Alternatives to Front-Loading Game Sales
I talked a little while ago about several of the differences between indie game sales and modern "AAA" retail sales.

One thing that I discovered when I first became involved with the indie community was about how indie sales tended to be more of a "slow-burn" proposition. I was struck hard by a comment by one indie developer who stated that he sold more copies of his game the third year after its release than the first two years COMBINED. Other indie developers echoed similar experiences.

This was a foreign concept to me. As a veteran of the retail, "AAA" game industry, I was used to game sales being "front-loaded" into the first few weeks following a games release. Thus a videogame has an effective shelf life of only about three months. After that, it drops off the radar, eventually lands in the bargain bin for impulse buys, and then is forgotten. A hit game might extend this cycle by about three to six months - more if it comes out with expansions to help keep it current. That's how the industry worked, darn it, how should anyone expect otherwise?

Well, apparently indies might. I had to go back and analyze my assumptions. The top- and mid-tier retail game industry spends an INCREDIBLE amount of money making it work this way. In a sense, it's not a natural state of things at all. Why do the big publishers do this? And do these same reasons apply to indies? SHOULD we be spending more of our resources trying to follow their model? Or is this simply the way of the dinosaurs, destined to become extinct?

So why DO the big retail publishers spend so much on front-loading their sales? Here are some reasons, not necessarily in order of importance.

#1 Physical Packages Have a Physical Cost
First of all, physical game packages take up physical space. There's the space at the warehouse, and there's the retail "brick and mortar" shelf-space that is always at a premium. A box that is sitting on the shelf or at the warehouse COSTS money. You have to pay rent for the building that houses the box, after all. It may only be some pocket change per month that a single box may cost a store-owner, but you multiply that by six unsold boxes over the course of a year, and costs can rise above what he'd earn by selling one of those games.

Ideally, the retailer and publisher and distributor would like to minimize that storage cost down to zero. If it were possible, they'd love to sell evey single copy they would ever possibly sell on day 0.

#2 - Shelf Space Has An Opportunity Cost
Because retailers and distributor warehouses do not have infinite shelf space, they have to concentrate their limited resources on what will make them the most money. Four boxes of "Caber Toss Championship 2003" sitting on the shelf for the last four years means four boxes of anything else that would have already sold and made money were NOT in that spot. If a game doesn't prove itself immediately to a retailer that it has the potential to move, it becomes a candidate for getting returned to the distributor to make way for something else.

So games with slower sales will have future sales cut off - arbitrarily clipped to zero - as they get cycled out for stronger sellers.

#3 - Publishers Don't Want To Compete With Themselves.
Thirdly, major publishers do not want a game that they released last year to steal sales from this year's game. Particularly these days, when publishers try to cut costs by slapping together minor improvements and roster changes to a franchise game and calling it a sequel. So they invest a lot of effort into convincing consumers that newer is ALWAYS better.


#4 - It's Easier To Start An Avalanche From The Top
Fourth, massive initial sales helps cause "hype." If your game is the one everyone is buying, playing, and talking about, that success becomes self-perpetuating. You'll get some of that with a slow-burn success, but he massive initial onslaught adds some urgency to it, and people tend to be motivated more by the urgency of the now.

After all, how much more likely are people to see a brand new film that they want to see, than an old classic that they've "always wanted" to see? In my experience, it's a significant difference. The lack of urgency increases the likelihood that someone will never get around to it.

Downloadable Games to the Rescue?
Well, most people reading my little rants (or who look at the pictures on the sidebar) know of a partial alternate solution. Downloadable games are the future, even though publishers are very cautious about admitting this. After all, they don't want to honk off their retail or distribution partners. And retail will still be a major factor in any major game's sales for the forseeable future.

But it may not be too long before it ceases to be the primary factor.

And as online distribution grows, the first two problems decline in significance. With downloadable games, you provide the product on-demand. The shipping and warehousing costs (which consists of bandwidth, storage space, and a little bit of maintenance for its spot on the web) become minimal. It becomes possible to take advantage of the "Long Tail" that could potentially double a seller's revenue.

Kinda like what indies are doing already, on a much smaller scale. But I digress. What about #3 and #4?

Avoiding Ancestor-Phobia
The third problem is only an issue if you have a rapid release rate of very similar games. But here's a novel idea: Maybe you should try to fill your release schedule with a bit more... I don't know... VARIETY, instead of the steady stream of World War II shooters and stuff?

How about making sequels that are not just more of the same only fancier? I didn't see the imminent release of "The Two Towers" or "Return of the King" to theaters screw up people's enjoyment of "The Fellowship of the Ring." I don't know of anybody jumping to read the latest book of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series without reading the earlier ones. How about the videogame industry following suit? Wouldn't it be cool if we weren't threatened by earlier games, but instead used the marketing of the newer titles to maybe provide boost sales of older titles as well? Wow, more money for the same marketing buck!

This happens already to some degree with story-centric games. I have gone back to play "prequel" roleplaying games (and adventure games... you know, back when they HAD adventure games) after playing the newer, more technologically advanced games. Even in the realm of "first-person shooters," it is possible. I was introduced to the Thief series (only an FPS by loose interpretation) by Thief II, and went back to enjoy the original afterwards. It CAN happen.

Sure, the concern about competing with oneself is never going to go away, but I think a large part of the problem is of our own making. If we quit repeating ourselves, we'll be less likely to compete with ourselves.

Making the Long Tail Work
The fourth problem - taking advantage of the timeliness of a new release - is probably never going to go away. Every other industry deals with the same issue. But I think there are ways to rekindle the flame. Heck, George Lucas has been re-firing that pilot light for the last decade. And from a financial standpoint at least, he keeps succeeding. How much money has he continued to make, directly and indirectly, from something that he did THREE DECADES AGO?

The recording industry continues to sell decades-old music to us (and then throws a fit when we act like we have rights to listen to music we already bought on a different format). Books get reprinted, and sometimes enjoy new surges in sales (when an authoer gets popular with another book, for example, or when the book gets made into a movie - or sometimes when it just "catches on," as Lord of the Rings did a couple of decades after its original publication).

Compare this to the game industry, where after three months, a game goes into bargain-bin hell. It may reappear a few months later in a "gold" or "platinum" edition with added content from expansions, or it may occasionally resurface as a bundleware "collection." But for the most part, it's dead, Jim.

Once again, I think the indies are the ones that are seeing this first. Especially when they keep going back and updating and improving old titles so that they keep up with changing technology. Look at Pretty Good Solitaire. That game is something like a DOZEN YEARS OLD, but it keeps selling. And it keeps getting updated and improved. Maybe that can't last forever, but it does give us a glimpse into possibilities. Likewise, look at EverQuest (the original) and Ultima Online. Neither of these are as strong as they were in their hayday, but they are still making money and supporting their communities.

Sure, this might not beat having a big splash on the day you release, but there's something to be said for having legs.

Labels: Biz, Mainstream Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:53 AM (Permalink)