- Image via Wikipedia
In chatting with a friend in the game industry, we discussed how the game industry is torn with two directions, seemingly irreconcilable:
“We’re between the super evolved all out $10,000 hologram vs the virtually ‘free’ easy to use-anytime game on your phone.” said my friend.
God of War, is one of the top PlayStation franchises that is definitely one of the top sellers takes a good 3 years to develop and hundreds of artists, developers, etc. and probably +$200MM to produce… Sony has to sell quite a bit, but how many games can be blockbusters like this? The challenge with this is similar to movies, the cost of production are so high and it’s all upfront investment, that studios are naturally very careful about investing and taking risks. So tried-and-true formulas like point and shoot and fast-skill based games just come out over and over with different, cooler graphic skins.
Then you have Zynga, who produced Farmville in something like 5 weeks and 6-10 guys. And now more than 64MM people play it. However, I constantly hear from friends that don’t play it, that Farmville is utterly annoying… so Social games have a virtue of being difficult for those who don’t get into it because it invades the social space of others. Is it enough to make Farmville less popular? I don’t think so…
If history serves us, low-end production will not substitute high-end… the industry will continue to push in innovations and offer new experiences that consumers (not all consumers, but some) will deem as valuable enough to pay significant $ for it.
For example, at E3 last week, 3D games were all the rave… and if 3D is already here, and more motion-based gadgets are becoming more common (see Microsoft Kinectic, formerly Project Natal) then that 10K hologram is not too far away. And if the movie industry is any model, we’re seen major crisis in the business model and yet we still get over-the-top expensive Blockbusters like Avatar.
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