Death To The Games Industry

[zparticle]

I copied this from /.

Greg Costikyan has an article up on The Escapist railing against the current state of the industry. Bigger budgets, obese publishers, and creatively dead franchises that continue to see publishing are snuffing out the opportunity for innovation in an increasingly mainstream market. From the article:

“For the sake of the industry, for the sake of gamers who want to experience something new and cool, for the sake of developers who want to do more than the same-old same-old, for the sake of our souls, we have to get out of this trap. If we don’t, as developers, all we will be doing for the rest of eternity is making nicer road textures and better-lit car models for games with the same basic gameplay as Pole Position. Spector is right. We must blow up this business model, or we are all doomed. What do we want? What would be ideal? A market that serves creative vision instead of suppressing it. An audience that prizes gameplay over glitz. A business that allows niche product to be commercially successful - not necessarily or even ideally on the same scale as the conventional market, but on a much more modest one: profitability with sales of a few tens of thousands of units, not millions. And, of course - creator control of intellectual property, because creators deserve to own their own work.”

[g666]

Why dont all the ppl on this forum make some mini games and provide them in a package kinda like wario-ware.

[erikd]

First off, I applaud this noise from important people in the industry like Warren Spector. (Almost enough to make me forgive him for Deus Ex: Invisible War :P)
Lets look at the bright side too, though. The gaming industry is becoming more and more a multimillion dollar industry. This has the obvious negative sides, but there is a positive side: more impressive stuff can potentially be created. Impressiveness often costs big bucks.
Lets compare the gaming industry with the movie industry. The same applies there: Sequel after sequel, there have to be popular stars in it, more and better special effects, etc.
But this same movie industry gave us films like Blade Runner, 2001: A space oddysey and Brazil. Classic movies that really needed budget to become what they are. All made by people that just love filmmaking. Made without compromises. Made possible by the multimillion dollar industry.
Also in the movie industry, interesting independent movies are made on a tight budget, but it is an industry with budget. Not as much as Hollywood blockbusters of course, but that makes sense as they have a much smaller audience. But money is made there too, and because the risk is smaller, innovation has a bigger chance there.
Maybe this is a difference with the indie game scene? AFAIK, most indie games are made by 1 or 2 people, but practically without any budget. Maybe this is a business opportunity? Fund smaller scale game projects? Not as risky as multimillion dollar AAA titles, but if you score, you score good! (The same way as The Terminator, which was made with a relatively very tight budget).
Maybe I’m completely off (I’m the first to admit I don’t know that much about the games industry), but it seems to me that there’s a big gap between indie games and AAA titles. A gap which can be filled and which might lead to interesting results.

[Bombadil]

That’s an very interesting article. Thanks for it.
I think Greg expresses very many true points. I’m not a fan of revolutions but his observations are good and unfortunately true.

[princec]

I’m not quite so naive as I was 3 years ago about the so-called “state of the industry”. I started out doing my own thing from scratch intending and expecting to at least make a tidy little second income over a few years but I discovered the hard way that the real world operates very differently from the opinions of programmers and game designers.

Even now the indie scene has undergone a massive change over the last year or so. No longer are most of the indies even vaguely independent; they’re all pwned by the portals now. Everyone wants to write games that will get on the portals. There are a very few stalwarts making completely original games, but they’re not the ones making big bucks.

Cas