14.2: They Still Make Games
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- John Banks & Stuart Cunningham
- University of California Press
It is to these identities and motivations—the scripts games developers have written for themselves to adapt to the new conditions—and their relation to business models and production cultures that we now turn. 15
Predominantly, we encountered a sense of pride in the fact that these developers were still making games. They had found a way to survive the changes upending the Australian industry. Many emphasized that they were now doing this more on their terms and that the shift from fee-for-service to original IP meant they enjoyed greater creative control and autonomy. In describing this sense of creative control, none of the developers were remotely Panglossian about the precariousness they and the workers around them routinely face. Many recounted the pain of downsizing and seeing fellow workers lose their jobs, with many needing to leave the country for work in the United States, Britain, and Canada. Others told us about their companies coming repeatedly to the brink of closure and yet finding a way to keep the doors open. Nevertheless, this assertion of creative control came through in a comment by Dean Ferguson at 5Lives (a Brisbane-based group of five developers making the Kickstarter-funded game Satellite Reign, 2015): “It’s probably the first time in a number of years where I’ve felt like I’m crafting a game and not simply part of a cog. Before ‘the crash,’ I worked with and formed great relationships with many very creative people, with really well-meaning people, including publishers, but it often came down to pure economics much of the time. It could be a real struggle to just craft something, and while it sounds tacky, a lot of us do this largely for the love of crafting.” 16
Morgan Jaffit, director of Brisbane’s Defiant Development, put the case even more strongly: “Australia has a history of terrible work-for-hire projects and shitty lowest-bidder poor-quality games. It not only erodes your studio but I think it kills your soul too.” 17 Trent Kusters, founder and director of Melbourne-based League of Geeks, also noted the importance of “having an impact on the medium, and the progression of the medium, and where that is happening. That you as a creator, you’re not just pumping out some crappy title that’s, you know, just going to turn a quick buck. If you want to make things that matter, you need to have a cultural understanding. You need to be involved in that, the discussion of the cultural zeitgeist of game development and games as a medium, and you can see a clear pattern between the people that are right now developing great games and the networks that they move within.” 18 The values that these leaders of what has emerged as a profoundly different Australian games sector associate with “indie” game development need to be carefully interrogated; they are in no way opposed to commercial interests or business sustainability. Creative adaptation, experimentation, and opportunity have arisen under conditions of profound uncertainty and precariousness.
Many developers clearly feel there is a great deal more innovation potential—and identity reinforcement—in original IP. On the other hand, viewed from an industry-wide perspective, some companies continue to pursue fee-for-service work to offset the risk associated with free-to-play—and indeed with making original IP games generally. For some developers, work-for-hire remains important to the sustainability of their studios. Therefore, we now posit a typology of approaches to funding and releasing games in the overall ecology of the sector and then briefly profile companies that exemplify this range of approaches.
Along with licensed IP, there are five distinct variations on the exploitation of original IP: subscription, premium payment, free-to-play with in-game monetization, advertising supported, and pay-to-play. The subscription model is consistent with the games-as-service approach, where at the beginning of each period, usually monthly, the player pays to stay engaged with the game. This is typical of games like World of Warcraft , which continues to have a significant player base ten years after launch. The premium model is very much traditional in the games industry and is consistent with the games-as-product approach. The consumer pays for a complete experience with a one-off payment. Such a model is typified in AAA titles, such as the Call of Duty series (2003–) or titles like Minecraft (2011), but a quite different level of premium pricing also applies to variations on free-to-play.
Free-to-play can be adopted in a variety of forms, placing this category in both games-as-product, where you pay to unlock additional content but expenditure is capped—for example, Puzzle Retreat (2013)—or in a games-as-service form, where there is no cap on monetary expense (for example, Clash of Clans [2012] or Kixeye’s VEGA Conflict [2013]). The advertising-supported revenue model leverages advertising as the primary source of income by inserting advertising at regular or semiregular intervals; it is most typical of browser-based flash games. The final model is the pay-to-play monetization model. Typified by the original arcade machines, each play of the game requires an input of credit for the player to progress. The developers that we discuss in this chapter have tended to focus on emerging opportunities of free-to-play and premium payment approaches, especially in the context of the shift toward games-as-service models.
The funding for games development takes a variety of forms, depending on the availability and the scale of the project. Briefly, these sources include government funding, in the form of loans or grants with funds available not just for development costs but also for travel or to engage marketing expertise; crowdfunding through platforms like Kickstarter; the traditional publisher model, where the developer is engaged to produce content at a set fee and with set milestones for delivery, essentially work-for-hire; variations on the work-for-hire approach that may involve undertaking projects such as game installations, serious games, or nongaming apps; and securing donations, where donations are received against the development costs.
As an index of the stakes involved in this challenging innovation space, consider the case of Halfbrick, the company that bet the farm on original IP on mobile game platforms. Halfbrick has continued this approach with recent releases like Fish out of Water (2013), Collosatron (2013), and Bears versus Art (2014). While the company’s recent releases experiment with various approaches to free-to-play and in-app monetization by drawing on analytics and metrics to inform their design, development process, and decisions, they have not as yet managed to repeat the stellar commercial success enjoyed by Fruit Ninja (2010) or the lesser but still substantial success of Jet Pack Joyride (2011). Halfbrick had led the industry in adapting to the shift from work-for-hire to original IP titles for mobile devices. 19 In front of the pack when mobile games were all paid for upfront, success has so far eluded the company after the market shift to free-to-play and games-as-service.
Wicked Witch, which was started, like Halfbrick, in the late 1990s, is different. It mixes work-for-hire with original IP development. During the industry decline, Wicked Witch radically downsized, almost closing. However, by continuing fee-for-service work for domestic sports titles that were not subject to the exchange rate crisis, together with developing original IP games for mobile devices, Wicked Witch has managed to rebuild a fifty-person studio. This makes them one of the largest companies in the new ecology. Successful titles include Catapult King (2012), released for both Android and iOS devices. Wicked Witch has also released Whac-a-Mole (2014) for Mattel, a conversion of the classic arcade game for Apple devices, and Jet Run: City Defender (2014), a free-to-play game with in-app monetization, for iOS and Google Play. Wicked Witch CEO Daniel Visser observed that in his opinion the free-to-play model was becoming “a race to the bottom that is so intense that we’re going to end up paying people to play our games.” 20 Free-to-play is becoming such a crowded market, with such great potential for destruction of value, that developers need to explore other models, including premium payment titles for mobile platforms.
Melbourne-based League of Geeks exemplifies such an approach. League of Geeks is not banking on chasing the mobile free-to-play market. Since 2011, this group of developers, including designers, programmers, and artists, have come together to make Armello (2015), a game they describe as “a swashbuckling adventure that combines RPG elements with the strategic play of card and board games, creating a personal, story fuelled experience.” 21 Structured as a core creative team of four directors and a loose coalition of programmers and artists who contribute collaboratively to the project, they are located in the Arcade in innercity Melbourne, a game development space shared with other companies that has the look and feel of a creative start-up and is supported by the Victorian government. League of Geeks garnered attention in 2014, when they raised $305,000 from Kickstarter to keep the Armello project progressing. Director Trent Kusters describes League of Geeks as a game development collective rather than a formal studio. 22 Kusters left the Australian industry in 2011–2012 to seek work overseas. He said that through this period he felt “disenfranchised” by the big studio developer culture. He worried that in such an environment he could end up being “a little cog in a big wheel, tweaking combat timings on some NPC for, you know, some multimillion dollar game.” In contrast to Wicked Witch, Kusters emphasized the importance of developing original IP, saying that fee-for-service work was “like quicksand.” 23 Unlike Australian developers who retain some fee-for-service work to balance the risks associated with an original-IP-only approach, Kusters believes relying too much on fee-for-service can compromise a studio’s ability and commitment to create original IP.
The game development engine Unity was becoming widely available by the late 2000s, offering low-cost but high-quality technology for making games. Combined with digital distribution opportunities through the App Store and Steam, this radically changed the possibilities for making and releasing games. Kusters noted the emergence of online indie developer communities using productivity tools to manage distributed collaborations among teams around the world. Armello relied on a distributed network of developers that Kusters sees as exemplifying his vision of a game developer collective. Some developers were engaged through a points-based system in which they would receive a cut of the profit from Armello based on their contribution to the project. Others worked on the project through an arrangement that combined points with contracted and paid employment. Armello also raised funds to continue development through Kickstarter, but both national and state government funding was critical to Armello ’s viability. League of Geeks plans to release Armello as a premium title rather than pursuing a free-to-play approach with in-game monetization. This model of indie development, Kusters says, is about “adapting to the current climate. . . . The market completely shifts underneath us all the time. We just have to be agile. We just have to do what we need to do, and that’s basically how we came up with the model . . . that doesn’t require us to have cash.” 24 This is a business model that marshals government backing, deferred points-based payment systems, and crowdfunding to underwrite passionately conceived games that depend on innovation, reputation, and point-of-difference from most standard mobile games product.
Sharing office space in the Arcade complex with League of Geeks, Voxel Agents (a small studio of five or six employees) pursues the opportunities of original IP and free-to-play game releases for mobile devices with successful titles like the Train Conductor (2009) series and Puzzle Retreat (2013). Voxel Agents is tackling the shift toward games-as-service, which requires regular content updates and the use of metrics and data analytics to respond to player behavior. Voxel’s Simon Joslin noted the value of working in a collaborative space such as the Arcade, which permits both formal and informal sharing of knowledge and experience about the rapidly changing video games market. 25 This includes access to small specialist firms, such as Surprise Attack, which offers consulting services to developers as they seek to develop effective business models that embrace the demands of games-as-service, particularly expertise in game monetization and effective use of data analytics. Both state and national government support for business development was critical as they experimented with various approaches to the games-as-service model. Joslin noted that while the shift to original IP provided greater creative control, changing business models to games-as-service, especially free-to-play games like Candy Crush Saga (2012), may compromise the craft of making quality game experiences. He worried—as did other developers—that many of the monetization strategies associated with in-app game purchases relied on mechanics that may be addictive. He discussed the ethical and craft implications of free-to-play: “It’s a complex question, a gray area. . . . There are points where I’ve played games and I feel that’s the wrong way to do it. . . . I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that to my players.” 26 He talked about the steep challenge of adapting existing game design knowledge and skills to create engaging and compelling free-to-play titles while making effective use of metrics and analytics.
So far, with the exception of Wicked Witch, we have emphasized GDAA-defined indies in this survey of the precarious but widening range of business models and company and developer identities. But some U.S. company presence remains in the country. Kixeye, situated in Brisbane with a staff of some fifty to sixty, manages the distance from centers of developer culture by being a wholly owned subsidiary of San Francisco–based Kixeye, a developer of online browser-based strategy and combat games, such as Battle Pirates (2011), War Commander (2011), and VEGA Conflict (2013). The studio director, George Fidler, a veteran of the industry, emphasized the fundamental challenge of shifting from a work-for-hire and games-as-product model to a games-as-service market environment. 27 He suggested that while the fundamental skills of programming, art, and good design were still crucial, new skill sets and expertise in digital retail now needed to be integrated into the production process and studio culture. Australian development studios still lacked the skills crucial to successfully making the shift to games-as-service. Fidler commented that the work-for-hire origins of many Australian studios and developers meant that they perhaps had not gained the market discipline of focusing on a core competency or a core market. Speaking of the games-as-service shift, Fidler concluded that for Australian developers, “it’d been tough to create those kinds of games early in the cycle, because the expertise simply wasn’t there.” By expertise, he clarified the product manager and producer skills required to combine and balance retention, monetization, and engagement: “We’ve got thousands of game designers in Australia. No problem at all, but we have very, very few experienced product managers, and that’s meant most of the attempts have fizzled out, because if you think of the build-measure-learn cycle, we built, we didn’t quite know what we were measuring, and we learned nothing.” 28