Game environments, Graphics, and Game Play.

With the new Nvidia graphics card that we all saw render a human head, I think we're all looking at our computers with a bit of an inferiority complex. I mean c'mon. Lets be honest. But I think we should look at a different aspect to all this advancement  What are we sacrificing when we pursue graphics in lue of gameplay mechanics or innovation?

When a company sits down to make a game, they have a limited number of resources. Time, people, required features that have to make it into the game, and money to pay for it all. So the company needs to decide what to invest their resources into. So when a company starts to invest more into graphics, that means they have less they can invest into mechanics and testing and other pieces of the game. Graphics have become exponentially expensive to create in high definition. Why don't we see expansions like Heart of the Swarm, or sequels like Half Life 3 come out within a few years? Cause they're working on them. And it takes a long time.

What we're seeing is the new kids on the gaming block (indie game makers) are usually pretty pregen graphically. Lets be honest, if a company like EA made a game with Atomic Zombie Smasher's looks we might possibly reach a new level of hate for them. Now when I say pregen graphics I just mean that they aren't 1080p, melt your card good. They can be totally satisfying for the game it's self, just not cutting edge.

Deus Ex is pretty.

But major companies, like Bethesda, are always pushing the envelop for what can be done. Look at the recent games that came out over the past two years. Masseffect 3, Killzone, Skyrim, all have been beautiful! Absolutely gorgeous games. I remember playing Skyrim for the first time and being blown away by the aesthetics of it just in the beginning scene alone!

But that sort of thing comes at a price. You either have to give something up, or make a game so good you earn enough money to cover the cost of production and then some. Lets use Skyrim as an example.

It took 90 developers, three and a half years and cost roughly 85,000,000 bucks to make. That not something that you, me, or anyone else could have done on our own time in our basement. To make a product of Skyrim's caliber, you need lots of resources.

Like most of my prom dates, FTL isn't
the best lookin', but she sure is fun
when you turn her on.

However lets look at Faster Then Light, one of my favorite games. It took two guys a couple months and $200,000 to make a game that damn sure made more then two hundred thousand dollars. Why did it sell though? Well it sold cause it was a damn fun game to play. Not because the graphics were cutting edge, not because it had all new guns and weapon attachments (looking at you COD) but just because it was a simply over all solid experience.

Skyrim took in $620,000,000. If we punch it into the calculator we get the initial investment of $85,000,000 got 7.29 times it's self in returns.

I couldn't find the exact amount FTL made but my guess is it's return rate was much higher then 7.29.

My whole premise is that graphics should be a secondary objective after fun and engrossing gameplay. And I think the market agree's with me on this one.

DRM and Microtransactions?

I was sitting down to play Empire Total War on my desktop today and, like every time I start the program, it asks me to log into Steam to prove I own the game. A pretty simple and easy Digital Rights Management technique. When I first bought Call of Duty I remember typing in that freakishly long string of numbers and letter. It's been pretty common through the years, you get a new game, on the box or disk there's a code, you plug that baby in and BAM you've got yourself a playable version! But like any product people have to pay for, some people have found a way not to pay for it.

sUpr LeeT HaXor circumventing DRM

People don't always want to pay for games. Some people, want to trial before they buy. What ever the reason, it happens. And piracy isn't as stigmatized as media companies would like it to be. So what can they do to minimize piracy? Well traditionally they've resorted to more and more complex DRM. This, while it's frustrating and annoying, can only stop people who are too lazy to find a torrent that''s got a work-around already in it. And believe me, there are plenty with work arounds in them. Pretty convenient.

Here's the deal, companies want to get money for making games. Good. I agree whole heartedly that they should be paid for making awesome content that we all can enjoy. Maximizing profits is what all companies want to do. It's how they grow and stay in business. I have no problem with a company using DRM to make sure they're getting paid for their work. But if your revenue is coming from both the game's sale, and microtransactions, gamers aren't going to like that. 

What we saw with Dead Space 3's microtransaction mechanism was apparently just the beginning. EA had decided it's going to make microtransactions a common thing in their products. What we see Riot doing with League of Legends is very similar. They say "Play our game for free, and if you like it, you can buy stuff to accelerate your progress." Fair enough. I'm not being charged to play the game so I wouldn't mind paying a few bucks to get some extra points to use. Dead Space is doing something along the same lines, but you still have to pay for the game to begin with.

Microtransactions work for Free-to-play models. Like Facebook games (I'm looking at you Clash of Clans) or some free MMORPG's (LOTR online, or D&D online both say it pretty clearly, NO MONTHLY FEES) but that's because no one is paying to play, so the sole source of income is microtransactions. Thus the makers of those games institute incentives for buying the extras 

Notch's sense of good will likely comes 

from his socialist roots.

But we like him any way.

An even more interesting phenomenon is Minecraft. You buy the game and instead of paying for additional content, new patches are released that add things into games. Basically over the past four years Minecraft has developed into a vastly more complex game without ever requiring payment for new content.

So what does piracy and microtransactions have to do with each other? Well they're both done out of convenience. Lots of games get pirated because people don't want to go out and buy a disk, or some other social activity. Buying games directly from the internet is the future. Consoles are picking up on this and starting to expand the number of games you can download from your network or market place. Game companies are doing the same thing. They're starting to enhance their revenue from games by adding in MT (i've started calling microtransactions MT cause I hate typing it out every time). It's easier then drumming up sales of units through marketing. If selling 1,000,000 copies of a game with MT can earn you as much as selling 1,200,000 copies of a game without MT then it would make good business sense to add in buying things "In game".

The other side of the coin is that adding in MT is starting to alienate gamers from products. If you're seen as some evil corporation *cough* EA *cough* then you're not likely to make more money from this. People will just pirate your game and laugh at your feeble efforts to stop them.