Ballerium was an Israeli MMORTS - Mass multi player Real time strategy developed by Majorem studio.
Another promising Israeli Tripe-A game company which failed. This one was the closest to success (almost published by Activision).
What were their problems?
1. Make sure there is target audience for the game niche
First and foremost ,they developed a niche game and the niche was bad.
They were unique with the RTS which is MMO , but that is generally a bad concept. There are not successful game today in this niche.
Going for a new niche is a very bold move. In the game business, unlike the other technology niches , being first in a niche does not mean you will be the most successful. It is typically the other way around. "Everquest" MMO had a small community , later MMORPG`s had more and more players and only years after the first game, the niche was accepted by the general public. I'm not saying you can not be the first an be successful (I think Id`s first FPS was a success) , but it is hard.
And as it turns out, that niche was not good enough.
This is the major reason for the game failure. A game without an audience , even if it is carefully coded , beautiful looking and aggressively published, can not sell enough to cover its investment.
2. Art - "sufficiently beautiful"
The game was bit ugly. You could see that some artists have been working there , but not enough. That was really shame for a game with so much work which was done into it. see screenshot and gameplay video.
As said in a previous post , art must be "sufficiently beautiful". sadly this game was not.
3. Don`t aim too high
: They developed all from almost scratch. Unlike "Rising eagle" , they could not use an existing game engine , because no MMORTS engine existed then, hell , the MMORPG market just started to flourish back then and no real MMO engine existed at all. They were smart enough to market the studio as both technology-engine and a game, but you have to remember that to be successful in both you need a lot of money to start with. really a lot.
Again a bold move. If the niche was good , and the game was good , they could have become an industry leader. But with the risk comes the failure. Aiming high meaning it is hard to polish the game and hard to be profitable if the game is only doing "some" money and is not a hit.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Why the game "Rising Eagle" was doomed to miserably fail
Rising Eagle is a FPS PVP (First-person-shooter Player-versus-player game) developed by "Inveasion interactive". It is in the same genre as the known "Counter-strike" ,"Team Fortress 2" , "Unreal tournament 3" , "Quake wars" games.
On the development of the game - a link in hebrew
Why was it doomed to fail from day one?
Poor technical choices , poor management choices.
It does not matter if you have 50 highly skilled geniuses which can code hanging up-side-down while sleeping , if you do not have good architectural plan , you end up with a carefully built , bug-less , piece of software , which no one outside the company will use.
Lets see some of these poor poor choices: We will first discuss the game engine choice (which killed the project) , then talk about the art (which nailed the coffin) and last but not least talk about the publishing (which burried the whole)
1. The game engine
Instead of licensing an existing state-of-the-art game engine, they decided to upgrade a low-end free game engine. I can count the number of PvP games which used this approach and did not fail on one hand (with few fingers to spare) and none of the successful games that I know of did it in the last 2 years.
One might ask himself, why oh why did they do that.
There can be few reasons , but it comes down to the "bordem level" to "minimal investment level" ratio.
Licensing a good existing engine costs a considerable amount of money (in the order of hunters of thousands of dollars) and leaves you with coding small , less interesting code. [most of the interesting stuff was already done by the engine for you]
Upgrading a low-end free engine costs nothing (in the short-term at least) and leaves you with an incredibly interesting code to code. It is cool as hell to code 3d graphics and networking code. Ask anyone.
So the rookies choose the second option which is great in the short-term. On the long-term however , it means that this game will fail miserably.
It takes a lot of time to upgrade a free engine to a "state-of-the-art" engine. I estimate it in tens of millions of dollars and 4-6 development time.
As time means money (programmer salaries are not cheap) , you end up after four years of 3 dedicated developers development with poor, buggy and hugely outdated engine.
Lets estimate how much it cost to develop this outdated engine. One programmer year is estimated as 100,000$. So it cost 3x4x100,000$ = 1.2 Million dollars. It costs more than it costs to license the engine!
So you are saying that no game studio should develop it`s own engine?
Generally yes. Most of the studios should not. There are few exceptions: if there is no engine for your type of game , or if you want to sell your engine to others , or if you are going to release multiple(more than 3) different games using this engine , or if you have an immense development budget and do not want to be dependent on someone else , then developing your own engine may not be a truely bad idea.
But for the majority of the studios it is a bad idea. very bad. The smaller the studio , the worse is the idea.
Art, or lack of
Good games do not have to look good. Games which sell do.
If you want to sell your game , you need to make it "sufficiently beautiful". It does not has to be the best looking game , but it should not be ugly. Ugly games do not sell.
If you look at game credits today , you will see that most of the development team is art-driven and not code-driven. Unlike code which can be reused between games , a considerable amount of art need to be developed for each new title.
What do you mean by art?
Not the Wikipedia art value for sure. I mean the 3d models, 3d animations, the textures,visual effects and even music effects.
Ok, I'm convinced that art is important , how much will it cost me.
In two words. A lot. Above million , but less than 20.
You need artists which are good at what they do. Unlike code , in art , there is a major difference between an average guy to a good guy. You need to get the good guys and you need to pay for them more.
You also need a lot of them, otherwise you will not finish the game in time.
Ahh, and the worst thing is that unlike the coders which may work for free/options , artists tend to want hard-cash for their work. so you really need to pay them.
If you started your company with bunch of coding friends , this is the time you will first realize you have a big problem which you can`t solve yourself. Some solve it by taking loans and pay artists (reasonable solution) , some solve it by sending their rookie coders to art-school and telling him: "how hard it can be to draw some painting / compose some music / create 3d animation". (clue: its very hard)
You can`t believe how many companies are cheap with the art. Most of them has three things in common: They did not start with a enough fund , they end up with ugly looking game , and the game does not sell.
3. The publishing
Lets say you have a working , yet unpublished game. Hooray to you , it was not easy.
Now to the publishing part. You can try to publish the game your self , but you will probably fail. So you need to go on the second bad options and find a game-publisher.
Game publisher are blood-suckers. You do all the work , they take all the money (or at least 70-90% of it). They can also decide to not work with you at all , if you do not fit their profile.
If you won`t find a publisher, you will probably won`t get anything at all , so use a publisher , and share the profit with him.
No publisher == No money at all.
Use a publisher.
On the development of the game - a link in hebrew
Why was it doomed to fail from day one?
Poor technical choices , poor management choices.
It does not matter if you have 50 highly skilled geniuses which can code hanging up-side-down while sleeping , if you do not have good architectural plan , you end up with a carefully built , bug-less , piece of software , which no one outside the company will use.
Lets see some of these poor poor choices: We will first discuss the game engine choice (which killed the project) , then talk about the art (which nailed the coffin) and last but not least talk about the publishing (which burried the whole)
1. The game engine
Instead of licensing an existing state-of-the-art game engine, they decided to upgrade a low-end free game engine. I can count the number of PvP games which used this approach and did not fail on one hand (with few fingers to spare) and none of the successful games that I know of did it in the last 2 years.
One might ask himself, why oh why did they do that.
There can be few reasons , but it comes down to the "bordem level" to "minimal investment level" ratio.
Licensing a good existing engine costs a considerable amount of money (in the order of hunters of thousands of dollars) and leaves you with coding small , less interesting code. [most of the interesting stuff was already done by the engine for you]
Upgrading a low-end free engine costs nothing (in the short-term at least) and leaves you with an incredibly interesting code to code. It is cool as hell to code 3d graphics and networking code. Ask anyone.
So the rookies choose the second option which is great in the short-term. On the long-term however , it means that this game will fail miserably.
It takes a lot of time to upgrade a free engine to a "state-of-the-art" engine. I estimate it in tens of millions of dollars and 4-6 development time.
As time means money (programmer salaries are not cheap) , you end up after four years of 3 dedicated developers development with poor, buggy and hugely outdated engine.
Lets estimate how much it cost to develop this outdated engine. One programmer year is estimated as 100,000$. So it cost 3x4x100,000$ = 1.2 Million dollars. It costs more than it costs to license the engine!
So you are saying that no game studio should develop it`s own engine?
Generally yes. Most of the studios should not. There are few exceptions: if there is no engine for your type of game , or if you want to sell your engine to others , or if you are going to release multiple(more than 3) different games using this engine , or if you have an immense development budget and do not want to be dependent on someone else , then developing your own engine may not be a truely bad idea.
But for the majority of the studios it is a bad idea. very bad. The smaller the studio , the worse is the idea.
Art, or lack of
Good games do not have to look good. Games which sell do.
If you want to sell your game , you need to make it "sufficiently beautiful". It does not has to be the best looking game , but it should not be ugly. Ugly games do not sell.
If you look at game credits today , you will see that most of the development team is art-driven and not code-driven. Unlike code which can be reused between games , a considerable amount of art need to be developed for each new title.
What do you mean by art?
Not the Wikipedia art value for sure. I mean the 3d models, 3d animations, the textures,visual effects and even music effects.
Ok, I'm convinced that art is important , how much will it cost me.
In two words. A lot. Above million , but less than 20.
You need artists which are good at what they do. Unlike code , in art , there is a major difference between an average guy to a good guy. You need to get the good guys and you need to pay for them more.
You also need a lot of them, otherwise you will not finish the game in time.
Ahh, and the worst thing is that unlike the coders which may work for free/options , artists tend to want hard-cash for their work. so you really need to pay them.
If you started your company with bunch of coding friends , this is the time you will first realize you have a big problem which you can`t solve yourself. Some solve it by taking loans and pay artists (reasonable solution) , some solve it by sending their rookie coders to art-school and telling him: "how hard it can be to draw some painting / compose some music / create 3d animation". (clue: its very hard)
You can`t believe how many companies are cheap with the art. Most of them has three things in common: They did not start with a enough fund , they end up with ugly looking game , and the game does not sell.
3. The publishing
Lets say you have a working , yet unpublished game. Hooray to you , it was not easy.
Now to the publishing part. You can try to publish the game your self , but you will probably fail. So you need to go on the second bad options and find a game-publisher.
Game publisher are blood-suckers. You do all the work , they take all the money (or at least 70-90% of it). They can also decide to not work with you at all , if you do not fit their profile.
If you won`t find a publisher, you will probably won`t get anything at all , so use a publisher , and share the profit with him.
No publisher == No money at all.
Use a publisher.
Why there is no Hardcore game industry in Israel?
The "boredom level" to "Minimal investment level" ratio.
The answer is simple: mere chance.
There is no inherit reason for this. After one game will succeed , a lot of studios will pop up like mushroom after the rain. The problem is that we all wait for that first game which no-one sponsors.
You might tell me , hey , I know of few game start ups which started and failed in the past years. So Israel did try , but something in the Israeli air dooms those games to failure.
My answer is a bit complex. Bear with me.
A software start up can be categorized by two criteria`s: The "boredom level" and the "Minimal investment level".
By Boredom level , I mean , whether a computer-science student will be willing to work on this project from a year with getting low or no salary. Lets give a job of working in COBOL in a bank a 10 Boredom level , and working in a cutting-edge, high-buzz start up a 1 level. Where do you think game studio will be? I recon level 1.
By minimal investment level , I mean , what is the minimal amount of work/money needed to produce a competitive product. Facebook started as one man project , so lets say the level here is 1. creating a new operating-system needs quite an investment meaning level 10. Where do you think game studio will be? most people don`t realize it , but it needs at least a 10 men crew working on it for two years for simple games and can grow to a 100 men crew for big games. Lets give it an 8 in the minimal investment level.
Now, my theory is that startups in areas where the boredom level is low but minimal-investment-level is high will have a lot and lot of failures. The simple reason is, that a lot of bored students will start them but do not have the momentum/funds to finish them. Without getting into names (I will get to that soon , don`t worry), the Israeli`s startups usually go into these category.
So does it mean that nothing can work in this category?
No. It means that you will see a lot of rookies try to climb this mountain and you should expect most of them to fall. But, someone which understands the difficulties before hand, gather the minimal-investment-level needed will still succeed there.
So you are saying that those game companies where rookies?
Yes. Totally rookies. With extremely stupid ideas. They got into it for the fun without thinking even a bit ahead.
Give some examples, men. You can`t just litter on people in general terms.
No problems. lets litter on "Rising eagle" FPS PvP which was released but as no considerable amount of players wanted to play it , became a free game [ which means no money gained for the game ]
I`ll dedicate a post for the biggest mistakes they made, and believe me, they are big... so big that after even one month of development you could say: this game will surely fail.
The answer is simple: mere chance.
There is no inherit reason for this. After one game will succeed , a lot of studios will pop up like mushroom after the rain. The problem is that we all wait for that first game which no-one sponsors.
You might tell me , hey , I know of few game start ups which started and failed in the past years. So Israel did try , but something in the Israeli air dooms those games to failure.
My answer is a bit complex. Bear with me.
A software start up can be categorized by two criteria`s: The "boredom level" and the "Minimal investment level".
By Boredom level , I mean , whether a computer-science student will be willing to work on this project from a year with getting low or no salary. Lets give a job of working in COBOL in a bank a 10 Boredom level , and working in a cutting-edge, high-buzz start up a 1 level. Where do you think game studio will be? I recon level 1.
By minimal investment level , I mean , what is the minimal amount of work/money needed to produce a competitive product. Facebook started as one man project , so lets say the level here is 1. creating a new operating-system needs quite an investment meaning level 10. Where do you think game studio will be? most people don`t realize it , but it needs at least a 10 men crew working on it for two years for simple games and can grow to a 100 men crew for big games. Lets give it an 8 in the minimal investment level.
Now, my theory is that startups in areas where the boredom level is low but minimal-investment-level is high will have a lot and lot of failures. The simple reason is, that a lot of bored students will start them but do not have the momentum/funds to finish them. Without getting into names (I will get to that soon , don`t worry), the Israeli`s startups usually go into these category.
So does it mean that nothing can work in this category?
No. It means that you will see a lot of rookies try to climb this mountain and you should expect most of them to fall. But, someone which understands the difficulties before hand, gather the minimal-investment-level needed will still succeed there.
So you are saying that those game companies where rookies?
Yes. Totally rookies. With extremely stupid ideas. They got into it for the fun without thinking even a bit ahead.
Give some examples, men. You can`t just litter on people in general terms.
No problems. lets litter on "Rising eagle" FPS PvP which was released but as no considerable amount of players wanted to play it , became a free game [ which means no money gained for the game ]
I`ll dedicate a post for the biggest mistakes they made, and believe me, they are big... so big that after even one month of development you could say: this game will surely fail.
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