What happened to Cave?

[KAI]

And then we woke up.

[AntiFritz]

Exactly. The costs are vast. Wages for highly specialised (and thus costly) staff, facility bills and rent, middleware (development software) license fees and so on, insurance, service provider costs (lawyers, accountants, PRs, cleaners etc), hardware, marketing/advertiosing campaigns, data and analytics stuff, possible fees and charges to platform holders, freelancers... the list goes on!

You can, of course, make a game for almost nothing today, especially as an individual or small team. But running a games making business? It can get silly expensive.

I think Cave are probably struggling to scale their shmup business. They produce quality product through a traditional studio make-up that has long worked for them, but are now (or were!) focused on a genre/market/audience that brings in the levels of cash now more suitable for funding a three-person indie outfit.

I still can't believe cave have 100 employees. Like, what do they even do? I don't think work on smt imagine any more so it can't be that.

[Udderdude]

And then we woke up.

Well, the Megaman clonestarter was pretty successful.

But then, that's Megaman. Generic loli wearing a frilly dress #1823862 just doesn't have the same draw.

[trap15]

But Kotani doesn't draw generic lolis :3
He draws BADASS shit like:

[AntiFritz]

But Kotani doesn't draw generic lolis :3
He draws BADASS shit like:
http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/ ... 4iboub.jpg

He did ibara/ps so he's cool in my book.

[KAI]

and no-pan Reco.

[AntiFritz]

and no-pan Reco.

eh, I always preferred haccan's reco.

[spadgy]

Exactly. The costs are vast. Wages for highly specialised (and thus costly) staff, facility bills and rent, middleware (development software) license fees and so on, insurance, service provider costs (lawyers, accountants, PRs, cleaners etc), hardware, marketing/advertiosing campaigns, data and analytics stuff, possible fees and charges to platform holders, freelancers... the list goes on!

You can, of course, make a game for almost nothing today, especially as an individual or small team. But running a games making business? It can get silly expensive.

I think Cave are probably struggling to scale their shmup business. They produce quality product through a traditional studio make-up that has long worked for them, but are now (or were!) focused on a genre/market/audience that brings in the levels of cash now more suitable for funding a three-person indie outfit.

I still can't believe cave have 100 employees. Like, what do they even do? I don't think work on smt imagine any more so it can't be that.

Thread beads onto bracelets for that jewelry business they have?

[cave hermit]

Ok, if I have this straight:
Cave is having big money problems
They don't know what to do now that arcades are switching to downloadable game based hardware and the new consoles are coming out soon
And they're either going to drop Shmups altogether or focus on more ports and non-shmup games with the occasional new Shmup, most likely for downloadable arcade machines.

[Pretas]

That's about it. I think their most pressing matter is the need to downsize and lay off a whole lot of unnecessary employees. Their paychecks are going to drain Cave dry if they aren't cut loose.

I do think Cave can successfully make a go of switching to NESiCA, it's just unfamiliar to a company that continued to rely on dedicated PCBs long after most developers had abandoned them. They also need to do more branching out into other genres that aren't social games. I can't comment on Instant Brain, but Nin2Jump proved that they're perfectly competent at doing so.

[IseeThings]

It's basically a case of evolve or die.

They might be best known for their shooters, but it's a niche target audience which is further decimated each time they increase the difficulty. You can only please your hardcore fans (who expect bigger, better, faster and more difficult each time) for so long before it stops being a viable business model.

Cave aren't the first and won't be the last.

I've said before, it has parallels with MAME, Arcade emulation is becoming as irrelevant as shmups, but too many of the developers are too stubborn to see we should head in other directions and embrace / integrate our MESS code etc. to give us a future even if doing so would be unpopular with the hardcore arcade emulation fanbase.

Thankfully, even if the hardcore aren't going to like it, Cave seem to be smart enough to realise they need to embrace other areas; Social games etc. if they're to have a future at all. Maybe they do have some business sense afterall. If you're lucky the more profitable areas could subsidise new shooters etc.

[spadgy]

Sorry if I'm being blindly stupid here, but where's the info on Cave's staff headcount come from?

[rancor]

Sorry if I'm being blindly stupid here, but where's the info on Cave's staff headcount come from?

Its on their wikipedia page.

[BIL]

He draws BADASS shit like:

Whoa, awesome. Reminds me a bit of this (NWS) apocalyptic vision by Battle Garegga artist Yuji Kaida.

[arcade-stg]

There is a reborn of fighting games because of SF4. I don't see why this couldn't happen to shmups games.

Maybe a cave shmup for nessica is the first step. We will see.

[KAI]

Fightans are easy to approach, Shmups are not.

[ebarrett]

Shmups are deader than fighters too, and have been for more than twenty years, despite this forum's insistence on believing otherwise.

[AntiFritz]

Fightans are easy to approach, Shmups are not.

Are they? I always thought it was the opposite. Shmups always seemed straight forward whereas fighting games have loads of mechanics and many different characters.

[trap15]

A scrub newbie can feel some accomplishment in a fightmans on their first few tries against the AI though. They can also be played against friends of similar skill levels, so they aren't against a seemingly impossible wall of difficulty.

[Pretas]

The biggest factor is that fighting games are immediate, direct player vs. player competition, while STGs merely allow you to compare the scores you already acquired, with only a handful of exceptions like Change Air Blade, TSS and Senko. While SFIV and MvC3 tourney streams attract huge numbers of viewers who don't even play fighting games, it's hard for most people to "get hype" over superplay videos, where it's usually a solitary person fighting the computer. Especially with games like Garegga that require a lot of specialized knowledge to comprehend what's going on.

Essentially, the same reasons why football will always be much more popular than the javelin or shot put.

[ciox]

The biggest factor is that fighting games are immediate, direct player vs. player competition, while STGs merely allow you to compare the scores you already acquired, with only a handful of exceptions like Change Air Blade, TSS and Senko. While SFIV and MvC3 tourney streams attract huge numbers of viewers who don't even play fighting games, it's hard for most people to "get hype" over superplay videos, where it's usually a solitary person fighting the computer. Especially with games like Garegga that require a lot of specialized knowledge to comprehend what's going on.

Essentially, the same reasons why football will always be much more popular than the javelin or shot put.

This sounds about right, there's a recent Asada interview where he talks about console shmups needing some kind of multiplayer experience to make up for the lack of arcade feel, though it just sounds like better coop not competition http://www.famitsu.com/news/201309/12039857.html

[Cagar]

The biggest factor is that fighting games are immediate, direct player vs. player competition, while STGs merely allow you to compare the scores you already acquired, with only a handful of exceptions like Change Air Blade, TSS and Senko. While SFIV and MvC3 tourney streams attract huge numbers of viewers who don't even play fighting games, it's hard for most people to "get hype" over superplay videos, where it's usually a solitary person fighting the computer. Especially with games like Garegga that require a lot of specialized knowledge to comprehend what's going on.

Essentially, the same reasons why football will always be much more popular than the javelin or shot put.

Slowly working on this: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/975 ... likuva.png
Figure it out yourself, picture is mspaint concept

[IseeThings]

Yeah, fighters are a competitive sport, shmups are more of a personal challenge (no direct competition apart from leaderboards) There's very little difference between the latest Street Fighter and the latest Fifa.

The vast majority of gamers today seem to be allergic to challenge, games like demon's souls and dark souls are considered the absolute nightmare level hardcore experience yet the challenge they offer pales compared to most Cave shmups. Deathsmiles is tolerable (although most players will think that lv 999 is some kind of joke put in there for shits and giggles)

I can't see the genre making a comeback in any meaningful way except as cheap downloadable games, but that again would mean Cave having to scale back development costs massively.

[DJ Incompetent]

It would make more sense comparing STGs to the pinball scene. A genre about a single dominating company made of significant ex-designers from previous dominating companies (Cave/Stern), a scrappy upcoming new group including a single dev with a long personal history (Qute/Jersey Jack), competing with several relatively unknown outfits with cult followings (G.Rev/Multimorphic) (Triangle Service/Quetzal) (5pb/Heighway), and then there's this one motherfucker in the background with excitable projects but hypetrains waaay too early and takes forever to release (Ben Heck/Xona).

[spadgy]

I thing DJ Incompetent's analogy is a great one.

Fighters and shmups are iconic gaming forms, but shmups take a bit more explaining. Even my mum can see at a glance what a modern fighter is and how it works; it's a two person battle . A contemporary shmup, perhaps, is a less obvious beast; 1CCs, hitboxes, multipliers, chains, numbers all over the screen, bullet patterns so garish and intense the untrained eye might not even spot the ships. If I explain my shmup hobby to a non-gaming stranger, a reference to Space Invaders is understood clearly, but hardly translates what the modern shmup form is.

Perhaps that's the very reason quality contemporary shmups of the kind we enjoy are a hard sell to the consumer, while fighters are an easier, more widely understood thing to get ordinary gamers to pick up, play and spend money on.

On another note, Cave seems to have slowed down on its international effort. As games journalist scum, I used to get regular (about monthly) press releases from Cave as their mobile and console stuff, and they were well aware I was a Western journalist. Last time I got an email from Cave? October 2012.

[retrojc]

Sorry if I'm being blindly stupid here, but where's the info on Cave's staff headcount come from?

Its on their wikipedia page.

When you say wikipedia do you mean this page?

153 employees, to me this suggests that Cave have on permanent staff all Art, Design, Code and Audio, plus secretarial, and HR. I know an internet friend was outsourced to do Audio for Dodonpachi resurrection black label (now, he could be lying, but I believe). This to me makes it seem like Cave are/have been outsourcing for some time, which cuts a lot of headcount, as outsourcing is a big thing in the games industry and shows that Cave have been saving money, for a while.

I don't know how busy they are, and how many games they release, as I'm not a massive Cave follower, but I do know that these shmups they release could be easily done with a small fixed team of max 15 (and i'm being generous) with outsourced audio and art. Doing the math, a dedicated 25 people on these games is way to many, so 30 people dedicated to two shmups in development makes sense. That leaves a 80 or so people to develop ios and instabrain... and effectively cost Cave a lot of money in staff costs.

I can fully believe that porting to iOS costing £75,000 upwards. Forgive my naievety, but are each individual cave game built on a new engine? or are each cave game built from the ground up? If they are all built of the one engine, there is a substantial cost/dev lost which would make the porting cost seem less believable.

[spadgy]

Could that number include Bead, Tabit and Win4WD staff?

[retrojc]

Could that number include Bead, Tabit and Win4WD staff?

I honestly don't know enough about Cave to know for sure, but guessing from other Wikipedia entries, subsidiaries are (I think) included in total employment count. For example, Tesco subsisdaries are included in their total employment count under Tesco Plc.

Wikipedia is freely editable site, so I take almost everything on there with a pinch of salt. It's very frustrating that the wikipedia 'right box facts' are not linked to a source for the Cave page, but are on others.

[system11]

I'd be interested to know how profitable SDOJ was.

Doesn't help that they made duds like Akai Katana instead of just making a Mushi 3.

[ReSe2k]

Not sure how profitable their cell phone games are bu maybe Cave could try to make regular console games, something like "Deathsmiles 3DS"...