The Post-Platform Future [The Decline of Hot Tickets]

The post-platform future is an idea that might make you laugh, or you might consider to be cryptic. At a conference of game executives that I attended recently, I asked a panel the question "Do you think we are moving toward a post-platform future?" and was met with both of those responses before receiving a thoughtful answer from a member of the panel which, in essence, said "It's hard to say."

Post-platform may seem vaguely baffling or buzzword-ish to both old and current generation game execs, but as I look over how the landscape is changing, how the dynamics of game distribution have pretty much descended into chaos, and how many supposedly safe strategies (new and old) are actually quietly failing, I've come to the conclusion that post-platform is actually the future, or at least a significant part of it.

If you plan to make games in the 2010s then you need to get comfortable with the idea that you will be running your own platform. Here's why:

 

Platform Traits (Dinosaurs)

In the old days of the industry, a platform was a format on which you sold your games. It meant game consoles, and it had the following traits:

1. It was expensive to invest in, requiring development and test kits, and very high production expectations
2. The marketing story of the platform belonged to the platform
3. It required publishing deals to get to market
4. The platform holder acted as gatekeeper over content as well as technology
5. 95% of game revenue went to people other than the developer
6. It provided great distribution reach
7. It relied heavily on relationships, which meant that who you knew mattered, but if you had the relationship then you had some protection from the winds of change
8. As the platform died, the technological knowledge underneath it died too, so you had to study up for the new platform, or you risked going out of business.
9. The platform owned the customer
10. The platform protected game content from piracy
11. The customer was prepared to pay a premium for what he or she considered to be a premium product
12. The industry was structured to drive hits, so a strong launch was vital
13. There was a dedicated fan base and media outlets that publicised your game
14. Metrics other than sales figures did not exist

The console software business is very much still alive. It is appropriate to refer to it in the evolutionary past tense, however, as there is more or less a general consensus that the game console business model is the dinosaur in a world of mammals.

The PC was a bit different. It was (and still is) the undisciplined platform that anyone could work on, but which shared many of the traits of consoles:

1. It was expensive to invest in because of a technology race and an expectation from consumers
2. The marketing story of the platform belonged to the publisher and, to a lesser extent, Microsoft
3. It usually required publishing deals to get to market
4. There were no gatekeepers over technology or content
5. 85% of game revenue went to people other than the developer
6. It provided less distribution reach, but units were cheaper
7. It relied on publisher relationships for finance, but not platform relationships
8. The platform was cyclical but never died, which meant knowledge transitioned more readily
9. The publisher owned the customer
10. Piracy was highly prevalent
11. The customer was prepared to pay a premium for what he or she considered to be a premium product
12. It was also hit driven, but there was more room for niche and slow-boil hits to emerge
13. There was a dedicated fan base and media outlets that publicised your game
14. Metrics other than sales figures did not exist

In both cases, the dinosaur platforms operate in a very guided and controlled fashion. Their objective is to achieve many millions of sales from individual titles, and they do so by carefully managing the catalogue of games, whether directly by the platform owner, or indirectly by the publisher. Relationships and credibility are King, but it's also a risky business of boom and bust where single releases can bankrupt entire studios.

 

Platform Traits (Mammals)

Increasingly, when we now talk about platform, what we mean is something different. Facebook, iOS, Android, ChromeOS and Twitter are now bandied about as platforms, for example. Browser-based gaming is a platform. Kindle is a platform. Myspace is a platform. Google TV is a platform. Kongregate is a platform. Everything seems to be some sort of platform now.

Where previously being on a platform meant building a heavy relationship, in which a developer usually tied itself to the mast of a console and sometimes went down with the ship, today a platform really just means a distribution outlet. Platforms used to be like exclusive DKNY stores, but they are increasingly becoming more like farmers markets.

They are also not all the same. This is what the list looks like for iOS, for example, which is the platform that most old school developers prefer as it feels more familiar than the open steppe of the Internet:

1. It is inexpensive to invest in, costing the price of a few Macs
2. The marketing story of the platform belongs to Steve Jobs
3. It doesn't require publishing deals to get to market
4. There is a gatekeeper over technology and objectionable content, but not content in general
5. 30% of game revenue goes to people other than the developer
6. It provides wide distribution reach
7. It relies on neither publisher nor platform relationships
8. The platform is cyclical but won't die
9. Customer ownership is about 50/50 Apple and the developer
10. Piracy is not too much of a problem
11. The customer is not prepared to pay a premium for what they consider to be a casual product (with one or two exceptions, such as TomTom), and seems to prefer in-App purchase to flat fees
12. It is visibility driven. If you don't show up as App of the Week on the App Store, you're probably screwed.
13. There is no definite fan base, and media coverage of your game is unlikely unless you really explode like Angry Birds did.
14. Metrics other than sales figures can exist, but their relationship with Apple is fraught

The resulting ecosystem is interesting. On console and PC, developers that did manage to get in the door with platforms and publishers were relatively protected from open competition, paid a heavy price to sit at the table, but once they did they were also essentially guaranteed publicity, financing and a sales channel. It was sometimes vicious (trust me, I've experienced the pain of project cancellation and it is not fun in any way) but there was a structure to it.

With iOS (and many modern platforms) anything goes. The developer has more access to market and lower barriers to entry, and the resulting torrent of 300,000 apps from all the corners of the Earth makes for a lot of cheap or free software. Most of it looks and acts the same, is forgettable, and there is not much protection.

With Facebook, the list is similar, but even more liberal:

1. It is both inexpensive to invest in, but expensive to thrive in
2. The marketing story of the platform belongs to Mark Zuckerberg
3. It doesn't require publishing deals to get to market
4. There is no gatekeeper over technology or content, but you might fall afoul of Terms of Service
5. 10-30% of game revenue goes to people other than the developer
6. It provides colossal distribution reach, but visibility is a huge problem
7. It relies on neither publisher nor platform relationships
8. The platform is pretty constant but does experience random changes at short notice
9. Customer ownership is the developer's
10. Piracy is not a problem
11. The customer expects the game to be free, and around 1 in 50 of them will then spend inside the game
12. It is momentum driven. Whether through paid (advertisements) or free (social graph sharing or cross promotion) channels, you need to market. But to achieve significant growth you have to be remarkable and constantly innovating.
13. There is no definite fan base, and media coverage of your game is unlikely unless you really explode like FarmVille did.
14. Metrics exist in spades. You can measure everything.

What's interesting about this new kind of platform is, ultimately, how Darwinian it really is. Facebook is not an active participant in your game's future and - barring objectionable content - really doesn't care what you do or how you do it as long as you adhere to the policies of the platform. The resulting environment is one that rewards visibility, geometric effects like cross promotion, and constant content delivery. It also offers the prospect of measurements and metrics, but with the caveat that all metrics systems have (which is that they can tell you what's not working, but not invent an answer for you), and also metrics can be quite deceptive.

Lastly, point #12's mention of momentum is critical for success in Facebook and many similar kinds of platform. Momentum is a combination of regular feature release, but also significant novelty in what you are making. The Facebook market is very adaptable and gets bored quickly, which means the rules of what works often change, especially for smaller developers. Zynga can get away with copying everyone because they're essentially a giant advertising operation, but that rule does not apply to small developers trying to break through. Small developers have to be bold as well as fast, or else they get stuck.

Without momentum on Facebook, you are dead. Although you may not realise it yet.

The lesson is, of course, that developers are having to become more responsible for their own futures. With a combination of easily available technologies, changing cheap distribution and visibility tactics, and a direct relationship with the customer, the choice of platform is mattering less and less. There is only one platform, and has been for a long time, and that is the Internet. All the other questions are simply those of which device you go on and how you deliver your game to one device or website, or another, with minimal friction.

What this means is that many developers have emerged, all doing business against each other in an environment where platform no longer offers protection, relationships don't matter, and the blizzard of available content to players means that a lot of average developers aren't actually able to compete. This new kind of digital economy may seem exciting because it is open, but the net effect of it being open is that you have 20 times as many competitors on that platform as you might have had in the console days, and each of them is just as capable of producing an average game as you are.

Without remarkability on your side, as Angry Birds or FarmVille had, and lacking significant financing for a more traditional marketing push (which most developers don't have), you'll end up in the digital graveyard, or at best maintaining a small app or two but never likely to accelerate beyond that point.

In the panel that I attended, the subject was all to do with what the next hot platform ticket might be. My question, on reflection was really asking this: "Isn't it time to stop basing your business on hot tickets?"

 

Post-Platform Traits

The post-platform future is not one in which there are no platforms and all devices run using the same software. That's clearly a pipe dream. Instead, it's the future where the developer hosts, distributes and runs its own operation whole and complete. It's the future where their job is not necessarily to acquire customers, but instead to attract them over the sheer volume of noise from every other developer trying to do the same thing. And also that rather than relying on the mechanisms and APIs of platforms to try and drive your growth, you are the platform and yours is the API that other people use.

In short: The game as platform.

As is happening in most other forms of entertainment (as well as other kinds of business in general) the rewards are increasingly going to go toward the niches, the edges and the novel. Being stuck in the middle selling basically the same kind of game as everyone else will be a recipe for slow and strangled disaster for all but the best-funded developers and publishers. The future belongs to the developer that creates their own platform through their content and brand and name, allowing consumers to find them across whatever device they wish.

Some examples of post-platform already exist, such as MMOs like EVE Online and World of Warcraft. Another is the browser-based game publisher BigPoint. Each of these game companies is also a platform, fully self-contained, and with data links through their own APIs that can feed out into other apps, social networks, and wherever really. The core of these games' strategy is that they are not reliant on the winds of change in other platforms, and instead they focus on delivering their content directly. They each currently do this through the PC as a form factor, but there's nothing stopping them from spinning off modules and applications that work within other platforms that may at least in part provide the experience at the core of their game.

Interestingly, however, a key aspect of this kind of strategy is that - like web platforms - it very much rewards the dominant partner and leaves all others in the dust. Like social networks or search engines, game platforms reward the winner because of the interconnections that they build. World of Warcraft is not just a game, it is a social network and creative time investment for the players who have spent years within it. So is Moshi Monsters. So is Habbo Hotel. And Second Life. And EVE.

The successful post-platform does not have to be vastly expensive. WeeWar, for example, is a very small game made by a small team that is also its own platform. What it does have to be, on the other hand, is different. It can't replicate another post-platform and expect success. It either has to vastly over-do the incumbent (as WoW did to Everquest and Facebook did to to Myspace) by scratching the biggest itches that the incumbent has, or it has to do something remarkably different. I don't just mean a little bit differently - and execution still matters a great deal - but significantly different. Post-platform games have to find their place in the sun by defining themselves.

Here's what the traits of the post platform future look like:

1. It can be either inexpensive or expensive to invest in and support. Your choice.
2. The marketing story of the platform belongs to the developer
3. It doesn't require publishing deals to get to market
4. There is no gatekeeper over technology or content, but different outlets will have policies to contend with
5. 10-30% of game revenue probably goes to people other than the developer until you build your own payment solution
6. Reach is your problem, but there will be many venues and ways to achieve it
7. It relies on neither publisher nor platform relationships
8. The outlets will change, but increasingly adhere to common standards (HTML5, Unity, etc)
9. Customer ownership belongs to the developer
10. Piracy may or may not be a problem, depending on the product. For services, no. For stand-alone releases, absolutely.
11. The customer will expect the game to be free or cheap. Around 1 in 50 of them will then spend inside games with virtual goods if that's the model you use.
12. It is conversation driven. Marketing is through social and paid channels, but the presence of players on your platform over the long term will require talking to them and engaging with them as a community.
13. There is no definite fan base, and media coverage of your game is unlikely unless you really explode. You will build your fans over time.
14. Metrics exist in spades. You can measure everything.
15. You will need to learn how to lead the charge, not follow it.

The future, unsurprisingly, is entirely in your hands. But that future is also in everyone else's hands as well. If you, as so many game developers and publishers have done over the years, are content to sit inside genres and make formulaic games that everyone else makes, convincing yourself that the future is all about publishing strategy, platform and opportunity then you are probably doomed. 

The post platform future is one of leaders rather than followers, communities rather than funnels, and standing out in a vastly over-populated crowd. It is more Minecraft and less farming games, and certainly a lot less old school console success than we have ever had before. It is exciting but also terrifying.

 

In Conclusion

These are serious times which require serious thought.

While the new media landscape of platforms is exciting, and in some cases generating very large numbers, the consequent effect of their more market-stall approach is that developers are now dealing with many more competitors than they ever used to. Without scale funding like Zynga, or a perfect fit game like Angry Birds, most platform-dependent developers and publishers will struggle in this new environment and ultimately be shut out. The dinosaur days of structured markets have clearly peaked, but the pressures on would-be mammals have also increased dramatically, and they are discovering that the downside to Darwin is that only the fittest survive. Most developers are not ready for that.

On the other hand, going post-platform is a way to avoid being swept up in the me-too cyclone that is enveloping the new generation platforms. But to approach it with any chance of success requires a deliberate attempt to create not just a game, but a social network and community of players. It doesn't have to cost many millions to do, but it does have to work hard to differentiate or out-do existing competition. It can be done, and I think we'll see more of this into the future.

The question is: Are you ready?

Comments

[Nicholaslovell]

An interesting post. I agree with your analysis, but semantics are, as always, a challenge.

Are we post-platform, or is every developer creating its own platform. Does having a portfolio where you cross-promote between them all (like Zynga does) count as a platform.

The element that resonated most strongly with me is that second-rate developers used to have a modicum of protection if they were registered Sony/Microsoft developers, because not everyone had that status.

In the open world we are racing towards, where people can distribute on multiple platforms without a gatekeeper's permission, those who were mediocre and *benefited* from the gatekeeper will be in trouble.)

[coach outlet]

Nailed it!

I think I might have to try this sunshine sauce myself. As I read it, it reminded me of a Bahamian cookbook I have. This sauce is very "islandy" in both it's content and name.

I might add just a hint of cumin to it, hopefully that won't muddle the color too much.

Great job.