Problems inside the game industry, Claims by dev X

[L_i_n_k]

This tread is for soring out the claims , made by anonymous developer X about the differet problems arising in todays gameindustry. You can find the article here.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/8/3

I would specially like to hear first hand experiences from resident developers about the subjects found in the article. Im not sure is this subject discussed here before with all this next gen talk going on.

So... is there a hidden world of unpublished aaa games, but never fructify, becouse of the reasons listed in the article.
Do the oldschool master designers go unchallenge becouse there is not enought knowledge in the bussines side to see where the talent lies and supporting them with enought resources that there could be any competition at the first place. There are lots of points in the article , please feel free to comment on them.

 

[scooby_dooby]

So what does this guy think about XB Live Arcade?

No publishers, no big budgets, lots of room for innovation. Sounds like the perfect solution...

 

[Edge]

I hate articles full of complaints.

Publishers are producing what the public wants, or they simply would not be in business very long. If you are going to blame the publishers, you might as well blame the people who buy the games. No one is forcing anyone to buy Doom III.

Let him innovate, and produce a game with less expensive assets (read: low quality), and see how many people are interested in it.

We don't buy $500 graphics cards, so we can buy games low on art asset quality, just because they are "fun". I want fun with high quality art assets, and if I can't get it from one company, I will buy the other company's product. If not, what was the point in spending $500 on a graphic card?

I think that you need more innovation is so over-rated. Many games try to innovate, and they are down right boring.

We need better story lines in games. Deliver an ingrossing and deeper playing experience.

 

[mckmas8808]

Edge you are dead on. SOTC proves that. It's not overly innovative, but it does give the player a great story with a new angle to play a videogame. I don't need games that are totally different than what I could ever think of in life. I want games that are fun. I want to be entertained.

 

[ERP]

It pretty much agrees with my feelings on the industry as a whole. When the last small developer I worked for went under, I considered starting a development company and decided that the business model just didn't make sense.

I probably wouldn't state things quite so strongly as in the article, but in general it's getting harder and harder to survive as a small developer and it basically impossible to sell an original idea.

I think we'll see more and more development moved internal by the big guys, largely because with larger development budgets it's easier to track the spending, you know the money your spending is being spent on your product rather than the one the developer is doing for the other publisher.

I think in a lot of ways it's just the industry growing up, budgets will flatten off at somepoint and there will always be people willing to take chances on original ideas, they'll just be few and far between. But honestly just because an idea is new and inovative doesn't make it good.

There are other models than the one that the article is pushing and there is more room for innovation in them. As a developer you have to conciously decide that your not making a AAA title and your not competing with the big boys and concentrate on something you can sell say 50K copies of and match that budget with your development costs. But no-one wants to build B titles.

 

[L_i_n_k]

What does he think about live arcade, i dont know. What do you think about it. There certainly is shell space, but there still is pile of money you need ,if you want to go beyond the Snes classics in terms of gameplay as anyone can top them in production values.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

A lot of it is hit or miss. Some of the things he says in there are just weird, but others are pretty much unarguable. Especially his little section about the power of middleware, since it seems that everybody thinks middleware solutions are these magic bullets that solve everything.

Let him innovate, and produce a game with less expensive assets (read: low quality), and see how many people are interested in it.

You clearly missed the point. It wasn't about making something cheaper and simpler with weaker art assets -- it was about publishers not backing something outside the status quo no matter what the cost. And that includes your hopes of deeper storylines. Why? Because nobody wants storylines, they want constant action.

 

[Inane_Dork]

He has point. Nothing will be done, though.
Just like the last time someone yelled, "The sky is falling!"

 

[mckmas8808]

Well the samething is happening in rap music and movies too. Maybe it's just things changing in the world.

 

[_phil_]

Let him innovate, and produce a game with less expensive assets (read: low quality), and see how many people are interested in it.

I would bet that the incoming massive outsourcing of graphical assets won't drive its quality upward.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I probably wouldn't state things quite so strongly as in the article, but in general it's getting harder and harder to survive as a small developer and it basically impossible to sell an original idea.

That's endemic to all the entertainments industries. Big companies want big returns and the 'accountants' decided what will or will not sell. If someone comes up with a great idea that'll be absolute perfect for a niche, and profitable, the publisher won't care if it won't be hugely profitable. Hence generic games, movies, books, musicians, TV programmes and everything else. As an example many kids publishers won't touch rhyming books because they can't be translated into other languages, and publishers only want to publish titles with broader appeal. That means if Dr. Seuss were trying to launch his career now he wouldn't get anywhere.

If publishers only cared about making a living, they could afford to take risks on small-time niche games and maybe get a sleeper hit once in a while. But they only care about making insane profits (like all other companies) and not actual contribute to people's entertainment, which ought to be the concern of the entertainment industry...

 

[Druga Runda]

it's an excellent article.

I am not from games industry but this is how any industry, or company dies and than sustains itself slowly changing and strangling competiton with its size and cash accumulated in past times. Effectively in the end just to be replaced with something else ... Not that gaming will dissapear any time soon, but the very forces that are driving the industry now it will slowly strangle it eventually. Not kill it, just strangle it, but this is the nature of this world, we will still play the GTA 69 games and such, not that it is bad, but surely it would be good too see the "real driver" (which is innovation) behind the entertainment take the hold.

Other mass appeal "art" style businesses are already at the same stage, look at music here and there some "real musician" manages to scrape through to the radio, and many times in the world it is because of some relatively cheap or independant medium, like small radio stations or in UK the BBC with it's John Peel's and simlar. Does this/ can this exist for games. Sadly making games is much more time consuming and costly than making music, and music is in such a dire straits as it is, on 100 Atomic Kittens, Boyzones, Girls Aloud, Sugarbabes, whatever you get some "real" musician like Jack Johnson (IMO an example of, a dude that would do the music regardless of making money or not) making a hit and being heard... what will happen with games? Who knows but IMO the only way out is to publish your own games ala Valve if you are big or reinvent the wheel through the net and find out to make money from "free" games...

It's not easy going against 50bn gorillas but quality counts and luckily the internet is the medium that a product can be distributed through almost for free. There is the future, somebody is bound to crack it, and manage to live off it.

 

[mckmas8808]

If publishers only cared about making a living, they could afford to take risks on small-time niche games and maybe get a sleeper hit once in a while. But they only care about making insane profits (like all other companies) and not actual contribute to people's entertainment, which ought to be the concern of the entertainment industry...

I agree with this 100%. But really aren't the game industry taking chances every now and again? Maybe not as much as we like but games like Okami, Jet Set Radio, SOTC, Ico, Kamnari Damancy (spelled wrong), etc. wouldn't have been possible.

 

[Druga Runda]

Does anyone seriously think anyone other than Will Wright could have gotten EA to publish a game like The Sims? And actually, EA tried to kill The Sims many times before it was finally released. From what I've heard (and this is definitely hearsay), Bing Gordon's comment at the meeting where publishing was approved was: "Well, it'll only sell a hundred thousand copies, but it'll get Will off our backs."
We're only talking about the best-selling PC title of all fucking time.

just to add that is quote is surely a classic, and I have no dobut that it could happen. This is strangulation because the money men have no vision, however teh industry will survive and move on with it's Fifas 200X's and Madden 200Y's... people want that too... it is up to independants to figure out how to make money out of creating and "giving away" good games. IMO not impossible but surely not something that has been started in the big way. From my perspective the natural way to independance is to try and get some money for in game advertizing, not much but it might be a way to get alternative stream of income for large distribution numbers. I am sure it would be even more valuable than TV adds for TV additcts as you can actually give products much more purpose and pitch in an purpose built innovative ad. (or better to hope for innovative game with some ads )

I know another beast we would want to avoid, but could be a way for independants to generate money just for large distribution of the game for free. I hope there are other more gamer friendly ways of creating games, but well we are still waiting for someone to start delivering... Surely this is bound to strart happening with even more power to "EA - it's in the lowest common denominator" style franchises.

 

[Brodda Thep]

Old games

I think he has some very good points about creating new game experiences. Such as the Sims or Nintendogs. or that damacy game I hear about. Most of these are from well known developers. You don't see very many new ideas from starting developers, yet at the same time we still see new types of games that are wildly popular. (grand Theft Auto)

So the problem isn't as big as he makes out.

The hardware guys would have you believe that there's a direct correlation between hardware capability and the size of the market, but that's false; people buy games for the gameplay experience, not for cool hardware, and the way to grow the market is to create new experiences - not to release game seven in a franchise.

I found that qute interesting. Ihave to disagree with him. The graphics is what has expanded the market drastically. I played the old rogue-like games such as Angband long ago. I loved them. But people would come up and look at what I was playing and not understand how I could find that enjoyable. They didn't see that '@' was me and that the 'D' was a fiersome dragon that I was engaged with.

Yet, these same people absolutely loved Diablo-esque type games. And the game play is nearly identical, with some aspects being better in Angband! (more levels, more variety of monsters, more effects) So graphics or rather immersion significantly drives market expansion and will continue to do so.

I think the reason why the industry is like it is, is because the medium which we bring games across to people on changes so dramatically in so short a time. In the three years it takes to create a game, the abilities of the medium have doubled if not quadrupled. Until this stops happening you are going to see the two-week-do-it-or-die sales.

Once hardware stops increasing so dramatically (maybe in 20 years?) you will be able to start getting collections of art and applicable algorithms that can expand your games without looking identical to every other game out there or look outdated. Until then, old work must continuously be discarded as new technologies come out, because they are simply outpaced.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

That's why publishers like Majesco exist.

 

[Alpha_Spartan]

Welcome to the games industry. Believe me, it sucks from the gamer's standpoint as well. It's sad that the ugliest Xbox 360 game, Tony Hawk Whatever, will probably sell the most because it's a safe game that many casual gamers will flock to.

Game development has become a needlessly self-fulfilling prophecy. Devs throw 20 million into a Halo clone to make it look shiny and they'll have to sell 2 million copies to make a profit. Why do games cost $20 million? Because Mr. Suit wants the game to appeal to the MTV audience so they hire Breaking Benjamin and The Killers to play a couple of tracks for the game. Of course, the game also has to debut on MTV so they have to pay MTV a few million out of the dev budget. Then there's the other advertising. Then there's all the developer overtime payroll because Mr. Suit wants the artists to put in a Sobe machine in one of the buildings in the game. But the programmers made it just another destructible object in the game, but Sobe execs don't like that so the programmer has to go in and make all of the Sobe machine objects indestructible. Of course, this causes the game to be delayed and go over budget.

Then when the game finally gets released and only sells 250,000 copies, the publisher dumps the developer because the $22 million dollar investment didn't pay off.

That's Modern Game Development 101 for you!!

 

[mckmas8808]

I just don't think it's that bad for the gamers Alpha.

 

[Alpha_Spartan]

Well, if you like Tony Hawk Rehash Edition and spending $60 a year on Madden for a new package and roster update, then you should be happier than a fly on shit.

But for those of us who got into gaming when almost no titles had a number behind them or was a clone of another game, we feel like blind men walking barefoot through a field full of cows at night and hoping that our feet don't get dirty.

 

[L_i_n_k]

People buy what they can get in their hands and that is desided by publishers, by voting idea x witch will get further along, And clearly in a lot of cases, they are not woting for a completely new bizard sounding ideas (EA anyone). But in the end , even if you get your self to the top, you are not going to top miyamoto if your ideas are allways greeted with , "stop this noncense Stanley, we are never gonna sell a game where this blumber eats mushrooms and grows big so that he can jump million times"