Not Ready for Closeups

[HaemishM]

I demand Beluga Caviar in my trailer!

[Samwise]

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.

[HaemishM]

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.

[Samwise]

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.

[WayAbvPar]

I would prefer to see sharing of the underlying technologies, like negative ping code  . 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.

[Samwise]

I would prefer to see sharing of the underlying technologies, like negative ping code  . 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.

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.)

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.

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.   

[Stephen Zepp]

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.

[schild]

Dear Haemish,

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

Love,
schild

[Margalis]

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.

[schild]

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.

[Samwise]

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 is a stellar example of flexible and reusable art assets.  Lots of games include trees - why should each game need to reinvent the sapling?

[Kail]

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.

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...

[HaemishM]

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.

[Evangolis]

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:

There doesn't exist a comprehensive vocabulary for reviewing games.

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.

[Stephen Zepp]

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. 

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.

[Paelos]

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.

[HaemishM]

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.

[Margalis]

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.

[ClydeJr]

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.

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

Shortly after we decided to start over, Jason Rubin, Naughty Dog's co-founder, called me and asked if we'd be interested in checking out the technology they developed for Jak & Daxter. He explained that Naughty Dog didn't want anything from us other than a gentlemen's agreement to share with them any improvements we made to whatever we borrowed plus any of our own technology we felt like sharing. In an industry as competitive as ours, things like this just don't happen.

We went over to Naughty Dog's offices and took a look, particularly at their background renderer. They had developed some incredible proprietary techniques to render smoothly transitioning levels of detail and instanced objects very quickly. We brought the code back to our offices, spent some time getting a handle on their techniques, and then we were up and running with a much more powerful environment engine.

Needless to say, Naughty Dog's generosity gave us a huge leg up and allowed us to draw the enormous vistas in the game. In return, we've shared with them any technology in which they were interested, but so far we've been the clear beneficiary of the arrangement.

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.

[Llava]

How about this.

Blizzard can reuse art from WoW for Warcraft IV.

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.

[HaemishM]

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

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. You are the weakest link. 

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.

[Llava]

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

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. You are the weakest link. 

Well I'll be damned.  I stand corrected.

And hey, my image is broken now.  Fantastic.

[Soln]

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. 

[schild]

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.

[HaemishM]

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.

[Stephen Zepp]

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.

[Llava]

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.

[Bunk]

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.

 

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.

[Hoax]

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.

[Nazrat]

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.

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

[StGabe]

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.

[schild]

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.

[StGabe]

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.

[schild]

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 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.

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.

[StGabe]

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?  ).  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?  ).  The next you are holding up the Weinsteins as what independent authors should aspire to work for.  *head spins*

Gabe.