Anti-GMS: Computer Games on the Wane, RPG sales up.

[ggroy]

And yeah, the fall of White Wolf has been unbelievable. I wonder if, going back in time, they'd still do the 'Time of Judgement' OWoD->NWoD transition, or whether they'd be a bit more careful of the goose that lays the golden egg and just release a '3e' revised ruleset in the original OWoD world? I'm far from finger on the pulse when it comes to WW any more, but it certainly seems to me that this was when things started to go downhill for them.

I wonder if it had started to go noticeably downhill before then?

Wonder how much White Wolf's "Sword & Sorcery" d20 imprint kept it afloat during the d20 glut era.

 

[Wik]

Not surprised, the PC/Console gaming market is ATM unforunately dominated by a few large games and their equally large developers. This leads to smaller developers playing copy-pasta and making even original games dull and boring because they copied the combat/build/theme of X popular game because they develoeprrs went "ooooo, it's popular! lets do that and make lots of money!"

It's also dominated by an excessive number of sequals. how many Halo games are we up to? We've now on what, the 3rd expansion to WoW? We've got Dragon Age getting a sequal which has more recons than a superman comic, and we're up to Mass Effect 3 where your immortal-cyborg character is about to take on an army of god-robots.

So it's not surprising that amid all the unoriginality and the repition, that players are going: "Hey, I can do better than this." or "Ooo, good idea, but now I want to add this, or remove that and make it better."

Respectfully, I think you're missing a few things here.

First, Halo: Reach (the newest incarnation) is one of the best-selling games of all time, and it outsold Halo: 3 on opening day. In other words, it was a huge success. And this carries on with all of those games you've mentioned - sequels are made because the gaming public WANTS them.

Second, Sequels in video games are done for a few reasons - the primary being that it is easier to make a game based on past work (ie, using the old engine and tweaking the gameplay, rather than starting from scratch). If you're running a software company, would you rather spend 2 million to release Awesome Game 2: The Sequel or would you want to spend, say, 12 million to release a game completely unrelated, and hope that it catches on? Fact is, game one will probably sell more units than game 2, and for a cheaper production cost, to boot.

Third, there is always a downturn in Q3 sales for video games, because all the big games get released in Q4 for Christmas. Developers (and gamers) know this, so you tend to see a reduction in the quality of Q3 games, with gamers also reducing their spending budget to save up for Christmas.

Also, smaller developers tend to release original games, with the middle-stream developers trying to play catch-up with the big guys. The smaller guys often run 3- or 4- man outfits, and release smaller-scale, addictive games. Simply go on XBox live arcade to see an example of this. They specialize in making cheap games that are still fun - while they may not see the millions in sales, their overhead is small enough that it works.

But when you run a big software company, you don't want to spend millions developing a game based on a new gameplay experience - it's much smarter to try and copy what the big guys are doing, and instead attach some tweaks learned from their mess-ups. And remember, this is how games like Halo, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect started - taking an existence genre of game and reworking it.

 

[thelis]

Totally agree

 

[MerricB]

Third, there is always a downturn in Q3 sales for video games, because all the big games get released in Q4 for Christmas. Developers (and gamers) know this, so you tend to see a reduction in the quality of Q3 games, with gamers also reducing their spending budget to save up for Christmas.

Just a note: The Q3 figures are based on *previous* Q3 stats, and videogame sales were said to be down for the first 7 months of 2010.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

Wonder how much White Wolf's "Sword & Sorcery" d20 imprint kept it afloat during the d20 glut era.

No idea. The part of the imprint that I actually paid attention to was that published for Necromancer Games. I would have thought it had a substantial impact.

I have a sneaking suspicion that there was a post by Clark or someone else with some information about how much of WW's output the d20 material was...

Cheers!

 

[Wik]

Just a note: The Q3 figures are based on *previous* Q3 stats, and videogame sales were said to be down for the first 7 months of 2010.

Cheers!

Ah. My bad, then. I think my only guess then would be due to the recession and the relatively high price of video games - this could also explain why RPGs are up... those gamers who play both are turning to RPGs because they're cheaper.

Just a guess, though.

 

[VictorC]

I find ICV2 completely unreliable, and until they start siting their sources I will never be able to take anything they have to say seriously.

I've said it before, there's better reporting on Fox News.

 

[humble minion]

No idea. The part of the imprint that I actually paid attention to was that published for Necromancer Games. I would have thought it had a substantial impact.

I have a sneaking suspicion that there was a post by Clark or someone else with some information about how much of WW's output the d20 material was...

Cheers!

My gut feeling (completely unsupported by any evidence whatsoever) was that S&S did well for a d20 product (particularly early, S&S being one of the first cabs off the rank on the d20 front although some people got quickly turned off by the wonky rules in the early releases) but that WoD was always WWs bread and butter. It's easy to forget how huge WoD was in its day I think. Granted, it's day was probably about a decade ago now, but until the recent days of Paizo it's hard to think of any non-WotC tabletop games company who came anywhere near the size and prominence of turn-of-the-century WW.

 

[BryonD]

One instance of being lower than the previous year does not define a decline. There is just no statistical validity whatsoever in drawing line between two points and declaring it a trend.

I think the tabletop nightmare thread is way overblown. There are elements of truth on the big picture scale, but there are other points to consider and the sky is not falling.

But the data (and even moreso the conclusions) presented here are STILL substantially less meaningful than the in other case.

 

[Barastrondo]

As for White Wolf, I am not positive but I think their print books have dropped off rather precipitously and that they mainly do PDFs now.

This is true. We're shifting to a largely digital/print-on-demand structure. (Which means we get to have the entire library available for purchase, without having to pay massive inventory taxes. Woo!)

They're in a bit of a rut because it would be too soon to release a "Newer World of Darkness" (NWoD came out only six year ago) and the line as a whole might not have the umph anymore to reboot successfully anyhow. Maybe it is just "so 90s."

This, not as much. One of the things about the merger with CCP is that we no longer have to put out two or more books a month in order to remain employed. We don't have to stay on the supplement treadmill, essentially; and truth be told, getting away from the periodical buying patterns that many people have fallen into (where RPG supplements are treated like magazines: order what's new this month, but don't bother reordering backstock) turned out to be a pretty attractive move. Our forthcoming books are the ones we want to do, from big things like the Forsaken Chronicler's Guide to interesting projects that would be tough sells to distributors like Mage Noir.

Plus there's work on that small (read: very large) thing we announced at Grand Masquerade.