Readers of my blog are familiar with my industry cycle articles. It basically describes a regular cycle which shakes up the industry whenever the consoles upgrade to the next entry. The Playstation 5 and the new XBox have been announced for second half of 2020 - welcome to the transition year.
If you want to read up my posts in the recent years on this blog about the cycle simply search for this word on the top left of this site.
One attribute of console cycles I have never written about is the cycle of arrogance. It means that whoever dominates the current cycle is getting arrogant in the next, forgetting what put him there in the first place - leading to wrong or often strange decisions.
These decisions will make it hard to third parties to develop on the new leading platform during the first 2 years. They will focus on big names & brands first, or their own first party titles. What also happens is that they underestimate the competition leaving holes for them to enter.
So expect the number 2 and 3 (Microsoft & Nintendo) to be more open to new developers, titles and approval processes while Sony will make it harder.
A sign to prove this? There is an internal shakeup at Sony management level where many of the key people who were developer relations or in charge of external titles were fired and replaced. This strangely isn't in the news as usually these key managers are known to developers of all sizes but not to the press or the public.
Still, as a developer, you should be worried if you bet on releasing soon on Sony PS5. You won't.
And as usual before transition years if you run a developer you should have been prepared and found alternative revenue sources or platforms. Did you? I hope you did. As this isn't anything new to the industry, its a cycle with similar attributes and effects to the industry.
And no, backwards compatibility won't help ;)
Showing posts with label talk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label talk. Show all posts
2019/12/09
2019/10/28
Live Streaming Game Dissections?
I don't like complex setups with PC, cameras etc., so I always want a solution to stream directly from my phone to Twitch, Youtube etc. to make quick analysis of new or older games, like an hour each. Would you be interested in something like this?
I found a little gem of app called Omlet Arcade which lets me stream to Twitch directly from my phone. I would do like bi-weekly streams dissecting a game and explain everything I find - what I usually do for clients. Let me know.
I found a little gem of app called Omlet Arcade which lets me stream to Twitch directly from my phone. I would do like bi-weekly streams dissecting a game and explain everything I find - what I usually do for clients. Let me know.
2019/10/14
Coming up: GiC in Poznan
This GiC conference in Poland is a really good one, in case you never heard of it. Excellent speakers, venue, and the attached gamer exhibition draws several ten thousand visitors each year.
My talk:
https://gic.gd/agenda/#teut-weidemann
about mobile f2p game segmentation. Doesn't sound advanced, but I am not doing the usual segmentation you find on GameAnalytics or other services, I do my own to show that some unusual f2p games simply need to be excluded in your analysis.
If they tape it I will post a video, if not my slides. And btw, Poznan is really beautiful and has excellent food and drinks!
My talk:
https://gic.gd/agenda/#teut-weidemann
about mobile f2p game segmentation. Doesn't sound advanced, but I am not doing the usual segmentation you find on GameAnalytics or other services, I do my own to show that some unusual f2p games simply need to be excluded in your analysis.
If they tape it I will post a video, if not my slides. And btw, Poznan is really beautiful and has excellent food and drinks!
2019/10/06
Data Analysts and our future
In f2p we use data to make better decisions. Data is magic these days and many companies make the mistake to rely on data too much. The simple reason is that it seems data is easy to read and make decisions upon.
It isn't.
It takes educated data analysts to read data properly. They know the common mistakes of self selection bias or survivors bias, Correlation & Causation or many other data oddities which exist. They also know the validity of the data you try to read, i.e. is the data really solid enough to make conclusions.
And there is this: Data tells you WHAT happened, never WHY.
There is a common misunderstanding that data gives you enough to make meaningful decisions. It does not. Data is a tool to make better decisions, but doesn't replace your experience or the designers knowhow.
The danger which data inserted into our industry is that data seems so easy to read to make conclusions upon that people in your company who are NOT educated in reading data correctly will make decisions based on it. And you don't even know that these mistakes are being made as simply putting data transparent on dashboards for everyone to read is injecting this mistake into your company (thats why I don't support public dashboards inside companies).
It takes specialists to interpret data and present them in a right manner. I learned this the painful way. I saw decisions being made by people who read data wrong. I have seen decisions being made based on data presented by specialists - which was much better.
Why do I think this matters to our future? Because data is the future of everything in our daily lives. Internet companies collect data. Insurance companies collect data. Your phone collects more data about you than you even know about yourself. AI is dependent on mass data and leads to even more data collected. Some governments use data to know everything about you (look at China). Their tech is so advanced including facial recognition that they always know where you are, what you did, what you bought, whom you talked to, online or real life. And if you think China is the only country doing this you are wrong.
Now imagine these Governments like game companies doing the same mistakes I experienced. People not used to reading data correctly will make decisions - wrong ones - influencing our daily life.
Thats why data analysts should be one of the most important jobs we should train - and knowledge about data analyzing should be educated to everyone in our industry (and beyond). Management needs to learn, Designers by default. Train this. It will be the competitional advantage between you and your fellow companies.
It isn't.
It takes educated data analysts to read data properly. They know the common mistakes of self selection bias or survivors bias, Correlation & Causation or many other data oddities which exist. They also know the validity of the data you try to read, i.e. is the data really solid enough to make conclusions.
And there is this: Data tells you WHAT happened, never WHY.
There is a common misunderstanding that data gives you enough to make meaningful decisions. It does not. Data is a tool to make better decisions, but doesn't replace your experience or the designers knowhow.
The danger which data inserted into our industry is that data seems so easy to read to make conclusions upon that people in your company who are NOT educated in reading data correctly will make decisions based on it. And you don't even know that these mistakes are being made as simply putting data transparent on dashboards for everyone to read is injecting this mistake into your company (thats why I don't support public dashboards inside companies).
It takes specialists to interpret data and present them in a right manner. I learned this the painful way. I saw decisions being made by people who read data wrong. I have seen decisions being made based on data presented by specialists - which was much better.
Why do I think this matters to our future? Because data is the future of everything in our daily lives. Internet companies collect data. Insurance companies collect data. Your phone collects more data about you than you even know about yourself. AI is dependent on mass data and leads to even more data collected. Some governments use data to know everything about you (look at China). Their tech is so advanced including facial recognition that they always know where you are, what you did, what you bought, whom you talked to, online or real life. And if you think China is the only country doing this you are wrong.
Now imagine these Governments like game companies doing the same mistakes I experienced. People not used to reading data correctly will make decisions - wrong ones - influencing our daily life.
Thats why data analysts should be one of the most important jobs we should train - and knowledge about data analyzing should be educated to everyone in our industry (and beyond). Management needs to learn, Designers by default. Train this. It will be the competitional advantage between you and your fellow companies.
2019/02/22
Publishers fireing people all over
You heard the news. Activision fires 800 people despite best year ever in terms of revenue. Arena.net, the operator of Guildwars, seems to get large layoffs. EA will fire a lot of people from their Australian studio (For Americans: that's near the Hobbit place, not the one in the Alps).
Longtime readers of my blog know why this happens now. Others can read my 6-year-old entries here:
https://teut.blogspot.com/2012/11/transition-years.html
https://teut.blogspot.com/2014/03/transition-years.html
Let's take the Activision case. Why fire 800 people when you had a record year? The reason is, you don't fire people due to the current year's results, but what you see in your forecast of the next. If you look at Activision's portfolio for 2019/2020 there is a large gap of original titles. Even Blizzard, part of Activision, said there is no new Blizzard game coming for a while. So the next one or two years will look bleak for Activision. That's why you optimize your company and fire the bottom 10%.
I am not defending this, I am just explaining. The one thing you can blame Activision is that they knew this is coming, its poor planning (and letting Bungie leave, wtf?).
Activision needs to invest their best teams into the next console generation. As the current one will drop in revenue in terms of software and the new one won't do much at first that gap is what we call transition years. EA is very experienced in this and already cut off workforce last year and will continue this year. If you google back into 2012 you will notice the same happened.
This transition year might not be as bad as the previous ones though as the rumored backward compatibility of the next generation, the Switch and the mobile market might buffer some of the previous revenue losses.
Longtime readers of my blog know why this happens now. Others can read my 6-year-old entries here:
https://teut.blogspot.com/2012/11/transition-years.html
https://teut.blogspot.com/2014/03/transition-years.html
Let's take the Activision case. Why fire 800 people when you had a record year? The reason is, you don't fire people due to the current year's results, but what you see in your forecast of the next. If you look at Activision's portfolio for 2019/2020 there is a large gap of original titles. Even Blizzard, part of Activision, said there is no new Blizzard game coming for a while. So the next one or two years will look bleak for Activision. That's why you optimize your company and fire the bottom 10%.
I am not defending this, I am just explaining. The one thing you can blame Activision is that they knew this is coming, its poor planning (and letting Bungie leave, wtf?).
Activision needs to invest their best teams into the next console generation. As the current one will drop in revenue in terms of software and the new one won't do much at first that gap is what we call transition years. EA is very experienced in this and already cut off workforce last year and will continue this year. If you google back into 2012 you will notice the same happened.
This transition year might not be as bad as the previous ones though as the rumored backward compatibility of the next generation, the Switch and the mobile market might buffer some of the previous revenue losses.
2019/02/05
2019/01/10
Happy New Year - here is whats up ...
2018 was a year full of travel. You will have access to most of my talks which were taped. I also published the ones online for download. So what's coming 2019?
I am busy with two large clients so I actually stopped taking new ones - but I do have partners I can recommend working for you. So don't worry.
I will also cut down my conference visits as I am starting my own mobile game project soon. Watch this space as soon as we can talk about it.
The next conference up is White Nights Berlin. I will talk about the "Lost Art of Immersion on Mobile". Something completely different but its a topic by heart.
The only other conference fixed so far is Devcom right before Gamescom. I do not know if I go to GiC or Digital Dragons in Poland yet - we will see. GDC USA isn't a place for me since years, although I have been on the first 10 since it started (yes, 1988 onwards) and triple-A and console aren't much for me these days although I am helping on a AAA f2p title at the moment. There is also the fact that the advisory board of GDC USA keeps ignoring my submissions, which is strange to experience when most other conferences fight about me but GDC isn't. Well, their loss.
So, if I visit other conferences which topic would you love to see? Let me know. I have covered so many that I might have lost track what you want to hear or learn about.
I am busy with two large clients so I actually stopped taking new ones - but I do have partners I can recommend working for you. So don't worry.
I will also cut down my conference visits as I am starting my own mobile game project soon. Watch this space as soon as we can talk about it.
The next conference up is White Nights Berlin. I will talk about the "Lost Art of Immersion on Mobile". Something completely different but its a topic by heart.
The only other conference fixed so far is Devcom right before Gamescom. I do not know if I go to GiC or Digital Dragons in Poland yet - we will see. GDC USA isn't a place for me since years, although I have been on the first 10 since it started (yes, 1988 onwards) and triple-A and console aren't much for me these days although I am helping on a AAA f2p title at the moment. There is also the fact that the advisory board of GDC USA keeps ignoring my submissions, which is strange to experience when most other conferences fight about me but GDC isn't. Well, their loss.
So, if I visit other conferences which topic would you love to see? Let me know. I have covered so many that I might have lost track what you want to hear or learn about.
2018/11/11
Up close & Personal
The chance to ask me anything:
https://www.medianet-bb.de/en/event/gamesnet-breakfast-with-teut-weidemann-monetization-money-makes-the-game-go-round-2/
My Poznan GiC slides were downloaded over 1000 times. So if anyone plans to develop this let me know, I would love to give additional input.
https://www.medianet-bb.de/en/event/gamesnet-breakfast-with-teut-weidemann-monetization-money-makes-the-game-go-round-2/
My Poznan GiC slides were downloaded over 1000 times. So if anyone plans to develop this let me know, I would love to give additional input.
2018/10/15
My talk from GiC in Poznan (Poland)
And as promised during the talk the slides as a PDf viewer below.
Alternatively, you can download the pdf (178MB) directly here.
Alternatively, you can download the pdf (178MB) directly here.
2018/09/16
Next Conference Visits
Casual Connect Serbia, October 1st to 3rd
Doing my Lootbox talk, maybe they tape it so I can post the video. I am also hosting a fireside chat with Patryk from Vivid, details see link above. Looking forward to this one, as I love Casual Connects.
GiC Poland
A week later I am in Poznan, Poland, to visit GiC. It is an awesome conference with high-quality talks, come to get some and see my talk where I try to design an f2p game in 45 minutes on stage.
Doing my Lootbox talk, maybe they tape it so I can post the video. I am also hosting a fireside chat with Patryk from Vivid, details see link above. Looking forward to this one, as I love Casual Connects.
GiC Poland
A week later I am in Poznan, Poland, to visit GiC. It is an awesome conference with high-quality talks, come to get some and see my talk where I try to design an f2p game in 45 minutes on stage.
2018/08/14
2018/07/11
My Digital Dragon Talk as video
If you missed this talk at Digital Dragons in Krakow, Poland, or didn't attend (which you should next year, awesome conference!), here it is:
2018/05/27
2018/04/21
My next talks & conferences
April/May is crazy. Too many conferences - all inviting me for f2p talks. So here is my schedule for now:
Week April 23rd: Quo Vadis, a talk about "Meta Games" and moderating a fireside chat with Lord British. See https://qvconf.com/
Week May 8th: Oulu, Finnland, there is half a day a public workshop about the Crazy App Store and More, organized by Fingersoft.
Week May 21st: Digital Dragons, talking about Product Strategy and how it decides your chances of success. See http://digitaldragons.pl/
Week May 23rd, GDD Frankfurt, talking about raising ARPPU/Conversion, the complete version: https://www.germandevdays.com/
Week May 29th, Casual Connect London, again raising APPU/Conversion, see http://europe.casualconnect.org/
and finally Develop in Brighton, talking about Lootboxes: https://www.developconference.com/
Phew. A lot, and I guess the next will be Devcom/Gamescom, but my talk isn't confirmed yet.
Week April 23rd: Quo Vadis, a talk about "Meta Games" and moderating a fireside chat with Lord British. See https://qvconf.com/
Week May 8th: Oulu, Finnland, there is half a day a public workshop about the Crazy App Store and More, organized by Fingersoft.
Week May 21st: Digital Dragons, talking about Product Strategy and how it decides your chances of success. See http://digitaldragons.pl/
Week May 23rd, GDD Frankfurt, talking about raising ARPPU/Conversion, the complete version: https://www.germandevdays.com/
Week May 29th, Casual Connect London, again raising APPU/Conversion, see http://europe.casualconnect.org/
and finally Develop in Brighton, talking about Lootboxes: https://www.developconference.com/
Phew. A lot, and I guess the next will be Devcom/Gamescom, but my talk isn't confirmed yet.
2017/12/15
Industry going conservative again
Consoles selling sub $200 (minus the Pro's) - entering last half of their cycle. 2019 will be hard for larger studios. So be prepared that publishers turn conservative not signing risky or expensive products next year as they already invest heavily in the next generation (it already shows this year).
So please, either split your studio into sizable teams working on multiple lower budget products or resize - yes, this means downsizing is a valid strategy.
Take the free advice, it happened before and will happen again.
The over 10-year-old talk describing the cycles can be found here:
2017/09/08
MTX in Destiny 2 and Shadows of Mordor 2 - Scandal?
So the web is alive with discussions about micro transactions in Destiny 2 or the upcoming Shadows of Mordor. Players don't like MTX shops in games they paid $60 for.
But this trend has been here since years. Ubisoft did MTX in the Assassins Creed series. Heck, I was part of the design team who did the MTX for AC IV Black Flag.
The MTX in retail games are adding revenue by x% (I can't reveal the number here, sorry). Publishers need this as games development becomes more and more expensive. Triple AAA products are 50m, 100m even sometimes more than 200m in development. So how many copies do you need to sell to achieve a return on investment? Roughly 3.5 million. That doesn't include marketing yet. Or other costs you need on top like HR, Management, Accounting etc.
So integrating f2p mechanics to raise revenue is perfectly fine.
Also, remember not everyone has hours each day to play those games, but really want to catch up with their friends to raid (like in Destiny) or to see the end, or unlock game modes etc. Why not pay for this service? It's not an alien concept.
Engaged fans of a series are able to spend $99 or more for collectors editions, season passes etc. but complain about some $ spending in game. This is all about perception by seeing a shop symbol in a retail game.
Rarely I have seen this complaint in GTA V. But they do like 700m per year on that. Hmmm.
We "F2P" people saw these trends coming years ago and it will get more intense soon. As the price wars are on and soon you will see AAA games being released for $60 and years after release being made free as their in game MTX mechanics make enough revenue. I have seen it, I know clients working on exactly this with their AAA IP.
So get used to it. It won't vanish and will get more expanded upon - until AAA products finally surrender and will be free ;)
But this trend has been here since years. Ubisoft did MTX in the Assassins Creed series. Heck, I was part of the design team who did the MTX for AC IV Black Flag.
The MTX in retail games are adding revenue by x% (I can't reveal the number here, sorry). Publishers need this as games development becomes more and more expensive. Triple AAA products are 50m, 100m even sometimes more than 200m in development. So how many copies do you need to sell to achieve a return on investment? Roughly 3.5 million. That doesn't include marketing yet. Or other costs you need on top like HR, Management, Accounting etc.
So integrating f2p mechanics to raise revenue is perfectly fine.
Also, remember not everyone has hours each day to play those games, but really want to catch up with their friends to raid (like in Destiny) or to see the end, or unlock game modes etc. Why not pay for this service? It's not an alien concept.
Engaged fans of a series are able to spend $99 or more for collectors editions, season passes etc. but complain about some $ spending in game. This is all about perception by seeing a shop symbol in a retail game.
Rarely I have seen this complaint in GTA V. But they do like 700m per year on that. Hmmm.
We "F2P" people saw these trends coming years ago and it will get more intense soon. As the price wars are on and soon you will see AAA games being released for $60 and years after release being made free as their in game MTX mechanics make enough revenue. I have seen it, I know clients working on exactly this with their AAA IP.
So get used to it. It won't vanish and will get more expanded upon - until AAA products finally surrender and will be free ;)
2017/09/05
My Blogs Audience
So are a large part of my blog's audience comes from Russia? But I never had Russian clients. Why is this? Dear Russian readers, can you enlighten me?
2017/09/02
Coming soon ...
My next talk is in creation. I decided not to do any Dissection talks anymore due to many reasons but someone convinced me to do this one - simply as I spend a long time analyzing it (3 years in fact), the longest ever it took to finalize this talk. I will let you know when and where I will hold this talk.
2017/08/25
App Stores rip off Developers?
So this made the rounds:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-08-22-tim-sweeney-app-stores-are-pocketing-a-huge-amount-of-profit-at-developers-expense
30%. Seems a lot. Rip off right? The problem is that most people saying this, including Tim Sweeney, never operated an F2P game outside an app store and have not the faintest about the operational cost.
So let's see what Apple (Google is similar but slightly worse) does for you if you sell through their store - all included in the 30%:
Payment Systems & Cost
The App Store offers payment systems and an easy way to pay, much easier than any other payment systems found online, increasing conversion immensely. This alone is worth a lot.
Everyone who worked on payment system integration knows how much work goes into this besides systems, UI, flow, optimizing etc. It is a lot of work and usually, you need 3-4 people just working on this - permanently.
Payment providers charge various single digit % of your revenue usually. So this is worth that percentage plus the bonus of ease of use.
In Store Payment System & Promotions
Apple offers iTunes cards in stores in most countries. Including promotions and sales of these. Remember if Apple does a sale on iTunes cards Apple pays for it, your margin is unaffected by it.
For free. This is an effective payment system for people without access to credit cards or bank accounts. Remember stores selling these also take a share - so this one is included as well.
VAT Handling
If you ever ran into accounting in F2P companies their biggest headache is VAT handling worldwide. Every country has different VAT rates, laws and handling of virtual goods. It is a huge problem and usually, accounting is busy fixing things and keeping track of changing laws - in every single country. With Apple, you get a single invoice per month. VAT is virtually gone here. So yes you would easily need an accounting department for handling payments yourself - with Apple you need none. Zero.
Returns, Cancellations, Fraud
The second biggest headache of handling payments yourself is fraud & returns. Apple does this for you.
Available World Wide
Yes, world wide. No issues with integrating how many payment systems so everyone in any country can pay? I remember that one company I worked for had 120+ payment systems online and integrated 2-3 per week (!). Want to do this yourself? Good luck.
Download Cost & Updates
You don't pay for traffic, hosting, and more important for updating your app. The app store and iOS do this for you, usually automatic for the users. And you don't even pay for the traffic or hosting.
In other words, if App Stores wouldn't do all this you, as a small to a medium sized developer, would need at least 5-10 more people handling all of this if you launch world wide.
Is this worth 30%? Easily. And btw Tim Sweeney charges 30% as well in their Unreal market place ;)
Did I forget another advantage? Let me know.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-08-22-tim-sweeney-app-stores-are-pocketing-a-huge-amount-of-profit-at-developers-expense
30%. Seems a lot. Rip off right? The problem is that most people saying this, including Tim Sweeney, never operated an F2P game outside an app store and have not the faintest about the operational cost.
So let's see what Apple (Google is similar but slightly worse) does for you if you sell through their store - all included in the 30%:
Payment Systems & Cost
The App Store offers payment systems and an easy way to pay, much easier than any other payment systems found online, increasing conversion immensely. This alone is worth a lot.
Everyone who worked on payment system integration knows how much work goes into this besides systems, UI, flow, optimizing etc. It is a lot of work and usually, you need 3-4 people just working on this - permanently.
Payment providers charge various single digit % of your revenue usually. So this is worth that percentage plus the bonus of ease of use.
In Store Payment System & Promotions
Apple offers iTunes cards in stores in most countries. Including promotions and sales of these. Remember if Apple does a sale on iTunes cards Apple pays for it, your margin is unaffected by it.
For free. This is an effective payment system for people without access to credit cards or bank accounts. Remember stores selling these also take a share - so this one is included as well.
VAT Handling
If you ever ran into accounting in F2P companies their biggest headache is VAT handling worldwide. Every country has different VAT rates, laws and handling of virtual goods. It is a huge problem and usually, accounting is busy fixing things and keeping track of changing laws - in every single country. With Apple, you get a single invoice per month. VAT is virtually gone here. So yes you would easily need an accounting department for handling payments yourself - with Apple you need none. Zero.
Returns, Cancellations, Fraud
The second biggest headache of handling payments yourself is fraud & returns. Apple does this for you.
Available World Wide
Yes, world wide. No issues with integrating how many payment systems so everyone in any country can pay? I remember that one company I worked for had 120+ payment systems online and integrated 2-3 per week (!). Want to do this yourself? Good luck.
Download Cost & Updates
You don't pay for traffic, hosting, and more important for updating your app. The app store and iOS do this for you, usually automatic for the users. And you don't even pay for the traffic or hosting.
In other words, if App Stores wouldn't do all this you, as a small to a medium sized developer, would need at least 5-10 more people handling all of this if you launch world wide.
Is this worth 30%? Easily. And btw Tim Sweeney charges 30% as well in their Unreal market place ;)
Did I forget another advantage? Let me know.
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