Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention
midiaresearch.com
Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention
1–10 of 110 posts
Re: Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention
#2[deleted]
Re: Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention
#3This seems like a inaccurate take from folks who are not following the gaming industry closely.
Activision just had a record-setting year of high revenue (presumably they are not feeling the impact of peaking attention), in part because the quality of their products is still high-ish. They laid people off because they could, not because of any downturn in business.
EA's quarterly results are down, because their product quality has suffered and their pricing has risen, players are somewhat disengaging. Those problems are with EA and internal to EA, not problems with the industry.
---
The article is right to claim that too much focus is on "Fortnite", but they miss their own point. These companies are not suffering from "peak attention", so much as they have stumbled into various mismanagement and/or bled out a chunk of their talent and ability to create. These companies problems are impacting the products they ship.
If you build a well designed, well crafted product, players will still happily arrive and spend lots of money (as EA's own Apex Legends is showing today, and as Fortnite, Spider-Man, RDR2, Warframe, Path of Exile, Magic Arena, and many others routinely demonstrate.)
Re: Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention
#4An interesting thing that's happening right now with the release and rise of Apex Legends is seeing how these now stale numbers are already starting to move around in regards to the level of engagement that Fortnite now commands versus what it commanded only weeks ago.
The pace that the market is moving is pretty incredible in direct contrast to the landscape even just 5 years ago when MOBA's owned the world.
This in conjunction with other nimble, highly accessible entertainment experiences (Tiktok, HQ and its clones, etc) make for vast and extremely fickle landscape vying for attention. It's really fascinating to zoom out and watch it unfold.
Personally I'm just thrilled to see the level of production around eSports really kick off. Games that have been around for a decade plus now (CS:GO, Dota 2, Street Fighter) now have these incredibly high quality events and online coverage that for me have shifted my attention away from many traditional sports I used to watch.
Exciting times for sure.
Re: Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention
#5It's been years since I played any games really. I enjoyed D3 and really committed for a while to WoW. personally, I don't really like free to play as it distorts the gaming experience too much. Take WoW for example: when it started, it was legitimately slow and hard to get to level 20. Now that level 20 is the free to play cap, it only takes a few hours. All the fun that came from exploration and "play" of the game in that early level set is now gone, replaced by speed grinding, achievements, and constant rewards. I feel like leveling used to be a consequence of playing, now, since they've basically decided that there is no play until endgame, leveling is a chore that is meant to be rushed through. I mean, I get that endgame play is fun, and that the big raids are fun, but, they've so distorted the solo-questability that as a part time player there is virtually no point. There was a point in there where they could have focused on the long-term viability of the game and doubled down on mid-game content - better quests with complicated storylines, better low-level raids, better "role playing game" mechanics. Instead, they focused on endgame, where WoW and Fortnite start to look a lot more similar. One just takes a ton of work to be competitive and one is easy any free.
I guess if I had one point to make it would be that all the big titles focus a lot on endgame rather than making the mid-game deeper and more fun.
Re: Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention
#6It's been years since I played any games really. I enjoyed D3 and really committed for a while to WoW. personally, I don't really like free to play as it distorts the gaming experience too much. Take WoW for example: when it started, it was legitimately slow and hard to get to level 20. Now that level 20 is the free to play cap, it only takes a few hours. All the fun that came from exploration and "play" of the game…
This is why Everquest was so great for me. Leveling took a long time and you really got to explore the world. It would take teaming up with people just to make perilous journeys - this is something I don't think exists anymore in games. Additionally, gear lasted much longer. You could be using the same piece of armor for months potentially as you leveled in EQ. It really felt like you were building your character. Now in MMOs, it often feels like you are just checking boxes to get best-in-slot items so you can be like every other high level $build $class character.
Re: Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention
#7An interesting thing that's happening right now with the release and rise of Apex Legends is seeing how these now stale numbers are already starting to move around in regards to the level of engagement that Fortnite now commands versus what it commanded only weeks ago. The pace that the market is moving is pretty incredible in direct contrast to the landscape even just 5 years ago when MOBA's owned the world. This in…
I do think Esports is let down by bad production quality of the telecasts, for eg: Most Rocket League telecasts seem show most of the match from each players camera, quickly switching from one player to another, but showing the whole action from a roof-top or sky camera or atleast traditional football broadcast like camera would make it more watchable. Even with CSGO and Overwatch, similar problems, the game designers and sportscaster should promote such more viewer friendly production of telecasts.
Also most esports telecasts have too much fluff and too little gameplay, hours of pregame chats and pettifloggery for very short actual gameplay, they should take a hint from football(Soccer for Americans), esp EPL broadcasts, very less fluff.
I think the content would be richer if one could spectate the tournaments in-engine rather than watch them as video streams, atleast then viewers can take full potential of such telecasts, see things from any angle / perspective desired.
Re: Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention
#8It's been years since I played any games really. I enjoyed D3 and really committed for a while to WoW. personally, I don't really like free to play as it distorts the gaming experience too much. Take WoW for example: when it started, it was legitimately slow and hard to get to level 20. Now that level 20 is the free to play cap, it only takes a few hours. All the fun that came from exploration and "play" of the game…
That has nothing to do with being free. For many expansions now,WoW has pushed players up to the latest content (usually last expansion content and 10 levels). They've been through 2 stat squishes and several expansions where you get a character boost when you buy the expansion. The MMO feel only happens when you're paying an MMO though so it makes sense to push the players into a smaller cross section of the game. They introduce what you call "mid-game content" every expansion. Its just in the last 10 levels.
They recently did a stat squish and made a large part of the old world autoscaling so you can take your time in an area and exhaust the quests there.
I have no idea what you mean when you say wow is like fortnite.
All this said, the quality of writing and attention to game design has suffered recently. I assume Blizzard has attention on other games.
Re: Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention
#9I'd love to spend money on games. Most games seem to be optimized for younger audience (==dumbed down) or monetized in really dumb ways. So no buy.
Re: Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention
#10This seems like a inaccurate take from folks who are not following the gaming industry closely. Activision just had a record-setting year of high revenue (presumably they are not feeling the impact of peaking attention), in part because the quality of their products is still high-ish. They laid people off because they could, not because of any downturn in business. EA's quarterly results are down, because their produ…
> EA's quarterly results are down,
And yet they posted pre-tax profits of almost 1.5 billion dollars in 2018 (their highest profit numbers in the last 4 years). That's hardly the mark of a company that's ready to go under.
Growth is not the only measure of a companies health.