Problems inside the game industry, Claims by dev X

[Shifty Geezer]

However won't XBLive! still require an expensive XB360 SDK to be bought? IT won't have the same degree of support as say PC development that's cheap as you like, bedroom development stuff. One the XB bigwigs mentioned a development price of $100,000 which still occlude most potential talent. How many wannabe developers can drum up that much capital?

I guess there might hopefully crop up some 'speculative' publishers who'll back small scale development teams who can prove they've the capability and talent. As I say, I hope so. I'm sure a lot of good ideas (though I'd hazard most people with a great idea for a new game actually haven't anything of the sort, going by software developer forums ) could get passed up just because people can't afford to develop them, and it's that cost as much as distribution model that needs to be addressed if development is really to open up. Though existing developers will at least find an outlet in Live! Arcade without a publisher taking all their earnings, and might try some more experimental work if they can find $100,000 to throw away on potential turkey. That's kinda the risk with new ideas - sometimes they just suck and you don't get anything back, so you should only undertake development if you can afford to lose it all.

 

[L_i_n_k]

Without getting too ranty

As a developer I want front loaded payment schedule since all my significant costs are upfront. Publishers insist on a backend loaded payment schedule since if they cancel they are less out of pocket.

In order to sign a contract you must be competitive on cost and schedule, which means you bid at or less than what it will actually cost you (betting on royalties to bail you out) and are "inventive" in scheduling.

Almost every small developer working on original property is in breach of contract, because they will miss at least one milestone somewhere, once your in breach the publisher has you by the short and curlies, they can renegotiate royalties and payments whenever they feel like it.

Even if the property is a success you likely don't own it so the publisher is at liberty to have another dev do the sequel or move development internally if you're considered too expensive.

You work from milestone to milestone, which means before you finish one product you need to have already signed another, but you can't sign until you demonstrate that you have the resources ready right now to work on the new title....

Big publishers seem to think you need a team of 20 programmers to build a current gen game, and you have no hope of convincing them that you can actually do it better with 7 or 8 really good people. This in turn drives your cost up, and your back to inventive accounting and scheduling above.

Don't get me wrong there are ways to make money as a small developer, most of them are work for hire, port X to PSP type things or do contract work for a large publisher, and that doesn't honestly interest me.

Okay very interesting thanks and very apreciated. As you said earlier, that you except things to get better eventually as other entertaiment industries have. But as we speack things are getting more complicated every day. You need even more money, bigger dev teams, quicker timelines. Could Xbox live arcade or similiar technology be that source of optimism?.

 

[scooby_dooby]

However won't XBLive! still require an expensive XB360 SDK to be bought? IT won't have the same degree of support as say PC development that's cheap as you like, bedroom development stuff. One the XB bigwigs mentioned a development price of $100,000 which still occlude most potential talent. How many wannabe developers can drum up that much capital?.

Well like any business you have to have some sort of capital, and $100,000 is much more realistic than 10 or 20 million!

ALso, I'd imagine if you had a group of dedicated guys with an amazing idea, alot of that 100,000 could maybe be in-kind manhours with the hope of cashing in after sales.

 

[L_i_n_k]

However won't XBLive! still require an expensive XB360 SDK to be bought? IT won't have the same degree of support as say PC development that's cheap as you like, bedroom development stuff. One the XB bigwigs mentioned a development price of $100,000 which still occlude most potential talent. How many wannabe developers can drum up that much capital?

I guess there might hopefully crop up some 'speculative' publishers who'll back small scale development teams who can prove they've the capability and talent. As I say, I hope so. I'm sure a lot of good ideas (though I'd hazard most people with a great idea for a new game actually haven't anything of the sort, going by software developer forums ) could get passed up just because people can't afford to develop them, and it's that cost as much as distribution model that needs to be addressed if development is really to open up. Though existing developers will at least find an outlet in Live! Arcade without a publisher taking all their earnings, and might try some more experimental work if they can find $100,000 to throw away on potential turkey. That's kinda the risk with new ideas - sometimes they just suck and you don't get anything back, so you should only undertake development if you can afford to lose it all.

Well 10 000 for sdk is five times more than a PC, That will defenitely make many heads turn. Then again, if there is more than one person in the project, that cost will be divided. 100 000 certainly is beyond many! bedroomcoders, but is afordable by smal to medi independent dev grops. Still i cant see a single person making a hit, except its some kind of new tetris.

 

[scooby_dooby]

So you code it in your bedroom on your PC, then take get some partners who can see the potential, and bring it to XBLive Arcade.

Maybe you don't retain full rights to your IP, but maybe 50%, and the investors deserve a slice anyways since you wouldn't have the capital to make it happen without them.

From there your game reaches XBLive and can begin selling, if it becomes a hit, you may be picked up by a publisher, and demand to retain rights to your IP. I think that if you had a proven product, there would be SOMEONE out there willing to fund it and cash in, even if it meant not owning rights to the IP.

The problem we have now is, IP's can't be proven until they've had 5million dollars pumped into them, and no-one pumps money that kind of money into an unproven franchise without a HUGE backend payoff, and the develop has 0 leverage. A smash hit on XBLive would change that negotiation process completely!

Hell you may be able to generate enough revenue to publish yourself(2million sales@$10), should that become the case, and your IP makes REAL money, then you could step in as the first real XBLive Arcade Publisher that took an active role in bringing the top-selling games to the next level, cashing in on the sales however not demanding IP rights from your developers.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I s'pose ideally, and perhaps unrealistically, I'd like to see the possibilities that existied in day one of computer games. Back in the 8bit era individual nerds (or a nerd and their geek friend) could hack away on 32kb of assembler and make a best seller. For me the key to opening full innovation is enabling those same individuals with no financial reserve other than for a $100 language and an old $40 copy of PaintShopPro to still manage to get their ideas out there if they are willing to put in the effort. Ultimately I hate an industry (and world) where how far you get depends more on how much money you have (which can be a fairly random criteria) rather than how good your ideas are and how hard you'll work towards them. *sigh*

 

[Edge]

It seems to me you have an industry with a lot of idealistic people, who are low on cash, and think they can create the next best thing, if only a publisher would give them the money to do so. In other words the risk is on the publisher, and so the publisher drives a hard bargain, and understandable so.

There is bitterness against this, but why should there be? If you think your ideal is so hot, fund your own development, create a great game, and shop for a publisher.

Of course people don't have the money, and they seem so arrogant to think publishers should help them simply because they have such a great ideal. Well great ideals for games are a dime a dozen.

It's a very competitive industry, and so it's a very tough industry. If you can't hack it, you should not be in it.

 

[pc999]

Great article IMO.

And I do agree with him, games are each time more related to each others, look the same etc... (part of that is what make Rev so atractive), while they still play the same the interesting in games starts to fadding out, each time we see a new games if there is a new features is normaly only one (a little one) few games can go beyond that.

IMO while nicier gfx is cool (from detail stand point) I think that effects (eg.shadows) are much more important for both gameplay (eg.Splinter Cell with 10X the detail would not be better than it is) and low budgets (I think) and power for better AI, physics can make new gameplay too , but as I said before multiple times I think that too thinghs should happen too games get a new breath:

1) Games (and the console(s) itself) needs to have a lower price (1/3), so they can get really mainstream , and probably jump by much more than 3X (IMO is probably the 1B from Allard) the sales and get a much biger audience, and this way creat new markets for low budget games and such..., and once that a lot of people just dont play games because they cant afford it ( and a big percentage only buy it after a big redution in the price)

2) Gemes need new ways to improve (ie new interfaces, as STANDARD, Rev will probably pick much more new gamers IMO), you can see in my signature how a microphone as standard can add to the gameplay (if from the ground up) because IMO controllers are the main limitation with the power from the new gen of consoles (you can see in some others threads more ideas). New interfaces will also bring new gamers , new markets etc...

Althought XBL sees to have some nice ideas, it looks like it will hav 2 problems:

1) It will be mainly for more content which sould be hard being inovative with maps(...) they will hardly bring new mechanics to the games.

2) New games will probably be very simple once (by now) they only anunced 2D, board like , flash like ...games so while IMO still can be inovative, it will not be good for any game a bit more complex and that may be problematic for some people.

Althought it will be very interesting too see a bit more ahead in next gen consoles when gfx dont matter (because it will be very hard to see diferences, just see the numbers of UE3 licences), how consumers will react.

 

[scooby_dooby]

2) New games will probably be very simple once (by now) they only anunced 2D, board like , flash like ...games so while IMO still can be inovative, it will not be good for any game a bit more complex and that may be problematic for some people..

Why can't a XB Arcade game be complex? The HDD is recommended for XB Live users, and would be preferential for anyone planning on downloading several XBLive Arcade Games.

So storage space is a non-issue.

Bandwidth is somewhat of an issue, but I don't see why the live servers couldn't pump out some decent bandwidth and let you download 500MB-1000MB games, these types of games would probably be in the $20 range anyways, that's plenty of money for MS to get a cut and cover server/bandwidth fees. Especially considering there's no costs for advertising, shipping, packaging, manufacturing etc...

So bandwidth isn't a non-issue, but it's not a show stopper.

 

[L_i_n_k]

I s'pose ideally, and perhaps unrealistically, I'd like to see the possibilities that existied in day one of computer games. Back in the 8bit era individual nerds (or a nerd and their geek friend) could hack away on 32kb of assembler and make a best seller. For me the key to opening full innovation is enabling those same individuals with no financial reserve other than for a $100 language and an old $40 copy of PaintShopPro to still manage to get their ideas out there if they are willing to put in the effort. Ultimately I hate an industry (and world) where how far you get depends more on how much money you have (which can be a fairly random criteria) rather than how good your ideas are and how hard you'll work towards them. *sigh*

So would it be good way to start designing the game in fever dimensions(not old school nessessarily) and when the core innovation in gameplay is right, move on to produce top production quality on top of that foundation. If the level designers would know gameplay,to like complementing the gameplay by making it more than sum of its parts, not just trying to make it look great artistically. Many franchises have find that succesfull, maybe this "make a top production quality innovation hit from the scratch", is so rare that everyone just looks at you with disbelief, even with great trackrecord.

Knowing products like mertroid prime, a lot of this knowledge is within the AAA devs, how fundametally gameplayish the development phase generally is, doesent show from general level products at least (genre spesific mimics ect). but above described way it would at least be easier to innovate on simple gameplay and then move on to high production quality level, softer landing for investors and developers.

After all ,how deeply new devs dug into these fundemental non superficial parts of the game. Lots of famous greatlooking games being their source of inspiration, but do they ever get them, or master those doctrines by just making new harry potters.

After all in the article escapist hinted that there are wastly more great working gameplay combinations in the working minds at least ,than we are lead to believe. Publisher are working like a floodgate ,by just aproving ideas that are safe from bussines standpoint, and Talented devs like ERP keep making ports, maybe new spiderman if he gets lucky.

But im not only conplaining, as a gamer I think that, with even these resttrictions that are maybe natural in many ways Still. The number of quality games is great, but i would like to be having my jaw handed back to me by the very guys who have played the first 20 year patch of games and understand everything about them and know how to fuck my brains out =)