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Games don't need venture capitalism

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Re: Games don't need venture capitalism

#21

Post by bhb916 »

hresvelgr wrote: post #18

Games in this day and age ideally need generous government subsidy to be successful. I feel we're a long way off universal basic income worldwide so at the very least, something like an artist's living wage provided by the government is a necessity to produce good independent video games. Most professional indie developers tend to survive rather than thrive, barely kept afloat by money from publishers who also have t…

Quite the contrary, the world you envision isn't nice to think about at all. It's impractical, inefficient, wildly haphazard, and, worse than that, would produce the exact opposite of what you're looking for. The profit motive might not be aesthetically pleasing to you but it provides the vibrant indie marketplace we see today.

Re: Games don't need venture capitalism

#22

Post by Madmallard »

They need something. I've been trying to crack into this space for a better part of a decade. Ideas that come naturally to me that I spend hundreds of hours on end up being limited by ludicrous amount of art requirements to be considered acceptable in my mind to the public audience. I'm not interested in releasing an 8-bit (but looks worse somehow) pixel art clone of a popular genre. I want to make something truly interesting. Well, do you have a studio of artists ready to work for the next year or two? No? Well, good luck then.

Re: Games don't need venture capitalism

#23

Post by jmyeet »

Gigachad wrote: post #14
raincole wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You cannot reduce them to a magic and infinitely-repeatable formula The formula is: > blockbuster movies every year, 20+ years of superhero movies just rehashing old IP, endless sequelss, annual Call of Duty releases, FIFA/Madden annual micro-transaction hell and so on These are very successful businesses. You might not like them as a gamer, but I don't know why you said it like they're some failures. They're not O…

Games in particular do not have to be that novel. People are still playing chess which hasn’t changed in hundreds of years. There is plenty of money to be made in just remaking the same concept but for the latest hardware with the latest technology.

The counter argument for this is emulators. An extraordinary amount of effort is made by people, largely for free, to play otherwise dead games from dead platforms.

Reskins of games with flashier graphics has some demand but game studios largely don’t do this. New content is created for the annual CoD game rather than simply reskinning the old game, remasters notwithstanding.

Re: Games don't need venture capitalism

#24

Post by jmyeet »

wodenokoto wrote: post #8
jmyeet wrote: post #6

This is ancient Internet history at this point but does anyone remember Rovio? In the early days of the iPhone/iPad they made a large amount of money with the Angry Birds franchise, even licensing the IP to a movie (or was it 2?). In 2011 Rovio took ~$40 million in VC funding and I distinctly remember thinking "well, that's over". Creative ventures don't scale. You cannot reduce them to a magic and infinitely-repeata…

I’m not sure I agree. Disney and Pixar lives and dies on being able to repeat success. And both have lived for quite a while now. Rovio was extremely conscious about not building an empire on top of angry birds, as that dad would eventually fade and they needed a new thing. They were aiming to be the next Disney, but of games and smartphones, not cinema and tv. I’m surprised they took $40 million in VC as that sounds…

Pixar is a perfect example. They had a focus on technological prowess, pioneering animation and storytelling under Steve Jobs that became part of their DNA. There was huge cultural inertia.

Since the Disney acquisition it’s mostly been recycling old IP into sequels.

Re: Games don't need venture capitalism

#26

Post by Ekaros »

klik99 wrote: post #11

5 years ago I would have agreed, VCs invested in games, rather than studios and most games never get released, let alone be successful if they are released. Rovio is a good example of that time period. But so many games people have exited and formed their own VC studios, or hired people who get games, and the focus has switched to investing in teams which is way better. So while it's true that "games don't need VC",…

Wouldn't the traditional publisher model somewhat modified be reasonable solution? They have been around for decades and they know the industry, have the connections and so on. Just have to leverage it right way.

Real issue with VC money in games is that returns most of the time just aren't big enough. And picking the winners is very hard.

Re: Games don't need venture capitalism

#27

Post by Gigachad »

jmyeet wrote: post #23
Gigachad wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Games in particular do not have to be that novel. People are still playing chess which hasn’t changed in hundreds of years. There is plenty of money to be made in just remaking the same concept but for the latest hardware with the latest technology.

The counter argument for this is emulators. An extraordinary amount of effort is made by people, largely for free, to play otherwise dead games from dead platforms. Reskins of games with flashier graphics has some demand but game studios largely don’t do this. New content is created for the annual CoD game rather than simply reskinning the old game, remasters notwithstanding.

The base concept of CoD is the same each time though. If you liked the last one, you'll likely like the next one. It's predictable which means you can pour a lot more money in to it since you know there is a customer base for it.

Re: Games don't need venture capitalism

#28

Post by kyriefh »

orbital-decay wrote: post #25

> the all-time concurrent user (CCU) record on Steam was just claimed by Palworld Was it? PUBG had > 3.2 millions concurrent players at the peak, and it's about 1.3M for Palworld. Sure it's growing faster but it's still nowhere near that.

you're correct, this was a basic error on my part - it's #5 all time (https://steamdb.info/charts/?sort=peak). apologies / thanks for the catch, and i've fixed the text

Re: Games don't need venture capitalism

#29

Post by Ekaros »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #16
minimaxir wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Palworld is an extreme lightning in a bottle and is not a consistent model for game development success. For every Baldur's Gate 3 and Among Us, there are thousands of games that never reach that level of popularity. It's a similar survivorship bias as typical VC.

The world's game industry only needs, at most, about 12 'lightning in a bottle's like this per year, so it seems like a perfectly workable model for such a small number. The existing game studio system can already handle all other established niches in practice.

12 sounds a lot, but it is actually not that many. Considering Steam had 14516 games last year. So that would be less than 1 in thousand. And you will also have self funded and games from traditional publishers.

Re: Games don't need venture capitalism

#30

Post by TillE »

minimaxir wrote: post #4
kyriefh wrote: post #2

hiya, author here. Palworld is a wild, wild game (think pokemon meets ark:survival evolved, or simply pokemon with guns), and it follows a number of other super-successful indie games that got made with no VC funding. i myself work heavily within the VC ecosystem, so it got me thinking about how games and VC tie together. while the article is written in an opinionated manner, i don't mean to present it as fact - more…

Palworld is an extreme lightning in a bottle and is not a consistent model for game development success. For every Baldur's Gate 3 and Among Us, there are thousands of games that never reach that level of popularity. It's a similar survivorship bias as typical VC.

I've seen a couple people refer to BG3 as if it's some out-of-the-blue success. Larian has a strong history of consistent success, and reached another level by licensing an extremely popular franchise.

Similarly, nearly every AAA franchise game will do very well. Maybe there are some ups and downs, but overall it's boringly predictable. I can absolutely guarantee that GTA6 will be one of the best-selling games of all time.

Among Us is an actual weird indie hit, yes.

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