DUST 514 | BETA
He adds that, like with Eve, there is no
mandatory requirement to pay real money for ISK. Provided they have the dedication and skill, players can work to earn weapons and items. This soft sell to the customer hasn’t
hindered CCP’s revenue intake. In fact, the hands-off approach has funded the company’s own expansion to four studios across the globe and the employment of more than 600 staff – all while remaining an independent company. And the war chest has fully financed the Dust 514 project. But for all its promise, some will look at
Dust 514 and see another All Points Bulletin. That project, built by Realtime Worlds, was founded on the same principal as Dust’s; that a launch is just the beginning. Poor reviews for APB, it was hoped, would
be overshadowed as the game evolved to meet its customers’ tastes. But MMOs need patience, and the VC groups backing Realtime Worlds showed little. The company buckled under its own debts and was liquidated. This won’t happen with Dust, Gunnarsson
proclaims. CCP will remain patient if the game doesn’t hit the ground running. “Our metric of success will not be however
many million of units sold in the first month. Our metric will be the lifetime value of our customers over an elapsed period of time, perhaps a year or two,” he explains. “We don’t need to make the big pop at retail to make a big impact – that’s a reasonably new approach.” But CCP is nonetheless taking a risk. The
project has cost them an Unreal Engine 3 licence and three years of dev time. “It would be a risk to not make Dust,” Gunnarsson responds. “It would be a risk to think that everything will work if we sit still.”
DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET
His response couldn’t be more appropriate.
The entire console business is grinding to an unbearable halt.
DEFINING SUCCESS A successful game is easy to spot; but too few are profitable. Expenses are pummelling revenues to the
extent that millions of sales are needed to recoup costs. Companies stay silent about their pressures, but from the thunderous collapse of talented studios the truth comes clear; the business model has become unsustainable. Dust 514 could show there is another way.
It would be a risk to not make Dust. It
would be a risk thinking everything would
be okay if we sit still. Thor Gunnarsson, CCP
“If you look at a developer’s bottom-line for a classic retail box model; when you subtract the publisher’s margin, the retailer’s margin, the platform margin, and so on, you’re left with maybe a quarter of the suggested retail price,” Gunnarsson says. “But in the MMO space, the path of success is based on vast multiples of microtransactions, or subscriptions or DLC. It’s a long-term strategy. We think it’s one that could be hugely beneficial to ourselves as well as Sony.” Triple-A became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The intoxicating belief is that success
demands budget-obliterating production values. Success demands studios be more concerned about what they’ve left out of a game than what they’ve put in. The result is an organised circle of studios mimicking each other, spending a fortune to blend in rather than stand out. Dust 514, as the videos will attest, is somewhat bland and vacant. There are no rich worlds of remarkable detail, but acres of basic and bandwidth-friendly war zones. What the critics will be tempted to say is that this is unacceptable in the modern age of triple-A games. If they do they are just as much part of the problem. Because detailed textures, phenomenal mocap and a trip to Abbey Road shouldn’t be what gives a project its ‘triple-A’ status. Entertainment remains the true and sometimes forgotten measure of a game’s worth. Dust 514 is part of a remarkable and unique online network, with no script and new stories told every day. It is a promising experiment in how console games can grow if developers are given direct access to their customers. It is an entirely new way to play on PS3 and – with Sony taking a cut of virtual currency purchases – could usher in a unique revenue model. A successful game is easy to spot, but just as easy to misconceive. Dust 514 could fail in ways that a triple-A game is not supposed to. It could be an ugly, unfinished mess. It could fail to make an impact in the charts. It could fail to turn a profit for a year. If it does fail, and still becomes a huge
success, the curse on consoles will be broken.
www.ccpgames.com
NOVEMBER 2011 | 23
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