Note: This was originally posted on the old site on January 13, 2004.
During the holiday season when I was in stores I noted a trend that has been going on for quite awhile now, but seems to really be getting out of hand. Among games of the type that I make (casual games), there has been a big trend towards excessive bundling. In fact, it has gotten to the point where if you go to a place like Best Buy, about the only casual games you see are all in huge collections (1000 This, or 100 That). You cannot even go to a retail store and buy a computer card game or something like that - everything is now bundled into large collections.
This has terrible implications for developers. First, with all the games thrown together into one package for $9.99 or $14.99 or whatever, the royalties are split amongst large numbers of developers. This means that for any given product, each developer is getting only a tiny amount of money from each unit sold. With some of these collections that is literally becoming pennies or even a fraction of a penny per copy sold going to the developer of each game. There is no possible way that these collections can sell enough copies to make the royalty to the developer more than just a token payment. Second, the prices of these collections keep going down and the number of games in them keeps going up, driving the royalties downward in a death spiral.
It seems to be all about the number on the box. You have to have a huge number on the box, to say that this product has 101 games or some other ridiculous figure. So there is a drive to get larger and larger numbers on the box to outdo the box next to it. The actually quality of the games in the collection is of course of absolutely no consequence. It does not matter. The only thing that matters is to bundle huge numbers of games together to make it look like the best deal. Whether it is the publishers driving this, or big retailers like Wal-Mart, or a combination of both, I do not know.
Basically, the publishers and retail stores selling these collections are turning their games into commodities. The commoditization of the retail games market is driving prices and quality down. No developer with a quality product wants to have it sold bundled with 100 other games. Anyone with a quality game is going to get their games out of there.
And of course the customer notices. The first time someone buys one of these huge collections, he or she might think they are getting a great deal. But when they get home and discover that out of those 100 games, maybe one or two, if they are really lucky, is actually any good at all, then they will be thinking differently. The next time they go to the store, they will see the next 100 games for $9.99 package and think, "the reason it is that cheap is because it is filled with garbage", and they will be exactly right.
The whole situation is bad for both developers and customers. Developers are not making any money from these collections, and customers are not getting the games they want from these collections. If a customer goes to a store looking for a Hearts or Spades game, for example, they should be able to buy a Hearts and Spades game and not some huge collection of card and casino games, filled with games they do not want and are garbage anyway.
The only way this situation is going to change is if developers refuse to let their games become commoditized. Once every customer has purchased one of these collections and vows not to do it again, then there will be a market for quality games again.
---
On a somewhat related topic, Game Matters has an interesting post on what developers should ask for in retail contracts. Unfortunately, if you have never made a game like Duke Nukem you are not going to be able to get virtually any of these in a real contract. Only the Scott Millers of the world can get these kinds of terms.
Recent Comments