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电子游戏制作成本过高导致开发者入不敷出

发布时间:2012-11-07 11:17:11 Tags:,,,,

作者:Jeffrey Werner

钱都花在哪里?

很多人都认为游戏产业非常赚钱,所以他们都不理解为何开发者会有如此多抱怨,或者为何会有那么多公司相继倒闭或被收购。这些人甚至认为“我们已经超越了电影产业”,对于这一点我并不认同,下面让我们详细分析这一原因。

当玩家在一家大型零售商店(如沃尔玛或GameStop)购买了一款游戏,发行商只能从中获得64%的收益。发行商需要支付的制造成本通常为每单位5美元。合作广告成本大约占批发销售的15%,市场营销成本占8%,还有发行商所估算的退货情况则占批发销售的12%。将其分解开来便是:

货架价格=50美元

零售商(沃尔玛/GameStop/Target等)获得18美元—-剩下32美元

商品成本(磁盘或包装盒的制作)为5美元—-剩下27美元

合作广告成本(店里的硬纸板站牌和海报等,占32%中的15%)为4.8美元—-剩下22.2美元

市场营销成本(商业广告和杂志,占32%中的8%)为2.56美元—-剩下19.64美元

估算的退货成本(制作出来但却卖不掉,占32%中的12%)为3.84美元—-剩下15.8美元

这便意味着当玩家以50美元的价格购买了一款游戏后,发行商(如动视和育碧等)最终拿到手中的利润只有15.8美元,也就是只占总收益的32%。而根据合同,开发者(也就是制作游戏的人,如Bioware和Bungie等)只能获得其中的10%至15%。并且还必须在发行商从所投资的开发成本中捞回本后才能获得这一数值。让我们通过一个例子进行理解:

call of duty(itechbook)

call of duty(itechbook)

《使命召唤7:黑色行动》是由Treyarch所开发,动视发行的一款游戏,在美国共售出了1370万的好成绩。它算是有史以来最畅销的游戏之一。

基于50美元的售价,1370万的销量便等于6亿8500万美元的收益

零售商获得其中的36%,也就是2亿4660万美元

动视只获得32%,也就是2亿1920万美元

动视在游戏制作时投入了1800万至2800万美元

市场营销和广告费用大约是开发成本的2倍,即为3600万至5600万美元

所以动视共投入了5400万至8400万美元才将游戏推向了市面

所以对于这款售价50美元的游戏,他们必须卖出110万至170万份才能赚回本,如此开发商Treyarch才能获得收益。

最后Treyarch只能获得剩下收益中的10%至15%,也就是:

2亿1920万美元-5400万至8400万美元=1亿6520万至1亿3520万美元

10%=1350万美元至1650万

15%=2480万至2030万美元

这便意味着开发公司只能从总的6亿8500万美元中获得1350万至2480万美元。这点钱甚至不足以用来制作一款新游戏!

对于我们来说这意味着什么?

表面看来,这是个有利可图的产业,但是事实上,我们从中获得的利润却少得可怜。这便意味着开发公司只能依赖于发行商对项目做出资助,而发行商又希望能够“保证利润”,所以他们便只会发行少量的游戏,努力推动每一款游戏的销量提升并想办法挤进更大的市场。而这就意味着前20位的游戏便占据着整个产业收益的80%,而其它游戏便只能分割剩下的20%收益。

因为发行商只依赖于少数游戏,所以二手游戏的销量将会给他们带来巨大的伤害。这也是为何他们会竭尽全力去阻止这种情况的主要原因(游戏邦注:如索尼就此对GameStop发起控告)。虽然我不认为销售二手游戏存在什么问题,但是既然它们是指那些已经存在于市面上的游戏,就必然会对发行商和开发者的总体利益带来负面影响,并打击他们想要创造另外一种游戏类型或系列的想法。

带着高成本,薄利润以及高风险等特征,游戏产业在过去十年间并未出现太多的创新与变化。90年代的时候,很少有游戏公司会基于早前的游戏而制作后续游戏,但是今天,系列游戏,授权游戏以及重翻早前IP等似乎已经成为了产业的一大标准。但是正是这种标准不断制约着整个产业的向前发展。

如何解决这一问题?

从我之前所列出的各种数据可以看出,阻扰我们利润提升的最大元素便是零售渠道。如果我们可以避开零售商,我们的理论便可以翻两番,如此我们也会更乐意去冒险制作新IP或挑战新型游戏玩法。Steam的数字下载系统便是一大典例。也就是我们可以在这一系统中销售游戏,避免接触到零售商,从而省去商品成本以及退货成本。我们唯一需要付出的便只有广告和市场营销费用。也就是当我们在Steam上销售一款售价30美元的游戏,便能从中获得23美元的收益(相比之下我们在GameStop销售一款50美元的游戏却只能获得16美元的收益)。这么做不仅能够提高我们的利润,同时还能让玩家以更低的价格买到游戏,从而达到双赢局面。

游戏销售额也是摧毁利润的主要利器。如果你以30美元的价格在GameStop上购买了一款二手游戏,我们便不可能从中获得任何利益。这便意味着,尽管GameStop宣称他们售出了1000多万份的游戏,但是如果一半的游戏都属于二手游戏,我们便算失去了一半的利润。这便是为何GameStop等发行商愿意投入较高利润进行游戏买卖的主要原因——他们可以通过低价销售游戏获得100%的利润,而不是销售新游戏却只赚得36%的利润。

如今的电子游戏正在逐渐瓦解,因为游戏开发成本过高,所以游戏开发者很难从中赚得利益,并且也只有少数游戏能够在此获得成功。而作为游戏社区中的一份子,我们可以通过避免购买二手游戏,并支持数字下载而推动着游戏制作人制作出更多我们所喜欢的游戏。

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

The Business of Making Games

by Jeffrey Werner

Where Does All The Money Go?

So, I have been hearing a lot of people talking about how the games industry is making tons of money and they don’t understand why developers are complaining so much, or why so many companies are closing down or merging with others. I keep hearing them say “we are bigger than film” and that is simply not true, here is why.

When you buy a game at a large retailer, like Wal-Mart or GameStop, the publisher only gets about 64% of that. The cost of goods incurred by the publisher is usually around $5 per unit. Co-Op advertising costs for the game are usually around 15% of wholesale. Marketing costs are usually around 8% of wholesale. In addition, the return of goods estimated by publishers is usually around 12% of wholesale. So too break this down;

-Shelf price = $50.00

-Retailer (Wal-Mart/ GameStop/ Target/ etc.) keeps $18.00 = $32.00

-Cost of goods incurred (this is to make the disk and the box) are $5.00 = $27.00

-Co-Op Advertising cost (cardboard stands and posters in stores 15% of 32) are $4.80 = $22.20

-Marketing costs (commercials and magazine adds 8% of 32) are $2.56 = $19.64

-Estimated return of goods (how much we made but did not sell, 12% of 32) are $3.84 = $15.80

This means that when you buy a game for $50.00, the publisher (people like Activision and Ubisoft) only get around $15.80; that’s only about 32%. Now the developer (the people who actually make the game like Bioware and Bungie) only get 10-15% of that, based on their contract. And that is only after the publishers made back all the money they spent on development. So let’s look at an example;

Call of Duty: Black Ops was developed by Treyarch and published by Activision and it sold 13.7 million copies in the US. It is considered one of the bestselling games of all time.

-13.7 million times $50 would be $685M

-Retailers keep 36% of that, so about $246.6M

-Activision only got 32% of that, so about $219.2M

-Activision spent $18-28M to make the game

-Marketing and advertising is usually around twice the development costs so $36-56M

-So Activision spent $54-84M to get the game on the shelf

-So at $50 a game they had to sell 1.1-1.7M copy’s just to break even, before Treyarch saw anything.

-Now Treyarch would make 10-15% of the remainder, so;

$219.2M – $54-84M = $165.2-135.2M

10% = $16.5-13.5M

15% =  $24.8-20.3M

-This means that the company that actually made the game got $13.5-24.8M of the total $685M. That’s not even enough to produce the game!!

What This Means For Us

Therefore, because of these daunting numbers, on paper it looks like the industry is making a lot of money but in reality, we have a very thin profit margin. This means that companies now have to rely completely on the publishers being willing to fund their projects, and the publishers want to “guarantee profit.” This leads to publishers releasing fewer games, trying to sell more of them, and trying to reach a larger market. This means that the top 20 games make 80% of the industry’s revenues, while the other hundreds of titles make up the remaining 20%.

Since the publishers are so reliant on just a few games, used game sales really hurt them. That is why they are trying so hard to prevent them and why SONY sued GameStop over it. Now I do not think there is anything inherently wrong with selling used games, but if it is a game that just came out in the last couple of months, then that severely hurts the overall profits of both the publisher and the developer, reducing their willingness to make another one of the genre or series.

Looking at the huge costs, thin profit margin, and extreme risk in making games the industry has seen vary little innovation or new intellectual property in the last decade. Compared to the 90’s when it was rare for a company to release a game that had anything to do with its previously released games, today all the industry focuses on are series, franchises, and remaking older IPs. This has stagnated and is some cases reversed the progress of our industry.

How Do We Fix It?

As you can see with the numbers I laid out above, the biggest thing that is sucking our profits is retail. If we could avoid the retailers then we would double our profits, which would make us more willing to risk making new IPs or innovative gameplay. The best I have seen is Steam’s digital download system. We can sell a game on there and avoid the retailers, cost of goods, and return of goods. So all we have is advertising and marketing, so we can sell a game on Steam for $30 and make $23 as opposed to selling in GameStop for $50 and making $16. This not only increases our profits but allows us to sell the game to the player for cheaper, Win-Win all around.

The other huge thing that’s killing our profits is used game sales. If you buy a used game at GameStop for $30 GameStop made $30, we don’t see anything from it. That means that even though GameStop’s records say they sold 10M copies of a game, if half of them were pre-owned then we lost half of our profits right there. This is why GameStop and others like them give huge benefits for trading in games because they can turn around, sell them for marginally cheaper, and make 100% profit instead of selling a new game and making 36%.

The video game industry is falling apart around us, they cost too much to make, everyone except for those whom make the games are making all the money, and very few games succeed. We, the gaming community, need to help reduce pre-owned game sales and help support digital downloads so that the people that make the games we love can continue to make games we love.
(source:gamasutra)


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