$12256 / $11500
Hi all,
Just spent better part of the week-end going through two articles
http://www.mobygames.com/featured_article/feature,25/ and its sequel
http://www.mobygames.com/featured_article/feature,31/section,207/
I especially liked the conclusion at the very end of the second article.
<blockquote=Drunknen Irishman, Mobygames>
"Let's take Crysis for example. It failed. In sales I mean. It was mostly because of their marketing campaign: "You won't be able to play this game. There is no way you can play this game. Dream on bitch!" that contributed to their lack of sales, but in my eyes it just shows that PC gamers (aside from a few tech junkies) just cannot afford to be up-to-date with the latest gimmicks like DirectX 10 compatible graphic cards, five gigs of ram and Vista. And that is the fault that PC gaming has been making lately. It forces you to upgrade constantly. And that is why it is far more comfortable to own a console. So the way I see it, these kinds of mainstream games will move away from PC's to consoles. "
"But what has it to do with RPGs?" Think about it. It is far more likely to see an RPG without any combat in this hypothetical future PC scene than in the mainstream console scene. "B-but, killing monsters is the fundamental element of RPGs!" No, it is not. Many RPGs have been only about exploration, quite a few about skills and stuff, and currently RPGs are pretty much about choices and consequences since outside from the RPG genre no one really deals with this area of game design" -
</blockquote>
I concur with both the above observations and perhaps it is why sites such as sourceforge.net, opengameart.org and freegamedev.net exist so small groups of people can make games without pressuring themselves to commercial success and make the kinds of games they want to play.
Just my 2 paise. Would love to hear people's thoughts on the above.
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First of about your allegations of Cyrsis not selling...
According to The simExchange, the NPD Group reported that Crysis moved 86,633 retail units in the first two weeks of its release in North America[32], but while it beat their expectations, the sales were considered overall disappointing.[33] Two months later, on Electronic Arts earnings conference of the quarter, it was reported that Crysis has reached the 1 million units mark, and that it has exceeded their expectations.[34] On the other hand Cevat Yerli on an interview with PC Play in April 2008 stated that he was disappointed to see the game leading the charts in piracy and because of that his studio would not produce any more PC exclusives, as he believed a game such as Crysis would sell four to five times more copies if it was released on consoles.[35] Piracy figures released by TorrentFreak indicate that Crysis was indeed one of the most pirated PC games of the year.[36] In June 2008 Cevat stated that while their hopes haven't been met, the game has reached their real expectations[37] and in August he added that despite of its $22 million budget the game has turned profitable for them.[38] By May 2010 the game has sold over 3 million units (and its standalone expansion about 1.5 million units)[39] making it one of the best selling PC games of all time.
From Wikipedia
Agreed a commercial games goal is to sell copies and make the highest profit margin possible. A crappy game that sells great is considered a success by the suits while a great game that sells poorly is considered a failure by the suits. Indie games don't have the budgets to compete with the big boys, and the big boys bottom line first approach can often times negatively effect the quality of games. Very few indie developers have the art, programming, music and business skills to pull of a desktop tower defense level hit. Games like WOW have dozens of people working on them with multi-million dollar budgets for both development and advertising. The for guys that work on a game in their spare time and have to come to sites like this to try to scounge for some useful game art for thier games are just out gunned. I know I am one of them. lol
All video games needs some sort of combat function. Thier is a saying that a hero is only as good as his greatest enemy. Every protagonist needs an antagonist. Your enemy is not always goombas or giant three headed dragons. In some games you have to battle against the clock, in some games you have to outwit the AI, in some games you have to maintain a sense of timing and rhythum, ain in some crappy games have you battling against the control scheme. I believe the appeal to western rpgs is the leveling up option and getting stronger every time you play. The what power can I get next feeling it was keeps you interested. You usually game experience points by taking out the randomly occuring enemies. A game where all you did was skill grind would get old very fast.
I also beleive that many games have unnecessary amounts of blood, gore, scantaly clad women, hi res graphics, and vugar language in order to give thier games a hard edge, and to help sell more copies. People think that "adult" games = rated for mature. I believe that the best games have little to non of this stuff, but these types of selling points are needed to sell games to the older demographics. Every body is simply not interested in playing Nintendogs or Brain Age.
There are certianly differences between western and eastern rpgs. See below
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_differences_in_role-playing_video_games#Cultural_differences
I agree with anon about crysis, it definately sold well, there is a sequel, and that is generally a pretty good iindication that it did well enough to justify doing again.
As for combat, there are plenty of great games that don't have combat, puzzle games for instance, and I think there is certainly room for more of them. The main restriction on those kinds of freeform exploration games has been the amount of work required to create all that content, however as procedural content generation becomes more widely available I expect we will see more games where just exploring is a large part of the fun
Dear Anonymous,
First of all that is/was not my quote (about the Crysis article) but the guy who wrote the article. I haven't played the game so doesn't matter to me really whether it sold or not. Just edited it again so its known perfectly. For some reason don't see the quote function in the UI so didn't do that .
As far as the other things are concerned, not necessarily. If you play adventure games you have all the time in the world to explore and try out different things. Not every gamer likes to grind just to get new powers etc.
I, for e.g. can be aptly described in the words of a great trekker "My ongoing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life forms and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before." - ok badly ripped from 'Star Trek' but still that is what I want as a gamer, to have new experiences and don't need any blood/gore.
If you look at the casual game scenario, 'farmsville', 'virtual villager series', 'castaway' and 'wandering willows' are some of the games that have sidestepped any kind of violence. One could argue about farmsville for the social aspect but not the others.
Games like 'RAMA' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rama_(video_game) also sidestep it or/and Sam and Max.
There is room for levelling up without grinding stuff and getting more freeform exploration where perhaps finding things, putting things together and fetch quests give levelling up. There is lot of room for innovation there.