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Print Story Notes from the Game Focus Germany Conference, 2008
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By codemonkey uk (Sat Jan 26, 2008 at 11:54:02 AM EST) (all tags)
Part 1, Thursday.  First up:

  • "The Independent Developer Shall Rise Again" - Grey Costikyan (Keynote)

To follow:

  • "Programming is easy, Production is harder, Design is hardest" - Jonathan Blow
  • "Inside Out Game Design" Stéphane Bura
  • "Zen and the Art of Project Maintanence" - Risa Cohen
  • "Pragmatic game development practices for small (and not so small) companies" - Noel Llopis

"The Independent Developer Shall Rise Again" - Grey Costikyan (Keynote)

Fall of IGD -> Moore’s Wall -> ‘92, $2k budget, ’08, $5m.


  • 15% royalties (after advance)
  • $40 = $8 retail, $8 mdf, $24 publisher of which dev $3.6
  • 1.4m slales needed to dev
  • 4k sales needed by publisher (if $5m spent on marketing)

So far internet has made little impact on the way games are sold (compared to telephony / music).  CDROM bloat killed shareware downloads in the ‘90s.

Web 1.0 -> free internet play on FPS / hybrid MMO model (retail sales, play online).

Bandwidth now makes downloading games possible again (app size/bandwidth ratio).

Casual game market: 0 to 600m in 2000-2006. 1h demo, $20 purchase, match3/word games, middle aged women.  0 marketing, but portals take 60%-80% of revenues.  $250k budget (rising to 500k), 32k (rising to 125k) unit sales to break even ... 1.2% of downloads converts to purchase.

Free MMO vs conventual MMO. Free (but 10-20% buy something from you).  Advertising supported.  Marketing by word of mouth.  Club Penguin -> Flash mini-games in a “virtual world” -> Premium subscription (items) -> Miniclips take 50% of all revenues.  Sold to Disney for $350m.  Webkinz (plush toys thing)

Social Networking Games (Facebook).  OpenSocial (google).  Average Facebook game has 2.5m users.  11% of multiplayer games are active daily.  PHP/SQL.  Viral marketing, ad supported.  Scrabulouse being sued by Hasbro (500,000 daily users).

DoubleTrump - 60m free play, 1c/min there after, free after $20.
Wild Tangent 25c/token, 1 token = free play until you stop.  Earn tokens watching ads.  Etc.

Nickelodeon, Adult Swim, Miniclips. Kongregate (concept: youtube for games).  Matrix Games still do retail, shifting to online (second tier niche games - ~100k unit sales, much lower production budgets).

Serious Games -> Forterra (spin off there.com).  Virtual training environments (virtual Bagdad for Dept. Defense).  See also: Peacemaker.  ReMission (medical FPS to get teens to take their medication).  Contract work, but most companies in this space have little real game experience.

Indie Games ->  Fileplanet, & Steam.  Small compared to casual.  Needs Indie is Good PR meme.  See also Uplink.  IGF, XBLA, Nintendo VC, etc.  Can’t make indie games in the same genres as AAA.  Some casual portals (Oberon).

Retail in decline, especially PC retail, console retail to follow.

Niche & mid-tier games can be profitable if made with reasonable budgets.  Requires creativity.

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Notes from the Game Focus Germany Conference, 2008 | 2 comments (2 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback
What? by ucblockhead (2.00 / 0) #1 Sat Jan 26, 2008 at 12:48:57 PM EST
I don't buy the statement that "So far internet has made little impact on the way games are sold" given Steam on the PC and the way at least two of the console manufacturers are pushing download only games. I know I've personally spent nearly as much on PSN as I have for disk-based games. More importantly, at least in the PSN world, it seems to have had an effect already. There are a lot of small games like "Everyday Shooter" or "Pixeljunk Monsters" that would never have gotten published on disk.

It has me very excited, personally. For instance, "Everyday Shooter" is a return to the days of the past in that it was created buy one guy, not a huge studio.
----
ウセーバラケダ


Potentially on the cusp of change by codemonkey uk (2.00 / 0) #2 Sat Jan 26, 2008 at 12:58:17 PM EST
You may be buying more online now, but the majority of games sold are still sold via retail.  But that can't last long now.

--- Thad ---
developer of ... ?
[ Parent ]

Notes from the Game Focus Germany Conference, 2008 | 2 comments (2 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback

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