Steam influenced Skyrim's quality?

[Calamachus]

'' Does that make sense? ''

 

Hmm.. Partly, because;

 

Console oriented development should not be an excuse for dumbing down an entire genre to the ground for mass appeal.

 

Console oriented development (or piracy) should not be an excuse for almost complete lack of quality assurance for the "full priced" PC release.

 

Console oriented development should not be an excuse for the false advertising they made to create massive hype for their in fact (imho) mediocre quality games.

 

It's not about 'excuses'. It's about profitability. If 'dumbing down' as you put it (streamlining I think is the favored term in most industries for dumbing stuff down) gets more copies sold and earns more profit then it's the direction the industry will go. That's a big part of my point. What are WE, by which I mean PC game consumers who want a more complicated product, offering to make that investment worthwhile?

 

QA is and has always been an issue in games, hardware and software for as long as they have existed. It's certainly not tied to computer games. As systems get more complex the number of things that can go wrong increase. I've worked on inhouse software development in a couple of large businesses. There was a huge focus on it being bug-free but at the end of the day it's just not possible. That has nothing to do with consoles, piracy or anything else save the complexity of the product.

 

If you think Skyrim, just as an example, is mediocre then what do you consider exceptional? 5 years and somewhere between $20-$100 million dollars (so the statistics say for a AAA game), over 30gb of content uncompressed.... is there some uber-game that came out 10 years ago that was actually better? Some example of complete and perfect gaming upon which no improvement has or ever could be made? For example I loved morrowind - when I could play it but it crashed almost constantly for me. It had some features I enjoyed but the combat system was crap and all the quests were linear, etc. etc. For the same $60 that gets you Mass Effect three which is probably 30-50 hours of entertainment (with multiple playthroughs) I've gotten a good 500 hours out of Skyrim thanks to mods (which Beth supports hardcore) and the Nexus. That's mediocre to you? I admit that sort of attitude really confuses me. Given the realities of the costs involved in game development now Skyrim is phenomenal on the PC.

 

If your intent is to motivate game developers to give you more for your money I'm not sure buying it and saying 'Meh, could have been better' is going to do it. That other 80% on the console market plus most of the PC market paid the same money you did for the same game and said we loved it. What are you offering that we are not?

 

In the end it's all academic. What is important is that if you want the industry to move your direction to have to offer something more than everyone else or otherwise make it a good business decision. Saying 'I'm not going to buy any games made for the console market' isn't going to do it - everyone else already is buying it. Would you pay more? Enough to make it worthwhile? $80 a game? $100? Just looking at raw market percentages you'd need to pay approximately 5x what a console gamer does to make releasing a game just for the PC as cost effective for the developer. Probably less due to a reverse economy of scale (selling less copies involves less overhead) but still. $200?

 

A better coin to offer is loyalty, consistency and support - these payoff to a developer in terms of making it easier to get investment capital for the next title in the series. That at least can keep us in the loop and justify the greater cost of cross-developing for the PC. Better consoles will help because it will push up the bar, but otherwise the best advice is to always remember that we are a niche market. Be worth selling to because we're not the biggest fish in the pond.

[Fortunado3]

Opening Skyrim up to consoles and that market allowed it to outsell Oblivions total sales in a matter of a couple of weeks. Was it a decision based on money? Of course it was. Bethesda isn't a charity, they have jobs and families and they want paid and paid well for the work that they do. That's not unreasonable at all.

 

PC games are a niche market now. Trying to pretend otherwise is pointless. What you need to do is get passed that and start focusing on what's important - staying worthwhile enough to get to tag along on the big titles. Halo 3 anyone? PC games get pirated far more than console games. They are more twitchy to develop for (different video cards, hardware specs, etc). Making a game for the PC is more complicated and expensive than it is to do for the console and the return per consumer is technically LESS because a larger percentage of your would-be consumers steal it instead of pay you for it.

 

Skyrim is an awesome game. Could it be better? Of course. Oblivion and Morrowind both could have been better at release too. Be glad Bethesda isn't Ubisoft and we get all these awesome modding tools.

 

Hands down the smart thing to do as a PC gamer is NOT to *censored* and complain and try to pretend that somehow Bethesda is required to spend more on us than they are on console gamers for the same or less return but to instead to show that we add value. Promote the game, make and use mods, buy DLC and otherwise continue to be a market worth catering to. Console kiddies have proven they are going to continue to shell out $60 for 25-30 hours of content every couple of months just about regardless of quality. They make up about 80% of the market. We need to make our 20% *worth* catering to and supporting. If it's cost-effective and a worthwhile investment game developers will make better PC-focused content for their games. If it's not, then they won't. It's pretty simple. What are you going to do - threaten to not buy TES VI if it's geared towards the console market? So their choice is to sell an extra 1,000,000 console copies with an extra $3 or $4 profit per unit or sell an extra 500,000 PC that barely meet production costs? Let's see.... make an extra $4 million or an extra $500,000?

 

It's a business. It has shareholders and investors. It exists to make money. The people who work their without a doubt have pride in their work and want to do what they enjoy. They WANT to make the best game that's ever been made ever - and they want to do it every time. It's not a career someone gets into for the money, but the business itself has to. If we, as PC game consumers, want to get the greater attention we need and our platform can take advantage of we have to be worth the investment.

 

Does that make sense?

Not really. Morrowind and Oblivion wasn't this dumbed down, and both were on consoles.

 

And these games aren't getting dumbed down because of piracy. Its because of laziness, greed, and wanting to pander to the lowest common denominator.

Edited April 8, 2012 by Fortunado3

[robanybody2000]

Let's face it, Bethesda moved along with the time. We are so few true playing RPG types out there that no gaming industry risks developing a game for us with the cost of bankruptcy (take Troika for example). We are dinosaurs and we tend to go back to the games we loved and "made sense" for us comparing new ones with them, sadly those games are long-over gone and gaming bussines moves forward regarding of our opinion. New games are "dumbed down" because the world dumbes down with each passing year and game developers no longer have the posibility of missing a huge sale without serious consequences. So...I guess that's it.

[Handofbane]

sadly those games are long-over gone

Not at all. We, the gamers, have a new tool in our arsenal and some developers out there who actually want to make those kinds of classic games again without a publisher breathing down their necks to "make it more accessible": Kickstarter. Go read the thread in the Nexus News board one tier up regarding Wasteland 2 (and Shadowrun).

[Glhadiator]

Not really. Morrowind and Oblivion wasn't this dumbed down, and both were on consoles.

 

And these games aren't getting dumbed down because of piracy. Its because of laziness, greed, and wanting to pander to the lowest common denominator.

 

 

A realist...we are becoming a small section in the demographic picture.

[Calamachus]

Not really. Morrowind and Oblivion wasn't this dumbed down, and both were on consoles.

 

And these games aren't getting dumbed down because of piracy. Its because of laziness, greed, and wanting to pander to the lowest common denominator.

 

 

A realist...we are becoming a small section in the demographic picture.

 

I was really tempted to just let this go because I absolutely realize no amount of discussion of economics is going to change your opinion, but I've just got to ask.

 

What are you talking about?

 

Pander to the lowest common denominator? Lazy?

 

Greed, absolutely. If by 'greed' you mean 'get paid and feed your family'. Do you think that everyone who works at Bethesda is knee deep in hookers and blow? All these insanely wealthy game developers, hanging around on their private islands and being escorted around in gold-plated limos?

 

But lazy? Skyrim has probably invested more time and money just into the motion capture animations than was spent in total on Morrowind. More time, more money, more people were invested in Skyrim than any TES game prior. How is that lazy? That one boggles me. Like somehow all these people who went into game design because they love in instead of taking a higher paying job in some soulless IT department just don't care about their work? Admittedly I know a few people in the game design industry. Nobody at Bethesda, but still.

 

Pandering.... not sure where 'lowest common denominator' comes in. The console market is over 80% of the business now. It wasn't at the time Morrowind or even Oblivion were being developed (around 2000 for Morrowind and 2003 for Oblivion) and thus the games were designed for PCs and ported for consoles. No question Skyrim was made for the console market - which is why it could be made in the first place. Skyrim sold more copies in the first two weeks than Oblivion did since 2006. Because of that TES VI is going to get made despite the rising cost of game development.

 

They are selling their product to the largest group of people who will pay them the most money for it. Are you saying they should feel guilty and ashamed for that?

 

That attitude is a great way to get your opinions and recommendations utterly written off and ignored. The reality is you want someone to go above and beyond what everyone else is paying them for (and happily so) and do something extra for you but all for the same price. The whole point of my post, from the start, is to say that if you want to do that you need to provide them an impetus to do so. Are you going to pay extra? I'm pretty sure 'I promise not to badmouth you on the forums anymore' isn't going to do it.

 

Again. PC gamers are now the minority. We want special treatment for the same CPU (cost per unit) as console gamers. Right now we add value by making mods and generating word of mouth advertisement. Our best angle would be to become the 'high return' market segment. Longer loyalty, higher return per consumer (more likely to buy DLC, etc). That's where piracy comes in as a negative. Everyone who pirates a game on the PC just cut their value of the copy of the game you actually bought in half. Literally. There is an inherent resistance to investing in a market that has a lot of loss due to fraud. If you sold TVs all over the country but in Flushing, NY 1 in 10 of the TVs you ship there got stolen when everywhere else in the country it was closer to 1 in 1,000, how tempted would you be to stop selling in Flushing? You're still going to make 90% of your sales, but still. What if it was 50%? You'd have to make everyone else in the country pay a little extra to offset your losses in Flushing. That is why piracy hurts PC gamers. It drives business decisions away from our market.

 

Or you can just believe that everyone else is just 'out to get you' and that businesses make their decisions based on some strange desire to do evil. Whatever floats your boat. Hope that works out for you, keep us updated on how it goes.

 

I'm going to stay focused on actually getting what I want based on economics and the realities of business and industry.

[Handofbane]

Again. PC gamers are now the minority. We want special treatment for the same CPU (cost per unit) as console gamers. Right now we add value by making mods and generating word of mouth advertisement. Our best angle would be to become the 'high return' market segment. Longer loyalty, higher return per consumer (more likely to buy DLC, etc).

Agreed, approaching this strictly from a marketing point of view. Sadly marketing is the bane of variety in gaming today, though - the phrase "we want CoD's numbers" has become infamous.

That's where piracy comes in as a negative. Everyone who pirates a game on the PC just cut their value of the copy of the game you actually bought in half. Literally. There is an inherent resistance to investing in a market that has a lot of loss due to fraud. If you sold TVs all over the country but in Flushing, NY 1 in 10 of the TVs you ship there got stolen when everywhere else in the country it was closer to 1 in 1,000, how tempted would you be to stop selling in Flushing? You're still going to make 90% of your sales, but still. What if it was 50%? You'd have to make everyone else in the country pay a little extra to offset your losses in Flushing. That is why piracy hurts PC gamers. It drives business decisions away from our market.

 

Or you can just believe that everyone else is just 'out to get you' and that businesses make their decisions based on some strange desire to do evil. Whatever floats your boat. Hope that works out for you, keep us updated on how it goes.

 

I'm going to stay focused on actually getting what I want based on economics and the realities of business and industry.

And here is where the disconnect from what marketing thinks and the reality of the situation is. Hell, let's take it from Gabe Newell himself, the head of Valve. Quote below taken from about 3/4 down the page.

Have you ever been tempted to put a set of standards for DRM across games on Steam? Unless you do a lot of research when you buy a game through the service you might not know exactly what you’re getting.

 

I’m not sure I understood what you’re trying to ask me.

Sure, like if you’re going to sell a game on Steam, has there ever been a temptation by you to kind of create a standardized set of DRM and holding publishers to it, or saying this kind of thing is inadmissible but will allow these certain solutions? Have you ever been tempted to get more hands-on on what kind of DRM is offered through what amounts to your storefront?

We tend to try to avoid being super dictatorial to either customers or partners. Recently I was in a meeting and there’s a company that had a third party DRM solution and we showed them look, this is what happens, at this point in your life cycle your DRM got hacked, right? Now let’s look at the data, did your sales change at all? No, your sales didn’t change one bit. Right? So here’s before and after, here’s where you have DRM that annoys your customers and causing huge numbers of support calls and in theory you would think that you would see a huge drop off in sales after that got hacked, and instead there was absolutely no difference in sales before or after. You know, and then we tell them you actually probably lost a whole bunch of sales as near as we can tell, here’s how much money you lost by bundling that with your product. So we do that all the time, we’re just – you know, I wouldn’t be super happy if some other third party tried to tell me how to have relationships with our customers and I expect other people feel the same way, and I also tend to think that customers don’t really like it when you try to impose rigid rules on them as well, so we tend to think and hope that over time people will move towards doing the things that are in the best interests of both the customers and the content developers.

 

You know, it’s a really bad idea to start off on the assumption that your customers are on the other side of some sort of battle with you. I really don’t think that is either accurate or a really good business strategy, and so we just sort of keep trying to show – you know, I think that we have a lot more credibility now with developers on issues like this simply because there’s so much data that we can show them where we say look, we’ve run all of these experiments, you know, this has been going on for many years now and we all can look at what the outcomes are and there really isn’t – there are lots of compelling instances where making customers – you know, giving customers a great experience and thinking of ways to create value for them is way more important than making it incredibly hard for the customers to move their products from one machine to another.

[totalwarman]

I stop playing total war games due steam, i hate those compulsive downloads of non used DLCs that i don't activate and don't use. Some games have 10GB of non requested stuff. Its insane. I hope this game don't follow the same path.

[TheLine]

I don't believe it's quality was affected by steam, I feel like that's taking it too the extreme.I do feel like Skyrim got sucked into the Steam Fad. I don't like that when I buy a Store Copy I have to Install the game through Steam. Call me Nostalgic but I miss the Good Old Days when I by a DVD and I install the Game from that DVD. Yes I realize theres a way to Install Skyrim for the Disc itself. Anywho I haven't seen a game that lost it''s quality because it was hosted on steam.

[PsxMeUP]

I love the "You can copy the game to a DVD" argument. Can Steam also provide me with content to print/burn/tinker my own bonus material too, like the box, art booklet, map, music CD, poster, trinket, etc.? Will they give me a discount if I do print/burn/tinker all that stuff myself?