Recently, I had a conversation with Nick about the business of console download games. As you know, I like the business model, especially for the developer starting out, but I began thinking more about commonalities between the three console offerings, and what I believe would improve the experience for the consumer, and in return, benefit the developer. The following are my conclusions.
1) Better support for user-generated content
Microsoft does a great job at supplying robust libraries and a tight platform for development, but as far as I know, all three consoles have no unified way of supporting user-generated content for their downloaded games. The usual answer is for the developer to supply their own server, but considering the security and authentication requirements to do so, this is simply not an affordable approach for a small budget game. I don’t believe the blocker here is the cost of hosting on the platform holder’s side — all Xbox LIVE users have a small amount of user space online, for example; you just can’t use that space to share content readily and easily.
Instead, the issue is legal and political — how do the platform holders protect themselves from offensive user-generated content? The answer is the same way any other online networking site does it — via EULA’s, and easy levers to report and control offensive material.
I’d like to see a simple way for downloaded games to be able to post even a small amount of data for sharing in the game; available even when the owning player is offline. If any platform supported that, I believe you’d see incredibly creative games flowing directly from that — in the meantime, only games that have a large budget (and probably a different agenda than a typical arcade game) have the luxury of such a feature, and all other games with user-generated content use crippled features such as sharing levels only with friends, and only when they’re online.
2) Less focus on retro games and advergaming
Let’s be honest — when you download a game that’s twenty years old, you had great memories of it and are expecting to be thrust back into the nostalgia. Instead, the game is incredibly difficult, and man do the graphics suck. When your new downloads page is filled with these offerings, or poor quality advergames, you’re going to be skeptical about coming back to try new games; you may even miss that great original indie title you’ve been waiting for.
In a nutshell — the poor quality games are drowning out and hurting the very games that the platforms are trying to push.
To be fair — I think the Virtual Console is making great use of their awesome back library, and WiiWare is a nice separation between retro and original games (although in general the Shopping Channel is pretty clunky and slow).
3) More focus on instant play value
Even though I understand Microsoft and Sony’s strategy of promoting their download offerings as a source of creative and “new” types of games, I somehow feel they’re doing at the expense of certain potential. New styles of play on an old interface (the controller) often necessitates a learning curve, and this learning curve creates a barrier for customers. Instead, I think they should be focusing on games that are instantly fun — exactly as Microsoft’s name calls for — consumers want arcade games!
I believe that Sony and Microsoft have a captive audience begging for more games that are instantly engaging, regardless of the genre. They do have an appetite for the unconvential, quirky game, but those games need to be interspersed with arcade racing, fighting, sports, puzzle (etc) games. I’m not talking about Project Gotham Racing — I’m talking about Rock N’ Roll Racing. Less depth — more fun.
So, in my humble opinion, combining these three factors would create a download service filled with fun titles that everyone in the family would want to try out. They are high quality, instantly fun, don’t require a deep knowledge of old games to enjoy them, and every once in a while, incredibly creative. As an owner of a next-gen console, you’d be encouraged to show these games off at parties and play with your friends — after all, there’s almost no learning curve to most of them. What’s not to like?
With regards to advergaming, a lot of advergames are poor quality. One of the more popular examples of a poor quality game is Sneak King by Burger King.
The quality of the game is probably the biggest problem. But a second problem is what Seth Godin calls “permission marketing”. I don’t give marketers permission to show me billboards in real life. Billboards are ugly and gaudy and generally detract from my usual environment. Commercials interrupt me when I really just want to be watching the current TV show.
I subscribe to Apple’s RSS feed for trailers. And I watch Nothing But Trailers on HDNet. But I don’t really want to watch trailers when I’m in a movie theater. I want to watch the film that I paid to see.
I don’t think game developers have figured out how to get the gamer’s permission to present them with ads.
I think certain MMO’s do a pretty bang up job of product placement. They make special branded items for sale within the game, giving the player a slight bonus. Nike shoes in an online basketball game, for example, or the Mini Cooper kart purchasable within Kart Rider Korea.
Heck my lawyers now have a virtual law firm within Second Life. I think it’s perfectly acceptable to integrate products within the context of the game, and companies are slowing learning to take advantage of that.
Of course, there will always be an appetite for explicit advertising; we’ll just have to see if players will get adjusted to it and finally accept it, as we have with online banners. You use Facebook, right?
[...] wrote a comment about this over at Jamie’s blog. The quality of the game is probably the biggest problem. But a second problem is what Seth Godin [...]
I haven’t gotten around to playing the Korean MMOs or Second Life. I’m not sure I am the target audience there.
I stopped paying attention to banner ads in the 90s.
I don’t think Facebook has figured out their revenue model there. In terms of permission marketing, I am a part of the Sony and Toyota F1 groups. In those cases, it’s a win-win-win situation. I get info about products I am interested in on my own terms, Sony and Toyota get to market to me, and Facebook gets paid.
There is value there. I don’t know where the value is for me with billboards.
I disagree with a lot of this. For a gaming-literate audience, less depth = less fun. What you really want is less complication, which is a different thing.
Playing just another racing game with different skins — or whatever — is boring.
I agree, though, that instant play value is important. However, this doesn’t mean the game design has to be a retread. All games are about teaching things to the player; the question is whether they are teaching something the player is interested in, and if it comes at an appropriate pace. So when you talk about a new design versus an old one, the difference is just in the magnitude and pace of the things that are being taught. With good design, a new type of gameplay can be communicated to the player while maintaining instant play value. The problem is that most designers are still in the mindset of adding relatively tedious tutorials that you need to slog through *before you get to play the actual game*, and this situation sucks. (Though it is a lot better than the norm when I started playing games — which was not to have a tutorial or any kind of ramp-up, and to just drop you into the deep end.)
Portal is a good example of a game that is new while providing instant play value. I like to think that my upcoming game is like this too, but we will see what people think once they start playing it.
I think you hit the nail on the head with less complication rather than less depth. The creative games on XBLA (Eets included) could definitely benefit from that sort of philosophy, and there will always be an insatiable appetite new types of gameplay.
However, I disagree with the sentiment that we only want new styles of play, and creating another “typical” arcade game would be boring.
We’re at a point where we can improve and learn from old games. It’s not “just another racing game” — it’s one with better usability, better value, and more connected than the games that preceded it. Players would love to play Rock N’ Roll racing again — not the original, but a new one with vastly improved user experience and online play. That to me is not boring — that’s bringing out the true potential of gamer nostalgia.
As Nick once said: “we can build the games we thought we were playing 20 years ago”.
Case in point: Castle Crashers is probably one of the most anticipated XBLA games lined up. They’re not creating a new game mechanic, nor are they adding a ton more depth to the game — they’re building Golden Axe, with vastly improved… everything.
I’m not saying that updating old game concepts is a bad idea. I really liked Pac-Man C.E. (and to a lesser extent, Jetpac Refuelled). I just don’t think retro upgrades should be considered the ideal form of an XBLA game. It’s one good form of game, sure. But at the present time, small-game outlets like Arcade are one of the best avenues for producing new kinds of games; to disregard that potential would be damaging to the entire games industry.
Comment by: carlos
November 1st, 2007 at 9:08 pm
I like;s sony current support for user genareted content, look at Little Big Planet
Jonathan: Interesting that you mentioned only the games that are literal upgrades to old titles. Don’t get me wrong — I don’t think there should be no innovation in game-types. I just think the distribution curve is skewed in a way that actually hurts the new types of games.
In my opinion, if we released 1 crazy innovative game for every 5 vastly improved old game concepts (which almost by definition have innovation within itself), we’d see an increase in sales for everyone.
That means a better foundation for more innovation — not less.
Regarding Little Big Planet: As I mentioned in my post, only games funded by large publishers (in this case, Sony) have the means to properly support user-generated content. You’ll never see Everyday Shooter with a level editor and level database that others can upload / download / rate because the cost is prohibitive for small developers.
Let’s hope the platform holders prove me wrong and make it easy for everyone.
News
Improving the Console Downloadable Games business
Date: 25th October 2007
Recently, I had a conversation with Nick about the business of console download games. As you know, I like the business model, especially for the developer starting out, but I began thinking more about commonalities between the three console offerings, and what I believe would improve the experience for the consumer, and in return, benefit the developer. The following are my conclusions.
1) Better support for user-generated content
Microsoft does a great job at supplying robust libraries and a tight platform for development, but as far as I know, all three consoles have no unified way of supporting user-generated content for their downloaded games. The usual answer is for the developer to supply their own server, but considering the security and authentication requirements to do so, this is simply not an affordable approach for a small budget game. I don’t believe the blocker here is the cost of hosting on the platform holder’s side — all Xbox LIVE users have a small amount of user space online, for example; you just can’t use that space to share content readily and easily.
Instead, the issue is legal and political — how do the platform holders protect themselves from offensive user-generated content? The answer is the same way any other online networking site does it — via EULA’s, and easy levers to report and control offensive material.
I’d like to see a simple way for downloaded games to be able to post even a small amount of data for sharing in the game; available even when the owning player is offline. If any platform supported that, I believe you’d see incredibly creative games flowing directly from that — in the meantime, only games that have a large budget (and probably a different agenda than a typical arcade game) have the luxury of such a feature, and all other games with user-generated content use crippled features such as sharing levels only with friends, and only when they’re online.
2) Less focus on retro games and advergaming
Let’s be honest — when you download a game that’s twenty years old, you had great memories of it and are expecting to be thrust back into the nostalgia. Instead, the game is incredibly difficult, and man do the graphics suck. When your new downloads page is filled with these offerings, or poor quality advergames, you’re going to be skeptical about coming back to try new games; you may even miss that great original indie title you’ve been waiting for.
In a nutshell — the poor quality games are drowning out and hurting the very games that the platforms are trying to push.
To be fair — I think the Virtual Console is making great use of their awesome back library, and WiiWare is a nice separation between retro and original games (although in general the Shopping Channel is pretty clunky and slow).
3) More focus on instant play value
Even though I understand Microsoft and Sony’s strategy of promoting their download offerings as a source of creative and “new” types of games, I somehow feel they’re doing at the expense of certain potential. New styles of play on an old interface (the controller) often necessitates a learning curve, and this learning curve creates a barrier for customers. Instead, I think they should be focusing on games that are instantly fun — exactly as Microsoft’s name calls for — consumers want arcade games!
I believe that Sony and Microsoft have a captive audience begging for more games that are instantly engaging, regardless of the genre. They do have an appetite for the unconvential, quirky game, but those games need to be interspersed with arcade racing, fighting, sports, puzzle (etc) games. I’m not talking about Project Gotham Racing — I’m talking about Rock N’ Roll Racing. Less depth — more fun.
So, in my humble opinion, combining these three factors would create a download service filled with fun titles that everyone in the family would want to try out. They are high quality, instantly fun, don’t require a deep knowledge of old games to enjoy them, and every once in a while, incredibly creative. As an owner of a next-gen console, you’d be encouraged to show these games off at parties and play with your friends — after all, there’s almost no learning curve to most of them. What’s not to like?
Thoughts?
Categories: Business, PSN, Slick, Virtual Console, XBLA
Comments:
Comment by: Parveen
October 25th, 2007 at 11:03 am
With regards to advergaming, a lot of advergames are poor quality. One of the more popular examples of a poor quality game is Sneak King by Burger King.
The quality of the game is probably the biggest problem. But a second problem is what Seth Godin calls “permission marketing”. I don’t give marketers permission to show me billboards in real life. Billboards are ugly and gaudy and generally detract from my usual environment. Commercials interrupt me when I really just want to be watching the current TV show.
I subscribe to Apple’s RSS feed for trailers. And I watch Nothing But Trailers on HDNet. But I don’t really want to watch trailers when I’m in a movie theater. I want to watch the film that I paid to see.
I don’t think game developers have figured out how to get the gamer’s permission to present them with ads.
Comment by: Jamie
October 26th, 2007 at 12:15 am
I think certain MMO’s do a pretty bang up job of product placement. They make special branded items for sale within the game, giving the player a slight bonus. Nike shoes in an online basketball game, for example, or the Mini Cooper kart purchasable within Kart Rider Korea.
Heck my lawyers now have a virtual law firm within Second Life. I think it’s perfectly acceptable to integrate products within the context of the game, and companies are slowing learning to take advantage of that.
Of course, there will always be an appetite for explicit advertising; we’ll just have to see if players will get adjusted to it and finally accept it, as we have with online banners. You use Facebook, right?
Comment by: Parveen Kaler » Blog Archive » Brain Dump of Pertinence
October 27th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
[...] wrote a comment about this over at Jamie’s blog. The quality of the game is probably the biggest problem. But a second problem is what Seth Godin [...]
Comment by: Parveen Kaler
October 27th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
I haven’t gotten around to playing the Korean MMOs or Second Life. I’m not sure I am the target audience there.
I stopped paying attention to banner ads in the 90s.
I don’t think Facebook has figured out their revenue model there. In terms of permission marketing, I am a part of the Sony and Toyota F1 groups. In those cases, it’s a win-win-win situation. I get info about products I am interested in on my own terms, Sony and Toyota get to market to me, and Facebook gets paid.
There is value there. I don’t know where the value is for me with billboards.
Comment by: Jonathan Blow
October 31st, 2007 at 12:55 pm
I disagree with a lot of this. For a gaming-literate audience, less depth = less fun. What you really want is less complication, which is a different thing.
Playing just another racing game with different skins — or whatever — is boring.
I agree, though, that instant play value is important. However, this doesn’t mean the game design has to be a retread. All games are about teaching things to the player; the question is whether they are teaching something the player is interested in, and if it comes at an appropriate pace. So when you talk about a new design versus an old one, the difference is just in the magnitude and pace of the things that are being taught. With good design, a new type of gameplay can be communicated to the player while maintaining instant play value. The problem is that most designers are still in the mindset of adding relatively tedious tutorials that you need to slog through *before you get to play the actual game*, and this situation sucks. (Though it is a lot better than the norm when I started playing games — which was not to have a tutorial or any kind of ramp-up, and to just drop you into the deep end.)
Portal is a good example of a game that is new while providing instant play value. I like to think that my upcoming game is like this too, but we will see what people think once they start playing it.
Comment by: Jamie
October 31st, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Great comment, Jonathan.
I think you hit the nail on the head with less complication rather than less depth. The creative games on XBLA (Eets included) could definitely benefit from that sort of philosophy, and there will always be an insatiable appetite new types of gameplay.
However, I disagree with the sentiment that we only want new styles of play, and creating another “typical” arcade game would be boring.
We’re at a point where we can improve and learn from old games. It’s not “just another racing game” — it’s one with better usability, better value, and more connected than the games that preceded it. Players would love to play Rock N’ Roll racing again — not the original, but a new one with vastly improved user experience and online play. That to me is not boring — that’s bringing out the true potential of gamer nostalgia.
As Nick once said: “we can build the games we thought we were playing 20 years ago”.
Case in point: Castle Crashers is probably one of the most anticipated XBLA games lined up. They’re not creating a new game mechanic, nor are they adding a ton more depth to the game — they’re building Golden Axe, with vastly improved… everything.
Comment by: Jonathan Blow
October 31st, 2007 at 4:49 pm
I’m not saying that updating old game concepts is a bad idea. I really liked Pac-Man C.E. (and to a lesser extent, Jetpac Refuelled). I just don’t think retro upgrades should be considered the ideal form of an XBLA game. It’s one good form of game, sure. But at the present time, small-game outlets like Arcade are one of the best avenues for producing new kinds of games; to disregard that potential would be damaging to the entire games industry.
Comment by: carlos
November 1st, 2007 at 9:08 pm
I like;s sony current support for user genareted content, look at Little Big Planet
Comment by: Jamie
November 9th, 2007 at 2:16 am
Jonathan: Interesting that you mentioned only the games that are literal upgrades to old titles. Don’t get me wrong — I don’t think there should be no innovation in game-types. I just think the distribution curve is skewed in a way that actually hurts the new types of games.
In my opinion, if we released 1 crazy innovative game for every 5 vastly improved old game concepts (which almost by definition have innovation within itself), we’d see an increase in sales for everyone.
That means a better foundation for more innovation — not less.
Comment by: Jamie
November 9th, 2007 at 2:20 am
Regarding Little Big Planet: As I mentioned in my post, only games funded by large publishers (in this case, Sony) have the means to properly support user-generated content. You’ll never see Everyday Shooter with a level editor and level database that others can upload / download / rate because the cost is prohibitive for small developers.
Let’s hope the platform holders prove me wrong and make it easy for everyone.
Leave a comment:
Games