Business case researcher David Wesley has posted an interesting analysis of the “decline” of music games at a performancetrap.org, a blog centered around his upcoming book, Innovation and Marketing in the Video Game Industry (co-written with marketing professor Gloria Barczak).
In the post, he asserts that music games have reached their peak of maturity, and are due for a substantial decline in sales and popularity. It’s an interesting read, and though I’m certainly no economist, he appears to provide plenty of evidence to back up his theory. But here’s the part I found particularly interesting:
Some companies are trying to compensate by adding more peripherals and more sophisticated game play. That is a common mistake. The target market of these types of games wants simplicity and adding more features will actually have a negative effect on sales.
Can this be right? Would players actually like Guitar Hero 5 more if it didn’t include the new Party Play features and competitive multiplayer modes? I know these are the things we critics went crazy for…but as we all know, critics’ opinions can often diverge pretty sharply from the consumers’.
I’d say there’s partial truth in there. I don’t agree about changes to gameplay and features causing a negative effect, but there is something to be said for an increasing amount of peripherals. Right now you can walk into any given Best Buy and there are probably at least three aisles worth of peripheral packages. This week they’re adding DJ Hero and next week will see the Band Hero set. This has to be overwhelming for the common consumer. Now most of those aren’t adding ‘new’ peripherals to the mix, but I’d imagine what is essentially the same thing in 10 different styles can be just as confusing and detrimental. At some point the regular shopper is going to think “Enough already!”.
“The logic is deceptively simple. Once people own a music game, there is less reason to purchase another one. Each additional music game purchase becomes subject to the law of diminishing marginal utility.”
I’m not an economist, but I’m not sure this really applies to video games. If this was true, why does Madden (except for this year) continue to sell more and more? It has been the same thing for years (and I’m a Madden fan). In fact, this writer would assume that Madden sales would decrease over time, since all of the additions they’ve made to the game since the early days have been adding to the complexity, not removing it (unless music games and Madden have totally different target audiences, but I’d say that isn’t true).
I’d suppose that new innovations/improvements to the games won’t attract new buyers as much, but it does keep those who are interested buying the new iterations.
Mike,
Actually, Madden is a very different product marketed to a different audience. Each year, a new release comes out with the latest players and updates current for the football season. Madden does not increase the number of product launches each year, nor does it add significantly to the complexity of game play. Complexity is not a bad thing provided that it is invisible to the player. For example, more details and features in the game are fine as long as it does not make the game more difficult to play. Adding more peripherals and more buttons could actually detract from the ease of use and playability that casual gamers are seeking.
Jeremy makes a good point about too many choices. We have examined this “Paradox of Choice” extensively in chapter 9 of the book, although the phenomenon is different from product life cycle and usability issues discussed above. I have a couple of short articles on the topic that I will be publishing on the website starting next week.
David, thanks for posting. I think I see what you’re saying now — you’re talking more about the complexity of the core gameplay experience rather than the game as a whole. So, the addition of the open note in the bass lines of Guitar Hero World Tour worked against the game (well, and I guess adding vocals and drums would have done the same), but adding, say, the Music Studio — an entirely new mode — did not. Do I have that right?
David,
Thanks for the reply. Year to year, Madden doesn’t increase in complexity for the player very much, but if you look at the beginning of the franchise, and what it is now, the complexity of play calling, adjustments, and player ability is significantly different than back in the old Genesis/SuperNes days. Buttons have been added, using all of what controllers can handle system to system. (there was no “juke” or “truck” back in the day) The difference might be that the core is still the same and much of the complexity is only necessary for expert users.
In this way, it’s pretty similar to what the music games could do – even now, a casual player isn’t using all 5 buttons on the guitar (assuming they play Easy/Medium). I think that this is one thing that music games have going for them right now. I can play on expert along with a brand new player (or casual player) and we can both have a great experience. This isn’t true in pretty much any competitive game. I would not have fun playing Street Fighter IV with an expert.
I realize the market will really answer what is going to happen to the music genre, but I don’t understand how updated graphics, new song selections, and improvement of features of the game in incremental ways isn’t the same as any “sequel” in video games. Sports games (within a sport), first person shooters, RTS games, even MMOs – they are all basically re-hashed of the same thing over and over, but people keep buying them. I mean, Halo:ODST and Killzone 2 aren’t really much different in terms of core gameplay as Doom or Goldeneye.
Mike,
That is a good observation about FPS games, which are another category that we address in the book. One thing to note about those games is that they are not growing significantly as a category in the same way as music and other casual games. The complexity that has developed around FPS games creates an important barrier to those who are unfamiliar with the genre.
You also don’t see the same level of innovation in FPS games as you do in small budget independent titles because of the risks involved. Those who cater to that market understand their target audience and stay within certain limits. Nevertheless, there have been some big budget flops in the FPS genre because of the level of competition and lack of market growth. The category can be very profitable for those who get it right, but that has become harder to do over time. That is why “Halo:ODST and Killzone 2 aren’t really much different in terms of core gameplay as Doom or Goldeneye.” If you are spending tens of millions of dollars on a title, you simply can’t afford to get it wrong.
David,
You’ve sold a copy of your book, it sounds interesting. I apologize if I’m now just asking questions that would better be answered by reading your book. How much information and data did you have regarding downloadable content for the music genre? I understand YTD sales, especially for Rock Band are down, but it seems like the output of DLC is only increasing – I’ve assumed it’s because they are profiting from it.
Looking at your graph “Number of Instrument Simulation Games Launched since 2005″ and I’m confused on one thing. Are you considering each of the Rock Band Track Packs as a separate game? It’s probably hard to really quantify them, they are somewhere between being add-on content, and a full release. I’d argue that they aren’t really leading to over saturation of the genre, as most people are buying them to augment the content available in RB2 (at least on the PS3 and Xbox 360). Sure, sales of each of these aren’t going to equal the main game (much less grow in sales), because each one is aimed at a particular musical taste, but I don’t see how adding to your music library means you won’t be interested in the next set of songs available.
With Rock Band behaving like a platform for playing with your music, and the Guitar Hero series also slowly moving that way, isn’t releasing more games that can be incorporated like selling CDs or Movies? Sure, there can be music and movies that don’t sell well, but overall they don’t see huge declines simply because people feel that they’ve heard or seen enough in general.
Mike,
There is a discussion about your last point on the original Gamasutra article that is linked to above where it says “[Read, via Gamasutra]“. Hopefully you will find the answer to your question there. If not, please let me know.
For the book, we have focused more on general trends, development strategies and management theory than on data (which becomes obsolete far too quickly, especially when the book won’t be in print until next spring). We do look at historical data over longer periods to help us identify trends, but you won’t find graphs like the one above in the book. I plan to use the website to link the concepts in the book to current events as well as to provide multimedia examples.