Netflix Model Bad for Games? | Games ReCAP Episode 023

[Music] what's up everybody welcome to another episode of games recap The Prodigy sons have returned from their short-term vacation and joining us of course what's up everybody so every week or every day at 10 a.m. in the morning we will give you a game developers perspective on game news big news exactly if you're watching us live you're of course watching us on our twitch TV forge slash blue underscore champs if you're watching this after the fact you're probably watching us from our youtube.com forward slash blue champs if you are watching this free we welcome that but we also welcome people who are paying on us directly on our patreon com force left blue champs helps every

little bit helps especially if you don't want to leave twitch you want to be a twitch subscriber you can describe there and we will get that money somehow it was on prime $5 free membership if you've got no one else to offer to you know hey hook up the homies and we'll keep making cool content stuff thanks for being there watching it also again shout out to everybody who's in the twitch comments right now our tech support advisors always on call you know appreciate those guys yes so though we are the only ones on camera right that doesn't mean your opinions don't matter right you can interact with us we will respond to you directly if you are on our twitch chat so be sure to tune in or while you're watching thank you for joining us so let's go ahead and go into our NYX topic for the day so this topic is something that I've been proudly saying that this is the future for game developers but this article came across

my feed as something very interesting this is an article that we're gonna reference for today's episode and it's about Netflix is it really bad for a game development model right it's Netflix model good for games or not right this article is an opinion piece of course but it raises a lot of good points that I want us to kind of go over so kind of if you don't mind Larry gonna go over like your overview of what you think this model that everyone's approaching right now with stadia with game paths is it healthy for us as an industry all right so if I if I think about me being the developer and so the Netflix version of a game service comes to me and says hey Larry we want to license your studio software for our project first question I have is okay well how do I get paid without seeing the details behind whatever company in this article is going to say I would imagine there's two opportunities right there's a we're just going to buy exclusivity from you for a set price or we're going to possibly

give you like some sort of percentage world to share of all the money that we get from all of our subscribers based on how much activity your product actually generates and then there's probably some sort of flat rate there as well either way these are brand new pricing models that game developers are now having the option of dealing with and I will say that they both actually sound risky to me well the least risky is we'll just give you a flat rate so if they say like hey we'll give you $300,000 to have your game on our service I would have to hope that the game only cost me two hundred thousand to make for that to feel like it was a great deal I know what I mean right if if that front end wasn't high enough that it took care of me worrying about whatever royalties that we were missing out on that is that's a big concern hey really our praveen what's up dude so that's what I look at as a developer myself is like how is the payment model gonna actually affect my bottom line if it's a you're gonna get a piece of the royalty from all the

customers that we have and let's say the customer demographics aren't that high I obviously that'd be very concerning because they're asking you to be exclusive on a platform that isn't yet proven is still growing you know what I mean doesn't have a huge subscriber base so you automatically know that your revenues are probably not going to be very large what are the benefits of joining something small with your hard-earned blood sweat and tears product that you just released I would say there's probably a little less a whole lot less competition right like if you're one out of a hundred games on a service there's a higher chance that you're gonna get eyes on your product and interact with because obviously if the consumer is part of that service mmm they've already paid the nine bucks and they're probably more likely gonna try a couple of games yeah so you'll probably get more attention right but you can't really capitalize off the attention rather than that person being excited about the service telling other people to get the service to then go chicken right right right so I mean there's definitely pros and cons and whenever at least when I talk about it I think about the idealistic version

of how this can be helpful so I really do shy away from like what are the bad things or even people complaining about how the music industry Spotify experience is a lot different than other type of platforms right so let's take a look at this article let's jump right in and actually break it down man so of course the business model is it bad news for indie games which is fastly approaching to be the norm right for a lot of these console makers so reading straight from the article form Engadget there's a lot of plans nowadays right we look we don't need to look any further than our cousin the movie industry to see what they're doing over there with movies and there everyone's kind of moving towards for both TV and movie a subscription model hoping that people continuously pay for it for life and it is honestly I feel a mutual exchange in a lot of ways or they're you know the movie industry or movie studio side they

can can can have like a history that they can look at and then some projection of like hey if we lose a few or 10% we can still project forward and have a fee that we can pay everyone right it's more it's a lot better than waiting for a movie to be a hit or not and then having to like not renew anybody's contract right so the games industry is in a similar boat okay right I think we're fastly adopting this model because on our developer side like you mentioned before we're waiting for what it's a blockbuster hit or fail or flop right and it we have a lot more flops than success and so the industry has been suffering for it so this model hopefully is gonna translate from what it has done for the movie industry to our industry and that's what we're hoping but this article argues you know

talking points that I would like to bring up with you to see if you agree or not so let's run with a Netflix example right what the company is known for they acquire shows and movies and licensing agreements based on contract length exclusivity and an estimated costs per hour view right so they actually factor that in like in a projector how many people their viewers were actually like launching it Netflix pinpoints this final figure by tracking audience habits at predicting the number of hours each project that will be likely watched during the time frame of its conference so they can use their data of years of like this genre types people that would watch it how many subscribers of that fit within that subject and be able to tell like anybody that their licensure and this is probably the estimate of what so this is what we're gonna pay you family and that's a very clear point non-complex no headaches for anyone not that I agree so far so good so what's the problem

so basically a minute based accounting system may work for a medium with a single passive input method viewing but it fails the falls apart when applied to games why is it paper per play is really bad for short games and so I hate hyper light drifter developer Informer square-enix creative director Teddy told Engadget I wanted to walk away into the sea and stay there if developers are paid per minute of play longer gains and replayable games make more money whereas single-player games especially games focus on a third story get a raw deal now I asked you write a sixty dollar rockstar game it's always gonna make more money than a twenty dollar no I guess in terms of copies right so that model this for me if I when I read that I don't coffee basis yes if you sell your game for $60 you stand to potentially make more revenue than if you sold your game for $20 yeah we can at least say that

obviously if you really want to break that down how much did it cost to make or how much did like essentially what we're trying to illustrate is like there's there's a knowing that you're selling your game for 60 bucks versus $20 there's incentives especially if you believe you're offering value for the price point what I wanted to jump on is that like as a businessperson myself I always try to evaluate the platform where I start getting upset before I start getting mad right like to say man I've made this short game my short game is not going to work well on your platform so I hate your platform yeah I don't think that's the attitude now that's the wrong attitude right it's like it's a knee-jerk kind of so yeah going fishing using mittens yeah instead of a fishing rod yeah like if you understand the the dynamic of the platform you know how to be efficient and how to use what's available on it yeah I mean there's a lot of variables that you don't like there's you're getting more eyes potentially that people would never pay attention to all right you know it's gonna indie dev front a lot of that business is kind of drummed up by your own right people will go eventually the buyer game it's not

going to find it by chance in most cases right you're in such a small market as is versus if you are in like a browse channel type of game paths and people are kind of passive buying you have something some cool key are you know it the impressions of it is increased evermore and the chances of them liking the art check in the description maybe trailer or playing it is infinitely more than having to like have a paywall in front of it so there's it opens up so many opportunities to in the end have someone become a fan and more exposure for your project and it might require some you know creativity outside of just paying for a product right which I think any developers should be at the forefront always evolving yeah and I think the key there that also kind of relates to what I was trying to say is that like you said there's an opportunity right indie developers are usually at the forefront of these opportunities what I'm what I'm trying

to express you to pull Larry can if you know that short games aren't gonna do well on that platform and you make a short game is it the platforms fault that your game isn't lined up to be successful or as successful as a game that's like hey you know what does great on this platform because it's played for a minute really engaging games that take a long time to complete because even though it may take more money for you to develop that game platform-specific that's a better partnership yeah we're just getting some complaint that my mic is super low hello we're good all right just let us know on Twitter sorry to interrupt you later all right that's why we have twitch tech support thank you so much TTS so anyway it's just a wrap up what I was saying the hard part that I have with somebody being upset about the platform saying like oh it's a pay per minute platform just understand that that's the market that's the rules for doing business there if you evaluate that your product isn't going to do well there then you might just want to avoid

it altogether and find an area where your product will do well right if you're going there with your product that's not going to do well when you start kicking and screaming and demanding that they change what they're doing so that you're $2 2 minute game can sell and do and be just as revenue producing as like a long-form very engaging like you said Red Dead that will do great on that platform your might need to be close to your face that's what they're saying it's not my mood there you go anyway so if your game is not gonna do well on the platform and you go to that platform kicking and screaming and demanding that they change their rules like you're totally missing out how free market and business is supposed to work right go to the platform that will make your game do better go to the platform that you believe will give you the best advantage for what you're doing or better create the platform that you think will help make that game do well I actually wouldn't blame a Netflix business model

for killing the game industry or for you know ruining what it costs or what it takes to be a game developer because they've created an opportunity for game developers to sell games in a new way yeah there's always gonna be these shifts there's always gonna be these changes you gotta have to adapt we have to you're not gonna stop this is happening yeah to say to fold your arms and say I don't like it because someone's gonna play rock star more yeah yeah grand theft auto more than my short to our king of course I mean that's just how it always has been and of course you're not charging $60.00 for you to our game yeah are you charging $20 and yes there should be a variable there is a difference between a 60 hour game versus the two-hour game and that difference having that a very small numerical value I think it's very fair right because flip that on the other side it's like I done you know people have to complete a 60 hour game to finish my game but it's equal to your two-hour game all right those guys won't be happy either yeah all right to have that variable is very

important for this model to work and it's honestly it's it's fair ish yeah it's fair in a sense it's like hey we have a paper minute yeah platform someone played your game for five minutes someone played their game for two hours yeah that's like everything we're treating you guys the same but they created something that draw more engagement more participation and let me kind of translate that to what how you feel right when you two finally watching videos they're watching habits anymore they've been weighing more towards minutes watched more than view counts yes all right so how did you feel about that did you feel like something like that was appropriate well it's this is gonna be revealing but I actually didn't understand why that would be the switch until I started using one of my YouTube accounts that wasn't under my email that has no ads right because for the last couple years like my main YouTube account I've been paying the ten bucks to get no ads so me watching 30 seconds of video versus two hours of video I didn't feel my experience change whatsoever so it actually didn't click with me until I have this other email

for this old account that I was using an updating content on and then I started watching videos on that account if I'm watching a video like 15 20 minutes there's three advertisement opportunities in that video so you get paid more so YouTube is generating more ad impressions because if a videos engaging and keeps me watching for an hour that's potentially four different times that they can show me more banner and or completely interrupt the video and then show like a 10-second commercial and then go back the video so now I was like oh okay it totally makes sense I see I was the privileged and I had like what is let them eat cake you have an attitude yeah then being on the other side and seeing how they actually roll out ads I understand now why they go more for engagement versus just a view yeah you see one ad if you just do one AD and they clicked it and they watched it yeah one view yeah if you have an hour video that still counts as one view but I've got four ad impressions instead of one yeah so I understand why they're going yeah as a business model and even as I consume I understand that and that is important right to use to just have that

number if someone's just playing for two minutes right and then leaves it shouldn't be equal to someone playing sixty hours on it it shouldn't be I mean as a developer you have to respect other developers time put into the game to allow that opportunity for players to actually play that long so so far don't agree with you Teddy let's go back let's see what other points he has I just I mean I'm sure Ted is smart enough to know that like if it's not gonna work out on that platform maybe find the thing that it will work out yeah you know well the thing is like no one's forcing you to play a game you always have that choice right you don't have to put on the game pass you don't have to put it you know just go out there and and and yell in a crowd room and just do what you keep on doing no disrespect to these types of parents but I'm not that type of parent where like if my kids sucked at basketball yeah I'm that coach yeah I demand you write to get my son thirty minutes again it's actually pretty important to point that out right

so Teddy from hyper light drifter it was a successful game and successful indie game the drums of noise he was huge game for any developers and so he's on a mountain right respectively that he's able to kind of make these choices like I don't want to be on the platform yeah but all those little guys man where every little exposure helps they will crowd around something like this it's like hey xbox will actually help promote my game and put it next to [ __ ] shadow at war and you know you know that's a huge opportunity right it's it's a it's a it's a controlled and closed-end marketplace right now right again you go to a movie theater you have maybe eight choices of movies right thousands of people if you really break it down you're gonna see a lot of support even for the shitty movie because that's just the option that they have there you know what I mean you go to a buffet you all you're there may be plentiful but you're gonna pick something that's there right yeah so when you have this like this close market environment it's better to

compete against ninety-nine other games than ninety-nine thousand other games yeah so since this is new since these things are on the rise such a tasty morsel of an opportunity especially for small guys because it's so much better for them to think about being one of a hundred versus one of a hundred thousand two hundred thousand one of fifty thousand however many games come out a day I don't know what the number is anymore but some ridiculous this is a lot of games three thousand uploads a day to steam some ridiculous it's just like YouTube now right huh so a relatively short narrative experience or indie gains bread and butter a bulk of the markets most acclaimed titles are harvested from the game gone home to the moon all these like very short experiences and they help drive video games into mainstream conversations about art yeah okay yes yes setting narrative aside most indie games are inherently shorter than Shiva yes because they come from another smaller from smaller teams with vastly different resources Red Dead Redemption - for example was dying late to take 60 hours complete though it required

hundreds and millions of people to crunch to finish it and and was built by a handful you know in comparison a small game like Celeste was taking with ten hours to finish but was built by a handful of people in the budgets of thousands yeah okay hey yes I hope they're not making a case about this because that yeah these are facts but it has nothing to do with it's not as how a leveraging the art it's not leveraging the argument yeah the indie scene is also where developers go to craft their pet projects experiment with new ideas all which leads to a lot of 10-hour games unless over all playtime translating to a bad deal for developers on a cost per hour how is that a bad deal what are you talking about the profit margin of course with a smaller team is vastly huger then uh then a big development team right I mean the profit profit margin yes while developers beer yeah so

if the indie title game sells a million copies oh yeah versus made it yeah versus a Red Dead Redemption only sell a million copies the Red Dead Redemption team is a drop but they will not be there the next day to even see those news so what that only argue is the fact that it's hard for any developers and if they do it right and have a good in good company you know people finding them they will sell well right this doesn't help the argument yeah I think that obviously we all know that it's gonna be difficult to make a really good flashy like super successful indie game when you're talking about small budgets small resources small opportunities time is something that they may or may not have because they might be doing this when they get home from work kind of thing we know that there's a ton of hurdles to try to be successful as an indie developer but that doesn't mean that like just because this new platform exists it's like ruining your opportunity further it's like it's it

really isn't like taking it or leave it mmm and it's not gonna hurt your business either way I'm not mad if I'm like a star basketball player that some of my friends want to play baseball I have nothing to do with baseball I'm still making money and basketball people still watching basketball there's platforms for what I do yeah and if this new platform is on the rise but it doesn't really work well my business model then so be it no definites I will say this though it's if anybody is worried about anything I just go back to streaming like streaming I feel like it's the biggest threat to small developers single player linear story narrative games more so than a new platform to sell those games I'd say the bigger threat is where people actually play your games like yeah I I bought the game I've got ten million subscribers I just did a full stream people loved it I got all these donations yeah I got all this money all these sponsorship all these commercials that go stream you know that went to the developer yeah but also three million 999 people are also not gonna buy the game potentially because it was a linear

story German experience and they just saw the whole story they saw the whole movie and and again that's that's on the developers yeah right that's on the developer - evolving it down and to make sure that it is more than just a viewing experience uses the way it is man if you're in business and this is outside of games just in general if you're in business and you expect money to come the same way it's always come you're ignorant to the fact that society is interest markets change and shift as time goes on yeah new technologies new experiences new wants new tastes new habits yeah society and culture is always changing it's always churning you have to be agile keep your finger on the pulse if you are a stagnant business who's like this is how we've always done it now if your business model is this is how it's always been or this is how we've always done it yeah you are essentially just going downhill your trajectory right now is going up I promise you your long-term average is Houston client yes huge decline so far they haven't said anything since we

managed before right was like selling horse and buggies horses well just look at nowadays premium leather Tesla wouldn't make right now for your everybody was the same thing that was a horse and carriage okay exact so Tesla comes out with like hey we want to be you know fully electronic vehicles yadda yadda yadda remember how laughed out of the room exactly yeah look at Tesla now had the year where they sold more Tesla's than Mercedes yeah Mercedes and it's the preferred luxury car it is everybody wants the Tesla very smart as you can see as a trendsetter and people are gonna challenge actually it's great that you brought that up and say that as a trendsetter people going to challenge because instead of competing with Tesla and trying to do better business this stagnant business model other big companies we're trying to force tariffs or force Tesla out of like automotive trade yeah they weren't doing good business by making better cars or jumping in that pool and trying to house wind Tesla they were trying to shut down the pool yeah they were for beer stilt Ronda exactly every time you

on tweets they're always like ragging on I'm saying that Tesla is gonna go out of business any day soon or any time someone leaves is like look Tesla it's not obvious amano stop buying those cool ass cars now did you know you know why because exon golf mobile exa co yeah there are the buying sell gas business yeah yeah Tesla is not in the business of using gas but providing people with car yeah yeah so the world is changing for developers now that any developers should be you know champion this so I'm very surprised to actually in the developer say no we rather just be out here as a lone wolf and figure this out on our own it's like no man we need help here and I think it's a very privileged thing to say that you don't need the help because they've found success right but all the other you know everyone successful story has like thousands of unsuccessful ones and those guys need the exposure they need something like this to keep afloat and this is money upfront that's something that people

forget when you strike a deal with Microsoft for Google stadia that's money upfront that you can put into more of your other game development and just let it cook man that's exposure that's uh this is just a public face on a well-established platform that people can believe in and when people walk into arcade their intention is to play games yeah alright this is the difference between the fad and streaming and watching right it's like they're going the game pass getting either way to play your game as long as you Kiera's good they're ready to play yeah and I guess there's a couple things that people need to remember one don't agree to a bad deal if it's a bad deal yeah I can negotiate right like if you know that you need excuse me more than four hundred thousand dollars but they're only offering you two don't sign yeah push back see if they you can meet in the middle and get something respectable but at the end of the day you are responsible for protecting your business for protecting your bottom line for protecting your opportunity to do future business yeah so sign good deals if you

don't have a good deal don't be desperate because the desperation might hurt you worse you know yeah I don't know I'd rather have a little bit of money then have no money because I signed a bad deal that's gonna pay me today but like essentially and you know I hate to use this word but just rape you for the rest of the contract right yeah we're gonna give you a hundred thousand now but we get ninety nine that you make moving forward right yeah me people will try to give you bad deals music game industry it doesn't matter if there's a contract that there's lawyers involved at some level you've got to be aware of somebody trying to give you a bad deal don't sign bad deals - don't be upset that a platform exists because a platform is just opportunity well if the opportunity ain't good you don't have to take yeah you still have your option looking for but they try to shut it down like this is bad for everybody else yeah he's not your place it's not your place to say that it's like your neighbor throws this awesome party and you weren't invited so you called the so digital distribution isn't a neat idea for games storefronts like Steam and GOG

have been tinkering with this formula for a while the landscape is still shifting there with newcomers like the epic game store a niche Daioh developers expect more than ever from these platform holders including a favorable revenue split steam the App Store and Google Play taught the industry about oversaturation years ago and the possibility will be on the forefront of developers mind as streaming marketplaces form they'll want to make sure their games are actually visible to the people who might be interested in them apparently Netflix is still learning this lesson yeah dude the search bar man yeah like if people are looking for you game they'll find your game alright come on don't I don't like how this is so against this idea it's there's no argument so far that like first I'm swayed I don't see how this is bad so far right I don't see how it's gonna be bad so we're lucky as game creators to have leverage in our industry and I hope our relationship with platform matures positively and pathetically we have to

weigh not just what a deal means for our team but the president encouraged is for a fellow creators the platform has more money and power than we do but we control the art yes yeah it's up to you subscription programs aren't new for the industry either but they'll be critical in the coming generation which is being founded on streaming in all digital gaming Google's ambition with stadia goes live in November meanwhile Microsoft is starting their test project X cloud and already has a fully digital disc list console on the market subscription services like xbox game past ati access a place that chanel will read the backbone of these programs they all offer discrete disagreements with our discrete agreements with developers determine the value of individual games and based on a secretive mix of metrics yeah I'd be great man if they just like publicize what those metrics are I think why wouldn't they if it's just a variable right it's not like you're

using an example I probably because it'll be free competitive it'll create angst between companies that they may potentially work with so for example branding games gets a deal for a hundred thousand because based on the metrics well you don't need to have so like you get this hundred thousand dealing let's say that gets published well EA or whatever one of these platforms already did a deal with I don't know ok so Larry games yeah and they gave me five hundred thousand and you're like what the [ __ ] yeah how did your metrics determine that they get more money than we do it like so I can see that is they be playing cards that would make people upset about working with them if ever people cross-referenced and saw that there's wasn't as big as someone else we've seen that before in bonus culture you know what I mean so I think that that that's the only card that I would see them playing as to why they don't just openly share and tell everybody by oh we gave this company 28% we gave this company 3%

because not only were the people who made those games obviously being uproar but then I think about the fans as well fans are already vocal about [ __ ] happening to games or for games that they believe in that they love or that they're part of and they'll say what this piece of crap game you got five hundred thousand and you only got this that's why your business is gonna fail like that's it saves them all the headaches to just be like look here's this Agreement that we want to make with you do you like this Agreement yes we like it - this is mutually beneficial everybody's cool okay boom you don't know that we'd pay this other company five hundred thousand because we thought it was worth five hundred thousand that company doesn't know that we've paid you 100 thousand because essentially individually each person was like yeah this is what I want this is cool so I think that in the sense of the company it's smart on them to just be like look we have metrics we evaluate your games performance based on X Y & Z and here's what we're prepared to offer you to be on our service do you take this agreement take all the time you need look it over call mom call the lawyers double check everything come back to us if we have an

agreement if it's yes we shake hands boom there you go front page for the next two weeks mm-hmm yeah I totally agree dude it's like the before a deal is agreed upon you have to be agreed upon that's like no one's pressuring you to do this so let's finish the rest of these article right now I mean it brings up good points as in like letting us know that people have concerns about this I was thinking that like the whole the whole side is on this like our our a countrymen are already all for this but it was very surprising the kind of sense this is a very interesting yeah I mean its clickbait t if that's what they're going for maybe it is not that controversial at all but to kind of take a hop ascent made me click on it's like why is it a problem I hope we're not missing something and look like jerks well we're reading the whole thing point by point and we're bringing it down so why we don't talk about the specifics of our business relationship publicly we

confirm we supported developer partners in xbox can you pass beyond the licensing fees they receive and ensure they are compensated fairly for having their games available see Xbox game passive anything is probably the best measure of like are the developers happy or not yeah might actually be good to kind of talk to those guys on our podcast naman is like how does it work how's it going all right Jenna Jane next so anyways a good barometer is like oh did you see the same company putting another game yesboxx game past not first party Microsoft owned right like if you see a new halo I'm not gonna be oh yeah it's great right there they're kind of stuck yeah but like I don't know if you see like the natural guys are on there that's combat the next Ninja Theory game yeah like this huge one the ninja there is Xbox now okay so that doesn't count yeah yeah but like at Metro I was looking on the metros on there and that's a huge you got two games on there right yeah yeah last light and then read up the last two one the last two which i want to play xbox game pass offers a

library of more than ten bucks yeah download our games for $10 a month $15 when bundled EA has a similar program the back catalog titles for opening up a vault of battle titles for five dollars a month on both of these service players clock more gaming time of course it spend more money and they more comfortable exploring titles outside the comfort zone yes that's how the model works Express GPS has been a great place for narrative and short form games to find an enthusiastic audience I think the fact that we're seeing teens make second third and fourth games available with the service shows that developers are pleased yes there you go dude that so if someone won or Swamy man I'm always two paragraphs ahead like game fast members play nearly 40% more games than non subscribers yes of course because you're only $60 every three months that you want to spend on games look look let's oh here's a great example gears 5 is coming out yeah if you don't have game paths and you don't

have Gears 5 but you plan on buying Gears 5 that's a wish list by 6 months of Xbox game pass because Gears 5 will be on there you'll beat it in two weeks and that's it if you play at a pace and then you have five months in two weeks worth of free games to play the same value of just buying Gears five to have just that one there's a there's a wish list problem right now yeah the wish list problem with steam is that we on their side they can see that people want these games yeah but people are willing to wait for a sale and even at sale time they might wait for several sales later because they have such a huge library of games that having gone through right now I love this game but you're not at 50 not right now I love it at 14 I like I love it later yeah exactly so steam can fix the issue if they make all those games on like a streaming platform for a subscription model and then developers can get paid

right away because they will be striking deals beforehand to make it available yeah and if anything you be building a fanbase right at the very least a fanbase that will we fall on you and support you even further and interacting with you rather than waiting for two years after the fact that you'll either be in businesses or not right that's like a huge time frame for most people to kind of stay with their lights on hoping that someday with a wish list what will convert until sale yeah it's time is not on our side as an indie developer right streaming is a solution where they can play now because people are walking into arcade ready to play Yeah right and better yet they don't need to have a quarter in hand a pic they can play every single game it's a free-for-all dang right there's there's so much to contend with in trying to market and sell games these days so like I understand like yeah it may look scary

when like aw man I made this game how do I make my money do I sell it here do I put on this platform do we do multiplayer do we add in you know gameplay mechanics that add a whole lot of randomness or a variety to the experience and protect against streaming there are so many things that you have to care about in making game product these days so like I don't envy any developers in that situation right now because a lot of our product has to defend itself against the market we can't just make like oh this is my single-player narrative story with completely linear but you're gonna love the story yeah you can make it but I hope that your goal for making that game wasn't also to be very rich because that game is like super setup for exposure failure which is it got popular everybody saw it before they bought it and played it because they don't need to play it anymore that sucks for you you know I mean so like knowing how people have to make games these days like yeah there's a lot that we got to worry about there's a lot to worry about food I don't worry that being on game pass is gonna ruin my business I think that if you can get your game on games pass and I know I sound like a cheerleader for

game pass but I'm getting a lot of value out of it it because it starts with the consumer are they happy all right and then I think developers have to adapt it to and involve their model to go fit that rather than any developers for happy first and then consume fighting in a market that o be at inti share this common indie games business friend of ours says it's a win-win from the MS and EAS and other nail in the coffin for game stop these that exist the less reason you have to go to game stop and not support I know stuff so stupid now I have my feel bad game stop is don't feel like man there's so slow on everything they're turning their remember that idea like years ago when I told her I'm like turn it into a hit place that people want they're doing that yeah they just recently announced it like hey we just listen to the game downa Shane they told us to change our business model this is what we're doing it's like you're three years late to the party man it's it's it's a positive step

but I can't believe they have so much money to burn stuff that's like why are you guys still up well they can you like their business model at before the internet ruined their business yeah their business model was legit yeah sell you a $60 copy of gears Yeah right you're done with it i buy it back for 30 i sell for 45 yeah i buy it back for 20 and 75 they should have been on the subscription model ahead of everybody foresight they did one copy when they were like giants where everybody was trying to get their game in their store they should have been like alright digital internet is becoming a thing we should strike deals now and become steam man well here's the problem that gamestop faces yeah that's a whole company I would imagine even to this day just and I'm only basing this assumption based on the decisions that I've seen not me knowing who actually is there it feels like a company full of neckties and not people who like grew up in

gaming who absolutely loved gaming like gamers who got business degrees these are people who have business degrees who are in gaming yeah and so that's why you would see them not necessarily looking at steam as a viable opportunity for themselves but you look our year on end revenue was better than last year's a year on whoever you see clearly we're doing the right thing right more of this yeah more of this let's not change the formula J pals gut checking us they said that game stock did buy a digital distribution platform and they [ __ ] it up I need more details on that day yeah I had never heard of it if I can imagine them like buying it to shut it down this is our competition we need to shut it down now the sad part is like four-game stop had them buying the digital distribution platform really hurts their brick-and-mortar business right so like they're hurting their workforce they're hurting their brick-and-mortar stores so that top-level web developers and

executives have put together this platform thing that is replacing the revenue that they were going to lose from the brick-and-mortar so the like hi luck of the game stat my name is Tommy do you want to sign up for a free gaming forum magazine and buy the Power Plus Club like those people right they're not gonna get any money from that right they're losing their job right so it's unfortunate to see like if they were to take a step in that direction to also know that they're saving the right arm cutting off the left thing so I want to kind of we're ending time soon okay I just want to end it with this quote here so Dino patty a co-founder of the inside studio played in on another heavy hitter described the situation on a game lab panel this month as report about your gamer consumer want as many games as possible as free as possible and you can't get anything for free so you need to find the right price but that's the angle I've been suggested subscription and it's never worked out because they don't know what developers need and in it is developers putting on a game for free well I mean that's just a bad deal yeah

indie games drop some knowledge for us congregate is an American mobile PC and console publisher with web gaming portal the website features over 110,000 online games 30 plus mobile games available to the public in 2010 it was purchased by gamestop corporation and then acquired by x group MTA b and 2017 so gamestop had it for seven years and i Kongregate was dope if it's the same congregate it was like if it reminded me like a newgrounds.com was like on flash games like I didn't play any tomb Raider's assassin Crees or any big titles on Kongregate but I played like tiny like nerd homerun rare like like small developers making flash arcade-style games if I remember that's my congregate experience me personally right but I thought congregate was do all right any games business thanks for joining and dropping a ton of gems in our chat feeds and everyone else also thank you for being a part of what we do all I know is don't be scared of new opportunities if

you don't like it you don't have to use it if it's a new recipe and it don't taste great for you that doesn't mean that it's the world it takes different strokes it takes different strokes I'm surprised you don't remember the full lyrics of that matter I don't I was super joke but uh it's that then well we'll fill you in on the rest of the lyrics tomorrow joining us again 10 a.m. every morning on Pacific time guess we're on the west coast in sunny California we won't give you any further information that's somewhere somewhere in Southern California in a white house so too much info so thanks for joining us on twitch.tv 4/4 blue underscore champs if you're watching this after the fact is of course on our youtube channel blue champs and thank you for all the supporters on patreon and anybody that

is our twitch subscriber we are ending our show to date but in about 5 to 10 minutes we are coming back with our game school online show with Linda campus so stay online to watch tutorial eyes digital arts talk about games we talked about game news we've gotta go bail game development but now we show you how to game day on our next show so thank you everyone for joining us see you in the bits lair you wanted to see us off if you're a little enter yeah you know when you finish your mural on the wall and you're using spray paint or in King spray when it's time to put that spray paint away consider yourselves weekend

[Music] [Music]