Hardcore Gaming's Salvation?

Quarter to Three talks to three developers about the profits and perils of bypassing the traditional retail market

Con't.

Qt3: What needs to happen for direct sales to really work for small developers?

Wardell: Once Broadband becomes more popular, you're going to see a huge shift. Luckily, your friend Tom Chick loaned me his Time Machine. While he had foolishly gone back in time to muck up with the election in Florida, I used it to go into the FUTURE and here's what I found:

In 2004, virtually all the PC game companies allow you to actually download CD ROM images. I went to EA.com and for $29.95 I bought Madden 2005 and downloaded the CD image which I was able to burn my own CD right then and there. My 10MB wireless connection allowed me to have it within minutes.

When you see that happen, then everything is going to really start changing. The game magazines will have to start taking a closer look at the non-retail game companies. You won't see 9 previews of Warcraft 3 (which was going to be shipping that Christmas when I was in the future with Duke Nukem Forever). There will be more coverage for games based on the game itself, not based so much on what we know is going to be a zillion-unit seller. Retail won't be dead or anything. They just won't have a monoply on what does well anymore.

Dunham: The cost of direct sales is still pretty high for a small developer (for example, our shipping & handling fees actually don't cover the cost to us of shipping & handling).

Some form of organization that could combine small publishers (such as MacBunch, which we're a member of) so they can have multiple SKUs and share resources would be a plus. Gathering of Developers is at a different level.

Micropayments would help, so you could more easily charge for play time or installments.

But if a small publisher intends to do direct sales, I think they need to plan for this early. We didn't (we'd always hoped to land a publishing deal). For example, having an actual marketing person would probably have helped us. Perhaps we should have diverted resources to doing a demo before we shipped. And we might have made some technology changes to make it easier to do add-ons.

And anything that lowers development costs helps.

Moylan: More high-speed Internet connections in peoples' homes. This will lead to greater consumer awareness of products available exclusively over the net, which in turn will lead to a change in purchasing habits. Right now most people go to the store and browse around to find a game. They expect to get a pretty box with shrink wrap around it. But in a few years they'll browse the net first, and likely make their purchase right there on the net, either downloading immediately or perhaps getting a CD or DVD mailed to them, never having set foot in a brick-and-mortar store. We're already moving in this direction pretty rapidly, but it will be a few more years before the change is complete.

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