The Future Of The Golf Club: 'We’re Not Going To Try And Rip Anyone Off'

HB Studios released The Golf Club in August in a curious vacuum. The new systems were out with a growing install base, and yet through the spring of 2014 no customary golf game appeared for the consoles from EA Sports or anyone else. The Nova Scotia-based developer seized upon the opportunity with The Golf Club – which is still the only golf game for new-gen platforms. However, the game is notable in its own right. It features an in-depth course creator and challenging and rewarding gameplay. We talked to Anthony Kyne, HB Studios' producer, about the game's future, the uncommon space the developer occupies in the industry, and his views on the dangers of free-to-play, sports games, and more.

The Strategy Behind The Golf Game:
Kyne: Well what we did is we didn't really go about it in a business logical sense, but we knew there was a gap in the market for golf on the PS4 originally. And we went, "Okay, so there's nothing there – why don't we go and make a golf game? 'Cause everybody always buys at least one golf game per system – even people who don't like golf always own one golf game."

Self-Publishing & The Advantages/Disadvantages Of Using A Publisher:
Quite a few [publishers] approached us...but we were really keen on retaining the IP and not being pushed around by what they thought the game should be. And you know we're lucky: we're a successful indie developer. I've worked with EA over the years, and worked with the MLB and stuff. It's meant that we've got enough money in the bank that we can take a gamble every few years on some internal projects like this.

[Publishers have] a lot of big marketing teams. They've got producers on their side that think certain things need to be done a certain way, and they wouldn't have let us get away with some of the stuff we've done, and some of the stuff the community likes.

We're not ruling out ever going to the publisher, it's just having the right partner. We're still talking to a couple of people about making us a disk-based product, because it's very hard for us to get our games on to a disc and out. Sony's not too bad, but with Microsoft you have to get another publishing agreement with them, and it's hard work to actually get that publishing agreement.

The Reaction To The Game:
It's funny how much you see people in our forums coming around. Like when we first released this one guy posted, "This is the worst game ever made." I looked at his post and he had six posts in the span of a week and a half. "Worst game ever made" was the first one. The next post was, "I played it a bit more, and it's still really bad, but I do like a couple of things about it." By the sixth post he was like, "I was totally wrong. It's the best game ever. I can't stop thinking about it. I just want to play all the time. I'm not even talking to my wife anymore because I'm just playing the game." People aren't used to that anymore. They aren't used to learning and being challenged by a game.

I think that we're actually a golfer's game rather than a gamer's golf game. And that's a good market for us, we don't need to sell millions to break even, we just need to sell a couple of hundred thousand and we are all very very happy.... We've about broken even, maybe made a little bit of money, our pot was around the $2-2.5 million mark.

On Free-To-Play Games:
If you go free-to-play then you gotta come up with some way of getting people to spend money, and you spend most of your time as a designer not thinking about how good the game is and how people are gonna play, you're thinking about, "How can I make this irritating for players so they want to spend money to not be irritated?" And that's not the art of making video games, or the reason I got into it.

I've got no problem with free-to-play. It's a viable business in some respects. When it first came about, it was a very clever idea. The problem is now with visibility within free-to-play games and everything else being out there. If you're paid on a mobile device, you're basically dead now. It's very rare that somebody's going to do well on a paid app unless they've got a real big brand.

That's how you make money, ultimately, is by having those licenses to push you up until you're noticeable. Anybody who doesn't have them is invisible. Type "golf" into the App Store and you're inundated. You don't know which one to buy.

The True Value Of Games:
I really believe that people don't value the cost of games anymore. If you see something on the App store for $1.99, even myself, I'm looking at it going like, "$1.99, that's a lot of money." For a game now you pay $1.99, you must be getting 50 hours out of it. You pay $5 for a beer if you're lucky, and you get 30-45 minutes out of it. You pay $60 for Friday night out, which is like four hours. But you're paying $2 for a game that's giving you 50 hours and you're like, "It's not worth it." It's a huge value for your money, but people don't value that anymore. It's interesting to see how you can break that down and get people's perception of value up.... It'd be interesting to see someone try it and whether or not it works. I've talked to people before who seemed interested in it.

A New Pay Model For Sports Games:
That's the thing with things like NCAA and stuff. If it was a deal where you go, "Ok, we've got a college football game and it's bare minimum – no season, no nothing." Then you go, "Ok, well I want to pay for all the correct teams, so each team costs maybe $2." You do a deal with the licenses and then everyone who buys the Texas Longhorns pays $3-4 for that. The college gets the money, and each of the players in the roster, or maybe the roster's even different. Then you go, "Ok, I want the correct stadium." You maybe pay $4-5 for the correct stadium instead of a generic one, or maybe you don't have a stadium, you just play in the park. In the end it makes a $60 game or a $70 game, but you're in the door for maybe $2 or $3.

The Future of Golf Club:
We're not going to be The Golf Club 2015, 2016, 2017. We're just going to go with what we've got and just add updates to it, some of which will be paid, some of which won't. You know, just make a game that's accessible to everyone, that can compete with everyone. We're not going to try and rip anyone off with just the updates and not add much and then charge $60 for it. We're looking at it from a gamer's point of view as well as a developer's point of view.

What Do Fans Want From The Game And The Updates?
People seem to want progression. People always ask for a career mode. I understand that. But what they don't understand is that you don't need to have a traditional career mode. In The Golf Club, the game is your career. We just have to do some gating and stuff. We're thinking about ways of doing that in a way where you actually feel like you're progressing. We don't want to have a golfer that you can big up with attributes or anything like that. That's something that I'm totally against.

March is when our next major [update] is going to be. We've got one coming before Christmas with some new things in it. We've got all of our choices designed out, and now we just need to decide which one we're going to push out. We've got a handicap system as well going into the December update. We want to make sure everyone has the handicap mode by the time career mode comes out in March so that they slide in nicely and make the competitive pyramid system we want.

For more on the game, be sure to check out our review, and also head over to the game's official site for info on future updates.