LESSONS LEARNED FROM MIGS

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Sailerius
did someone say angels
3214
I'm out of the country at the moment to attend the Montreal International Game Summit, which is a game industry conference going on today and tomorrow. Since most people on this forum are aspiring game developers, I thought I'd post my experience and thoughts here. The talks were all given by people in the industry and they all had interesting things to say.

Day 1

The Morning
I woke up to a pounding on the door at the ungodly hour of 7 AM. After quickly getting dressed, we were off to the conference. The conference was held in the Hilton Bonadventure Hotel, a venue so oozing with class that I'm sure I'd never be able to afford staying in.

Everything was very professional. We were directed to elevators, where there were attendants waiting on us that sent us up to the conference, where registration took place. Because the first keynote was to be delivered in Japanese, we each had to pick up a translator and headset.

With about 10 minutes to spare, we all decided we wanted coffee and scoured the hotel for a Starbucks or at least some place selling coffee. Andrew, Chris, and I decided to give up on the pursuit of caffeiney goodness in order to make the first keynote on time.

Keynote: Fostering Cultural Diversity in Game Development (Yoichi Wada, CEO of Square-Enix)
After an introduction delivered in Canadian moonspeak, Yoichi Wada took the stage and discussed Square-Enix's business plan with regard to game development worldwide and the challenges posed by being a global developer.

One of the points he touched upon was how Square-Enix now holds offices across the world, which all work on different titles. He spoke about how they must balance simultaneously broadening their market while not losing sight of their target audience. Games made in America tend to appeal to an American audience, and Japanese games tend to appeal to a Japanese audience.

"There is no such thing as the 'global' community; there's no place in the world called 'Global.'"

Having little experience or knowledge about the corporate end of game development, I didn't find his talk as interesting as I had hoped. It was interesting to hear his take on the future of the gaming industry, especially as game development companies begin to spread out and distribute development across the world.

After a quick question/answer session, the keynote ended. Our group split up to go to different sessions, as multiple were going on simultaneously. Andrew and I went together to a seminar on the importance of marketing in game development.

Why You can Make the Best Game Ever and It Won't Even Matter (Jesse Divnich, EEDAR)
This conference set the mood for the rest of the day. It presented stark facts on the status of the game industry that woke me up from my having-only-gotten-2-hours-of-sleep daze and made me look at the state of the industry in a new way.

The speaker works for a company called Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR), which has reportedly played every video game in the past 10 years and catalogs all relevant data on it--marketing budget, total sales in a given country, main character's gender, main character's hair color, et cetera. EEDAR collates this data and licenses it out to studios that pay (a lot) for it, for use in collecting marketing data.

His point was simple and backed up by his company's data: the quality of a game doesn't even hold a candle to the amount of money that goes into its marketing budget.

Jesse touched on several case studies, including why Transformers 2 was a commercial success in spite of being one of the worst-rated movies of the decade (indeed, it's apparently the worst-rated movies in the list of top-selling movies of all time).

Most striking (and depressing) was the fact that on average, the amount of money spent on advertising had three times as much of an impact upon a game's sales than its review scores.

There were a couple anomalies in his data, for example the case of Rock Band versus Guitar Hero. In spite of having spent the same amount of money on advertising, Guitar Hero continues to outsell Rock Band more than 2 to 1, which he attributes to how Guitar Hero's ads all target a general audience (including the family), whereas Rock band's advertisements target the hardcore gamer only.

In addition, he attributed the PS3's initial failure to launch not with its high cost, but with the subpar marketing it received. He showed us the traumatizing baby commercials that aired when the PS3 first launched, videos I had long since purged from my memory...
(Note: If you haven't seen these commercials before, don't look them up. Seriously. Not even just to see how bad they are. They're terrifying.)

In the following question/answer session, I asked him what advice he has for aspiring game developers now that we know that the amount of effort we put into making a game good is nearly irrelevant when compared to the size of the game's marketing budget. His response was to connect with the community, to get to know the players, the target audience, and other developers. It might have a small impact on sales, and you might help it spread by word of mouth.

It wasn't the answer I was hoping for. I left feeling rather bummed out, but it was a reality check that I suppose was coming eventually. He was a friendly guy and gave out his business card, inviting indie designers to email him if they needed help with anything. I just may in the near future.

(I'll finish up day 1 asap!)

***

So that this isn't just a topic about me rambling on about my experiences, I'll start with a discussion topic: How does it make you feel as a game developer knowing that, in the grand scheme of things, the quality of a game means almost nothing when it comes to how successful it will be?
That all sounds very interesting and like an awesome experience!

I think within our particular niche as game developers(most of us use a maker), quality does have more of an impact on our commercial indy games. No-one wants to buy a game from a no-name developer if they can't try it out. Now there was that one game (I know it starts with an Am but I can't remember the exact title) made with RPG Maker that was commercial and quite a success. But the general consensus among RPG maker users was that it was horribly shit. (From my memories of the demo, I'd have to agree.) Imagine what a huge success it would have been if it was good! Free advertising among a very focused demographic - people would be playing it, and you'd have to play it to keep up. (this happened to a lot of people with Twilight.) It would have been an even bigger success than it was, and then the sequel would have sold, whether it was good or not(and whatever sequels after that). Having said that, it's hard to gauge how much affect it would have.

However, for large-scale developers. this is a sad fact, for players and developers. But remember, quality can generate advertising possibilities when you consider things like E3. (Scribblenauts, for instance.)
How does it make you feel as a game developer knowing that, in the grand scheme of things, the quality of a game means almost nothing when it comes to how successful it will be?


There are so many exceptions to this. Though it sounds like you just discovered that gaming is becoming yet another hollywood, I'm not sure what you expected other than "go indie" Because thats the only way to keep away from the horrors of the gaming industry.
post=107995
How does it make you feel as a game developer knowing that, in the grand scheme of things, the quality of a game means almost nothing when it comes to how successful it will be?
There are so many exceptions to this. Though it sounds like you just discovered that gaming is becoming yet another hollywood, I'm not sure what you expected other than "go indie" Because thats the only way to keep away from the horrors of the gaming industry.
...and successes!

Please continue with these posts. This is interesting!
Really great stuff here. And those PS3 commercials were god awful.
I would really like a guy in the industry to talk to =[
So uh, who here is actually considering of going into the game industry one day?
LouisCyphre
can't make a bad game if you don't finish any games
4523
* Chaos raises his hand and awaits his mockery.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
post=109060
So uh, who here is actually considering of going into the game industry one day?

I'm not interested in big business, but the thought of going commercial is not alien in my/our mind. It wouldn't be this year or anything, but within the next five years maybe. We'll probably finish up our current, er, line* and then do something totally unrelated as a commercial entity. (I say "we" because I can't really see myself selling anything not made with Karsu as he brings so much to the table, and I also can't see myself working as closely with other people, especially now that we have a completed game!)

*wut idk

also hooray for run-ons
This conference does sound very interesting, looking forward to more :)
I wouldn't go so far as to say the quality of a game means almost nothing(though i'm no expert), seeing as it's a pretty important part in getting your game noticed, but i understand your(and the speakers') point.
It's sad that advertisements and essentially a lot of money = success, but i suppose that's the way a lot of things go.
I wish Imagine games would pass on their money+advertisements to better(and that doesn't take much) companies.

I looked up that baby advertisement and i wish i hadn't :(
I should remake HR in 3D and sell it on Xbox Live or something. People keep lying to me telling me that they would have paid for it in its current form anyway!
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