Founder of Arkane Studios: "I think Gamepass is an unsustainable model that has been increasingly damaging the industry for a decade"; impacts sales
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The premise itself is flawed, of course Gamepass impact sales, that’s the whole point. The question is does it negatively affect profit? Well for AAA games it might, for AA and indies it might affect positively and those make up the bulk of the gamepass library. Matter of fact there’s barely any AAA games released on GP that aren’t Microsoft’s own games.
AAA and AA haven't meant shit in this industry for a long long time. It's not even almost something I look for when looking for something new to play.
Oh that looks fun, but the budget just isn't high enough for me, next.
This is such a terrible take.
Of course AAA and AA mean something in the gaming industry! I'm hardly going to power my controller with a fucking 9V am I?
Not with attitude
You wanna elaborate on that perfect analogy?
He means battery sizes.
Rip
They need to bring back demos. It would help a ton if they did, but it seems so many companies and devs just completely skip the idea. I think some of it has to do with companies who kinda know their games aren't going to be worth a fuck so they want people to buy at full price, so they're not going to release a demo. Same with not releasing the game to reviewers early.
They could easily do so on a console or game streaming service, just give you like 2 hours and then switch it off.
I think Sony actually do that as part of one of the PSN tiers.
But I think the main driver behind no longer doing demos is that when they started analysing it, they found it mostly reduced sales. A lot of people were no longer interested enough to buy it after playing, at least not at full price. I gotta admit, back when demos were common on the front of magazines, there were very few that I actually purchased on the basis of the demo. The ones I did buy, I'd have probably got anyway, like Metal Gear Solid 2.
I mean from a consumer perspective no, but this isn’t something the consumer would even need to be concerned with. The conversation is from a business point of view.
AAA vs AA vs whatever else never had anything to do with business aside from marketing, and marketing doesn't mean shit for the consumer if the game sucks. Just make a good game.
Make the game, and the people will come.
It describes the budget of the game. It’s always relative to the average budget in the industry but it is a business term.
I still don’t know why you keep bringing the consumer into this. The consumer doesn’t and should not care whether Gamepass hurts sales, only that it is a good deal for them. And it is. Whether sales are affected (obviously they are) is an industry conversation, but the real question is whether it boosts profitability or not.
Quality of games etc etc is all irrelevant in this specific conversation.
That's the exact problem that we're talking about.
Being so shortsighted for this quarters numbers, while also not giving a shit about the only thing that actually brings you money.
The consumer.
This is failing because business doesn't take that into account, and down the line it absolutely plays a part. Let's keep focusing on milking these 4 "AAA" franchises, and also buy up as many independent studios as we can just to shut them down, that surely won't have an effect on the industry.
The consumer is the whole godamn point. You don't get profit without them. They (we) smell this bullshit, and it doesn't smell good.
It's not a long term strategy and it never was supposed to be.
Edit: anytime I say you, I just mean companies, not you, I think thats obvious, but I just want to point out I'm not coming at you
I disagree, because fundamentally Gamepass is a great deal for consumers. And it’s also a good deal for developers if they know how to use it strategically. Like if your game came out a year ago, and its sales are stalling you can go to Microsoft and ask for a big lump sum, put your game there and stop worrying about month to month sales while you develop the next thing. People like me get to play a game they wouldn’t have never bought otherwise and they get the money to develop the next thing.
It’s not the best deals for all consumers, but it is for many. For example I don’t give a rats ass about owning a “library” because I very very rarely replay games, I have very little time for gaming and the type of game I prefer tend to be on the longer side. Gamepass is great because in between those 50+ hour games I have a large selection of games to choose from and I get to play a bunch of games that I wouldn’t have played otherwise because I wasn’t willing to pay $50 or more for them, like for example Lies of P. Then there’s the exclusive AAA from Microsoft which I happen to enjoy like Doom, Halo, and Gears of War. It saves me a lot of money.
Will Gamepass die at some point? Maybe. Probably. Nothing lasts forever. But there’s no signs that it is dying right now, nor that it is harming the industry at all. In fact it has allowed games that otherwise not see the light of day to become viable.
I'm a bit very hammered, let me get back to you here in a little while. Spoiler, I did read some of your first paragraph and I'm pretty sure there's a middle ground coming up.
Oooo, still not ready to respond, but I did read all of it. Hit me up if you're trying to get your shit ran in that gears remaster, I'm pretty stoked about that all irony aside.
I am tryina drink some water and rest a little bit but I promise I'll get back to this thread. I appreciate you talking it out.
It's been 7 hours......I think this guy passed out.
HE IS RISEN
Yeah I don't know where exactly I was going with that, but you're right in the sense that for industry itself it's good because it's profitable. it makes sense, although there have been issues with large corporations like Microsoft shit canning everyone at the first sign of a new sparkly thing. Game pass can be and is beneficial in a lot of cases, but what it takes to create something like game pass and it be profitable has its downsides for people that work in the industry, studios that have been bought and abandoned, and in turn the consumers.
That's the thing, for the big publishers, the end user (consumer) is only part of the puzzle. Investors and business partners (such as licensees) are more important, and have been for years. They bring in the wealth.
End users are neither organized nor informed enough to have a seat at the table. The masses will gravitate towards their big properties and marketing will be shaped to that effect. Acquire said big properties if you don't have them, and make sure all the potential investors know you did.
I like indie games for walking sim and story heavy games only. Outside of that, 99% of indie games feel like some pixel art bs retro rip off roguelike nostalgia cash grab. I hate garbage ware like meatboy, etc.
If AAA studios weren’t so shitty, I feel like half of the indie studios wouldn’t have a chance.
Your opinion is valid, but "AAA" studios have lit themselves on fire, and a shit ton of objectively great games have come out and absolutely dunked on them.
A great example of this is balatro. It's none of what you described, it's nowhere near your typical cash grab AAA and it's just a good game that did extremely well.
Another example would be Hades, just a monster of a good game.
Blasphemous 1 & 2, unknown studio, fucking killed it.
Also if you prefer not AAA games for story, what actually is a AAA game?
For a healthy mega publisher/platform with a lot of fingers in the pot? It will increase overall profits and, theoretically, those profits can be redistributed. This is effectively what EA did in the late 00s/early 10s where Madden and The Sims meant games like Mirror's Edge (or... The Sims) could be created.
The problem being that once a few of the tentpoles collapse? it ALL collapses
Also, this ignores the companies that aren't part of that megapublisher who now are fighting "just play Halo or Call of Duty, it is free with gamepass". At best it creates an environment where it doesn't really matter how well a game sells so long as you sold N licenses to Humble and MS and Sony and so forth. Which effectively incentivizes "streamer bait" games.
Also: We have seen exactly this play out in music and film/TV.
But Gamepass is not even close to being a tentpole. Halo and Call of Duty being in Gamepass has not limited the ability of games like BG3 being huge successes. If anything it frees up people to buy these type of games because their yearly COD is included in their monthly fee and now they can budget to buy other types of games.
Baldurs Gate 3? The game part of one of the bigger franchises in all of gaming (D&D) that is the sequel to one of the most celebrated franchises in all of gaming (Baldurs Gate) that had been in Early Access for years AND which was developed by one of the three best CRPG developers in all of gaming (Larian).
Well, you heard them: just make more Baldurs Gates!
Are you implying that the indie game industry is in any risk at all? Because that’s frankly hilarious. If anything like in music and movies (which is now also tv in a way), what’s more at risk are the big franchises. They’ve become unsustainable.
Gaming is going to look a lot more like the music industry looks now, with lots of indie companies doing great stuff and just a few huge artists making slop for the masses.
The "big franchises" that are how people find success in a gamepass world? Or do you still think that Dungeons and Dragons Presents Baldurs Gate 3 By Larian Studios is a tiny indie game?
Also: Maybe you should check out how the music industry is doing as countless artists talk about how hard it is to break out at all and one of the more popular bands on spotify (?) is literally AI slop?
Also
Are you implying that the indie game industry is in any risk at all?
Tell me you have ignored all the endless fucking layoffs without telling me you have ignored all the endless fucking layoffs.
If you want to discuss this? Either be open to learning or educate yourself ahead of time. But if you are just going to insist on vibes and how everything is going to just work out? You are wasting everyone's time.
If you go back 20, 30 years ago you would never be able to make a living as a musician in an indie project. Nowadays you have an amazing and frankly mind blowing amount of very talented artists making wonderful and unique music that also affords them a living. I love music man, so I know that it’s never been a better time to be a fan of music especially if you like stuff that breaks boundaries. There is more difficulty becoming huge, but again that’s how it works now. huge artists like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé etc are basically a dying breed. The AI slop thing is more about chillhop artists etc having difficulty because their music is not differentiated in any way and the people who listen to it are not actually looking at who the artists is 99% of the time. Artists will have to adapt and make music that is more unique now instead of hoping that they get on the queue of people who are not paying attention to what they are listening to.
The layoffs are proof of what I’m saying. Huge studios with thousands of employees are no longer sustainable, therefore they need to shed weight. The era of AAA 500million+ budget video games is coming to a close. More studios will close, more people will lose their jobs. From there a lot of smaller companies will spring up and that will be the gaming environment for the next 10 years or so.
I’ve been gaming all my life, I turned 30 recently. And I think the last 5 years have been some of the best the industry has ever had, and it was all thanks to the indie scene and the AA scene. There has never been more variety at this level of quality ever before, that’s for sure. The only thing that may come close was the 90s when you basically had a similar scene to what we have now.
All of this to say that from the perspective of the consumer, gaming/music/movies and tv are fantastic right now. But it’s become much more atomized, you have lots of niche shows, music acts and videogames as opposed to what we had before were there were a lot of larger properties but they all were a little dumbed down because they had to appeal to a large demographic within its niche.
The people who most praise Gamepass are indie developers. All the time. The ones that complain the most are the AAA studio employees for a reason, it threatens their entire model.
Does it suck for the developers, yes, I feel for them. But this is the market shifting to reflect consumer behavior and preference.
Edit: Btw it really shows you haven’t even looked at gamepass, because it hardly has any AAA games that are not MS properties. And the ones it’s has are quite old. So it’s not how people find success in Gamepass, at all.
I don't have a game right now. I spent the weekend searching Gamepass and testing out some games I wouldn't have bought blindly, trying to find my next obsession.
None have grabbed me yet. DOOM Middle Ages was starting to get fun but it kept crashing on me. Sorry developer's, if your game doesn't get my attention in the first ten minutes, you never deserved my money, but if I find the game on Gamepass and enjoy it, I tend to let others know.
Spend like 6 bucks on 3 games in the steam most purchased and you'll be fine for awhile
But then I'd have to buy a gaming PC.
That's the solution homie, not the problem.
You don't have to have an expensive PC, and even if you do, the amount you would save on software would far outweigh that cost in a year or less. And then every year after that, 6 bucks for 3 games dude
Steam deck is a great option too
With GP, I tend to dwell on older AA, indies games that I had my eyes on, but not committed enough to buy or good but too janky to spend money on. I found that I have more tolerance this way.