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关于2016年末的“AAA级游戏灾难”的讨论

发布时间:2017-01-10 14:22:10 Tags:,,,,

作者:Kevin Murphy

回想起来,当我们刚进入2016时人们还在谈论着2015年最热门的话题“独立游戏的灾难”。在2016上半年这一话题是不是还会从人们的嘴巴里出现,但随后它便渐渐被淡忘了。有趣的是,当Steam Spy最近发布了一份关于Steam上40%的游戏是发行于2016年的报告时,这一话题却并未重新浮出水面。

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相反地,在过去几周我们更多地听到人们在谈论着AAA级世界所面对的“灾难”。

2016年最后一季度诞生了许多大型游戏,而大多数这些游戏所创造的新闻都是关于它们的糟糕表现。最先问世的《战地》表现得很好,但之后出现的《泰坦陨落2》便拥有非常糟糕的表现,虽然它的评价不错。这可能是因为人们已经玩过艺电的《战地1》或等待着《使命召唤:无限战争》或《耻辱2》的发行。

类型疲劳

关于《使命召唤》,我们会发现《无限战争》的销量只有《黑色行动3》的一半,这也是许多《使命召唤》玩家仍然在玩《黑色行动3》的原因。动视其实是在和自己竞争!每一款游戏中的多人玩家元素基本上都是相同的,所以玩家也就没有什么改变的理由。游戏的预告片也是人们在YouTube上第二不喜欢的视频类型。

动视其实应该让《使命召唤》休息几年,但这里的问题在于他们拥有3家工作室同时创造着不同的《使命召唤》游戏,所以即使他们决定休息,我们也仍会在明年或者后年看到下一款《使命召唤》游戏的问世。

相比之下育碧便巧妙地在2016留给了《刺客信条》休息时间,并且在年初的时候让《全境封锁》和《孤岛惊魂:原始杀戮》发力,然后便是在16年年末问世的《看门狗2》。而《看门狗2》的表现也是低于人们的预期。可能是因为人们已经厌倦了育碧开放世界模式的游戏,或者是他们在年末有太多游戏选择了吧。当然也有可能因为人们对《看门狗1》的失望导致他们对续集报以观望的态度。

连续发行!

这里的问题在于,大多数玩家都不愿意等待,即使他们有意这么做。他们可能只会等几周便转向下一款大型游戏,也许他们会在12个月后游戏打8折的时候再去选择之后被自己抛弃的内容并只玩几个小时的游戏。

就育碧来说,在继续推动《彩虹六号:围攻》和《全境封锁》的同时,他们的另一款大型游戏《荣耀战魂》将在6周内问世,另一款游戏《幽灵行动:荒地》也将在隔年发行。我们也不要忘记《刺客信条》很有可能也会回归。他们同时还拥有像《南方公园》等小型游戏以及像《Steep》或《The Crew》等多人竞技/赛车游戏。

大多数这类型游戏以及来自其它发行商的类似游戏都侧重多人游戏元素,即希望将玩家长久留在游戏中并在公司发行下一款大型游戏前推动他们去购买DLC和其它微交易商品。

现在的AAA级战略似乎忽视了有一半以上的其它发行商也在做着相同的事的事实,这个市场被分割成了更小的部分,而游戏预算却在不断增加着。

即使暂时忽略独立游戏而只算上AAA级发行,你也会发现2016年的游戏市场已经过度饱和了。大多数玩家没有足够时间和金钱去玩他们想玩的所有内容。你可能会说像《最终幻想》,《守望先锋》,《最后的守护者》,《为战而生》,《毁灭战士》,《幽浮2》等游戏都不是年年发行,所以明年的市场可能就不会这么拥挤了,但是你只说对了一半。这些游戏的发行商将会在明年继续推出新游戏,即使是基于不同的IP。人们或许仍会继续玩《黑色行动3》或最终转向《战地》或《无限战争》。但你同时也需要考虑有许多玩家在5月份玩了《守望先锋》后便未曾玩过其它游戏!

所以AAA级游戏灾难是什么情况?独立游戏是否会因为看到这些大块头们的陨落而感到痛快?其实也不全是这样。但也有我们不能忽视的事实。

以CryEngine游戏引擎而出名的CryTek便宣称他们将关闭5家工作室。其中一家便是位于索菲亚的Black Sea Games,然后他们也宣称将变成一家独立工作室。的确,在许多遭遇了糟糕销量且不得不关门的大型工作室中,那些富有才能和经验的开发者便开始决定“是时候去创造我自己的梦想游戏了,”所以本来你可能只面对一个强大的竞争对手,但现在你面对的却是无数更小型的对手,并且所有的这些人可能比Steam上的大多数开发者更加优秀。

我们将会看到什么

假设将会有一些公司继续遭遇失败。尽管表现不尽人意,《无限战争》以及其它我所提到的游戏仍然继续大获其利。在达到收支相抵时,他们将开始赚取纯利润。这些赚钱的工作室通常都不会关门。而那些看到利润下降的工作室则会去尝试一些新内容

我认为我们将看到一些公司不再专注于多人游戏和用户留存。作为一名玩家,在2016年我更倾向于短游戏,因为它们总是能让我全面地体验游戏内容并能够快速转向其它内容。大多数玩过《毁灭战士》的人都很喜欢这款游戏并会向别人推荐它,但却没人会去谈论它的多人玩家模式。当然,这一模式也拥有自己的拥护者,但这并非这款游戏的主要吸引力。玩家们都承认自己有许多想玩的游戏,但是AAA级开发者却仍想要将玩家长久地禁锢在一两款游戏中。不过这里也存在调整的机会。

尽管单人玩家内容的创造成本较高,但却是一种更稳妥的选择,因为玩家知道这样的游戏不会要求他们投入太长时间。单人玩家游戏也不需要玩家长期寄托于他们的服务器上,所以往往拥有更长的销售尾巴,因为不管玩家是在游戏发行时还是发行后10年内购买游戏,他们所获得的体验都是一样的。iD的《德军总部》和《毁灭战士》便是我在最近几年里最喜欢的游戏,因为它们带给了我既有趣且拥有不错的故事的高质量游戏体验,然后也能让我继续游戏。它们是值得我去花钱的。而我却不能同时玩6款不同的多人游戏。并且我也不能为一款只有5个小时活动的多人游戏支付60英镑的费用。我觉得这是不值得的。而如果你实在不想玩单人玩家游戏的话,你倒是可以选择《黑色行动3》,因为这款游戏的多人游戏内容相对较便宜。

销量!

发行商开始着急的一个标志便是,即使是全新的游戏也执行了促销活动。就像刚发行一个多月的《战地1》和《泰坦陨落2》便分别打了6折和5折。《无限战争》和《杀出重围:人类分裂》也都打了很大的折扣。

这是史无前例的!这同时也是一种自我毁灭的选择,因为如此的话接下来新游戏的预购与早期购买者便会大大减少,因为玩家都知道等到假日促销时他们便能够以更便宜的价格买到游戏。所以对于早前的《使命召唤》玩家来说他们将没有一起游戏的对手,所以等到假日促销的新购买者到来时他们已经放弃了游戏。而这种促销方法是发行商的一种短见,在这个过度饱和的市场中他们应该采取一些更全面的方法。

预定文化

2016年末大多数游戏的预定也呈现下降趋势,我认为这可能是受到人们对于年初发行的《无人深空》和《黑手党3》的失望的影响。Square Enix关于《杀出重围:人类分裂》荒谬的预定活动并未带给游戏任何帮助,这与《看门狗2》拥有较低预订数量的原因是相同的。

但如果消费者最终变成监察者一般去催促开发者长期完善游戏而不是专注于预定,这便会形成有关发行未完成的游戏并在之后进行完善的循环,这或许也不是什么坏事。

但是在如此拥挤的市场中,这种做法似乎也不可能长久维持下去。但对于数字产品来说预定也不合理。毕竟没有商品的商店就不再是商店了。

结论

我并不能忍受我们继续以年初所开始的话题而结束2016年。不管是大型还是小型的工作室仍会继续创造游戏,继续发展与衰败,继续雇人与解雇人,并继续做他们该做的事。关于重蹈20世纪80年代围绕着雅达利的游戏产业坍塌的覆辙的讨论其实是危言耸听,这种说法忽视了电子发行不需要从货架上转移商品的事实。这同时也忽视了现在的游戏公司即使破产了也有无数开发者将取代他们的事实。如今几乎所有人都能够创造并发行一款游戏,他们并需要拥有相同的技能也没有分销准入障碍。尽管消费者的信心受到了影响也出现了类型疲倦,但评价,Let’s Plays以及退款等方式都能够有效缓解这些问题。

我认为这一产业仍将好好地维持下去,但不可避免会出现一些让人堂皇的改变。那些愿意听粉丝的话并敢于创新的公司将会有不错的表现,而那些冒险去创造下一款大型MMO或电子竞技游戏的公司可能遭遇半途而废的情况。我们也将看到一些专注于单人游戏或多人游戏的低成本的小型AAA级游戏,因为发行商既要尝试着去保护自己也要摸清楚风势走向。

最后

虽然和本文不是很相关,但我还是想说,因为各种原因,2016年对于世界上大多数人来说都是悲伤的,而游戏则是帮助人们逃往另一个世界的一种有效方法,这能够保护人们的心理免受肆虐于我们媒体(游戏邦注:不管是社交,现实还是虚假媒体中)的消极元素的影响。

如果你需要的话可以使用游戏去保护自己,但千万不要将其作为绝对的保护壳。我们还是需要正视现实世界。不要忽视你的健康也不要忽视你周边的环境。我们比之前的任何一代人接受过更好的教育也拥有更多信息。所以我们必须能够找到合适的前进方法,而这也将能够让你真正融入现实世界中。

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

AAA-pocalypse?

by Kevin Murphy

I recall that as we entered 2016 there was still talk of the Indiepocalypse – 2015’s hot topic. It remained on everyone’s lips (either seriously or derisively) for the first half of the year and then it gradually petered out. Curiously, it didn’t seem to resurface when Steam Spy more recently released the alarming statistic that approximately 40% of all games on Steam were released in 2016.

Instead, what I have heard about in the last few weeks is talk of disasters coming to the AAA world!

2016’s final quarter release schedule was jam-packed with huge titles, and the news from most of them was that they were under-performing. Battlefield 1 was first, and did pretty well, actually, but Titanfall 2 came out straight afterwards and did extremely poorly despite great reviews. This is most likely because people were already playing EA’s Battlefield 1 still and/or waiting for this year’s Call of Duty (Infinite Warfare) to release just a few days later, or Dishonored 2 a few days after that.

Genre Fatigue

To look at Call of Duty a moment, apparently Infinite Warfare has sold only half as well as last year’s Black Ops III and a leading reason why is that many COD players are still playing BLOPS3. Activision are competing with themselves! The multiplayer in each game is extremely similar, after all, so there’s really very little reason to move on. The game’s reveal trailer was also the second most disliked video of all time on YouTube.

Activision should probably give COD a break for a few years, but the problem is that they have 3 studios each creating a different COD game at once, so we’ll probably see one next year and maybe one the year after that even if they decided today to apply the brakes.

Ubisoft did wisely decide to give Assassin’s Creed a break this year, but in its place we had The Division and Far Cry: Primal early in the year, and then Watchdogs 2 releasing in that same crowded end of year schedule (not to mention the Assassin’s Creed movie). Watchdogs 2 also performed way below expectations. This could be because people are tired of Ubisoft open world formulaic games, or because there were too many games to choose from at the end of the year (Final Fantasy XV and The Last Guardian also released in this same period for PS4 owners). However, it’s also quite likely that people’s disappointment over Watchdogs 1 caused them to adopt a wait-and-see approach with the sequel.

Back to back releases!

The problem is that most gamers don’t wait and see, even if they mean to. They wait and move on to the next giant title in a few weeks, maybe picking up the forsaken game at an 80% discount 12 months later and playing a few disinterested hours.

To look solely at Ubisoft for a moment, they’re continuing to push Rainbow Six: Siege and The Division content, while their next big launch, For Honor, is due in just over 6 weeks, with Ghost Recon: Wildlands due later next year. And let’s not forget that Assassin’s Creed will likely make a return. They’ve also numerous smaller titles like South Park, and multiple sports/racing games like Steep or The Crew.

Most of these games, and many similar ones from other publishers, are multiplayer focused, hoping to keep players engaged long term and buying DLC and other microtransations until that company’s next big game comes out.

These current AAA strategies seemingly ignore the fact that there are a half dozen other massive publishers doing the same thing, and the market is getting carved up into smaller and smaller pieces while game budgets grow and grow.

It’s unsustainable! The games market in 2016 was most definitely over-saturated, and that’s even if you count only AAA releases and ignore the indies. Most gamers didn’t have enough time or money to play everything that they wanted to. You could argue that Final Fantasy, Overwatch, The Last Guardian, Battleborn, Doom, XCOM 2, and others weren’t annualised releases and so next year won’t be as busy, but you’d only be half right. Those same publishers will have new games next year even if they’re in different IPs. And people may still be playing Black Ops III, or finally have moved onto Battlefield or Infinite Warfare. You also have to consider that many who drank the Overwatch cool aid in May haven’t played a single other game since!

So, AAA-pocalypse? Can the indies take some guilty pleasure in seeing the big guys fail for once? Well, no, not exactly. But something has got to give.

CryTek, admittedly less of a content creator and more known for their CryEngine game engine, just announced that they’re closing 5 studios. One of these, Black Sea Games in Sofia, Bulgaria, then announced that they’re becoming an indie studio. So for every major studio that does suffer poor sales and has to close down, we should remember that many of the talented and experienced developers in that studio will decide “now’s the perfect time to try to make my dream game”, and suddenly where you had one big competitor, you now have a dozen smaller ones, all of whom are likely to be more talented than the vast majority of Steam’s overpopulated developer base. Indies must be aware of this.

What might we see?

That’s all assuming that we will have companies failing left and right. Despite disappointing performances, Infinite Warfare and many of the other games mentioned still grossed millions upon millions of dollars. After breaking even, profit is profit. Profitable studios don’t usually close. But companies who see declining profits do usually try new things.

I would think that we’ll see some shift away from the constant focus on multiplayer games and user retention. As a gamer, this year I more and more appreciated short games because they let me experience something in its entirety, and move on to the next thing. Most people who played Doom loved it and would recommend it to anybody, but nobody is talking about its multiplayer mode. It has its players, sure, but it’s not the main draw. Gamers acknowledge that there’s loads of games that they want to play, but AAA developers are still trying to keep them locked into just one or two titles for as long as possible. There’s an opportunity to listen and adapt here.

While single player content is expensive to produce, it can be a safer sale, with gamers knowing that this one game won’t demand all their time or hook them for the next 6 months. Single player games also don’t need to reach a critical mass of players to populate their servers, and can have a much longer sales tail because the experience will be the same whether the game is bought at release or in ten years. iD’s Wolfenstein and Doom reboots are my two favourite shooters of recent years because they gave me a high quality experience with a fun, passable story, and then let me move on. They’re worth the money and I’d buy more of the same. I can’t play 6 different (‘different’ being a generous word) multiplayer games simultaneously. I also sadly can’t afford to pay €60 a pop for multiple games with only 5 hour campaigns. It’s just not worth it. Black Ops III did start selling their multiplayer component cheaper if you didn’t want the single player stuff. I’d love to see that in reverse!

Sales sales sales!

One sign that the big publishers are sweating is the size of discounts on even their newest releases. I picked up Battlefield 1 and Titanfall 2 just a little over a month after their initial releases at 40% and 50% discounts respectively! Infinite Warfare was also heavily discounted and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was a whopping 67% off on Steam!

That’s unprecedented! It’s also self-destructive as now next year there’s likely to be even less pre-orders and early adopters for the new games, as they know they can probably get huge savings if they wait until the Holiday sales. So the early COD adopters may have nobody to play with and abandon the game by the time the Holiday sales purchasers arrive, who in turn will themselves have nobody to play with. That’s short-term thinking on the publishers’ parts, and they’ll definitely have to think smarter to compete in an oversaturated (as proven by their discounts – increased competition decreases prices, after all) marketplace.

Pre-Order Culture

Pre-orders of most of the later games of 2016 were down too and I’d suspect that the massive disappointment that many felt over No Man’s Sky and Mafia 3 earlier in the year has a lot to do with it. Square Enix’s ridiculous pre-order campaign surrounding Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (adjusted after considerable backlash) wouldn’t have helped things either, and I’ve already talked about why Watchdogs 2 had low pre-orders.

It can only be a good thing if consumers are finally doing as the watchdogs (and other consumers) have been urging them to do for the longest time and not pre-order, as it perpetuates a cycle of releasing less and less finished games and only maybe fixing things later.

In a crowded marketplace, this sort of thing won’t fly for much longer. So that’s one positive. Pre-orders also just don’t make sense for digital goods. The store can’t run out!

In Conclusion

Much as I couldn’t resist ending the year with a twist on how we started it (AAA vs Indie -pocalypse(s)) I don’t think we’ll see either, really. Studios large and small will continue to make games, grow and shrink, hire and fire, and just do as businesses do. Talk of a repeat of the game industry crash surrounding Atari in the 1980s is alarmist and ignores the fact that digital distribution removes the need to shift physical cartridges from actual shelves. It also ignores that, unlike the 80s, when a games company goes out of business there are literally thousands of developers ready to take their place. Almost anyone can make and publish a game nowadays without the same skill or distribution barriers to entry. While consumer confidence is being eroded and genre fatigue is setting in, reviews, Let’s Plays, and refunds do a lot to combat that problem.

No, I think the industry will be fine, though it will see some uncomfortable shifting, for sure. Companies who listen to their fans and innovate are likely to do well, while many suit-driven ventures to make the next big MMO or eSport are more likely to fall by the wayside. We may also see a lot of lower-cost, smaller AAA launches that focus solely on single or multiplayer as publishers try to protect themselves while figuring out just which way the winds are blowing. It’s an interesting time to be a gamer and a game dev.

Final Thought

Unrelated, but I just want to add this. 2016 felt like a harrowing year for most people in the world, for all sorts of reasons. Games are a great way to escape to another world, to switch off, and to protect your mental energies from the whirlwind of negativity that plagues our media (social, real, and especially fake media).

Use that to protect yourself if you have to, but don’t use games to hide indefinitely. We have to be able to still cope with the real world (because that’s where the eyes, ears, and hands that we use for gaming live). Don’t neglect your health, and don’t neglect the world around you. It needs good people to stand up for what’s right. We’re more educated and have access to more information than any generation before us. We have to be able to find the right ways forward for all, and it will take your (yes, your) involvement in the real world.

If we could all act from a place of equality, reason, and conscience, the world would be a much better place to live in, and playing games might feel like a reward instead of an escape.

Let me leave you now with my personal theme song and motto for 2017 :)source:gamasutra

 


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