Except developers don’t have the same incentives. Publishers are incentivized by profits. Developers are usually incentivized by wanting the world to see their artistic output.
Of course some of them will do it for money because some people are just like that, but overall the industry would probably be in better hands if the developers got the long end of the stick and the publishers got the short end. Right now in the AAA market it’s the opposite and it shows.
Developers are also incentivized by profit when they’re entitled to keep it rather than a publisher, and this is the case regardless of being AAA or not.
And who was the CEO of Bungie during that period? Pete Parsons who had a senior marketing job at Microsoft before joining Bungie. Parsons also had no problem laying off hundreds of people at Bungie while continuing to expand his classic car collection. Dude has big publisher energy all over him. In fact he was the person I was thinking of when I said some people will do it for the money.
Which is a very different market. Mobile game developers couldn’t even ask $20 for their game let along $60-$70. It’s not comparable to the traditional computer gaming market.
I didn’t say that. I agree that the first one counts and that’s an exception to the rule. The second you better bring out point by point examples of how DE does monetization as horribly as EA or Ubisoft because I’ve heard otherwise. And I think with the third the vast majority of people would agree it doesn’t count.
Any free to play game operates on the same principles that are as “horrible” as EA or Ubisoft, which honestly feels like a dated point of reference when your phrasing was “feels like you have to pay to have a good time”. First, it’s highly subjective. I came away from my time with Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey feeling like I had a bad time because I didn’t buy their XP boosters, but fans of the game said they never bought one and had a great time, perhaps because they had more fun with the game’s side activities than I did, so they got more XP from content that I was more than happy to skip. I haven’t bought sports games in a long time, but if I still did, I wouldn’t touch Ultimate Team with a ten foot pole; not just because of the business model, but because the fantasy to me would be playing with the real teams as they actually exist; and the parts that I would want to engage with don’t ask any more spending of me. And for as much as you associate predatory monetization with those companies, they also put out the likes of Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, and work with partners on Split Fiction and The Rogue Prince of Persia, which use very normal and ethical monetization strategies.
For as much as mobile games often can be a different market, plenty of times they’re not. Thatgamecompany may be known for Journey in our circles, but their big hit is Sky: Children of Light, which started on mobile and came to platforms you and I are more likely to play games on. Uma Musume is blowing up regardless of platform, but it’s a gacha that’s typically found on mobile, and Cygames expanded from their mobile market to putting out console and PC GranBlue games. Mihoyo’s games are in both places and found success using gacha. My point in all of this being these companies, all self-published successes, operate in both spaces, because building a game in either place requires much the same skillset, and they’ve found an audience in both, often with the same exact games.
The last thing I’ll say about this being developer vs. publisher is that if you’re successful enough as the former, you often become the latter, like with Cygames or Epic. These kinds of monetization methods are very feast or famine, so you’ll get survivorship bias of some games getting so big that they’re a publisher now, like Riot, for instance, or they get bought by a bigger fish like Microsoft.
Except developers don’t have the same incentives. Publishers are incentivized by profits. Developers are usually incentivized by wanting the world to see their artistic output.
Of course some of them will do it for money because some people are just like that, but overall the industry would probably be in better hands if the developers got the long end of the stick and the publishers got the short end. Right now in the AAA market it’s the opposite and it shows.
Developers are also incentivized by profit when they’re entitled to keep it rather than a publisher, and this is the case regardless of being AAA or not.
Can you give me 3 examples where the developer is monetizing the game like EA or Ubisoft would?
Destiny after the Activision split and before the Sony acquisition. Warframe. Basically the entire mobile market.
And who was the CEO of Bungie during that period? Pete Parsons who had a senior marketing job at Microsoft before joining Bungie. Parsons also had no problem laying off hundreds of people at Bungie while continuing to expand his classic car collection. Dude has big publisher energy all over him. In fact he was the person I was thinking of when I said some people will do it for the money.
First of all, Warframe is a F2P game which means they need SOME sort of a revenue stream. And from what I’ve heard Warframe monetization is one the best on the gaming market. It doesn’t feel like you have to pay to have good time. And they actually removed an accidental slot machine from their game because they didn’t want to incentivize whale behavior.
Which is a very different market. Mobile game developers couldn’t even ask $20 for their game let along $60-$70. It’s not comparable to the traditional computer gaming market.
Then yes, developers have nothing but the best intentions with monetization compared to publishers when you say that the counter examples don’t count.
I didn’t say that. I agree that the first one counts and that’s an exception to the rule. The second you better bring out point by point examples of how DE does monetization as horribly as EA or Ubisoft because I’ve heard otherwise. And I think with the third the vast majority of people would agree it doesn’t count.
Any free to play game operates on the same principles that are as “horrible” as EA or Ubisoft, which honestly feels like a dated point of reference when your phrasing was “feels like you have to pay to have a good time”. First, it’s highly subjective. I came away from my time with Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey feeling like I had a bad time because I didn’t buy their XP boosters, but fans of the game said they never bought one and had a great time, perhaps because they had more fun with the game’s side activities than I did, so they got more XP from content that I was more than happy to skip. I haven’t bought sports games in a long time, but if I still did, I wouldn’t touch Ultimate Team with a ten foot pole; not just because of the business model, but because the fantasy to me would be playing with the real teams as they actually exist; and the parts that I would want to engage with don’t ask any more spending of me. And for as much as you associate predatory monetization with those companies, they also put out the likes of Dragon Age: The Veilguard and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, and work with partners on Split Fiction and The Rogue Prince of Persia, which use very normal and ethical monetization strategies.
For as much as mobile games often can be a different market, plenty of times they’re not. Thatgamecompany may be known for Journey in our circles, but their big hit is Sky: Children of Light, which started on mobile and came to platforms you and I are more likely to play games on. Uma Musume is blowing up regardless of platform, but it’s a gacha that’s typically found on mobile, and Cygames expanded from their mobile market to putting out console and PC GranBlue games. Mihoyo’s games are in both places and found success using gacha. My point in all of this being these companies, all self-published successes, operate in both spaces, because building a game in either place requires much the same skillset, and they’ve found an audience in both, often with the same exact games.
The last thing I’ll say about this being developer vs. publisher is that if you’re successful enough as the former, you often become the latter, like with Cygames or Epic. These kinds of monetization methods are very feast or famine, so you’ll get survivorship bias of some games getting so big that they’re a publisher now, like Riot, for instance, or they get bought by a bigger fish like Microsoft.