For this week's edition of "Game On," The Fly spoke with Emeric Thoa, creative director at French video game publisher and developer The Game Bakers, which developed and published 2016's "Furi" and 2020's "Haven." In the interview, Thoa discussed how "Haven" has performed since its release late last year, Xbox Game Pass, new gaming consoles, and more.
'HAVEN': Emeric said that the critical reception to "Haven," a role-playing game released on PC, Xbox One (MSFT), PlayStation 5 (SNE) and Xbox Series X/S in December, has been "quite good" so far. “Critical reception is quite good actually, because it’s been basically two kinds of reviews," he said. "The really good ones, people who are really touched by the characters, the story, the way we talk about love, the music and visuals and acting...some go into the game without really knowing what it is and say that it’s romance that’s never been done before, so that’s pleasing to read. And we have also player reviews, which are “incredible,” as the game has 93% positive reviews on Steam. We also have some reviews that are less positive, but they are never really bad. Whenever we get a bad score, or a mixed review, it’s always a bit like ‘oh the music was great, the visuals were great, the characters are moving, it’s well-written, well-acted, it’s a very original take on romance, but…’ and most of the time it’s ‘but it’s not a very deep RPG’ or ‘it’s a bit repetitive.’”
“I’m fine with mixed reviews, because that’s what we wanted to do," Thoa added. "We wanted to do a light videogame that’s for everybody to play, not some big, deep, complex RPG.”
In terms of sales, the creative director said the performance was "good, not great, and definitely not bad," though he expressed that the company is still has yet to release the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch (NTDOY) versions of the game, which are set to come out in 1Q21. "Not a [great] surprise, as we have more wishlists than sales conversions that we could expect," he noted. "The consensus here is that solo indie games have become a discount market [commodity] basically. So there is almost never a big great surprise before a first discount.”
GAME PASS: 'Haven' launched on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Microsoft's gaming subscription service. When asked why The Game Bakers opted to make the game available on the service right away, Thoa said that it was "good timing" for a company as small as his to put a new game on multiple platforms as part of a subscription service since it "kind of pays for itself." "It pays for the development for the platform," he said. "Basically, they pay upfront fees so that the game is free for the subscribers. So we get security, money at launch. And we still make the game for multiple platforms and we still get the revenue from the sales on the other platforms.”
“What is a bit scary in the future if this becomes the primary business model [for the industry] is that we risk that we will sign deals for subscription platforms, use the money to make the game, and then get nothing after launch," Emeric said about the future of subscription services. "I still don’t know how it will work for small developers, or big developers, either.”
SERIES X/S: In addition to coming out on PC and Xbox One at launch, "Haven" released on Xbox Series X/S and the PlayStation 5, both of which came out in November 2020. Thoa said it's too early to know whether the game is selling better on newer platforms compared to older ones, though he said releasing the title on the new systems was "rather easy." “It’s rather easy to port a game that’s been designed for old platforms, including Switch, to new platforms, like PS5 or Xbox Series, because there is no optimization to be done," Thoa said. "It’s running at 60 fps [frames per second] without doing anything. We pushed some graphics [to their fullest], but we didn’t do a lot of specific development [for the new platforms] because we got the development kits pretty late, because of COVID I guess. But when you get the devkit just in time to make the game run, you don’t spend a lot of time making a lot of specific features.”
“We did use some of the specific features of the PlayStation 5, such as some work with the DualSense controller, but we didn’t push that as much as Sony’s teams did with ‘Astro’s Playroom,’ for instance, or the other exclusive games for that platform," he added.
OLD CONSOLES: When asked if The Game Bakers expects to release future games on both older consoles, such as the Xbox One and PS4, as well as new consoles, the creative director said it won't always be worth it, especially for smaller developers. “My conclusion with ‘Furi’ and ‘Haven’ is that trying to do a simultaneous launch on many platforms for a small team is not worth it," he told The Fly. "It requires having to finish the game [roughly] six months before actually shipping, because once your game is almost finished on PC, it takes a lot more time to make a game run more smoothly on older platforms, to make them optimized for things like achievements or whatever activities, or DualSense, or all the special features that [consoles] have.”
Thoa noted that multiplatform, cross-generational games come with a host of technical concerns, forcing companies to multiply their quality assurance budget by the number of available platforms.
“I would rather make the game for PC, patch it for six months, and then port it to new consoles," he said. "We didn’t do that for ‘Haven’ because we wanted to take the opportunity to be available for launch on the new generation. That’s always exciting, but it happens once every ten years, and [our games coming out on console launches] probably won’t happen ever again. But I would rather do the game on PC and then select each platform that makes sense. Xbox One will probably not make much sense in the future. I’m not sure PS4 will make much sense either if our next game comes out in the next few years. Those consoles make sense for [a new game that will come] in one year, maybe two.”
STAGGERED RELEASES: On the topic of staggered release schedules for multiplatform games, Thoa said that the current trend will "disappear" soon," as eventually the Xbox One and PS4 will be phased out and it'll become easier to develop games for multiple platforms. "For a little bit of time, it could happen, but in a pretty close future all this is going to disappear, because for a while you’re going to ship only on the PS5 and Xbox Series X, and Switch is going to be another world," Thoa said. "Indies are going to ship on PC and then Switch, that’s probably that will happen, and in maybe five years, if streaming becomes the primary platform, then it’s not going to be a question anymore. It’s going to be all at the same time according to the platform, because it’s just going to be PC for everyone. I think it’ll be five or six years before Stadia (GOOG), Luna (AMZN), xCloud, and streaming in general [to become normal]. You’ll just play games on stream at that point.”
When asked if the messy launch of CD Projekt's (OTGLY) "Cyberpunk 2077," whose PS4 and Xbox One versions were riddled with technical problems, Thoa said that game is "an exception, since they really messed up that launch." "They should never have released the PS4 and Xbox One versions like that, that was stupid," Thoa said. "So that’s an exception.”
"Game On" is The Fly's weekly recap of the stories powering up or beating down video game stocks.
Microsoft
+0.55 (+0.26%)
Symbol now SONY
-0.065 (-0.06%)
Nintendo
+ (+0.00%)
acquired by MSFT
+0.78 (+0.86%)
Take-Two
+0.67 (+0.34%)
Electronic Arts
-0.41 (-0.29%)
Ubisoft
+ (+0.00%)
CD Projekt
+ (+0.00%)
GameStop
+2.95 (+8.33%)
Tencent
+ (+0.00%)
Alphabet
+10.63 (+0.61%)
Alphabet
+13.59 (+0.79%)
Amazon.com
-0.35 (-0.01%)