EightBitBlood
@EightBitBlood@lemmy.world
- Comment on 13 hours ago:
At any given time, there’s about 400 million people playing game on the planet. Of those people, only 14% play NEW games released within 12 months.
It used to be 30% 10 years ago. Now it’s less for a variety of factors, but one of them is less people have the income and budget they used to.
You are in that 14%.
Which is great - but the games you buy as part of that 14% are based on your taste. Not if they are exceptionally good, only if they are exceptionally good to you.
So making games that are “exceptionally good” for an audience isn’t easy because your audience doesn’t even know what they want beyond a genre. I’m sure you could tell me about the games you like and prefer to play, possibly even a genre of games you love.
But if I asked you to tell me what game COULD be exceptionally good in that genre, you might not have an answer. Just other games to compare it to. And if you do have an answer, there’s no telling if it would actually be popular with a bigger audience that genre enjoys.
Making “exceptional games” isn’t a bar to be crossed that makes a game money. Rather a game is “exceptional” once it finds an audience that feels that way about it. Games that have broad appeal have broad audiences like Call of Duty who all feel that game is exceptional too. Many who play it would argue which one in the series was the most “exceptional” and wouldn’t have a great answer for what to make as a better version of that game.
People like what they play, and exceptional games are only exceptional to the audience that plays them. So it’s not so much about making something exceptional, but making something that has an audience that thinks it’s exceptional.
And finding that audience is the hard part. Especially when only 14% of people who plays games are even looking at what you’ve made.
But it’s not impossible. Just difficult these days.
- Comment on 13 hours ago:
Based on what? Your opinion? Or is there a profit analysis and breakdown you want to pair with that to make a point?
- Comment on 1 day ago:
My dude, I’m very familiar with the 14% of videogame players new game devs are vying for. And every one of the games you mentioned launched at that price because they were developed by a single dev (two at most) who could profit off of the $10 - $15 dollar space that was below the smaller studios putting out games like Shadow Complex, or Mercenary Kings, or Shank 1+2 for $20.
Now all of those spaces are being crushed together. Mostly due to economic factors. Thats where the biggest problem really lies, in the fact that people just have less money to spend on all that entertainment. Just pointing out that it’s competitive at all is obvious my dude, but the direction its going in is one in where there’s less anything being made (including games) because not as many people have money to spend on anything but necessities.
That’s why AAA is now scavenging at the bottom of the totem pole, and pricing their older games at $10 or less on sale, it’s because the few people that have money find that price point appealing. So it’s now one that not just the people who made Terraria, Braid, etc compete in. The money those devs made previously in that space is now up for grabs to AAA companies that never had anything to sell at that price before.
Theres a very tried and true formula for any business, including making games, and in the last 2 years it has completely broken apart. Mostly due to the Embracer group merger failing, combined with AI, combined with economic uncertainty, combined with AAA companies stabbing indie creators in the back (Subnautica, Disco Elysium). Your game doesn’t have to be a massive hit to be successful, it just needs to have a big enough audience to be profitable. But that audience has shrunk over the years as economies have tightened, and the companies getting squeezed have been invading markets they never had a presence in before.
So it’s just desperate times more than anything. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make a living off of making games. I know dozens of small teams funded by government grants making small games you’ve never heard of to help kids in hospitals learn about their cancer. Or teach kids in underprivileged schools about resource scarcity. Making games as a business goes far beyond entertainment and the hopes of narcissists. It’s an artistic medium like any other, and as such benefits society by making the toughest parts of it more accessible.
There’s plenty of ways to run a company doing just that - and just because the world economy is in free fall doesn’t mean the entire business of making games is something for the lucky few. It’s just for anyone that wants to learn how to run a game company. Which isn’t easy, but extends far beyond the simplistic view you are portraying.
- Comment on 1 day ago:
Thanks! 🙂 Appreciate you confirming that. We actually changed the price of our latest game to $10 (from $20) because we launched last December and got buried by AAA selling for $15.
Almost every dev team we talked to this year felt the same about the $20 price. That is, it’s much better to go out at $15 or $10 as a LOT of people see indie games at that price as better than modern AAA. (All while still holding out for classic AAA that go on sale for $20.)
And that being said, I’m totally cool with losing a sale to MGSV or Witcher 3 😁 Just wish the $20 space wasn’t getting so crowded. It’s making it rough for the smaller teams to compete at that price too now.
- Comment on 1 day ago:
As an indie dev, this article is fucking stupid.
Want to know why indie games are priced at $10 to $15? Becaue AAA has been putting everything they’ve made in the last decade on Steam and it’s all going for $20 - $25.
Indies can’t launch at that price point anymore because they’re competing with AAA games from 10 years ago that have been discounted to death.
The Steam winter sale is the best example of this, where most people will buy RDR2 for $19 instead of the new mega hit indie that’s $20. So indies have been lowering their price to actually get sales. That’s why team cherry priced Silk Song at $20.
Basically, AAA is now just competing with the bottom part of the market they spent that last decade flooding.
They’re complaining about people actually choosing where to spend their money wisely because that means they might actually have to make a good product if they want to sell a game for $70.
- Comment on Alberto Mielgo defends the Marathon cinematic as "not AI," denies his team touched Bungie’s plagiarized material and calls the art theft incident a genuine mistake that was "blown out of proportion" 1 week ago:
The real question is how a company accidentally steals something like that for a 4th time. (This was the 4th time they’ve been caught doing this).
- Comment on Paul Krugman. Former Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1 week ago:
Agreed.
Here’s a way to use crypto to buy from pretty much any major online merchant anonymously without them tracking your user data:
Its a card that acts as an intermediary for crypto.
It let’s you buy from these merchants without giving away your private data or buying habits.
This is a valuable use for crypto for many people. This is a site that let’s them use their crypto basically anywhere without getting spied on.
This fundamentally disproves his first core statments about crypto not having a use case and not being usable at most merchants.
Basically, he immediately reveals he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
- Comment on They Wylin' 1 week ago:
The Ken Starr report that lead to Clinton’s impeachment begs to differ.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starr_Report
Many of the details reveal highly personal information; many are sexually explicit…Because Starr’s office allegedly leaked portions to press about sexual details that were mentioned in his report, he was criticized for using the scandal as a political maneuver and was charged for violating legal ethics by presenting information irrelevant to an investigation as evidence of legal wrongdoing.
That report is ten times the size of the 9-11 report btw.
Reading the charges now is hilarious considering Trump is guilty of the same hundreds, possibly thousands of times over.
- Comment on eco-vengeance iconoclast 5 weeks ago:
As someone that’s still in AZ, you are correct on all counts. But forgot:
- They have the cutest babies who follow their parents marching in straight lines.
- STAY FAR FAR AWAY IF THEY HAVE THOSE CUTE BABIES
- Comment on Xbox consoles and games will no longer be sold at Walmart and Target, according to employees 1 month ago:
Very true. They are still acting identically as if they were shutting down console production. The only difference between Dreamcast and Xbox is that Xbox is willing to lie to keep their shareholders oblivious.
Sega at least put their units on sale with honesty, yet Microsoft is acting like their Xboxes selling for 279 at Sam’s club is just a temporary thing.
- Comment on Xbox consoles and games will no longer be sold at Walmart and Target, according to employees 1 month ago:
Actually. It happened with Sega after the Dreamcast. Almost beat for beat:
Sega: We’re so going to make a cooler next Gen console. Sega: Yeah our games are leaving stores, but just you wait until we announce what’s NEXT! SEGA: J/K no more new consoles, Sega just makes games now.
Microsoft is likely going to turn Xbox into a brand the same way Sega was forced to.
- Comment on Xbox consoles and games will no longer be sold at Walmart and Target, according to employees 1 month ago:
It’s a contradiction to them having a successful next console. This is Sega + Dreamcast vibes all over again.
- Comment on Who's your favorite female protagonist in a video game? (Add pic of character in response) 1 month ago:
- Comment on PhDebaters 1 month ago:
I dunno. Sounds like you like discussing things.
- Comment on Asus ROG Xbox Ally Gaming Handhelds Cost Up to $999.99, Preorders Open Now 1 month ago:
You know it’s going to be a great and memorable platform to play games on when it’s catchy & cool name is 3/4 corpo IP 1/4 name.
- Comment on THIS JUST IN: FBI suspects Kirk was likely targeted, more info to come 2 months ago:
Not in law school 😂
But as an American, how is money coming from a political donation legally protected free speech?
Since I’m not a lawyer, and I assume you are, please walk me through how that concept, legally, makes more sense than a bullet coming from a gun being considered free speech in a “Prove me Wrong” tour about gun violence.
Honestly, no antogonization intended, I would earnestly love to hear an actual lawyers take on the differences between these two concepts.
Because from my perspective: both are genuinely poorly reasoned when it comes to the first amendment and free speech, yet one is actually legal.
Would love to know why that is.
- Comment on THIS JUST IN: FBI suspects Kirk was likely targeted, more info to come 2 months ago:
Better still:
Mr Kirk was on his “Prove me Wrong” tour.
And the assassin chose to prove Mr Kirk wrong in a way words couldn’t.
But - If money can legally be protected as speech, what else should we consider protected under the first amendment?
If Mr Kirk was openly asking to be proven wrong, then couldn’t the assassins bullet be protected under free speech as a clear (but violent) answer to that question?
- Comment on THIS JUST IN: FBI suspects Kirk was likely targeted, more info to come 2 months ago:
The blood shooting from Mr. Kirks neck alone was not good enough evidence to determine if the shooter hit what he was targeting. Great work FBI. At this rate, you’ll soon be able to confirm the shooter used a gun.
- Comment on All while the skeletal, crumbling, dusty bones of an econ major pulls business backwards into hell. 2 months ago:
I’m a fan :) Not many multi-millionaires are out there making YouTube videos about wealth concentration being bad. But he is. And he’s very well spoken, highly intelligent, and knows what he’s talking about (at least 99% of the time). It’s refreshing to say the least. Here’s hoping he keeps gaining traction and a wider audience🤞 If anyone can get people to understand how to fix our system, it’s him.
- Comment on All while the skeletal, crumbling, dusty bones of an econ major pulls business backwards into hell. 2 months ago:
My favorite paper published last year includes the following, now scientifically proven statements:
The preponderance of the evidence shows that rising income inequality slows economic growth [3], [4], [5], [6]. Recent analyses have shown that once one controls for wealth inequality the negative effect of income inequality on economic growth falls away as statistically insignificant, and that **it has in fact been wealth inequality that has been detrimental to growth, ** either in an inverse linear form or in the form of an inverse u-shape À la Kuznets [7], [8], [9], [10].
www.sciencedirect.com/…/S003801212400003X
So economically speaking, Econ math just proved that we need to eat the rich in order to improve anything.
From the same paper above:
From a policy perspective, the ongoing increase in the concentration of wealth is one of the main socio-economic failures of our time [1]. Not only is it likely to depress economic growth in some countries, as we measure here, it has fueled social unrest, political polarization, and populist nationalism… redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor may well be growth-enhancing in most countries
- Comment on All while the skeletal, crumbling, dusty bones of an econ major pulls business backwards into hell. 2 months ago:
The only thing funny about the Laffer curve is how little it now matters.
It was used to justify Reagnomics, which then immediately proved we weren’t nearly as high on the Laffer curve as we assumed. Because of this, we have concrete evidence that lowering taxes on the rich doesn’t increase government revenues.
Yet we’re still doing that 50 years later. Despite the only vaguely scientific thing behind it proving it doesn’t work decades ago.
Imagine being in a catholic family, reading the Bible, and always walking away thinking that Judas did the right thing (despite everything else the Bible says). That’s US economic policy for the last 50 years.
- Comment on All while the skeletal, crumbling, dusty bones of an econ major pulls business backwards into hell. 2 months ago:
As an econ major with a BS, please don’t lump me in with the econ majors who went to business school for a BA. I like cool math, not venture capitalism cancer.
- Comment on Microsoft Still Can't Say How Much the ROG Xbox Ally X Will Cost Due to "Macro-Economic" Conditions, Despite Announcing Release Date and Availability Details(Leaked prices $549.99/$899 for Ally/Ally ) 2 months ago:
Interesting strategy! And thank you for describing it in detail as well! If I sounded condescending at all, it was certainly towards Microsoft 😉 But you’re right - that path is worth pursuing for that value proposition. It’s a safer path than others as well.
Agreed it’s almost destiny that the futon will be dueced. But at least this approach could make things interesting 🤘
- Comment on Microsoft Still Can't Say How Much the ROG Xbox Ally X Will Cost Due to "Macro-Economic" Conditions, Despite Announcing Release Date and Availability Details(Leaked prices $549.99/$899 for Ally/Ally ) 3 months ago:
I agree this is clever, and a decent shot at evolving what an “Xbox” is. I just think it’s spreading the brand thin when it’s already been stretched far. While it would be very convenient and cool to have a certified Xbox machine, outside of CoD or Overwatch, there’s not much software that makes the Xbox brand as a recognizable game service valuable.
Basically, If all Microsoft has to offer on our Xbox PC’s are CoD and Overwatch, then that is what the name “Xbox” will be worth. I would not say either of those games have a bright future, let alone one that’s uniquely identifiable as “Xbox.”
So while I agree that Microsoft is making sure everything can be an Xbox, I disagree that will increase its brand value. I think, if anything, it will just further dilute the value of Xbox as a service or name that people relate to for games. If the only games offered are ones that have shrinking crowds, then what else is growing them that Xbox offers?
Imo, more entry points into having an Xbox doesn’t mean there’s more of a reason to enter.
- Comment on Microsoft Still Can't Say How Much the ROG Xbox Ally X Will Cost Due to "Macro-Economic" Conditions, Despite Announcing Release Date and Availability Details(Leaked prices $549.99/$899 for Ally/Ally ) 3 months ago:
So in ten years Xbox won’t exist as a brand at all? I agree. No need to take the bet.
I think what you’re describing is exactly what Microsoft is doing. Except I think it’s incredibly short sighted from a business, consumer, and brand perspective.
IMO, It’s basically the brand equivalent of seppuku.
With no functional distinction between Xbox and Windows, you just get the entirety of the Xbox ecosystem silently competing with all of Steam. But even worse: it’s now just the word Xbox on Windows. And everyone really hates Windows at the moment. It’s bleeding OS marketshare to Linux like nothing I’ve ever seen.
So they want to put the entirety of Xbox recognition on a Platform (PC) that their console users won’t be familiar with, and the OS they’re integrating it with is actively losing users. Mostly to Linux. Which Steam has an entire OS built on top of that anyone can use for their games for free.
So the consumer choice for PC users will be between:
-
Steam OS based on Linux for free. Runs all steam games and has a desktop mode for all other apps.
-
Windows 11 for $hundreds, smaller pool of games + worse performance.
I don’t think people are going to choose option 2 just because the word Xbox is in it somehow. Some might, but this is just HBO becoming MAX all over again, but without the escape plan of returning to HBO.
Destroying a console AND brand just to compete with Steam with an inferior product is incredibly dumb, and incredibly Microsoft.
-
- Comment on Microsoft Still Can't Say How Much the ROG Xbox Ally X Will Cost Due to "Macro-Economic" Conditions, Despite Announcing Release Date and Availability Details(Leaked prices $549.99/$899 for Ally/Ally ) 3 months ago:
Slapping the Xbox name onto the ass-end of an overpriced and confusingly named steam deck clone is definitley the funniest way to kill the Xbox brand.
I mean Nokia had the NGage which was designed to look like goat-c, so the bar IS high.
- Comment on The next time you hear someone say they're just vibing in life without a job, just look at this image. 3 months ago:
You’ll be able to go through life saying that a lot. Eventually, the only thing you’ll fear is when that might end.
- Comment on What's the equivalent of rose coloured glasses for always seeing something in a negative perspective? 4 months ago:
Mine calls em shit shades.
- Comment on ROG Xbox Ally Is $700 And Xbox Ally X Is $1050 4 months ago:
RIP Xbox.
Did they bother looking at the history of console launches that were above $600?
You know, all those household names like 3DO, Jaguar, and CD-I, that prove how historically there is NOT a big audience for expensive consoles.
Good ol Playstation even learned their lesson with the PS3.
And now in the middle of a global recession, one where people are even turning on Nintendo for price increases - Xbox is releasing their most expensive console ever with no exclusives, and not a single reason to use this new “Xbox” because game pass is available on everything else.
I’m sorry. But whoever is left at Xbox needs to pull their head out of their ass and breath real air.
This move is out of the 90’s with crossbranding that smells of desperation. WHY would you call it so many names? WHY the ROG Xbox Ally? And not the Xbox Ally?
You really just had to slap the corporate partnership with ROG in the name of the product at the front like that? People smell that bullshit ten miles away now, as it basically the equivalent of putting corporate flowers on a devices grave. Like the Verizon Blackberry Storm, or the ATT Nokia NGage.
FFS “XBOX ALLY” is a great name! They could have even called it the “Xbox ALLY by ROG”
Now it’s going to be another “Xbone” situation because Microsoft can’t unincorporated their brain from making terrible decisions.
The ROG Xbox Ally is an overbranded ununique afterthought of a console designed to milk Xbox nostalgia from people that don’t have the budget or desire for an expensive portable PC.
I wish Vegas took odds over the potential failure of this console, because it’s almost certain how much of a failure this thing is going to be at launch.
Just my 2 cents. Haters better tell me how many of these they’re planning to buy at launch to scalp.
- Comment on Anon takes shots at Donkey Kong 4 months ago:
Just FYI. I lucked out and won my local Blockbuster stores version of this contest 🙂 Made it to the state finals, but was too young to compete and got kicked out. (I was 11.) But you better believe I rented a free movie every month. Sometimes got away with 2 haha 😂
