This Week In The Business: Learning From Success

“Taking more time with Assassin’s Creed Origins enabled our talented development team to fully express their creative vision. As expected, this had a very positive impact on the game’s quality and largely participated to its commercial success. Taking a similar approach, we have decided to invest additional development time in three upcoming games.” — Ubisoft Worldwide Studios executive director Christine Burgess-Quémard explains why the company delayed Far Cry 5, The Crew 2 and an unannounced third title.

STAT | 35 per cent — The rough percentage of EA Sports players this year who have spent money on an Ultimate Team mode.

QUOTE | “It’s nice to hate EA and blah blah but I don’t care about that shit. What I’m saying is this: all publishers fuck up sometimes. That’s how it is. They fuck up.” — A Way Out developer Josef Farres comes to the defence (kind of) of his publisher during The Game Awards.

QUOTE | “During our time developing Journey, we discovered that it wasn’t the gamer who is mean or toxic, but it was the way the game design had put the players together in a situation that triggers toxicity.” — Thatgamecompany’s Jenova Chen says it’s up to developers to design games that “evoke different sides of humanity” besides toxic aggression.

STAT | 47 per cent — The percentage of male mobile gamers who play 10 hours or more a week who said they would play more if they were assured to play only with others of their own gender. Among all male mobile gamers, the number was 25 per cent. For female mobile gamers, the number was closer to 10 per cent regardless of how much they played.

QUOTE | “It’s little by little. If you go to smaller channels [on Twitch], with hundreds of concurrents rather than tens of thousands, you’ll see a lot less [toxic behaviour].” Twitch co-founder and COO Kevin Lin sees “a glimmer of hope” that the service could solve its toxicity problem if small broadcasters police their communities closely, establishing standards that the community keeps as it grows.

STAT | 70.6 million — Cumulative sales of the PlayStation 4 in its four-year lifetime. The PlayStation 3 took seven years to sell 80 million.

STAT | 30 million — The total player base of Fortnite‘s Battle Royale mode. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds only has 21 million players, but PUBG is also $US30 ($40), while Fortnite‘s Battle Royale is free-to-play.

QUOTE | “Smaller scope teams are really good at marketing their games. Lots of kids out of school are really good about marketing their games. In my opinion, it almost seems as if people are forgetting about the game and getting really good about everything else, like getting up the websites, emailing YouTubers, and this and that.” — Guacamelee and Parkasaurus developer Chris McQuinn would like to see indies focus more on design than promotion.

QUOTE | “When you’re working with the budgets and marketing [AAA publishers are], they have to round off the edges of what otherwise might be sharp subject matter. But there are a lot of games out there that aren’t from traditional development teams, or a traditional development environment, or even using traditional content, mechanics, etc. that can own what they’re about.” — Far Cry 4 writer CJ Kershner expects indie developers will lead the way when it comes to respectfully portraying other cultures in games.

QUOTE | “I did some work looking at how do people decide the value of the game, and I kind of came to the conclusion that it was perceived quality and length. Particularly in the digital space, it seems like people aren’t willing to pay over a certain price point for something like a pixel art game.” — Commercial director Dominic Matthews finds it odd that pricing is tied to form in games in a way it isn’t with films or books.