Reality Panic

Nice :) The numbers I'd really like to see are the success of your average license/franchise game vs. your average original game. After all, I imagine the point of "repeat-games" is to play the averages rather than compete with the best games ever.

The only numbers I have access to are what I see on shelves--what's sold out, and what games are sold in different stores. I don't like those numbers. :(

I wish raw sales data was readily available to the general public. The trend data that is presented by research groups is often irrelevant to questions I have. In addition, research groups tend to collate data to focus on marketing or publisher concerns. That's great for the publishers with the money to buy these reports, but it leaves me a tad uppity. With the same data used to generate a list of the 'Top 100 games by sales volume for 2002', I could do a trend analysis that details the percentage of original vs. licensed games for 2002 by genre & platform.

Beyond just the relevance of these reports, I'm also concerned about reading to much into them. They don't offer enough comparative information. Must have raw data. Arg.

If NPD can accumulate these numbers, you'd think us analytical types could find where they are getting them. I've tried company statements, financials and other public records but in most cases, any disclosed sales data is aggregated. Any suggestions where we can get these numbers through research and without paying a ransom?

NPD has the numbers because they get them from retailers!!!

First, very interesting data and very worthwhile. I don't want anything I add later to take away from that -- this is cool stuff, Jason.

Second, BUT....
Perhaps a more interesting set of data (I know, I know, we can't get the data we want -- but at least we could know what we want!) would be this information plus:

Cost of development & marketing
Total development expenditure on original, licensed, sequel categories, and the number of each product that are: started, finished, canceled, etc.

In other words, a picture of how much money goes into the "average" (mean) Original title, the "average" Licensed title, and so forth. That would provide an interesting picture of how publishers are risking their money.

Other interesting data would be the number of products the development team has previously done (probably several subsets: designer, producer, programming team). In other words, is there really a correlation between experience and profitibility or success?

Third, this is exactly the sort of data that publishers ought to have in order to make good decisions about what to produce and sell. Whether they actually have it or not I have no idea. It would be interesting to ask publishers if they know how much their average development project costs and how many of them return more than that. You'd think they would....

Given the general perception (and I've encountered this at publishers as well as among developers) that the business is "going to hell in a handbasket" and becoming more hit driven and the development costs are going through the roof and there's not going to be any percentage in doing this in a few years and... and... and..., having some solid data is a Good Thing(tm).

We've seen nasty cycles before. The trick is knowing when we're in a cycle and when the roof really *is* caving in. :-)

Jason,

I appreciate your analysis of the data in gameSTATE, but I would have to say that I interpret the data quite differently. I see sequels and franchise games (that use established characters) as 'non-original.' Reason being - you have to sell it to the public, the publisher, and ultimately the retailer - who is the person that is going to put your game on a shelf. Retailers love to know that your game will be successful before they buy it, which is why they will purchase more copies of the sequel than they ever did of the (successful) original.

My closest definition of an original game is a game that comes 'out of nowhere,' with no characters from anywhere else, is not a sequel in any way shape or form to any other game, and does not create a game from an already existing universe. In short, it is completely new - like Tetris.

So onto the list: *All* Mario games should be considered part of the "Donkey Kong / Mario" franchise because they are using an already established character / universe. The Sims was original to a degree, but it still got to the stores because of the name on it. GTA 3: Vice City *is* a sequel and therefore a franchise. Harry Potter is a franchise; Goldeneye is a franchise, DK Country was related enough to Donkey Kong (the original arcade version and therefore Mario) to be considered part of the 'Mario' franchise. I don't know if Pokemon started as a card game or not - I think it did, and it is definitely a huge franchise by now.

All the rest of the games are explicitly sequels: Tomb Raider II, Final Fantasy VII, Gran Tourismo 3, Dragon Warrior VII.

The only truly original games (with no licenses or are not sequels) that I see in the list are Tetris, Half-Life, and Myst.

So, in my Final Conclusion: "Franchises and sequels are the best selling games of all time." Exactly the opposite of your conclusion.

I'd like to see what you or other people think of my view. BTW - I'm not afraid of working on sequels or licenses (I've done both)... Thoughts?

Well, of course, the numbers can be manipulated to say anything ;)

I took into account what you are saying by having the non-sequel/franchise column...

But, after your post, I've changed the conclusion to read "biggest" instead of "best". That is, on average, the biggest sellers are the original non-sequel/franchise games.

This message was just now pointed out to me, so I'm posting a few months late. Anyway, I've been arguing for years that original games (and their sequels) are far more successful than licensed games (and have mentioned this many times in my IGDA forum posts). I studied this years ago, and I've re-visited it a few times since then, and it's always the same results: approx. 80% of the best selling games each year are based on brands born within the game industry, NOT licensed brands from other industries.

I've pointed this it to publishers we've worked with and they sometimes acknowledge that it's true (after all, they cannot argue against black & white facts), but they point out that it still seems like it's more reliable making a game based on a license (due to built-in public awareness) than a fresh, unknown original brand -- they'll happily point out that there's no guarantee wither way.

This is not unlike the movie industry, which relies on the star system to make and sell movies. Movie studios falsely believe that big stars sell movies, yet I've studied this and found it to be entirely untrue. Movies with big stars are exactly as hit and miss as movies with lesser known or unknown stars. In fact, 9 of the top 15 box office hits either had no well known stars at the time of their release, or they were sequels with these same stars (who had then become stars). The bottom-line is that stars due not make hit movies -- hit movies make stars. Yet, movie studios will still pay $10 to $20 million for stars, believing that just because the star is well-known it will attract droves. There's no such thing as a bank-able star, just as there's no such thing as a bank-able license.

Scott Miller, CEO
3D Realms