• 3Dec 09

  Colliding into the cost walls of game development.

  A subject I feel is worth discussion in regard to gaming is costs, everyone who cares to take note should know by now that costs are playing a major role in the current generation, so I think it is worth looking at it to see where this is going.

  The problem is it's difficult to discuss costs without fanboys abusing it for what they think is some sort of ownage. This is an industry problem that is affecting all platforms, yet this won't stop them from using it to declare ownage against another platform. Fanboys aren't interested in the long term affect of changes in the industry, they only concern themselves with the short term and whether in their eyes it enables them to declare superiority.

  Initially I thought there was only one cost wall in gaming, that when we reached it things would changed dramatically. I realise now there are in fact two costs walls; and we have already passed one of them.

  We passed the first cost wall this generation, which many people should recognise by now. The cost to develop games makes exclusivity impractical, with today's technology expectations why risk not breaking even with an unproven IP by targeting one platform? Target multiple platforms and you reduce the risk of current generation development considerably. Hence why this generation is largely dominated by cross platform development, 3rd party exclusivity is quickly becoming a thing of the past, at least in regard to current generation quality games.

  The problem with cross platform development is all the individual merits of a platform are ignored, games are built with the lowest common denominators in mind to ensure broad compatibility across all target platforms. PS3 in particular is aware of the affects of this as Cell is largely seen as a burden rather than an opportunity. If you are developing with multiple platforms in mind why take advantage of hardware only one platform will benefit from? Why invest additional resources into what is at this time the 3rd smallest console audience?

  So Cell capability gets ignored in favour of ensuring cross platform compatibility, same with PC hardware advantages, same with any unique perks a platform has to offer. All platforms are equal in that regard, big budget development simply isn't practical when it comes to exclusives.

  This common ground was changed when the 1st party got involved. Consoles lifeblood is differentiating themselves from the competition, take that away and why buy a PS3 over a 360? Just go for the cheaper model and access pretty much the same games at the same quality. This is of course unacceptable for the 1st party, so they made considerably investments in differentiating themselves from the competition. This has taken the form of bought exclusives, bought exclusive features and bought exclusive DLC. All this spending is costing the 1st party considerably compared to operation costs the previous generation, but it is what they have to do to stand out this generation.

  Here is where the fanboy problem appears, what was once common ground has been distorted by 1st party involvement. PC does not have a 1st party to take care of it, so when the 1st party supplement their platform the PC appears to be lacking the same sort of exclusive content and games, therefore in fanboys eyes the platform is failing. We are all in the same boat, the only difference is someone is making regular trips to help out the consoles, consoles appear to be surviving the situation better when they are under the exact same issues as PC gaming.

  When you look at a consoles exclusive lineup it consists almost entirely of 1st and 2nd party exclusives, 3rd party developers have almost totally abandoned console exclusivity and the 1st party knows it. Fanboys of course aren't interested in that, all they see is consoles have more blockbuster exclusives than PC, so in their eyes consoles are doing much better than PC. This makes starting discussions on this topic very difficult, fanboys are not interested in the bigger picture or what is going on behind the scenes. All they care about is PS3 is getting big budget games like Uncharted 2 while costs are drive big budget PC developers like Crytek cross platform, therefore they argue consoles > PC.

  The thing is if you actually perform a comparison between PC and console; you will find PC is actually surviving this much better. At this time PC has a significant lead in AAA and AA exclusives, there is no such thing as 3rd party on PC; but these sort of games fall under a similar category. These developers chose to develop for PC, they chose to remain exclusive of their own free will. That means more than any Sony funded big budget exclusive, Naughty Dog gave PS3 Uncharted 2 because Sony told them to and funded the game, these developers remain PC exclusive because they personally felt it was worth it.

  My theory behind this is consoles static nature encourages high utilization of the hardware, everyone shares the same tech so developers are expected to use it. This of course pushes up development costs each generation, leading to the cross platform jump this generation. PC has variable hardware, developers can choose what hardware install base they will develop for. This enables Valve, Stardock, Blizzard and other developers to produce low cost games they couldn't get away with on consoles outside of PSN and XBOX LIVE, enabling more developers to remain exclusive to PC.

  These games can remain exclusive because they have a reasonable budget, something fanboys feel the need to point out when boasting about the $20+ million development budget developers invested into their exclusives. Well, to be more accurate the $20+ million Sony invested in their own platform. It is quite ironic someone would make fun of mostly low budget games remaining on PC and boast about the big budget games appearing on consoles, in other words they are gloating about the very thing that cost them 3rd party exclusives in the first place.

  They aren't interested in sustainable development. A game like Sins of the Solar Empire is an example of a low budget game, $1 million in development costs, going on to become AAA and very successful. Stardock made back millions on that game after only an initial investment of one million, that is impressive. But tell this to one of these console fanboys and they will turn their noses up at it, nothing less than an investment of $10+ million and sales in the millions are impressive anymore. Again they wonder where their 3rd party exclusives went.

  So this is where we are this generation, PC takes the lead in 3rd party exclusivity while consoles have to supplement their exclusive lineup. Then the fanboys boast about developers bringing blockbuster exclusives to their platform and not PC, well, to be more accurate their 1st party bringing blockbuster exclusives. Most western developers in their right mind won't invest that sort of money and remain exclusive these days. But at the end of the day people don't care where the exclusives came from as long as they get exclusives, all they care about is Sony and Microsoft are spending the money to bring Halo's and Uncharted's to consoles; were as PC isn't getting those sort of exclusives anywhere near as often.

  This is going to be the face of this generation for the most part, that is; until we hit the 2nd cost wall.

  The second cost wall is going to have a considerable impact on the console market, potentially devastating. If the games market continues to go down this path of increased development costs then inevitably they will hit this problem.

  High budget games remain exclusive to a console because the 1st party need to differentiate themselves, as said if they don't differentiate themselves why pick console X over console Y? The thing is there is a reason developers went cross platform and that reason is still affecting 1st and 2nd party exclusives. Uncharted 2 apparently cost $20 million to make, this game was kept exclusive to the smallest console install base. This is very high risk if you planned on actually making a decent profit from your game, with costs like this you really should go cross platform; but of course the 1st party won't do that. Right now they can get away with it, but what if Uncharted 2 cost $40 million to make? $60 million even? Would they still be able to make a return off the game then?

  Costs are expected to double next generation, even then we are seeing games reach and exceed these expected budgets this generation like MW2. When blockbuster games cost twice as much to make; can you really limit that game to only one audience? On a consoles launch when the install base is small? Inevitably the cost to make these blockbuster titles are going to exceed the ability of a consoles audience to buy enough copies to break even. Maybe with a big name game like GT5 you can get away with massive budgets, but not with less popular games and new IPs, you cannot get away with it with the majority of games.

  Cross platform games will be able to provide those sort of sales, so it is foreseeable that one day cross platform games will exceed the budgets and quality of exclusives. This is the second cost wall, when consoles are no longer able to provide the sort of sales to justify blockbuster exclusives. When this happens consoles will no longer be able to differentiate themselves using games, they will be back in the boat were PC is now; only they won't have PCs 3rd party appeal to fall back on.

  They are given two options when this happens, either find a new way to differentiate themselves or take the cost hit to keep these games exclusive, again increasing the costs for them to operate. Either way consoles cannot supplement their lineup forever, sooner or later the costs will catch up with them and they will lose their means of differentiating themselves using games. What then? How will consoles compete then? Now you know why I called this potentially devastating, the entire console business model is due for a shake up. It would already be happening now if they didn't supplement their lineup, they are just putting off the inevitable.

  As for PC it is not all bad news, we don't have a 1st party but we do have stake holders. Intel and AMD are stake holders, so are Nvidia and ATI. PC gaming makes up a fairly large chunk of the demand for their higher end retail hardware, it is unlikely they will just sit back and allow all of modern gaming on PC to become console limited. If you look into it you will note these companies are sponsoring the implementation of new technology into games, most notably Nvidia's GPU computing physics and ATI getting DX11 into games. They will sponsor the implementation of new tech because demand for their new hardware is reliant on it, this is where future pushes in PC gaming technology will come from. Consoles have reacted with short term solutions, how they plan to adapt to this changing environment has yet to be seen.

  I don't know what the future holds, but by looking at gaming today I can get an idea of where it might be heading. If you are a PC gamer don't let fanboy boasting get to you, this is a temporary advantage; which as explained is going to fade away at some point. Try not to place your loyalty in developers who push technology, inevitable these developers will be forced cross platform by their high development costs. Look to the low cost developers, those investing in sustainable game development that can afford to remain exclusive to one platform. Even if they go cross platform like Valve did, recognise when they still favour PC development over console orientation.

  Now that I have gotten all these thoughts down, let's see what the future holds?

  • Posted Dec 3, 2009 10:12 am PT
  • Category: Games
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• 18Nov 09

  Exploitation of DLC getting worse

  I really have to fear for the future of gaming. When I made predictions of how the industry would change this generation I'd say they have been fairly accurate so far, however I didn't account for how blatant developers would be about their profit increasing methods.

  Dragon Age is a good game, but you have to admit it is beyond cheeky what they did with DLC. Most developers hide the fact that they cut content out of the game in order to sell it back to the player later. Dragon Age actually has characters in the release that tell you to buy DLC in order to complete the quest, it was obvious the game was designed with the intention to exclude content for additional milking. It doesn't help either that Modern Warfare 2 reportedly already has the DLC on the disk, purchasing it only unlocks what the player already has installed.

  These methods are beyond ridiculous but are becoming acceptable ways of acquiring additional money by the games industry. They get away with it because gullible consumers pay for it, they spend millions on DLC; which only encourages this activity. This generation is frighteningly becoming about paying more for less, it is only a matter of time before someone really pushes the bar as to what is acceptable. I don't know what that may be; but I feel we are only at the beginning of DLC being exploited.

  This is happening far too quickly, I didn't expect desperate measures of increasing returns like this until the next generation. It is depressing to ponder what else will change in gaming by the next generation, will the industry be recognisable to gamers today? It is hard to be optimistic when the current generation feels largely inferior to the previous one, technology has advanced but the industry feels like it is getting increasingly worse as it goes down this unsustainable path.

  I expect we will hit the cost wall at some point, forcing the industry to rethink gaming. However how much are we expected to put up with before then?

  • Posted Nov 18, 2009 3:22 pm PT
  • Category: Games
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• 17Apr 09

  Thoughts on post platform choice anxiety.

  I saw a video on YouTube talking about the platform war, he pretty much summed it up as being people with post purchase anxiety trying to justify that they made the correct purchase decision. Whether or not that is the case I didn't attempt to consider, what I thought about was how PC gaming fit into that picture of the system wars.

  You know what? It doesn't fit.

  If you're a informed rig builder the closet thing you get to post purchase anxiety is if you upgraded at the right time, outside of that the only choice concerns is what games to play. There is no worries about game selection because everything you could play before changing your hardware still works, only better. PC gaming has a massive game library spanning decades, most of it doesn't need special backwards compatibility care; and for the ones that do there is software and services available to you.

  I'm not concerned about getting value out of my hardware purchases because every component I use for gaming will also improve the performance of my day to day tasks. Even GPUs have a noteworthy impact on my day to day performance such as Vista 3D interface acceleration, Folding@Home GPU performance, DVD & Blu-ray hardware acceleration and even GPU accelerated transcoding when I'm converting something for my media player or YouTube.

  So when you think about it PC gamers are in a pretty comfortable position regarding platform choices. Our game selection doesn't get reset every generation, our gaming orientated hardware purchases have multiple day to day applications and we are not reliant on a company like Sony or Microsoft to make decisions on our behalf on what we can do with our PC.

  It makes you wonder why PC gaming is even in the platform war, it just keeps doing its thing regardless of who wins or loses the gaming platform war each generation.

  • Posted Apr 17, 2009 8:00 pm PT
  • Category: Games
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