In hopes of saving a forum post from disaster, and to help out the English language.
I have decided to make this thread.
What is your definition of Commercial quality?
After all is said and done, we should take all the opinions and try to form one definition of what “Commercial quality” is from popular opinion.
I will take the most popular belief and submit it to the Wikipedia, so others can benefit.
Who knows… We might even get into the dictionary like Homer Simpson did with the word “doh” .
I hear the term all the time, and would like to have a definition of what it really is.
I see it time and time again in this game forum.
Please keep opinions limited to the subject, not to other peoples posts… we need everyone who wants to submit their opinion to be able to do so, without fear of ridicule.
I think that “Commercial Quality” is defined as “is it sellable?”. Naturally, this raises a couple questions. First being “to whom?”. Like Social stated, the majority of a target audience. Whether it ACTUALLY sells is entirely unrelated to commercial quality. That doesn’t mean that it can be tripe some one says will sell. Note that the word “Quality” is in the title. It has to be projected that is a plausible sell. There will be grey terms in this (and any other definition), but that’s really the nature of language, so we shouldn’t get hung up on idiotic specifics.
edit: I just realized I said a ton of things, on partially different topics, all at the same time, so decipher my post as best you can…
I think this is a very needed topic/discussion. In my eyes, I agree with what Dim says about “is it sellable” I also think commercial quality means the graphics are decent, or up to date, the plot or game in gernal is unique, and the gameplay is entertaining. ofcourse there’s lots of other lements too it too
There are a lot of different elements that branch off, but it pretty much all comes down to those core game dev disciplines that RagingChaos66 presented here.
Hmm - Interesting question. I guess I agree with Dim: Commercial quality is something that is of a sufficient quality that someone will buy it for a fair price.
Note; quality plays a factor in supply and demand. If a game is not good enough to sell for $50 but it sells OK for $9.95 is it commercial quality? Perhaps. If you sell enough.
If you calculate that it cost you $100 to make and you can only sell 6 units at $9.95 then I guess not.
Bottom line: I’d say it’s commercial quality if it can make a profit. How much is it costing to burn, package, market etc. Can you sell it for more than that? Then yes.
Ultimately, something is not sale-able because it’s good, but because someone will buy it (for example that $#1+ crazy frog ring tone).
It wouldn’t cost $100 to make a blender game. Probably more like… $5… at most…for packaging and whatnot. And then to ship it you would get $6, and it would likely sell for $10, so you’d get $11 per game sold! That, or you could make it downloadable, and still get $10 a game.
Sorry, I wasn’t being clear. If you’re going to make a profit making games you should take your own time into account as well.
They say, of new drugs, that each tablet may cost 0.1c to produce, but the first one cost 14.6 million dollars.
In other words, if you spend 6 months at maybe 6 hours a week of your own time making a game and then you sell 100 units at a profit of $6 each, was $600 really worth it?
That boils down to about $3.80 per hour. Is that a fair wage for a game developer?
I believe that the term is more of a “catch phrase” we have adopted from sales people.
Most of the time I hear it, is on the ass end of a software or game advertisement.
When I hear people promise “Commercial quality” or “Professional quality” from productivity software, I feel like they are trying to sell me skill.
From experience I have found that Skill is acquired, and cannot be purchased.
I start to wonder… wow, why are they not talking about the features of the application?
I also see it used as a proxy/synonym for the word “Good”
I would say about 85% of all the Commercial, “Commercial quality” games I have purchased are borderline crap.
So “Commercial quality” to me means nothing about: Looks, Game play,or Sell ability.
I hear you! I always feel cheated when I stay up for the “Ultimate Television Experience” only to find there are more television experiences following it.
I think “commercial quality” is an ambiguous term. When directed at an independent developer, it is generally understood to mean “what your podunk little garage game is not.” When it is used by an independent developer to describe his product it either means “I’m going to charge you money to play the final version, probably more than it’s worth” or simply “I’m full of myself.” Occassionally it is used merely to draw out a response.
To give it a real and clear-cut definition is quite a task. The commercial game industry has levels of “quality.” I think the problem is that we tend to think of “commercial quality” on the basis of sheer glamour. Cutting edge graphics, surround sound, and full-page ads. The truth is, not all commercial games are as good as the best. Consider, for example, some of the computer versions of popular card and board games. They are certainly commercial products, so should we include them in our definition of “commercial quality”? Most of those products don’t even deserve to have the word quality in the same sentence with them unless it’s prefixed by the word “poor.”
When faced with problems of definition like this, I’m forced to define “commercial quality” in one of two ways when describing games. Either it means “comprable to contemporary, main stream, professionally produced games” or it means “anything that people will pay money for.”
Personally, though, I think the best definitions for our community understanding are those I put forth in my first paragraph. Everybody keep up the “commercial quality” work. Let me know when you make some money.
I think what most people mean when they say it is, A. Does it look like Half-Life 2?
and secondly, more as a subconscious afterthought, B. Is it innovative?
Though most people are thinking more of A when they say “commercial quality,” B is still more important than most people realize. It’s quite often the truly unique games that make a hit, even if they don’t quite measure up to standard graphics of the day. The original Myst, Black and White, The Sims, Katamari Damacy, these are all games which were completely different than anything else on the market, and as such, sold really well. Katamari is an example of a game that was so new and unusual that people overlooked its graphical shortcomings. This principle is especially strong with independent games. A game like Armadillo Run doesn’t necessarily have fantastic graphics, but it’s so innovative that people don’t care.
This is how I see it: when people say “commercial quality,” they usually mean graphics, but in reality, innovation is more important.
I think that sums it up… While innovation and quality and gaming experience are all nice… There are many, many commercial games that lack one or more of the above. That doesn’t necessarily make those games bad.
