tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031504049648467795.post4111802313352788550..comments2023-07-05T07:37:17.264-07:00Comments on LazerBlade Blog: MultiplayerAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18138205856634039766noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031504049648467795.post-67182200606482528942013-03-13T09:10:40.897-07:002013-03-13T09:10:40.897-07:00And of course, getting someone who can figure out ...And of course, getting someone who can figure out why the other game was a success can be part of throwing money at a ripoff too I guess. ;)Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18138205856634039766noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031504049648467795.post-50634997790757754902013-03-13T09:09:57.059-07:002013-03-13T09:09:57.059-07:00I won't deny that measuring common elements in...I won't deny that measuring common elements in successful products can be an effective way to create another successful product. The issue is that in the games industry companies lose money by not measuring enough of them deeply enough. If people bought game A which had thing X in it, a company will put thing A in their game. But when the people bought game A because they liked the way thing X mixed with thing Y, that company will get the short straw financially as well as artistically.<br /><br />Also, if people bought game A because it had a ton of really intelligent marketing, then you can rip off and throw money at as many pieces of that game as you want without getting the same sales figures.<br /><br />And I would like to point out that the Matrix and Star Wars were both big budget popcorn flicks AND artistic story pieces. Everyone might not have seen those movies for the art and story, but by including such art and story they expanded their audience and became even larger successes.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18138205856634039766noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031504049648467795.post-21435100694874336422013-03-13T08:41:00.226-07:002013-03-13T08:41:00.226-07:00You pointed out that understanding engagement fact...You pointed out that understanding engagement factors is probably the hidden art in selling games... and you're probably right in saying that most of the popular market models don't measure those factors.<br /><br />However, I disagree very strongly with the idea that "you have to do more than rip off a few ideas from another success and throw money at it." Look at the top 40 music charts; look at movies like Avatar, Wall E, and The Dark Knight... it doesn't take a market mogul to figure out that the majority of the population is not artistically discerning, and that even the most awkward combination of the common elements (Abraham Lincoln's Doctor's Dog) in the most widely-purchased products can be directly converted into money. Even the existence of Pandora proves that no human creativity is needed to accurately predict which new songs an individual listener will want to hear, given a sufficient statistical sample of his or her listening preferences.<br /><br />The reason Call of Duty itself never interested me is because it is one in a long line of first-person-battle-field-simulators-in-a-box that started (in my subjective experience) with Mech Warrior 2. Who knows what *that* game was based on... and yet it is a stunning commercial success.<br /><br />My pet theory is that, just like in the broader software world, the success of a game has more to do with the success of its publicity than with any of the factors reviewers consider important (playability, story integration, graphics quality, etc).<br /><br />That said... since most gamers are "nerds," they are increasingly entrenched in ideological fiefdoms surrounding specific, high-profile reviewers like Gabe and Tycho, which means that game-makers who pay attention to the evaluation criteria used by high-profile reviewers will end up ahead of the market. And while I can't agree that the statistics are being misapplied today, I definitely agree that it would be a serious business mistake to continue using them over the course of the next 3-5 years... or at least until future research starts to reflect the influence of these primary publicity sources.<br /><br />I'll round off my comments on this topic by circling back to an example of the "businessman's perspective" I mentioned in my earlier comment; note how the article strongly implies that money is a sufficient measure of a product's quality (particularly with the quote, "Personally, I love revenue at this stage because it’s the best validation that we’re delivering value for which customers are willing to pay. It’s a five-star affirmation of our existence"):<br /><br />http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130307212923-41485049-the-new-sales-cycle-of-enterprise-software?_mSplash=1&rs=false<br /><br />This statement flies in the face of the artist's claim I made earlier, that the majority of the population lacks artistic discernment, and that true quality isn't always 'whatever the most people will buy;' but at the end of the day, I [can't bring myself to disagree] with either of these contradictory positions.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031504049648467795.post-91828822751951477152013-03-11T10:24:44.799-07:002013-03-11T10:24:44.799-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031504049648467795.post-57691678665754115752013-03-11T10:09:41.289-07:002013-03-11T10:09:41.289-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031504049648467795.post-88361570947696794072013-03-06T12:30:54.742-08:002013-03-06T12:30:54.742-08:00It's not just about doing what makes the most ...It's not just about doing what makes the most money vs what is artistically satisfying though. People buy art for one thing, and even keeping the art out of this we can still see this kind of MO hurting the industry.<br /><br />Of course companies assert that they're doing the intelligent thing given their goals. There is a difference between knowing what your audience wants and selling it to them, and spending a hundred mil on a COD clone without understanding its core engagement factors though. That's why I brought up Angry Birds, which did not have competitive multiplayer, realistic high fidelity visuals, a successful game with similar mechanics, or a number of things considered necessary to sell in business circles. There is also Minecraft(to break the multiplayer mold and address the core problem.) In order to create a hit product, you have to do more than rip off a few ideas from another success and throw money at it. What a lot of these companies are doing is basically gambling with millions of dollars and making their bets based on misapplied stats.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18138205856634039766noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7031504049648467795.post-80181640356114835092013-03-06T12:17:33.860-08:002013-03-06T12:17:33.860-08:00There is an ongoing internal conflict of interest ...There is an ongoing internal conflict of interest for the professional programmer because, while the businessman inside him says, "Find out what the most people want and be the first to give it to them;" the artisan says, "Find an interesting problem and solve it in an elegant fashion without subjecting yourself to boredom." These conflicting goals influence which languages a programmer chooses to learn (first), where he work and even *whether* he works, at least in his capacity as a programmer. It also manifests in professional relationships, where the highly "skilled" professional programmers who can "write more lines of code in a day" look down on the prodigious master craftsmen who eschew the "barbaric" practicalities of moneymaking. The result is that you have software/publishing companies like the kind that demands "multiplayer" games, juxtaposed with the Open Source community.<br /><br />Of course there are outliers who can make money with products like Facebook, but I (or at least, the software companies) will guarantee that they aren't making as *much* money as someone who maintains his core competency and his primary market.<br /><br />To understand the conflict of interest more clearly, let's consider the quintessential salaried hacker. She endlessly complains about "unreasonable" deadlines, having to (write and!) maintain shoddy code, and that her bosses "don't understand software" - even if if she works at software a company. Worse yet, she probably earns less than another programmer at the same company who designs less elegant solutions, simply because he codes faster. Our programmer innately understands the plight of "starving artists" and professional musicians, who have equal difficulty finding a way to "get paid for what they do."<br /><br />I've gone back and forth in my head, justifying the businessman (who can say that the efficacy of his coding philosophy is proven by numbers in the form of money) and the artisan (who can say that the efficacy of *his* coding philosophy is proven by the universal adoption of free software like Chrome and Ubuntu) in turn; but, at the end of the day, I have to admit that the first person who can mediate a resolution in this war will probably get rich.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com