Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and today would normally
Speaker 1: be a tech news day for Thursday twenty one, but
Speaker 1: I thought I'd do something a little different. This episode
Speaker 1: will be shorter than a normal tech Stuff episode, but
Speaker 1: it does tie into something that was in the news
Speaker 1: this week, and so it's more like a commentary and
Speaker 1: point of view on the news. And earlier this week,
Speaker 1: the head of finance at game developer and publisher Ubisoft
Speaker 1: said on a call with investors that producing three to
Speaker 1: four premium triple A game titles per year is quote
Speaker 1: no longer a proper indication of our value creation dynamics.
Speaker 1: In the quote, Um, that's not easy to parse language,
Speaker 1: ain't it. I mean, it's got all sorts of corporate
Speaker 1: speak in there. But what's actually being said here is
Speaker 1: that the old classic model where a company produces a
Speaker 1: premium title and then relies exclusively on sales of that title,
Speaker 1: is more or less a thing of the past, and
Speaker 1: it's important we walk through this now. I did some
Speaker 1: episodes about the history of Ubisoft last year, I think,
Speaker 1: and this is kind of an addendum to that in
Speaker 1: a way, because it's a a look at how the
Speaker 1: company is viewing its future. I should also point out
Speaker 1: that a lot of folks have actually covered this story
Speaker 1: pretty thoroughly, a lot of Pierce, who works at Sony
Speaker 1: Santa Monica, did a fantastic breakdown explanation of what's going
Speaker 1: on from an industry for Inspective. I highly recommend you
Speaker 1: go to YouTube and check out her video. It's titled
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Ubisoft Going free Play. I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: going over some of the same ground that she does,
Speaker 1: but she's super good at this, and if you're not
Speaker 1: familiar with her work, you should check it out. She
Speaker 1: does all sorts of stuff um with her channel, mostly
Speaker 1: to kind of relate to the video games industry, not exclusively,
Speaker 1: but frequently, and she's got some really good insight on
Speaker 1: this um having worked both as a games journalist and
Speaker 1: now working to write video games. So let's consider for
Speaker 1: a moment the business of making video and computer games,
Speaker 1: because it has changed dramatically, and keep in mind this
Speaker 1: is still a relatively young industry, so forty years ago. Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe not that young man, I'm old. Anyway, forty years ago,
Speaker 1: it wasn't unusual for a single person to make a game.
Speaker 1: That person would program the game from start to finish,
Speaker 1: they design everything. But then getting that game out so
Speaker 1: that people can you know, buy a copy was still
Speaker 1: a big hurdle. There was no Internet that the average
Speaker 1: person could access back in those days. So some early programmers,
Speaker 1: like say Richard Garriott, who was the creator of The
Speaker 1: Ultimate series, they got their start making games and copying
Speaker 1: their code to diske kets, you know, like five and
Speaker 1: a quarter inch discs, and then packaging those up in
Speaker 1: ziplock bags with maybe a page of instructions, and they
Speaker 1: would then go to their local hobby stores, which would
Speaker 1: sell them for you know, X amount of money per copy.
Speaker 1: You would even find bulletin boards where these bags would
Speaker 1: just be hanging from a thumbtack and you could take
Speaker 1: one down and go up to the cash register and
Speaker 1: purchase a computer game this way. But obviously that approach
Speaker 1: net you have a very limited number of customers. It's
Speaker 1: not scalable. It's not like you could do this nationwide.
Speaker 1: You could maybe do three or four hobby stores in
Speaker 1: your general area. Then you're kind of done. But then
Speaker 1: you've got your video game publishers. These are companies that,
Speaker 1: at least in the old days, would form relationships with
Speaker 1: various retailers and the publishers would pay developers for a
Speaker 1: game title. Uh, sometimes you would have a developer and
Speaker 1: a publisher be the same entity, but a lot of
Speaker 1: times you're talking about, you know, one group is developing
Speaker 1: the games and then the publishers are taking it from there.
Speaker 1: Then the publishers would distribute that game title to various
Speaker 1: retail establishments, So the publishers would get money from retailers
Speaker 1: who turned around and then sold copies of the game
Speaker 1: for a profit. So everyone along this chain got paid.
Speaker 1: The retail stores were getting paid by the customers, the
Speaker 1: publisher was being paid by the retail stores, and the
Speaker 1: developer was being paid by the publisher. So you had
Speaker 1: to cover your costs obviously every step of this chain, right,
Speaker 1: The developer needed to make enough money to cover the
Speaker 1: time and effort that went into creating the game. The
Speaker 1: publisher needed to make the money back that was sent
Speaker 1: to the developer, and the retailer needed to make up
Speaker 1: the money that was spent on getting inventory. These relationships
Speaker 1: came in a variety of forms and agreements. Uh sometimes
Speaker 1: there were royalties involved, which was great news for the
Speaker 1: developer with royalties, if the title sold really well, the
Speaker 1: developer would benefit from that with royalty payments, but this
Speaker 1: wasn't a guarantee, especially in the old days of game design.
Speaker 1: One thing that was pretty darn firm, however, was that
Speaker 1: the purchase of a game was the end of the transaction.
Speaker 1: So if I walked into a computer store and I
Speaker 1: purchased a copy of Ultima, well that was one unit
Speaker 1: sold and the transaction pretty much marked the end of that. Right,
Speaker 1: I bought my copy, I handed over my cash. Done,
Speaker 1: so you generate revenue at the point of sale, and
Speaker 1: that's it. Flashboard a few years, and then you get
Speaker 1: some new models that start to pop up. One was
Speaker 1: expansion packs, so companies would create expansions to previous titles
Speaker 1: that already had an established fan base. So if someone
Speaker 1: makes a game and it sells really well, often that
Speaker 1: means that the players are really eager to get more
Speaker 1: of whatever it was that they liked, so you can
Speaker 1: create additional material, and expansion packs frequently leaned heavily on
Speaker 1: using the assets that already existed for the original title,
Speaker 1: which meant that the developers didn't have to reinvent everything,
Speaker 1: they didn't have to build a game from the ground up.
Speaker 1: They could repurpose assets for this new content. That streamlined
Speaker 1: the development cycle, and it brought development costs down, and
Speaker 1: now companies could continue to make money off of US
Speaker 1: Civic title. Though this approach does require that the developer
Speaker 1: put some resources into making the expansion, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's not as simple as just making more money off
Speaker 1: the same thing you sold. You have to convince people, hey,
Speaker 1: this expansion back is going to give you more of
Speaker 1: whatever it was you enjoyed of the original game. A
Speaker 1: little bit later, you also saw an approach called sharewear,
Speaker 1: which was incredibly clever. Now, typically a shareware title would
Speaker 1: give players access to a part of a game, but
Speaker 1: not the full title. So, for example, in a first
Speaker 1: person shooter game, it might include the first third of
Speaker 1: the game for free, and you could get a copy
Speaker 1: of this. Back in the old days, it was still
Speaker 1: on diskette and you could install the game on your
Speaker 1: computer and play right up to the point where the
Speaker 1: you know that sharewear part ends and upon reaching the
Speaker 1: end of the free section, you would encounter a message
Speaker 1: that would encourage you to purchase the full game, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe through mail order or whatever, and then developer would
Speaker 1: send you the full game on disc and you could
Speaker 1: play it. And a lot of games were distributed this way,
Speaker 1: like Wolfenstein three D. Brilliant approach, because what Wolfenstein three
Speaker 1: D did was it encouraged people to make copies of
Speaker 1: that shareware version and to give those copies out to
Speaker 1: their friends. You you, you know, you had players doing
Speaker 1: the marketing for the company. They were distributing this shareware
Speaker 1: version of the game, and every single shareware version ended
Speaker 1: with that message saying, hey, I hope you enjoyed this.
Speaker 1: If you want the full game, you know, here's how
Speaker 1: you can buy it. And so players were effectively doing
Speaker 1: a lot of the marketing and distributing for the company
Speaker 1: at the ground level. It was an effective way to
Speaker 1: get a game awareness out there, and several titles found
Speaker 1: success through that method. By this time, games were getting
Speaker 1: more sophisticated, and now you usually had teams working on
Speaker 1: a title with people, you know, specializing in particular skills
Speaker 1: like art or music or programming, and the costs of
Speaker 1: developing a game. We're going up because you had more
Speaker 1: folks spending more time putting together each title, but generally speaking,
Speaker 1: you still had that same revenue model where someone would
Speaker 1: purchase a title that was that that was the end
Speaker 1: of the transaction. Then we get up to the era
Speaker 1: of downloadable content or d l C. Games that have
Speaker 1: DLC allow you to augment an existing title by downloading
Speaker 1: additional content, and DLC can come in lots of different forms,
Speaker 1: some of which provide at least arguably more value than others.
Speaker 1: So you might offer up additional levels or experiences within
Speaker 1: a game as DLC, or you might give players the
Speaker 1: chance to use special items in a game, like weapons
Speaker 1: or vehicles, but only if you get the DLC. There's
Speaker 1: no way to get them through regular game same play.
Speaker 1: Or you might allow players to play through the same
Speaker 1: game but as a totally different character. So in some
Speaker 1: cases it might just be as simple as subbing one
Speaker 1: character model out for another, but in others it might
Speaker 1: involve shifting the entire storyline so it actually reflects the
Speaker 1: perspective of this other character, and it creates an all
Speaker 1: new game using the same basic mechanics. Some DLC was
Speaker 1: purely cosmetic, and it gives players a chance to make
Speaker 1: a game look different in some way, either they're player
Speaker 1: character or level design, or whatever it might be. DLC
Speaker 1: comes in all shapes, sizes, flavors, and price points. You've
Speaker 1: got some DLC that ends up being practically as expensive
Speaker 1: as a full game. You have other DLC that it's
Speaker 1: a micro transaction. You're just paying a small amount of
Speaker 1: money for some tiny element of that game. And there
Speaker 1: have been some pretty incredible examples. Occasionally you get DLC
Speaker 1: that eclipse is the popularity of the original title. But
Speaker 1: there are also examples of really really bad DLC, and
Speaker 1: they're hard to frame as anything other than a cash
Speaker 1: grab and a waste of money for the player. DLC
Speaker 1: really opened up a new revenue stream for video game
Speaker 1: developers and publishers. Now companies could continue to offer additional
Speaker 1: content and features to an existing game and charge players
Speaker 1: to access it. They could keep making money off of
Speaker 1: a title after they sold it. So rather than having
Speaker 1: a person just plunged down their fifty or sixty or
Speaker 1: today seventy bucks to purchase the title and then walk
Speaker 1: away forever, they could see that that person plunged down
Speaker 1: the cash to purchase the title, and then occasionally offer
Speaker 1: up some more cash when they saw some DLC they
Speaker 1: wanted to own, or a micro transaction that they didn't
Speaker 1: mind paying for. And that's when we get to loot crates.
Speaker 1: Loot crates. Now, if you're not familiar with loot rates
Speaker 1: and games, these are things that typically players can earn
Speaker 1: through in game activities, but it can take a lot
Speaker 1: of time for them to earn them that way, or
Speaker 1: they can earn them very quickly by purchasing them with
Speaker 1: real world money, and again this tends to be in
Speaker 1: the micro transaction range. The loot crate represents the potential
Speaker 1: to unlock something interesting in the game. It might be
Speaker 1: an outfit or some other cosmetic effect. Those are the
Speaker 1: types of loot crates that, in my experience, are generally
Speaker 1: viewed as being the least offensive, because if you don't
Speaker 1: care about aesthetics, then you don't feel pressured to engage
Speaker 1: in it. But for other players who just really like
Speaker 1: making the look of their character unique or at least unusual,
Speaker 1: then it's really appealing. Some games, however, will include items
Speaker 1: and loot crates that have an actual in game effect,
Speaker 1: like better weapons or other types of items, and that
Speaker 1: tends to rub players the wrong way. It gets into
Speaker 1: a pay to win kind of classification. Now, there's no
Speaker 1: guarantee with a loot crate that you're gonna get anything
Speaker 1: you want when you open it. It might be something
Speaker 1: that you don't want, it might be a copy of
Speaker 1: something you already have. The distribution of items is at
Speaker 1: least in theory, randomized, with rarer items having a lower
Speaker 1: percentage chance of spawning when you open the loot crate.
Speaker 1: Um Though you don't necessarily have a guarantee that this
Speaker 1: is all random anyway, but in theory it's randomized, and
Speaker 1: it is the The chances of you getting any particular
Speaker 1: item are based upon some percentage of that reflects how
Speaker 1: rare or common that item is within the game. Um.
Speaker 1: Some real world regions have classified the loot crate system
Speaker 1: as being akin to gambling, because again, you don't know
Speaker 1: what you're gonna get. There's a chance you'll get something
Speaker 1: really rare in the game, there's a chance you'll get
Speaker 1: something incredibly common, and thus these regions have kind of
Speaker 1: cracked down on the practice of loot crates. And there's
Speaker 1: definitely something to be said for that psychological payoff that
Speaker 1: you get when you open a loot crate and you
Speaker 1: get something neat inside it that does tend to encourage
Speaker 1: people to make more purchases, and that obviously can get
Speaker 1: really harmful if left unchecked. It can feed into sort
Speaker 1: of an addictive cycle. Then we get to the free
Speaker 1: to play model. With free to play games, players get
Speaker 1: access to the base game for free, as the name implies,
Speaker 1: but then the game typically offers lots of ways that
Speaker 1: players can enhance their experience through making purchases somewhere inside
Speaker 1: the game that can include unlocking new content. So maybe
Speaker 1: there's certain parts of the game that are inaccessible unless
Speaker 1: you pay for them. Uh. It might remove level caps
Speaker 1: so that you know you no longer are stuck at
Speaker 1: maxing out at a lower level. Uh. It might give
Speaker 1: you access to special equipment or cosmetic items. And there
Speaker 1: are games that do this really well, like games like Fortnite.
Speaker 1: The Battle Royal mode, which is arguably more famous than
Speaker 1: the original version of Fortnite, is free to play, and
Speaker 1: players can purchase stuff like character skins and emotes and
Speaker 1: dances and that kind of stuff. So all those viral
Speaker 1: memes you see of like Fortnite dances, Well, those represent
Speaker 1: streams of revenue, because if you're playing the game and
Speaker 1: you want to feel like you're part of the cool club,
Speaker 1: you're gonna need to shell out some cash so that
Speaker 1: you're not just stuck with the default options that come
Speaker 1: standard with the game. All Right, we've laid up the basics.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go into more detail, but before I do that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. Okay, So free to play
Speaker 1: games are free to play, as the name implies. Sure,
Speaker 1: but unlike a Triple A title that's a one and
Speaker 1: done from a transaction point of view, these games typically
Speaker 1: have hundreds of different ways that people might spend money
Speaker 1: on it over time, and they tend to be titles
Speaker 1: that get long term support. They encourage players to stick
Speaker 1: with playing that game indefinitely. So with the traditional Triple
Speaker 1: A title, you would make a purchase, you would play
Speaker 1: through the game, maybe you'd play through it a couple
Speaker 1: of times, but then you would move on. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: just keep playing that same game over and over because
Speaker 1: there's a limited amount of content and entertainment value there
Speaker 1: and eventually you would exhaust it. Um. For a lot
Speaker 1: of the traditional Triple a titles. I mean, now, a
Speaker 1: lot of these free to play titles aim to keep
Speaker 1: players active on them for years if possible. So what
Speaker 1: stuff like DLC and Luke Crates and free to play
Speaker 1: really did in the industry is start to shift the
Speaker 1: thinking and the perception around what games mean from the
Speaker 1: industry side. From the business side. Producers began to look
Speaker 1: at video games in terms of how much entertainment players
Speaker 1: were getting per dollar spent, like what's the what's the
Speaker 1: value of entertainment of a game? And then they compared
Speaker 1: that to other forms of entertainment like movies, and that
Speaker 1: I think is kind of apples to oranges. It's not
Speaker 1: a real fair comparison, but it is something that's happened.
Speaker 1: Alana appears in her video that I mentioned earlier, the
Speaker 1: one about let's talk about Ubisoft going to free play.
Speaker 1: She points out a piece that was done at Activision
Speaker 1: that really shed light on this line of thinking. Let's
Speaker 1: take a movie as an example. So if we go
Speaker 1: by Statista, the average price for a movie ticket in
Speaker 1: the United States is nine dollars and sixteen cents, or
Speaker 1: at least that's what it was in which is news
Speaker 1: to me because here in Atlanta, it's much higher than that.
Speaker 1: The average price seems to be closer to around fifteen dollars.
Speaker 1: In fact, I actually did a quick check before this
Speaker 1: podcast and found a ticket to Mortal Kombat, which would
Speaker 1: set me back fourteen dollars thirty four cents plus it
Speaker 1: would steal a hundred ten minutes of my life away
Speaker 1: and I would never get those back. Mm hmm. I've
Speaker 1: seen Mortal Kombat. It wouldn't have been worth the fourteen
Speaker 1: dollars and thirty four cents. So one minutes, that's a
Speaker 1: smidge under two hours. So you're looking at roughly seven
Speaker 1: dollars per hour of entertainment value if you're taking that
Speaker 1: perspective that you're paying seven bucks per hour for your entertainment.
Speaker 1: But now let's take a look at a triple A
Speaker 1: title video game, and since Ubisoft is the company that
Speaker 1: got us talking about this in the first place, let's
Speaker 1: use one of their recent titles with a ses sence,
Speaker 1: Creed Valhalla. That game cost fifty nine cents or sixty
Speaker 1: bucks when it first came out. According to PC Games
Speaker 1: to the nth Power, the expected play through time for
Speaker 1: Assassin's Creed Valhalla is somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty
Speaker 1: to nine hours. So when you average that out, it
Speaker 1: comes down to somewhere between sixty seven cents to a
Speaker 1: dollar per hour of entertainment. So, if you're looking at
Speaker 1: this as a quantity of entertainment per unit of currency perspective,
Speaker 1: movies are way more expensive per hour than triple A
Speaker 1: title games for the consumer. On the flip side, movies
Speaker 1: net studios way more money per hour of entertainment than
Speaker 1: video games. So if you're looking at it as a
Speaker 1: company that makes video games, you're left with the question of, well,
Speaker 1: how can we get more money per hour of entertainment.
Speaker 1: We're giving away hours of entertainment here. We should really
Speaker 1: rethink how we're going about generating revenue for games. We
Speaker 1: can't leave money on the table. We need to figure
Speaker 1: out a way to optimize the monetization of entertainment. Well,
Speaker 1: the free to play represents a way to get more
Speaker 1: money per player over the long run. Now, some players
Speaker 1: might never spend a dime on our free to play game,
Speaker 1: but others will end up spending way more money than
Speaker 1: they would if they were just purchasing a triple A
Speaker 1: title outright. Someone who might have balked it dropping seventy
Speaker 1: bucks on a game all at once, could, over the
Speaker 1: course of their time playing a free to play game,
Speaker 1: spend twice as much as that or more. Once it's
Speaker 1: all said and done. It's just all of these transactions
Speaker 1: are on a much smaller scale, and then they add up. Plus,
Speaker 1: this approach can bring development costs way down. I mean,
Speaker 1: you still have to develop the base game. That is
Speaker 1: still a big commitment, but once that's done, any additional
Speaker 1: development can be done on top of that existing framework. Now,
Speaker 1: it might require some tweaks. So for example, if you
Speaker 1: introduce new weapons or characters in a multiplayer shooter game
Speaker 1: like Overwatch, you might have to rebalance the game if
Speaker 1: the new character proves to be too powerful or not
Speaker 1: powerful enough to go toe to toe with the characters
Speaker 1: who are already part of the roster. Now this marks
Speaker 1: a shift of games as being you know, distinct units
Speaker 1: of entertainment for purchase into becoming more of a service.
Speaker 1: There are many manifestations of games as a service. There
Speaker 1: are subscription plans. There's like the Xbox Game Pass, which
Speaker 1: for a monthly fee, gives you access to a selection
Speaker 1: of games that you can play. You know, you could
Speaker 1: argue you can play them for free, though you're not
Speaker 1: really playing for free because you've got the subscription fee.
Speaker 1: Then you have persistent online worlds like World of Warcraft AFT,
Speaker 1: which you know traditionally had a subscription associated to it
Speaker 1: or with it rather or g t a online which
Speaker 1: has lots of different versions of micro transactions to get
Speaker 1: access to various types of content in the online world.
Speaker 1: And there are free to play games that have additional
Speaker 1: content available for purchase, and all of these are different
Speaker 1: variations of the same basic idea creating a game that
Speaker 1: allows publishers to continue to make money on an ongoing basis,
Speaker 1: rather than have a game launch and then sell x
Speaker 1: number of units of that game and then that game
Speaker 1: fades from consciousness, so you have to do it all
Speaker 1: over again with a new title. And this coincides with
Speaker 1: more players purchasing fewer titles but spending more time in
Speaker 1: individual games. So it's not that people aren't playing games
Speaker 1: as much as they used to, it's rather that they're
Speaker 1: spending way more time playing specific games. So in some
Speaker 1: cases this goes along with branding. So for example, there
Speaker 1: are twitch streamers that I watch who are best known
Speaker 1: for playing one or two specific titles. Uh Meg Turney
Speaker 1: is a dead by daylight fiend and she scares me
Speaker 1: in some is a phasma phobia expert who can practically
Speaker 1: run through the toughest levels of that game with his
Speaker 1: eyes closed and still win. Joe Woudle is best known
Speaker 1: for his content around Seven Days to Die and Sure
Speaker 1: for streamers, their brand often gets tied to specific titles,
Speaker 1: and that's a little different. But apparently even for non streamers,
Speaker 1: the trend is that folks are buying fewer titles but
Speaker 1: spending more time playing each title. Anecdotally, I can say
Speaker 1: that that is true for me, but anecdotal evidence isn't
Speaker 1: really evidence. But here's my version. I've been playing a
Speaker 1: few games, an awful lot, you know. I've been playing
Speaker 1: a lot of Star Doo Valley because I got to
Speaker 1: get that completionist achievement and it's I didn't go about
Speaker 1: setting up my farm super efficient at least, so it's
Speaker 1: taken me way more time than it should. I also
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time playing hit Man three, which
Speaker 1: continues to release more specific content for that game and
Speaker 1: continues to be really interesting to play. I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time playing the game Hades, which is a
Speaker 1: roguelike game that is really exceptionally well done and infuriating,
Speaker 1: but I love it. And we see a long running
Speaker 1: trend in Triple A titles of sprawl and epic epic
Speaker 1: nous so games like the Elder Scrolls series. They have
Speaker 1: so much content in these games that it might take
Speaker 1: you more than a hundred hours to see it all.
Speaker 1: Some of them have so much sprawl that I, as
Speaker 1: a player, tend to get worn out before I ever
Speaker 1: play through it, and I just never finished the game. Now,
Speaker 1: this is a personal issue for me, Like I have
Speaker 1: trouble with side quests because I always want to complete
Speaker 1: all the side quests before I finished the story. And
Speaker 1: I get this, this fear of missing out. If I
Speaker 1: continue the story, it means I might shut myself off
Speaker 1: from certain side quests, and I don't like that. So
Speaker 1: then I end up pursuing all the side quests and
Speaker 1: I never finished the story mission. And yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: I get it. It's a personal problem. Now, the free
Speaker 1: to play model depends on creating essentially open ended gaming experiences.
Speaker 1: The game can't end because if it did, then players
Speaker 1: might move on and the whole value proposition from the
Speaker 1: corporate standpoint is that the game never ends. It encourages
Speaker 1: continued play. Now, some games work really well with this model,
Speaker 1: and they tend to be stuff like competitive shooters and
Speaker 1: Battle Royal games and that kind of stuff, because those
Speaker 1: games aren't so much about completing a story, but rather
Speaker 1: about competing against other players in various types of matches.
Speaker 1: There are lots of good games that fall into this category,
Speaker 1: they just don't tend to be the games that I prefer. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the financial numbers show that this trend is likely to
Speaker 1: continue and in fact accelerate. Jeff Keeley tweeted out that
Speaker 1: when it comes to e A's revenue, just twenty six
Speaker 1: percent of that revenue came from selling premium titles, and
Speaker 1: the rest of the stuff came from things like mobile
Speaker 1: games and micro transactions and DLC. So nearly three quarters
Speaker 1: of all of e A's revenue came not from selling
Speaker 1: big ticket titles, but rather all this kind of additional
Speaker 1: stuff that's on the periphery of a big title. And
Speaker 1: developing video games is incredibly expensive. It takes a lot
Speaker 1: of time, and there are ways to make way more
Speaker 1: money for smaller investments of time and effort, so it's
Speaker 1: no surprise that Ubisoft is making a larger move toward
Speaker 1: that direction. Now, does this mean that the era of
Speaker 1: the self contained single player video game experience is coming
Speaker 1: to an end? Should we expect all game titles moving
Speaker 1: forward to be about this ongoing experience and and more
Speaker 1: consistently an online multiplayer experience, one that encourages players to
Speaker 1: spend smaller amounts of money over time, but to continue
Speaker 1: to do so over the course of years. I feel
Speaker 1: like that's going to be a major focus for a
Speaker 1: lot of big publishers out there. That being said, we
Speaker 1: continue to see some incredible games made by smaller studios,
Speaker 1: and some of these games are exploring storytelling in really
Speaker 1: interesting ways. Some represent a smaller experience, something that has
Speaker 1: a definitive ending and perhaps doesn't require forty or more
Speaker 1: hours of play to get there. Personally, I'm finding those
Speaker 1: style of games really rewarding. I enjoy it when I
Speaker 1: get a chance to play them. It's refreshing to play
Speaker 1: something that isn't trying to coax me into another dozen
Speaker 1: hours or whatever. It's just a really compact, well to
Speaker 1: designed experience. I really think that those are awesome, And
Speaker 1: I think we're going to see a mixture of these approaches,
Speaker 1: with smaller studios kind of filling in the big gaps
Speaker 1: that are left by the larger companies. To be Soft
Speaker 1: and Activision and e A are likely to prioritize games
Speaker 1: that have these ongoing transactions as part of their design,
Speaker 1: maybe in fact, the central part of their design. And
Speaker 1: I guess that's okay. I mean, I'm not super jazzed
Speaker 1: about it, but these tend to be games that I
Speaker 1: don't play all that frequently anyway, with the exception of
Speaker 1: games like hit Man. I mean, I do play some
Speaker 1: of them, just I don't play all of them. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you've got other studios making experiences that aren't meant to
Speaker 1: be persistent ones that last indefinitely. That's okay too. As
Speaker 1: for the whole free to play movement, if I don't
Speaker 1: know that it's going to bring more people in to
Speaker 1: try stuff out and might I mean, for me, it's
Speaker 1: not always the perception of the cost to me, it's
Speaker 1: the perception of am I going to really enjoy this experience.
Speaker 1: So for certain titles like Assassin's Creed, it's heavily dependent
Speaker 1: for me on the context of where that game falls,
Speaker 1: Like Assassin's Creed Black Flag was a pirate Assassin's Creed,
Speaker 1: and that was speaking my language. I love the the
Speaker 1: the romantic image of piracy, not the real one, but
Speaker 1: the romanticized piracy image. I I find that really compelling,
Speaker 1: and so I loved playing that game. But there are
Speaker 1: other titles in the Assassin's Creed franchise that just, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't have any real interest in, so I didn't
Speaker 1: try them. I don't think that making those free will
Speaker 1: necessarily encourage me to try them out. I think it
Speaker 1: just has to appeal to me first, and whether or
Speaker 1: not it's free or I have to pay for it, uh,
Speaker 1: is kind of beside the point. However, I also knowledge
Speaker 1: I'm in a very privileged position where I can generally
Speaker 1: afford to play these kinds of games, and for other
Speaker 1: people who might not have that kind of privilege, this
Speaker 1: could be great. Like they get a chance to try
Speaker 1: out games that they might really enjoy. Uh. They might
Speaker 1: not be able to access all the different content of
Speaker 1: those games, which is kind of a bummer, but they'd
Speaker 1: at least get a chance to play the games, So
Speaker 1: that's kind of cool. I'm curious what you think. Um,
Speaker 1: for those gamers out there, shout out to me over
Speaker 1: on Twitter text stuff, hs W is the handle and uh,
Speaker 1: let me know, do you think the free to play
Speaker 1: micro transaction approach is that okay? Is it ruining games?
Speaker 1: Do you like it? Do you hate it? Are there
Speaker 1: types of games that you really enjoy? Are there some
Speaker 1: that don't really exist anymore? Thanks to independent game studios.
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of the styles I really
Speaker 1: enjoy still get produced, depends on the studio. They can
Speaker 1: be of, you know, very in quality. But I get
Speaker 1: inspired by some of the stuff I see, especially the
Speaker 1: weird stuff I see all of independent studios. Anyway, that's
Speaker 1: it for this episode. Uh. Usually I would just do
Speaker 1: a tech news episode straight up, but this particular item
Speaker 1: really hit me, and I thought it would be great
Speaker 1: to have more of an opportunity for me to get
Speaker 1: on a soapbox and talk about games and monetization and
Speaker 1: revenue and how how this business of making games is
Speaker 1: in fact a business and so we have to admit that,
Speaker 1: you know, we have to acknowledge that and not just
Speaker 1: say that this is something about, you know, creating entertainment
Speaker 1: for any altruistic purposes or whatever. But um yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: curious to hear what you all think, so let me
Speaker 1: know and we will be back next week with more
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, including our usual news episodes. And
Speaker 1: with that, I'm out of here. Y'all take care and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Y Text Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows