gaming

Yesterday I tried to put together a guesstimate list of the top-grossing video-games of 2013 (in terms of player spending, not dev/publisher revenue).

To summarize, a top 10 list would look something like this (in ball-park descending order, sources are in the previous post):

• Grand Theft Auto V – $2B
• [EDIT3 Candy Crush Saga – $1.5B, simple estimate from their S1]
• Puzzle & Dragons – $2B [EDIT1 – $1.4B after changing my assumption for whether their revenue was pre or after platform 30% cut]
• Call of Duty: Ghosts – $1B
• World of Warcraft – $1B?
• Candy Crush Saga – $1B?
• Clash of Clans – $1B?
• Crossfire – $1B*
• League of Legends – $0.6B*
• [EDIT2 Clash of Clans – $-0.5B – revising these games’ numbers after Supercell’s revenue disclosure]
• Fifa 14 – $0.5B
• Pokemon X/Y – $0.5B

*Crossfire and League of Legends are Superdata Research estimates, and as I don’t know their methodology I’m unsure what adjustments need to be made from “game revenue” to “player spending”. Also the same disclaimer/disclosure as the prior post, while I work on League of Legends I’m not using any internal data and I’m not vouching for the accuracy of external research claims.

As I look at this list, some take-aways jump out:

• From a return on investment perspective, the top-grossing mobile games are likely an order of magnitude better than other platforms – the production / marketing / operating costs behind P&D / CoC / CCS are probably a fraction of that of GTA V / CoD.
  • However, this doesn’t mean mobile games represent better ROI overall – the 3 mobile titles on this list are the extremely lucky few out of hundreds of thousands of mobile titles.
• These 10 games represent a surprisingly wide (IMO) range of gaming experiences (genres, platforms and business models). This would actually be very interesting to probe further, in terms of asking the question of “what are the jobs being done?” by these products/services.
  • I’ll try to tackle this specifically in a future post.
• The rise of mobile is really fast – would anyone a couple of years ago have imagined not one, but three mobile games, in a top 10 grossing list? It suggests that there may be an entirely new (and much bigger in scale) segment of gamers via mobile.
  • Would these new gamers remain “casual” gamers, or can they be introduced to the more “core” gaming experiences? (Or to flip the question around, can “core” gaming experiences be brought to mobile?) This is literally a multi-billion dollar question
• The geographic markets behind these 10 games show interesting concentrations. GTA V / CoD / Fifa are primarily driven by western markets; P&D / Pokemon are primarily Japan; CF is mostly China; CCS / CoC may have the most global distribution.
• Future growth potential – I think there’s an almost 100% obvious answer (with immense implications) to the question of “which types of games are likely to grow faster in future?”
  • One clue is on this Newzoo market research graph

On reading some of the financials disclosed recently by games publishers, I had this question in my head: what were the top-grossing video-games of 2013? I’ll do a simple write-up here using a few public sources and some ball-park estimates.

To start off, let’s define top-grossing as measured by player spending. That is, I’m not particularly concerned with how much revenue publishers/developers took in (versus the cuts taken by the various distribution channels, or factoring in how revenue is recognized from an accounting perspective), but rather looking at how big the pie was in terms of money that players paid out-of-pocket.

As a first step, let’s look at boxed retail, which is mostly console/dedicated handheld titles: http://www.vgchartz.com/yearly/2013/Global/

Grand Theft Auto V was clearly the monster hit of the year, with almost 30MM units across Xbox360 and PS3 in 2013 (Take Two announced 32.5MM units shipped recently). Assuming an average retail price of $60 + tax (say, 10%), GTA V comes in at just shy of $2B of player spending. (A different cut is using Take Two’s reported earnings data, where GTA accounted for 72.2% of $2.15B from Mar-Dec 2013, which is $1.55B – which is about $50 per unit, which sounds about right for the pre-retail markup price.)

Call of Duty: Ghosts had close to 15MM units, which translates to about $1B of player spending (assuming $60+tax).

Aside from these two titles, no other title seemed to come close to $1B of player spending – Pokemon X/Y had 10MM units, but a lower retail price ($40), so it would come below $0.5B. Fifa 14 had close to 9MM units, which would be around $0.5B as well. It’s also worth noting that the top PC game at boxed retail was Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm, with only 1.1MM units.

Next let’s look at PC digital retail (as in, purchase once, play forever, via Steam etc.). I’m actually drawing a blank as I write this thinking of a major PC game in 2013 under the digital retail model that would come close to $0.5B or more. (Doing a quick scan on steamgraph I really struggled to find any 2013 releases that would be likely – so let’s table this for now.

Next up – subscription-based games. Or, basically, World of Warcraft. I’ll just do a quick back of the envelope exercise rather than dig through Activision earnings. It seems the last publicly announced WoW subscriber numbers were 7MM as of July 2013 – assuming $15 per month (ignoring the bulk discounts and tax, or regional pricing models in Asia – which could really change the picture but I haven’t researched this in detail) that comes out to $1.26B. So WoW is probably around the billion dollar club in terms of player spending.

Next, free-to-play games. A big disclosure/disclaimer here, I work on League of Legends in my day job, and I will not be disclosing any internal data points. Instead, I’ll only use publicly available info, such as this a publicly released research piece. (I’m not vouching for the accuracy of the report, especially any League of Legends estimates from this research vendor.) From this source, it seems there’s 2-3 online games under the free-to-play model that are in the ballpark of $0.5-1B in player spending.

Lastly (and this is what I really want to talk about), mobile games (basically iOS + Android). GungHo released their numbers recently, and Puzzle & Dragons scored huge, accounting for 91% of the $1.5B revenue. Adding back the 30% app store commission (I’m assuming their revenue numbers are net of this commission, since that’s what they get from Apple/Google), that comes out to just shy of $2B in player spending. [EDIT1: I’m now assuming that the standard revenue reporting for mobile games includes the Apple/Google 30% cut, as this was stated in the reports last year on Supercell, e.g. this post]

While we don’t have full year numbers for Clash of Clans or Candy Crush Saga, it’s not far-fetched to see them in the billion dollar club. For example, some research vendors estimate that Clash of Clans was the overall top-grossing iOS game of 2013, while Candy Crush Saga was the top-grossing Google Play game of 2013. Picturing what we know about Puzzle & Dragons, then these two titles are almost certainly billion dollar titles in terms of player spending. [EDIT2: Supercell’s 2013 revenue is $892MM, so Clash of Clans by itself may be around $500-650MM, since it is generally higher ranked than Hay Day].

[EDIT3: So King filed their IPO prospectus, and we have a lot more data on Candy Crush Saga. If we do a simple estimate and take the reported bookings contribution from CCS from Q4 2013 (78%) and apply it to the whole year revenue of $1.9B, that’s around $1.5B from CCS. And King reports gross revenue, so that’s the amount players spent.]

I came across this gem of a book recently via video-games industry veteran Pat Wyatt’s blog. It’s a breeze to read and I finished the main chapters in a day (I say main chapters, as the book takes cues from its subject matter and contains a ton of optional extra reading).

The book is mainly a behind-the-scenes account of how Diablo came to life. I consider Diablo to be one of the best games I’ve ever played, and it has a permanent place in my childhood. As a personal side story, it was one of the few games that I bought a legal copy of growing up in China – I pooled together 160RMB (~$20 at the exchange rate back then) with two friends and we rode our bicycles to the burgeoning Zhongguancun area (now a renowned high-tech hub) in Beijing to buy the box.

The making of Diablo has a distinct Silicon Valley feel to it – not unlike the other stories from the west coast of how iconic tech brands had very humble beginnings. While Silicon & Synapse (the start of Blizzard) and Condor (the start of Blizzard North) did not literally begin in garages, these two companies were incredibly scrappy and were often fighting to make payroll. And then there’s also the part of overnight riches (due to buy-outs) and how the spoils were shared (or not shared) with the employees.

But mostly, the book is about video-games development – an endeavor that is a mix of traditional software development and a creative effort (like writing a novel or making a film). The Diablo that players loved was a very different beast from its original design document, and that’s a good thing – the fascinating twists and turns of how the product came to be is inspiring and showcases the amazing things that can happen when a group of people share a common vision and passion.

I’ve been spending a few hours this past week on Max Payne 3. I’m a quite a fan of the series, and consider Max Payne 1 & 2 among two of the best action games I’ve ever played (which is a limited selection, I’ll admit). As such, I was quite enthusiastic about the 3rd installment, but halfway through I’m sorely disappointed.

My main issues with this Rockstar production are two-fold – 1) narrative over gameplay; 2) frustrations at the core gameplay design.

The first is by far my biggest complaint with this title. The previous titles in this franchise were noted for their noir style as well as comic-book narrative device, which I felt worked extremely well with the action gameplay. The series has always been story-heavy, with fairly complex plots (for action games), but the story development never took too long or got in the way of the action. With Max Payne 3, it seems Rockstar has got the relationship backwards – the gameplay is very frequently disrupted by cut-scenes, some of which are often drawn-out sequences. These cut-scenes also serve as save points for the “chapters,” which is how the game is organized (missions, effectively). Each mission is therefore typically broken down into half a dozen save points; a mission usually do not last more than an hour if the player is not getting stuck. This means that the core gameplay is effectively being given out to the player at 10-minute (or even less) installments, which breaks all sense of flow and suspension of disbelief. Additionally, while Max Payne was never a franchise about open exploration of levels, the game at least offered flexibility and progression in terms of gearing; 3‘s structure completely breaks this – guns come by easily, and are also lost easily (some cut-scenes/save points seem to reset/adjust the inventory).

Regarding gameplay, my frustrations so far are:

• Extremely restrictive and linear level design, with a extended on-rails shooter sequence in one level being especially blatant and bad
• The extremely fragmented level design, with cut-scenes liberally sprinkled about. Also, the player is often immediately placed in a boxed setting with immediate threats, which may seem like a good way to throw the player straight into the heat of the action, but after a while becomes highly repetitive. It doesn’t feel like a free-flow action game, but instead a sequence of action puzzles, where the player has to figure out the path of least resistance out of a scripted setting.
• The introduction of cover mechanics, while in line with modern shooters, doesn’t seem to fit well with the frantic (and arcade run-and-gun) style that the series is known for. My memory of Max Payne 2 is the extremely enjoyable (and definitely arcade-like) combat sequences where you are overwhelmed by enemies and have to charge in with bullet time; this type of experience rarely happens in this title, and bullet time effectively becomes a support to fast aiming from cover.
• The under-emphasis of weapons – it seems, based on the 7 or so chapters I’ve played through, that Rockstar decided that gun variety / uniqueness is not important at all to this game. Sure, the previous titles didn’t have any ridiculous sci-fi weapons, but previously each gun felt unique and acquiring a new weapon was an exciting moment; in this game, the guns are extremely generic, and because of the “streamlining” of inventory (reset every chapter, and sometimes within a chapter) there was little excitement when you ran across new arsenal.

So far, I’m still enjoying this title, but barely. There are genuine moments of suspension of disbelief, where you have an extended action sequence uninterrupted by cut-scenes and you are focused on making pathing decisions instead of being presented with a scripted scenario which you have to get out of. But these moments are hard to come by and I keep invoking memories of Max Payne 2.

I spent the weekend rushing through Mass Effect 3. The game is quite well polished from a production stand-point, though I was irked that one side quest was buggy. The ending generated massive player backlash, for very good reasons – I won’t go into details here as there are already excellent analyses elsewhere. In short, the production quality dropped off a cliff during the last 15 minutes of the game – it felt very tacked on and had numerous plot holes.

The remainder 99% of the game was satisfying. From a narrative point of view it felt closer to the original than the sequel – it was “epic” in thematic dimensions and there was constant tension (my main objection against the sequel was that the narrative of building out a team of diverse personalities – while all the characters were very interesting individually – felt like a cheap plot device to add 15 hours of gameplay). The entire universe was in peril; even against this backdrop, different civilizations were pursuing selfish goals and there were multiple conflicts across galaxies; you, as the central character, could choose to defuse these conflicts and unite the species against a common enemy (and you may succeed or fail depending on your choices).

The most interesting take-away I have about the game, is the unique immersive experience a video-game can provide, as opposed to other forms of media (such as film), and how it could leverage and expand on narrative techniques commonly found in films. There are a couple of really powerful moments in Mass Effect 3 – spoilers ahead – that demonstrate fully the power of the medium.

My favorite scene from the game is involving a side character, Mordin. Mordin is an alien (Salarian, to be precise) scientist introduced in Mass Effect 2, who speaks in a rapid fire monotone voice. He represents a strict utilitarian world-view, and is responsible for causing a disease called the “genophage” which made another hostile species, the Krogan, largely infertile – he sees this as an elegant solution to solving a complex problem. Over the course of the narrative of Mass Effect 2, his character development involves a side story where he discovers research that could cure the genophage, and it was up to the player’s choice how that data was used. Regardless, during this side story Mordin’s character evolves as he sees the damage that the genophage has done to the Krogan civilization, and he begins to feel remorse (while not necessarily changing his utilitarian view on the goals).

Mordin also serves as a source of comic relief within Mass Effect 2. His intentionally monotone machine-gun speech is always funny to listen to, and players could also unlock the following if diligent with engaging the character in dialogue:

In Mass Effect 3, the player is rewarded with a very dramatic scene that builds on top of these previous player investments. One mission provides closure to the genophage side-story, allowing Mordin (if the player chooses to do so) to cure the genophage and give the Krogans a renewed future. However, in doing so Mordin has to make a personal sacrifice, and during the climactic scene he quietly hums the song uncovered in the previous video:

Many a player have been quoted as crying when they first witnessed this scene. The beauty of the narrative here is that it is not only strong from a passive, cinematic point of view (the cutscene is well edited and can rival similar scenes in films and TV); but it is all the more stronger because the player’s interactions with the game led up to this point. The player interacted with Mordin, and got to know the character; there is stronger emotional investment than what is ever possible in film (which is all passive).

And of course, it is all the more intriguing that the player could, through a different set of choices, avoid this scene from happening. This to me was one of the best demonstrations of the power of the interactive medium, and the highlight of the game.

Mass Effect is BioWare’s critically acclaimed space opera RPG series. It features original IP in terms of narrative, and in terms of core gameplay it also has made some very interesting design decisions.

Narrative

The series is much praised for its excellent writing. I’m not a huge sci-fi buff so I won’t dwell on this too much, but the series’ positioning of mankind as up-and-comers fighting for its rights in a mult-racial galaxy (its struggle to get acceptance into the powerful Council) is fairly refreshing. In this regard most of the praise belongs to the original Mass Effect. Another point of praise is the emphasis on player choice and consequence – players literally choose which characters live and die, making the narrative much more impactful and thought-provoking (do you save your loved one, or your loyal friend?).

In the sequel, from a narrative point-of-view the game takes a somewhat lazy approach. By setting the bulk of the story as a series of recruiting missions to build up your team, the narrative becomes a series of origin / character background stories. These are effective, and the characters are admittedly distinctive, but the overall story definitely pales compared to Mass Effect 1. There’s no sense of epic-ness in 2, compared to the historic struggle in the original, especially the climatical battle at the end of Mass Effect 1.

Gameplay

Mass Effect 1 is more conventional in terms of RPG elements. It is strictly single-player. It has a familiar inventory system, based on the characters’ various weapons classes, tools and armor systems. Players manage a team of 6 characters at max, and any given time the player can field 3 characters. Interestingly, characters that are not active are not punished; they level up along with the active members. This means there is less emphasis on prioritizing which team-members to develop (or make a choice early on regarding which characters will be used primarily). There is a class system in place, with unique skill-trees per class. This adds a lot of replayability to the game.

Combat is in real-time with a pause function to allow the player to setup complex tactics. It is in a 3rd person shooter perspective, and utilize cover mechanics. The game does not feature mana or any type of energy resource; there isn’t even the concept of ammo. Instead, special abilities rely on cool-down timers, while weapons can overheat if the player is too trigger happy. Another type of combat utilizes a moon buggy type of vehicle, which has two types of ammo and unfortunately has fairly awful controls.

Besides combat, there is major emphasis on dialogs, with players being presented various dialog options that affect the narrative. There is a moral system in place – performing heroic and just actions accumulate “Paragon” points, while cold-blooded acts that mainly focus on the outcome (the end justifies the means) accumulate “Renegade” points. Both Paragon and Renegade points unlock hidden dialog options, so while players could accumulate both (one does not offset the other), from a practical point of view the player should be consistent in one type of action. Thus the moral system also adds a layer of replayability to the game.

Besides combat, leveling up and collecting items, the game also offers character interaction in the form of romance. Romance is purely dialog driven – i.e. it doesn’t include a game mechanic where you increase the chances of romance by making a character active in duty.

In Mass Effect 2, BioWare made a number of interesting choices in reworking the gameplay. The inventory system is drastically streamlined, to the point where it is almost completely removed – players still manage different types of weapons, but they are not dropped by enemies nor do they have item quantities; instead, weapons are researched/discovered, and once you unlock one weapon, all characters that could use the weapon can equip it. Classes are also reworked, with condensed skill-trees – the typical character has about 5 spells to use throughout the game, with 1-2 of the spells being ammo modifiers (passive spells). The redesigned skill-trees also introduce a progressive points system – each spell has 4 ranks, and each higher rank costs more upgrade points to unlock. Upon unlocking the highest rank, the player can choose from one of two advanced upgrades – usually a more potent single target nuke vs. an AOE version of the spell. This again seems mainly aimed at increasing replayability, as there are more options for the player to explore.

From a combat perspective, Mass Effect 2 also took some cues from popular straight-up 3rd person shooters such as Gears of War. The cover system is less buggy, and combat in general feels more tense. The game also introduced a significant global cool-down timer, which means players could no longer spam spells in rapid succession. The health bar now auto regenerates if you stop taking damage, which again is taking cue from popular shooters.

Mass Effect 2 removed the moon buggy vehicle, while injecting a few new alternative game modes. There are two mini-games positioned as computer hacking in the game, and both are based on finding patterns. Another mini-game revolves around the collection of resources, which is done by scanning planets for minerals using a radar and collecting minerals when the scanner picks up a strong signal. The resources are used for tech upgrade research, so they are significant, but that also makes this mini-game tedious. In general, these mini-games seem positioned to balance the pace of the game – a small break in a long combat mission, or a break from progressing the story while just scanning unchartered planets for resources.

For die-hard RPG fans, Mass Effect 2 will feel like a hybrid game. It feels more like a 3rd-person shooter with strong storytelling, especially when you run the game at normal difficulty and usually don’t need to pause the game during combat for tactical micro-management.

Criticism

Mass Effect 1 definitely suffered from some bugginess in terms of its combat. Players could get trapped entering / exiting cover. While 2 made some big progress in this regard, the 3rd person shooter angle still meant that in the heat of the battle it was common to lose track of where your AI team-mates were – and since the combat is based on tactical management and team composition matters (e.g. you want to effectively send in your tanky team-mate to soak up damage), this meant combat still is frustrating at times.

Also, in both 1 and 2 the game relies on dialog to progress character interaction (namely, romance and additional backstories). This became fairly mechanical and repetitive as the player learns he needs to visit the support cast scattered around the spaceship after a couple of completed missions if he wants to unlock new dialog. A better way would be to have such major developments embedded in missions.

Another criticism is around UX. This is a minor point, but on the PC I expect to be able to double click in menus; yet the series forces me to click the respective “select” buttons to confirm an action. This becomes increasingly annoying as time progresses.