I didn't like Fallout 3 either

And I'm a die-hard RPG fan too. Despite my fondness for the genre and the franchise, however, I could not help being able to relate to Scott Jones in his admission. He attributes his earlier reluctance to come out of the closet to 1. the developers, and 2. the game's pedigree. For me, it was a different reason that I tried my best to convince myself that I liked it even though I was not really impressed.

The reason is simple and somewhat laughable: I was afraid of what it could mean if I admitted not liking it. Could it mean I was getting old? Had I lost my appreciation for the medium? Had my inner child died? The answer, I realize, is none of those. It is something far worse perhaps: the gaming that I used to like seems to be dying, if not dead already.


For me, my fascination with games was always for discovering something new. When I was a little kid, I did not have internet access to read reviews from. I could not even find any gaming magazines to read in my country. So it was a treasure hunt each time I went to the computer store, and read the long (and sometimes handwritten) list of games, picking titles I had heard about but not knowing what I would get. And yes, they were pirated copies. But simply because no company was shipping to my corner of the world in those days. I used to play games with no tutorials, no manuals, spending hours and hours trying to understand how it all worked.

It was the talk of the whole school when some kid managed to make the jet fighter take off in some simulation game. Knowing the way to tackle a tough puzzle in the Secret of the Monkey Island was a golden bargaining chip in many situations that a schoolboy might have to settle with his peers. Being one level ahead than the next kid on Dune 2 meant being on a whole different level of existence, as you had access to wonders that they did not. Back in the day, gameplay duration given in hours used to give you an idea about the amount of treasure buried in a given game, the amount of things to discover. These days it simply means how much of a drone-like activity you will repeatedly perform until you reach a sorry excuse for a story ending.

The games I loved used to stand for originality. They used to give me an incredibly valuable resource for my mind: a venue for discovery. It saddens me greatly to realize that this huge benefit has been taken away from me. It saddens me to know that when I look at the DVD cases at the retail store, I know exactly what makes them tick without opening the case, let alone playing them. They all follow the same 'tried and true' formulas of RTS, RPG, FPS, whathaveyou. They were all designed with the common sense of 'not fixing what did not break.' Sometimes I know it all just by hearing the name of the title. I know all too well how it will play out, what resources I will gather, what mechanics I will utilize, what 'world changing choices' I will have to make, and all that good stuff. -- (I also have to note; it is becoming something of an industry norm that whenever someone speaks of world changing choices in a RPG game, it turns out they were referring to a very singular and isolated instance in the whole game, outside of which everything is scripted and streamlined like an elementary school play)

I was hoping it would be different, that it would be like the good old days with Fallout 3. After reaching level 8, though, I no longer see a point in going any further. There is nothing left to discover. All the areas unlocked thereafter, all the dungeons I have missed, I am pretty sure I have already seen them in other games if not in Fallout 3 itself.

This is why people (including myself) are playing more and more casual games. Because we find something in those games that I cannot find in Fallout 3. When a browser game loads, I find joy in the fact that I have no idea how it will play out. Sure, it takes me less than five minutes to figure it all out, but guess what, then I can move on to another without having to pay $59.99 again. In that sense, it is ironic that what people call casual gamers might very well be the true hardcore gamers, for what they derive from the experience is what the medium used to stand for.

I sometimes think whether the video games industry is just waiting for that group to die out, so the marketing divisions will have no trouble selling their games to impressionable youngsters of the future who will have nothing better to compare to. It is a bitter thought along with the predictions in the news saying games will be the dominant media of the future. There was a time I would be very excited about that statement. These days I don't even know if we are talking about the same thing when they say 'games.'

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From sad to happy

The level of quality in your product or service is a direct contributor to sales and profits. This goes without saying. But when it actually needs saying, you know something is definitely wrong with your industry. This is from Michael de Plater, creative director on Ubisoft's forthcoming strategy title EndWar, quoted by Phil Elliott:

"...so there is a relationship between the quality of the games you make and the sales," he said, although he did concede that other factors, such as marketing, were also likely to ultimately influence the sales figures.

In order to convey the ridiculousness that this state of affairs corresponds to, allow me to reconstruct this statement as if it were spoken by some other expert from some other industry:

"Milk bottles that are actually filled with milk tend to sell better in the milk market, compared to those filled with water," the senior milkman said, although he did concede that they were regularly able to sell large quantities of water to consumers, under the guise of milk, thanks to marketing.

You developed what?
Earlier today I was looking at the R&D expenditures of EA and Ubisoft, wondering just how much of that was actually value-added for the gamer. Someone tell me if I am wrong, but I am assuming a large portion of their R&D goes for graphics/physics engines. This is the conclusion one reaches after seeing no major innovation in gaming experience when the total R&D spending of these two companies reach almost $1.5 billion together.

While some people might count the sheer graphical prowess of these game engines as major innovations, the question that stands out in my mind is this: have they run out of all other less costly venues of value innovation?

Some people know the fact to be far from that. In my previous post I gave the Taleworlds example, but there is more. Introversion Software in the UK claim to be the last of the bedroom programmers. I will dare say they are, instead, one of the first of a new generation in gaming.


PC gaming is dead
PC gaming as we knew is dying. Console gaming owes much of its success to the fact that many PC gamers were simply burnt out by the crazy hardware race that made you upgrade - if not buy an entirely new computer - almost every year in order to get the most out of the titles you purchased. When you pay $60 dollars for a console title, on the other hand, you know it will work seamlessly on your machine. You know this will be the case for any title for the entire life span of the console which can be up to four or five years depending on your time of purchase. With the PC, there are no guarantees for tomorrow.

Although many companies are on the transition to the console market these days, their mentalities are still locked on to that arms race. It is as if they have been running for so long that running is all they know now.

Long live PC gaming
The exodus leaves a lot of room, however, for independent developers who are sweeping the remaining venues of innovation left unexplored by the biggies - and they have left a lot in their crazy run.

The immensely positive response shown to games like Mount&Blade, Uplink, Darwinia and others, proves the demand for originality in games. This is a demand that does not need billions of dollars to meet. All it needs is creativity. The internet has helped with the big hurdle of distribution for the indies. For the gamers it might just be the cause of preference over consoles where the only content digitally delivered to your drive is the one that pays the royalty fees. Devs and publishers who can realize their new options and advantages may have a good chance of enjoying a second golden age in PC gaming.


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To boldly go noone knows where

As I said previously, my goal in this blog is to combine a business perspective with a passion for games. Truth is, though, a year ago from now I only had the latter and not so much of the former. This is why an article by William Vitka, dated 2005, was still news to me when I first read it this year. The title read “In-Game Advertising” and was discussing the trends in this new and exciting marketing frontier. Sitting in class and reading this article three years after its publishing, I thought I must have missed a lot in the meantime.

The perpetually new frontier

Or have I?

Here is a quote from an article by Phil Elliott (Advertiser’s Context, 2008):

“In-game advertising is set to be one of the hottest subjects of 2008 and while most people seem to agree that there's a lot of potential new money to be made for videogames publishers, quite how that will be realised is still debated.”

This debate stems from another important question; what is the most effective way of employing in-game advertising? Much of the research undertaken in this field in the last three years comes from the agencies themselves, and therefore gives cause to skepticism about the true potential of the medium.

Another reason, Elliott proposes, is that the video games industry is moving at an intimidating speed for advertisers, changing at much higher rates than traditional channels such as TV and radio. Even though this makes sense when you compare games to television, the explanation is somewhat less convincing when you hold comparison to a more similar medium. The internet is not so slow moving at all, yet it is already thoroughly infested by all kinds of advertisers.

What is the difference then?

There are opposing forces at play here. On one side companies are trying to avoid the first mover disadvantage by watching the others first and learning from their mistakes before launching their own in-game campaigns. On the other side, there is the pressure of the possibility that your competitor might just get it right before you do. When Nike reaches out to the masses of 18-34 year olds through in-game advertising, how long can Adidas afford to leave them completely unchallenged and unchecked? Or think Coke and Pepsi. Not so surprisingly, the answer is ‘not very long.’ An article on Gamasutra.com ( back in 2006) proves the point perfectly. Traditional brand rivalries are strong propulsion for in-game advertising.

There is no huge difference between general internet advertising and in-game advertising in this regard. The latter is simply at the beginning of its life cycle and is on a very healthy growth rate to maturity in the future. Innovators and early adopters of the medium will eventually provide the critical mass of good and bad examples necessary to make the leap to wide adoption.

The one big difference lies in the structures of the two media. The internet has a great multitude of channels to reach the consumer with advertisements. The conditions are close to perfect competition and the dynamism allows for quick experimentation. This is not so much the case in the video games industry dominated by two big publishers such as EA and Activision, where the number of PC and console titles at one time is limited. Add to that the long (and sometimes unpredictable) development cycles of blockbusters, as well as the complexity of advertiser-agency-publisher-developer relations in developing of advertisement capabilities. Looking from that perspective, advertising in big PC and console titles may be more similar to ads in movies.

In-game advertising is not limited to the cutting edge of hi-tech gaming, however. Research from eMarketer shows ad spending in web based games has a growth rate of nearly 40%, compared to 30% in PC and consoles, between the years 2007 and 2008. This is more in line with the “Do It Wrong Quickly” philosophy of internet marketing, for the flexibility the web provides.

The suggested offset to this lack of flexibility in big titles is the use of dynamic ads, placed on billboards or other in-game surfaces, which can be changed in real-time. In theory this sounds pretty sweet. In practice, however, what you can change in real-time is the content of your advertisement. The context (the game in which it appears and the method of interaction) remains largely the same. Compared to web advertising where you have greater control over both content and context, there is still a considerable disadvantage.

Frag or Coke?

The original article from Vitka does not mention the issue of metrics, but a good deal of the debate boils down to that point. Again, Elliott explains the situation:

“…the three big sellers of aggregated in-game ad space don't even have the same measure for what constitutes an 'impression' (the oft-used number on which the advertiser gets billed).”

The problem with in-game billboard ads is that it is almost impossible to identify and formulate the instances where the interaction with the user is meaningful and the message is properly delivered. While the ad may show up on your screen when you are playing a game, your attention could be highly focused on anything (such as the enemies trying to kill you) but the ad at that specific time. A good study on the issue is the report on advertising effectiveness in ‘Battlefield 2142’ (Mindshare, 2007). It seems a big challenge for the sector will be inventing new ways of creating dynamic ad space that allows for meaningful, measurable, in-depth interactions with the brand that is being advertised.

Only it's not always a pleasant walk in the battlefield

This argument then leads to the two big components of in-game advertising: gamers and developers. The sentiment has pretty much been the same in the two articles with three years between them; if the consumer will not be getting anything out of this deal, then nobody will. The acceptance of advertising in games depends largely on winning over the gamer and operating in a way that will not disturb their entertainment experience. This is very critical considering how outspoken the gaming community can be. An aggressive strategy could cost both the publisher and the advertiser dearly.

I would suggest that the best way to explore new techniques and ways of non-intrusive in-game advertising lies in collaboration with developers. In that respect, the exact size of the cut that the devs will get out of this trend probably depends largely on how much of this opportunity they can realize and incorporate into their business models.

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Selling? Game? What?

With this first post, I will simply try to explain the purpose of this blog and what one might expect to see within.

My main goal here is bringing together two big interests of mine: computer games and marketing. Oddly enough, I am an expert neither in one nor the other. Why then?

Why computer games?
Because they are fun and exciting. In the way that movies were exciting when cinema emerged. In the way that radio was exciting in the early days of wireless broadcasting. One might go on with this list, adding things like the classical theatre or even the advent of writing.

Simply put, video games are a new and revolutionary medium for artistic expression and storytelling, if not the most advanced one at our disposal. The potential for immersion, expression and interaction is almost limitless. Yet if so, why are we not already seeing content that rivals classical literary works? Why is it not dubbed the 8th Art (the number is negotiable) yet? How come one of the biggest companies in the industry owes its success to publishing the same sports games over and over again every year? How did we lose the values of originality and creativity, and ended up with 'tried and beaten to death formulas' like RTS, FPS, and whathaveyou?


Why marketing?
Because things are not as limitless as they seem. A video game is a commercial product like any other. It needs people to use it, play it. It has to meet a need, and it has to find the right person with the right need. Otherwise? It is meaningless. It does not sell and it does not get played. It gives its developers little reason and provides even less means to achieve consistency in creation of great new works.

Thus the future of the medium is largely determined by what is commercially successful. This is why we have been playing the endless iterations of the same soccer title for the last decade. Because it has found its niche, and its commercial fortunes are, more or less, predictable and safe for the business-mind.

On the other side of the spectrum we see games, developed with amazing talent and production value, which somehow fail to achieve a commercial success. The game 'Planescape: Torment' is probably the best example to this. Sadly, each consecutive failure of originality (aided by each consecutive commercial success of the tried and beaten-to-death) delays the medium from achieving its true potential.

So?
So it is my vision and goal to find the grounds where profitability and quality (with originality and creativity being its primary metrics) do not have to be competing goals. As a MBA candidate and gamer who is trying to get into the industry, my goal in this blog is to explore the dynamics between the content and business sides of the medium. Hopefully my writings will help me (and possibly others) in framing, analyzing and solving this challenge.

In short:
The Selling Game - How to sell games that deserve to be played.
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