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  1. #31
    xcel30's Avatar Senior Member
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    Well at least everyone will be able try the game to say if some mechanic changes will improve the series or not
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  2. #32
    dagrommit's Avatar Senior Member
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    Reposting this in a more appropriate thread given we're talking about business models:

    Originally Posted by TimesLostArc Go to original post
    As for the F2P part, a lot of these projects have to be financed. Pretty much the guys that finance these things hear about F2P games and mobile titles that are successful and ask "If we are going to finance this, why can't you do x like this really popular game has already done?". Remember that the guys financing these projects have investors of their own who are often things as banal as retirement funds. They want returns and they want something that was recently proven or part of a thesis they can present to their own investors.
    This deserves to be expanded on for the people at the back.

    Companies like Ubisoft are accountable to their shareholders, many of whom manage investments on behalf of individuals saving for their retirement. Your mutual funds, 401(k), RRSP or state pension funds probably hold positions in the same companies you complain about being greedy.

    As an example, the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan holds 2.2 million shares in Tencent. They in turn hold 5% of Ubisoft.

    TL;DR - F2P games are paying for Ontario teachers retirements.

    Welcome to Capitalism 101
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  3. #33
    ^ I don't think Hyperscape is funding / paying for anything.
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  4. #34
    dagrommit's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by Bursucul Go to original post
    ^ I don't think Hyperscape is funding / paying for anything.
    You might want to look at who else Tencent has invested in. One of them is Epic, who make a small game you may have heard of called Fortnite
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  5. #35
    Originally Posted by Bursucul Go to original post
    ^ I don't think Hyperscape is funding / paying for anything.
    That doesn't really matter. You were never the person who financed it. Its the problem with playing something that other people pay for. When other people pay or finance something, you have very little to no say in how or what they produce.

    Too often gamers expect video games to cost the exact same as they did back in 1988. The problem is that $50 in 1988 is now $112.87. Unless a game is a strong hit, game developers cannot count on consumers to make up the missing costs. Game development is even more expensive now as well. That means they often need someone to finance the project. Everyone is opposed to pre-orders, right? Well that has a cost too. It means that developers are even more dependent on financing(i.e. loans and stock purchases).

    You and everyone else who complained about "greed" and refused to evaluate the facts pretty much gave these projects over to other people to finance. Now when they are releasing a Free to Play game, we as consumers have little to no influence.

    I know that bad corporate behavior is a thing, but often lately there has been a lot of bad consumer behavior. Someone else is paying for this, literally. It isn't the consumer, we have very little say in what they produce.

    It is problem with Free to Play. It is why they exist to an extent. Consumers think things should be "free" and thus someone else has to pay for things.

    Unless you or anyone else is willing to pay $112.87 for a todays produced equivalent 1988 game or likely $200 for a triple A title, expect more of this to happen.
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  6. #36
    Thought we are talking about Ubi and/or The Division...

    ... anyway, the point is that for every successful PVP there are hundreds of failures. At this point there is Fortnite, CoD and Apex (and maybe Overwatch), and nothing else. The nothing else includes Hyperscape, a game launched in August last year and now dead in the water. And that was a full on PVP effort and still not enough to be successful.
    In contrast, Heartland feels like a half-acced shallow mish-mash of PVE and PVP, and the risk is that it will fail on both fronts. Yeah, I know, it's still early, could get so much better by launch time, blah, blah, but the published roadmap puts before anything else.

    There was another point about recycling assets... It makes perfect sense to do that, especially with The Division. Is one good looking game, with lots of variety and incredible attention to detail. It's important how much effort you put into the game and level design, how you use those assets. One bad example is The Summit... has the same assets, but the design is boring and the combination of assets is just so effing ugly. I mean the lobby is the best part of it...
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  7. #37
    Originally Posted by Bursucul Go to original post
    Thought we are talking about Ubi and/or The Division...

    ... anyway, the point is that for every successful PVP there are hundreds of failures. At this point there is Fortnite, CoD and Apex (and maybe Overwatch), and nothing else. The nothing else includes Hyperscape, a game launched in August last year and now dead in the water. And that was a full on PVP effort and still not enough to be successful.
    In contrast, Heartland feels like a half-acced shallow mish-mash of PVE and PVP, and the risk is that it will fail on both fronts. Yeah, I know, it's still early, could get so much better by launch time, blah, blah, but the published roadmap puts before anything else.

    There was another point about recycling assets... It makes perfect sense to do that, especially with The Division. Is one good looking game, with lots of variety and incredible attention to detail. It's important how much effort you put into the game and level design, how you use those assets. One bad example is The Summit... has the same assets, but the design is boring and the combination of assets is just so effing ugly. I mean the lobby is the best part of it...
    Whatever you saw on heartland was likely an initial video of content created as a concept. Most online gaming publications expect it to be released very late 2021 or early 2022. That is 6 months to a year away. It is why I despise leaks like this. It is extremely unfinished and there are a lot of changes that can and will be made to polish it.

    As for F2P successes and failures. Banal groups like retirement funds investing in something will mean that anyone that wants their money has to "chase the trends". You can't afford to be an innovator when the local Teacher's or Municipal Government's Pension fund is invested in the company financing your project and wants a safe proven money maker based on market trends. Telling them that Fortnite was an outlier rather then a trend setter requires more courage than most in that industry have.

    Summit is basically Underground from the Division 1 recreated for the Division 2. It was a random procedurally generated dungeon maker. Personally, I enjoy it. It's great for farming and way easier to multi level binge over Underground. Considering that this was what they were aiming for, I think they did really well.

    More content for the Division 2 is supposed to come out this year or next year. We are supposed to get apparel events eventually as well. Heartland is its own project produced by Red Storm. They are 2 different games and development studios.
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  8. #38
    @TimesLostArc
    What are you even trying to say?! Not sure what you point is...
    Yes, games are expensive to make, but the market is much bigger and the returns potential much higher than 1988.
    As re. who is financing development, they do it to make make money, sales, hence they will make it for the market / audience, not to fit or satisfy their own preferences.
    The fact that some games fail and some are successful is witness to the "influence" we, the consumer and audience still have.
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  9. #39
    Originally Posted by Bursucul Go to original post
    @TimesLostArc
    What are you even trying to say?! Not sure what you point is...

    I think I was extremely clear in what I was saying. We as consumers don't matter any more in this part of the development process. Our demands don't matter. We aren't paying for it.

    Yes, games are expensive to make, but the market is much bigger and the returns potential much higher than 1988.
    The returns might be bigger, but the expenses are vastly larger and the return per customer is much smaller. Hence the individual customer has less influence if not almost no influence. At this point the developers are looking at trends and trend setters. Fortnite is the most successful game and is hence the trendsetter. Individual customers mean almost nothing, it is about creating the next "it" title.

    As re. who is financing development, they do it to make make money, sales, hence they will make it for the market / audience, not to fit or satisfy their own preferences.
    The fact that some games fail and some are successful is witness to the "influence" we, the consumer and audience still have.
    It is about returns. To the investors/developers, all they have to do is recreate the exact model that Fortnite did and then simply profit. Most individual customers mean nothing(except for the whales), because in this case individual customers aren't willing to pay for anything and can't even be reliably trusted to even know what they want.

    When customers mean nothing and aren't a part of the financing process. Then their opinion is moot. It becomes a game of following trends and trying to recreate success.

    They adopt the mantra "if they just build it exactly the same way someone else did then the money will just come".

    Eventually investors may wisen up and realize that Fortnite was a fluke rather than a likely future. That period of time will likely be years from now.

    As for this moment the conventional wisdom is that "most customers are not willing to pay for the development of a game, hence we need to follow a formula that works from the most successful example in the gaming industry(Fortnite), we create that and maybe we can get enough money to produce other projects that can succeed."

    Most of Tim Sweeney's clumsy statements about the "consumer not mattering" are a part of what I just explained. There is a lot of hubris in this thinking, but I strongly think that the consumers, developers and investors each had a hand in bringing us to this shameful moment. Process in this moment matters far more than people simply because people(i.e. consumers) are considered unreliable moochers to developers and investors.

    I personally think customers should be an integral part of the process. Still when most customers are unwilling to pay for things, I can see this series of events playing out more often. My personal belief code is to "aspire for a world without end" and "free is a four letter word". I know that I am in the minority in my personal beliefs, especially on that last one.
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  10. #40
    dagrommit's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by Bursucul Go to original post
    Yes, games are expensive to make, but the market is much bigger and the returns potential much higher than 1988.
    Massive had 450 people after Division 1 had completed (and that doesn't include the people from Red Storm, Annecy or other studios that helped out).

    The original Bioshock from 2007 peaked at 130 people. Knights of the Old Republic from 2003 peaked at 98 people.

    The original Rainbow Six from 1998? 22
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