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Posted on
December 14, 2012by ntennear
GAMASUTRA.COM
The 5
trends that defined the game industry in 2012
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December
6, 2012 | By Kris Graft
Editor-in-chief
Kris Graft kicks off Gamasutra’s annual year-end roundups with five trends
that defined 2012.
Once
December hits, pretty much every year I marvel at just how fast time flies.
That feeling of the swift passing of time was inflated as I scoured the
stories of the past 12 months: Was it really just this year that I saw
Tim Schafer at the February DICE Summit in Las Vegas, constantly checking his
phone to keep track of his crazy Kickstarter campaign? Was it really just
this year that Zynga dropped hundreds of millions of dollars to buy its
way into the mobile market?
There
were a lot of individual pieces of news, but with the benefit of hindsight,
we can see that the news with the most impact culminated in the five
following trends: the trends that defined 2012.
Crowdfunding’s
new opportunities
There
had been plenty of Kickstarter campaigns for games the past few years, but it
was Tim Schafer’s Double Fine Adventure in February that blew the
doors open on crowdfunding for games, waking the industry up to new possibilities
and setting a strong theme for the rest of the year.
Double
Fine Adventure drew in more than $3.3 million (a fair bit above
the $400,000 target) and shattered previous records for Kickstarter. But then
along came Obsidian Entertainment’s Project Eternity, which brought in nearly $4 million. And Kickstarter
in 2012 wasn’t just about game software, but also about hardware. The
Android-based Ouya console raised $8.6 million. The Oculus Rift VR
headset, which major game studios vouched for, raked in over $2.4 million.
Creators didn’t always use Kickstarter for
crowdfunding. Chris Roberts, best known for his work on Wing Commander,
launched a crowdfunding campaign on his own website, then added a Kickstarter
campaign, reaching a combined total of over $6.2 million in funds for his spacefaring
game Star Citizen. Introversion’s independently-run crowdfunding
campaign is now at $625,000.
Not everyone who took to Kickstarter was
successful — there were a number of notable campaigns that came up short.
Success or failure, Kickstarter offered not only the means for developers to
independently fund their games, but also oft-compelling stories for onlookers
and contributors — sometimes about oh-so-close misses, sometimes about a late-campaign rally to success.
The mobile transition
This year, social game developers allocated even more time and resources to
mobile platforms, as Facebook’s most dedicated players embraced games on
their smartphones and tablets.
Facebook has been helping facilitate mobile
adoption for game developers who previously were focused on browser-based
social games. The social network opened up new viral channels to allow games
to organically spread among Facebook friends, and now developers can more
fully hook their native mobile games into Facebook’s Open Graph.
One report in September showed how Zynga,
Electronic Arts and Disney/Playdom’s social browser games were seeing double-digit declines of daily active
users, month to month. Meanwhile, the top-grossing mobile games continue to
gain traction.
Businesses are changing their strategies in order
to follow where the players are going. Social game stalwart Wooga told Gamasutra that its main focus is no longer
on Facebook games, but on mobile, with over half of its 250-person staff
working on smartphones and tablets. Crowdstar has halted development of social network games to
focus on mobile. King.com is concentrating on cross-platform
browser-to-mobile experiences. And there’s Zynga, whose $210 million purchase of Draw Something
developer OMGPOP this year showed just how much the leading Facebook
developer thought mobile games were worth.
As mid-tier developers are squeezed out it’s
obviously not just social game developers who are flocking to mobile phones.
With millions of new phone activations happening each year, mobile hardware
becoming more powerful and Facebook itself focusing its efforts on mobile,
2013 will continue to see the maturation of this transition, in all parts of
the industry.
So long, MMO subscriptions
If there was any hope left for “premium” MMOs and
the monthly subscription model, those hopes were dashed in 2012 when BioWare
Austin’s Star Wars: The Old Republic swiftly declined in players, and
eventually transitioned to the free-to-play business model.
There was Funcom’s The Secret World — an
interesting MMO that charged players a monthly fee. When the players didn’t
show up, the company had to restructure, lay off workers and soldier
forward. The game still is subscription-based, but isn’t exactly an
example of how to make the subscription model work in a modern day MMO.
It’s not just the shortfalls of the subscription
MMO model that are notable, but also the success of new MMOs and
online-focused games released this year, that launched as free-to-play games.
Player expectations shifted dramatically in 2012 — and aside from
the lumbering giant World of Warcraft (released eight years ago) and
the rather brilliant EVE Online, the subscription model for MMOs is
all but finished.
Mid-tier fallout
At about the mid-point of the current console
generation, prognosticators warned the game industry: Going toe-to-toe with
studios in the top-tier, high-budget “triple-A” video game sector is going to
become an increasingly harrowing task.
We saw this happening last year as well, but the
trend continued in 2012 — mid-level developers and their games are falling
out of the picture. Slow sales of Square Enix’s Sleeping Dogs hurt the publisher’s earnings this year — a
disappointing shortfall, as the publisher made a special effort to scoop the
game up from Activision, where it was called True Crime: Hong Kong.
Lightbox Interactive’s Starhawk released
to some solid reviews in May, but by October the studio was hit with layoffs, and transitioned to
mobile games. Activision-owned Prototype 2 developer Radical
Entertainment also suffered layoffs; 007 Legends developer
Eurocom cut staff and began focusing on mobile.
THQ’s Vigil Games didn’t see restructuring, and
released a well-reviewed game in Darksiders II over the summer. That
game sold 1.4 million units, but THQ said it still didn’t meet
expectations. THQ president Jason Rubin conceded in November: “In the current
marketplace only the absolute top tier of releases is making an impact on
game consumers.”
If you want to survive and thrive in triple-A,
and fight against the Call of Dutys, the Gears of Wars, the Assassin’s
Creeds and the Halos, you’re going to need a whole lot of money
and a whole lot of talent. And even if you have those ingredients, nothing is
certain.
Resounding calls for diversity and inclusiveness
The video game industry seemed to reach a turning
point this year, as frank, open discussions about diversity and gender
inclusiveness frequently took place on video game websites and social media.
In late November, gender-related issues that were
being expressed throughout the year appeared to culminate in the #1reasonwhy Twitter campaign. The hashtag,
brought about by the question of why there are relatively few women in the
game industry, exposed many examples of sexist behavior in the work
environment, and put that ugliness up for the world to see.
But that was only one of the many pointed
instances that brought diversity issues to the surface. There was a certain
trailer for Hitman: Absolution that caused an uproar and sparked
discussion about misogyny in games — developer IO Interactive eventually apologized for the teaser, which
showed protagonist Agent 47 violently beating down gun-toting dominatrix
nuns. Game journalists took Crystal Dynamics to task when one developer
suggested players will want to “protect” main character Lara Croft from sexual assault.
Blogger Anita Sarkeesian launched a Kickstarter for a web series
investigating female tropes in video games. Along with support for her
efforts came disgusting, juvenile, sexist reaction from internet posters with
limited brain capacity. But in the end, the Kickstarter was funded well over
its goal, and the people had spoken, not only with their words, but with
their wallets.
We could go on with examples of calls for
inclusiveness and gender equality: Halo 4 developer 343 Industries talked openly about fighting gender stereotypes
in the game; Electronic Arts officially took
a stand against the Defense of Marriage Act; author and game
designer Anna Anthropy spoke out against “token characters” in games
at Indiecade; Boston’s No Show Conference for games aimed to have women make up at least 50 percent of the speaker lineup.
Of course, Gamasutra contributing writers were an active part of the discussion as well.
The movement is concentrated, but it’s spreading,
picking up traction every day. As people who care about video games grow up —
both players and developers — they’re becoming more vocal and insistent that
video games grow up with them.
|
GUARDIAN
GAMES BLOG Tuesday
11 December 2012
Video games in 2012: five
things we’ve learned
It’s the
year that brought us Kickstarter, Wii U and Doritos-gate – so what did it all
mean for the video game industry?
From the
crowd-funding explosion to the arrival of the first ‘next-generation’ console, the
games
industry has had quite a time of it this year. Although the technological
plotlines that brought us to this point have been building steadily throughout
the decade, 2012 saw a period of tumultuous change, lurching from incredible
highs to depressing lows, often within the seconds it takes to fire off an
ill-advised tweet.
So here
are the five key lessons I’ve taken from the past 12 months – feel free to
disagree, or add your own in the comments section.
The PC
is back, the consoles are confused
A few
years ago, plenty of industry pundits were writing obituaries for the PC as a
games machine. Rampant piracy led to plummeting game sales and mainstream
publishers were either introducing draconian and invasive DRM measures or abandoning the platform
altogether. For a while, it was all about World of Warcraft and the odd Triple
A shooter.
But then
came affordable broadband and digital distribution (or Steam as we may as well
call it) and alongside that, the incredible growth of the indie sector. The
income channels stabilised, tempting the traditional publishing giants back,
while the freemium model introduced us to emerging mega-powers such as Bigpoint
and Nexon.
These
interconnecting factors have produced some of the most important and impressive
gaming experiences of the year. There has been innovation, but mostly there has
been confidence in the classic PC gaming genres, especially the RPG, with
Diablo III, Guild Wars 2 and Legend of Grimrock all excelling.
And this
has all happened during a year in which console gaming has suffered a crisis of
confidence – or more accurately of identity. The Xbox
and PS3
dashboards now act as glorified advertisements for video-on-demand suppliers,
while the 3DS and Vita have struggled to establish a user base amid competition
from smartphones and tablets. There have been some astonishing games, of
course, but there has also been a fin-de-siècle atmosphere creeping through the
corridors at Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo as their respective architectures
have stared into the abyss of retirement.
The PC
has come out of its crisis with a renewed sense of optimism and self-belief;
the consoles don’t know whether they want to be set-top boxes or social gaming
servers. They’ll need to sort this out before they evolve.
Indie matters
For so
long, the old boys’ club of console gaming, with its certification programmes
and hugely expensive development kits, kept indie developers out of the
mainstream equation. Much of the bedroom coding scene was restricted to flash
gaming sites such as Newgrounds and Kongregate, with only a few fortunate souls
attracting the dismissive charity of major publishers.
With the
growth of digital distribution and the arrival of connected gaming consoles
there was a sudden requirement for broader content offerings. Hardware
manufacturers suddenly realised that they were in a long-tail market where
communities would gather around niche products; meanwhile, the App Store showed
that the next mega hit could just as easily come from five guys working in a
shack in Finland as it could from 250 coders in a mainstream publishing house.
So in
2012, indie gaming has earned its place at the top table. The power of
Minecraft, Angry Birds and insta-hits such as Draw Something has shown that old
models of supply and demand are irrelevant in the era of cheap downloadable
software and social networking. The likes of Microsoft and EA used to make
half-hearted overtures toward the indie community, chucking a few scraps at the
dirty upstarts; now they’ve realised the power Notch wields. Many of the most
exciting and discussed titles this year – from Slender to Fez – have come from
independent studios.
This year
has shown that when the next-gen consoles are announced, they had better make
sure they have compelling infrastructures to support and promote indie titles.
It isn’t about patronage anymore, it is about business.
Crowds are the new dictators
In
February, US studio Double Fine used Kickstarter to raise funds for a new
adventure game – within 24 hours it had attracted $1m in donations. From that
point on, this was always going to be the year of crowd funding.
The
results have been fascinating. There have been heartwarming Kickstarter
triumphs (Faster Than Light, Maia, The Banner Saga), there have been
Kickstarter scams (Mythic: The Story of Gods and Men) and there has been a
controversial glut of nostalgia projects, aimed at testing the love of veteran
gamers. It will be interesting to see what ‘investors’ will make of Elite, Star
Citizen and Wasteland 2.
But the
‘wisdom of crowds’ dynamic was not confined to Kickstarter and its rivals. In
July, Valve announced Greenlight, a new aggregating service that would allow
community members to assess prospective Steam titles and vote on whether they
should receive a full digital release via the service.
Some saw
this as a dereliction of duty, others as a chance for studios to mobilise their
fans and take destiny into their own hands. Whatever the case, it was a
challenge to the benevolent dictatorships operating on the smartphone and
console app stores and introduced a new era in which developers would need to
be shrewd publicists and charismatic community leaders to garner success.
But what
of the arty titles, the insular, delicate experiments that might not catch the
eye of Steam’s most active demographics? The past year has introduced us to
what may well become a key question going forward: does popularity mean
quality? Or does the crowd – like the major publishers – naturally gather
around the most familiar and understandable projects? Are we trading one form
of elitism for another?
The hardcore/casual boundary is down
It used
to be so simple: there were hardcore titles for real gamers, and then there
were the mainstream inanities that brought families together at Christmas. A
few titles managed to span the divide, but not many.
But then
came smartphones, app stores, social games and the freemium revolution.
Suddenly, everyone was playing games everywhere, and with hundreds of titles
released every week, your mum was just as likely to discover some indie ripoff
of Angry Birds as you were.
At the
same time, the mechanisms of casual games have infiltrated the ‘hardcore’
sector. Auto Log, Battle Log and Call of Duty Elite are effectively social
networks for gamers, while the free-to-play paradigms of endless iteration and
updating have brought us into an era of episodic content and multiple DLC
drops.
The
barriers between devices have turned into pathways. The ideas of cross-platform
connectivity and pervasive gaming have led to titles that play and save
seamlessly across consoles, tablets and handheld machines. The idea of the
‘second screen’ – the image of families watching TV while simultaneously
browsing on their iPads and laptops – has infected gaming to such an extent
that we know have a console (the Wii U)
and a major new application concept (Microsoft SmartGlass) based around the
proposition.
Minecraft
should be hardcore, but it is everywhere; it is even a Lego model now. The
market has widened this year; mainstream consumers are no longer bound by the
old gatekeepers, they have been emancipated. And it turns out that they
actually want to play Dark Souls as well as Call of Duty. We’re all gamers now.
This is the brutal generation
The
transition from the old games industry of boxed copies, huge publishers and
dominant consoles to a highly competitive content-rich digital marketplace has
been tough. This year has seen major closures from Sony Liverpool to Eurocom,
while the likes of Zynga, THQ and Popcap have laid off staff and cancelled
projects.
2012 was
a year of extremes. At the grassroots level, the rise of indie gaming and
digital distribution have opened new avenues to success for smaller developers.
But at the other end, the huge costs involved with producing Triple A console
titles has shut doors for all but the richest and largest mega-publishers.
Major titles now call for teams of several hundred staff and budgets of $50m –
this is unlikely to be sustainable going into a new console generation. The
whole shape of the mainstream industry is changing accordingly – at first it
was about outsourcing routine graphics tasks to specialist studios in the Far
East or Eastern Europe; but we may now be seeing a more dramatic restructure,
away from vast in-house teams and toward a movie industry model of freelance
specialists brought in for specific tasks.
At the
same time, the rise of social networks, gamer forums and community engagement
has led to a new era of accountability and mass controversy. Games developers,
publishers and journalists have all found themselves in the firing line this
year as consumers have mobilised via Twitter and sites like NeoGaf to wage war
on industry failings.
Games
companies have found themselves out of step with the sensibilities of this
empowered audience – the Hitman sexy nuns trailer being a case in point. Game
news sites, too, have become answerable to a powerful and engaged user base
that sees conspiracy and subjectivity in the relationships between journalists
and publishers. The Doritos-gate controversy, originating with Robert
Florence’s attack on comfy press/publisher relations led
many writers to rethink their dealings with the industry.
Mistakes
leapt on, miscreants savaged, careers ended – the games industry in 2012 became
a hyperactive microcosm of wider business and media practice. The will of the
people, once easily influenced, curtailed and controlled is now an
unpredictable force, and the old adage that all publicity is good publicity has
been smashed against the rocks of Twitter outrage.
Freedom –
of choice, of expression, of access – has brought volatility. There are no cosy
second acts in games industry lives.
Weblinks
Some
useful infographics here
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