Issue 40 - Wal-Mart Rules

[The Escapist Staff]

Allen VarneyEven if you don't shop there, or even live near one, the retail giant Wal-Mart has probably affected your life in some way. Allen Varney discusses the Wal-Mart Effect on the gaming industry, and how parts of the industry are trying to break free.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: mofomojo

You're a short sighted moron.

You can't outsource cultural art, which is what videogames is. You can't outsource creativitiy - Do you know how many people in India play videogames regularly? Almost none. Of course, China is a different story, and they're getting their games production up. But you just can't outsource great minds.

Would the original rag-tag team of id Software could've created Doom in India or China? I don't think so. Can you find a chinese or indian equivalent of John Carmack? Or how about Will Wright? Or how about Miyamoto? Do you think that these great minds will uproot their homes and families and move to some developing nation just to keep their job?

Sure, you might be able to outsource model designing, a little portion of it maybe. Only repititive mindless manufacturing jobs are outsourcable, you can't outsource great minds and thinkers. You're a moron for not realizing this, in fact, I don't even know why they let you write for this magazine with your crappy redundant opinions that were stated exactly the same in about the last two or three issues of this magazine.

And there are a lot of creative minds beneath these people too. You can't outsource videogame modifications. Eventually, the Indian people are going to call for unions anyways, it's a definite probability - of course, they'll be repressed and of course, they're economy will be setback. But really, when the employees are making like $20 a week, and their employers are spending very little of their profits in this country, how much are they putting into the Indian economy anyways?

Not much, very little in fact. The government of India will realize this and begin to modernize it's economy. Eventually, india, in the next 20 - 40 years, will modernize it's economy and let inflation grow a bit more.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: anon

mofomojo, why the need for personal attacks?

Can you outsource Madden... yes!

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Allen Varney
http://www.allenvarney.com
Whether or not I'm a moron, my article doesn't say what you think it says.

My article says: " This has forced most American industries to move offshore, but the software business, and electronic games in particular, have been less affected this way. Though selected art resources are increasingly outsourced to India and Southeast Asia, games are largely still produced in relatively small, integral domestic groups. Is this because North American creators understand their audience better than overseas coders? Because the creators here are better skilled? Or is it simply that Wal-Mart customers, who unfailingly seek the lowest prices for food and appliances and shampoo and garden hoses, will still pay high prices for top-line computer games? For whatever reason, the game business has so far resisted most competition from lower-wage workers overseas."

My article specifically says the gaming industry ISN'T being outsourced.

Maybe I should have used shorter syllables.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: SKTurner

This is an interesting article, but that's not why I'm commenting.

Appearantly, someone "dugg" it: www.digg.com [http://www.digg.com/gaming/Does_Wal-Mart_Control_Game_Design_].

Interesting comments there. It's even getting pretty popular.

Made a comment myself (as AerodynamicHair), since there seem to be many interesting interpretations of the article by the users.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Steve Peterson

Good article, Allen.

The dream of infinite shelf space, while solving some problems, has its own issues. When there are thousands of titles to choose from online, getting found becomes difficult. Marketing (viral or otherwise) becomes much more important. Sure, user recommendations and various social networks can help, but it's still going to be difficult. Small developers will be able to create original titles without retail oversight (if they can afford the development budget on their own), but they're going to have to find ways to make people aware of their games.

Still, I look forward to seeing digital distribution become more popular -- it should result in more titles, more originality, and better rewards for small developers.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Charlie_Six
http://virtualmerc.blogspot.com
Does the Wal-mart Deer Hunter crowd actually buy from online distrubition stuff like Steam? Sure would surprise me if they did. I can't imagine Walmart's game selling power fading away for a looooooong time.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: BlindMonk
http://www.redredballoon.com
In Deer Hunter's defense, simple and easily accessible gameplay is something to be admired. In defense of the Deer Hunter "crowd", I ask who here hasn't found some pleasure in the simplistic, 'one-handed' allure of a standard Flash game? There's a time and place for all walks of gaming life.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Saurabh Garg
http://phoenix.gargs.com/blog
I think that Walmart is unnecessarily made the evil entity, when it has actually done so much for consumers in terms of pricing. If the American people really cared about indigenous industries, they wouldn't go out in droves to shop at WalMart. We all love low prices, and you can go ahead and blame corporate America for paying millions to their CEOs and selling products at a higher price/outsourcing.

That said, I think mofomojo has no idea about how outsourcing works. There is no "repressal", there are no economic setbacks, and the companies do in fact invest the money back into India. Heck, the top 3 tech companies in the US just announced more than $4 billion worth of investment in that country!

Although it's kinda hard to educate people about outsourcing, I would just like to say that it isn't just about costs.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Charlie Six
http://virtualmerc.blogspot.com
Blindmonk, simple games are great! But casual gamers don't strike me as the kind of people who will gravitate to online distribution sites. Isn't Wal-mart's game selling power all about the fact that people can buy everything they want at a Wal-mart? And I'd imagine people who are picking up Deer Hunter are primarily people who are just walking past the game aisle while looking at a TV or movie to buy. Then boom "Hey, Deer Hunter! I like hunting deer!" So they buy it.

Garg, there was recently some poll that showed that most Americans have a love/hate relationship with Wal-mart. It goes something like this: "I hate big business! But boy those low prices sure are great.." It's sad and funny at the same time. Mostly sad, IMO.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Insider

Wal*Mart dictates many things, box size was one, game content is another driving force. It's not just Wal*Mart that plays dirty...they carried God of War didn't they? They sure wanted to sell those PSPs...

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Ian Easton

Excellent article. I knew that Wal-Mart had a strong effect on the gaming industry (the examples of Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior come to mind), but not to the level you've indicated. Hopefully digital distribution will pull gaming back from the least common denominator, and bring back some of the niche genres of yore (I've been playing adventure games since I was 6, and would love to see a major resurgence).

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Brian Easton

I know that this is a minor part of the story but I'm going to argue that a reduction in box size hasn't necessarily been benificial to the gamer. Before the box size reduction Diablo II (and other games) came in a nice 4-disc (it was on 3 discs but I digress) jewel case and had a large manual with easily readable print. On the other hand World of Warcraft's four discs came in a cobination of cardboard and paper sleves, and the manual, while thick, features text that runs practically into the binding. Gone are the days of games like Red Baron where the spiral-bound manual was almost as fun to look at as the game was to play (and Red Baron was a blast.) But of course games were going this way before the box size reduction. With the advent of CDs and PDFs the elimination of hard copy manuals was an early cost cutting method.

With digital distrobution all of this will be lost. My thoughts are that with this there will be two kinds of games that get heavy distrobution through digital channels; there will be simple games like the ones we alredy see in web portals like Popcap and on Live Arcade which have few instructions and a prehaps a moderate tutorial (this includes adventure games and FTS'), and there will be the hardcore simulations which are full of hot-keys and readouts, but who's players are willing to print out and pour over 50 page manuals. Most of the other games will probably be lost in between. The kind of games that could be lost are stuff like realtime strategy games and semi-casual empire builders like Civ, games where it is nice to have a manual near by, but you aren't willing to print it out just to play. But, maybe I'm wrong.

In any case it seems like, if anything, the advent of digital distrobution means the re-sugence of shareware. Once again we may be downloading larger demos of games and then paying a moderate fee for the whole thing. I could say more but I've said enough already. I will only say that if digital content distrobution is going to succeed then we need a better model than Steam.

 

[Vandemar]

Oh, I don't know Brian. Yes, there were occasionally games with lots of stuff in them. I remember buying Icewind Dale when it launched and I got a cloth map and the spiral-bound manual and a bunch of other goodies...but I also remember buying lots of games that were little more than a 20 page manual, a card showing what keys did what, and a CD case in those Giant Boxes of Doom. For every Wing Commander 3 (which came with about 10 zillion manuals and actually provided enough reading material for a plane trip I took) was a game that put in an elaborate cardboard CD holder and manual and called it a day.

To get back to the article, I'm not surprised at all. To retailers, games are just another box to sell, not anything special.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: BlindMonk
http://www.redredballoon.com
Charlie Six, I definitely agree with you. I would think that attitude extends, however, to a great number of people who are "in the market" for entertainment. The casual browsing mood, a PC/DVD/CD cover catching the eye, the impulse purchase ("Hey, it's under $10, no biggie"). As far as digital distrubution, I would think it just a matter of time until the casual consumers -- those who don't research the products ahead of time -- become more tech savvy or more aware of other methods of making their purchases (and I think, as a society, we are generally more knowledgeable about the tech encroaching on every side of daily life).

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Clay Dreslough
http://www.sportsmogul.com
>Comment from Charlie Six on Apr 12, 2006 at 5:50 am · http://virtualmerc.blogspot.com Blindmonk, simple games are great! But casual gamers don't strike me as the kind of people who >will gravitate to online distribution sites.

Casual gamers love online distribution as much as anyone else, as long as you make it easy, don't mess with complicated 'e-licenses' and have good customer service. We make the 'Baseball Mogul' game mentioned in the article. Our average buyer is the prototypical 'casual' gamer: a web-surfing baseball fan in his 30s whose only computer game purchase this year is Baseball Mogul.

It's possible in fact that the reverse is true -- that a higher percentage of casual gamers buy online -- because they aren't spending their lunch hour every Tuesday driving to EB Games and checking out the new releases.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: A Hettinger
http://oninoshiko.deviantart.com/
The inherent problem for the online distribution methodology is while you shelf is infanitly large, your presence becomes infanitly small. It will overly benifit portal providors which, in the end, will carry a wal*mart-esque power over the industry. If your choice is your soul or you survival, most will be spending some time at 444.7 °C...