Not Ready for Closeups

[schild]

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.

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.

[StGabe]

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

[Shockeye]

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

[HaemishM]

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.

[StGabe]

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.

[StGabe]

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.

[HaemishM]

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.

[StGabe]

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.

[HaemishM]

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.

[StGabe]

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.

[Margalis]

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.

[schild]

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.

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.)

[Paelos]

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.

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

[AOFanboi]

Gaming studios do not.

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 seems up and running though.

[HaemishM]

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

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?

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.

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.

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!"

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.

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

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. 

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.

[Stephen Zepp]

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.

[Margalis]

Gaming studios do not.

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

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.

[schild]

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.

[Margalis]

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.

[StGabe]

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.

[schild]

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?

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.

[Pococurante]

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.

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.

[Paelos]

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?

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.

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.

[Llava]

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.

[Arnold]

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.

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.

[HaemishM]

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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) Said shit about the article that the article didn't say

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.

5)  Unions as advocacy groups

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.

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.

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.

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.

7) 8 ) 

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).

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.

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.

[Righ]

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.

[Shockeye]

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.

[Paelos]

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.

[HaemishM]

Call it a tutorial on the "Quote" button.

[Jayce]

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

[HaemishM]

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.

[Soln]

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

Speilberg will develop games for Electronic Arts
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Coming soon to a game console near you: a Steven Spielberg video game. The acclaimed film director and producer has agreed to develop three new games under a long-term exclusive deal with video game maker Electronic Arts.
 
  Steven Spielberg will create original gaming content for Electronic Arts. 
By Kevork Djansezian, AP file

The deal to be announced Friday reflects the increasingly intertwined interests of Hollywood and the video game industry.

Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but Redwood City-based EA, the world's largest game maker behind blockbusters such as Madden NFL and The Sims, said it will own the intellectual property behind the Spielberg games and publish them.

The deal involves much more than the Hollywood director merely putting his stamp on a game or popping in for quick consultations, said Neil Young, vice president and studio head of EA's Los Angeles studio.

Instead, Spielberg will have an office in EA's studio. He plans to work side-by-side with game developers to create original gaming content beginning with the concept — not a game based on a movie, or vice versa, both of which are common practices nowadays.

"It's really the first time a filmmaker, and a filmmaker of Steven Spielberg's caliber will collaborate at this level on an original game," Young said. "He understands how our medium works and wants to push it in different directions, putting innovations in a game that no one has ever seen before."

Young would not disclose what kind of ideas Spielberg or EA already have in mind, or whether the genre would be science fiction or something else. But the hope, he said, is to draw on Spielberg's storytelling talents and create games that would engage players emotionally.

Spielberg, whose large portfolio includes films such as Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. was not available for comment. In a statement, he said he "was looking forward to working closely with the team in Los Angeles."

Spielberg has been an avid follower of games for years. In a speech last year, he told film students they could change the face of filmmaking if only they played more video games.

And in the early 1990s, LucasArts, the game-making arm of Lucasfilm Ltd., created a computer game called The Dig based on a Spielberg story idea. Game observers considered it a flop.

It will be several years before the first of three Spielberg-EA games hits store shelves, Young said.

[schild]

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.

[Merusk]

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.