Whether Prestige Titles? 52
Via some extended commentary on GameSetWatch, a post by Greg Costikyan on the Games*Design*Art*Culture blog on the lack of 'prestige' games in the modern game industry. By 'prestige' Costikyan means titles that may not do terribly great commercially, but that attract a lot of goodwill towards the developer and publisher. From the article: "Suppose Capcom, instead of closing Clover Studios and muttering about 'disappointing sales' had trumpetted Okami's critical success, instructed its publicists to attempt to interest both game and tech media in presentations of art from this beautiful and visually stunning game, and announced their strong support for innovation and creativity in future? They might have produced greater interest in, and sales for, the game, but more importantly, could have worked to establish for Capcom what no company other than Nintendo has in the industry today--a reputation for actually caring about gameplay. Could Ubisoft not have done the same with Beyond Good and Evil? And since Ubisoft is in direct competition in most of the cities where it has studios with EA, which has a reputation for mistreating its staff and a lack of innovation, would this not also have benefited their recruiting efforts?"
Which one do you want? (Score:3, Interesting)
TLF
Re:Which one do you want? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Which one do you want? (Score:4, Insightful)
TLF
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The stream of FMV connected by repetitive random battles known as Final Fantasy says otherwise.
Rumor has it there is a game somewhere within the Metal Gear Solid series, but I don't think it's been found yet.
Hasn't stopped them from selling though
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But anyway, Greg Costikyan is high. He acts like one of those
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And yet DVDs still sell rather well, despite having no gameplay whatsoever and being entirely about sitting passively staring at a story unfold in front of you. Seems there are actually quite a lot of people who rather enjoy the combination of story and visuals, and aren't particularly fussed about getting to mash buttons or push crates. So why shouldn't there be r
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No, the summary talks about "beautiful and visually stunning game[s]." Games like Okami and Ico are beautiful beyond the graphical aspects—there's a beauty to their story, feel, and gameplay. Those are the type of games that we're talking about when we discuss possible "prestige" games, not games with all visual splendor and no depth.
And when we're discussing a creative endeavor, "the sales will show I'm right" is not a particularly compelli
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If these prestige games have beautiful story, feel and gameplay then I fail to see why they won't sell well. I think they should. So why are we talking about poor sales? If
Re:Which one do you want? (Score:5, Insightful)
because the masses are morons with shitty taste. They want violence, tits, and football.
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TLF
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The thing is, Okami delivers on the violence and tits. (Although it's cartoony violence and tits, so I guess that might not count.) It's not exactly "high art." You defeat one of the early bosses by getting him drunk. One of the unlockable abilities is a "taunt" move where the main character (a white wolf) pees on her enemies. Not exactly high art, and definitely not things that "average Americans" wouldn't understand.
Unfortunately it is on the stylistic side, and some people find the cartoony graphi
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I think the real question is, "Is there anything we can do to fight the desire to reduce risk by way of marketing tits and football to people?"
Its the willingness to take risks in actually advertising and marketing new ideas
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If these prestige games have beautiful story, feel and gameplay then I fail to see why they won't sell well. I think they should.
For a work to sell well, it needs to grab the attention of the mainstream. It should appeal to mainstream tastes. As can be seen with a form like film, not all mainstream works are "beautiful", and not all "beautiful" works are mainstream.
In other words, the sets of the "mainstream" and the "beautiful" certainly intersect, but neither one is a subset of the other.
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One word: Marketing
Marketing can make or break the sales of anything, good marketing can sell tons of a crappy product and poor marketing can cause a good product to not sell at all. The ass
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My guess at how to interpret it is "Something that is mostly meant to be a game can have artistic qualities, but something that is primarily intended to be art can't make a good game." I would disagree with that, though. I've seen art that also works well as a game, and while I agree that t
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Breaking Even (Score:2)
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I don't think so, I think the main idea is that they are good games that were underrated in the mainstream. The goodwill comes from showing that you aren't making a game to sell it to the juicy mainstream market and make the most money possible, but for the sake of making a good game that includes some originality.
The last thing you say demonstrates that you missed the point, and should have made you stop and think. Right in the summary the idea of generating goodwill towards the developer is mentioned.
Re:In other words... (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact of the matter is, the majority of game buyers do not buy games based on reviews at all. A mediocre sequel to a mediocre game is guaranteed to outsell a spectacular original game for this reason.
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However, I appreciate those who go out of their way, beyond goals of profit, to create real art from within the boundaries of these media. I don't buy their goods because they "deserve" my money more, though. My reason is more selfish: I buy their goods because they
Small Gross - Large cost = Large Loss (Score:2)
Developers and publishers have to care about profit because every title these days costs a lot of money to make. Even 'small' titles cost over a million dollars. That's ignoring advertising costs, which generally are at least equal to (and generally more than) the cost of development.
Publishers and developers these days aren't interested in building meaningful relationships with developers. They are interested in investing in a one-hit-wonder at the right time, and then moving on.
It may not be the 'right wa
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And the one hit wonder could be the developers second attempt after he found out what went wrong with the first game in the series. I'm sure there is more then one game out there that didn't take off until a second (or later)title on it was made.
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In my opinion, BG&E is the only recent non-Nintendo game that can compare to Wind Waker
A symptom of poor management (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course the standard single page ad in a magazine generally doesn't even play up a game's strengths properly. If "beautiful graphics" are touted on the box cover, I'll see four 1 inch square microscopic "screenshots". If they're trying to promote the story we get a few stale phrases like "expansive storyline". You're not getting my attention, guys. And don't get me started about eye-splitting obnoxious flash ads. Oh, you're selling a game. That's nice. Your ad doesn't even try to tell me how it's different from the other 50 blockbusters on the market. That kind of sloppy advertising works fine for your sports sequel, because people already know what they're buying, and they're lined up to buy the next installment anyway. But it makes genuinely unique games like Okami flop.
Most companies seem to be blind to the difference between a great product promoted poorly and a mediocre sequel marketed to the gills. If a good game is not selling, fire your marketers and hire new ones. And if a bad game isn't selling, THEN you fire development staff.
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Budget (Score:5, Interesting)
The article hints at this when they mention that prestige movies tend to be lower budget, and people who work on them are expected to work for lower pay. The huge expensive special effects and highest-paid actors are saved for movies with more mass-market appeal. Meanwhile, a lot of the more, shall we say, experimental games that I see coming out of major game studios still hold tight to their expensive high-detail graphics and whatnot. This makes the games much more expensive to produce, and they effectively price themselves out of their already restricted market.
I think a key lesson that the game industry could stand to learn is that they don't have to have incredibly complex graphics and endless content in order to make a game look good and get played a lot - Katamari Damacy illustrates this point extremely well. This is another thing that sets prestige movies, which do shun the special effects and whatnot, apart from most attempts at prestiget games that I've seen. Another is that people who pay attention to these games aren't necessarily all that interested in great visuals, anyway. Paying for all of that when your target market doesn't care about it is just throwing money down a well.
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Case in point: Shenmue. Moving on:
a key lesson that the game industry could stand to learn is they don't have to have incredibly complex graphics and endless content in order to make a game look good and get played a lot
Define "game industry". I assume you mean the "big" companies here, and for them this is probably true. But there are other game makers who have discovered t
Ubisoft (Score:1)
DJCC
Interesting Title (Score:1)
Correct. Studios should be more "hung up" on Game Downloads. (Think all of the NFS series and HL/HL2+episodes).
Ubisoft isn't exactly swimming in money (Score:2)
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Lack of Advertising (Score:3, Insightful)
I've played and finished Beyond Good & Evil. It is a brilliant game and I'm glad I found it at the local store. But I only heard about it this year. It completely slipped under my radar. I bought it from the bargain bin on a whim because the cover art looked interesting.
Psychonauts? I hadn't even heard about this game until the Slashdot story about it being available on Steam. I bought it the same day and it's been very entertaining. It's a little childish and platformers aren't usually my thing but I'm finding it fun anyway. Another one that almost slipped my attention.
Okami? This is the first I've even heard of this game.
The failure in all three cases isn't the game; it's the advertising. I receive gamer newsletters all the time - electronic and paper versions - and none of these games were brought to my attention. Even worse, word of mouth failed as well. Usually I can rely on friends to recommend worthy games but I had to tell them about BG&E and Psychonauts.
Imagine if a movie studio sunk $5 million into a flick and even the movie buffs didn't know the film existed. Yet that is the situation we currently have with $5 million games such as Psychonauts.
You Win (Score:2)
This is the other problem games face (which Greg Costikyan has discussed extensively before): games titles are discounted far too rapidly. A game might eventually sell copies based on its good reputation but it can never make much money that way.
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Because of the review for BG&E, I bought it (for $10) and like you said, it was a brilliant game. The boy wants to get Psychonauts, but I haven't seen it in the stores anywhere. Okami, not my type of game, but it does have some very intriguing art.
IOW, I agree. Advertising was damn near non-existent for these games.
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Box/Manual and all were in near mint condition. No guarantee yours will be like that, but they seem to try.
A very long response (Score:2)
In video games, sport games are what comes quickest to mind. Ask an American if he pr
Can't happen. Games are about making money. (Score:2)