Games Industry Bubble

it's no secret the games industry is struggling millions of dollars have been lost and thousands of layoffs have occurred even games with mild success will not make their money back one would think that these failures would create a moment of Crisis a moment of self-reflection in the industry that Studios would realize that instead of lecturing Gamers about what they should want they would listen and understand their fans you know the people who want to be entertained who want to pay to play their games so how did we get here why is it so difficult for

the feedback to get through why aren't Studios listening well the problem is that over the years they've created a bubble and unless they turn things around and step into the light things are only going to get worse let's talk about how this happened when I first started in games you made a game got ready to ship and then you talked about it at E3 you let people play and sometimes you even had Gamers at E3 it felt like a fun geek fest with friends as games became more mainstream and made more money things started to

change the Press became more powerful and reporters that wanted to increase Their audience might do so by creating breaking news about your game sometimes that was really good and the game developer would score a magazine cover they'd get more sales and a lot more attention sometimes it wasn't so good because a lot of game developers weren't great at selling their games they were just great at making them they might say something wrong about the game or maybe a reporter would misunderstand this could end up costing the game developer shelf space sales and sometimes their job

noise in their makeshift trailer park across the street from E3 I think it's it's more honest uh like we don't have to put on a big show our Big Show is our technology naturally what happened was the game developers and Publishers started to evolve out of self-interest they needed to protect their investment so they would set their message and their narrative very specifically before they went to E3 the last thing they wanted was for a reporter to misunderstand and print something that would hurt the game now instead of game developers working 8 hour shifts on

the show floor discussing their games companies moved to designated spokespeople and had secondary people manning the booth many companies staffed their floor with beautiful contractors that couldn't answer any in-depth questions hoha welcome to the maxim video game quiz this worked really well instead of having kind of a grumpy V ER that had crunched in order to get their E3 demo done you had beautiful bubbly people and they would set a great first impression of your game oh my God I know this one too um the green guy Giovani no the turtle Fabio no Leonardo an

added benefit was that no reporter in their right mind would quote one of these people as some kind of expert on the game so it took away that risk if a journalist wanted an indepth interview or wanted specific questions about the game answered then they were directed to a PR spokesperson and these people were trained they were intimately familiar with the game and generally they didn't say anything stupid fortunately we have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity it's called Xbox 360 right so stick with 360 that's your message

if you don't don't like it well if if you have zero access to the internet that is an offline device this also really worked to increase the star power of game creators people like stories about another person right it's hard to tell a story about the 150 people working on the game it's just too much for people to keep track of they want to hear about the star who is the co-creator of Halo who is Jason Jones that is what they wanted to hear these spokespeople became famous and often the Press became their friends it's

natural for friendships to develop over time and it helps in interviews if people know each other it's great to see you again it's good to see you as well waiting for us to get back together now I do always enjoy it where you make up features and ask me if they're actually real ex and then you go back and build them right no sometimes yes sometimes yes we get the pressure to do that yes this created a star power on the interface too suddenly you weren't just a journalist you weren't just a buyer for GameStop

you were friends with some of the most famous and powerful people in the games industry if you played your cards right maybe you'd get exclusive interviews or get to break stories after drinks one night and the escalation continued it became normal to whine and dine the press and Retail buyers since games were on physical media you had to have shelf space and even better cross promotion with major stores it was big business companies had to manage hundreds of these people at E3 so Xbox had a Handler for every major press person and Retail buyer the

Handler would make sure that the experience for these people was topnotch for press it was a PR person in the Xbox case they had internal PR and an army of contract PR people from a company called Edelman they were beautiful smart and funny people for the retail buyers it was easy because Microsoft already had someone internally that managed every account and so those people would be the guides for the retail buyers we got 400 retail Pros ready to hang out in the Xbox booth and learn like Xbox one is the best place to play games

this year where's the best place to play games [Applause] if you were a VIP you would check in for an appointment at the desk and have a first class tour access to a VIP section where you could eat drink and mingle with Xbox and game royalty on the tour you might see a presentation by one of the creators followed by a Hands-On demo staffed appropriately so that your experience was perfect this sometimes meant that they would even win when they weren't very good at the game I like that you actually went through three hurdles and

you still finished first so that's cuz I run so fast no matter how many obstacles I hit I can just make up for it that's fun it's pretty phenomenal if the game was big enough like gears there might be an exclusive party or event it was also staffed with beautiful people models and sometimes even celebrities like Paris Hilton I remember Paris showing up at the event she walked over to the bar and slammed a few shots next thing I knew cliffy's girlfriend was was posing for a selfie and there I was looking like I don't

know where's Waldo in this picture it was funny because when cliffy's girlriend posted this picture she made sure to scrub me out of there I wonder why then there were the Press briefings before E3 even started we'd spend weeks leading up to E3 figuring out which games to include and how to create Blockbuster sound bites that would further Drive our message I know you plan these things months and months in advance for anybody that doesn't know that like planning for this starts like the beginning of the year kind of thing it's crazy so we didn't

want a random reporter setting the tone for the entire week so we got ahead of it we set the tone at that briefing and then gave more details later in the week and it worked sometimes reporters would just report your message exactly like this article which mirrored our internal xnaa messaging we knew that it was insanely ambitious to assume creating a game engine like XNA was going to somehow change the entire dynamics of the console business but reporters liked it and they ran with it and this still happens as you saw with Dragon Age a

return to form is exactly what the designer wanted the press to say managing the message was critical to a studio success and was done for survival purposes but it sadly started to hurt Gamers you now had an industry that was in a bubble as the friendships and relationships grew only journalists in the bubble were given exclusives and sometimes their review didn't match what was going on again you saw this recently with vilard IGN is walking back their review did IGN actually believe vilard was a n out of 10 or did they intentionally ignore the flaws

did they play the game did they like the game but then after they got into it more they decided they didn't like it anymore it's just confusing as to why it appears they're walking back that review is it because suddenly they're seeing that Gamers don't like it and the sales are going to be low I don't know the answers but it's not a new story then there were the awards at the shows for game developers it was a way to keep score to get more marketing and support for your game it was a way to

gain more shelf space at retail look an expert loves my game see IGN says I'm a 9 out of 10 please give me more shelf space this created even more power for the journalists because they had a chance to create their own brand and suck up to the bigger business of Hollywood then YouTube took off and threatened to bring the whole thing down because suddenly you didn't have to listen to a print magazine you could just go watch the game being played online and hear what that person had to say about it it took a

while but the industry started to notice I remember being at WB Games and arguing with our PR team about this being a Hollywood company they loved the current setup they had been cultivating these relationships for years they knew and loved the model they didn't want to embrace the new reality on Gotham City imposters we wanted a presence on YouTube so we made the video ourselves all of these videos were done by the actual game developers they didn't have a budget or help just their own creativity and time once the big companies caught on that YouTube

and streaming was here to stay they started the process Again The Playbook was the same cultivate a relationship with the most popular streamers and YouTube personalities that love your game and pull them into the bubble but then something changed you see when you're in a bubble or an echo chamber where no real feedback gets through it's easy to make bad choices it's easy to believe the friendly journalists when they tell you what a genius you are and how great your game is on the score yeah we do mock reviews for every game that we we

launch and this is like double digits lower than we thought we would be you stop seeing what the gamers are actually playing you stop understanding what they want you stop listening because all you hear is how awesome you are let's look at Dragon AG it took over 6 years to make that game and that is very expensive even before you start talking about the marketing this means you're going to have to sell a lot of copies and that means you're going to have to appeal to as many people as possible look shipping a game is

really hard and I give these developers a lot of credit for getting it out the door there's no question that some people like the game and that's great but it's looking like it won't be enough and I have concerns this will lead to more layoff off also as a gamer I have no problem with game developers taking risks with their content who doesn't love Innovation but that doesn't mean I'll buy your game there are many games I like and many that I don't this is true of movies too and that's the beauty and the challenge

of working in the games industry sometimes you will make something that you think is good and people don't love it I was proud of every single game I shipped but not all of them had commercial success and it was frustrating but I didn't blame the gamers for that instead I tried to look back I tried to self-reflect what did we do well on this game what could we have done better why didn't this work out and as the leader of a studio or a game I always looked at myself first war to North was also

a commercial failure a fact that many critics attributed to the timing of its release being released only 10 days before the Juggernaut of fantasy gaming Skyrim gaming is entertainment people aren't forced to buy your message or your game holding back user reviews for a few days only buys you a few days eventually the truth comes out eventually people notice that you aren't delivering fun games and they stop giving you money everybody knows it's over everybody except you when people ask me why AAA games are in trouble this is it because they're not reflecting on what

they could do better instead they're attacking the people that they want to sell their games to it is not a winning strategy it reminds me of Plato's allegory of the cave it's where people only see what is on the wall in front of them they don't see that there is a fire behind them and puppets that are creating the images that they see on the wall what they're seeing isn't real and if only they would turn around and walk into the light they would know the truth they would be able to change it's hard but

fortunately they made the cave they made the fake reality they can turn around at any time and I for one hope they do because I really want more great games [Music]