't do it.  Except as a promotion (marketing, basically) to sell other DLC or products.

[Frumple]

Uh, companies totally do that, though? I guess maybe the amount has lessened lately-ish but free samples and whatnot are totally a thing. Sometimes it's promotion, sometimes it's just good will fostering. Free DLC (arguably including patches, really, particularly content ones) is pretty common, too. Even when there's not other DLC or products to sell...

Any case, do movie making budgets include the advertising/marketing, too? I legit don't know.

[hector13]

Guys, this is not really the thread for it.

Go to elsewhere.

[Retropunch]

I'm not joining in the debate on loot boxes and gambling-for-loot in games in general - I hate it and I think it's ruining gaming.

However, Destiny 2 (the game on offer) has one of the least obnoxious implementations of it - I've now put in a good 30 hours and can't see the need to ever buy stuff. It doesn't pressure you to buy stuff, and the stuff you can buy is mostly cosmetic (a few bits have small bonuses, but no different to bonuses you'd get from other gear) from one merchant. There's no real advantage to buying any of the stuff, and you get a lot of free cosmetics/cosmetic currency without paying anyway.

My only issue with it, as mentioned before, is that they push the DLC/expansions a little bit too hard in the base game for my liking, but it's not something that detracts from the overall game if you can just ignore a few items you can't use etc.

TLDR: All this to say, if you're worried about Destiny 2 being a buy-it-and-then-pay-to-win nightmare, it's not. It's the same level of buying cosmetics as WoW/any other MMO - it's annoying, but hardly unexpected.

[Reelya]

Every dollar spent on marketing equals more than one dollar in sales? I guess they don't need gambling boxes, then. The game is automatically profitable.

No, just common sense. They don't spend money for the fun of it, they spend money so that more people hear about the game, enough that the additional revenue exceeds the spend on marketing. Marketing increases your margins, e.g. it means you end up with more money to spend on everything else, including development. The more people you can spread the development costs around to, the more money there is to develop the core game: everyone gets a better game.

In-game purchases are entirely separate to that. The point of in-game purchases is that they create an optional pricing scheme.

e.g. assume a box price of $60, 1 million players, an no in-game purchases. You have a total of $60 million for development and distribution costs. If you want to compete with the latest games however, you need a $90 million dollar game, not a $60 million one, so you need to charge a box price of $90, but then you're going to lose customers, meaning you really need to charge $110 per box for a game with a $90 million dollar development and distribution budget.

So, you make in-game purchases instead. If you keep the box price at $60, you still get ~1 million customers, but if you can convince half the players to spend another $60 in-game then you now have your $90 million to make the better-looking game, but the average cost-per-player is lower even considering the in-game purchases, since the lower box-price allowed you to pull in more players than for an equivalently-funded game without variable pricing.

People want a killer-looking game, people want a low base-price for the game, and people also want there to be no in-game purchases. They can't have all three things at once.

Not having gambling boxes equals Coca Cola giving out free product?

But I never mentioned gambling boxes at all so any connection there is in your mind, not mine. It was burnttoasts statement:

You're trying to argue poor starving activision has to chop out parts of the game to sell in gambling boxes just to make ends meet because games are so expensive to make when they are spending 280% of the cost to make the game on marketing.

That is a completely incoherent straw-man. First there's the idea that they "chop out parts of the game". The point about variable pricing is that those parts wouldn't be there in the first place without the option of variable pricing, so it makes no sense to say they "chopped them out". The point about marketing spend also has nothing to do with it. Marketing lets the devs reach more people, and spread core development costs around to more people.

Marketing doesn't cost other players anything because each dollar in marketing pulls in more additional dollars than they spent on it. But the "more additional dollars" is made up of the same mix of core-price and variable-price as everyone else, so the same principles apply as I mentioned above: games with variable-pricing are out-competing ones that don't have it, precisely because the variable-pricing scheme allows you to fund more content in general since you have a bigger player base than you would otherwise. This is why those games are winning the battle for sales.

[Darkmere]

Open thread for the sales... close thread for the bickering.

[nenjin]

+1.

[Mephisto]

Hey, a bundle!

$1 for Mercenary Kings (currently $20) is pretty great.

[Retropunch]

Hey, a bundle!

$1 for Mercenary Kings (currently $20) is pretty great.

Insurgency is also a fantastic FPS - the best of the Battlefield-likes in my opinion.