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General discussionDear GOG, we need to talk about your cred in the indie dev community.(267 posts)(267 posts)
(267 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted July 23, 2015
My reasoning comes down to a number of points:

1) Me wanting every game under the sun to be DRM free.
2) Me realizing that many developers or publishers won't release their games DRM free without an incentive to do so. If GOG rejects their games they lack such an incentive. End result: Fewer DRM free games over all.
3)A desire for GOG to expand their user base in order to make it more attractive for developers/publishers to sign up here. In particular AAA developers/publishers. That can lead to a snowball effect with more developers leading to more games being released leading to yet more developers signing up etc. Currently GOG is , for mysterious, irrational reasons, actively doing everything they can to prevent such a scenario! It makes no sense!
4)A concern over GOG's reputation in the industry. Imagine this not at all unlikely scenario:

A GOG user posts on the forum of some AAA company about releasing their games on GOG. That leads to following conversation:

PR/Community manager type person: "So there is this thread going on in the forums about us releasing our games on GOG. What is the status on that?"

Business type person: "I am sorry but GOG are really hard to work with. They are extremely picky and reject games all the time plus their infrastructure is not up to snuff. It is just not worth it for us to deal with them".

That could very well be something a 2K, Sega, MS or Zenimax/Bethesda executive would say. That is bad, really really bad. We are dealing with an industry that is highly connected with alot of networking going on. Word travels fast and this sort of stuff can really work against GOG. Rejecting certain indies might lead to them talking to friends at AAA places(or more prominent indies that GOG really desires to sign), bad mouthing GOG to the wrong people.
Do we really want that to happen?
Posted July 23, 2015
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Kristian: Do we really want that to happen?
It won't.
Posted July 23, 2015
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Kristian: Do we really want that to happen?
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JMich: It won't.
Why? Do people not talk to each other in the game industry? Do they not share opinions and experience? Don't large companies consider how easy or hard it is to work with potential partners?
Posted July 23, 2015
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Kristian: Why?
It won't.
Posted July 23, 2015
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JMich: It won't.
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Kristian: Why? Do people not talk to each other in the game industry? Do they not share opinions and experience? Don't large companies consider how easy or hard it is to work with potential partners?
It's a little unrealistic to draw that connection from indie devs to AAA publishers. GOG's refusing certain games absolutely has dissuaded prominent indie devs from bothering with the platform, and that's a problem. But let's not oversell the effect it's having.
Posted July 23, 2015
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Kristian: Why?
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JMich: It won't.
What a brilliant argument.

Anyway, why is it so important that GOG not sell say Thomas Was Alone, Braid and Rex Rocket? What ills would befall us if they released those games here?

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Kristian: Why? Do people not talk to each other in the game industry? Do they not share opinions and experience? Don't large companies consider how easy or hard it is to work with potential partners?
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Chacranajxy: It's a little unrealistic to draw that connection from indie devs to AAA publishers. GOG's refusing certain games absolutely has dissuaded prominent indie devs from bothering with the platform, and that's a problem. But let's not oversell the effect it's having.
I don't see why at all. Plenty of indie people know people at AAA places. Some indies were founded by ex-AAA people as well. Also who is to say GOG have not rejected any games from AAA companies? I bet they have, actually.

It is probably the case that some of the AAA companies out there don't want to deal with GOG because they have rejected some games of theirs.
Post edited July 23, 2015 by Kristian
Posted July 23, 2015
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Kristian: Why? Do people not talk to each other in the game industry? Do they not share opinions and experience? Don't large companies consider how easy or hard it is to work with potential partners?
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Chacranajxy: It's a little unrealistic to draw that connection from indie devs to AAA publishers. GOG's refusing certain games absolutely has dissuaded prominent indie devs from bothering with the platform, and that's a problem. But let's not oversell the effect it's having.
This. I would be highly surprised if indie sales make up any large part of overall sales at GOG to begin with, as the perception for GOG is still heavily emphasized on Good "OLD" Games. Lots of people still view it that way and probably will continue to. That said, I don't think there's huge overlaps in the industry between an indie dev and large AAA studios, and even if people hang out, unlike the indie dev, the AAA dev goes back to work to do exactly what the publishers funding them asked for, and most of those usually don't care about indies.
Posted July 23, 2015
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Chacranajxy: It's a little unrealistic to draw that connection from indie devs to AAA publishers. GOG's refusing certain games absolutely has dissuaded prominent indie devs from bothering with the platform, and that's a problem. But let's not oversell the effect it's having.
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LiquidOxygen80: This. I would be highly surprised if indie sales make up any large part of overall sales at GOG to begin with, as the perception for GOG is still heavily emphasized on Good "OLD" Games. Lots of people still view it that way and probably will continue to. That said, I don't think there's huge overlaps in the industry between an indie dev and large AAA studios, and even if people hang out, unlike the indie dev, the AAA dev goes back to work to do exactly what the publishers funding them asked for, and most of those usually don't care about indies.
I wouldn't be surprised if indie games are beginning to be a bigger and bigger part of GOG's sales, judging from the games that seem to frequent the popular games list on the front page. And indie games are becoming more and more of GOG's bread and butter, given how frequently they release them relative to old games these days. In any case, though, it seems more and more like GOG's trying to compete more with the other digital storefronts on PC rather than cementing themselves as an old games-only platform, and the only realistic way for them to build that reputation is for them to offer a more robust selection of what the broader PC gamer audience actually cares about.
Posted July 23, 2015
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I am willing to bet that someone like Jonathan Blow knows prominent people at companies like 2K Games and Zenimax/Bethesda. Executive level people. I am also willing to bet that he isn't exactly telling them positive things about GOG. If Braid, an extremely popular, well selling, well reviewed game can't get on GOG what game can then stand a chance? Daikatana. An old(way way past its prime sales wise), badly received game. It is that sort of inconsistencies that some of us take an issue with. I am sure many in the industry do too.
Posted July 23, 2015
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de_Monteynard: Another game that fell on GOG's chopping block was AntharioN. Considering that it is an isometric, turn-based, open-world game inspired by classics of yore (which get a lot of attention of the customer's here), I was surprised that it was rejected. Funnier even, is the fact that visually similar games like Eschalon and Spiderweb games have been here for quite a while. So yeah, GOG's decisions on which games to bring on and which to reject is sometimes skewed strongly in the direction of "does not compute."
Oh, I didn't know Antharion was finally released. By reading Steam forum I can see now why it could probably be rejected by GOG, this game could use more polish in all aspects (e.g., looks like there aren't enough arrows in game for 2 archers in party). Also graphics strongly resemble Ultima Online style to me, so I a bit expected this game to be more like UO just Offline and party/turn-based. Well, maybe eventually it will turn into that, but I am not putting hope.

Off-topic: Also I am not sure why single-player rpgs don't really have such things as customizable houses (in UO style) - changing actual look, not just using preset exteriors and interiors), elaborated crafting systems (though some games are close to) and such. Game doesn't have to be in 3D or fully support 5k resolutions.Think of it like Terraria but top-down view, party-based, with CRPG mechanics and probably no free terra-forming (unless it is done in some optional "world" like some kind of mini-game - like Disgaea Item Worlds, but on scale of actual game world!).

Properly done, I think such game would be highly popular. Come on, it is 2015 now, hardware race isn't everything, but neither is genre stagnation :) Some game models have more polygons (or even pixels) than amount of races, classes, items and monsters in that game taken together. Bring new concepts and/or improve old ones, which don't break the genre, and trash away level-scaling, no-respawning and twitch elements from CRPGs :) Give more freedom to players instead of hand-holding them by level-scaling, low level capping and such.
Posted July 23, 2015
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LiquidOxygen80: This. I would be highly surprised if indie sales make up any large part of overall sales at GOG to begin with, as the perception for GOG is still heavily emphasized on Good "OLD" Games. Lots of people still view it that way and probably will continue to. That said, I don't think there's huge overlaps in the industry between an indie dev and large AAA studios, and even if people hang out, unlike the indie dev, the AAA dev goes back to work to do exactly what the publishers funding them asked for, and most of those usually don't care about indies.
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Chacranajxy: I wouldn't be surprised if indie games are beginning to be a bigger and bigger part of GOG's sales, judging from the games that seem to frequent the popular games list on the front page. And indie games are becoming more and more of GOG's bread and butter, given how frequently they release them relative to old games these days. In any case, though, it seems more and more like GOG's trying to compete more with the other digital storefronts on PC rather than cementing themselves as an old games-only platform, and the only realistic way for them to build that reputation is for them to offer a more robust selection of what the broader PC gamer audience actually cares about.
I'd agree with the slower flow of old games, but you have to admit that they're still what captures attention from the broader media and gamers both, as evidenced by System Shock 2's re-release, and the Lucasarts titles. Indies tend to fall into two categories for me. Niche, hyper-niche and nostalgic. I would assume that nostalgia probably plays quite a large role in the buying habits of a standard GOG customer, and I would also assume that if that theory holds true, GOG's marketing people know this and tend to lean towards indie games that play more into the nostalgia category.

I realize that I only have my empirical evidence to offer, from myself and my friends' purchasing habits here, but as I said, if public perception is still heavily towards "GOG for old games," then I would also assume that there are quite a few people like me out there, that GOG attempts to cater to as their "bread and butter" items.

I'd agree that GOG IS attempting to branch out, but I mean, the last thing I'd want is for GOG to become Desura, then go the way of Desura.
Posted July 23, 2015
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Pheace: Steam's 'shovelware' period didn't start till a few years ago and you have to realize that they clearly stated that up until then, they simply were not capable of releasing more titles a year than they were before that. The floodgates opened when they became capable of doing so.

GOG is a small company, I have no doubt this 'boutique approach' they like to claim is not so much a choice as it is a necessity, GOG is only able to release so many titles a year. So to those wanting the gates to be opened, that's probably not an option.

Whether their curation could stand some improvement (like the OP is asking for), that's another matter. I've seen titles rejected I personally considered quite good, but then again I've noticed over the years my preferred titles don't tend to be top sellers, and I guess to a store, that last part is paramount.
This post pretty much sums up what I believe is the reason why GOG is so careful with releases. If they can start gaining more market share, I'd expect it would make it a lot more business sense to increase the number of releases... but for now, every release is already competing against eachother for GOG's (comparatively) meager userbase.

One thing that I do think is in GOG's power at this moment in time is that they could put a little more effort into developer relations at the time of rejection. Instead of a one-liner that often seems rather baseless like "We don't sell visual novels (except for the we actually do, and the game in question wasn't really a visual novel at all)", they could give a more thorough line of actual reasoning why they didn't accept the game AT THIS TIME, and a list of things the dev could do or market conditions that would perhaps make the game a better fit for GOG and that it might be accepted if resubmitted in the future. Maybe include some sort of non-disclosure agreement in the terms for submitting a game for consideration so that devs aren't allowed to blab and spill the beans on info that GOG would rather not be public.

As it stands, I'm actually of the opinion that GOG doesn't have enough manpower or resources to actually thoroughly evaluate many of the submissions they receive, and thus devs just get this standard effortless response when a game for some reason or other doesn't immediately scream out "this game can sell really well here right now, let's go get it".
Post edited July 23, 2015 by the.kuribo
Posted July 23, 2015
*sigh*
There seems to be a new thread about GOG's failings every day. I remember when we used to discuss games.
Call me back when Thomas Was Alone gets released here. ;)
Posted July 23, 2015
It seemed promising when GOG rolled out their developer portal in what seemed to be an attempt to reach out to smaller indie developers; however it's not clear which games, if any, resulted from that. If titles like Braid, Thomas Was Alone, or Cthulhu Saves the World get boo'ed then I'd be hard pressed to imagine which indie games GOG imagines would have worked out through that process.
Posted July 23, 2015
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Chacranajxy: I get why GOG struggles to bring some of the bigger publishers on-board, but indie games are the lowest of low-hanging fruit -- these games should be easy to bring over.
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JMich: Let's go over costs for those lowest of lows, shall we?
Assume the contract requires 10 hours to complete. If you've ever had any contracts written up, you'll know that is the bare minimum for it. Even if their lawyer is on retainer, let's assume his cost is $50/hour, which (again) is on the low end of the spectrum. We've gone up to $500 already.
Next, compatibility and performance testing. They have 20 machines on their test lab (at least 20 is the number I recall), so shall we assume 10 hours of testing per machine again, even though that may be barely enough for some games. For the testing, let's say minimum wage, $7/hour. That gives us $1400 for testing, and that testing will take time which could be used to test patches or fixes for other issues instead.

So, a bare minimum of $1900 for a new publisher of one game seems like a good baseline. GOG takes a 30% cut of the sales, so assuming a $9.99 game, they will have to sell ~500 units at full price to break even. How many people would buy a 6-month old indie game at full price, much less a 2+ years old? Most would wait for a sale instead, hoping for a 75% off. So the lowest of the low fruits would have to sell 2000 units to break even.
If you lower the price of the game, you need to sell more units, though you increase the chance of impulse purchases. If the price is higher than $9.99, you do need to sell less units, but impulse purchases are less frequent.

So, if you assume that each wishlist vote is a guaranteed sale (it's not), you see why the "several hundred votes" indie games may be ignored. Getting them here will be a financial loss instead of a financial gain. Go for the "couple of thousand votes" ones instead.

P.S. Feel free to correct my wage estimates, no idea if the $7/hour for testing is correct or not, or if the $50/hour for lawyers is viable either.
You are forgetting taxes, paypal / credit card fees and interest rate.

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There's no fee to use PayPal to purchase goods or services. However, if you receive money for goods or services (such as from selling an item on eBay), the fee for each transaction is 2.9% plus $0.30 USD of the amount you receive. International payments:
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The more discount you have, the lower returns so selling $2.5 at 75% off will get $2.1.

So given 70% to devs will left $0.63

Then there are taxes.
I guess GoG earn enough to warrant 32% tax, it may not be accurate because GOG expend to other country but I use poland tax as reference so left $0.43

Then there are interest rate if your take years to break even. Then there's man hour for sales talk, support when game fail, server cost and other misc fees. I would bump $1900 to $2500

I think it need 6000 copies to make it worth it.
Post edited July 23, 2015 by Gnostic
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionDear GOG, we need to talk about your cred in the indie dev community.(267 posts)(267 posts)
(267 posts)