The Great Video Game Business and Financial (In)Stability Thread

fenomas wrote:

"labor vs management!!1!11!" rhetoric

If we're going to keep going back to the criticism policing well, maybe don't caricaturize what others are saying in this way. It was already tough to politely not notice how some rather dog-whistley talk about protestors got little pushback earlier in this thread.

I never quite understood some of the SAG-AFTRA arguments in the ~2016 video game voice actor strike. One of the big sticking points for them was they wanted residual income from products they worked on (ie: a percentage of the profits from sales). I'm all for voice actors getting paid more, but asking for a profit share was a big ask.

I'm a game developer myself. I felt that SAG asking for residuals based on dozens (or possibly hundreds) of hours they put into a game (as well as their training, skills and expertise in their field) was much smaller than the thousands of hours I'd put in to a game (as well as my training, skills and expertise in my field), and yet I usually don't have access to any sort of residual income from a project. And neither do most others that contribute to a game project (including artists, sound designers, story writers, QA, marketing, etc).

I don't say all this because I didn't believe they shouldn't be paid more. I do believe that they deserve to get paid at a decent rate for their time and skills, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were getting undervalued for their contribution.

I’m always impressed how easily it is to pit people against each other. I want everyone involved in making games to get paid more. Nobody should be upset that anyone is trying to get paid more.

TheGameguru wrote:

I’m always impressed how easily it is to pit people against each other. I want everyone involved in making games to get paid more. Nobody should be upset that anyone is trying to get paid more.

Quote a post here (and don’t delete the name) where someone was upset by people trying to get paid more.

Personally my message remains: it’d be nice if talent in almost every industry was paid better. I don’t think this case is anything outside of business as usual and that isn’t worth boycotting a game I’ve been anticipating for years.

And it's the opposite in films and TV. The actors are the ones that get residuals. But the CGI artists who do all the effects don't get that.

Blind_Evil wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

I’m always impressed how easily it is to pit people against each other. I want everyone involved in making games to get paid more. Nobody should be upset that anyone is trying to get paid more.

Quote a post here (and don’t delete the name) where someone was upset by people trying to get paid more.

Personally my message remains: it’d be nice if talent in almost every industry was paid better. I don’t think this case is anything outside of business as usual and that isn’t worth boycotting a game I’ve been anticipating for years.

I mean, it's pretty clear what was being referred to...

Buzzrick wrote:

I'm a game developer myself. I felt that SAG asking for residuals based on dozens (or possibly hundreds) of hours they put into a game (as well as their training, skills and expertise in their field) was much smaller than the thousands of hours I'd put in to a game (as well as my training, skills and expertise in my field), and yet I usually don't have access to any sort of residual income from a project. And neither do most others that contribute to a game project (including artists, sound designers, story writers, QA, marketing, etc).

Which certainly doesn't come across as someone being 'upset', but it does pit one group (devs, artists, etc) against another (voice actors) when it comes to time spent on a project and 'fair' compensation. So instead of the conversation being 'why aren't we all getting residuals', it becomes 'they don't deserve it because i spent more time on the project and I don't get them'. And the reality is that they're all being f*cked by management.

billt721 wrote:

pit one group (devs, artists, etc) against another (voice actors).

On topic and staying away from labor vis/vis capital in the capitalism-and-moving-images thread:

Big Brands Are Getting More Involved With Games

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/video-...

Here's Meta's person in charge of making Meta a thing talking about how the metaverse is GREAT for brands:

Meta Guy wrote:

It is utter madness that most of the brands aren't talking about the spaces that the vast majority of the population are in. One of the main reasons that any kind of gaming platform or environment that people are spending time in is compelling, is people are there because it's where they're spending their enjoyment time. If as a brand I can associate myself with that joy, I'm building affinity and I'm building something far stronger than if I interrupt a TV show that no one's watching, which isn't really useful.

"If you can do it well as a brand and you can partner, you are becoming part of a universe that someone loves to be in, that someone WANTS to be in and expresses themselves freely in. And I think if you can be part of that self-expression and you can facilitate it, you're creating something that is of more value to a user.

I think what we'll end up seeing is brands creating virtual knock offs of their own meat space products, GTA style. Buy it in the metaverse for some ungodly amount of money and get a coupon for the real thing, or whatever.

Yeah, the article talked about that, with an example of Gucci (!?) offering an in-game thing (purse?) for Roblox. I don't know the demos for Roblox and Gucci but apparently they overlap?

If I can get my Oakley shades as a +2% to XP in Call of Duty, that probably does something for brand awareness, even if it doesn't come with a coupon.

Brands are going to need to be hyper-aware of the various constituencies or games, though, and better make sure there is a high degree of overlap between the game's demo and their target demo. That could be difficult to parse since the industries are going to be different and games, despite the size the industry, haven't yet matured to the level of, say, movies or sports with mass appeal across multiple demos. Maybe I'm wrong about that and CoD (or whatever) is tracking across multiple demos and insurance and ED and beer companies can see gains being in that space just like they do on NFL Sundays.

Microsoft misses Xbox Game Pass subscriber target for second year

Microsoft targeted a 73% growth rate for Game Pass for its fiscal year ending June 30, 2022, as part of performance incentives for Nadella and other top executives. But the service only achieved 28% growth.

Subscriptions aren’t easy. I confess to having subscription fatigue myself between apps and tv services. Microsoft says that on console they’re already saturated.

Not surprising.. the Ven diagram of the potential customer base is pretty tiny. You are looking at a subset of an already small user base (Xbox One/Xbox Series) console users and then an even smaller overlap with those that have a Windows 10/11 Gaming PC that are interested in those titles (and not Steam fanatics).

I haven't kept up but is there a plan for dedicated Game Pass Streaming hardware at some point?? If that comes out with some sort of affordable game streaming only subscription (i.e way less than $10 a month) then maybe they can pick up some new customers.. otherwise its going to be flattening even more quickly and prices will go up.

Certainly Sony's potential has a way higher ceiling when it comes to subscription revenue especially if they can figure out a unique way of handling digital addons.

28% growth sounds really healthy. 73% growth sounds insane.

To me, it feels like a fake target - they never expected to hit it, but the leadership can point to it and say "Hey investors, look, our totally arbitrary and self-set metrics are valid and honest assessments of our performance. You can tell we're being honest because we didn't hit every single one. Look how professional and transparent we're being!"

On the other hand, I know I have a more jaundiced view of institutional behavior and incentives than most folks.

TheGameguru wrote:

I haven't kept up but is there a plan for dedicated Game Pass Streaming hardware at some point??

There was, but apparently Microsoft shelved their internal device and is currently focusing on the app side for now.

Microsoft: Xbox game streaming console is ‘years away’

I don't get it. Microsoft makes good hardware. This seems like an easy win.

polq37 wrote:

28% growth sounds really healthy. 73% growth sounds insane.

To me, it feels like a fake target - they never expected to hit it, but the leadership can point to it and say "Hey investors, look, our totally arbitrary and self-set metrics are valid and honest assessments of our performance. You can tell we're being honest because we didn't hit every single one. Look how professional and transparent we're being!"

On the other hand, I know I have a more jaundiced view of institutional behavior and incentives than most folks.

That might be true if the goal was like 35% and they instead hit 28%. But when you miss the goal by over half that isn't a fake thing.

The way MS could get more Gamepass subscribers is sell more Xboxes. I think the percent of people who only play on PC and subscribe to Gamepass is probably pretty low.

PaladinTom wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

I haven't kept up but is there a plan for dedicated Game Pass Streaming hardware at some point??

There was, but apparently Microsoft shelved their internal device and is currently focusing on the app side for now.

Microsoft: Xbox game streaming console is ‘years away’

I don't get it. Microsoft makes good hardware. This seems like an easy win.

On the one hand, they already have that device and it's called Xbox.

On the other hand, getting a product to market is far from "an easy win". That's years of development. Doing it profitably is even harder.

And that's where i see it. There's no profitable business case to develop that streaming box when subscriber levels aren't high enough to make it profitable.

And...aren't they also sort of making the case against a stand alone box with what they're doing with the old xCloud thing?

If I don't need a box and I just need an app on one of my dozen devices, seems like that's a better long-range bet than developing "new" hardware? Those are resources that could get plowed I to cloud gaming.

Skipping a purely streaming box is good business sense; I mean, it's been a month or two since Google lead Stadia out to pasture and put a bullet in its head? The history so far for dedicated game streaming boxes has been endless failures. Instead, they've announced you can stream Xbox games to Samsung TVs, and I would expect Microsoft's strategy is going to be to try to get their streaming capability on other devices like that.

Sure if they can get the streaming app on Sony or Nintendo platforms that would be a huge win..but it seems far fetched. I guess getting apps on Samsung and LG TV’s would be a step forward but the adoption rate on those types of partnerships historically are very low. Sony couldn’t even make it a thing on their own TV’s.

They might consider expanding on their Netflix partnership to add games to that platform.

MS just seems to set high goals.
Since the goal is for leadership performance bonuses, they might also just be set higher than what they expect to hit. Not much of a bonus, if the expectation is they will be reached no matter what (not that it usually stop boards giving themselves bonuses)

Microsoft Cloud Subscribers Growth - Target: 26%, Actual: 21%
Teams Monthly Active Usage Growth - Target: 25%, Actual: 4% (Ouch!)
Xbox Game Pass Subscribers Growth - Target: 73%, Actual: 28%

The Game Pass goal was also way higher than in 2021. Maybe they expected a big boost from Starfield, which was then delayed?

Shadout wrote:

The Game Pass goal was also way higher than in 2021. Maybe they expected a big boost from Starfield, which was then delayed?

Nope, and it won't be, because they promised that everything that was part of the same showcase would launch within 12 months.

They probably were thinking there would be another covid/indoors bound type bump from Covid like last year...

ranalin wrote:
Shadout wrote:

The Game Pass goal was also way higher than in 2021. Maybe they expected a big boost from Starfield, which was then delayed?

Nope, and it won't be, because they promised that everything that was part of the same showcase would launch within 12 months.

They probably were thinking there would be another covid/indoors bound type bump from Covid like last year...

Yeah, but when that showcase launched, the rest of 2022 was also within those 12 months.
I mean, if Starfield was originally planned for 2022, boosting the FY2022 goal, but now it is 2023.

Expecting a covid boost does seem likely. Although even with last years covid, growth was "only" 37%, and they only expected 48%.

I wouldn't have time to play all the free games and I'd end up with an even bigger backlog.

Reading the article, which is pretty biased against her, they say she pointed to 14 charities, one of which is pro-life. She's draggable, but only barely.

Some people have identified TERF dogwhistles in some of her tweets recently, as well. Additionally, Mother Teresa's charity is in there, as well as a Catholic church in Santa Monica, CA, a charity for "persecuted Christians worldwide," and some quacky sounding organization about uniting animal & human medicine. She's a little out there.

Even so, anyone who looks at all of this, dusts off their hands and says, "Well, we're done with that," is ignoring that there's still a lot of underpaid talent in the industry. Unless we get a huge boycott going, to the degree that basically everyone is not buying video games at all, the industry isn't going to do anything to change that. All of these people need to get organized.

You mean the US has been pushing labor concerns away for decades, and now we see the effects of it on artists and workers in all fields? Color me surprised (but of course not at a fixed union rate).

Statement from Mick Gordon, creator of the (legendary) soundtracks for Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal, responding to an earlier open letter where the game's executive producer publicly blamed him for delays and for the game's poorly-done OST release.

Absolute insane read.

That is some very crazy stuff, but I kept wondering as it got worse and worse: why did he keep giving Marty the benefit of the doubt? Why not keep going over his head to Bethesda since that worked for the OST contract? I'm not trying to suggest that any of this was Mick's fault for being too trusting, but that seems like way more incidents than one would need to learn that Marty was a snake. Like, by the time I got to the settlement negotiations I was half-assuming Marty was pulling a John Barron with the lawyers contacting and threatening Mick.

Yeah I hear you. My read is that Gordon has gone to great lengths to limit his scope to only refuting the claims in Stratton's open letter - there's probably a lot more he could say if he was trying to give a full account, and without those details some his actions may not make sense.

E.g. for a start there will surely have been way more people involved than he mentions, so it's telling that he never mentions anyone who wasn't named in the letter already.