General Games News - The Bear and Badger

digi

Yossarian wrote:

Sony’s getting publicly dragged over its treatment of indies. Edit: although this article focuses more on the pay for promotion aspect of it, there’s more in the original Twitter thread /edit.

https://kotaku.com/sony-charging-devs-at-least-25-000-for-playstation-sto-1847201141/amp

If you head through to the original guy’s Twitter account, he’s been retweeting a fair few other indie devs who are backing him up.

First comment on the article kinda sums it up for me.

I don’t really get the issue here. Yes it makes it hard to break into the mainstream as an indie developer. But this is kinda just how marketing works. If you want people to see your game front and center, be prepared to pay for that.

If you want to avoid that, your only hope is to make an amazing game that gets enough word of mouth to climb some kind of best sellers chart. Or hope to get noticed by a store’s editors. This part is like winning a lottery. It’s rare, but super helpful if it happens.

Those are your options. The same has they have been for generations in all forms of commerce. Get word of mouth through quality, or pay to advertise. Simple as that.

b0r1s

Anyone at the top of the game seem to act like dicks because they think they can. Go back to pre Xbox One and you’ll see similar stories about MS. We all know Apple (a company who’s products I really enjoy) have similar policies.

MS appear the consumer friendly company at the mo. If their strategy kicks Sony in the nads you can guarantee next time around they’ll forget what they’ve learned and treat people badly.

There is the other thing that stores have so much real estate and you can’t let everyone easily promote. Sony choosing to curate and not let drivel float to the top (Nintendo E-Shop) may be a business decision that is there to protect the PS brand to consumers who won’t be reading industry news.

Not telling devs what they need to do seems crappy but Apple rarely tell devs what to do when they deploy a game or app and it doesn’t meet guidelines. Google don’t tell you what to do to get your website to the top (without paying).

b0r1s

I’ll also add that I’m unlikely to buy many indie games on any platform now due to GamePass and PS Plus combo. I’ll always be thinking it could come out on either of them.

Yossarian

It’s about more than marketing, Davie, it’s about the tools and support that they’re offering. As I say, that article isn’t actually that great, try the original Twitter thread and some of the replies from other devs. The thread starts here:

https://twitter.com/NeonIain/status/1410184912745885702

Replies include things like the following:

https://twitter.com/summoningpixels/status/1410256378854313993 (thread)

https://twitter.com/RaveofRavendale/status/1410257398225321987

https://twitter.com/matthewmwhite/status/1410261301180444681 (thread)

https://twitter.com/summoningpixels/status/1410268893386584073

https://twitter.com/jaytholen/status/1410299892631810055

The fact that so many devs are speaking up about this points to an issue here.

Yossarian

b0r1s wrote:

Not telling devs what they need to do seems crappy but Apple rarely tell devs what to do when they deploy a game or app and it doesn’t meet guidelines. Google don’t tell you what to do to get your website to the top (without paying).

Apple is far from perfect, but their support for devs seems miles ahead of Sony’s, there’s talk of people who send emails to their Sony account manager and don’t receive an answer for months, their publishing tools are really good, they let you set your own prices, it’s a world away from this.

Edit: And Google isn’t taking a cut of your revenue for the privilege of having your site listed by them.

Minnesänger

Can’t really add much here as I work in indies and I also know the guy whose rant kicked this all off. He’s a nice dude, and he’s also very smart - he also knows his shit.

b0r1s

@Yoss - to my main point. People at the top are dicks. Don’t think that will ever change.

bad_hair_day

Load out here:
https://www.roadtovr.com/halo-vr-alien-isolation-nibre-343-microsoft/

poprock

Interesting! Even if Microsoft have no plans to do VR on the Xbox, they’d be daft to ignore VR options for their PC releases.

bad_hair_day

The prospect of big team battles in VR is head spinning.

Phil mate, loan him to Turn 10 and Playground afterwards.

yourfavouriteuncle

b0r1s wrote:

@Yoss - to my main point. People at the top are dicks. Don’t think that will ever change.

The 360 was the dawn of dl indie console games for me. It really opened my eyes to a whole new area of gaming, so for them to publicly announce that indies weren’t that big a deal before they launched the XOne put them in my bad books from the off. I’m astonished that Sony seem to be doing the same thing rn. Maybe this is how big business works? Be good and grow grow grow grow. Whilst big become a bit evil and a general shitlord whilst your main competitor is in the good good good phase. Repeat for fucking ever.

afgavinstan

Whilst I do think it's a bit rubbish Sony can be so unhelpful and annoying to indie devs, I can't act like the Xbox Store (or that goddamn awful eShop, for that matter) are pushing indies front and centre either. But the point about discounts and general support for certification stand up, though.

Yossarian

Two weeks today!

Not sure of the price in the U.K., but only $7.99 in the States.

LivDiv

Sweet. I will probably cash in my quest points against it.

Moot_Geeza

Two weeeks

LivDiv

Yossarian

Follow up article from Kotaku about the PlayStation indies controversy.

https://kotaku.com/playstation-is-hard-to-work-with-devs-say-1847210060

Tempy

Sounds like those devs should simply earn more money

LivDiv

I guess the long term outcome will be Indies stop putting their games on Playstation. Sony had them by the short and curlies last gen as they had such a large share of the market but so far this gen is relatively even, with Switch ongoing with an already large audience.

digi

LivDiv wrote:

I guess the long term outcome will be Indies stop putting their games on Playstation. Sony had them by the short and curlies last gen as they had such a large share of the market but so far this gen is relatively even, with Switch ongoing with an already large audience.

Relatively even?
Sony have been selling at least 2 to every 1 ms console so far since gen start and at times 3-1.
Nintendo are a whole different ball game.

hylian_elf

I read that as the indie game market. Which to me makes more sense.

LivDiv

I thought they were about even, fair enough.

digi

hylian_elf wrote:

I read that as the indie game market. Which to me makes more sense.

I guess I'm not following.

On the bright side he now has loads of free advertising for his indie game as kotaku are covering it and a few other places too.
The chat on resetera is fairly good on this.

Yossarian

digi wrote:

LivDiv wrote:

I guess the long term outcome will be Indies stop putting their games on Playstation. Sony had them by the short and curlies last gen as they had such a large share of the market but so far this gen is relatively even, with Switch ongoing with an already large audience.

Relatively even?
Sony have been selling at least 2 to every 1 ms console so far since gen start and at times 3-1.
Nintendo are a whole different ball game.

It’s a bit less than 2:1 so far.

https://www.vgchartz.com/article/448819/ps5-vs-xbox-series-xs-sales-comparison-april-2021/

But both consoles are currently supply-constrained, so sell through only really tells us who made more.

LivDiv

I think my point stands.
The share of console ownership was massively in favour of Sony last gen. That makes it difficult for Indies to ignore it even if it is difficult to publish on.
If MS do better this gen (which so far as a ratio they are) and with Nintendo having a very strong footing it makes creating games without publishing them on Playstation a more viable business.

b0r1s

If you're gonna buy a console for Indies then you gotta go Switch.

The longer term concern from MS is the ratio of indie games to gamepass indie games and what affect that has on the business model of those not on GP. With my survey of one (me) I'm now reluctant to get Indies on either PS or Xbox due to Indies going to their sub-service. That has got to have an impact.

Yossarian

Personally, I’ll be sticking with buying games on Xbox when given the choice as I believe that I’ll be able to continue playing those games for as long as I want to, on my current Xbox or whatever comes after it.

LivDiv

@Boris
That will depend dev to dev, game to game I would have thought.

GP could put a ceiling on income but it could also assure some level of income.

Tempy

Ex-Edge editor Nathan Brown has done a good bit on this for his Hit Points newsletter (which is very good!).

To the weirdly small extent that the gaming press has picked this up, it has chosen to focus on Sony (whoops, named ‘em!) charging a minimum of $25,000 for a featured slot on the PlayStation (again!) Store. This is rather missing the point, I think; marketing does tend to cost money. The real story is in the dismal lack of support Sony gives to small developers and publishers — and worse, the almost total lack of control they are allowed over how their game is promoted and sold.

[...]

Sony’s systems are seemingly set up for an older, simpler and much smaller time — when store catalogues measured in the dozens rather than the thousands, and keeping developers happy was more about relationship management than empowering them with data. Over 3,000 games have been released for PlayStation 4 since launch. It would take an army of account managers to look after them all, and evidently Sony’s forces are small. As Valve has shown, you can run a successful store with a skeleton team well enough if you provide your developer clients with the tools and information to allow them to do their work without you. It seems faintly ludicrous to me that the runaway market leader should be this inhospitable to so many developers. Something, somewhere, has to change.

Yossarian

That’s what I said on the last page!

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