The $40 Game

The recession proof game industry has finally had to admit that it is not recession proof. The industry has become fragmented into 10 megahits which account for 60% of the sales and a multitude of minor hits to complete failures that account for the remaining 40%. This is happening due to gamers only buying the staples (Halo, COD, Madden) and then only 1 or 2 more games due to our current economy. For major publishers and development houses this model still works for them. Publishers are secure in the fact that out of the many titles they publish each year, at least one will be a hit and part of gamers’ purchases for the year. Large development houses are secure in the fact that they have a great development team and are going to release a quality game and also be a staple purchase for gamers.


Who this doesn’t work for is everybody else.

Everyone not EA, Activision, Blizzard, Bethesda, Ubisoft, Bungie, etc. has to somehow break their way into this elite group of games to even survive or give up on producing a triple AAA title. A triple AAA title is generally targeted at the core/hardcore game market, costs $60 to purchase, costs tens of millions of dollars to produce, and has a 2-3 year production cycle. After working for 2-3 years on a single game developers are banking on the game selling well. And they don’t always sell well.

This high risk and cost trend has caused a new shift in video game development. It has created the indie game movement, a collection of individual developers who make smaller games, with smaller teams, and much less cost. These games have been extremely successful in the past couple of years with titles such as Braid and World of Goo leading the pack. They normally start off with a cost to players of $10-$20 and often go on sale within a year for half the cost.

So now we have an upper echelon of top tier AAA titles that cost $60 and a lower tier of titles that cost around $20. The questions why hasn’t the game industry started making games for the middle?

These games already exist, just in the wrong category. They are games that are trying to break into the top tier triple AAA titles but don’t make it. They have the same 2-3 year production time and tens of millions of dollars budgets as the top tier triple AAAs but still don’t make it. This is not to say they are bad games but that they aren’t part of the gamers staple purchases and that they didn’t make the cut of the 1 or 2 other gamers also bought for any given year.


Games like Mirror’s Edge, Brutal Legend, Wet, and Wolfenstein are prime examples. They all had large production budgets and development time. They were marketed as big triple AAA titles and were produced by proven developers. But they did not meet sales expectations and were considered unsuccessful by their publishers.

The video game industry needs to stop always going for the huge AAA blockbusters. They should take a hard look at their game and determine where it actually fits compared to the rest of the games being released that year. The video game industry is no longer in its infancy and marketing bad games doesn’t work anymore because players have other choices. Valve has taken the first step in the right direction with their Left 4 Dead franchise.

The first title in the series arrived with a lot of fanfare, a low production budget, a high marketing budget, and a $50 price tag on PC and a $60 price tag on consoles. The title’s sales were going well and then Valve took a risk and cut the price in half for a weekend on PC. It was the right choice. Their sales went up 3000% for the weekend, making more money that weekend than they did the opening weekend on Steam.

Valve found itself in the middle of the market and then capitalized on it. They realized they weren’t going to be a number 1 seller but they also realized they had something great on their hands. So they went to consumers and said here is this great game for cheaper than most AAA titles, come buy it. And it worked. Left 4 Dead went on to be a nomination for game of the year and just released a sequel.

What would happen if the rest of the video game industry started following this model? Creating these great games, selling them to gamers for cheaper (lowering the effect of the gamer staple purchases), and then letting the games prove themselves.

Just a thought…

Cyaz