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Gameroom

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Re: Gameroom

#101

Post by drivingmenuts »

arcanus wrote: post #70

Origin, steam, battle net, uplay... And now gameroom. Is steam so profitable this makes sense? What possible motive does FB, one of the largest companies in the world, have to compete? The revenues should be paltry.

The target audience for Gameroom is not the same as the target audience for Steam; it's the people who play Farmville or Words with Friends - not the product of Triple-A game producers.

Think parents of Steam players, if not Steam players themselves. Sure, there will be some bleedover - after a long day of ganking noobs and insulting moms, some people think it's nice to sit down to a casual game and buy a vowel or a cow.

If FB can make Gameroom stick around, it will be profitable. Farmville has stuck around for 7 years now and most people would snerk at the idea that it's "a real game". But it's target audience doesn't care about the snark. They have fun.

The real worry here should be how FB is losing it's focus with the shopping pages and the social pages and the game hub and the blah and the blah.

You know, just like what happened with AOL and Yahoo. They were big for a long time, and then they suddenly don't matter much anymore.

Re: Gameroom

#102

Post by striking »

kevhsu wrote: post #83
DannyBee wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you are a minority. the average gamer on a given popular game is usually going on about how fat your mom is in between rounds or on chat or whatever (it's worse than this, of course, i'm being nice). Somehow, i don't think they are going to be up for tying that to their real identity. There are two possibilities. This either massively improves the discourse on games like COD and the equivalent of every…

These rude 'average gamers' you speak of are the vocal minority in my experience... Most of us are normal people.

Average gamers in CoD are not average gamers. So there's that.

Re: Gameroom

#103

Post by jakebasile »

ben_jones wrote: post #96
jakebasile wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's targeting PC gamers, there's almost no reason to release for anything but Windows.

That's unfair I think. It's a perfectly fine idea that has been executed poorly multiple times.

It's not failed for a lack of stores on Linux. Both Steam and GOG sell Linux games, The gaming ecosystem on Linux just doesn't compare to that on Windows. Driver support isn't there, AAA/AA game support isn't there, backwards compatibility isn't there. It is much better in recent years than ever but I think this is a knock on effect from the general resurgence of PC gaming as a whole.

Trust me, I'd love it if this weren't the case but Linux gaming has been pushed as least as long as the Linux desktop, and I don't see either getting much more traction. It's a chicken and egg problem.

Re: Gameroom

#105

Post by grogenaut »

DumpOfGenius wrote: post #95
enraged_camel wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Is steam so profitable this makes sense? We don't have the numbers obviously, but Steam must be so profitable that Valve is primarily a software distributor these days. Over the past six years, they've released only two titles (Portal 2 in 2011 and Dota 2 in 2013), and Half-Life 3, a game that is guaranteed to sell millions upon millions of copies, isn't even on the horizon.

I don't think they really care about earning money from their original games. They give out team fortress 2 for free, and has been actively maintaining it all these 9 years. They sell all value game as a bundle for like $20 last year. On the other hand. Others like battle.net, origin, uplay are just other game companys trying not to give away 30% cut of their new hot game by selling at valve's platform. They will pro…

This is just called Free to Play. Look up how much money TF2 made on hats.

Re: Gameroom

#106

Post by DannyBee »

kevhsu wrote: post #83
DannyBee wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you are a minority. the average gamer on a given popular game is usually going on about how fat your mom is in between rounds or on chat or whatever (it's worse than this, of course, i'm being nice). Somehow, i don't think they are going to be up for tying that to their real identity. There are two possibilities. This either massively improves the discourse on games like COD and the equivalent of every…

These rude 'average gamers' you speak of are the vocal minority in my experience... Most of us are normal people.

In what game, precisely? Seriously, these platforms are all known for it. I've pretty most major triple-a multiplayer titles in the past 15 years, and they are all like this.

Do normal people exist? Sure. Are they the majority? Uh, no. :) It's not even a close contest.

This is even pretty easy to see. Pick 100 random top youtube videos of these games. Count the amount of racism, what have you going on in voice chat, team chat, whatever.

I say 100 just so one doesn't say "well, it's just these guys". It's everyone.

Re: Gameroom

#107

Post by DannyBee »

striking wrote: post #102
kevhsu wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These rude 'average gamers' you speak of are the vocal minority in my experience... Most of us are normal people.

Average gamers in CoD are not average gamers. So there's that.

Pick any triple A title with multiplayer.

Re: Gameroom

#108

Post by kbenson »

arcanus wrote: post #70

Origin, steam, battle net, uplay... And now gameroom. Is steam so profitable this makes sense? What possible motive does FB, one of the largest companies in the world, have to compete? The revenues should be paltry.

It's looks to be pretty damn profitable. Here's an article from 2011, which indicates some people value Valve between $2-$4 billion[1]. That's for a private company with ~360 employees according to wikipedia (although they only have.102 people listed on their company page). In 2015, they look to have taken in about 3.5 billion in revenue[2].

1: http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2011/02/15/valve-an...

2: https://medium.com/steam-spy/steam-sales-in-2015-2e81a6bb0f5...

Re: Gameroom

#109

Post by jay_kyburz »

bitmapbrother wrote: post #99

This is not going to end nicely. Forget about the fact that Steam is pretty much insurmountable for a second, but this a space Facebook doesn't belong in.

They havn't put a lot of work into it I dont think. Its just a re-skin of Facebook itself in something like Electron.
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