r/gaming • u/CiabattaKatsuie Console • Oct 01 '24

The games industry is undergoing a 'generational change,' says Epic CEO Tim Sweeney: 'A lot of games are released with high budgets, and they're not selling'

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/the-games-industry-is-undergoing-a-generational-change-says-epic-ceo-tim-sweeney-a-lot-of-games-are-released-with-high-budgets-and-theyre-not-selling/

Tim Sweeney apparently thinks big budget games fail because... They aren't social enough? I personally feel that this is BS, but what do you guys think? Is there a trend to support his comments?

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u/mysmellysausage Oct 02 '24

Actually market research is exactly what they’re not doing.

If they did proper research they would actually learn what people like from successful games and dislikes about non-successful ones, then use that data to design a product to fulfill a role in the market.

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u/primalmaximus Oct 02 '24

Yep. Take Bethesda and Starfield. It was pretty much a flop when compared to Skyrim, Fallout 3, or Fallout 4.

Part of that was because it was also released on GamePass day 1, but a large part of it is because Starfield was not the type of game that the consumers expect Bethesda to release.

Bethesda's spent so much time focusing on the Fallout & Elder Scrolls franchises, to the exclusion of any other type of diversified portfolio, that the actual fans of Bethesda did not want Starfield.

They also would have learned that fans are suffering from Skyrim fatigue because the game has been re-released on every system from the Switch to your girlfriend's pregnancy test. And it's been re-released at full price even though the game is already over a decade old.

So they would have learned that what the fans, what the market wanted was The Elder Scrolls 6.

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u/mysmellysausage Oct 02 '24

I think Starfield would have been more successful if Bethesda did some proper market research into what fans loved about the Fallout/Elder scrolls, while also paying attention to what the fans didn’t like, then design Starfield around that niche.

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u/primalmaximus Oct 02 '24

That too.

Like, I expected it to be more like "Skyrim... in space". That's also what the fans wanted as well.

Instead, from what I've heard from people who've played it, the game was more like "Fallout... but in space and with high tech stuff".

Like, I'd have been willing to try it out if it had been Skyrim in space, but with something like the magic creation from Oblivion. But I don't like the Fallout games, so I'm not going to try Starfield.

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u/teh_drewski Oct 02 '24

Nah. They failed because they tried to be "Bethesda's No Man Sky: A Todd Howard Game".

All the ways they went away from what people like about Bethesda games is how it failed. Not that it wasn't ES6.

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u/MelancholyArtichoke Oct 02 '24

Market research shows that people hate microtransactions, and yet they love buying them.

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u/[deleted] Oct 02 '24

[deleted]

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u/Kimmalah Oct 02 '24

Usually with microtransactions, they don't work because they're popular so much. It's because you have a few "whales" (as the companies call them) who spend pretty much all their money in the game store. So it's like a handful of addicted people with too much money propping up the market for any given game.

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u/[deleted] Oct 02 '24

Oh I know. I briefly played a shitty Warhammer Fantasy mobile game that amounted to "rich people throwing spreadsheets worth several mortgage payments at each other" because the amount of money people would spend to insta-raise an army of chaos warriors of khorne was ridiculous.

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u/Additional_Cat_3677 Oct 02 '24

Microtransactions work more off of psychological tricks and FOMO, even on beloved games with microtransactions like Warframe or FF14

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u/Solaries3 Oct 02 '24

Patently false. A small percentage of players actually buy mtx. They rely on whales to make the cash.

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u/MisirterE Oct 02 '24

The problem they're slamming their heads into is that market research will determine that the most lucrative market, the one they're trying to get in on, is that of the Job Game. That is to say, the one game that wants to take up all of your time as if it was a job.

The problem with trying to breach the Job Game market is that Job Gamers already have a Job Game, and you only have time for one of them. You can't get the Destiny 2 players to pivot to your game, even if it's better than Destiny 2, because they already have Destiny 2. They don't have time for anything else.

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u/mysmellysausage Oct 02 '24

Depends on the aim of the research. If they’re only doing it for profitability then the pitfall you described is the consequence.

Whereas if they wanted to know what their fan base wanted in a new franchise the results might be more lucrative than pursuing the Job Game.

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u/stormblaz Oct 02 '24

That's what the chief lgbtq+ visionary creative director does though !