[casual_games] Community Functionality

Ron lists at rzweb.com
Tue Jan 31 16:57:39 EST 2006 

You know, this is a very interesting topic (ok, a little off-topic), and 
something that has confused me for a while.

In the mainstream game business, a publisher provides 3 basic functions:

1) Financing of the game.
2) Marketing/PR support and funding.
3) Production guidance.

In my experience, the portals (who are often referred to as Publishers) 
rarely provide any of these.  They are, in my mind, nothing more than 
distributors and/or retailers, but they take a 60% or more cut.  A 
distributor should be taking a 20% or less cut.  What it basically comes 
down to is the developer is taking all the financial risk, and getting 
very little of the reward. It's strange that it evolved this way, and I 
don't have enough history to know why.

But my question is:  How long is this going to last?

It would be one thing if the publishers/portals were paying for 
development or real marketing, then I would expect them to be getting 
the cut they do.  With Risk comes Reward.

Am I missing something here?  I've asked this question to a couple of 
developers and they are respond "yeah, sucks, what are you going to do, 
they have all the traffic".

Is that really it?  Do games with strong community elements start to 
break this down, or do they only make it worse because the barrier to 
entry for a small developer is now even higher.

Ron






Juan Gril wrote:
> Distribution is selling goods to the consumer, and publishing is 
> creating the goods for the consumer. Multiplayer games require that you 
> create the goods, and to create a relationship with the consumer. In the 
> videogame world so far this has not been a huge problem because the 
> distributor’s business seems to not be affected by the publisher’s 
> after-sale relationship with the consumer.
> 
>  
> 
> But in the online world, the line becomes a little blurry, isn’t it? So 
> since the consumer purchases a digital good, it doesn’t really make a 
> difference for the consumer to buy it at the distributor’s web site or 
> at the publisher’s web site, isn’t it? It’s just a URL after all.
> 
>  
> 
> So is this the survival of the fittest? Is distribution/publishing 
> becoming one entity, and at the same time, polarizing in less than a 
> handful of companies? If so, aren’t most of us in this list in serious 
> trouble? Will Google save the day? J
> 
>  
> 
> Cheers,
> 
>  
> 
> Juan
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> *From:* casual_games-bounces at igda.org 
> [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org] *On Behalf Of *Joe Pantuso
> *Sent:* Tuesday, January 31, 2006 11:52 AM
> *To:* IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List
> *Subject:* Re: [casual_games] Community Functionality
> 
>  
> 
> Exactly.  And responding to Juan; it's not the big guys that are scared 
> stiff, I should have been more clear.  It's the smaller portals that 
> just aggregate games and don't have deep pockets. 
> 
>  
> 
> The big guys will screw it up because they want to keep each others 
> players out of the other guys hands.
> 
>  
> 
> We'll no doubt have other limitations of our own, but at least we're 
> going to be trying to bring games to all the IMs.
> 
>  
> 
> On 1/31/06, *Ron* <lists at rzweb.com <mailto:lists at rzweb.com>> wrote:
> 
>>  It's interesting. Makes you wonder why Pogo, Yahoo! and MSN invested in
>>  multiplayer infrastructures since the late 90s. I have a hunch that's
>>  it's a little bit more complex than that.
> 
> I don't think that it's so much that they are scared of community, it's
> that they are scared of loosing control.  Much like the IM stuff,
> everyone's happy if you can only use their system, but once you can hop
> around, it becomes a problem for them.  Community in Casual Games is
> probably the same.  The portals are in in favor of it, as long as you're
> locked in.   The last thing Yahoo wants is you playing with MSN players.
> 
> But I agree that community is going to be huge as soon as it moves
> beyond just chat and doesn't turn into PvP.
> 
> Ron
> 
> 
> 
> Juan Gril wrote:
>>  Joe was saying:
>>
>>  "My own opinion on all this is that community driven casual games are
>>  the next big things, and the portals only figured this out the last 12
>>  months and they are all scared stiff."
>>
>>
>>
>>  It's interesting. Makes you wonder why Pogo, Yahoo! and MSN invested in
>>  multiplayer infrastructures since the late 90s. I have a hunch that's
>>  it's a little bit more complex than that.
>>
>>
>>
>>  Cheers,
>>
>>
>>
>>  Juan
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  *From:* casual_games-bounces at igda.org 
> <mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org>
>>  [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org 
> <mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org>] *On Behalf Of *Joe Pantuso
>>  *Sent:* Tuesday, January 31, 2006 10:58 AM
>>  *To:* IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List
>>  *Subject:* Re: [casual_games] Community Functionality
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  My own opinion on all this is that community driven casual games are the
>>  next big things, and the portals only figured this out the last 12
>>  months and they are all scared stiff.  My thinking is admittedly biased
>>  as we've been working on infrastructure specifically for this for nearly
>>  3 years.
>>
>>
>>
>>  Our approach is this; there is room for community features in all games
>>  and they will be de riguer very soon.  There will also be an increasing
>>  number of multi-player 'casual' games.
>>
>>
>>
>>  One of the models I'm hoping makes sense to people with existing
>>  single-player games is to look at doing multi-player or MSOG versions
>>  (http://www.traygames.com/Developer/FAQs.aspx?faq=dev_terminology 
> <http://www.traygames.com/Developer/FAQs.aspx?faq=dev_terminology>
>>  <http://www.traygames.com/Developer/FAQs.aspx?faq=dev_terminology>) of
>>  their games that are hosted through us, but go ahead and do the single
>>  player version for all the portals.  Since we want *only* games that are
>>  MSOG or multi-player we're perfectly happy for your single-player
>>  version to be on every portal under the sun.
>>
>>
>>
>>  I assume there will be a trend in these things similar to what we're
>>  seeing happen in the IM products.  They've been rabidly insular the
>>  first decade, and only the past year are we starting to see signs that
>>  things will open up.  Within 18 months you'll be able to inter-operate
>>  between all the major IM products.  This is a big boon to us as it will
>>  make our strategy of being the service you install to add games to your
>>  IM (regardless of which one you have) much simpler to make happen.
>>
>>
>>
>>  I expect that eventually it will be hard to compete without at least
>>  some community features in a game.
>>
>>
>>
>>  -J
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
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