f13.net

I demand Beluga Caviar in my trailer! (http://www.f13.net/index2.php?subaction=showfull&id=1114116951&archive=&start_from=&ucat=1&)

First!

Good stuff.  MyVocabulary += "borken frau".

Liked the metaphor of having to build a new camera for each movie, and I'm intrigued by the notion of small indy dev studios sharing common assets rather than relying on the big boys (e.g. licensing the latest Quake or Unreal engine).  Are there any current examples of this?  It seems like a good idea.

The closest example I can think of would be Skotos.net, which is a bunch of MUD's and Meridian 59 all gathered together under one distribution network. Sharing game engine assets hasn't been done yet, that I know of.

Going a step further, reusing art assets across different projects would be interesting - the main obstacle has been the constant growth in technology and asset format (you couldn't take the sprites from Doom 2 and reuse them as 3D models in Quake 1), but we're starting to get to the point of models (and other art assets) being portable enough that you could reuse them across games, like having an actor play different roles.  Not too practical for things like a monster that's unique to your particular game, but having a large shared library of high-quality human models, for example, or props like shrubs, rocks, et cetera, could cut down on the amount of money that needs to be spent developing art assets for each new game.

I would prefer to see sharing of the underlying technologies, like negative ping code  :wink: . Having each dev group have to learn all the scaling lessons each time a new game is developed is beyond annoying. If they could get their hardware and architecture under control (by standing on the shoulders of those who came before), it would give them more time/money/resources to hammer out bugs, imbalances, unitemized zones, etc.

As for art, I like a distinct look for each game. I don't mind exchanges of techniques and software tricks and whatnot, but keep the finished models proprietary.

Definitely.  Fortunately, there's already some precedent for that - we're seeing more and more games built from licensed engines rather than homebrewed ones, with the mod community being the most extreme example of standing on the shoulders of giants.  (Vampire would also be a great example if it hadn't been so bug-riddled.  Ah well.)


I agree that having distinct looks and aesthetics are good... on the other hand, I wouldn't have complained if the Doom 3 team had licensed some of the "actors" from Half-Life 2 to replace the gargoyle-looking "humans" they had in their cutscenes.  There are some aesthetic aspects that need to be unique from game to game, and nothing will ever change that, but there are a number of objects and textures in any given game that are more or less interchangeable between games but still get rebuilt from scratch each time, sucking up time and money that could be better spent on, say, QA.  For example, once you have a nice high-quality stormtrooper model built for Jedi Knight, there's no reason you should have to pay for a whole new (slightly lower quality IIRC) stormtrooper model for SWG when the end result is going to represent exactly the same thing.  Leverage that shit, yo.

The skyrocketing costs of art asset development seem to have been part of the inspiration for Spore, which is a damnably clever solution to the problem.  Unfortunately, I don't see the technique of procedurally-generated art being extensible to most other genres, which still leaves developers "building their actors from scratch" for each and every game.  You can use the same actor and still get a radically different "look" for your movie - just dress and light him differently.   :wink:

Since you mentioned Dynamix in your essay, I thought it might be ok to bring up the fact that when Dynamix got shut down, they took the core engine of the Tribes engine, packaged it up, and made it available to independent game devs for $100. Source code and all.

MharinSkel doesn't post much here anymore, but I know that he's taken a look at the engine (and I've read his blog's comments about some frustrations he's had, all of which are pretty accurate), and it would be interesting to get a fully non-biased viewpoint from him if he shows up regarding his experiences with what you are talking about: using a licensed engine instead of starting from scratch.

There is an interesting .plan from the CEO of the company itself commenting about the wrong way to use a licensed engine as well: Tribes:Starsiege. They purchased the Unreal engine license (which goes for a whopping $750,000+), and then wound up making a game that sold less than 40,000 copies in the US--such a poor showing that they even canceled the "post release patch" that actually made the game work in the first place.

There are benefits to using existing/licensed tech, but pitfalls as well.

Dear Haemish,

That's the best article you've written. God help me if we have to start paying you.  :-D

Love,
schild

Re-using art is extremely difficult. All you art has to have the same general tone, color pallette, and that sort of thing, same rough polygon count, and often-times the models are created with some of the engine features in mind. Add to that the fact that game settings run from future to fantasy to pirates to driving to whatever. You can't take a creature from Metroid, one from Zelda and one from Resident Evil, throw them together and call them a game.

Even if you look at MMORPGs, many of which are fantasy based, it's hard to see how a WoW creature could end up in EQ2 or vice-versa, or how AC2 creatures would end up in either of those games.

Re-using art in games is not like re-using objects in movies. It is like re-using animation from cartoons. Movies have the distinct advantage that a Ford Escort is a Ford Escort, regardless of what movie it's in. On the other hand, a Displacer Beast or a Troll doesn't really exist so there isn't standard model you can just drop into any game and have look natural. Games are stylized. Movies, or at least the objects in movies, largely are not. The stylization in movies comes from things like camera angles, filters, etc, not in the actual objects being filmed.

There may be some home in sharing art assets for things like driving simulations or WW2 Shooters, but the list is pretty limited.

How about this.

Blizzard can reuse art from WoW for Warcraft IV.

Reusing art assets can be based down to simply being "not starting from scratch" but rather building on past assets. Characters from a medieval game can be efficiently reskinned and colored pretty quickly by skilled artists. Even reanimating doesn't take that much work. Starting completely from scratch and rebuilding the wheel is the pain in the ass that I think he's talking about.

Yes.  The degree to which you can re-use a given asset depends on how specific that asset is to a particular game - I'm not saying you can build a game entirely out of recycled assets without making any modifications to them whatsoever, but very few games that require lots of art assets are comprised solely of completely unique objects.

The stuff from Bionatics (http://www.bionatics.com/home/index.php3?QuelleLangue=en&Res=1&Height=1024) is a stellar example of flexible and reusable art assets.  Lots of games include trees - why should each game need to reinvent the sapling?

Games are stylized, yeah, but most of them try not to be.  The majority of games are going for a very realistic look, and while you'll always find a lot of stuff that needs to be specifically done for a certain game, you'll also almost always find a huge amount of stuff that can be easily switched.  Even if you discount character models (which I think are more interchangeable than you're claiming), there's still a huge array of stuff that has to be modeled.  Trees, grass, flowers, rocks, bricks, guns, animals, swords... all this stuff has to be put together by somebody, and if you swiped some cobblestones from "Zombie Thrilla 4" to use in "Ninja Adventure" I don't think anyone would really notice.

On the topic of the original article:

Not a lot there I disagree with.  The one thing I do kind of take issue with is the representation of Steam.  Personally, I'm not at the stage where I can feel comfortable paying real money for virtual merchandise.  There are just way too many ways for it to go wrong and leave me with jack all but an e-mail reminding me I paid actual money for a product I don't have.  That, for me, is the weak link in the whole "Small Development Houses" thing.  I don't trust "We Live In A Basement Software" to handle my money unless I've already got their game, they don't trust me enough to give me the game without getting paid first, and they can't afford shelf space at EB, so it seems like I'd get stuck at that point.

Edit: Ack, looks like Samwise already said most of my first paragraph.  I've got to start writing these things a bit faster...

The one thing Steam and digital distribution has against it IS the lack of a physical "product." Never mind that the actual product ISN'T the CD, but the bits on the CD, this is the same bugaboo that is fucking the music industry in its mind. The CD is a distribution method for bits, not the produce in and of itself.

Of course, it's real goddamn simple for things like Steam to remove that obstacle to purchase. Just make a program that creates an installer disk for the purchaser, so that they may burn their own backup. VOILA! Problem solved. I can almost guarantee you the reason that piece is not in place currently has more to do with Valve's contract with Vivendi than any objection on their end, or wrinkle in the software.

I won't even get into the requirements from the publisher that keep Valve from charging less for the digital version than the boxed version. No, that's not there to keep people from buying the digital version, no sir.

Steam is a baby step. When it works, and when it is unfettered from the stupidity of old world box pushers, then it'll be something.

Another excellent write up, Haemish, marred only by being wrong.  Not totally, and not in the final analysis, but still there is wrongness there.  I shall, of course, explain my point in detail, but first I shall pause for a non-sequiter.

Your mention of reading faster than the voice actors can talk gelled something for me regarding the old speech vs text in MMOs issue.  The problem with speech is noise tolerance.  It can convey information more quickly and clearly than text, but it has a much lower noise tolerance, as anyone who has used Teamspeak or Ventrilo with a poorly disciplined group knows.  For the breadth of information, and for diverse information flows, text is easier to sort, particularly text with embedded links. So voice can augment text, but it can't replace it.  But a picture is worth a thousand words, and if we could harness graphics as a communication medium, we might be able to greatly reduce the dependance on text.  But that is mostly a digression from my comment on the article, although it ties back indirectly to what I think is missing in the analysis.

I'm going to leave that hanging, and talk about what I see as the great problem with standardized engines or other technical or artistic assets.  It has already been broached in regard to graphic assets, and I'd extend that problem to programming assets as well.  Just as the 'look' of a game can be unique, so too can the physics and other gameplay aspects be unique, and this uniqueness is partially derived from the programming.  These non-textual aspects of gameplay tend to overwhelm the story, conveying more information to the player, on a more direct level, than the story, whether it comes through text or voice acting.  Thus, if we adopt standard engines and reuse more art, in an effort to save productiuon costs, we run the risk of reducing our games to a sameness communicated on an almost subliminal level.  While you are right about the cost savings, I do not think the industry has the tool it needs to implement the cost savings without crushing innovation.  However, I think your comments about game reviewing are pointing the way to that tool, particularly this one:

What we see here is the need for a notation for describing games, not just for review, but for design and specification as well.  Of course, this is no news, Raph beat us there, but he is getting paid to do that.  Still, if we are to gain the savings of standardization in the art, sound, and programming areas of game creation, then we need a vocabulary that ties these to design, so that you can know in pre-production that your engine can handle the design you wish to build, and when new ideas arise, they can quickly, almost automatically, be vetted against the abilities your existing game assets have.  Thus, while your call for standarization is well conceived, it is somewhat out of time, coming before we have the means to describe the standards we wish to employ.

Still, your general point about not emulating Hollywood is very valid, particularly as games have a problem that Hollywood does not, namely that games are a more comittment-intense product.  I can watch a dozen movies in a weekend, but I am unlikely to play a dozen video games in a month, and might only play one MMO in a year.  Games need a longer shelf life than movies, so that they can reach an audience that is diluted across time that may run into years.  Here the digital nature of games can be an advantage, since the cost to warehouse digital information is very small, although it may cost something to update older games to track hardware and OS changes.  Nonetheless, this is an alternate marketing option for a developer who has broken away from the brick and mortar retail model, one which might value quality over hype.  One way out of milestone dependancy might be residuals from older games, but only if there is a way to counter piracy.  Hence your suggestion that Steam might be a better distribution model would be reasonable from this viewpoint.

While your point has merit for consideration, it's actually a bit behind the times, as it were.

There are significant differences between building a simulation engine from scratch, and modifying an existing simulation to customize the look/feel/reactivity of a game. Roughly 75-80% of a simulation engine is pretty transparent to the end user, and many, if not all, use the basic model of a simulation that has been in existence for quite a few years. From my personal experience, I've seen the following (indy) games that all use the exact same underlying simulation engine:

Dark Horizons: Lore--mecha based multi-player semi-persistent FPS.
RocketBowl--casual bowling game that gives your bowling balls rockets, and you bowl on 3-D bowling lanes
Marble Blast--physics based "marble rolling game" to overcome various obstables to proceed through levels.
Minions of Mirth (alpha)--party based single player/multi-player persistent RPG

Looking at the "opposite from indy" side of the Industry, GamaSutra and other game dev industry web pages have all announced recently a significant amount of "in development" games that will be using the Unreal engine license. While personally I don't think that the Unreal engine is the best choice in all areas (specifically due to it's cost--when just the license for your game is 3/4 of a million bucks, your budget is going to have to be HUGE), the industry is in fact still saving quite a bit of development time (and therefore money) re-using existing engine technology.

I liked the analysis of the gaming industry in comparison to other mass entertainment industries. Truly, when it comes to original entertainment we are accepting mediocrity as a nation. However, movies and music still reach a greater audience than games, and IMO much of that audience is classless and vapid. They like mediocrity because they understand it. They don't comprehend greatness for what it is. They've been eating Velveeta so long that a fine aged Cheddar tastes like shit to them, and you can't make a good grilled cheese out of it.

Games are different. They have people like us watching them. People like us who, lets be honest, often don't even know what we want in a great game. However, we know it when we see it. We can find greatness in the shittiest of things (ala - crafting in SWG) and we can find shit in the best of things (ala - camera issues in God of War). The point is that I believe we have developed  a community whose numbers are smaller and more discerning than your average movie-goer. We hold the people who produce our medium to different standards, and we are quicker to judge them for faults. This doesn't apply to the whole, but I think it does apply to the watchdogs, such as F13, of which there are numerous iterations.

I'm more hopeful for the gaming industry than the movie industry, and i've lost all hope for music. That's a whole different can of worms. I do think that we provide a service though as jaded gamers. We are the last hurdle to complete for a good game. If it can pass by us without repeated rapings, its damn good. I think that counts for something.

I actually think there are MORE of us for music/movies/TV than there are for gaming. They've all been around longer than gaming, they are more mass market so there is a larger pool to choose from, and there is an established vocabulary for discussing these media. Games lack that vocabulary for even rudimentary design and review. It takes a lot more effort to express things about games, which fits the media because the media requires more effort to grok (take that!) than the other media by its interactive nature.

Games and game reviews can only get better by establishing that vocabulary. We'll always be the fringe, but there'll eventually be more of us.

I have some experience with the Torque game engine. It's the engine the Dynamix guys sell and it's the engine used by the games listed above (Dark Horizons, Marble Blast, etc)

I would be happy to answer some specific questions about it, I've done scripting on it as well as C++ programming.

I was reading the port-mortem for Rachet and Clank (the first one) over on Gamasutra and saw something like this in their "What Went Right" list.

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20030613/price_02.shtml

I think this kind of sharing would be incredibly helpful to a lot of developers. Instead of reinventing the wheel every time, you can just give the existing working wheel better treads. You could probably only get this kind of sharing out of the smaller studios though.

You know, if you hadn't mentioned that I would've forgotten that they DID reuse a lot of Warcraft III art in WoW.  Mostly the 2D stuff.  Also, a lot of the animations and some voice recordings were carried over.  The animations likely had to be redone, but when you can look at what one 3D model is doing it's likely easier to make another 3D model do the same thing.  Kinda like how drawing from a photograph is easier than drawing from (even perfectly still) reality.

Let's see, a few points.

You misspelled hazard at one point.  You used 2 z's.  This invalidates your entire article and you fail at life.

You mentioned how ridiculous it would be for a movie to have to build an actor from conceptualization to reality deciding look, mannerisms, etc, and then finding a voice that suits it.

Well...
(image deleted cause it's broken, imagine a screen cap from Finding Nemo)
They kinda do that.

But I see what you're saying there.  If they had to do it for every fucking movie ever, it would be a different story.  Though for certain characters, building them from scratch is certainly easier than trying to mimic them in reality... much to the dismay of many a cosplayer.

Hazzard, as its spelled in the article, was in the title of a TV show, The Dukes of Hazzard. The name Hazzard came after the fictional Georgia county, Hazzard County. As per IMDB (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078607/). You are the weakest link.  :evil:

Building an actor from scratch for every movie, even in digital movies such as Pixar's, is done. But based on Pixar's output, they are either lightning fast, or they DO reuse some things about digital actors. Considering it takes them less time to build a movie than a game studio does to finish games, I'd say they are doing something right, even considering they don't have to take interactivity into account.

Well I'll be damned.  I stand corrected.

And hey, my image is broken now.  Fantastic.

I very recently went through a dev mgmt interview process at EA (I did not get it, for good or ill).  I learned a fair amount about them and their business.  At the end of the day, all the zaniness and mania in the games industry stems from one single problem: They have no recurring revenue.  Games companies have zero means of forecasting and depending on recurring revenue from any of their products (except MMO's which apparently have their own Douglas Adams'-like accouting principles).  This is why the EA-folk kept emphasizing to me why they were like the film industry.  Like other large consumer software companies (I'm in one) they have maybe 10 months to design/produce/develop/test/ship and hype their products.  By Nov or SuperBowl, depending on yer niche.  They only get the first week or maybe second week of launch to break-even.  EA claimed the "buzz" around their games will make or break that product.  So, the only thing they feel they can depend on is making the bulk of their revenues within that 1-2 week period.  Without more details, they claim they are like the film business because the consumer buying habits seem to be the same as movies.  Whether or not this is coincidence or they've helped create these expectations and habits I dunno.  Anyway, fresh from some horse's mouths.  Great article BTW.  Innovation is key IMO. 

Peoples buying habits are like those of their film consumption habits because companies like EA, BestBuy, etc treat the customers like they're afflicted with the most insane strain of ADD one could possibly imagine. Between Best Buy Radio, Best Buy TV, those terrible EA commercials which seem to change on an almost hourly basis and games from large companies being advertised in movie theaters + all the movie tie-ins companies like EA have at stake, there's no wonder they can only get revenue the first few weeks. Whoever thought the games industry should be treated the same as the film industry needs to be shot in public and then have his body hung over a bridge for all to see in the middle of town square.

As I said, the games as film industry thinking has been around since at least 1992 or more. Just about the time they found they could digitize video (and make those awful Sega CD games like Night Trap), they figured they were the little Hollywood that could. EA and the others have made the bed on 1-2 week break even schedules, but they don't have to. Look at Underdogs, home of abandonware. There IS a market for backcatalog games, but I dare you to find one big-name or even middle-tier publisher/developer who offers a significant amount of back catalog product. Hell, how many games never get discounted before they go off the shelf forever? There's a reason that EB Games makes so much money off of used games, it's because the market is still there for good games at lesser prices to people who do not want to pay either full price or who do not have to have the newest games the picosecond they are released.

As I've said before, EA's business plan is a self-fulfilling prophecy of stupid. It's the same short-sighted idiocy that infest the music business. They keep thinking they are selling CD's, instead of the information those CD's contain. They are so tied into a set distribution scheme that they can't or won't see beyond it.

The recurring revenue of MMOG's is the ONLY reason some companies get into it, because without that, they are more trouble than their worth. That's also the reason EA has significantly scaled back its MMOG committments; they don't know how to be in a game for the long haul. It's get in, get the money, and get out, moving on to the next big thing.

Truer words have never been said...just look what they've done: convinced their consumers that they have to be a yearly incremental upgrade as a sequel, at the same or higher price than it was last year--and the worst part is, the market does it, and will continue to do it.

Just to toss in some proof from Haemish's hypothesis:

I was thinking about going out and buying Vampire sometime this week.  You know, with the Half Life 2 engine.  Wonder if I'll be able to find it for less, cause I'm not planning to buy it for $50.

The console market seems to have caught on to the idea of back catalog games. Sony puts out thier line of Greatest Hits games at $29.95. I picked up Tekken Tag for example at that price back when Tekken 4 was still $79.

You do see the odd back catalog stuff for PC. Usually they take a bunch of games from a series and bundle them all together, minimal packaging, no printed manuals, etc.  The old Gold Box D&D games are a good example of ones they did that with. I also often by my Madden games a week after the next years version hits. Usually get hockey for about $19.95. Thats not a re-release though, its just a case of Futureshop having old stock.

We used to trade in our Madden/NCAA/NHL games (all hockey post 2002 sucked though) a month or two before the next one came out, we'd get about quadruple what they would be worth once the new one hit the shelves.  But the EB guys would just smile and hand us the cash...  I guess they knew we were going to take it up the ass and buy a tiny upgrade of what we were trading away for $50 in two months anyways.  Fucking EB.

Bought it a month ago for $39.99.  I rarely buy new releases due to the suck factor and low budget for worthless games.

Well-written but wrong.  You're throwing out blame in all the wrong directions and, as was discussed in the Union thread, vastly oversimplifying the process of actually making money selling games and, in so doing, talking about a caricature of the small game company that does not exist, and vastly underestimating the difficulty faced when these companies want to go independent.  There have been examples of games sharing resources in this thread and stuff like this does happen.  The reason independent game companies aren't dashing to the forefront of the gaming world is not because they arrogantly refuse to develop any feasible business practices but because, even if they do the things you suggest, they still aren't going to reach the market without a publisher throwing out money.

The EA hype thing rings true.  EB, et al, are all about hype.  And if you want your game in their market you have to be able to generate that and you have to throw money around.  Lots of it.  Money that small companies, or even most mid-sized companies with a few hits under their belt don't have.  The software industry, and the game industry even moreso, are setup so that it requires having lots and lots of money to begin with if you are going to have a chance making a cent back.  This works in EA's favor.  But it is the frigging market that does this, not EA and not small game companies.  It's consumers.  All that shit about paying off reviewers to give you good reviews, having stupid awards, etc. ... do you really think it's unique to gaming (or even the entertainment industry).  It's not done just to stoke some lower game dev's ego, it's done because people actually eat that shit up, buy the games that do it and as a side-benefit for people who already have control of the market (like EA) it dramatically increases the cost of entry keeping all the riff-raff out.  News flash, the developerss aren't even involved in this stuff: it's called a marketing department.  I've seen it in action and it is scary (but sadly effective).

Think about this.  You are talking about developing common tools so that each game doesn't have to reinvent the world just to get started.  Well a lot of these tools exist now.  OpenGL, DirectX, all sorts of SDK's, 3d model editors and all sorts of grpahics development tools.  None of this stuff existed 20 years ago when the industry was really getting started.  And that was when we were still buying games from shareware catalogs, small budget games actually stood a chance and companies like Id were born.  20 years ago, you were hacking assembly to build your own graphics primitives, let alone engines.

And so it should be obvious that the rise in big-budget games isn't caused by lack of common tools (in fact probably the opposite).  The amount of common tools available to Joe Dev has increased dramatically with time, and it is during that same time period that the budget and dev team size of a game has increased from pizza money and 1 guy in a garage to millions of dollars and teams of 20-50.

In other words, nice try, but you seriously don't know what the fuck you are talking about.  I mean that in the nicest possible way.  Really.  I understand that you mean well and I share some of your conclusions if not your premises.  I'd love to see big-budget game design go away and have an emphasis placed on innovation and fun.  There is just a lot about the business of actually getting games to market and having people actually buy them that you don't understand.  And you are misplacing blame towards developers who would LOVE to do what you are talking about and just can't because the consumers are idiots and actually want and pay for this big budget crap.  Games are going in the direction of movies (actually went there rather a long time ago) because it's what people actually buy and not because game devs are universally moronic.

Gabe.

I don't like your dystopian game world and do not wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

The gaming industry simply can't exist in the same form as Hollywood. Games don't have recurring income. Basically by companies letting EA, Nintendo, UBISoft, etc boss them around for the last 10-20 years, they've written their own headstone. It just can't happen. While movies can hit the theaters, make even more money in international release long after the movies are on dvd in america raking in money while they're converting it to fullframe for mom's TV and transferring a digital smear for the next format of video. Us on the other hand hope a special edition of a game comes out in Game of the Year format with mods and stuff on one CD/DVD for 2/5 the price of the original game. Seriously, did you type any of what you just said with your hands or did you grow fingers from your asscheeks and let them do the work?

Companies have a chance to save the industry by not buying into the big publishers who want a Hollywood style system. But they won't. Because they're filled with weak-kneed geeks who don't understand business.

I hope you are being sarcastic, but I presume not.  Movies have a recurring income just because they can release in 3 or 4 formats?  Err, no.  That's called having a single income times 3 or 4 (and for computer games maybe it is only times 2 or 3, but so what?).  I'm not sure where you are going with that because I can't really see a good argument there.

Because they're filled with weak-kneed geeks who don't understand business.

Ahh, here is the kernel of the absurd, self-fulfilling caricature that you guys are bandying about with no basis in reality.  The effect: you get to blame game companies for not providing something that you want when in fact they aren't providing what you want because it won't sell and what will sell takes way more capital than they are going to have without enlisting outside backers (read publishers or other people who will steal creative control).

It's classic misplaced consumer angst.  I could read the same stuff on some indy movie board with movie snobs bitching about how good indy movie makers don't magically create a market without selling out to a bigger studio.  It's all their fault that consumers won't buy what I want to watch.

What else is this caricature based on?  Are you really naive enough to believe that there are no gamers out there with business savvy who know a few guys who can code/draw and that it is due to this cosmic anomaly that independent games are not taking off and not simply due to actual market realities?

Gabe.

Game designers, programmers and artists are by and large the latter. Artists. They are not cutthroat businessmen. The cutthroats may learn a thing or two along the way, but they are there because they understand how to squeeze pennies out of their asscheeks. It's not misplaced consumer angst - it's 20 years of watching these people bend over backwards for companies full of vultures.

Also, no, it's a recurring income. That's why DVDs double dip. More money - another time around. I would have bought what you said if you said first run and second run of movies in theaters was the same income a few times, but no, you challenged the DVD sales. So, what you're telling me is the gross of Office Space in the box office  (which was terrible) and the gross of Office Space on DVD (which was and continues to be amazing) are considered the same income? Right...

...And who the fuck are you again?


I know your entire point hinges on these two sentences. And I'm sorry, despite your grammatical errors, you're still wrong. There's a bustling independent market that exists throughout the world. There's many larger studios and fundies that take an independent studio under their wing and treat them pretty nicely. It's not very often you hear about the Weinsteins funding a company for a movie and then shutting them down. That only happens with Disney, which ironically they recently did to the Weinsteins if I'm not mistaken. On the other hand, you'll hear about this situation daily in the gaming world.

Independent Gaming is rarely seen as legitamate because quite simply, EBGamestop, Best Buy (who are probably the worst of the bunch when it comes to carrying obscure shit), and CompUSA have hardcore contracts with publishers to carry what, put it where, and for how long. Independent gaming can't get that kind of exposure. Some would say the net delivery idea could work, but it really won't - most gamers really haven't embraced the net, despite what others would leave you to believe.

Game designers, programmers and artists are by and large the latter.

You know, very few of the ones I actually know are out and out geeks, and many know a lot about business.  The less business savvy ones, are the ones who never make it anyway.  You can't even get a publisher, let alone sell a game on your own, without having a significant amount of business know-how, doing the networking, etc.  But hey, aren't stereotypes great when you need to make a poor conclusion in a hurry?

Independent Gaming is rarely seen as legitamate because quite simply, EBGamestop, Best Buy (who are probably the worst of the bunch when it comes to carrying obscure shit), and CompUSA have hardcore contracts with publishers to carry what, put it where, and for how long. Independent gaming can't get that kind of exposure. Some would say the net delivery idea could work, but it really won't - most gamers really haven't embraced the net, despite what others would leave you to believe.

Or better said: because no on makes any money at it.  Because EB and BB are where the market is.

So, what you're telling me is the gross of Office Space in the box office  (which was terrible) and the gross of Office Space on DVD (which was and continues to be amazing) are considered the same income? Right...

As always you base your arguments on outside cases.  Forget that 99.9% of movies have no cult lfollowing like Office Space and their DVD sales after a year or two are virtually nil.  Obviously Office Space defines the movie business.  Duh, why didn't I think of that.

Independent movies are at best a very niche product and exist only because film-making is more mature, because actors and film makers HAVE organized, and from what I understand 9 times out of 10, because the indy movie makers sell out to a bigger studio to do the distribution, marketing, etc., anyway (which is what game studios do to, by necessity not choice, it's just that they are selling to EA, but you are somehow blaming the dev companies that there is no one better to sell too?  :roll:).  The point is that sitting around and bitching at independent movie makers, the people who actually have a lot more experience with selling movies than you, that consumers won't buy their product, is missing the point.

And make up your mind already.  Should games be like movies or not?  One moment you say absolutely not because duh, Office Space the classic example of the movie revenue model, shows us that movies need a constant DVD revenue stream (amazing that the movie biz existed before DVD players though, isn't it?  :wink:).  The next you are holding up the Weinsteins as what independent authors should aspire to work for.  *head spins*

Gabe.

Viklas?

1. I was using Office Space as a worst case scenario. It didn't defuse my point and neither did you. I could do it with Fifth Element or the Matrix, but you would have tried to poke holes through that with backwards logic as well. Because I mean, the latter 2 movies are truly cult movies. Oh, wait, no - they just happened to do better on dvd than they did even with their HUGE international box office draw.  Once again though, you're completely missing the point - by a wide margin. I make a movie. I put it in big theaters. 4-6 weeks later, I run it in second run theaters for another 2-3 weeks. While it's there, I'm prepping my DVD for release, say, around Fathers Day. DVD comes out and I sell the televised rights to it for broadcast around, say, Thanksgiving. Around Christmas I release a 2-disc box set with my sweet ass commentary where I have two hookers who had nothing to do with the film babbling while the film is running in the background. I sell that. This is all common practics, short of the hooker part. They're also, ALL, very different revenue streams. If you think they're even remotely the same, back the fuck away from this thread.

2. Most gaming companies have someone high up on the food chain - even the small dev houses - who are business savvy. Someone who makes up in the area where everyone else fails. He also doubly functions as an axeman. Selling a game isn't hard - or at least, there's someone willing to buy anything out there. It's just a matter of finding them. I mean comeon, shit like Psychotoxic or Stolen or Ryzom or Face of Mankind gets made and SOMEONE, somewhere has to fund it. Point being, selling a game is selling yourself to a businessman. If you can't sell yourself, you're simply not an artist of any sort. You're a beggar.

3. Your argument for BB and EB is a fallacy. The market is there because the publishers chose for it to be there. Brick & Mortar is still the place to be. Valve tried to do something else, something radical - and Vivendi tried to ride them raw. Slowly and surely the industry will become more netcentric so they don't have to compete for shelf space. Developers will eventually get fed up with the bullshit. But for now, even I would rather shop BM.

4. Independent movies are a niche? My mistake. I must be imagining the 100+ film festivals every year in America alone. 9 times out of 10 they don't "sell out." There's prestige in being independent. There's honor in winning the Palme D'Or or the Seatlle Film Festival. There's no honor in the popularity that is gaming festivals. The award shows are bullshit and the little man gets stiffed by whatever the 800lb gorilla of the year is. The IGDA is a joke, filled with arrogant fools who somehow call themselves independent while getting funding by the likes of Microsoft, Sony, EA, and other massive corporations. And the Independent Awards given out to Independent Game Devs is a joke. And I gotta admit, I'd say a good deal of the time a lot of the independent companies are willing to get a publisher if possible. Get their game on the shelf. In the hands of the players. Unfortunately the contract they sign involves sacrificing your sight, replacing one of your testicles with a teflon ball, and signing over your first born. Many of the developers probably just aren't willing to do that. Don't get me wrong publishers do a lot of work to be part of the well oiled machine of putting overpriced boxes and optical discs in your hand. But they deserve zero respect and I can't wait to see their empire crumble before them.

Edit: Oh, and I forgot to mention - use the quote tags or die. I didn't really have a problem with it before, but at 5am that shit is hard to read. If you don't want to use the quote tags, just stop posting.

Oh, wait, no - they just happened to do better on dvd than they did even with their HUGE international box office draw.

Which means they have multiple revenues, not a constant stream.  How, pray tell, did the movie industry survive before the invention of the VCR and DVD player?  Oh, I'm sorry, am I using "backward logic"?

2. Most gaming companies have someone high up on the food chain - even the small dev houses - who are business savvy.

Not sure what your point is here.  You are incorrect that it is easy to sell a game.  It isn't.  There are a bazillion fanbois out there who want to make games that are a testament to this.  That bad games get sold is actually a testament to slick business men who sell shitty products and not to the fact that anyone who writes a Tetris clone is gonna get EA to publish it.  You are correct insomuch as you admit that yes, virtually all game companies have one, or several, people who know business.

Brick & Mortar is still the place to be. Valve tried to do something else, something radical - and Vivendi tried to ride them raw.

Umm, exactly the point.  The people trying to go their own way ... aren't succeeding.  Oh, that's because they're all morons.  There is not a single good businessman in any small game company.  Riiiiiight.

Developers will eventually get fed up with the bullshit.

Developers already are.  They simply can't magically make the market like they want it, which you seem to think they could do if they didn't all have their heads up their asses (amazing that you still actually want to buy games from these people who you give so little credit).

. And I gotta admit, I'd say a good deal of the time a lot of the independent companies are willing to get a publisher if possible. Get their game on the shelf.

Yes, independent game companies want a chance to actually make money.  Gee, what hubris.

But they deserve zero respect and I can't wait to see their empire crumble before them.

I don't like them either.  Not liking them doesn't magically make consumers willing to buy independent titles.

If you don't like my posting style, well, no one is forcing you to read my posts at 5am.

Gabe

Learn to use quote or learn to use another forum. Thank you.

Before I read the rest of St. Gabe's replies, and get into what I'm sure will be a multi-page slapfest of "Yes, it is" "No, it isn't" game, let me just respond on the recurring revenue thing.

The movie business has about umpteen billion different means of recurring revenue off of the same product. They have first and second run theatrical release in the U.S./North America. Then they have international sales. Then, you get DVD sales, which for some products, can actually last longer because of the ability to sell first runs, then collector's editions/director's/unrated cuts, etc. Add to that Pay-per-view revenue, both from cable operators and satellite operators. Then video store rental revenue. But wait, then we have pay-channel runs (HBO, etc.). Then we've got syndication rights and broadcast rights. And even for shitty movies, those can last for years. I mean, how many times do you turn on a Superstation channel and find Weekend at fucking Bernie's on?

Games have almost none of that. They have first run revenues, and for most games, that's it. If the game doesn't sell, it's gone, as is any revenue the developer could ever hope to get out of it. For moderately successful games, they will sometimes re-issue jewel case only releases, like EA does with their "classics" line. I mean, they are still making some money out of NHL 2002, for fuck's sake. But do the developers of that game see any of that money? Probably not. If the game is hugely successful or gets some kind of award, it gets a collector's edition or a game of the year edition, or manages to stay on the shelves for a year or two.

Most publishers don't offer back catalog games, at all, especially not on games that weren't hits. Why? What that means is a developer HAS to move on to the next big thing, and has to depend on publishers milestone checks in order to stay afloat. They have no means of maintaining revenue on things they've done in the past. Places like Underdogs show that there would be a market for back catalog games. Either publishers don't allow development houses to direct sell their older games, or developers are too busy to do so. Back catalog games do not require the big marketing budgets you keep trying to bandy about as barriers to sales.

The system has been built to fail, because it's trying to emulate an attitude of a system that has assloads of recurring revenue, none of which the game industry system taps.

As for indy developers, we obviously have two entirely different definitions of the term. Fine, let me tell you mine. Near Death Studios is not the indy developer I'm talking about here. You are right, in that teams of 3 and 4 guys in the garage could not pull this kind of thing off (unless they get together with a lot of other houses). I'm talking about the Troika's of the world. I'm talking about the Irrational Games, the Creative Assebly's. I'm talking about the guys who HAVE had success with the current system, but not so much that they can write their own ticket, like Blizzard.

Another thing to consider is Valve. Valve did something I've yet to see anyone do. They managed to keep an old SKU on the shelves for over 5 years. They'd put out mod type packages (Counter-Strike, Blue Shift) and collector's editions and kept the game on the shelf. I'd wager the recurring revenue from that alone allowed them to keep producing Half-Life 2 on their schedule as opposed to their publisher's. 3D Realms is another savvy studio (despite their inability to produce a Duke Nukem Forever). How do they manage to continue to exist despite not creating the sequel to their one-hit? Recurring revenue from things like licensing the Duke name to other companies to produce console games.

Perhaps I'm talking out of my ass, but it has nothing to do with consumer angst. I've observed this business a long time, as an outsider. I may be wrong, but I'm not far off. No, consumers aren't going to buy assloads of really crappy innovative games that look like they were produced in a garage. Kevin Smith movies don't make $100 million at the box office. I don't expect the indy games to be million-selling hits. What I do expect and believe is that there IS a market for their games, and the studios I'm talking about CAN succeed without buying into the cycle of having to produce the "next big thing" because their hit game didn't net them jack and shit for profit. Success does not mean everyone in the dev studio can afford Ferraris. It means the studio can make payroll, control its own destiny and bankroll future projects without living day to day on milestone checks.

Again to the movie thing I have to say that movies existed before DVD players.  And you contradict yourself later on by pointing out how game companies do get recurring revenue.  Usually by selling their engines or licenses to their content -- but this income is unreliable as movie revenue. Some movies gather cult followings, some do well on DVD and arguably the box office can become hype for the real money on DVD sales now but in general, the revenue stream isn't expected to last more than a few years.  The main source of recurring revenue is still next years movies (or next years games).  By and large I am just confused by the distinction and its relevancy.  In the end it doesn't really matter, a smart business making 5 million once every 5 years actually has an advantage on a company making 1 million every year (getting your money up front is actually better investment-wise).

What I do expect and believe is that there IS a market for their games, and the studios I'm talking about CAN succeed without buying into the cycle of having to produce the "next big thing" because their hit game didn't net them jack and shit for profit. Success does not mean everyone in the dev studio can afford Ferraris. It means the studio can make payroll, control its own destiny and bankroll future projects without living day to day on milestone checks.

You have noted the ones that do succeed.  And they do, to a very limited degree, just as indy movies succeed to a very, very limited degree.  They do not succeed, however, enough to demonstrate that there is a vast enough market out there, untapped, to challenge EA or Vivendi.  Challenging these guys and the status quo of the market will require, more than anything, a shift in consumer values and buying patterns.

And really, that could and probably should, start at sites like this.  It's all well and good to piss and moan about EA and Vivendi, but then most of the threads here are still about heading to EB and buying the latest big budget titles.  I'm not saying you shouldn't enjoy those too (I do).  But instead of just bitching about how clueless and incompetent you believe these guys to be you should be out there supporting them, bringing up the indy titles and the small game house games and actively supporting those.  Blaming the indy developers for the failure of the market to embrace them and give them a big enough market share to challenge the big names is just ass-backwards and hurts more than it helps.

I happen to work for a game company (right now we do mobile games, but before I got here they did GBA and GBC games and a GC title) that has been trying to get independent for a while (see us at the wireless zone at E3 for more details on that) and has worked for all kinds of publishers.  While I'm fairly new in the field and I'm just a code monkey most of the time, I've already been exposed to more of the marketing/publishing/business crap than I really care for.  I do know what I am talking about.  I know how it feels to work for a publisher.  I get exposed to the dozens of additional costs, the networking and marketing and sales and all that crap, that exist on the way to any retail market with a chance in hell of generating sustainable revenue.  And I know just how much publishers suck and how much game devs hate working for publishers.  I also know that the idea that there are no smart business people in the field is complete bullshit as is the idea that there aren't game companies out there that want, desperately, to be independent and have creative control.  I'd say at least 2/3rds of the game devs I have met don't match your stereotypes at all.  The programmers are all over the place, from complete nerds to party animals and jocks (I'm all three).  Artists tend to be cool cats, but can be just as nerdy as the rest.  Producers (an important cog in the machine you don't really mention) tend to be slick, business-savvy, charismatic and confident.  Designers can be just about anything.  In other words, they're just people, of all stripes, and are fairly capable and intelligent in multiple realms including business.

If EA did it back then, and yet is full of assholes, and game companies aren't doing it now, maybe that isn't because of EA's superior intellect and business acumen, maybe it's just because the market changed and the desire to have an indy-friendly market does not mean that it does or will exist.

Gabe.

Also, the point I made that I would be most interested in seeing a reply to is this:

The amount of tools that exist for existing games has increased dramatically in the past 20 years.  20 years ago a programmer was hacking assembly to build graphics primitives let alone graphics engines.  Nowadays, game programming is much more accessible with SDK's, graphics libraries, API's, and a ton of 3d graphics and art tools.  If there was a time when game developers reinvented their cameras every game it was then, and not now.  Now I'd say we're onto far more subtle challenges.  But we keep doing it, not because we are stupid, but because it's required for innovation and control over your product and gamers want it.  Every time we get an innovation that makes the job of making games easier the frontier just gets pushed out.  That developing your own 3d art for each game is now the big development challenge shows how far we have come, not how far behind we are.

And the period of time during which we have gone from writing our own graphics primities to writing our own graphics engines is the very same time period during which game budgets and dev teams grew from pizza money and a guy or two in a garage to millions of dollars and teams of 20-100.

In other words, the creation of better tools for making games does not drive budgets down.  If anything, the opposite is true: as better tools have become available, budgets have increased.

Gabe.

Note, you have misread the article. I do not blame the fuckup the entire industry has become on indy devs. I blame that on the publishers and retailers, both of whom have tried to follow the worst examples of "next big thing whoring" from the movie business. I blame the CONTINUATION of the fucked up situation on the publishers, the retailers, AND the developers who do not make the efforts to rid themselves of the tit that is publisher milestone checks.

I pointed out how the movie business HAS found ways to generate recurring revenue, and how the game industry has NOT followed suit on this regard. I actually think the movies have done ten thousand times better with their business model than the game industry has, mainly because the movie industry has found the way to make that recurring revenue in so many ways. Their expansion has also opened up new avenues for indy film makers to get films made and seen, completely outside of the studio system.

That path exists for the games industry, but no one is taking advantage of it. And outside of MMOG sub fees and the huge publishers who do put back catalog stuff on the shelves, no one else is doing that. The computer game industry seems dead set on completely forgetting its past with each new game.

As for your comment on creation tools, yes, there exist more creation tools now than in the beginning of the game industry. But you really do not see it being used correctly, except in small circumstances. Things like Speedtree and Karma are the types of things I mean, whereby you reuse off-the-shelf elements. For artwork, why bother re-creating new 3d trees when you can cut your budget and license Speedtree? Why do game companies who make "realistic" representations of things in the real world constantly having to recreate those things for each game?

For example: Medal of Honor and Call of Duty. I think both included a Normandy level. Which meant both art departments had to recreate Normandy, from scratch. Why? It's the same stretch of rock. The same textures should be apparent. But instead of the two devs trading art assets on those levels (even if it was just trading textures, or some such), wouldn't they have saved some money, or at least been able to put more money on the important stuff like QA and gameplay? But you won't see that, because everyone is so busy trying to outdo the other with fancy-ass shaders that they'd never consider that. I'm not talking about repeating the whole level, but there are parts of it that could be shared without making each game seem just a mirror image of the other.

You haven't really addressed my point about game tools.  Game tools are constantly evolving and most importantly, improving.  That we are at the level of building tools to create realistic trees and not building tools to draw raw pixels is a testament to how far we have come.  And yet during that evolution budgets increased.  People make their own Normandy levels because they don't like other Normandy levels and they want to do better. And gamers like that and will determine that one or the other Normandy was better (and would have been disappointed if only the other had been made).  That IS innovation, which supposedly you are after.  Not to mention that hardware changes so regularly that last year's super-realistic tree is this years stick figure.  Mostly movies don't have to deal with such a changing medium (they do a bit with the increase in CGI utilization).

As far as where the blame is going, ultimately you are still sending a lot of blame towards game devs in the article, but in your posts even moreso (why do they put up with EA/Vivendi?  Because there aren't other viable options) and you miss the need to redirect everything back at consumers ....

... who actually shop at the retailers.
... and actually pay for the big budget titles ....

... in the first place.  EA/Vivendi does it because it works and because consumers reward them for it.  Not because they want to create art.  And what compelling reason have you given them for changing anything?  You've intimated that game companies should starve themselves in order to try to fight the system (gee, no thanks) and that they are all pussies and geeks for not doing so but that's about it.

Gabe.

Consumers will never do anything as a concerted effort. It is beyond most individuals, much less a wide open market.

Publishers will not change it because it is working for them. They have no incentive to change it. Ditto for retailers.

Game devs are the only ones who can or will change it, and they can and should do it because it would work out better for them. Because the current system is stifling their creativity, bankrupting their companies and leaving them in a constant cycle of doing something they don't wish to do. I'm hearing many game devs lately bashing publishers, and yet not a fucknig one of them seems to have any good ideas to change it other than "Form a union."

That's the stupid leading the lazy.

Well for one thing it's simply not true that consumers never organize.  What you're really saying is that you refuse to change or organize.  Secondly you just went from one post saying that the whole article is laying the blame on publishers and trying to get them to change their act to another where you say that obviously you can't expect them to change.  So which is it?

Game devs are the only ones who can or will change it, and they can and should do it because it would work out better for them.

Well you're wrong on the latter part.  As I've hammered home several times, the prospects of independent game releases are simply not nearly as rosy as you make them out to be.  You're basically asking people to starve for their art.  Some will, and probably would have anyway, but not because you ranted at them to do so, and not because it will actually make their lives easy.

Game devs are the only ones who can or will change it, and they can and should do it because it would work out better for them.

Which means actually organizing.  Because you're whole idea that one game company can change the market is just dead wrong.  Now we're back to what was being said in the union thread about the power of aggregated bargaining power versus diluted bargaining power.

The problem is that you assume that the failure of game developers to magically create the market that you and they want is "their fault" and is a result of them being too stupid or lacking business skills.  The former ignores the fault of the consumer.  The latter ignores the fact that you couldn't be more wrong about the people actually developing games.  They are smart and they know business.  That they know business and don't particularly care to starve for their art is exactly the reason they aren't stupid enough to do a lot of the things you suggest. 

Gabe.

I don't want to get into a point by point discussion on this stuff, but Gabe is way more correct than Schild and HaemishM. You guys are really coming off as naive honestly.

First, the idea that the movie business is based on "recurring revenue" is absurd. Movies release on DVDs, and release overseas. Guess what? A game comes out for the XBox, then later it comes out for the PC, and in France! That's 3 "recurrences" right there! Is the release of Fable for PC recurring revenue? What about the EA Sports games that come out for literally every system, in every country? Is that like 2000 "recurrences"?  Recurring revenue is a fixed stream you can account for on a quaterly basis. THAT ISN'T MOVIES. It just isn't, and it's silly to argue otherwise. Recurring revenue is something like an annual support contract paid for the next 5 years, ongoing license fees, subscribtion fees, etc. A DVD release is not "recurring revenue." It's just another single, finite revenue stream.

Gabe has a good point about tools. They have come a long way. But Haem says they aren't being used correctly, and that the savior of the industry is re-using 3D generated trees? I can think of LOTS of good reasons I wouldn't want to use out of the box trees - reason number one being they aren't going to match up with the rest of the art in my game! You guys want 3D clip art? That's the solution?

How would those 3D trees or Normandy level rocks look in WoW, or FFXI, or EQ2? My guess is most of those out of the box things are going to suck in those games. And let's face it, the vast majority of your budget is not spent on trees and rocks! You can re-use all the generic brick textures and rocks and trees you want, you'll save a couple thousand dollars and your game will look worse, and then you guys will be bitching about how all the games look the same.

Games have very different requirements, even games that appear the same. Again, in real life there is a real tree, and most movies can just use REAL trees. In games maybe my tree needs a certain polygon count, a certain art style, a certain texture style, certain associated bounding boxes. Maybe the drawing algorithm for the tree has to work a certain way because I'm on a PS2. Maybe the tree needs X different levels of detail. It's not as simple as copy/paste a tree, and we are talking about a TREE. Now start talking about animated characters. Can I just copy/paste the WoW guy into the next Zelda?

I enjoy a good rant, but a lot of this stuff is "omg lol, the devs r so dumb, why don't they add 2 and 2 and go kick some ass!!!" No, they are too dumb or too lazy. "Stop bitching and DO something" is great but that's not really sound advice. And you guys can't get into specifics - it's just handwaving about how some WW2 shooters kind of look the same.

It's just "OMG they're doing everything wrong" along with some "grow some balls!" That's not a very compelling analysis.

The problem with start small and grow is that ONE setback will tank you. I may make a small game that does well, staff up a bit, make a second game that does well, staff up some more, than hit some trouble and that's it, I'm out of business. And the fact that there was demand for my first two games doesn't mean there will be any demand for my third one. Even large publishers get into trouble when they botch a couple of quarters.

I don't think sharing Normandy rocks is going to solve that problem. Do the math. So I share some grass textures, some rocks, and a tree, maybe a generic wall and a sandbag or something. How much of my budget did I just cut? .1%? And now all my generic objects look exactly like the objects in a game I'm directly competing with that came out before me. "New and unimproved!" And that's only for games where sharing art is really feasible, which is a small fraction of them.

I'm gonna base this way way down for you:

Movie studios know they can make money off a game after it leaves the theater.

Gaming studios do not.

DVDs and the like very much are recurring revenue.

A game can die overnight and NOTHING and I mean NOTHING can bring it back.

You can put all the geniuses you want on Ryzom, Horizons, Wish, whatever. Nothing will bring it back.

A solid dvd re-release can rejuvenate a reviled movie. Take Showgirls as an example. The VIP edition sold pretty goddamn well given how abyssmal every other version of that movie sold.

If you want to talk about anomalies - sure, sports line video games are very much recurring revenue. Dumb motherfuckers pay for updated rosters every day.

Great. You've found the one genre that works that way. (Edit: Assuming we're excluding MMOGs as a permanent recurring anomaly - as they rely on that sort of income.)

If you are going to talk down to someone, you might actually want to get it right first.

EDIT: Hell, I'll go one step further. You are arguing recurring income which doesn't really fit the business standard. To an accountant, recurring income is the regular income not associated with asset sales or any major non-regular income windfall. Lawsuits, mergers, etc. However, when you refer to a recurring revenue model you are making a comment about a subscription based income stream. In a business sense, to say that movie companies have recurring income is correct. To say they make recurring revenue on certain properties is not. The properties themselves are classified revenue by their income streams, which upon view of the financial statement notes, indicate that their are four streams. Theatre, home-market, pay-for-view, and free TV view. All of these would be classified as as part of the company's recurring income. However, to be recurring revenue stream, a service beyond simply selling and reselling would have to be involved and a quantifiable fee per period would be attached

A multitude of budget labels and multigame collections join in a choir, going "Ur a tad wrong".

Plus there's stuff like Atari On Demand, except they seem to have shut that down (basically it was game rental; pay $15/month, play any of the offered games as much as you like). Stardock's TotalGaming (http://totalgaming.stardock.com/) seems up and running though.

Look, it's the quote feature, see how easy it is to use?


Consumer advocacy groups ogranize. Consumers themselves do not, unless of course, that product does something like give them fucking cancer. Otherwise, consumer markets as a whole only act when they feel threatened. The consumer market is THE MOB (TM), and it does not have a mind, it has a collective herd mentality. You cannot expect consumers to change their habits unless you threaten their lives.

The whole blame of the article is not on publishers, as you yourself later acknowledge in this very post I'm quoted. The blame is on no one trying to change the system that is obviously flawed, and heavily weighted against the devs. The people with the most to gain from attempting to change it are the development companies. Why WOULD the publishers change? They currently benefit the most from the system, but it's short-term benefits, and it's predicated on constantly chewing up little dev houses and spitting out the pieces.



Hey, if they won't do it for their own benefit, what would my ranting do? I don't expect my ranting to be anything more than me writing for my own amusement. I long ago gave up the idea that ranting changes a fucking thing about this industry or any other. But it gives me writing practice, and generates discussion. Any changes that might come about because of it are bonus. And it isn't like anyone is ever going to say, "HAEMISH'S RANTING SAVED DA INDUSTRY! DUR!"


Where did I say that ONE game company is going to change anything? Thanks for being myopic and short-sighted. One company cannot do it. It is going to take a concerted effort of a NUMBER of game companies. It will take a UNION OF COMPANIES, not a union of employees. A union of employees is only going to:

1) Add another layer of separation between the people with the money and the people with the talent
2) Force companies to outsource things, which drags down quality, or raise game prices
3) Shelter and insulate game devs even further from the business side of things


Yeah, I assume from the things I've seen that it's either stupidity, lack of business skills, short-sightedness (especially prevalent in an industry where so much focus is required to finish one project that the project to project mentality is easy to fall into), and general laziness. I should know about laziness, because I am extremely lazy. It won't be easy to do this kind of thing. Easy is just sitting back and letting the publisher's milestone checks determine what gets put out in this industry. And the publisher DOES NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT GOOD GAMES, they give a shit about profits. If two pixels masturbating on screen was profitable, there'd be 16 pixel masturbation games on the market.

Recurring revenue was probably a bad term. How about 'alternate revenue streams.' Of which, there are so many fewer streams than movies, or tv, or music. There's first release sales, collections and back catalog jewel cases. And of all that, I'd wager that beyond first release, most dev companies get jack and shit off of collections or back catalog sales. They are constantly living on credit. Tell me if I'm wrong about that, I honestly do not know if dev houses get any kind of royalties. I DO know as a consumer that if you don't buy a PC Game (and many console games) within the first six months, you'll never have the opportunity to buy it again.

Also, when EB Games sells used games, do the developers get ANY of that money? Do the publishers? I'm not saying that all used sales (like person to person) should have some kind of surcharge added on them so that the devs get royalties, but when a business entity resells product like that, I believe the creators SHOULD get some kind of royalty fee.

As for the Normandy situation, that is a small example, and obviously if you are going to take the effort to share those kinds of things, you're going to do more than just a set of fucking rocks. Some of the base things, like multiplayer netcode, or physics engines, those things can be shared as well. And those DO cost a lot. Using off the shelf products like Gamebryo, Speedtree and Karma can all save dev costs, even when those things are expensive to license.

Look, Dark Age of Camelot got made for $3 million dollars. A fucking MMOG for $3 million, an MMOG which was more stable and played better than Star Wars Galaxies at a budget of $20 million. They used Gamebryo (when it was called NetImmerse). They made the game with money from other smaller, indy games they'd done. It can be done.

No, it ain't easy. THINGS THAT ARE WORTHWHILE NEVER ARE.

As an Indy Dev, (in the true sense of the term--completely self funded, on a shoestring budget), the things that Haemish are talking about are being done:

--Many of the AAA studios are licensing the Unreal engine (which in and of itself is probably a very bad idea given the cost of the license), and a very large amount of AA/A/A- studios are licensing lower cost alternatives, but are absolutely licensing engines now that they have matured.

--Indy studios are also beginning to utlizize much more appropriate development methodologies based on extremely rapid prototyping combined with agile software development. This allows for some very high efficiency idea demonstration and follow-on development if warranted. A huge example is something called , which is designed to have playable games presentable within a 24 hour period, stretched out over a weekend.

--many Indy devs are also integrating SDK's such as Ogre, ODE, SpeedTree (and other, cheaper tree packs), Torque Network Library, as well as other low cost to free environments to accomplish shoe-string budget games.

--professional quality art asset packs are starting to become commonplace from various art studios, and while there is a HUGE customer resistance to seeing art that isn't totally "original" (HEY! Didn't I see that barbed wire fence in GameXXX? WTF, I got ripped!), they can at least be used for prototyping and demo presentations. Some of the content packs I've seen are such high quality that any game would be proud to use them.

--there is still a lot of inertia, but the financial successes of WoW are just now starting to turn around the VC community again to look at alternate models for investment. Since game development is such a huge risk financially, VC's were completely turned off to even considering investment in small studios, but this resistance is (barely, I admit) starting to go away now that there are some huge success stories. (http://gameinaday.com[/url)

Namco Museum. Sonic Collection. Sega Ages. NES ports to the GBA. SF: AE + 3S for XBox. KOF 94 Rebout. Midway Classics. (Or whatever that collection is called) VF4:EVO. DOAX. Lunar 1 & 2 Set. Phantasy Star Collection. Ninja Gaiden Trilogy. Super Mario All-Stars.

Alternate sources of revenue for game companies? How about strategy guides, cartoons, live action TV shows, movies, toys, collectible card games, comic books? Hell, there was a Nintendo breakfast cereal.

Discussing outliers doesn't do shit. Very few games get action figures, tv shows, etc. etc.

Every Single Movie get the stuff I've listed above. Even the shitty ones. Hell, the shitty ones are double dipped on more often than the good ones.

Mario and Zelda once got cereal.

Namco has to bundle multiple games together to resell that shit. That's very different than putting Dig Dug back in a box and selling it alone in it's original form for a new system.

Collections != 2disc special edition DVD. Hell, it doesn't even = Superbit regular edition dvd.

Movies have a built in ridiculous number of alternate and often recurring sources of revenue. Games do Not.

Please stop using terminology when you don't know what it means. "Recurring revenue" means something, except when you use it.

At one point in this thread you said that releasing movies in foreign theaters counted as recurring revenue. So can't I point out the obvious, the releasing a game in multiple countries or for multiple systems is also "recurring revenue."

Or, we could all get together and actually learn what recurring revenue actually is. Hell, we could even read in the thread where someone TOLD US what it was.
---

Video games don't have a ton of different revenue sources, true. Neither do books, comic books or music.

If you guys insist on characterizing the problem as "everyone sucks, and they are dumb geeks!" you aren't going to hit on any brilliant solutions because you haven't passed stage 1: identify actual problems.

If you want to criticize, LEARN something about the publisher/developer model, the retail industry, indy game development, etc.

Games tend to either sell in the first couple weeks or not at all, that is a real problem. How about analyzing why and how that is the case? Obviously that system evolved for some reason. Is it the number of new releases? Is it the fact that game technology becomes obsolete and books don't? I don't know, and neither do you guys apparently.

To recap (and avoid homicidal reactions to italics):

1) The recurring/alternative sources of income doesn't even matter because games are making money anyway if not through a slightly different way than movies and the similiarities between movie production and game production remain.  It is possible to compare books, movies, songs, and games and in so doing you will find that while the revenue models differ in various ways, there are many similiarities.  Of the four, games and movies are probably becoming the most similar.  Movies bomb too, and make no money after release.  Probably about as often as not.  In talking about the Matrix, LotR and Office Space you're completely fucking up the point.  If you want to consider only the most successful movies then you have to consider only the most successful games, which do sell action figures, comics, strategy guides, licenses, engines, etc. If you want to include the whole industry then you have to include the stuff that gets panned during screening, gets released directly to video and is completely forgotten in 6 months.  But it just doesn't matter.  6 here, half a dozen there, the game industry IS making money on par with movies and it is doing so through becoming rather like the movie industry in some but not all ways.  That game X may or may not be able to sell action figures is certainly not a reason to doubt the whole machinery because it is succeeding, like it or not.

2) The end of the article makes no sense.  First of all, a lot of confusion is caused by the failure to indicate who you mean by "game developers".  Secondly, all the stuff you label "furious masturbation" has nothing to do with game development or even egos no matter who you direct the term at.  It has to do with marketing departments.  It has to do with the fact that buying good reviews, creating bogus awards, etc., helps sell shit to Joe Consumer.  And it's not unique to the game industry either.  Blaim the sad state that our market economy is in where consumers will actually buy that stuff if anything. [insert segue to Joseph Stiglitz and a discussion of imperfect information and economics.

3) The armchair game development really is only going to make you look like a naive asshole unless you are willing to actually learn about how the industry works.  When you read a few articles on games and suddenly you think you know how to make an indy game sell in 3 easy steps, maybe you ought to stop and consider that a lot of smart people, who actually work in that market, have been thinking about this for a long time.  Your answer for this is that anyone attached to the game industry is a congenital idiot?  Come on, you know better than that.

4) At a certain point with all this, all you've done is pretty much piss off everyone involved in game creation leaving a bunch of righteously indigant game consumers to sit around and be furious that everyone in the game design field happens to be a congenital idiot.  Can you honestly say that your article/posts has any other point than that?  Why start off by pissing on the people you actually want to make your games for you?

5)  I'm not sure you understand what unions do.  I think you have a jaded/stylized view of them as some vague evil.  That said, I'm not sure myself that a union would solve the problem we are currently talking about although it could probably help.  Just as example, this would be an excellent platform from which to create meaningful game awards and indy developer advocacy.  Advocacy is probably the most important thing a union actually does.  Imagine having a game developer union spokesman actually getting air time to talk to consumers about this stuff.  Getting interviews on the big game sites talking about these issues, etc.  Could a "guild" of game dev companies do something like this?  Possibly.  I think that would be great but it's simply that this is virtually impossible due to the fact that game companies represent investors, etc., who wouldn't be keen on this stuff whereas game developers represent themselves and can do whatever they want.  If you leave out every single company with an investor (even most Indy groups are going to have VC's or somesuch) then you are left with a group that is marginalized in the views of others from the get-go.  It is important, period, to have some advocacy groups with real money and influence that can talk about this stuff and I think it is good for the industry however it comes about and whatever the specific group is as long as it represents the voice of smaller companies.  While I am now guilty myself of pulling stuff out of my ass it's my vague understand that this is pretty much how Hollywood has managed.  Organizations of independent studios would never happen but unions such as SAG (Screen Actor's Guild) are actually quite powerful advocacy groups that do get shit done.  SAG even has its own awards, for example.

6)  IMO, this is just something that is going to happen very, very slowly.  I expect that the market will change first and that companies will then fill the cracks rather than having companies slowlly erode away at EA, Vivendi, et al and changing the market themselves.  It could happen, I just don't think it is likely.  Music and book publishing companies, for example, have maintained their hold of the market quite well and if anything it is not a rise of independent labels that has challenged them the most but just changes in actual music/b media.

7)  I think you vastly overestimate the ability to share stuff not to mention that this itself stifles innovation.  Margalis discussed this pretty welll.  Stephen Zapp is correct that this stuff is already used.  I use stuff like this whenever possible.  It's smart software development.  But it doesn't get rid of many of the costs of selling to the big markets and it doesn't magically mean that you can make a game for no money.

8 )  You still haven't really addressed the fact that game tools today are vastly improved over the game tools of 20 years ago and yet budgets have also climbed dramatically during that time.

9) Why the immediate resistance to consumer organization/advocacy?  You've got a cool site here, at the very least why not be conscious of this stuff here?  If you're going to rant why not at least target the idiots that buy all the hype instead of pissing off people who already agree with you?  Whether it accomplishes anything or not at least it's better than mere righteous indignation.

10) VC's are warming this stuff (wireless zone at E3 for more details :P).  They are really a lot like publishers however in that their money buys them creative control over your product and they can fuck it up thusly.

11) I use italics because I want to use italics.  No one has to read my posts if they don't want to.  If I told you that I'd prefer if you quoted in italics, used another avatar, posted in German or whatever, you'd tell me to go fuck myself and rightly so.  I post how I like to post and you're free to ignore/ban me if it really means that much to you.

Gabe.

I do believe that's something we've harped on over and over. Pimping games like movies will sell them like movies.

The system evolved because it's the best bang for the publisher buck, and they control the initial dollars. Hit them hard and fast and have them buy your game at the intial cost - which is almost always the highest the game will ever be.

It's good business and fucks developers.

You were asked nicely and you pouted.  I welcome your insights and have learned a few things.  And I ask you, please set aside the juvenile posturing and make your cases simply while using forum tools that make it easy to absorb your comments.  You walked into this community and while it seems like you have something to offer it should be automatic you'd at least acknowledge how things are done here.  I suspect you would not take this same stance if you walked into a friend's party and insisted everyone pay attention to you when you spoke Ewok while kissing everyone's girlfriend.

I like f13 the most when the #hate is all in fun.  This and the union thread are what make f13 great.  The peen waving is an incredible distraction and I'd appreciate it if everyone dialed down.

Exactly what doesn't fuck developers? I get the feeling you think developers are hapless saps being sucked dry by the vampire that is capitalism sometimes. If it's innovation you are after, I think faulting the suppliers is the wrong focus. You have to change the market, not the good. Just because people have monatary backing for an innovative idea won't immediately equal a success.

I don't have a ton of time here, so I haven't read everything in-depth... but it seems that the folks who are arguing that games DO have recurring revenue are using only successful games to point that out.  Well yeah, successful games do make money.  An "okay" game doesn't get recurring revenue.  The point that Haemish and Schild are making, it seems, is that even really crappy movies make recurring revenue off of stuff- such as Showgirls, which is widely hailed as a truly horrible movie yet has decent DVD sales.  A modern day game has 1 week to sink or swim, and if it doesn't swim in that first week then it's pretty much gone.  No action figures are made.  No cereals.  You can't find it for rental at Blockbuster.  You won't see it in any collector's editions (or compilations unless it fits the mini-game or continuing series paradigms).  It vanishes and makes no money.  Thus, publishers don't want to take a risk on something like that.  And who can blame them, really?  That's a lot of money to toss away.  But, at the same time, without risks we end up with Madden 2074.

If this post doesn't make sense in the current argument, ignore it.  Like I said, I was just able to skim.

While on the subject, Freedom Force pissed me off.  When the first game came out, they promised new campaign packs for it.  I never saw one (please let me know if there was one I missed).  Instead, they released Freedom Force II, which I didn't feel was much of an engine upgrade from the first.  I would have been much more happy if they had concentrated on new stories.  I also thought the story and missions of FFII weren't as good as the first.

Going to try not to SirBruce the shit out of this:


Office Space was a COMPLETE tank at the box office. It might have gotten two weeks of time in theaters. If that were a game, the developers would be shit out of luck. Period. They would either have to 1) develop their next game in debt to the publisher for the first game's milestone checks (see music industry), be operating at a loss and have to get even more funding for another game, 3) hope international releases don't tank as well, or hope the publisher even wants an international release and doesn't just write them off, 4) or just fold up. Yay us. God forbid the game needs patching, because chances aren't good the publisher will fund patches for even the most broken games that really need it. See Vampire: Bloodlines (2 patches, neither of which really fixed the game), or even Shogun: Total War (which wasn't allowed to be patched beyond the first patch by its publisher, EA; Creative Assembly had to release the second patch as a beta).

As a movie, Office Space had a DVD release, which has been a pretty decent success. If Office Space was a music CD, it'd be available for a while. The games industry has very few channels like that, especially for products that aren't initial huge sellers. In other words, the game industry has followed all the wrong attitudes of the movie and music industry: it has geared itself for that first initial push, and not much else. So the majority of the industry, especially in the PC Game arena, has to constantly look for the "next big thing" coming down the pipe, chewing up and spitting out a ton of great games and game development companies in the process. The GDC's (Game development companies, such as DICE, Bioware, Creative Assembly, Irrational Games, etc.) can put out what 1, maybe 2 or 3 products a year at most? And most can only do 1 every other year. Living off publisher tit for 2 years hoping that you'll sell enough to make back all that milestone money AND give you enough profit to start a new project when that's done (as well as supporting the last product) is assinine. And I'm saying it doesn't have to be that way.


GDC's, as defined above, don't know shit about marketing and should. It IS NOT rocket science. They don't want to know about marketing, because publishers can take care of it, for a price. That price is too high.


Wow, way to simplify the entire article into one point, which, BTW, is the wrong fucking point. I'm not saying that anyone attached to the game industry is a congenital idiot. I'm saying the industry has been built to be a stacked deck, stacked away from the GDC's, you know, the people who actually create the games, and in favor of the people who do very little to make the games good. I'll elaborate later.


No, I understand exactly what unions can do, and YES, I have a jaded view of them. Unions are the last resort of the lazy. Unions are proxy organizations that do nothng more than bitch for higher wages and less hours. I'm in favor of higher wages and less hours. I'm not in favor of unions strong-arming businesses doing as much damage to the industry as they help the workers. See the NHLPA, hell really any sports league unions, etc. See the Director's Guild and their idiotic restrictions that caused Robert Rodriguez to have to resign his membership in order to give what he believed was due credit to Frank Miller as co-director.

But I also believe that marching protests do jack and shit, so I'm not a big believer in "advocacy" really helping anything.


DUH? Any kind of market change happens extremely slowly. You seem to think I believe the ideas I've presented would be EASY to implement. THEY ARE NOT. They are tough, a lot tougher than just living off the current system. I believe the rewards for the GDC's would be much better than under the current system. We will have to agree to disagree.


Yes, game tools have improved. So have production values. The cost of game artwork has risen DRAMATICALLY in the last 10 years because of the increasing complexity of such things as 3D rendering, as well as additional increases brought about by sound design. Games 10 years ago didn't have nearly the spoken (acted) dialogue they do now. I believe that art work is one of those areas that, while important, could be impacted by sharing of common art assets. The addition of more standardized tools, such as the Unreal engine, Big World MMOG development package (if it works), Gamebryo, etc. could also help cut down costs and/or development time (quicker to market means more games and less time living on milestone checks).


I walk into your house for a friendly discussion of whatever. I piss on the rug and couch because I like to piss on the rug and couch before having a good discussion. Am I wrong for pissing on the wrong, or are you wrong for telling me to stop pissing on the rug?

You've come into our house, which has a pretty clearly established practice of using the quote feature instead of using italics for quoting other posters (i.e. NOT PISSING ON THE RUG). If you don't want to use the quote feature (i.e. you want to piss on the rug), don't be surprised if people call you out for it.

I watch the industry closely. I'm not a stupid person, most days. I've played games for most of my 33 years, including computer and console games since the days of the TRS-80, Pong, and Atari 2600. I've seen the industry come crashing down, and frankly, I see that happening again because of the way the current system is structured.

The industry is generating MORE revenue than the movie industry. And yet, the people who make the games, the programmers, artists, writers, designers and producers who make up the game development companies (GDC's) don't seem to be getting that money. There have been entirely too many companies who make successful games over the past 5-7 years that are no longer with us. Troika, Ion Storm (the good one), Westwood, Origin, Looking Glass, Black Isle. These aren't companies that made the gaming equivalent of Office Space; these aren't the makers of "cult" hits. These are companies that made top-selling games. You could say, "Well they weren't good businessmen," and maybe you'd be right. But I'd be more inclined to believe that while some might not have been good businessmen, most were victims of an industry that is geared towards "hit of the week" as opposed to long-term growth of the industry. During the time all of these GDC's have gone under, publishers like EA are getting bigger and bigger, their shareholders getting fatter and fatter, while releasing more mediocre garbage and sequels.

There is an inequitable sharing of revenues in this industry. The publishers will not give up the revenues without also taking all of the control, which allows them to do what they've been doing all along. The GDC's can either continue along this path, which I think will lead us into "dark times" for the industry, or they can try something different and maybe get control of their destiny again.

Apologies for interrupting these vacuous monologues of bilious self-flagellation. There are two things that need to be said here.

Re-usable technologies such as gaming engines and graphics toolkits are the industry equivalent of Panavision and Dolby. In a closed and protected industry, these artifacts of intellectual property will invariably drive costs up and innovation away.

You lost SirBruce and yet he appears to have suffered a stroke, lost two thirds of his brain cells and returned as StGabe. This is ironic.

Gabe was here before Bruce... disappeared. Check the EQ2 forum.

The Doodle knows all.

And I've never seen Hammy Bruce a thread that badly. I think the response was longer than the article.

Call it a tutorial on the "Quote" button.

Just a detail.... but do you realize that "borken frau" means something like "barking wife" or "barking woman"?

I guess now the Germans know how we Americans feel when we see those Japanese Engrish commercials. It's like the World War II of Language.

this caught me and a mouth full of toast off guard this morning.

Yea, I know, I can't believe he created Call of Duty. Well, I can - I just didn't know. Who knows, maybe he has something interesting in his head. Maybe not. After all he did create and license the character that led to the worst video game of all time.

Is he really an ideas man? The article implies his position will be exactly that, and frnakly, I don't think it'll work. He's a great director and producer, but all the movies I can think of that he's done have been based off of history, novels or an idea someone else came up with. 

(http://www.crankycritic.com/qa/qaimages/ssonsouthpark.jpg)

Speilberg == teh money

he also has his own studio for creative and marketing.  He will need EA for design,coding, distribution....  Modelling etc. I expect will be by Dreamworks. 

"OMG we are no more making a game-z0r of that!!"
(http://cache.eonline.com/Celebs/PartyGirl/Gallery2005/Images/spielberg.cruise.062705.jpg)

Oddworld Inhabitants switches to movies and tv. Spielberg starts in on a contract for games.

If Uwe Boll starts making games and Epic starts making movies I'll eat my shorts.

I think he will quickly rediscover the difference between making movies and games. Again. Because, you know, he already sort of tried that with The Dig. I can imagine he'll be driven fucking batty with the branching story idea that interactive fiction really requires to be, you know, interactive.

But you know the ending will be inspirational.