Running with the Big Dogs
The games industry is in a turbulent state. PC game retail sales are waning, but at the same time revenues are increasing, which shows that there is a radical change taking place in the market. Next-gen console platforms now challenge PC games, but at the moment they coexist and compete mainly between each other and with entrenched platforms from the previous generation. These are hazardous waters for an aspiring game development team but there are many niches and opportunities in emerging platforms and markets.  Matias Myllyrinne, Business Director at Remedy Entertainment and Kevin Bruner, the Chief Technical Officer of Telltale Games, tell us how their companies survive and prosper in competition with games industry giants. Even though their market segments and goals are very different, you'll find many corroborating points in their advice. So you're an aspiring, small game developer with a great idea, skilled people and all the tools you need to make a great game. First of all though you should prepare to be disappointed and slightly disillusioned because… "Good games don't sell"Some of them don't, anyway, and Matias Myllyrinne from Remedy has the numbers to prove it. Simpsons Road Rage for the Xbox wasn't well received by the critics (essentially a poor Crazy Taxi clone), achieving an average score of 61 at Metacritic. That didn't stop Road Rage from selling 750 000 units worldwide. "Those of you who have actually played a 61 Metacritic [score] game know what those are like". Let's compare Simpsons Road Rage to a much better game: Panzer Dragoon Orta for the Xbox is a favorite at the Remedy office, says Myllyrinne, and scored 90 at Metacritic. That's almost thirty points higher than Simpsons, but Panzer Dragoon Orta managed only one-third of the sales, 250 000 units.
Meanwhile at the Telltale Games episodic games lecture, Chief Technical Officer Kevin Bruner explains how and why Telltale picked up the Sam & Max franchise and self-published a series of point and click Sam & Max adventure games. Bruner explains how choosing an episodic format, with its smaller initial investment, gave Telltale more creative freedom to make the kind of games that they want. "We didn't want to take Sam & Max and turn it into a Simpsons Road Rage." Nobody wants to make bad games, right? An episodic format also helps in controlling risks, just in case your great and original game fails to find its customers, but it has its own challenges as well. If a title takes off, maintaining episode schedule becomes the developer's number one responsibility. That's a good thing, because every episode is almost certainly going to sell. "On the other hand, if we release the first episode and nobody shows up, we can cut our losses and try something else."
Sad as it may be to bury a great game after just one episode, it's much worse if you've spent three years on a title; you think it's a fantastic masterpiece, but it flops after release and makes you a net loss. Real-life examples aren't hard to come by, and Matias Myllyrinne lists one for all major last-gen console platforms. Tetris Worlds for the PS2, with an average Metacritic rating of 60.7, sold over a million units worldwide. Meanwhile Ico - a great, innovative game and a favorite of many - sold only 540 000 units. "Just to labor the point," says Myllyrinne, "Gamecube's Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly scored an average Metacritic rating of 49, but sold 640 000 units. That's a 49 rating game!" he exclaims. "SSX 3 scored a rating of 92.5, the fifth highest ever on that platform, and sold 380 000 units. So good games don't sell. If you think that you can just put the product out there, and because you made a good product it'll sell… *BUZZ* [you're wrong!]"
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