Just been listening to the lovely Handsome Daz and insightful, but slightly dour Nory on their very good webcast.

One of the pockets of wisdom they touched upon was supermarket price wars and the effects on the games industry.
Of course cheap games are good for us gamers and most publishers can well afford it.

Sometimes though I do feel sorry for the back room guys....the developers.

This day and age, smaller publishers are being snapped up, leaving the giants to dominate.
When a game is a failure, the publishers don't suffer, the developers can.

You're only as good as your last game.

In the previous generation, Oddworld were one of my favourite developers.
Then they were snapped up by EA, made one of the most inteersting games of that generation OddWorld: Strangers Wrath.
For whatever reason, it flopped, they were disbanded by EA.

This generation, Free Radical design, ex RARE developers, kings of the FPS genre.
One duff game HAZE.

Poof! They're gone.

I don't think either Eidos or EA werer hurt by these flops. You probably know some other decent outfits that have folded?


Apologies for taking my time in getting to any sort of point or question that I want to ask.

I am a frugal gamer, some people think I'm tight.
But over the last year or so I have started to feel for the developers that I like.

I still want the cheapest possible option, but I also want to help the artists, the creators, the visionaries that make me love my hobby.

So I avoid the second hand market for developers that I like.

Just after your thoughts.

I do feel sorry for those small developers that bite the dust, like any unsuccessful small business in any other competitive market. The point I was trying to make is the industry is in pretty good health and it's a total over reaction when people say the gaming industry is about to suddenly implode. Bloody drama queens.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with what you were saying.

I just think the distinction between publisher and developer is important.
The podcast just got me to thinking about it.

An example being, last year I wanted to buy Lost Odyssey. I had to really hunt around for a copy that wasn't second hand. There was no way on earth I was going to pay full price for it. But I wanted to buy it new, so a ticked the box as sold. purely for the developers in the hope they make more games.

In the end the supply chain by and large goes:
Developer - Publisher - Retailer - Consumer
change the words abit and you have a description of virtually every other established industry in the western world.

And there is nothing to be sorry about when unsuccessful developers go under or get taken over. The employees who made those games will still be their or will move to/form another studio (like IW being created from people who made Medal of Honour)

Its business, pure and simple.

The biggest problem I see is that despite claims the industry is 'healthy' the majority of games are technically flops that do not generate a profit. My fear is that VG will follow movies and music and become stagnant and bland with success determined primarily be the marketing department.

And if you say it backwards, you hear the devil speaking!

I agree with Stuie, also if you look at a sub-market (I may have just made that term up), the iPhone app store, small indies are kicking the major publishers in the balls and making names for themselves. What I'm saying is, there is still loads of room for the little guy.

I don't agree with the supermarket price war thing because I think the whole loss leader thing is unfair. It's the same when they do deals on drink and other stuff just to get people into the store in the hope that they'll buy something else while they're there. If you're not buying the goods that they're selling for below cost then you're subsidising them though higher prices of the good that you do buy. So the little old lady just buying cat food is also paying towards Fifa 10 & 20 bottles of Stella.

I read that cheap booze costs the average person (who does not buy any supermarket booze) £80 a year just to subsidise the alcoholic offers.

See that's the wrong way to look at it. You buy a product at the price set by the retailer if its acceptable to you, if not you take your money somewhere else.
Arguing that your food is more expensive because it needs to compensate for cheap booze loss leaders is not really your concern, but rather between the shop and its shareholders.

The Supermarket Price attacks are such flash in the pan things that the only significant effect on the Games industry is the dent in pre-orders it has created.

I think that with the advent of wide-scale digital download formats the market has really been opened up for developers to forge their own path, if they so decide. It is sad when developers close down, but as Nory said in the podcast they are in no different a situation to any other business. Take Haze as an example; yes, the Free Radical guys have created some great games in their time, but then they spent a boatload of cash and all their time on creating an ill concieved and crappy title, and it bombed. Nothing to do with any external forces, purely down to a poor game being poorly recieved.

I know that there are cases where developers have made good games that have still bombed and they have gone under, but that is the nature of the beast - you can't tell people what to like and buy. At least with digital distribution it offers a lower risk entry point for developers to get a new idea out there, which if well received can grow.

Most of them are it it in some way or another. I now avoid the large supermarkets (& Subway & Chinese takaways ) as some of the food makes me ill. Certain foods really screw my chest up (sometimes it was difficult to hold a conversation or climb stairs. The last time I went for 3 days with very little sleep as I couldn't lie down & breathe at the same time). I think it might be a sensitivity to MSG? I was told to keep a food diary by my doctor, in doing so learned what food I could & couldn't eat. I was supposed to go back but got offered loads of overtime at work & I couldn't find time. I now do my shopping at Iceland which doesn't use additives in their own brand stuff & eat a lot more fresh stuff. Iceland is pretty cheap, but unfortunately it's full of Kerry Katonalikes.