Game Matters

How important are independents?

Good friend, Binu Philip, co-Founder & Biz Guy of Austin's Edge of Reality, kindly gave me permission to post a talk he gave at the South by Southwest conference (SXSW) last month.  I really liked his message, and so I present it here in full.  And sorry, you'll have to use your imagination on the engine demo he gave, but trust me, it is amazing jaw-dropping next-gen tech.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Future of Independent Game Studios

We are in year one of a platform transition. As with every transition, we face a myriad of serious issues. Rising development costs, higher production values, unfriendly publishing contracts, recruiting shortages, all make tough challenges for independent studios. What is the rightful place in the game industry for independents? Who in their right mind would want to be an independent?

As Gimli said in Lord of the Rings: “Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?!” I sometimes wonder if this is the motto for independent studios these days.

Let’s start our talk with a one minute tech demo that was captured completely in our proprietary engine.

<<<cue video>>>

Our studio has been in business for 8 years now, and in that time, we’ve shipped 8 games resulting in many millions of units sold. We built our company gradually taking on small projects, executing them, and them moving on to larger and larger projects.

In order to have a discussion about the future of independent game studios, we must first have a discussion about intellectual property. Specifically licenses versus original intellectual property.

Licenses have played a large role in the growth of the industry. Licenses fill a need by consumers to play a game based on content they are familiar with and want.

The downside of licenses is that they are not as creatively fulfilling to make as original game content. Some large licenses have declined in sales and popularity in the gaming world such as Harry Potter. It is rare to find intellectual property that maintains strong popularity across various media such as film, games, tv, books, and comics.

Coming up with new properties is a necessity for our industry to thrive. The industry needs new intellectual property that is aimed at the gaming market first, not at films first. Translating a game from a film means that the developer is often tied into design decisions that limit gameplay in order to be true to the movie fiction. Games should be made with gameplay in mind first.

One major problem is that publishers are typically run by green light committees made up of a variety of people with different back grounds. Unfortunately, most green light committees are dominated by people who don’t have recent development experience. They are set up to minimize risk for the publisher, and this is the antithesis of innovation. You can’t create original game franchises without taking substantial risks. It often seems that green light committees operate like a driver trying to drive forward by concentrating on the rear view mirror.

Most publishers look to reduce risk by creating copy cat products by letting TRST dictate what they should make. Creating something new and compelling is extremely difficult, and exponentially more difficult when you must convince a large group of people at every step along the way.

I believe that today’s greenlight committees are well set up to handle licenses and established franchises, but they have a much tougher time gauging new original properties.

Creating new intellectual property requires a lot of patience and trial and error. This is difficult to do when most publishers have extreme pressure to perform on a year to year or even quarter to quarter basis for stockholders. One of the major new IP’s launched by a publisher recently had only 24 months of development time. We are already 24 months into the development of our original game, I could not imagine being forced to ship it so soon.

There are a finite amount of licenses that are worth having. Licenses often carry short development cycles which results in shoddy quality and lots of overtime for the team which leads to burning out good talent. Licensing costs are also going up as license holders become savvier about the economics of the video game business. Licenses may carry more predictable sales, but margins on licensed games will continue to be squeezed.

Owning a stable of original franchises should be a priority for publishers because it gives them greater control over their profits and their destiny.

The real value of an independent developer in today’s video game industry is in its ability to create compelling original content. Independent developers don’t have to answer to the stock market or to green light committees during the process of making an original game. By independent developers, I am really talking about veteran studios that have been in business for a while and can afford to self fund a significant portion of a game.

The risk of creating original properties is better suited for independent studios for a variety of reasons. Independent studios by nature have to be better than internal studios in order to stay in business. If an independent puts out one too many duds, the studio will fold. If an internal studio at a publisher puts out a dud, there are still other products in the publisher’s portfolio that can make money. Most internal studios do not offer royalty plans for their developers. This is a disincentive to developers who really want to work hard in a creative field and enjoy the fruits of their labor. Why try as hard as you can if you know that you won’t earn royalties and you will likely not get fired if your game fails? Internal studios have much less natural selection than independent studios.

The natural selection process at independent studios is much more fluid. If an area of a game isn’t shaping up as expected, we will work with the person responsible for that section, and if necessary, replace them. Independent studios have to perform.

Studios that are acquired often lose their identity and branding. This is a huge psychological disappointment to the developers within that studio because they are being assimilated into a larger parent company instead of being part of a cutting edge small independent studio. Instead of focusing on making great games, internal studios generally have a large amount of politics and red tape to deal with because they do not control their destiny.

Independent studios generally have smaller teams. With smaller teams comes better communication and greater clarity of vision and focus. Team members feel much more ownership of their portion of the game. Smaller studios have more freedom to do research and innovate b/c they don’t have to ask permission from a corporate parent. Larger internal teams have hellish communication problems. They are also at the mercy of the whims of upper management which is usually off site and often not in a position to make the best decisions about a particular project. Internal studios are often required to use shared engine technology between the various internal studios. This rarely works out well because no one engine is ideal for every type of game you can make.

In my opinion, established independent studios are extremely important to the future of the industry. It takes time to build a quality independent studio. You need to work out your processes and grow slowly. Hopefully the games you ship earn you royalties and you can save enough to fund your own title. Another route is to try to get an investor. The problem with this is that investors are always looking for an exit strategy and a return on investment in a timely manner. They aren’t necessarily interested in creating high quality IP’s if it means patience, trial and error.

You should be proud that Texas is a hotbed of independent development. Companies such as ours, id, 3D Realms, Ritual and Gearbox are all contributing to the industry by creating original franchises and maintaining the creativity and freedom that comes with independence.

Thank you for your time. Enjoy the rest of the show!

The big crunch

I'm not talking about a certain unhealthy sugary cereal with a ship's stumpy captain as a mascot...I'm talking about the 14 hour days developers put in near a project's end to shine-up our games before that inevitable looming date when we must hand over the gold master to our publisher.  Even us "when-it's-done" studios have such dates -- we just do not make them public until the very end.  It's impossible to avoid deadline dates nowadays, because there's so much coordinated pre-planning and marketing that must be created and purchased (magazine ads, banners, marketing events, etc.) in order to maximize the anticipation and awareness of your game's release.

Testing of the game is non-stop.  And there's always a rush to improve last second elements and add in last second ideas that might have a significant impact.  It's during this final race to the finish that a game takes leaps and bounds every week, with every new build, as it all comes flying together like an exploding jigsaw puzzle played in reverse.  There are two phases I love most about game development, the beginning conceptual phase, where the direction is set, characters created, gameplay hooks devised, and then the last few months, when it all comes together and you finally see the results of years of hardcore effort.

We will soon release a three minute trailer of Prey.  I'll post the details of where the trailer will debut as soon as I know.  We're working with a major game site for the debut.  We took a little bit of a different direction with this trailer, and I'm curious to see reactions.  The trailer opens with live action footage, to help ground the character.  A lot of people who've seen the trailer don't like this aspect of it, but I think it works well.  In a few days, we'll all see how it pans out, reaction-wise.

All questions and comments relating to the trailer are welcome here.

4-day old Xbox 360 for sale

I have just about had a heart attack, thanks to my new Microsoft Xbox 360 that I finally was about to find in a store last weekend.  The problem is Xbox Live.  I've spent all morning trying to sign up, and each time I'm near the end of the process, I get a time-out and I'm told to try again later.  Okay, I can live with connection troubles like this, but what puts a stake through my heart is that the Xbox doesn't remember ANY of the 20 minutes worth of information I already typed in before it timed out.  So, I'm forced, kicking and cursing, to re-type in my GamerTag name, password, address, credit card info, secret question, birth date, favorite ice cream flavor, and a long list of other mind-numbing information.

After doing this four times, I'm defeated.  The Xbox wins... I cannot bring myself to type in all of this information again, just to have Microsoft fling it freely into the ether winds, forever lost.

Oh well.  Bring on the PS3...

UPDATE:  Well, turns out my account went through, but never was I given any indication by my Xbox 360 -- the only indication I ever saw was that of failure, with an Xbox 360 screen that said there were connection problems, and to try again later.  But, when I checked my email later, I see that my credit card was charged and I had an account set up.  I called customer service and had them cancel my account.  They said all I had to do was select the option to recover my GamerTag, but I pointed out that I had been given no indication that there was a GamerTag account to recover, so why would I try that option.  The tech support guy admitted to seeing my point.  I also pointed out that I did, if fact, begin the process of recovering my GamerTag, but when I saw that I was being asked to enter in a ton of data again, I blew it off.  I figured it was a long shot anyway, so the hassle wasn't worth pursuing what I thought was a dead-end, anyway.

I will try one more time when I head home late tonight.  If things do not work out, well, I'm putting it up on eBay.  I'll have one last update here tomorrow, one way or the other.

UPDATE NEXT DAY:  Had a friend come over and finally got it working -- this time it didn't time out and I successfully set up an account:  XBSux0r.  Yeah, I was in a pissy mood.  Especially since the account name I tried to get in the morning (when it showed it was available) was no longer available, even though a call to tech support said it was available.  Clearly, there are still kinks in the system.

So, I'm all set up and decide to check out the market place.  Here are my first impressions:

o  Microsoft, bless their little hearts, hasn't heard of the concept of quantity discounts that been going around for, oh, I don't know.... a few 1000 years maybe.  They let you buy credits, that can then be used to buy little arcade games that can be downloaded to your 360's hard drive.  You can buy 1000 credits for $6.25, or 10,000 credits for $62.50.  Most downloadable games cost under 1000 credits, so why would I ever plop down $62.50?  But, had Microsoft been ever so slightly clever, they would have at least discounted 10,000 credits to $58 or so.  That would have encouraged more people to buy the larger quantities, and in the end, resulted in more revenues and profits for Xbox Live.  As I like to say, it's always the little things that big companies can't quite get right.

o  Another little thing:  I downloaded a few demos, are was shocked at how little demo time you're given to test most games.  Robotron, for example, gave me like 30 seconds.  That's it.  Marble Madness Ultra, which was a GIANT friggin' download, gave me one level, per difficultly level.  That's it.  And the hard level was ultra hard, so worthless as a way for me to test play the game.  The easy level was too easy.  So really, I got to play one short medium level as a way to determine whether I liked this game, and based on that test, I'm still not sure, so I'll just hang onto my credits, thank you.

o  Geometry Wars rocks, and the demo was sufficiently long for me to properly come to this conclusion.  Sold.

o  Finally, for Oblivion players on the 360, there's armor that can be bought for your horse.  I have no idea how this impacts gameplay, but I suspect we're on the verge of seeing this type of gameplay upgrade a LOT.  And I mean a LOT!!!  If this proves profitable, then tons of games will step in line.  Heck, when I first saw this last night I was even brainstorming ways to do this for our upcoming game, Prey.  Money is money, right?  But seriously, I don't know if I like this or not.  I think I do, as long as the purchased additions do not alter core gameplay, but merely add minor features or upgrades.  In any case, I think it's going to be commonplace soon.  It's hard to argue against incremental revenues.

Electronic Arts seize the IP

Saw this story on BusinessWeek Online reporting that EA, long time friend of the movie-based game, is going steer their floating behemoth into the bluer waters of original IP.  From the article: "EA's ambitious goal is to create more such innovative, internally developed games while lessening the company's dependence on professional sports and Hollywood movie franchises."

As I've stated in this blog many times (more often within the comments section), there are only a limited few linear media IPs that can reliably, consistently cross the chasm into the non-linear games market.  These are IPs, like Spider-Man, Star Wars, Harry Potter, LOTR, and James Bond that have strong characters, a mythology providing a strong story backbone, and built-in hooks that translate into compelling gameplay (web slinging, Bond's gadgets, light sabers, etc.)  I have contended for the past decade that there are less than a dozen linear IPs (out of 100's of 1000's of novels, movies, TV shows, etc.) worthy of being turned into games (not including sports licenses and kids licenses -- kids will always go with what they've seen before on TV and in movies).

Poor EA! Brokeback Mountain, Crash and Munich just aren't game material.  And so they'll have to actually think of their own game ideas!

Publishers need to home grow their original games for three overwhelming reasons:

[1] It's more profitable in the long-term, because original hits add tremendous ongoing stability to a company (sequels).

[2] Home grown hits elevate the company's stock price, because they get full credit for the value of the IP.  IPs can be worth 100's or millions of dollars.  The GTA IP alone is probably worth $800 million or more.  In 2002 the Max Payne IP sold for nearly $50 million.  Bottom-line: IPs add a LOT of value to the bottom-line.

[3] Ownership of an IP allows the publisher to fully benefit from transmedia exploitation (as opposed to being the one being exploited).  What this means is that the publisher benefits from movies, TV shows (Earth Worm Jim and Sonic, for example), novels, amusement park rides, novels, and anything that may stem from the IP.  Again, adding bucks to the bottom-line.

In 3D Realm's history, even recently, we've been approached dozens of times to make games based on movies, including The Matrix and Men in Black.  We've always turned down these offers in less than a heartbeat.  And the reason is simple: We come out much better off by making our own IP, rather than working on someone else's.  Publishers like EA, perhaps, are starting to learn this, too.

Something else interesting from the article, EA is adopting something of a When It's Done attitude: "Another change is that homegrown projects will be given more flexible deadlines. Since these projects won't have hard release dates like sports or movie titles, [EA's president of Worldwide Studios, Paul Lee] believes it makes more sense to develop them until the team feels its idea is fully realized. "In the past we have committed to ship dates with large development teams before we had a game design," says Lee. "That is changing....We're going to have the best games and release them when they are ready."

Next in the news, cheese discovered on the moon...

Forrest Gump'ed

Well, the news is out that Rockstar, a label of Take-Two Interactive, is coming out with a table tennis game.  Does anyone think this is a good match for the Rockstar brand?  Here's what I had to say, in a letter I wrote to executives of the company exactly four years ago...

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Miller
Sent: Monday, March 04, 2002
To: xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Rockstar

I saw the news story below [not included here - ed.], and this line here is the one I want to talk about a little:  "Their games are very unique," said Paul Kaump, an analyst with Dougherty & Co. "They focus on the mature market."

[...snipped section...]

The Rockstar brand has become a true brand, unlike most meaningless, jack-of-all-trades brands in the game industry.  The Rockstar brand, to consumers, is positioned as an adult, mature brand.  Gamers and the press are picking up on this, and further games like DNF and Mafia will help reinforce this.  And brand is only powerful, compelling and meaningful when it's focused on a single, easily-understood meaning.  The Rockstar brand has achieved this.

Most publishers do not know how to make a brand meaningful, which is why most publisher brands are nearly worthless on their own.

And once Rockstar begins shipping games that do not fit this adult image, it too will become diluted, less-valuable, less-meaningful, and less able to attract gamers based on its own merits.  The best way to kill this brand is to make it generic, like the Activision brand, or the THQ brand, or the Eidos brand, or the Acclaim brand, or the Sierra brand, or the Infogrames brand -- all nearly worthless brands that gamers don't care about because these brands do not stand for anything (because they stand for everything).  In these cases, gamers buy the game brands, and don't care about the publisher brands.  But in Rockstar's case, the brand brings value to the table because it stands for something--it is positioned very well.

So, I hope Take-Two understands what they have with the Rockstar brand and maintains the brand's purity and focus.  This will mean that if a good game comes along that doesn't fit the Rockstar image, it should be published under a different label.  For example, if Take-Two wants to publish a game based on N-Sync, then doing so under the Rockstar brand would be a giant blunder.

Scott Miller
www.3DRealms.com

I did hear back from them the next day, and they fully agreed.

In a very recent update on Origin of Brands, Laura Ries writes:  "Preserve your focus: Maintaining your focus is the best way to keep a brand strong. By chasing the latest trend, you unfocus the brand and lose the meaning, credibility and authenticity of the brand."  It's really very simple to make a strong brand.  But it's also incredibly tempting to muddy your own brand, by branching out and satisfying that burning desire to be all things to all people.  When brands become strong, the executives in charge too often forget how they got that way to begin with.  It's all about focus.  Lose that, and you lose the brand's power.

N-tombed

I missed this non-story when it made news, but it appears that several sources have reported that production of N-Gage has ended.  Anyone who's read this blog for a while will not be surprised that I didn't think the N-Gage had a chance in hell.

The final story is that Nokia lost a TON of money on this product, and probably partly due to the distraction of the N-Gage, they lost a lot of ground to other cell phone makers, like Motorola.  Will Motorola one day get the itch to dabble in the gaming market?  If they do, I bet the now-wiser execs at Nokia will cheer loudly in their boardroom.

Here's another interesting link regarding a report by Screen Digest Limited I missed when it was fresh a few months ago.  The report claims that within the coming console cycle, developers are having to once again learn a lot of new technology, which pushes attention away from gameplay considerations.  And because the rising cost increases the risk of financing games for publishers, we're probably going to see more licenses, versus less originals.  Oh, joy.

Marc de Gentile-Williams, the author, commented, "At 30 years of age, the games industry still suffers from an endemic lack of professional management compared to less mature industries such as the mobile telephony and the Internet industries."  I have witnessed this sad reality first-hand.  It's very clear to me that publishers, especially, are generally poorly managed at the highest levels.  I think it comes down to this:  We need leaders/CEOs at the top who know something about making games.  Is there a publisher that has type of leadership?  Not that I know of.

And so we meet again...

With some sadness I've neglected the care and feeding of this blog, but sometimes you need a break from these things (anyone who's written a blog for 2+ years will surely nod their head in agreement), plus, I've just been busy.

Many people have asked me to comment about the next-gen consoles, and frankly I have nothing enlightened to say.  I've yet to touch the controller of any of them.  I can't find a X360 to buy in stores, and we have yet to get a development machine sent from Microsoft even though Prey is being developed for their system.

My prediction for this new round of consoles is that the X360 and PS3 will wind up about equal in terms of sales, with Nintendo's Revolution coming in a distant third--perhaps this will be the last console from this company.  The X360 gains ground on the PS3 this cycle by virtue of two points:  [1] Xbox Live! rocks (from what I've heard -- again, no first-hand experience).  [2] The X360 has a big head start over the PS3.  Finally, I cannot comment on the Revolution's controller until I try one.

More:

o  E3 decides to focus on games!   It's about time.  If we're going to be taken seriously as a maturing industry, it only makes sense to drop the soft porn geek fantasies and make games the thing.  Two thoughts:  One, getting around E3 has been a nightmare if you ever needed to pass a booth with scantily clad booth dancing dolls drawing a feverish crowd of camera flashing boys.  Two, and I love this one the most... Games with no game will finally have no crowd.

o  On our site, every week until release, we'll have a developer diary on our coming game, Prey.  And just for fun, too, we started a weekly series that we're calling the Apogee Legacy Interviews, in which we are posting interviews with many of the key developers who were instrumental in our early success, going back to 1990.  We hope to have at least 30 interviews this year

o  I stopped playing WoW seven months ago, after hitting level 60.  I am a solo player, and I do not like the hassles of grouping and re-raiding the same areas over and over.  The game was only interesting to me when there was the promise of new areas to explore, new sights to behold.  I'll probably jump back in when the expansion pack comes out (Burning Crusade) that introduces new areas and pushes the level cap up to 70.

UPDATE:  Meant to post this yesterday:  I now have in my grubby hands a signed agreement that will result in us getting Xbox 360 dev boxes.  All is good.  And I had no idea that this little blog post would get so much news coverage, even in Europe (based on incoming links from news sites).  And while I'm here, a fun link for everyone, showing a recent consumer video/PC game market breakdown in the United Kingdom.

IP on licensed games

The June/July issue of Game Developer has an article, Playing Smart with IP, by Dan Lee Rogers, that hits on several strong points in favor of original IP versus licensed IP.  One of Rogers' key stats:  If you look at the top 40 console games (lifetime sales) since 1995, 31 of them, or 77 percent, are original brands (including sequels within these brands).  That leaves just nine out of 40 as licensed game brands.  That's near total dominance in favor of original IP.  Some of these top selling brands include: GTA, Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Halo, Crash Bandicoot, Tekken, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid and Driver.

And about two years ago I read a similar article with original IP winning by 80%.  This earlier article included PC brands, including Diablo, Doom, Half-Life, The Sims, Warcraft, Tomb Raider, Duke Nukem and EverQuest.

So, if original brands control nearly 80% percent of the chart every year, why aren't we seeing a LOT more original games in development?  It's clear that the real gold mine in our industry is with original IP (and their sequels and spin-offs).  Publishers would be so much better off in the long-run by creating original IP versus licensed games.  Owning an arm's length list of home grown IP should be the goal of every publisher, because it gives them ultimate control of their own destiny and revenues.

Yet we have a large publisher like THQ being out-IP'ed by a little game studio like Id Software, who've created three blockbuster IPs, Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake.

Given the success of original brands over licensed ones, why don't publishers invest more in original IP?  There can be only one answer:  They're not good at it.  They're afraid.

But we need more original IP to put us on the same self-sustaining plateau as TV, movies and novels -- all three of these entertainment industry branches absolutely crush us in total revenues, and by no coincidence, in original IP output.

It's okay to cherry pick a few licenses now and then, but if I ran a publisher (fat chance!) I'd be focused on creating original brands that I fully controlled, and could exploit across other media.  When it comes to licensed IP, other than kids licenses and sports licenses, there are fewer than a dozen licenses from the entire library of novels, TV and movies that are worth exploiting in the game world.  That's right, less than a dozen.  Which is why so, so few licensed games can compete with original games for the top revenue slots year after year.

And yet every year publishers trip over themselves to license Hollywood summer movies, adding value to Hollywood's bottom-line, while spanking ours.  What we need are fewer chicken-shit publishers run by non-gamer financial or legal suits, and instead run by someone with a creative spark in their cranium, who have the guts to ignore financial quarters or slotted release dates.  I won't hold my breath, though.

Learning to be fun

Last week I finished reading A Theory of Fun, by Raph Koster, Chief Creative Officer for Sony Online Entertainment.  This book convincingly answers the question, What makes a game fun?  And more than that, it dives into topics such as the ethics of games and how games can take their rightful place alongside other respected forms of entertainment.  It's all good stuff, and it's easy to agree with everything Koster writes.  It all rings true.

Although the book is deep with detail, the main question boils down to three words:  Fun equals learning.  As Koster puts it, "Fun...arises from mastery.  It arises out out of comprehension.  It is the act of solving puzzles that makes a game fun.  In other words, with games, learning is the drug."  And likewise, he writes, "Boredom is the opposite.  When a game stops teaching us, we feel bored...Games grow boring when they fail to unfold new niceties in the puzzles they present."

I think Koster is 100% right.  Developers must strive to make games whose difficulty zig-zags within that narrow band of "fun," between boredom (too easy, already learned) and frustration (too hard to learn).  Koster says that "the definition of a good games is therefore 'one that teaches everything it has to offer before the player stops playing'."

Another interesting comment in the book gives a hint as to why we love certain genres, like the FPS, RTS, RPG, & MMOG:  "Given that we're basically hierarchical and strongly tribal primates, it's not surprising that most of the basic lessons we were taught by our early childhood play are about power and status."

Koster also talks about a concept related to fun, called "delight," which deals with aesthetic appreication.  We experience delight when we recognize patterns, yet we're also surprised by them.  Delight has nothing to do with challenges.  And Koster says delight will "wear thin quickly," and therefore games cannot live by delight alone.  It's easy to name games that have sure looked pretty (delight), but have not given us an fresh challenge to overcome (fun).

Koster has written one of the best books for our industry.  I hope everyone adds it to their bookshelf.

The Ico syndrome

Quite often I see discussions among developers who use Ico as the poster child for critically stellar games with underwhelming sales.  But while Ico is often lauded as a great game, it never surprised me with its lack of success.

A few factors that contributed to Ico's under-performance:

o  Meaningless name.  Just seeing/hearing the name tells you nothing about the game.  So, the name itself did nothing to help position the game.

o  Oddball hero.  Doesn't the boy have horns?  If so, this game has the same problem that the Oddworld games have, a quirky hero that's hard to relate to.

o  Short game.  Probably a victim of rental, and gamers just wanting more for their money.

o  Non-compelling subject.  This may be the heaviest anchor.  Ico seems to be a generic fantasy, save the girl story without anything buzz-worthy to sell it.  Yes, the hook is that you grab the girl's hand and guide her, but on the surface that doesn't sound like an excitingly new hook.  And even playing the game I didn't find this all that compelling.  Really, the only thing eye-opening about the game was its visuals, but again it's still overall generic, just nicely done.

o  Kid's game.  This ties into the previous point, but it also stands on it's own.  To Joe Gamer holding the Ico box in his hand, it looks like a game for kids.  There is no obvious coolness to the concept.  This game is a tough sell to the teenage/adult gamer.

Ico has many game developers shaking their heads in dismay, because it's a game with stellar production values, gameplay uniqueness and overall terrific execution, and yet it didn't become an unqualified hit.  The game was poorly positioned, both from a branding perspective and from a game concept perspective.  Ico's main character, generic setting and kid level story did not lay a compelling foundation for a game.

Practically all games that are critically acclaimed yet fail to realize expected potential have similar problems.  And generally it's a problem that's easy to avoid.