There’s no denying that games are becoming more and more expensive to produce. What with the building full of developers it takes just to handle a top-tier graphics engine, not to mention the producers, sound designers, artists, writers, the butchers, the bakers and the candlestick makers that go into the creation of a single game. Tack on infrastructure, overhead, dev kits and licensing costs, and you’ve got one hefty price tag for a AAA title.
But when a game can sell over three million copies and be declared a commercial failure, perhaps we’re taking it a bit far.
To provide a bit of background, the game I’m referring to is Square Enix’s recent reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise. The game launched to enormous praise from both consumers and critics, being seen as a welcome re imaging of a classic video game icon. The gameplay was tight, the story had was imaginative and effective, the graphics looked excellent, and all and all it seemed to be a rousing success.
But then Square Enix said that Tomb Raider’s sales didn’t meet expectations, selling just over half of what Square Enix predicted for its first month. What did the actual sales numbers look like? 3.4 million.
Yes, that’s right. Million. With an M. Based on that, approximately 170 million dollars in sales in the first month are not enough for Tomb Raider to be declared a success. If you ask me, something about that notion is genuinely unsettling.
Now, don’t take this the wrong way, I’m not saying that Square Enix should be happier with these sales figures. If that’s their bottom line, then of course they should be disappointed if they don’t hit it. What bothers me more is where the bottom line was set in the first place. It seems as if Square Enix overstretched their goals. This game has already sold better than any Tomb Raider title in history, so why was Square Enix expecting 5-6 million sales within the first month?
The truth is, they couldn’t have been expecting it, not with the sales data they had. Instead, they needed it, having poured so much money down the pit that is AAA game development.
Again, not exactly Square’s fault. They were committed to creating a high quality product, and it seems as if they succeeded. I hesitate to tell any developer to scale back their vision, especially when they seem to have stuck the landing and crafted such a widely acclaimed title. Games such as this should be good for our industry. But if they don’t sell, then it could be very, very bad.
It seems to me that this is more of a systemic problem with the industry as a whole. If you want to aim for the cutting edge of innovation, then the cost-of-entrance is enormous. And did Square Enix really have anywhere else to aim? A mediocre Tomb Raider reboot could very easily have tanked, having far worse repercussions. You can at least see the rationalization for investing so much into this title.
The trouble is, we keep pushing for better and better graphics, and voice acting, and physics engines and all the other technical elements of our games. While this can certainly improve our gaming experience, it forces development costs to grow disproportionately to the market. Which means that developers need to bank on selling more and more copies to a market that hasn’t grown nearly enough. It’s fairly easy to see there’s a problem there.
What we need, what the industry truly needs, is to slow down, and to stop pushing for the latest and greatest(and most expensive) technological advances. To begin to develop our best practices, and streamline development. To create better tools, and refine our game engines and architectures to ease the development process. We need to learn to lower development costs while not cutting corners.
And while I’m at it, I’d like my gold plated elevator to the moon…
But back on topic, would this mean we couldn’t innovate and break new ground? Absolutely not! Innovation can come in many forms. Narrative, gameplay mechanics and new explorations of genres can always set games apart, with or without realistic hair physics. Just think, this years winner of Best Picture, Argo, was made with technology not all that different from that used a decade ago.
Just as good movies are good, despite how they are made, good games are always going to be good, no matter how much money you throw into them. So let’s take a step back and learn to make great games with what we have, instead of spending too much on what we don’t.
