For strong womyn everywhere: "Internet Plus Equality"

[Veho]

There's always more that can be done with marketing, no matter how large the budget may seem. Even if the additional marketing has only a small, marginal impact, that's still greater than whatever the presence of a playable female character in one mode would bring, so of course they're going to go with that.

Gee, I guess that warrants removing an option that a previous installment had, an option other titles have no trouble implementing, so they could have more money to advertize the game. As, ironically, "bigger" than the predecessor.

More marketing can cover for less content, heck, enough marketing can sell a shit brick, that doesn't mean we should welcome that business policy.

Perhaps they took the required money and, rather than put it into more marketing, invested it elsewhere. Perhaps they put it towards servers, or QA, or put it towards funding other games. There's a million uses for that sort of money, all of them more significant than an additional playable character in a single co-op mode.

The fact remains that they had an enormous budget compared to the cost of developing that particular feature, no matter how much you inflate it, so saying they had to drop any feature because "they didn't have enough money" is bullshit. The very notion they had to finance some features at the expense of other because their budget was "too small" is ridiculous.

 

[Foxi4]

Wrong thread?

Wrong thread, but if I could Like a comment a thousand times...

 

[zeello]

female character is arguably a type of marketing, so it arguably makes no sense to use steep marketing costs as an excuse

on the other hand if all publicity is good publicity then maybe saying females is too much work is EVEN BETTER marketing. You have people talking about the game for months.

 

[Gahars]

Gee, I guess that warrants removing an option that a previous installment had, an option other titles have no trouble implementing, so they could have more money to advertize the game. As, ironically, "bigger" than the predecessor.

No previous installment had co-op, so...

The fact remains that they had an enormous budget compared to the cost of developing that particular feature, no matter how much you inflate it, so saying they had to drop any feature because "they didn't have enough money" is bullshit. The very notion they had to finance some features at the expense of other because their budget was "too small" is ridiculous.

Every game and company, no matter how big, has a budget. When a budget is already big as it is, you generally don't want to add to your expenses, especially not on superfluous additions that would have no impact on the game whatsoever.

 

[FAST6191]

I once read a comment along the lines of "It is easy to make a dating site, it is the advertising to get it used that is the killer. (unless you are not in the US or possibly some parts of Asia, in that case you are just pissing your money up the wall)". I wonder if the same thing now applies for games, even with their crazy inflated budgets.

On the other hand Veho your inner engineer might be coming through a bit strong.

 

[Veho]

No previous installment had co-op, so...

Did it have multiplayer?

Every game and company, no matter how big, has a budget. When a budget is already big as it is, you generally don't want to add to your expenses, especially not on superfluous additions that would have no impact on the game whatsoever.

And if you're spending only 20% of your budget on actually developing the game, there's something wrong.

Are you sure you're not an Apple exec in disguise?

I wonder if the same thing now applies for games, even with they crazy inflated budgets.

Only the marketing budget is crazy inflated, the development budget is still very limited and meager.

 

[Gahars]

Did it have multiplayer?

Competitive multiplayer /= Co-op

And if you're spending only 20% of your budget on actually developing the game, there's something wrong.

Are you sure you're not an Apple exec in disguise?

Good thing I'm sure even Ubisoft spends more than 20% of the budget on the game, then. I don't know, it's kind of silly to make up hypothetical percentages here and argue as if they had any merit. We can do better than that.

 

[zeello]

I once read a comment along the lines of "It is easy to make a dating site, it is the advertising to get it used that is the killer. (unless you are not in the US or possibly some parts of Asia, in that case you are just pissing your money up the wall)". I wonder if the same thing now applies for games, even with they crazy inflated budgets.

On the other hand Veho your inner engineer might be coming through a bit strong.

there is no way the same applies to games. Even if they were as cheap to make as a dating site, which is obviously not the case, games promote themselves and get a lot of free coverage by gaming sites, reviewers, and the same is essentially true of the service that offers them for sale and any site that lists upcoming releases.

 

[FAST6191]

there is no way the same applies to games. Even if they were as cheap to make as a dating site, which is obviously not the case, games promote themselves and get a lot of free coverage by gaming sites, reviewers, and the same is essentially true of the service that offers them for sale and any site that lists upcoming releases.

It seems to apply to films, music and several other entertainment type things (not sure about TV as that is mostly advertiser or grant funded, with DVD taking a notable secondary revenue source).

Only the marketing budget is crazy inflated, the development budget is still very limited and meager.

Assuming that is so (and we hear tales of massive dev budgets, though at this point I am not sure if marketing is included) I have to do the profit tradeoff question -- would $10m more in marketing do better than $10m more in game dev. I would like to think better products make for better sales but I am far too cynical to even contemplate believing that.

Trouble is I am not entirely sure if there are any good examples of no marketing, maybe different types but they are not going to allow the plebs to look at such data. The closest I have is Coke's stunt in the Philippines http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column...-in-the-philippines-is-genius-cause-marketing and the outcome is still uncertain here, in games there have been plenty of games that go seriously limited marketing for some reason (Blades of Time might be a good example) but at some level with games being a quality driven thing that is not always the case, maybe we could look at some of the Sega stuff as it imploded -- rumour was an exec disliked certain divisions and basically kneecapped them by doing sub par marketing. Other than that I have a couple of other things where the marketing was a mandated spend and they did something a bit silly to use it all, however as you could probably write that off as attempting viral nonsense or goodwill or something who knows.

 

[pokefloote]

Spoiler

Holy shit you guys.

too srs in the eof

 

[Gahars]

Spoiler: #Pokemon

u wut

 

[Veho]

Competitive multiplayer /= Co-op

Clearly the distinction reaches far further than the mere mechanic of "working with" VS "working against" other players, but I'm afraid that regarding the choice of player avatar (or lack thereof), the distinction between the two multiplayer modes eludes me.

Good thing I'm sure even Ubisoft spends more than 20% of the budget on the game, then. I don't know, it's kind of silly to make up hypothetical percentages here and argue as if they had any merit. We can do better than that.

I did mention that the marketing budget for AC3 was over $100 million, and it is safe to assume the budget for the 4th installment will surpass it. But let us keep our estimates conservative for now and say the marketing budget is once more $100 million. The development budget for AC2 was $24 million, let's assume $30 million for the latest installment (a solid 15% increase per sequel), that means $130 million total budget, meaning the development budget is 23% of the total budget. Rounding it down to 20% can be put down to hyperbole, or the whole thing could be dismissed out of hand the way you did, but it's the only numbers we have.

I'm sure we can do better than that, but I really can't be arsed.

 

[Gahars]

Clearly the distinction reaches far further than the mere mechanic of "working with" VS "working against" other players, but I'm afraid that regarding the choice of player avatar (or lack thereof), the distinction between the two multiplayer modes eludes me.

That simplification is disingenuous; co-op and competitive multiplayer are totally separate things. Using your simplification, singleplayer and multiplayer modes are basically the same because one is "playing alone" and the other is "playing in company," ignoring the fact that (in most titles) these are vastly different experiences that designed in entirely different ways.

As for your second point, the characters in the competitive multiplayer are unique to that mode, with their own animations, movesets, weapon selection, attacks, etc. They're comparatively limited when compared to the playable character in the singleplayer mode. The co-op mode is based on the singleplayer mode, so the playable characters in the co-op mode are based on the playable character in the singleplayer mode.

I did mention that the marketing budget for AC3 was over $100 million, and it is safe to assume the budget for the 4th installment will surpass it. But let us keep our estimates conservative for now and say the marketing budget is once more $100 million. The development budget for AC2 was $24 million, let's assume $30 million for the latest installment (a solid 15% increase per sequel), that means $130 million total budget, meaning the development budget is 23% of the total budget. Rounding it down to 20% can be put down to hyperbole, or the whole thing could be dismissed out of hand the way you did, but it's the only numbers we have.

I'm sure we can do better than that, but I really can't be arsed.

Fair enough.

 

[FAST6191]

Spoiler: #Pokemon

u wut

I now have a mental image of fat people lining up to protest outside an aids research place... I am amused.

 

[zeello]

maybe I'm just speculating here but gamers are a devout group. They read sites that bring new games to their attention even those with little/no marketing. Simply looking at a shelf in the store brings attention to games you could buy for a given platform. Possibly the same with logging onto PSN. By comparison movies are more casual. Nobody lives at the theater. They stop by because they saw a commercial for a movie. Music is too vast, nobody has time to listen every song on planet earth. What's more, music is a sociological affair, like what style of clothes you wear. People don't wear "good" shoes, they wear shoes that make them look cool. same with music. So in this sense of course marketing matters for music in a way that is different from games.

 

[Foxi4]

I now have a mental image of fat people lining up to protest outside an aids research place... I am amused.

I think they need a whole different kind of aids, aides if needs be.

 

[The Catboy]

Too much Tumblr! ;O;

 

[zeello]

I know this is really late, but I read on jezebel that the posts to end father's day were all by 4chan users.

 

[Foxi4]

I know this is really late, but I read on jezebel that the posts to end father's day were all by 4chan users.

And Jezebel verified that how, exactly?

 

[Vipera]

Touhou has only female characters, and we all know how that turned out, like people knowing the porn first and then the games themselves...