Tim Brooks (Shrapnel) on why retail is dead

In article <1109338936.115975.152310 RemoveThis @g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
eddysterckx RemoveThis @hotmail.com says...

> > The model that's emerging is going to be quite different.
>
> Checking off your points against reality I'd be even as bold to say
> that the model *has* already emerged.
>
> Schwerpunkt is the best example of this, but as you've pointed out :
> there's nothing stopping Pete Programmer now from publishing his work
> independantly - - all thanks to the 'net.
>
> But I'm just wondering where the publishers fit into all of this as
> they seem to be doing fine. The Big Three (Matrixgames, Shrapnell and
> Battlefront) have all been signing up developers left and right in
> recent months.

I'd bet a buck, though, that the agreements programmers are operating
under with each of these are quite different from, say, those that
surrounded TOAW.

> As I see it Pete Programmer likes to progam but in order for his game
> to reach the customer there's a lot of additional work involved :
>
> - sprucing up the game with professional artwork and sound
> - having an online forum for gamers to discuss your game
> - settting up a secure e-commerce website + the logistical stuff
> - pr, annoucing your game to the world

Sure. All valid points. But I think this gets back to the original
issue; that in this emergent model, programmers are *only* going to sign
up for these advantages if they're not required to give up the ultimate
rights to their code. I mean, I could be wrong, but I think the days of
"sell us your game, then we own it, then we tell you to get lost" are
probably numbered, at least in a programming genre where mass-appeal is
unlikely.

> There used to be a time when in order for your game to reach customers
> you needed a publisher resulting in almighty publishers and developers
> losing their life's work to MegaPubCorp.
>
> But nowadays it's more like a partnership with the publisher taking
> care of all the additional work/headaches - the fact that Pete
> Programmer could go it alone if he wanted has leveled the playing
> field.
>
> The internet has given more power to the programmer, but the fact that
> publishers have been signing up developers like crazy lately indicates
> that everyone is happy with this new equilibrium. And what's more
> important : customers are benefitting from it.

Exactly. The relative "power" of the programmer and the publisher in
the sense of what they bring to the negotiating table has changed
forever. When programmers *needed* the whole hoo-haa of the
distribution apparatus, the publisher could come down on "take it or
leave it, bub." Nowadays, I suspect a good many developers would simply
"leave it," and explore another avenue of turning their code into $$$.

--
Giftzwerg
***
"The treachery is that Doug Wead waited until after
the election [...] Another round of explosive front-
page revelations from secretly recorded phone
conversations like today's and Bush's approval will
hit 70 percent."
- Mickey Kaus
 >> Stay informed about: Tim Brooks (Shrapnel) on why retail is dead 

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 07:36:13 -0500, Giftzwerg
<giftzwerg999 DeleteThis @hotmail.com> wrote:

>In article <1109317982.104521.142800 DeleteThis @l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
>eddysterckx@hotmail.com says...
>
>> A bit stating the obvious really, but nice that he has put down some
>> numbers as a starting point for a discussion about the alternatives to
>> retail.
>
>I'm not sure the issue is so much "retail is dead," but "why retail must
>change."

If you include e-commerce as "retail", maybe. Many commentators don't
include on-line transactions in the word. Some do. It's a moving
semantic target.

>The model we've seen for the last 20 years is:
>
>(1) Pete Programmer builds game.
>(2) Pete sells[1] his game to OmniMegaCorp, the publisher.
>(3) Omni dresses Pete's game up with Omni's bullshit, and markets it.
>(4) The public buys the game for three months.
>(5) Pete gets money.
>(6) After three months, the game goes in the bargain bin.
>(7) After six months, the game is entirely forgotten...
>( ...unless it's popular enough for a sequel. GOTO (1).

Based on the book publishing model, which is successful. I have
experience in that market and late-90s predictions of radical
changed/adoption of e-books are dead-in-the-water right now. It may
happen, but nowhere near as rapidly as early-adopters thought.

>The model that's emerging is going to be quite different.
>
>(1) Pete Programmer builds game.
>(2) Pete Programmer builds website, or partners with Joe Wargamer, who
>already has a website.
>(3) The game is downloaded by fans, who pay Pete directly.
>(4) Pete incures no particular cost in keeping the game on his
>"shelf," so he keeps selling it.
>(5) Pete improves his game over time and as hardware changes, so that
>he *can* keep selling it.
>(6) When Pete is good and righteously sick of screwing with his game,
>what does he do with it? If Pete's a smart fellow, and has other games
>he wants to sell, he might just post the code in the public domain, or
>license it off to someone else who wants to run with it. What probably
>doesn't happen is that Pete buries his game. Why do this?

All of this is fine and good for Pete. But that's only one end of the
snake (and not the mouth end.) A new model has to serve customers as
well or better than the current model. Publishers, despite your
seeming distaste for them, perform a basket of services that are
important to consumers. In a nutshell they ameliorate risk. This has
economic value.

>Some of the advantages of this are obvious, such as Pete getting to keep
>a better percentage of the money, but there are more subtle points which
>are already emerging in parts of our niche.
>
>For one thing, games are going to have a *far* greater shelf-life.
>Instead of being marketed over the short term and then being forgotten,
>games are going to be updated and improved *and sold* over a much longer
>timespan. We're already seeing this. TACOPS. HPS <anything>.

This is a good thing. Technology is improving fast enough (broadband,
media burners) that some former roadblocks are less serious. But it's
not the only thing keeping on-line distribution from exploding, and
not only in niche markets. If it was a home run, if all those nasty
intermediate costs could be taken out with no loss of volume, EA would
be doing it. Independent designers would be doing it without the EAs
(or Shrapnels.) But it's not an even trade. Those intermediate costs
buy intermediate services that lower consumer risk.

>For another thing, with the programmers directly involved in ownership
>issues - instead of soulless suits -

As a former suit (checks for my soul--yep, still there) I know that so
long as this is the attitude there will be jobs for suits. Suits do
numbers. Business is about numbers, soulful or not.

A very successful businessman (you've probably heard his name) once
told an audience of my peers and I, "I know only two truths about
business. One, I'm 206 quarters old. And two, you very rarely get
invited to the nice places if there are brackets around your numbers."

>These two points are crucial because there are any number of games which
>are perfectly good, but are sunk because the computing environment has
>moved on. I mean, how many DOS games would I still be playing if I
>didn't have to spend two days hunting up working VESA drivers for my
>SuperZapCo 256TB MegaSLI Card-Array - only to find myself squinting into
>a 640x480 postage stamp in the middle of an enormous LCD panel? When
>games are owned by their developers, and sold and improved over longer
>periods of time, there will be less impetus towards this "make a killing
>and then disappear" model which too many folks have been enthralled by.

I also have lots of DOS games I'd pay for a re-do on. But are
licensing deals the hold-up? Or low potential pay-outs for the effort?

>[1] Yes, yes, I know "sells" isn't the word that's wanted, but let's
>not wander into the fever-swamps of copyright and the like. Keeping
>terminology simple, "his" game isn't "his" any more.

When he takes money from the publisher to pay for services he can't or
won't do for himself a portion of the risk goes with the transaction.
Of course it's not all "his" anymore. Markets don't work that way.

Steve

--
www.thepaxamsolution.com
 >> Stay informed about: Tim Brooks (Shrapnel) on why retail is dead 

"eddysterckx@hotmail.com" <eddysterckx DeleteThis @hotmail.com> wrote in
news:1109317982.104521.142800@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:

> A bit stating the obvious really, but nice that he has put down some
> numbers as a starting point for a discussion about the alternatives to
> retail.

Not bad as a conversation starter. Facts and subject matter.

Of all of the different directions being tested for game distro I think
that Shrapnel as the developer-turned-publisher offering web-based
purchasing is a good example of the most stable model in the last couple of
years.

Retail stores and mass advertising is definetly having bumps so the large
publisher corporations I dont think I would invest in at the moment. Direct
Download, online-only, web based, phone games, console market... anything
else being watched as an alternative that Ive missed? Nothing strikes me as
ready to invest in IMHO

Gandalf Parker
-- no longer representing any gaming concern. Resume at
www.community.net/~gandalf/resume.txt
 >> Stay informed about: Tim Brooks (Shrapnel) on why retail is dead 

In article <vu0v11tarkk7uvqf8lpsh7vlhn8oc32mo7.DeleteThis@4ax.com>,
sbartman.DeleteThis@visi.com says...

> >The model we've seen for the last 20 years is:
> >
> >(1) Pete Programmer builds game.
> >(2) Pete sells[1] his game to OmniMegaCorp, the publisher.
> >(3) Omni dresses Pete's game up with Omni's bullshit, and markets it.
> >(4) The public buys the game for three months.
> >(5) Pete gets money.
> >(6) After three months, the game goes in the bargain bin.
> >(7) After six months, the game is entirely forgotten...
> >( ...unless it's popular enough for a sequel. GOTO (1).
>
> Based on the book publishing model, which is successful. I have
> experience in that market and late-90s predictions of radical
> changed/adoption of e-books are dead-in-the-water right now. It may
> happen, but nowhere near as rapidly as early-adopters thought.

I would argue that the book publishing model is irrelevant to software.
Simply put, computers bring *nothing* to books, so it's wholly
unsurprising that "ebooks" failed so miserably. Game software, on the
other hand, offers concrete and profound advantages over paper-based
games.

> All of this is fine and good for Pete. But that's only one end of the
> snake (and not the mouth end.) A new model has to serve customers as
> well or better than the current model. Publishers, despite your
> seeming distaste for them, perform a basket of services that are
> important to consumers. In a nutshell they ameliorate risk. This has
> economic value.

What "risk" is "ameliorated" by my purchasing games that are marketed by
traditional publishers, as opposed to my purchasing games that are
marketed directly by the development team? I guess you'll have to
define and explain this "basket of services" I'm getting from a
traditional publisher that I couldn't get directly from the developers.

> >For one thing, games are going to have a *far* greater shelf-life.
> >Instead of being marketed over the short term and then being forgotten,
> >games are going to be updated and improved *and sold* over a much longer
> >timespan. We're already seeing this. TACOPS. HPS <anything>.
>
> This is a good thing. Technology is improving fast enough (broadband,
> media burners) that some former roadblocks are less serious. But it's
> not the only thing keeping on-line distribution from exploding, and
> not only in niche markets. If it was a home run, if all those nasty
> intermediate costs could be taken out with no loss of volume, EA would
> be doing it. Independent designers would be doing it without the EAs
> (or Shrapnels.) But it's not an even trade. Those intermediate costs
> buy intermediate services that lower consumer risk.

Hmmm. Risk again. I'm not seeing it. Explain.

> >These two points are crucial because there are any number of games which
> >are perfectly good, but are sunk because the computing environment has
> >moved on. I mean, how many DOS games would I still be playing if I
> >didn't have to spend two days hunting up working VESA drivers for my
> >SuperZapCo 256TB MegaSLI Card-Array - only to find myself squinting into
> >a 640x480 postage stamp in the middle of an enormous LCD panel? When
> >games are owned by their developers, and sold and improved over longer
> >periods of time, there will be less impetus towards this "make a killing
> >and then disappear" model which too many folks have been enthralled by.
>
> I also have lots of DOS games I'd pay for a re-do on. But are
> licensing deals the hold-up? Or low potential pay-outs for the effort?

Maybe we should ask Norm Koger.

> >[1] Yes, yes, I know "sells" isn't the word that's wanted, but let's
> >not wander into the fever-swamps of copyright and the like. Keeping
> >terminology simple, "his" game isn't "his" any more.
>
> When he takes money from the publisher to pay for services he can't or
> won't do for himself a portion of the risk goes with the transaction.
> Of course it's not all "his" anymore. Markets don't work that way.

Well, they didn't use to. Now they do.

--
Giftzwerg
***
"The treachery is that Doug Wead waited until after
the election [...] Another round of explosive front-
page revelations from secretly recorded phone
conversations like today's and Bush's approval will
hit 70 percent."
- Mickey Kaus
 >> Stay informed about: Tim Brooks (Shrapnel) on why retail is dead 

In article <ei0v11hmbc0t0dkm16fjng1n9c0ifme3db.DeleteThis@4ax.com>,
sbartman.DeleteThis@visi.com says...

> I don't believe him. Capital does not flow to such propositions, and
> capital is not stupid.

New Coke.

--
Giftzwerg
***
"The treachery is that Doug Wead waited until after
the election [...] Another round of explosive front-
page revelations from secretly recorded phone
conversations like today's and Bush's approval will
hit 70 percent."
- Mickey Kaus
 >> Stay informed about: Tim Brooks (Shrapnel) on why retail is dead 

Giftzwerg wrote:
> In article <ei0v11hmbc0t0dkm16fjng1n9c0ifme3db.RemoveThis@4ax.com>,
> sbartman.RemoveThis@visi.com says...
>
> > I don't believe him. Capital does not flow to such propositions,
and
> > capital is not stupid.
>
> New Coke.


new coke was a misdirection play. coke changed the formula of old coke
substituting high frutcose corb syrup for cane sugar, they introduced
new coke and removed old, they waited for the outcry and reintroduced
the new"old" coke, none of the coke drinkes really noticed the slight
flavor change, new coke was killed off and it was mission completed
with no one the wiser at first.
 >> Stay informed about: Tim Brooks (Shrapnel) on why retail is dead 

ray o'hara wrote:
>

>>>and capital is not stupid.
>>
>>New Coke.
>
> new coke was a misdirection play. coke changed the formula of old coke
> substituting high frutcose corb syrup for cane sugar, they introduced
> new coke and removed old, they waited for the outcry and reintroduced
> the new"old" coke, none of the coke drinkes really noticed the slight
> flavor change, new coke was killed off and it was mission completed
> with no one the wiser at first.


They haven't used cane sugar in soft drinks since the early 1970s.
Fructose is a lot cheaper than sucrose.
 >> Stay informed about: Tim Brooks (Shrapnel) on why retail is dead 

In article <1109401191.533603.194400.RemoveThis@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>,
reoh.RemoveThis@comcast.net says...

> > New Coke.
>
>
> new coke was a misdirection play. coke changed the formula of old coke
> substituting high frutcose corb syrup for cane sugar, they introduced
> new coke and removed old, they waited for the outcry and reintroduced
> the new"old" coke, none of the coke drinkes really noticed the slight
> flavor change, new coke was killed off and it was mission completed
> with no one the wiser at first.

As usual, you're full of rich, brown dung:

http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/newcoke.asp

--
Giftzwerg
***
"The treachery is that Doug Wead waited until after
the election [...] Another round of explosive front-
page revelations from secretly recorded phone
conversations like today's and Bush's approval will
hit 70 percent."
- Mickey Kaus
 >> Stay informed about: Tim Brooks (Shrapnel) on why retail is dead 

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 18:46:59 -0500, Giftzwerg
<giftzwerg999.DeleteThis@hotmail.com> wrote:

>In article <ei0v11hmbc0t0dkm16fjng1n9c0ifme3db.DeleteThis@4ax.com>,
>sbartman@visi.com says...
>
>> I don't believe him. Capital does not flow to such propositions, and
>> capital is not stupid.
>
>New Coke.

A flippant answer to a complex situation. Whole books have been
written about New Coke. I've read some of them. Have you?

Steve
--
www.thepaxamsolution.com
 >> Stay informed about: Tim Brooks (Shrapnel) on why retail is dead 

Briarroot wrote:
> ray o'hara wrote:
> >
>
> >>>and capital is not stupid.
> >>
> >>New Coke.
> >
> > new coke was a misdirection play. coke changed the formula of old
coke
> > substituting high frutcose corb syrup for cane sugar, they
introduced
> > new coke and removed old, they waited for the outcry and
reintroduced
> > the new"old" coke, none of the coke drinkes really noticed the
slight
> > flavor change, new coke was killed off and it was mission completed
> > with no one the wiser at first.
>
>
> They haven't used cane sugar in soft drinks since the early 1970s.

coke was still using sugar,

> Fructose is a lot cheaper than sucrose.


hence the change.
 >> Stay informed about: Tim Brooks (Shrapnel) on why retail is dead 

Steve Bartman wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 18:46:59 -0500, Giftzwerg
> <giftzwerg999 RemoveThis @hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >In article <ei0v11hmbc0t0dkm16fjng1n9c0ifme3db RemoveThis @4ax.com>,
> >sbartman@visi.com says...
> >
> >> I don't believe him. Capital does not flow to such propositions,
and
> >> capital is not stupid.
> >
> >New Coke.
>
> A flippant answer to a complex situation. Whole books have been
> written about New Coke. I've read some of them. Have you?

in the 1970s i read a book on the glomar explorer, it went into great
detail on the mohole project, books arn't always the truth.
 >> Stay informed about: Tim Brooks (Shrapnel) on why retail is dead 

In article <4eb1215ph3b6hnd58aavcqdotidmsbr7sr.TakeThisOut@4ax.com>,
sbartman.TakeThisOut@visi.com says...

> >> I don't believe him. Capital does not flow to such propositions, and
> >> capital is not stupid.
> >
> >New Coke.
>
> A flippant answer to a complex situation. Whole books have been
> written about New Coke. I've read some of them. Have you?

A flippant answer is all a silly generalization like "capital never
flows to such propositions and is not stupid." Capital has flowed to
the most insane propositions and is exactly as stupid as the people who
manage it.

--
Giftzwerg
***
"The treachery is that Doug Wead waited until after
the election [...] Another round of explosive front-
page revelations from secretly recorded phone
conversations like today's and Bush's approval will
hit 70 percent."
- Mickey Kaus
 >> Stay informed about: Tim Brooks (Shrapnel) on why retail is dead 

ray o'hara wrote:
>
> in the 1970s i read a book on the glomar explorer, it went into great
> detail on the mohole project, books arn't always the truth.
>

ROTFLMAO!
 >> Stay informed about: Tim Brooks (Shrapnel) on why retail is dead