Sticking it to the greedy publishers.

House · 2 Nov 2017 at 20:27

Simple version. Income (or revenue what people pay) - operating costs (development costs and costs of business) = gross margin.

Then you have other costs, corporate stuff, tax’s, loans and banking costs etc. One off stuff like purchasing companys or shuting companys down. Repaying goverment grants etc.

When you are doing done with that your onto profit which either goes to dividends to share holders or reinvestment.

Always winds me up when people talk about game development cost and talk about wages. Wages are typically less than half of the cost of a man hour of work, buildings IT and infrastructure, burdens on salary (pensions NI medical insurance holiday and vacation) R&D marketing by and sales all cost money as well.

Excuse train & iphone typing

BuffetSlayer · 2 Nov 2017 at 21:41

Dont know a lot about gaming publishers financial affairs but if they are anyrhing like other big businesses, they will be syphoning it off through convoluted arrangements that allow them to bank it with minimal tax deduction.

A lot like amazon and google.

Rusko187 · 3 Nov 2017 at 11:08

It will eventually get to a point where you buy 1 aspect of the game but will have to pay a monthly fee to play another component i.e. the multiplayer.

Devs/pubs will inevitably want to have a long term commitment from the player and what better way of doing that by tying a player down with monthly fees in place of a 1 off cost.

vintage-x · 3 Nov 2017 at 13:52

Rusko187 said:
It will eventually get to a point where you buy 1 aspect of the game but will have to pay a monthly fee to play another component i.e. the multiplayer.

Devs/pubs will inevitably want to have a long term commitment from the player and what better way of doing that by tying a player down with monthly fees in place of a 1 off cost.

There is an augument for a Netflix style pay monthly and get games model like EA started. Its a good idea in theory.

There may be months where you don't download or play anything on such a service however at some point a couple of games will come along and make it worth the price.

I have Origin access and it costs me £19.99 a year. I have had it since march and played and completed 3 games (titanfall 2, dragons age inquisition and battlefield 1) so I have already had my moneys worth and it hasn't even been a full year yet.

Kreeeee · 3 Nov 2017 at 14:18

vintage-x said:
There is an augument for a Netflix style pay monthly and get games model like EA started. Its a good idea in theory.

There may be months where you don't download or play anything on such a service however at some point a couple of games will come along and make it worth the price.

I have Origin access and it costs me £19.99 a year. I have had it since march and played and completed 3 games (titanfall 2, dragons age inquisition and battlefield 1) so I have already had my moneys worth and it hasn't even been a full year yet.

How does that benefit the publisher?

VincentHanna · 3 Nov 2017 at 14:33

Kreeeee said:
How does that benefit the publisher?

They are relying on people who wouldn't normally buy their games signing up for £3.99 a month (or £19.99 a year)

The games on there aren't brand new, they tend to be at least 6 months old, by which point sales have dwindled anyway so they might as well get a steady income stream using a subscription service.

vintage-x · 3 Nov 2017 at 16:13

Kreeeee said:
How does that benefit the publisher?

This is where things need to be worked out, and how they work it out i don't have a clue.

However some agreement must have been reached with Microsoft for them to offer botj EA access and their own service that I can't remember the name off at the moment

House · 3 Nov 2017 at 16:48

Game Pass and EA Access.

I have EA Access and even though i bought the 2 newest games on there (BF1 and TF2) i still think for £20 a year its good value, I'm the sort of person who never buys FIFA but will play it when people are round having a beer, with the 10% discount on online purchases i think its worth having, in fact its a great deal.

Game Pass, less so as ive been on live for 13+years I have loads of the games on it through games with gold, they also dont do cheap yearly sub so at the moment i cant justify £8 a month for it. I would pay £80 for a year of it if it included live though, its down to pricing same as Groove that was always to expensive for me.
I am saving up my Microsoft rewards points for a years sub though, using Bing for 6-8 months is worth that.

Rusko187 · 6 Nov 2017 at 09:08

Kreeeee said:
How does that benefit the publisher?

Adds a new lease of life to games presumably which have lost that initial impact in sales. Take Dragon Age Inquisition for example, if I were to buy that than I would like at the pre-owned market (in which the publisher feels no benefit). Instead if I were to pay a monthly fee the publisher feels the benefit, you get the game... than happy days (as long as the scheme is fairly priced).

VincentHanna · 8 Nov 2017 at 12:35

This is exactly the reason that 'loot crates' etc are on the rise:

The past few years have seen the ratio of digital download sales versus physical copies accelerate - but also the rise of in-game sales, too. For the first time, Ubisoft announced it had earned more money through what it terms Player Recurring Investment ("PRI") than the digital sale of games themselves. PRI accounts for microtransactions, season pass sales, DLC, subscriptions and advertising.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-11-08-assassins-creed-origins-launch-sales-double-syndicate

Plainsong · 8 Nov 2017 at 13:04

Yes I saw that too. Which is why microtransactions are not going away for a long while yet.

I'm OK with DLC if it's done right. I think I am done with season passes and maybe even games with planned season passes. Especially since it's becoming more common for companies to strip content out to sell it to you later, rather than giving you new additional content to an already complete game.

VincentHanna · 8 Nov 2017 at 13:16

Or if a game doesn't sell and they don't even bother with DLC.

Rusko187 · 10 Nov 2017 at 09:41

On very rare occasions do I buy DLC, the game must have been really good for me to have invested more money into it.. Hence I'll never buy a season pass day 1, did this for the original Titanfall and I barely played it.

That said if they introduced something like £100 for Xbox Live and a much improved Game Pass to accommodate newer games I would totally consider that.

biron_w · 10 Nov 2017 at 10:25

Plainsong said:
Yes I saw that too. Which is why microtransactions are not going away for a long while yet.

I'm OK with DLC if it's done right. I think I am done with season passes and maybe even games with planned season passes. Especially since it's becoming more common for companies to strip content out to sell it to you later, rather than giving you new additional content to an already complete game.

I'm OK with DLC. I'm also OK with micro transactions. I'm just not OK with loot boxes and the way the industry is going with them.

sg0 · 11 Nov 2017 at 22:02

Plainsong said:
Yes I saw that too. Which is why microtransactions are not going away for a long while yet.

I'm OK with DLC if it's done right. I think I am done with season passes and maybe even games with planned season passes. Especially since it's becoming more common for companies to strip content out to sell it to you later, rather than giving you new additional content to an already complete game.

Yep 100% agree. For instance I remember picking up elder scrolls Morrowind in Electronics Boutique for the original Xbox and thinking I’ll take a punt on this because the graphics looked ***** but it had this open world element that I’d always wanted in a game. That game was the bees knees. You could probably finish it 20 to 30 hours but if you took on the side quests and explored you were looking at 100 hours and then some. So when a second version was released with the expansion packs included I purchased that as well and started it all again. Happy days. I have also purchased DLC for the fallout series and other Besthesda elder scroll games, they have been worth every penny.

Fast forward now to Deus ex human revolution. It had been released for a year or two before I got a chance to play and I thoroughly enjoyed it (I also purchased the side missions). So when Mankind divided was announced, it was a done deal. The game was delayed twice to get just right and I had heard that the developer was having financial issues, so when it was up for pre order to show my support I purchased a season pass at £60. Boy what a mistake that was, that game felt like it had been reverse engineered, chopped up and stripped into multiple poor products. I still think the story narrative was top quality thought just like it’s predecessor. God only knows why it took so long make this game.

Now if you check out EA games on iOS, the in game purchases of £99 are mind boggling. These micro transactions just seem to be designed to keep you coming back for more, so similar to the gambling scene. You could also draw parallels to what Sean Parker was discussing in a recent interview about the early days of Facebook and how they designed the like button to give users a dopamine hit as soon as possible to keep users coming back for more.

Man I sound like David Icke.

sg0 · 14 Nov 2017 at 18:26

Star Wars game in U-turn after player anger http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41981979

A bit of good news for Battlefront 2 users.

VincentHanna · 15 Nov 2017 at 12:00

Ridiculous these people sending abuse to the devs - What's the point? They do what EA tell them.

Go after the Publisher who holds the purse strings, not the developers, who are ultimately just employed by EA.

sg0 · 15 Nov 2017 at 19:01

VincentHanna said:
Ridiculous these people sending abuse to the devs - What's the point? They do what EA tell them.

Go after the Publisher who holds the purse strings, not the developers, who are ultimately just employed by EA.

Absolutely, EA management would have designed the monetisation of this game a while back.

Here’s another update from the bbc.

Star Wars Battlefront II game faces further backlash http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41997252

biron_w · 21 Nov 2017 at 23:20

The Belgian government says loot boxes are gambling and will seek to have them removed in Europe.
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/...al&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Hopefully this is the beginning of the end for these things.

xs2man · 23 Nov 2017 at 01:30

So is the future of games really multiplayer? I cant be hooped with multiplayer anymore. But I do really enjoy a good campaign. Hopefully the £50 "access fee" is all you need for at least the majority of the campaign in games, leaving the money grab for the online players...