And I, for one, hope that a shit developer like Gameloft continues to be largely alone in trying to imitate HD console games using touch controls.
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Republique Kickstarter by Ryan Payton - NOW FOR PC AND MAC! [Ended, $555K funded]
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And I, for one, hope that a shit developer like Gameloft continues to be largely alone in trying to imitate HD console games using touch controls.
You're taking it too litteral. My point was just because a console / device has an enormous fanbase doesn't mean it's a market for any kind of game. You can't say 'well even if only 3% would be interested' because there's no way of telling if any percent would be interested.
Gameloft is very aggressive in their cloning and marketing their ripoff games. They profit because they squeeze the market, not because 'core' games are highly desired on the device.
Are they forcing people to buy the games? I don't understand. They are making money because people are willing to pay for the games.
"If only a small percentage of a large market buys our stuff we'll be rich" was also the logic of Pets.com.
Gameloft makes clones and shows that there is a market for IOS clones of AAA games. That doesn't mean there is a market for original AAA games. (Not saying there isn't one - I have no idea)
Gameloft makes clones and shows that there is a market for IOS clones of AAA games. That doesn't mean there is a market for original AAA games. (Not saying there isn't one - I have no idea)
I agree, I think it is risky and that there is a small market for original AAA games on any platform. This is a completely different issue from whether or not there is a market for gamers interested in AAA games on iOS.
Terms like "core", "serious", and "AAA" are vague and make it unclear what you guys are trying to say. I don't think there is much overlap between people who buy Gameloft games and people are are willing to shell out for Republique, which is what really matters in this discussion.
Most people buy their games at $1, or get them free and spend on IAP. Gameloft has almost wholly switched over to the IAP model, which suggests the 'AAA' approach wasn't the most luctrative.
They're still the same types of games. I don't think monetization models is how games should be defined. Infinity Blade uses IAP and also runs sales that bring it down to 99¢. And that is still on an expensive budget and what is described as an AAA game in this thread as well as the Republique Kickstarter.
Pie and Beans
Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
Funds seemingly havent gone up since I went for a big ol nightly sleep. Seems dead in the water.
Sorry Ryan, but you're entering 'delusional developer' status here perhaps up with Dennis Dyack but less militant, and probably with more potential quality in the offing. The audience isn't there on iOS for your game. Not on Kickstarter, not in the iOS community. You're pitching to vapours of a mythical subset you want to exist to justify what frankly seems like a kamikaze dive you're taking your lifes work and new studio into.
But anyway, lets disassemble your somewhat stubborn bullet points:
And that same exact story can be told through PC's. To greater effect even. From your trailer theres parts where as the player you hack into other computers and cameras. Have you tried hacking anything with your iPhone lately? No, you go to a computer for that mischief. As for the element of constant communication, forgo the phone angle, and embrace spoofs of social networking instead. Instant message clients, skype, Facebook, irc channels. A PC has an almost limitless supply of communication potential to back up your "story told through brief digital liasons". You could spoof the approaching internet doomsday scenario's that caught big airtime with SOPA and more. You could even add more gameplay variety with say Hope's means of communication constantly getting blocked. Whereas first she could call you straight from Skype or other instant messenger with webcam, she has to resort to more and more ways to get her message to you. Perhaps even where you have to meet her in a mocked up MMO to get her latest tidbit. The South Park episode of Stan trapped in the computer world yelling up to his friends from a Farmville setting comes to mind.
You've closed your mind off to a lot of potential game design with your core concept, and also from an entire audience hungry for content. The iOS audience isn't hungry, Ryan. But if you continue this Kickstarter as is, I fear you soon will be.
Sorry Ryan, but you're entering 'delusional developer' status here perhaps up with Dennis Dyack but less militant, and probably with more potential quality in the offing. The audience isn't there on iOS for your game. Not on Kickstarter, not in the iOS community. You're pitching to vapours of a mythical subset you want to exist to justify what frankly seems like a kamikaze dive you're taking your lifes work and new studio into.
But anyway, lets disassemble your somewhat stubborn bullet points:
As others have said, you've got point and click on PC, a medium literally the entire world is now familiar with.
They are your favourite games because they were aimed at you, the target audience. If getting your friends and family gaming, there are plenty of gateway 'drugs' as it were on consoles these days. A game like Journey could inspire them to care about games on the big screen, and other more simplistically controller fare. Coming at them with MGS3 and Bioshock right off is the mistake.
Of which you are supporting only the iPhone 4 and up (iPad included). Welcome to a fragmented userbase. Also unlike with 150 million PS2's sold, all for gaming, many of these phones will be just that.
Point and click. Also if your new studio is all about creating new gaming experiences, the "even babies can play it" tagline isn't going to help you achieve any lofty goals.
And those games are extensions of free Flash game timewasters sent around in office e-mail circulars. "Hey have you played Jetman? Bejewelled? Cool. Did you know you can play Portal on that computer device? Or hey look, heres a multiplayer deathmatch Quake game in your browser!! You... don't appear to be interested..."
Notice then that those iOS games with meaning, still lure players in with simpler 2D production and lower budgets. Also of course notice Sworcery has just comed to Steam to reach a larger audience. Whoops!
Then it should all be about the gameplay shouldnt it. It shouldn't matter if its got a AAA budget, motion capped live actors, speech throughout and more. If your game design idea was primally interesting and new, it could be done with geometric coloured shapes on a screen.
And that same exact story can be told through PC's. To greater effect even. From your trailer theres parts where as the player you hack into other computers and cameras. Have you tried hacking anything with your iPhone lately? No, you go to a computer for that mischief. As for the element of constant communication, forgo the phone angle, and embrace spoofs of social networking instead. Instant message clients, skype, Facebook, irc channels. A PC has an almost limitless supply of communication potential to back up your "story told through brief digital liasons". You could spoof the approaching internet doomsday scenario's that caught big airtime with SOPA and more. You could even add more gameplay variety with say Hope's means of communication constantly getting blocked. Whereas first she could call you straight from Skype or other instant messenger with webcam, she has to resort to more and more ways to get her message to you. Perhaps even where you have to meet her in a mocked up MMO to get her latest tidbit. The South Park episode of Stan trapped in the computer world yelling up to his friends from a Farmville setting comes to mind.
You've closed your mind off to a lot of potential game design with your core concept, and also from an entire audience hungry for content. The iOS audience isn't hungry, Ryan. But if you continue this Kickstarter as is, I fear you soon will be.
As unbelievable;le as it sounds, Gameloft does these rip offs pretty well, so well that some companies now go to them for the IOS spin offs and the like.
Only very recently was Infinity Blade at $1. It had the Apple bump, along with the sequel. Gameloft games go to $1 1-3 months after coming out. Unless it gets the Apple bump, I don't see Republique doing anything near Infinity Blade, and even to get there it would have to be a finished game, which won't help the kickstarter.
Monetization is exactly how games are defined on IOS. You may not like it, but that's the way it is.
Infinity Blade had a sale dropping the price to $2.99, 3 months after launch. It updated with IAP very soon after launch and Infinity Blade 2 has depended on IAP since it launched.
Gameloft drops an extra 2 dollars to 99¢ when it does its sales, uses similar IAP, has games that are featured by Apple as the Game of the Week, and has high budgets on games such as Modern Combat 3. And they made $25 million in revenue last quarter.
Its silly to say that these are somehow some type of casual twitter-like games that people don't want to spend much money on.
I think this game would find an audience and turn a profit on iOS. Where I perceive the difficulty arising is using Kickstarter for funding. Most of the people that would be buying this game don't even know that Kickstarter exists and the amount of people that fit into 'wants AAA iOS titles' and 'knows about Kickstarter' Venn diagram is tiny.
Nintendos Sales/Revenue for Quarter Ended 03/31/2011 is $206.35B
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/ntdoy/financials/income/quarter
$25.4 million for one of iOS most successful publishers isn't very impressive at all.
catapult37
Member
I think this looks cool, but my #1 argument against big-budget iOS titles is file size and updates. I don't mind a 1-2 gig download once, but then having to do it again every time they fix a bug or add a feature?
I really believe Apple has got to allow incremental patches before AAA games can have a real shot on the platform. When I have 26 updates waiting from the App Store and several of them are for huge games, I am more than likely to simply delete some of those large games rather than update them. Otherwise, I never update anything and all my apps get out of date (because navigating the UI to selectively update apps is a giant pain in the ass).
Actually, the difficultly of selecting individual apps to update vs "update all" is another problem Apple should address.
I really believe Apple has got to allow incremental patches before AAA games can have a real shot on the platform. When I have 26 updates waiting from the App Store and several of them are for huge games, I am more than likely to simply delete some of those large games rather than update them. Otherwise, I never update anything and all my apps get out of date (because navigating the UI to selectively update apps is a giant pain in the ass).
Actually, the difficultly of selecting individual apps to update vs "update all" is another problem Apple should address.
If this game was featured in the App Store, I'm sure it would find its audience most definitely. I think the lack of this game to get revenue through Kickstarter isn't a problem with iOS but a problem with Kickstarter and I think Ryan misjudged the type of people that fund kickstarter games but with everything being so new I can see how someone was going to misjudge it.
Nintendo sells hardware as well you know. Also they're Nintendo.
I picked Nintendo because anytime we get some boneheaded analysts saying that Nintendo should drop out of the portable race and just release games on iOS we get a lot of posters in this thread who get really excited and seem to think that is a good idea.
How are they one of iOS most successful publishers? Their games aren't even in the top 50 grossing, maybe not even top 100.
Then why did you showcase them?
The Elite
BOSS
Well, it's not going to hit its mark so any newcomers don't see the need to invest.
Because they are making money focusing on "core" games, even when it's just poor copycats. I'm positive that Modern Combat or NOVA had budgets higher than $500,000. We're talking about if such games can make money on iOS in this thread.
Ouch on that whole attack, but I thought it was a well written post. This point in particular I agree with.
I think Ryan is USED to working with these big budget games and in a way doesn't understand how to scale back a project. I mean, his work experience is with KojiPro and 343, studios that have lots of money to toss around.
I think this game sounds cool and Ryan, I've been a fan of you since during the whole MGS4 dev days. I'm not an iOS user so this game is out for me, I have zero interest in putting any money towards the Kickstarter. However when I watched the video and it runs through all the features, like the mo cap actors, etc, I just thought "Why?" You don't need to do this stuff. Hire some competent animators, cut out that entire mo cap studio process. There are so many ways to make this game for a fraction of the budget and still have it be just as good a product. As long as the core idea and foundation is solid, the game will turn out fine, regardless of the all fluff.
Zeouterlimits
Member
Yeah, it's self fulfilling in a sense.
Well, it's one we have lots of data on. Rovio as a whole probably does much more than that, but their Angry Birds revenue reaches far beyond the mobile games.
Of course, there might be some other companies which makes more revenue through scamware and other fishy apps, but those don't get talked about often in GAF.
The low budget is the problem. The ability of being able to push massive budgets is the primary way big traditional companies can differentiate their products from low-budget copycats. Could Activision make a better mobile FPS than Gameloft at the same budget? Would they sell 10x as much with a tenfold budget?
B_Rik_Schitthaus
Banned
-_-
In any case, $25 million in revenue in 3 months would pay for many games. If they are making small budget or $500k+ AAA clones, it seems to draw people willing to pay in the amounts that would cover both types of budgets.
It's very easy to compare revenue. You just go to the App Store and look at the Top Grossing Apps chart. Gameloft doesn't even chart until you go out of the Top 100, I think. Then you get random bits of data occasionally such as on Draw Something's revenue, Zynga's revenue, Infinity Blade revenue, Sword and Sworcery's revenue, etc. and you get a rough idea of revenue. Since they mix in non-games as well, you can also correlate other revenue data for other apps.M3d10n said:
Yeah, I think you're right to assume that moms probably won't be compelled to just download and try Republique on a whim, which is why we're definitely not aiming for the "mom market" out of the gate. With that said, I do think that if do our jobs right, the input will be intuitive enough that our core players can recommend the game to non-gamer friends and family and feel good about their recommendation.
I don't have any stats to back this up, but I love hearing stories about how my friend's mom got an NES to play Tetris but then was introduced to Zelda and feel in love with it. It would be great if we could have that sort of crossover with Republique.
I was just telling somebody the other day that the community's questions about the budget has been one of the most surprising aspects of this campaign. My fear at the beginning was that people would look at our $1 million budget and say: "Dude, you're crazy if you think you can only do this game for a million!" But instead we're getting the opposite reaction.
We're aiming for a high-quality, console-like experience that 5-7 years ago would have taken 20-30 people and ten times the budget. We're cutting corners in every way possible to make this game without sacrificing quality. We're in a rundown office that leaks every time it rains. (Which is rough, when you're in Seattle!) We have a friend who makes sandwiches for us every day to save the cost of eating out for lunch. My salary is just enough to pay for rent, food and the occasional game. I'm pulling as many favors as I can to do this game on the cheap, cheap, cheap. But again, quality is our focus, and I hope that comes across in our trailer.
Hydrogen Bluebird
Member
Ryan, You've come a long way since your KP report days. I remember listening to the episode where you had the one of the Logan guys as a guest (Alec or Alex?).
Anyway, what's the first thing you plan to do if the Kickstarter period has elapsed and the target amount was not reached?
Anyway, what's the first thing you plan to do if the Kickstarter period has elapsed and the target amount was not reached?
Ignis Fatuus
Banned
Ryan, is there a contingency plan if the iOS version does not do well after release? How many sales are you looking at to break even? Hearing about how you've put everything on the line makes me genuinely worried.
Interesting to hear and know and thank you for responding. Also I do hope this works out for you in some way, regardless of what happens with the Kickstarter in the end. Like I said, I've been a fan for a while so I don't wish any ill will towards the project.
Sarah_Bryant
Junior Member
Wait - so you're taking a SALARY from your "scrappy startup" that has yet to release a product? Do you even understand the meaning of the term "bootstrap"?
How is he going to live if he doesn't pay himself a salary? What the hell is wrong with you?
Pachterballs
Banned
There isn't a need to be rude to ryan even if you're skeptical of the KS.
I mean, what do you expect him to do; be homeless/hungry/poor?
fuck it. I'll put $10 in.
I mean, what do you expect him to do; be homeless/hungry/poor?
fuck it. I'll put $10 in.
Sarah_Bryant
Junior Member
I'm guessing from this statement that you are not an entrepreneur.
Are you?
He needs to make some form of money, how is he supposed to live?
Also in my experience, most self proclaimed entrepreneur's are a bunch of ass hats with lots of money to blow.
Pachterballs
Banned
you do seem to have a thing against RP. sub 20 posts total and that one came up? I had to have a look.
RP started a business to make this game. This is his start up company. There was likely some funding involved to make this happen. This isn't a guy in his basement putting everything on the line to make a game by himself. Not that there is anything wrong with that at all, there isn't, it's great actually. This is just a different way of going about it.
edit: Also I did not watch that movie, but I'd love to!
Right, I think Kickstarter is thought to be in support of the latter description, not the former, which is what rubs Sarah_Bryant the wrong way. There's nothing wrong with paying yourself a salary if that's what you want to do.
Dog Problems
Banned
Yeah, something going on there lol
Ignis Fatuus
Banned
Agreed. What's your beef Sarah_Bryant? Who are you really?
B_Rik_Schitthaus
Banned
I'm guessing from this statement that you are an entrepreneur.
Pachterballs
Banned
B_Rik_Schitthaus
Banned
So he's one of those people who gets in the face of the more famous posters on GAF trying to make a name for himself.
What a chap.