Does High Production Value Matter?
If you talk to the CEO of any well-funded games company (and I have talked to all of them), he will tell you that social games are moving in the phase where high production values will be necessary if you want a hit game.
What are high production values? Generally, pretty graphics, some animations, custom music, and an overall polished feel. In the case of the new social games, this all will be delivered via Flash.
I've been hearing this high production value (HPV) argument since the arrival of Playfish onto the social gaming scene, about 6 months ago, give or take. However, I have not seen any evidence of its truth.
Taking a look at the top ten games on Facebook, five of them are HPV, and five are not. I've been tracking recent games that are gaining traffic, most of not HPV games. In fact, some of the most beautiful HPV games have failed to get any traction at all.
So if the data doesn't suppor this conclusion, then why are people saying it, and worse why are other people believing it?
1. To explain why Playfish has been so successful. Playfish came out of nowhere and dominated Facebook, with hit after hit. Playfish games were graphically superior and delivered via Flash. It seems reasonable to suggest that graphics + Flash equalled success. The real reason for Playfish's success is they understand the audience and makes fun games with 3-5 minute playing sessions.
2. It's the graphics fallacy at work again. For some reason, games companies traditionally have believed that better graphics=better games. It's been showed repeatedly to be false by a high number of beautiful and expensive flops. Meanwhile, games with poor (relatively) graphics are incredibly popular: World of Warcraft, Habbo Hotel, Desktop Tower Defense, Mob Wars. I suspect it's because number of pixels is a measurable quantity, but fun (the real reason games succeed) is not. Executives are much more comfortable using a metric that can be quantified, where's the fun column in the spreadsheet?
3. It's a self-serving argument for well-funded companies. If you have a lot of money and a lot of employees you can afford to spend money making a game pretty. Bedroom developers can't. If you can get everyone to believe that HPV matters then you get them to play a game that only you (the well-funded company) can win.
My point: if you're an indie developer, worry about getting the gameplay right and you'll get an audience. Don't drop $50,000 of making a beautiful Flash game that sucks. Let the guys with money do that. They can afford to (try to) fix bad games. You can't.
And please don't let the graphics fallacy infect social games. Thanks.
I'm sure there will be many that disagree and will argue until they're blue in the face that HPV matters. That's cool, make your case in the comments.
Oh, and I am aware that HPV has another meaning.
9 comments:
Companies that focus on HPV to the exclusion of all else typically do so because they aren't very good at innovating ideas of their own. Graphics matter when you have several developers essentially making the same game (racing games are a great example) and they can't really differentiate based on the gameplay. Sometimes a nice art style really helps to make a game more fun, but not art for art's sake.
For social games, I suspect that companies spending lots of money on HPV are essentially wasting it. What matters in social games are that the game loads quickly, can be played by many, shared easily and is novel in some respect worth talking about. As with every other sphere of the gaming universe, simply adding polish to cover over a lack of ideas rarely works.
Strong visual presentation cannot save a poor 'script' ... regardless of the medium. We've all seen the flashy feature film were somebody forgot to write a decent script, and we've all played flashy games were the designer forgot to craft the play mechanic around something that is fun.
That said, we've also all seen the feature film that looks great, built on top a great story with great characters. Dark Knight is the most recent example.
And we've all played games that play AND look great ... GTA is a one of many examples.
So why is it 'either or" here? To me it's pretty clear that social games will evolve visually ... with the winners being the ones that provide strong visuals to support strong gameplay.
I'm a big believer in 'fun' being the most important part of any game (I know tons of people that are thrilled to pull out the old Atari during a party simply because the games were easy and fun...and we love reliving those times)...
In a lot of ways, I view newer social games like sports games for the console...in that, it's about the interaction or the competition with the friends and the game play, more than it is about the graphics or a 'plot'...
All that being said, if you can find a way to have KICK B*TT graphics it never hurts...and I would go so far as to argue that it goes a long way in early adoption/notice for a game (getting people's attention so they'll at least give it a try)...
I think that the benefits of giving a game a good presentation are mainly felt during the first few minutes of learning and play. In a sense a game has to convince the player that it will give them a rewarding experience and not just waste their time (something quite a lot of Flash games do). So showing quality intro, menus and tutorial could well convince the player to spend more time learning fun aspects of the game itself. I know it works on me!
RE: anonymous. If you're an indie developer working on a shoestring budget then it is an either-or proposition. You can either spend your time polishing graphics or perfecting gameplay. You can try and do both, and that will cost you either time or money, both are scarce resources for most.
I'm a professional game designer/producer who has always claimed graphics don't matter to a good game. Recently though I'm starting to lean in different directions.
This evening I decided to learn about tower defense. (Yes, I'm that late to the party!) And oddly I wanted to find a variation with really high graphic quality. Seemed like it would be more fun somehow.
I settled on Onslaught which is fine but I was hoping for something really fantastical and uniquely themed with graphics to tie it all together.
Just more ramblings.
I've been developing games for 15 years and I can say that having good graphics and sound does go a long way to fool the average player into thinking your game is a LOT better than it actually is. Crappy/formulaic games with good visuals and sound have outsold games with superior gameplay/story more times that I can count.
Occasionally indie games come along that are hits but they become hits by fundamentally different means than those shiny shallow games.
The HPV games tend to get a mass of people drawn to them right from the start based entirely on looks whereas the low budget indie games tend to grow over time by word of mouth. This is so because when people see Flash games on a portal site, usually the only deciding factor whether they play it or not is if the image link on the site looks cool.
Much of what I was going to say has already been said (i.e. HPV and good gameplay are not mutually exclusive).
But I want to comment on World of Warcraft's graphics. I think its important to make a distinction between quality and style. WoW's graphics are not "realistic" per say, but I don't think realism necessarily equates to quality. Look at Braid, or Geometry Wars. In fact, I think WoW's graphics are a big reason why they are successful, and why they appeal so much to the mainstream. WoW has always been about having *fun*. This extends from their simple polished gameplay, down to the playful, sparkily, tounge-in-cheek graphics. This cartoony look is probably less intimidating to some one entering the genre (or gaming) for the first time than something more "serious" like EQ2.
This xkcd comic pretty much sums it up... :)
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/flash_games.png
Post a Comment