Why Are There No Prestige Games?
November 26, 2006 3:04 PM | Simon Carless
Over on his blog, Manifesto Games' Greg Costikyan has a very interesting post called 'Why Are There No Prestige Games?', which raises a number of questions - which I will now ramble upon at length.
After referencing games like Clover Studios' Okami and Doublefine's Psychonauts, Costikyan references alleged comparisons in the film and book industries, and concludes: "Wouldn't we all--the industry and gamers alike--be better served by businesses which understand that, sure, the bottom line is the end game--but that there are multiple routes to the goal, and that sales alone are not the sole measure of a game's value?"
A couple of comments on this. Firstly, as I mention in the comments, Psychonauts ended up costing a pretty spectacular $14 million, which makes it the equivalent of a big-budget action flick at current-gen prices. But more to the point - I don't think it was pegged as a 'prestige' project, and nor was Okami. They're simply games that aspired to make money, didn't, and ended up having creative leanings that make them beloved at a later date. And that's true of a lot of cinematic classics, too.
More to the point, I don't think that publishers necessarily derive corporate goodwill from releasing games that may not be entirely commercial, at this point - people differentiate the developer from the publishing entity. So in pure hard profit terms, I just don't think the concept of 'prestige titles' exists. Companies have to plan to make a profit on each game they make.
Having said that, though, I think that services such as Xbox Live Arcade present a great opportunity, on the much lower end of the development budget, to make 'prestige' and riskier projects. Right now it appears pretty easy to sell 50,000 copies of a new $10 game on Xbox Live Arcade, which is about $250,000 going back to the developer. So if you can spend less than that on the game, and perhaps also release it on PC, then there's a definite opportunity - but right now, only for 3 or 4 person developers. But as the big aggregators grow for indie games (and they will!), we've got plenty to look forward to.
Hopefully the PS3 and Wii download services will work the same way, in time, as well as some bigger PC aggregators for non-casual or borderline-casual titles - and I honestly believe that we're entering a golden age of indiedom this way, not by big publishers trying to derive some kind of overall halo from funding loss-leading 'prestige' titles. (Even the arthouse divisions of major movie studios tend to make money by having a very few breakout hits and overall low development costs, as I understand it. Major console titles like Psychonauts and Okami are just too complex and expensive to work under that model.)
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4 Comments
I agree. The piece takes the assumption that "prestige works" operate as loss leaders. I don't think this is even close to the general case on the face of the issue. "Loss leaders" are intended to appeal broadly so as to encourage halo sales, whereas "prestige works" are only particularly impressive to the people who find them impressive to begin with.
That there are identifiable "prestige pieces" in established media such as books and film rather points to the fact that a critical mass of people exist who enjoy such works and who, as an identifiable market, can be courted as customers and fiscally projected. This also demonstrates that these works are somehow made intellectually accessible to these viewers, who in turn enjoy them.
The gap that games have failed to cross as an artistic genre is the creation of this critical mass for a market of aesthetically valuable works. As noted above, digital distribution might have a role to play here. Branding does too: who doesn't identify a reliable kind of product with "Penguin Classics", "Home Box Office" or "Miramax Studios"? But perhaps most importantly of all is regular and regularly insightful games criticism that reaches and appeals to a wider audience and can tell them why a work is important. The last time I read a newspaper review of a game it barely made sense and hardly excited the imagination of the layman. Similarly, the IGN review of Okami uses a lot of words like "beautiful" and "incredible" but nowhere tells an interested gamer why it is pretty fucking cool that for the first time in history digital technology empowers them to *literally* rewrite Japanese mythology using its own kanji characters and gestures, and thereby conveniently places a couch-slouching gamer in the position of god.
The best example of an effort like this would probably be the "Penguin Classics". Back in the 1940's Penguin had rights to all kinds of classic works but sales were in the shitter. Somewhat predictably their first step was to create a distinctive brand with distinctive packaging. But the real kicker was including a short essay at the beginning of each book explaining why the work was an important contribution to literature, what its historical context was, and what the general theoretical approaches to it were. In other words, it made the book relevant to the contemporary reader in a way that it wasn't otherwise. As a result of this, Joey Layman who never had the benefit of a university education could pick up a famous work and give a damn.
Which is to say pay for it.
Obiter | November 26, 2006 11:50 PM
Something I keep pointing out is that killer7 is basically the definition of a "prestige" game. Capcom knew it wouldn't sell at all, yet felt it was important to produce -- so a big, stupid blockbuster called Sengoku Basara was thrown together specifially to offset killer7's expected loss. Capcom keeps doing this sort of thing -- as did Sega for a long while, if you recall! For that matter, Konami doesn't really make any money off of Castlevania; it's just produced to keep people happy. That's a similar situation.
This lack of "prestige" games strikes me as more of a problem in the Western industrry -- especially when you've got everyone looking to companies like EA (which has been quite vocal about its "no small games" stance) as a business model.
Eric-Jon Rossel Waugh | November 27, 2006 5:26 AM
I just assumed that God Hand was designed to cover some of the losses on Okami.
mister slim | November 28, 2006 3:18 AM
the big problem is that while a movie can slowly gain a bigger and bigger audience over a number of years as new people find it, and as it's thought to be a classic, the revenue opportunities for games down the road are much smaller. games disappear from shelves in a matter of months -- they're blown out, in fact, to make room for newer games that are no better and potentially much worse. if you go into best buy you'll find movies from the '70s. you won't even find games from 2002 unless they managed to become greatest hits. and with that being the way the market functions, prestige games don't seem very possible.
not that i read the dude's article.
ferricide | November 30, 2006 3:04 PM