Comment on Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good: The gaming industry spent billions pursuing the idea that customers wanted realistic graphics. Did executives misread the market?

Lanthanae@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• DdCno1@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Balatro is 1) a fluke, an exception, a rarity and 2) not something big studios could even possibly replicate. What would be the point of a big studio trying to make a game that one developer can pull off? The closest the likes of Ubisoft in particular are getting to games like Baltro are their Indie-esque side projects that parts of their bigger studios engage in on the side, like Valiant Hearts. Those can never be enough to finance a big operation though.

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  • Lanthanae@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    You’re missing my point and arguing against a strawman here. All I’m arguing is that the things AAA studios focus on (like hyper-realism) are not the things that make a game fun, and AAA studios sound be putting fun as the focus.

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    • DdCno1@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I’m not arguing against a strawman, but against someone who might want to look into this topic a bit more closely. Balatro sold two million copies less than Star Wars Outlaws. People obviously want flashy spectacle more than tight mechanics - it’s just that even those higher sales figures weren’t enough to compensate for the bloated development budgets. That’s the real lesson. The old method of spending more and more money to make more and more money isn’t quite working anymore - not that people don’t want pretty graphics anymore (because they still do want those more than basic Indie art).

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      • Lanthanae@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Yeah you’re still not even contradicting what I’m saying, you just think you are. You’re arguing against positions I don’t hold lmao.

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  • Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Balatro is…not something big studios could even possibly replicate

    …and why not?

    What would be the point of a big studio trying to make a game that one developer can pull off?

    …money?

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    • DdCno1@beehaw.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      …and why not?

      Because Balatro is a single developer’s vision realized without compromise, without producers, writers, tech people, art directors, etc. all meddling with the production in the usual “design by committee” approach that large studios are using. This kind of game can only exist as a solo or very small team project.

      …money?

      The mantra of big studios and publishers is to spend lots of money to make lots of money. Balatro sold a mere 3.5 million copies over the course of a year, for a price of $14. That’s just $34.3 million taking Steam’s 30% cut into account. Huge money for a solo dev (especially given that the budget was just $125,000), but both the sales figure and the sales revenue are in serious flop territory by big studio standards. Star Wars outlaws underperformed at 5.5 million copies sold, since it cost hundreds of millions to develop and market, including having the highest marketing budget of any game ever made. To put this into perspective, this means they spent significantly more than $150 million (the usual figure for a top of the line AAA game these days) on marketing alone.

      You can not generate the kind of money that large publishers and studios need to survive with little Indie games.

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      • Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        “design by committee” approach that large studios are using

        They don’t have to use that.

        This kind of game can only exist as a solo or very small team project.

        That’s just very clearly wrong.

        You can not generate lose the kind of money that large publishers and studios need to survive with little Indie games.

        Wrong again. If anything, only large publishers can lose the kinds of money that they sometimes do.

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