Humble Bundle Launches With Exclusive GOG.com Controversy
Posted by Zachary Knight in Game News on April 20, 2012
This post originally published at Game Politics.
A new Humble Bundle is upon us. This bundle launches the release of Botanicula, the latest game from the creators of Machinarium, Amanita Designs. While these Humble Bundles are getting more and more common, this particular one launched with a fair bit of controversy.
This controversy stems from the fact that the only place to pre-order the game was from GOG.com. What was an exclusive deal for GOG and its customers quickly became the subject of ire and backlash from pre-order customers. You see, GOG sells the game for $10 and those who pre-ordered Botanicula got a partial soundtrack and some wallpapers. They thought that was a fairly good deal until they learned that those who buy from the Humble Bundle not only got the game, but 2 other games and the full Botanicula soundtrack. This could have been purchased for little more than $0.01.
This took GOG by surprise. It spent the next few hours quiet on the issue simply expressing their surprise before writing on Facebook that they would announce a good deal for those that pre-ordered the game. At the time of this writing, GOG had not announced what exactly that deal will be, but I did receive word from a representative of Amanita that they will not leave GOG customers hanging:
everybody who pre-ordered Botanicula on GOG.com will get the full soundtrack, the art-book (not released yet) and Machinarium for free tomorrow. and of course also our eternal gratitude for supporting us:)
Update: GOG has announced that along with what Amanita has promised, GOG is throwing in a copy of The Witcher Enhanced Edition.
That is a very fine remedy for what could have been a much larger issue had it been ignored for longer than a day. However, this really didn’t have to be this way at all. Had Amanita simply kept GOG in the loop with its launch plans, they could have worked together to prevent this fan fall out.
We all make mistakes, game developers too. So let’s not let a little bit of controversy over launch day promotions get in the way of enjoying what looks to be a very nice game. The guys at Amanita and GOG both want fans of the game to be happy and enjoy the purchases they made. I think that is the important part to remember.
Zenimax Wants To Trademark “Fus Ro Dah” Meme; Buy A T-Shirt In Protest (Or Not)
Posted by Zachary Knight in Game News, Shameless Plug on April 13, 2012
Over on Techdirt, I wrote about Bethesda parent company Zenimax wanting to trademark the phrase “Fus Ro Dah”. This is stupid on many levels. Its goal, according to the filings, is to monetize and control this internet meme at the expense of those that made it popular. Seriously. Does it not know that trying to own a meme will effectively kill it? Why does it feel the need to control what amounts to free advertising for Skyrim?
In response to this blatant attempt at control, I have decided to join countless others in monetizing this meme for my own good. So I have added my own “Fus Ro Dah” shirt to my CafePress store. It isn’t anything spectacular, but it does tell Zenimax what we think of this move.
So feel free to buy one or more of them.
UPDATE: Do to an infringement claim by Zenimax, my shirt is no longer available for purchase at this time. I will have more on this story later.
Random Tower’s New CafePress Store
Posted by Zachary Knight in Shameless Plug on April 12, 2012
One of the things we at Random Tower want to do is immortalize certain aspects of gaming and pop culture in t-shirt form. So we have opened a CafePress store in order to sell these wondrous creations. Right now we only have 3 t-shirt designs, but we have a few more on the way. So sit back and let me describe the shirts we have for you:
This little wonder was designed to tell people the truth about gaming since people like Representatives Baca and Wolf want to force game developers to label their games with lies. So express to all the world what gaming really results in, having fun.
Back in January, the protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act were going strong. People were really riled up about the ESA’s support for SOPA and were sending emails and phone calls to ESA member companies asking them for their individual position on the failed bill. Sega had a very interesting response. This advice is very much universal and timeless, so let the world know what they should do when something gets in their way.
This one is a bit different. What this shirt is based off of is an old Atari 7800 ad I found in a Batman Comic. While the font isn’t exact (what can you expect for a free font) it still gets the message across. This is also the start of a series of t-shirts I want to do based on old ads for video games and consoles. These ancient tag lines are perfect to stamp across your chest.
So those are the first three I have ready to go. Feel free to buy and wear to your heart’s content. I will post more as I upload them. Enjoy.
Is The Death Of Single Player Games Due To Used Games? No.
Posted by Zachary Knight in Game Philosophy on March 20, 2012
Amongst an otherwise interesting interview on Gamasutra with David Braben is a discussion on what Braben thinks is killing the narrative driven single player game. According to Braben that death is being dealt by the used game market. I can barely begin to explain just how wrong he is. So let’s take this a bit at a time.
The real problem when you think about it brutally, if you look at just core gamer games, pre-owned has really killed core games. In some cases, it’s killed them dead. I know publishers who have stopped games in development because most shops won’t reorder stock after initial release, because they rely on the churn from the resales.
Now there is a lot wrong here. So let’s take this apart bit by bit. First we have the idea that publishers will kill a game based on first run sales projections. Now this is most likely true. However, I have little faith in his insistence that such low projections are based solely on used turn over. There are a lot of factors that go into such a decision. These decisions are based on the whims of the games market. If a game will not sell enough in the first run due to other market factors, most publishers will kill it. Used games turnover is one of the factors measured but not the only one.
Then there is the blame he places on retailers for such practices. I agree that some retailers rely on used game sales for a large chunk of their profits. This is primarily because the profit margins on new games and hardware are so slim that it would be nigh impossible to stay afloat selling only new products. Even the high margin sales of hardware accessories is not enough to cover all costs and allow for expansion. Used games are used to bring in the revenue needed to stay afloat and grow.
It’s killing single player games in particular, because they will get preowned, and it means your day one sales are it, making them super high risk. I mean, the idea of a game selling out used to be a good thing, but nowadays, those people who buy it on day one may well finish it and return it.
Really, the behavior described here is less a result of the used market and more a result of gaming culture both from the consumer side and the developer side of things. Core games today have become nothing more than a checklist for many gamers. This checklist behavior is compounded by the design decisions of game developers and publishers. Achievements and Trophies are part of this. Gamers are given incentive to power through as many games as possible to get as many Achievements as possible. The easiest and cheapest way to do this is to trade and sell their games in order to get more games.
For the developer, if they truly want to end this, they need to look at ways to change the behavior of gamers to get them to replay games they would otherwise trade away. Making the games prohibitively long is not the way to do this. Making more engaging stories and gameplay would be a better solution. But doing so requires actual effort on the part of the game designer. Something that many publishers are not willing to invest in.
People will say ‘Oh well, I paid all this money and it’s mine to do with as I will’, but the problem is that’s what’s keeping the retail price up — prices would have come down long ago if the industry was getting a share of the resells.
I honestly can’t believe this claim at all. Let’s look at the retail PC market. There is no used PC game market at least not outside player to player trading. However, there has been no drop in price for retail PC games. They are still $60 along with the console version. If what he said here was true, these PC versions would be half or less the cost of the console version.
Perhaps it is not the absence of a used market and more the idea that used resellers should be sharing the profits they make on used games. Would prices fall then? Who knows, there is not a way to properly estimate the impact of such a move. We do not have a market to compare it to. Unfortunately, I have my doubts about such a prospect. Mainly, this has to do with how such a move would be managed. Who would make sure that the right people get paid? Who would determine who those right people are? How would you make sure that all that money doesn’t just get “lost” in the massive bureaucracy that will be created? I have seen the problems in the music royalty process and would not wish such a massive hindrance on my worst enemy.
Developers and publishers need that revenue to be able to keep doing high production value games, and so we keep seeing fewer and fewer of them.
What this really points out is that console game development is a high risk, low reward business. It costs a whole lot to make a common AAA game these days and if your game is not a break out success, you will fail. So rather than try to fight the will of the consumers, perhaps it is time to shift your focus away from AAA development and move on to lighter affairs that cost a fraction of that. AA and A development is still a viable market but you have to be willing to spend less than $10million and often less than $5million developing them. Sadly, most publishers are not willing to invest in such games.
It just becomes a higher and higher risk… But justifying that is much harder at the moment.
Yep. It is. That is why you need to look at other ways to work around such risks. Find ways to mitigate it. Part of that is working with a long tail in mind for your games. If you focus solely on the first month of sales, then yes, you will have problems. Yet, if you work from a long haul perspective, you can make a lot more money and be happier, even if it means people buy your game used.
Used games are not going to kill the games industry. High risk, low reward game development will and is. There is a reason mobile and web based gaming is growing right now. I think it is time that game developers like Braben look at those avenues of gaming and work on finding out what makes those games tick and how they can be applied to console gaming.
Politicians Say Video Games Cause Cancer Or Some Such Nonsense
Posted by Zachary Knight in Politics and Law on March 20, 2012
Last June, the US Supreme Court released a decisive opinion on whether violent video games can and should be regulated as obscene material. In that ruling, the Justices found that video games were protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and could not be regulated for violence. This ruling was a huge victory for free speech as well as for gamers.
Even before that ruling came out, I made the prediction that laws targeting games would not stop even if the Supreme Court ruled in gaming’s favor. My predictions were based on the behavior of Oklahoma politicians after Oklahoma’s own violent game law was struck down as unconstitutional. When I wrote that, there was a bill proposed that would have forced retailers to hand out literature that was mostly false about the effects of violent games on children. The other bill at the time was an attempt to bring game development tax incentives to the state but it excluded M and AO rated games even though the film incentive it was modeled after had no such provision for R and NC-17 movies. Just recently, Oklahoma had another Representative propose a bill that would have applied a sin tax on “violent games” (really just T, M and AO games). This bill never made it out of committee even after the bill was amended to just ask for a commission to review the research on violent gaming.
So with all that in mind it really is no surprise to see that even on the Federal level such efforts are still under way. Primarily, these laws are proposed by otherwise incompetent politicians who are simply looking for brownie points from their constituency. Such is the state of Representatives Joe Baca and Frank Wolf. Baca with Wolf’s assistance has reintroduced a bill that would apply cigarette style warning labels on violent games which reads:
“WARNING: Exposure to violent video games has been linked to aggressive behavior.“
Frankly, this label is absolutely absurd. There is no such research. Even the research used to defend the failed California law in the Supreme Court was rejected as it failed to actually prove any link between violent games and aggressive behavior. On top of that, many of those same studies have been applied to violent prose and images showing similar results.
What this really is is Baca’s attempt to look like he is working to protect the children without the necessity of actually doing any real work toward that goal. I don’t really see this bill going any further than his previous bills, which is not anywhere after being proposed. It is the type of bill that is proposed with no intention of ever being passed. Even if it were to pass in its current state, it will be ruled unconstitutional like the law before it and the new warning labels on cigarettes.
High Profile Game Developers Succeeding On Kickstarter
Posted by Zachary Knight in Game News on March 20, 2012
Last month, I talked about how Double Fine’s success on Kickstarter has captured the attention of other game developers. Many of those developers expressed an interest in using Kickstarter to fund games that would otherwise not get funded through more traditional means. We are now seeing the fruits of several of those developers.
First up we have the guys behind the classic RPGs Wasteland and Fallout getting funding for a Wasteland sequel. In less than a week they reached and exceeded their goal of $900k. At the time of this writing they are at $1.4 million and growing. They have even stated that if they get to $1.5 million they will make a Linux port for it. (So got out there and donate so I can play it.)
Next we have some developers from Bioware breaking free and working on their very own Strategy RPG. This game, Banner Story, has some really awesome looking animation and art to it. The gameplay is reminiscent of games like Heroes of Might and Magic. This one has a goal of $100k and is now funded. This is all in the first day of funding. They look like they could double or triple their goal by the end of the 30 days.
However, not all is rosy for Kickstarter campaigns. There is a campaign for a Hardcore Tactical Shooter that seems to be struggling to get the funding it is requesting. This game is being developed by a group of people who know what they are doing. They have developed a number of shooters. However, I think that is what is going wrong with their campaign. They are doing something that most people cannot tell apart from the current crop of shooters already on the market. Sure it may not be a true FPS, but it is close enough to make people stop and think, “Isn’t this something I can already get elsewhere?” On top of that, the $200k they are asking for is not the end of their budget, they still plan to go to publishers to ask for the rest of the money they need to get it made. This is another turn off for potential funders.
There is a lot to be excited about coming from Kickstarter as well as a lot to learn. As we keep an eye out on how these successes and failures change the landscape of crowd funding, we will see more and more developers realizing just how little they actually need publishers in order to be successful.
Capcom Complains About Gamers Accessing Content On The Disk
Posted by Zachary Knight in Game News on March 20, 2012
One of the things that the internet and connected gaming consoles has brought us is the prospect of expanding the core game with additional content. This is a really cool thing that for the longest time was only available on the PC or through expensive expansion packs. But now that we can download content to consoles, we are able to extend the life of the games we love.
Unfortunately, not everything is roses and sunshine in this world. Some game companies are abusing this ability by stripping content from the main game and selling it off as DLC. Some companies are even so lazy that they don’t even bother removing the content from the retail game before shipping it off. Capcom is one of the offenders. Recently, Capcom released Street Fighter x Tekken with a download pack of characters for gamers to buy at an additional cost. However, some resourceful gamers were able to find out that those characters are contained on the retail disk. No download is required other than to unlock them for play. Some even more resourceful gamers have found a way to hack into the game and access those characters without having to pay for them. This has not made Capcom happy and they are looking at means of punishing those players.
“In any event, we already have opened channels of communication with Microsoft on these issues Friday night. If you can capture screens or video of this in action (as some have already) we’re working on bans for boxes and accounts with Microsoft for haxxors.”
Here is my problem with this move. Capcom has set these characters aside in order to make some extra money selling them as DLC. Yet, it was not concerned enough to completely remove the characters from the main game. Now they are mad that people are playing characters that are already on the disk the people have paid for.
An analogy I used over at GamePolitics was that of buying a house that had two rooms and the garage sealed off with the prospect that you should pay extra money on top of what you had already paid to get access to those rooms. No one would think bad of you or pursue legal action against you for tearing down the barriers and accessing those rooms. Yet, for some reason a similar move in the software world can get you fined or thrown in jail for accessing content that is on the disk you bought. You can thank the DMCA’s anti-circumvention clause for that lovely scenario.
What I have to say to Capcom is this, “Boo freaking hoo.” Really, I can’t think of anything more to say. Capcom made its bed and must now lie in it. If it doesn’t want people accessing additional content they are supposed to pay for, they should sell it completely separate from the retail game. If not, they should stop throwing a fit when they see people gaining access to it.
As Expected, EA Kills Servers For Games Using Online Pass
Posted by Zachary Knight in Game News on March 20, 2012
I am definitely not a fan of Online Passes for video games. These things are a waste of resources as well as bad business for gamers. One of my problems with them is the volatile nature of them. There are no guarantees that even if you buy a game new that the online pass will work 1, 2 or more years down the line, let alone be able to buy the content in the future if you got the game second hand. It looks like that future is already upon us.
EA has announced that it will be killing the servers for 14 games in the next 30 days. I can understand the need to stop services for games that have little or no use, but there are problems when the games require a server in order to function. That is the state of games with an Online Pass. Now if you decide to get one of the titles on the list you will be completely out of luck if you want to utilize any of the online content.
One thing to note here is that many of these games are barely 2 years old and are also sports titles. What this really tells me is that EA wants you to stop playing the older sports titles that you enjoy and go out and buy the newest iteration. This is a slap in the face for those players that like the features of the older title over whatever minor changes were made for the new update.
In the end, we will be seeing a lot more of this type of behavior from game companies. The prospect of capturing revenue from the used game market has blinded many publishers on how to properly handle such a move without turning off the customer. Perhaps one day we can look forward to a digital world where the game companies actually care about how the gamer feels and what they want. Until then, we will be stuck watching gamers be harmed by moves like this.
Double Fine’s Kickstarter Success Get’s Attention Of Other Developers Big And Small
Posted by Zachary Knight in Game News on February 18, 2012
We are all pretty familiar with the success of Double Fine’s Kickstarter Campaign. This campaign has been the fastest and most valuable success on Kickstarter. After only 8 hours its original $400,000 request was met and now a week later, it has reached nearly $2 million. This is a success that many people are watching very closely, but none so close as other game developers.
One of the things this Kickstarter shows is that game developers don’t have to rely on publishers to fund games, especially if those games are targeting a niche. As Tim Schafer said in the campaign video, he approached a number of publishers about the idea of an adventure game, but no publisher was willing to back it. So he went to the fans. This particularly is what caught the attention of a couple other prominent game designers.
First off we have David Jaffe. While not outright saying he will follow Double Fine, he says that in his new studio, it would definitely be something he would consider:
Now, with what’s happened with Tim’s Kickstarter, sure, I would consider [crowdfunding]. There’s kind of the fear that this would suddenly become, you know, a dick-measuring contest. Schafer comes out and raises a million, and Jaffe only raises $200,000.
But joking aside, I definitely think it’s a really cool thing, so I would consider it. I think I would be really nervous because suddenly now it’s not just a publisher’s money. Suddenly you have all these peoples’ money, and you don’t want to let them down.
While Jaffe is looking at this from a speculative point of view, other game designers are looking at Kickstarter as a way to revive old and loved game franchises. Brian Fargo, the creator of Wasteland and Fallout is one of those designer. He is looking at Kickstarter as a way to fund a Wasteland sequel.
It doesn’t escape Fargo that a new, Kickstarter based Wasteland would raise some eyebrows. “A lot of people have forgotten that there would have been no Fallout if there wasn’t a Wasteland,” says Fargo. But having it be publicly funded by the fans would mitigate a lot of this risk, because they’d know going into the project that the fans, the believers in the original game, were backing them.
But even with all this attention that Kickstarter is getting from major devs, not everyone is happy about it. Some people seem to consider this attention from major designers as somehow treading on sacred indie ground.
The whole point of this internet spaces was giving people funding to projects that couldn’t get notice any other way, but the rude intrusion of fame and trajectory rips this noble principle to replace it with HYPE.
I find laughable that the kickstarter double fine adventure game project says nothing of the project itself other than We’re cool, and funny and we will make an old school graphic adventure game. While other projects are specific and detail plot ideas, Doublefine is absolutely confident (cocky) about them getting the complete funding and more, they know that they will be featured in steam and know that people will pay more than enough to get their game going. They didn’t need this kickstarter fund to make their game, they needed it to add bejewelled rims on their already functional humvee.
Personally, I just can’t see it. I don’t see how raising the public awareness of Kickstarter is bad for anyone. Sure Tim Schafer raised a ton of money just by telling people he is returning to his roots, but that shouldn’t turn anyone off. In fact, if this game is successful, we could see far more crowdfunding happen as more people are willing to take a risk on these developers.
If people are really worried about Kickstarter failing them, it will not happen because someone that garners more attention jumped in. Any failure will be on the part of the person running the campaign. Here is what I have learned about Kickstarter and what it takes to be successful based on Double Fine’s success.
- Build a name for yourself. Very rarely will anyone succeed on a Kickstarter campaign without some kind of trust between the developer and the community. It helps if you have completed some games prior, or at least have the game you want to fund completed enough that people can try it. If people don’t know who you are or what you can do, they won’t fund you.
- Create a game the fills a niche. Sure you may love a FPS or RPG game, but most gamers would rather get those games from established developers. If you instead look to develop within a niche, you will find many people who are willing to fund a game that they like and can’t get elsewhere.
- Ask for a reasonable amount. $400,000 is actually quite a lot for a Kickstarter campaign, but because people knew Tim, he was able to ask for it and get it. As a lesser known developer, you should ask for far less and the more successful you get, the more you can ask for. Most campaigns ask for only a few thousand dollars. You are far more likely to achieve that than 10s of thousands.
- Set your completion goal to be something reasonable. I am talking months here, not years. People who fund a campaign want the finished product in a short time frame. So you need to be realistic with your goals. If doing this requires you to shorten the game or cut features, make sure you make those decisions prior to starting your campaign.
So those are my lessons. There is probably a whole lot more that we could learn from this success. But the main thing I want to get across is that you should not give up. Don’t look at Double Fine, Jaffe or Fargo as villains or competition. Look at them as people who want to get a product out that they couldn’t otherwise. If you think of it that way, you will be far more likely to appreciate their successes and work to create your own.
Apple Moves Closer To Walling Off The Mac OS
Posted by Zachary Knight in Game News on February 18, 2012
In what took the world by surprise this week was the announcement of Apple’s latest Mac OS, Mountain Lion. While this update will bring a whole lot of great things to Mac users, one thing that really caught the attention of game developers was the inclusion of a feature called “Gatekeeper”.
Just as it sounds, Gatekeeper is a new security feature that will attempt to mitigate the security risks of user installed software. It has three settings:
- Install any software
- Install Only Mac App Store Software
- Install Mac Appstore and trusted software
Option 3 will be the default setting for new installations of the update. What has most game developers upset is that most users will not change that default setting and will end up forcing these developers to either pay $99 a year to add their apps to the App store (and sacrifice 30% of their revenue along with it) or become a trusted developer (how much that costs is up in the air at the moment, but it seems to be free). This has a lot of developers up in arms as they are used to selling their games themselves or through alternative stores such as Steam.
What is also concerning is the idea that sometime in the future Apple may completely eliminate options 1 and 3 and force all developers to sell only through the App Store. This is currently how the iPhone and iPad work, but the Mac has always been open for any software. The idea that Apple would completely wall off the Mac is frustrating for a lot of developers.
One other group of software developers that don’t like this idea is the Open Source Software community. Because this software is not often owned by a single entity it may be far more difficult for the OSS applications to get a trusted developer status and would make most Mac users completely unable to run it if they do not change their settings.
On top of this, Apple still reserves the right to revoke a developer’s trusted status for any reason. While they claim they will only do this to those developers that harm the user, they have been known to remove apps from the iPhone app store for little reason other than they didn’t like it. So it is no surprise that developers are not fond of that.
In the end, this may be a non issue if the options are kept as they are and developers can successfully educate their customers on how to change them. However, if any of these settings ever change, Mac developers could be hurt badly by being closed off from their customers. Either way, this is unsettling.
