View Full Version : brainstroming: garnering reverent gamers
Ive gotten whiff of the Infograms vs homebrews conflict, and it figures with an idea Ive been working on: A video gaming company should not sit idly and let reverent gamers create tributary works through tons of toil--it should garner and nurture these potential workers and their works.
I have the opporunity to brainstrom once again for ideas, only one one aspect of the idea however: how to implement gernering; and thats what I want to do in this thread.
Let me summarize what I have so far.
The gaming company should:
(1) Come up with a system of assiging value to individuals based on the degree of appreciation they show for certain games.
(2) Scavenger hunt for their olden games that come up with the best of appreciative individuals.
(3) Create official forums, ask for voting to elect project managers (voters with greater assigned value have significantly greater vote value)
(4) Hire project managers to lead smallscale game based projects.
(5) Release smallscale products compliled together.
The full draft was adressed to Sega but isnt the least bit specific. "Nurturing the Classics": http://boards.sega.com/sega/viewtopic.php?t=21370 Note: the claims I make have no support, I just assumed them. :D
Flack
10-06-2004, 04:56 PM
Ive gotten whiff of the Infograms vs homebrews conflict, and it figures with an idea Ive been working on: A video gaming company should not sit idly and let reverent gamers create tributary works through tons of toil--it should garner and nurture these potential workers and their works.
I have the opporunity to brainstrom once again for ideas, and thats what I want to do in this thread.
Since I'm knee deep in statistics class at the moment, here is what I would do.
Randomly sample 100 people off the street. Ask them the following three questions:
1, did they have an Atari 2600 growing up.
2, do they own an Atari 2600 now?
3, would they be interested in purchasing new Atari 2600 games for $30 each?
Now I haven't done this survey so the following answers are pure speculation on my part -- feel free to post your own guesses.
1, depending on the age group, probably between 25%-50%
2, < 5%
3, <1%
My guess is even if you ask around your IT department or the computer people you know, not very many of them have working Atari's lying around. On these forums, sure.
How exactly would one talk Infogrames into putting time and money into advertising, development, manufacturing costs and the like into games that less than 1% of the population would be interested in. Hey, I like Atari as much as the next guy -- probably more, as I have one hooked up with close to 100 games -- and *I* wouldn't pay $30 for a new Atari game. I don't own any homebrews (not in cart form, anyhow).
The whole idea of "retro" is the idea of making a connection with people's memories of their childhood. I wouldn't be caught dead with a Barney or Dora the Explorer lunchpail, but I have 2 Star Wars ones. That's the whole idea. There is simply no mass market for new games for old systems. If you wanna make a dozen or so for you and your friends, that's fine. I have all the respect in the world for the homebrew guys both here and at AA, but ask them if they could make a house payment with all the ones they've sold combined. No WAY Infotari, Sega, Nintendo, or any other company would invest in such a small time venture.
Ed Oscuro
10-06-2004, 05:04 PM
I wouldn't be caught dead with a Barney or Dora the Explorer lunchpail, but I have 2 Star Wars ones. That's the whole idea.
"Dora, I am your father," the ominous purple figure breathed heavily.
"NOOOOO! That's a lie!"
...yeah, that doesn't quite work the same.
Though the original SW films were pretty primitive compared to today's, they had that simplicity and recognition upon making the first impression that you can't get anymore. Erm, anyhow, I'm not sure that's the case with games, but there might be a market for classic type games. Maybe Activision, Atari, or somebody could publish collections of new games put out by retro-loving types? Hmm...
Duncan
10-06-2004, 05:13 PM
Hey, I like Atari as much as the next guy -- probably more, as I have one hooked up with close to 100 games -- and *I* wouldn't pay $30 for a new Atari game.
Thirty bucks is probably pushing it. Because apparently, a lot of people are willing to pay a more reasonable $20 for old NES games (on the GBA).
I realize we're talking about supporting long-dead consoles rather than the latest handheld, sure, but I get a lot of positive reaction from people in my store when the subject of old games (Nintendo and Atari, mostly) comes up.
I suspect that if Atari were thinking about making a new 2600 as a new kind of "value" console, it might have some success. The sales of those "plug-n-play" arcade systems are a good indication of this as well.
If the new 2600 console were on the order of fifty or sixty bucks, I suspect many people would bite strictly for its value and simplicity. (There's something to be said for just a stick and a button as a control layout. :) )
Ed Oscuro
10-06-2004, 05:18 PM
If the new 2600 console were on the order of fifty or sixty bucks, I suspect many people would bite strictly for its value and simplicity.
Too expensive. That'd have to be the six-switch model! I'd say sell the console as cheap as possible, and put the cartridge prices around $10-$15. It's not as if we're talking high technology here.
phew that was fast Flack, :embarrassed: um your quotation is now obsolete he he. Ill get back to "proving that serving reverent gamers is highly reccomended" some other day. Right now Im focusing on how it should be done, "a particular solution" given some constraints (finance anyone?).
So we are given (we can assume) the following. Weve already writtin quite a deal about why its good to serve reverent gamers, the benefits that are there. Of course weve written that the company should not concern itself with immediate financial profits from such products, other than those to cover the costs.
The particular solution demands that Sega should have minimal involvment in this. What this leads to are ideas like the following.
Games must be "lent" to the reverent gamers. The gamers should do managing of projects through writing code, the company will only decide who the "managment" of projects will be. The pay of the managment should be a percent of the sales of the final product, and the managment will be allocated a certain percentage pay that they may "hire" willing coders and such. Some projects might be so small that the "managment" might be doing all the work themselves. Perhaps managment should be a single person. heh
ddockery
10-06-2004, 05:41 PM
Hey, I like Atari as much as the next guy -- probably more, as I have one hooked up with close to 100 games -- and *I* wouldn't pay $30 for a new Atari game.
Thirty bucks is probably pushing it. Because apparently, a lot of people are willing to pay a more reasonable $20 for old NES games (on the GBA).
Apples and oranges my friend. The $20 GBA NES classics are games people REMEMBER playing, really liked, and want to experience again. The new Atari game is something they have never played, and wouldn't react to in the same way.
See, what I have in mind something that works for that guy who did that "Mario Brothers" flash at Newgrounds. (http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view.php?id=107784 ye see this now if ye havent... seeeee *E.G. Robinson*)
Suppose this were a flash about an Atari 2600 game. Infograms should be able to detect this guy, (from things like number of viewings of the video, the comments) offer him to manage a project based on the game. Even alone he might bring about something good (his pay, "his" product's sales matter!) I thought the cost of development of cartridges could also be avoided if we stick with CDs.
A more elaborate method is to pool all guys like this for the same game, also weaker guys, have em discuss that they may get some idea whos worthy of managing projects, and then have just these esteemed individuals vote on who the managment might be.
[quote="Duncan"][quote=Flack]
Apples and oranges my friend. The $20 GBA NES classics are games people REMEMBER playing, really liked, and want to experience again. The new Atari game is something they have never played, and wouldn't react to in the same way.
Say, that brings up something. "Suppose" Nintendo told that guy, "make an ensemble of such mario flashes, youll get 20% of the sales". Would people pay to see more (and probably more quality rich) of the best mario flashes on Newgrounds?
Hmm, of course in our case, Mario is curretnly being heavily used by Nintendo--its all good if a gaming company brought up many of its non-currently used items in this way, if it otherwise planed to do nothing with them and let Newgrounds get its hits.
Flack
10-07-2004, 07:21 PM
The gaming company should:
(1) Come up with a system of assiging value to individuals based on the degree of appreciation they show for certain games.
(2) Scavenger hunt for their olden games that come up with the best of appreciative individuals.
(3) Create official forums, ask for voting to elect project managers (voters with greater assigned value have significantly greater vote value)
(4) Hire project managers to lead smallscale game based projects.
(5) Release smallscale products compliled together.
Answer me this; why? Why would any game company want to do any of this?
o2william
10-07-2004, 08:12 PM
I'm thinking what Flack's thinking. What's the incentive for a large game company to invest any time or money into small-scale projects like homebrew carts and Flash animations? Good will among a tight-knit but tiny group of game geeks like ourselves? Doesn't seem worth it to me.
It's really "easy" for a lone guy to produce something cool like that on his own. It's a lot of work, sure, but he doesn't have to get management approval, account for all his time, prepare cost justification analyses, clear everything with a legal department, account for his profits and losses, etc. A public company HAS to do all that or they're going to have big time Sarbanes-Oxley problems. Sure, by hiring these "reverent" guys as independent contractors they could enjoy cheap development -- and maybe marketing -- costs, but they'd still have to pay for:
Managers (somebody will have to manage the contractors)
Lawyers
Accountants
Production costs (you can save money by producing CDs or whatever, but it still won't be free)
Bandwidth
HR management
And probably more I haven't thought of.
Sure, a big company will have these kinds of resources already, but anything they divert to this small-scale venture is something they can't use somewhere else, like generating the million-dollar game sales needed to keep the company afloat. I realize Flack pulled his statistics out of thin air, but I think they're probably pretty accurate. The market for these kinds of things is too small.
Now, I agree with the idea that many of these guys making homebrew carts and Flash animations are incredibly talented, so maybe Infogrames should hire them. However, if Infogrames hires somebody, they're going to put him where he'll generate the most revenue. A Flash guy could develop a web site for their next Dragon Ball game. A good programmer could work on graphics kernels for Test Drive 12 or whatever. That would represent a much better return on investment that having them develop niche products of limited appeal.
I'd like to see you sell Sega or Infogrames on this idea, but you'll have to take all this into account if you want to convince them.
The general rationale I have in mind is just that if theres an old product that essensially doesnt have any sequels (or related material) in production, its good to go with minutia sequel projects for that .
See, it benefits the gaming company to get the most creative reverent gamers under its wing. Its relatively bad for the company's old products that people might get their sequel (or related material) appetites appeased by getting the creative gamers' material very very readily (because its free). In a sense the company has no right to silence such creative gamers unless it has projects underway; minutia projects are effective.
Okay, we can come up with plenty of points why there (exist) some benefits to undertaking minutia projects. For this thread however, I want to discuss a solution to accomplish the nurturing. Although I have to say the production cost problem helped me think of an idea:
Even better than CDs, for the PCs we could have a "download a limited number of games for some bucks service". That way the authors (reverent gamers) would get their due based on the number of downloads of their game.
Solves the problem of choosing the breath of projects. See, the gaming company would only have to do nothing much past the scavenger hunting, and letting a project leader be elected. The project leader would decide how to allot his given percentage share. If he thinks hes got grand plans, he can go ahead and convince his fellow reverent gamers and "hire" say 10 of them at fees ranging from 3 to 10%, telling them his end product will get enough downloads to procure $10,000 sales (to be distributed through the percentage system). I dont know money figures, but this is easy money for the company if it gets 40% or so from say 50 projects.
How does this (the idea) compare so far with "aniversary" collection releases?
Here's a thought. For QC the projects will all have to be accompanied by demos (also good for advertisment/inticement). If the demos get good comments by folks, they pass. But there the problem of making sure the demo and the real thing correlate (bugs galore past the demo level). Could just have a mag do a review of the full thing.