*cough*fraud*cough* If things like this keeps happening, it will be become much more difficult to find investors, even if you have that million dollar idea.
"Without resorting to the usual doomsaying about the hypercasual market, it still represents a massive portion of global installs, accounting for 26% of all mobile games in 2023. A few years ago, almost every project had the potential to soar. But currently, out of a thousand new games, there might not be a single hit.
The majority of installs continue to cluster around older projects, which publishers have developed and supported for years using a model akin to games-as-a-service. Yes, working in this market is both possible and necessary (our corporate group alone garnered more than two billion installs last year), but it's also essential to realistically assess the profitability of this sector.
The casual market has witnessed a similar shift. Previously, it was feasible to secure funding for a prototype without any metrics, primarily because the success rate among such projects was about one in 10-15. Nowadays, it's rare for companies to invest in projects without preliminary metrics. Exceptions exist for teams with an impressive background, but this doesn't mitigate the extremely high competition in the market. This all implies that it's nearly impossible for a small, young team to launch a successful project. There are success stories in the market, but focusing on them would be to fall for the classic survivor bias. Market growth has slowed, advertising effectiveness has decreased, and margins have normalized."
I did not mention it here but I did in the other thread, it is not all about live service "fatigue", players are going back to the live services they trust. I wonder how similar this is to MMO "fatigue": you have done the grind many times before to get to top level and now you have to do it all over again?
We talked MMO fatigue years and years ago, get a few under your belt and anyone can feel that. What I think may have happened, is Multiplayer games have taken on more and more MMO-like gameplay as they drift into live service. So we are seeing a replication of that, but with the ubiquity of live service (or at least elements of live service) you are getting a similar fatigue in most multiplayer games you play. Do you want to start another one up, another which might only last a month before you get cheesed off and abandon it? Stick with the tried and trusted seems to be increasingly the choice made.
So I am not predicting the end of live service here, because I don't think studios are going to wake up to this. What is needed is less live service, less monetarization and if need be a higher initial price to buy. But that solution goes against the grain of what studios have been doing for a couple of decades now, so I don't see it being adopted soon and it may never be adopted. Therefore I see this downturn going on into 2025 maybe even 2026.
“The Avalon universe prioritizes delivering an immersive gameplay experience by combining cutting-edge tech like Unreal Engine 5 with AI-assisted user-generated content systems. Our focus on a no-code solution enables players to create game logic effortlessly. Plus, our upcoming NFT collection will introduce AI-powered avatar NFTs, adding another layer of innovation.”
Nothing in that paragraph even makes sense.
I don't want to bother typing out the 10-page rant that this sort of drivel inspires, but I'll offer up a couple of quick takes:
Quote: The Avalon universe prioritizes delivering an immersive gameplay experience by combining cutting-edge tech like Unreal Engine 5 with AI-assisted user-generated content systems.
Response: Immersion has nothing to do with cutting-edge and very little to do with graphics, so you've kicked off your big sell by letting everyone know that you've no idea what immersion actually means.
Quote: AI-powered avatar NFTs
Response: I don't have the faintest idea what that could possibly mean, and I don't think you know what it means either. I can tell you what I think it means: An AI tool that pumps out worthless NFTs that we'll pretend have real monetary value.
This is the dumbest marketing pitch I've read in quite some time, and it reads like it was generated by AI because there is no way something that stupid was written by a sentient human being with a soul.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
This is the dumbest marketing pitch I've read in quite some time, and it reads like it was generated by AI because there is no way something that stupid was written by a sentient human being with a soul.
It's a great marketing pitch for the target audience: Investment fund managers that don't have the faintest clue what the "game's" demographic will tolerate.
To be honest the fist half is fine. Sounds similar to that Foundry system that an MMO I can't recall had (STO? DDO? one of the superhero games?) but with better tools for those that struggle with coding. On some of the volunteer game projects I was involved with they were constant short of coding staff.
The NFT stuff though, that's pure Wall Street bait.
Comments
We talked MMO fatigue years and years ago, get a few under your belt and anyone can feel that. What I think may have happened, is Multiplayer games have taken on more and more MMO-like gameplay as they drift into live service. So we are seeing a replication of that, but with the ubiquity of live service (or at least elements of live service) you are getting a similar fatigue in most multiplayer games you play. Do you want to start another one up, another which might only last a month before you get cheesed off and abandon it? Stick with the tried and trusted seems to be increasingly the choice made.
So I am not predicting the end of live service here, because I don't think studios are going to wake up to this. What is needed is less live service, less monetarization and if need be a higher initial price to buy. But that solution goes against the grain of what studios have been doing for a couple of decades now, so I don't see it being adopted soon and it may never be adopted. Therefore I see this downturn going on into 2025 maybe even 2026.
I don't want to bother typing out the 10-page rant that this sort of drivel inspires, but I'll offer up a couple of quick takes:
Quote: The Avalon universe prioritizes delivering an immersive gameplay experience by combining cutting-edge tech like Unreal Engine 5 with AI-assisted user-generated content systems.
Response: Immersion has nothing to do with cutting-edge and very little to do with graphics, so you've kicked off your big sell by letting everyone know that you've no idea what immersion actually means.
Quote: AI-powered avatar NFTs
Response: I don't have the faintest idea what that could possibly mean, and I don't think you know what it means either. I can tell you what I think it means: An AI tool that pumps out worthless NFTs that we'll pretend have real monetary value.
This is the dumbest marketing pitch I've read in quite some time, and it reads like it was generated by AI because there is no way something that stupid was written by a sentient human being with a soul.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon