| Picko said: I'm not sure whether I ever used the word shovelware, well actually I'm very sure I didn't use it because I used it for the first time ever in this very sentence. Reviews in the aggregate effectively become a reasonably objective measure of quality, otherwise you can simply use budget which is highly correlated with high production values which translates into a quality game almost always. Either way it is not a particularly important point. There are however plenty of low budget games that have sold extremely well on the Wii. You should have a look for them. There is however, clear evidence that low budget games can be very lucrative for developers on the Wii. More to the point, a number of very successful Wii games have relatively low production values. Therefore, there seems to be evidence that Wii owners care less about the quality of the software relative to owners of other consoles, and therefore there is lower incentives for developers to make quality software and thus they don't. Game developers simply have a reduced incentive to work as hard on games on the Wii than they do on other consoles, which is reflected in the sense that they don't work as hard on Wii games - and that is surely not a contestable point. At the end of the day, my theory starts with the hypothesis that developers are rationally responding to market incentives, whereas everyone else is out there loosely referring to conspiracy theories and assuming companies must be insane. Conspiracy theories are a highly unlikely event and if possible the mass insanity of game developers is even less likely (in fact its absurd). The answer has to lie with there being screwed up incentives for Wii developers and this is likely to be the case whether Wii gamers wish to believe it or not. Just don't expect there to be a huge increase in the quality of third party developed games any time soon, you'll just end up disappointed. But I'm largely over debating the point, afterall it appears clear that Wii owners here would rather simply whinge than try to understand anything that is going on in the marketplace. |
You have a point. I do think a lot of 3rd party developers think like this. But the number of really succesful low-budget games on the wii is, as far as I can tell, really small. Almost all of the real successes are well-made games, not low-budget ones. The problem, we think, is that developers do not realise what makes Nintendo's games sell, and not theirs. If they put out high quality games, they would sell a lot more, is what we think.
High-quality does not at all mean highly scored games. It just means that the games are fun and good at doing what they're supposed to. This usually means you have to spend a bit of money on them, and maybe put people in charge that know what they are doing. It means looking over all the details, making sure everything is right.
The way to make a high-quality game lies in not thinking too little about ones audience, but instead trying to understand them. It lies in making a product that you are proud over, and that you would enjoy playing. Anyone assuming that their audience doesn't care about quality probably won't sell so many games, but they might make some money out of it anyway.
A great example of a high-quality game is Brain Training. It's a well thought-through, well executed and stylish collection of excersizes. It's simple, yes, but it never ever belittles the player. It uses really good voice-recognition software and pretty amazing handwriting recognition software (at least I think so). It is the perfect example of a high quality 'casual' game. It has sold around 15 million copies. If you think it sold that many just because it was a brain-training game, think again.
An almost great example of this is Boom blox. It contains almost the same qualities, except EA has specifically tried aiming it at kids at the age of 12. This is EA's doing, I think, and not the developers, since the interviews I have read on this subject has had the producer say 'It's great for everyone, and I like it a lot'. It's a great game that needs to be targeted to everyone. Let's face it, there are more of 'everyone' than of 'kids the age of 12'. And usually 'everyone' has more money to spend too.
I would not mind more high quality games like these, and I think that there is a market for them. But all of what I said here is just my personal opinion. I might be wrong. I usually am. But I won't assume that executives of big companies know better than me what kind of game I want to spend my money on.
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