What cau$ed the decline?

[Necroscope]

Guys can somebody fucking explain to me how the development costs have risen so much? As far as I understand it, the development cost is the salary of the people in the office, the office itself and the shit like free coffee mugs for every office worker. Where is the rise? What more do they need than they needed before? I don't believe these claims about the humongous costs through the roof. All the money goes somewhere else, most likely the PR and some internal corruption.

Music, voice acting, cinematics, getting third party devs to do ports and other stuff, etc.

hm, so the older games didn't have music, cinematics and ports?

Voice acting, motion capture and complex 3d graphics (like with normal maps that are baked from ultra high poly meshes)? No. Also, advertising costs fortune.

 

[Jarpie]

Guys can somebody fucking explain to me how the development costs have risen so much? As far as I understand it, the development cost is the salary of the people in the office, the office itself and the shit like free coffee mugs for every office worker. Where is the rise? What more do they need than they needed before? I don't believe these claims about the humongous costs through the roof. All the money goes somewhere else, most likely the PR and some internal corruption.

Music, voice acting, cinematics, getting third party devs to do ports and other stuff, etc.

hm, so the older games didn't have music, cinematics and ports?

Voice acting, motion capture and complex 3d graphics (like with normal maps that are baked from ultra high poly meshes)? No. Also, advertising costs fortune.

Don't forget that AAA-games can nowdays have 200-300 people working on the game, instead of 20-30 like in the 90s.

 

[Cadmus]

Guys can somebody fucking explain to me how the development costs have risen so much? As far as I understand it, the development cost is the salary of the people in the office, the office itself and the shit like free coffee mugs for every office worker. Where is the rise? What more do they need than they needed before? I don't believe these claims about the humongous costs through the roof. All the money goes somewhere else, most likely the PR and some internal corruption.

Music, voice acting, cinematics, getting third party devs to do ports and other stuff, etc.

hm, so the older games didn't have music, cinematics and ports?

Voice acting, motion capture and complex 3d graphics (like with normal maps that are baked from ultra high poly meshes)? No. Also, advertising costs fortune.

Sure, I can buy the motion capture and voice acting. The complex 3D graphics not so much.

What are those complex 3D graphics, in which games? I suppose if you're making a super duper pretty FPS that's what you mean? And the costs for these translate to what, man hours? Renting some program? What? Is that such an incredible amount of money for these? Do our favourite new cRPGs have that?

 

[Necroscope]

Don't forget that AAA-games can nowdays have 200-300 people

And these ppl don't take beer for their work.

What are those complex 3D graphics, in which games?

Compare NWN1 with any latter 3d cRPG.

 

[DraQ]

Microsoft Windows.

Mass accessibility was what got the ball of decline rolling, as is always the case.

It might not have been readily apparent for quite some time, when we abolished setup.exe and manual editing of config.sys and autoexec.bat we certainly didn't even realize that we were jamming the floodgates of the decline wide open, but mass appeal allowed inflation of budgets followed by need for more mass appeal and laying groundwork for multiplatform development, simplification and catering for lowest common denominator in an effort to fuel ever inflating budgets with more and more millions of sales.

The obsession to must have 3d graphics.

This unfortunate misguided belief killed no end of PC stalwart titles from Worms to Broken Sword and from Balder's Gate to Commando. This drove the impetus of design towards cut-scenes, quicktime events, and uninteresting combat and away from tactics, quick-flowing gameplay, and involved problem solving.

 

[Vault Dweller]

RPGs never sold as well as action games and it was the action games that popularized video games. With each generation of games, action games sold more and more, appealing to wider and wider audience and becoming household rather than geekdom names. The skyrocketing costs (to make AWSUM! visuals) made the situation worse. Not only RPGs earned less money, which was bad enough, but they could also bankrupt studios.

Daggerfall nearly bankrupted Bethesda (if ZeniMax didn't step in and 'save' it). Oblivion made it rich. Troika refused to drink the kool-aid and died. Bioware went full retared and prospered.

It wasn't Fallout that started the RPG 'renaissance', but Diablo (originally turn-based, changed to RT early in development) and Baldur's Gate (RTwP - it plays itself! just click on the enemies and don't worry about them numbers and dice-rolling; and insanely awesome graphics that every magazine was raving about).

It became the formula - focus on the visuals for the magazines and sites to rave about it (remember Oblivion's 3 key features? 'realistic' forests, soil erosion, patric stewart) and action gameplay. Anything else was bound to fail.

 

[Avellion]

Guys can somebody fucking explain to me how the development costs have risen so much? As far as I understand it, the development cost is the salary of the people in the office, the office itself and the shit like free coffee mugs for every office worker. Where is the rise? What more do they need than they needed before? I don't believe these claims about the humongous costs through the roof. All the money goes somewhere else, most likely the PR and some internal corruption.

Voice Overs, especially bad when people demand full voice overs for games and a fully voiced protagonist.
3D Programming
Better technical graphics
Better Sound
Bigger Teams

And while it isnt directly related to costs, the economy is a mess too.

While it is not an RPG or a PC game, here is the size of the development team of Super Mario.

That is really just one of many examples of how much development teams have grown. I can only imagine how much more expensive RPGs are to produce with entire writing teams and voice over teams.

 

[Jarpie]

Those who claims that it was Microsoft who brought the decline, not Sony...don't forget that when PS1 was released, the publishers and devs saw how much it sold so they started to switch for PS1 from the PC.

 

[:Flash:]

Guys can somebody fucking explain to me how the development costs have risen so much? As far as I understand it, the development cost is the salary of the people in the office, the office itself and the shit like free coffee mugs for every office worker. Where is the rise? What more do they need than they needed before? I don't believe these claims about the humongous costs through the roof. All the money goes somewhere else, most likely the PR and some internal corruption.

Music, voice acting, cinematics, getting third party devs to do ports and other stuff, etc.

hm, so the older games didn't have music, cinematics and ports?

Voice acting, motion capture and complex 3d graphics (like with normal maps that are baked from ultra high poly meshes)? No. Also, advertising costs fortune.

Sure, I can buy the motion capture and voice acting. The complex 3D graphics not so much.

What are those complex 3D graphics, in which games? I suppose if you're making a super duper pretty FPS that's what you mean? And the costs for these translate to what, man hours? Renting some program? What? Is that such an incredible amount of money for these? Do our favourite new cRPGs have that?

You need a lot of 3d models, and guys who create them. Then you need a lot of textures, and texture artists for them. Then you need people who create the levels. Then you have people who write shaders for magic effects, etc. etc.
And each employee costs a lot of money for a company, it's not just the salary.
Compare that to the graphics of Blade of Destiny, where you have 3 sets of wall tiles, each with about 5 different tiles. Or to the complete tileset of Ultima VI:

Spoiler

The Cinematics of Floppy Disk games consisted of some bitmaps that were animated by moving some small bitmap overlays and palette effects, because the Floppies didn't have space for more.
Full voice over had already been mentioned - one of the worst developments: A huge money pit that actually makes games worse. But it's a must-have nowadays. When Larian said that D:OS would not be fully voice acted, you could read a lot of comments of people who said this was a deal-breaker for them, and they wouldn't buy the game if it wasn't fully voice-acted.

 

[pippin]

Wasn't Oblivion the game which had a team entirely dedicated to model and animate trees?

 

[AwesomeButton]

RPGs never sold as well as action games and it was the action games that popularized video games. With each generation of games, action games sold more and more, appealing to wider and wider audience and becoming household rather than geekdom names. The skyrocketing costs (to make AWSUM! visuals) made the situation worse. Not only RPGs earned less money, which was bad enough, but they could also bankrupt studios.

Daggerfall nearly bankrupted Bethesda (if ZeniMax didn't step in and 'save' it). Oblivion made it rich. Troika refused to drink the kool-aid and died. Bioware went full retared and prospered.

It wasn't Fallout that started the RPG 'renaissance', but Diablo (originally turn-based, changed to RT early in development) and Baldur's Gate (RTwP - it plays itself! just click on the enemies and don't worry about them numbers and dice-rolling; and insanely awesome graphics that every magazine was raving about).

It became the formula - focus on the visuals for the magazines and sites to rave about it (remember Oblivion's 3 key features? 'realistic' forests, soil erosion, patric stewart) and action gameplay. Anything else was bound to fail.

Very good, much agree, but two points:
1. Oblivion made it rich, and then Skyrim scored so good that everyone tries to imitate its retardation, and somehow fails at it.
2. Who even needs to impress magazines any more, when your media budget is in the millions and you can just buy take them on a retainer for as long as your campaign lasts. Media corruption - I knew I'd forgotten to address something in my last post.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

Apologies if this subject has been done to death, but I realize that while it's generally accepted that cRPGs (and, arguably, gaming as a whole) went into a decline starting in the early 2000s, I don't have a very firm understanding of what caused it to happen and what is ultimately driving the recent promise of a turnaround.

One thing in particular that jumps out at me regarding the Kickstarter renaissance is the recurring theme of once-bright devs being stuck in casual/mobile/MMO hell and finally reaching to Kickstarter as a means to escape and return to their passion projects. The problem is that I'm just not really sure if that narrative, which I've seen pop up time and again, is ultimately true and, if so, what fundamental shifts in the marketplace would have led them to being stuck for so long in exile.
..............

In my eyes it's simple. I don't need to explain the minutia for me to believe. Basically, the software industry started small. The first game makers were very technical and/or particular, as they were themselves part of the tech industry and entering into an emerging market. As the gaming industry grew, the consumer base outgrew the makers. Either the technical/particular ones had to adapt or be thrown out. Publishers wanted less demanding games which could be played by more and more people.

This was true in console games too. They started out very demanding. You had to have your eyes glued to the screen and your sweaty hands fastened tight to the controller. Things could be very confusing or twitchy or require weird control combinations. If you lost, you had to start all over again. Nobody cared back then because it was an emerging market. As it grew, they wanted to reach larger and larger segments of the population. This meant dissolving any "particular" things, like things which were too twitchy or too technical or too demanding. This has evolved to current games where you can play the game on normal half asleep. The only way to feel like you have to be alert is to raise the difficulty slider until a couple hits kill you and save points are fewer.

Mainly, the effort has been to eliminate "particular" things. That's why a lot of angry fed-up (/lol) gamers refer to the "common denominator." The idea behind this is to find all the common things between gamers and compile a list of them which constitutes the highest population. In principle, this means if you abide by this list then you'll be able to produce a game desired by the largest population. Note this means the players will LIKE the game. However, if the things they desire from a game star to conflict or diverge too much from the common denominator then they'll not enjoy it anymore and get left outside cold and wet.

As this was happening, the indie market grew to fill this niche. This is why you see games still being made which have "poor gameplay" or "bad graphics" according to the authorative game review sites. Some of these game started coming out first from foreign countries. If you lok at Japn, for example, the average japanese gamer was still ok with grindy technical gameplay, but the same can't be said of most western gamres. In fact, I recall reading on a website that asians learn best after failure, whereas westerners learn best after succes. I guess this is somehow supposed to explain it.

So the word you're going to get from me is a positive one. Everybod is geting what they want. The players who fit under the largest classification are having fun and the outcast gamers are having fun. Kickstarter is a reasuring sign too.

I also want to add the indie industry and the mainstream industry benefit each other. Any innovation in one is bound to find its way into the other, obviously with more or les mainstream eleements attached to it. If it gets moved from the mainstream to the indie, the indies cry "We have what they got and more!" If it's indie and moved to the mainstream, it's "100x better!"

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Microsoft Windows.

Mass accessibility was what got the ball of decline rolling, as is always the case.

It might not have been readily apparent for quite some time, when we abolished setup.exe and manual editing of config.sys and autoexec.bat we certainly didn't even realize that we were jamming the floodgates of the decline wide open, but mass appeal allowed inflation of budgets followed by need for more mass appeal and laying groundwork for multiplatform development, simplification and catering for lowest common denominator in an effort to fuel ever inflating budgets with more and more millions of sales.

 

[tuluse]

Hmm...no. At least this particular comparison is false.

Name me a console developer that's still around since the 1990s. Bonus points if you can name a console developer since the 1980s.

It's easy to come up with SEGA and Nintendo from the 80s, and Sony from the 90s, but whom else?

80s: Konami, Capcom, Game Freak, Rare, Atlus, From Software, SNK*, Arc System Works, Bandai Namco**
90s: Naughty Dog, Insomniac, WayForward

Nintendo has a number of wholly owned development teams that have their own branding, not sure how to count those.

*SNK actually went bankrupt, but then was resurrected as SNK playmore, and they were at times more of an arcade company than console.

**company has actually been in business since the 50s

Then come up with a PC developer that's still around since the 1990s, and again from the 1980s.

What names come up? EA and Activision from the 80s, possibly even Atari. From the 90s there's Blizzard and Bethesda.

Revolution and Cyan are still around. id still exists even if they've been bought by Zenimax. Same with Arkane. Gearbox. Valve. Treyarch. Monolith.

Well, I'm getting tired of thinking of names now. I'm sure my 90s console list is horribly incomplete as well as the PC list in general. I think most of those PC devs founded in the 90s though. Not many from the 80s still around.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Switching over to 3D was the start.

Yes it did!

It never ceases to amaze me how easily staff members brofist shit that is obviously missing the point, even from kindergarten levels of reading comprehension.

Pre-2004 the market gave you a huge choice of formats that tended to present their game in the format that suited it best. Post-2004 all you got was crappy 3d games with the combined nightmare of unbelievably unhelpful camera spinning.

If you're desperate to be pedantic for the forum lolz of it all then pretty much all post-pixel games are 3d if they express depth within their image, it doesn't matter whether they're cubist or landscapes, sprites or models, what people mean when they say 3d computer games is spatic camera, motion sickness, running in zig-zags, impossible depth perception, change of core mechanics focus 3d, not just the idiot's definition of 3d...

Obviously...

 

[Mustawd]

I think what's even more interesting is to think of the flip side of this question: what caused the incline?

Think about it...the Internet has been around for a while. Why did it take until 2012 for Kickstarter? There were indie developers this whole time...why did it take so long for the, to make quality/niche /profitable games?

For example, to me it seems like the ingredients for D:OS have been there for years.

 

[Machocruz]

Vault Dweller's point rings most true with me, due to my background as a kid in the arcades in the 80s and 90s. The dominance of action games is a key component. Computer games may have been a nerd pastime, but arcade games --and by extension, console games-- were not. If you were in an arcade on any busy day, you would see a mixed clientele: nerds, troublemakers, jocks, metal-heads, gearheads, gangstas, punks, punkettes, joe six pack, etc. Spectacle, lights and movement, it's what first attracts the average person to video games. The immediate physical and technical characteristics of arcade play provided accessibility that Apple 2C and Commodore 64 games did not. It is not surprising that video games that are an extension of the playground and sports, which arcade games were in a way, would appeal to the average person (a lot of geeks tend to overlook or deny the normal human zeal for physical activity) , as we saw back then and again with the Wii.

With every jump in spectacle, the audience grows. People bought Playstation for games like Battle Arena Toshinden, a rather mediocre fighting game and example of 3D graphics. The average person is a graphics whore, basically. This is why games like Final Fantasy 7 and Oblivion become the face of a genre. They don't care about genre, and this I know from first-hand experience. If the game looks impressive, they'll ask about it, seek it out. Skyrim didn't sell 20 million copies to the RPG faithful. I have a friend who still asks about every FF that comes out, even though he doesn't play games and certainly isn't into any form of the RPG genre. He doesn't even play the Final Fantasy games. This kind of thing is not uncommon.

The average person doesn't care about technicalities of difficulty, depth, or complexity. The spectacle comes first. If a game fills that prerequisite, and is not too punishing to them, they'll go along with it. Predictably, video games doubled down along those lines last console generation when the Xbox 360 and PS3 provided even more mainstream spectacle than ever before, closer and closer to a facsimile of film - the dominant art and entertainment of the 20th century- which drew in a new crowd of people who never paid games any attention before and were not ready for or interested in difficult or complex play. The game companies see this and make the correlation between spectacle, audience growth, production cost, and ease of use. They are not blind.

The other feather in the cap of arcade and console games was cost. At 25 cents, the barrier to entry was low. A 200 home machine, while a hefty lump sum compared to feeding credits, was still less expensive than a computer.

If one says that the decline of CRPGs specifically is independent of the console scene, maybe they are right. In hindsight, it looks like a lot of troubled product was being put out in that genre toward the late 90s/early 2000s. Bad sequels to storied franchises, shoddy workmanship, delays, etc. Or maybe computer players got tired of dealing with the quirks of the platform, and figuring games is games, fled to consoles. Or they remained on PC but, like the average entertainment seeker, weren't immune to the immediacy of arcade-like play in the form of your Dooms and Diablos. As a creator, why toil away trying to make something that lives up to your PnP memories when the reward has become so little?

But the decline is a creature with many tendrils, grasping all. Major PC and console development are both affected by the same forces now.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

YOu know it's not really a decline if a game is not made for you. And since the indie market (read: 1-person teams all the way up to small companies) filled this niche there's not really anyting to complain about. It's only a decline if you stuck to mainstream games even as you didn't like it. Once you start playing what you like, you'll get over it.

Want to also add many of us in 1999-2005 were still playing games from the 1990's.

In fact, I STILL play old (1990's/2000's) games available on GoG. I played Fallout recently. And there're many of those games I've yet to play and want to. One of htem is Outcast. My point? Don't underestimate old games.

Kickstarter for me is the continuation of the past. Niche (or "good") games did not start with Kickstarter. I think the young and aspiring like to put it in the context of something revolutionary to feel part of something special. But I just laugh at that. If this was 2005 you'd be playing Master of Orion II (or something els) and you wouldn't give a s*** about kickstarter. Every generation it seems latches onto something and gives it embellished meaning so it can raise the bar higher than its ever been.

 

[FeelTheRads]

The obsession to must have 3d graphics.

This unfortunate misguided belief killed no end of PC stalwart titles from Worms to Broken Sword and from Balder's Gate to Commando. This drove the impetus of design towards cut-scenes, quicktime events, and uninteresting combat and away from tactics, quick-flowing gameplay, and involved problem solving.

Yes, DraQ, those games and in fact all games benefit from 3D, because man its 3D like the real world did you know the real world is #D i did not know thats how i learned to stop worrying and start love the $D

 

[belowmecoldhands]

Hey guys I have another idea. You know how everybody says consoles were like a virus and consolised PC games? Well I have a theory portables are doing the same now. More and more people are playing games and using software on their portables. This is leading, more frequently I might add, to "unified" graphical user interfaces which will run on desktops and on portables. The problem is BECAUSE they're unified this means desktop users have to put up with flat colors, gesture-like UI, minimalist things and so on. There's a constant tug of war between the interests of desktop PC users and portable users. Compromise is inherent.

Whatchya think? Am I onto something? I know I must be, I just am not sure if it will appy to games. Insofar as OS's are concerned, I'm convinced it's and will continue to be. Even the overlay scrollbar in my Kubuntu installtion is an example of portablitis. I mean I like the idea and would use some of the ideas if I could redo scroll bars, but it's clear to me my OS has portablitis.

Now, I CAN install a different theme. I can shut off some of the portablitis. I can install a different linux distribution. Yet, I have to go somewhat out of my way to do that, sort of like in gaming in general. I guess I really shouldn't complain, since ther'ree options. And that was my main point in my previous post. It takes o new meaning when YOU're the one having to shift gears. In gaming terms, I shifted gears a long time ago. But I only recenlty shifted gears from win xp to ubuntu to Kubuntu...

 

[a Goat]

I don't get people's fixation on "graphixxx caused the decline". I mean obviously vomit-inducing-filter-heavy "graphixx" are cancer but are you trying to tell me that legitimately good games like Dark Messiah would be made with 80's technology? I doubt it. Technology opens the doors for designers to step in with creative gameplay, the only problem is that they don't want to do it.

I think what's even more interesting is to think of the flip side of this question: what caused the incline?

Think about it...the Internet has been around for a while. Why did it take until 2012 for Kickstarter? There were indie developers this whole time...why did it take so long for the, to make quality/niche /profitable games?

For example, to me it seems like the ingredients for D:OS have been there for years.

Why did it take 50 years from vacuum tube to transistor? They've had technology needed to make transistors way back in the 20's I think.

Basically nobody thought there may be something like kickstarter. Like nobody thought about Myspace(RIP), Facebook, Youtube etc. and so on.

The truth is those games aren't that profitable. You have extremely long development cycle, that ends up in releasing good(or bad) product that may(or may not) sell over many, many years. As opposed to let's say annualised FPS that may cost more to make and maybe, after 20 years or so, the classic RPG may be still cited as classic and bought in small numbers by retro fans while your quick cashgrab won't be remembered at this point, but wait a while! You've made just as much money in YEAR as said RPG did in 5(who cares it wasn't selling at all after that time!). And in each other year you've released another instance that earned the same.

The problem is that the cost of making AAA game has inflated in a way that makes AAA cRPG ineffective as a whole, and publishers are less and less eager to fund something that isn't AAA(hopefully it'll change, seeing as even Ubisoft started funding small/mid sized games again - and seriously in 2014 they were better than any AAA they've had).

Kickstarter changes it, as it offers at least partial funding outside of publisher or loans(on top of it - early access makes beta-testers redundant which makes development cheaper) which in turn helps companies to reduce the timespan when game's balance is in red.

For specific example - games like Divinity:Original Sin didn't happened earlier, because Ultima as a series died and late 90's devs were mostly hardcore goldbox fans(and it seems that late 90's RPG fans are more common than Ultima fans as a whole). Larian alone didn't had experience nor funding to do it earlier on.

 

[Mustawd]

But D:OS is not a AAA game. And neither is W2, Shadowrun, or TToN.

Point is, that it seems weird that there are not sources of funding for these types of games outside of Kickstarter.

I mean there are niche products and distributing channels in other industries. Why not RPGs/videogames? For example, banks give loans to small businesses all the time with no expectation that they will be the next Facebook or Google. They just want to make a return on their investment.

I'm sure I'm missing something here, but it just seems crazy that everyone has this "AAA or go home" kind of attitude. I mean it makes sense for consoles, but for PCs?

Can any devs here talk about their experience trying to get funding?

 

[DraQ]

Gaming became too big for its own good, I guess. Big companies don't like risks, fear of risks leads to samey products that were proven to be successful in the past, which leads to blandness.

Consoles. Consoles. Consoles.
- Publishers want to put PC games into consoles, especially the incredibly popular FPS genre.
- Compared to computers, consoles are: A) underpowered, B) far more easy to use (read: kids and retards friendly)
- Kids, retards and shit hardware can't deal with 'complex' stuff, so devs have to progressively dumb-down and streamline all the games (hand-holding, simplified levels, less content overall) until a point where today it's considered a standard practice.
- Budgets skyrocket because kids and retards are mainly interested in good graphics, all other aspects of a videogame are almost irrelevant.
FIN.

I think there's a contradiction here. Graphics whores would want the most powerful platform available, no? Complexity shouldn't be a problem because you can always ask a Cripsy to install a graphics card for you.

No contradiction.
Consoles were always meant to be cheaper, dedicated gaming rigs.
To remain attractive they needed good visuals (although they could hide some inadequacies using blurier visuals provided by TV sets). Being homogeneous and single-purpose they also managed to boast higher overall efficiency, but they still had to drive the costs down by skimping on components not contributing to direct wow factor - like memory.

As long as the platforms were segregated each focused on games suiting its unique characteristics - console games often employed tricks like narrow range of camera angles, hybrid 2D/3D scenes and manually culled scenes to maintain impressive visuals while minimizing computational requirements.
Games that were immensely popular were ported more or less successfully, sometimes requiring sacrifices.

When multi-platform development became a thing everything changed. The games could no longer rely on strengths of particular platform. Take early multiplatform FPSes, for example - narrow, corridor-like levels, frequent loading zones, excessive scripting, reduced interactivity. Everything to reduce memory footprint. Gameplay tailored for controller, as the less capable HID. Etc.

Of course this wouldn't happen without strong drive to appeal to as many players as possible, then there wouldn't be a need to bridge fragmented market.

The obsession to must have 3d graphics.

This unfortunate misguided belief killed no end of PC stalwart titles from Worms to Broken Sword and from Balder's Gate to Commando. This drove the impetus of design towards cut-scenes, quicktime events, and uninteresting combat and away from tactics, quick-flowing gameplay, and involved problem solving.

Yes, DraQ, those games and in fact all games benefit from 3D, because man its 3D like the real world did you know the real world is #D i did not know thats how i learned to stop worrying and start love the $D

Yes, everything is 3D's fault. Cutscenes, QTEs and uninteresting combat in particular.

Half Life (...) interactive movies...

Eh, kids these days...

 

[:Flash:]

But D:OS is not a AAA game. And neither is W2, Shadowrun, or TToN.

Point is, that it seems weird that there are not sources of funding for these types of games outside of Kickstarter.

I mean there are niche products and distributing channels in other industries. Why not RPGs/videogames? For example, banks give loans to small businesses all the time with no expectation that they will be the next Facebook or Google. They just want to make a return on their investment.

I'm sure I'm missing something here, but it just seems crazy that everyone has this "AAA or go home" kind of attitude. I mean it makes sense for consoles, but for PCs?

Can any devs here talk about their experience trying to get funding?

I'm not a dev, but the hit/miss rate of video games are *very* ugly. There is a reason developers go bankrupt all the time. I wouldn't invest my money into game development. There are other opportunities where you have much better return of investment.
But some developers have outside funding / investors. Larian had. Otherside has. Warhorse has. But Larian had a proven Track record and the Warhorse investor took the Kickstarter success as a proof of existing interest in the game.
I know that during the dotcom bubble a German developer had high risk capital fund a game based on The Neverending Story. They burned through all the money (more than most other developers could dream of), and then had no game and were bankrupt. I heard other German developers blaming these guys for their difficulties for getting funding.

 

[Mustawd]

But D:OS is not a AAA game. And neither is W2, Shadowrun, or TToN.

Point is, that it seems weird that there are not sources of funding for these types of games outside of Kickstarter.

I mean there are niche products and distributing channels in other industries. Why not RPGs/videogames? For example, banks give loans to small businesses all the time with no expectation that they will be the next Facebook or Google. They just want to make a return on their investment.

I'm sure I'm missing something here, but it just seems crazy that everyone has this "AAA or go home" kind of attitude. I mean it makes sense for consoles, but for PCs?

Can any devs here talk about their experience trying to get funding?

I'm not a dev, but the hit/miss rate of video games are *very* ugly. There is a reason developers go bankrupt all the time. I wouldn't invest my money into game development. There are other opportunities where you have much better return of investment.
But some developers have outside funding / investors. Larian had. Otherside has. Warhorse has. But Larian had a proven Track record and the Warhorse investor took the Kickstarter success as a proof of existing interest in the game.
I know that during the dotcom bubble a German developer had high risk capital fund a game based on The Neverending Story. They burned through all the money (more than most other developers could dream of), and then had no game and were bankrupt. I heard other German developers blaming these guys for their difficulties for getting funding.

Agree.

Also, must have had a temporary brain lapse. Like you alluded to there are plenty of reasons:

*Video games are high risk endeavors; Which is anathema to a bank
*Even AA or A games need software dev tools/engines/art/etc. Back then there wasn't the availability or the price of the tools we have now
*No easy distribution system. Sure a microbrew beer can convince a restaurant or bar to carry their stuff. But I imagine that's much harder with games. Now we have Steam
*Kickstarter is basically a poor man's marketing focus group. IT can show a publisher the type of interest a game has. If it does well it can attract more funding.