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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

From the inside looking out

  
 
rising and revolving
16:08 / 29.04.06
I thought I'd take a moment to kinda chat about some of the current hot-topics inside the industry at the moment. I'm hoping this will be both interesting and spark discussion back the other way.

See, we talk about all the same things that get considered here. Is Wii the stupidest name you've ever heard, or a stroke of white-hot brilliance? What's your favorite beat'em-up? Is Lost heading in a satisfying direction? On the flip-side, we also have a lot of concerns that don't tend to get a lot of air-play outside the profession. Many of these are simply production based -

Making next gen games

There's a lot of scared people around now. Next gen games are hard to make - and it's not because anyone is doing anything new (so far, they're not) - it's just that making higher res assets (models/textures/environments) takes longer. A lot longer - we're starting to buckle under the exponential increase in time required to build things. A 20 man team used to be able to make a game without problems. Now you need 100 to even consider shipping a title for a next-gen console.

This is hard, precisely because most game companies are not constructed (on the business side) to handle this sort of load. 100 people are hard to manage (although big companies pull it off all the time) - and most game developers are going through serious growing pains trying to accomodate the changes.

Hiring staff that don't exist

Oh yeah. That's the other thing. See, the extra 80 people per team - where are they coming from? We don't know. They don't exist. We can hire people straight out of the game universities, but teams that are 80% inexperienced just compound the management issues discussed above.

I don't know how many people there were developing games professionally when I started 7 years ago. I'd guess somewhere in the 10's of thousands. Now, EA employees that many people alone. Finding enough people with experience is impossible - because they don't actually exist. This problem will go away when the industry matures ... but right now, it's a crisis.

Procedural content

The savior that will fix the above problems. Instead of making 1 000 models of trees, write code that makes trees for you. Spore (Will Wright's next big thing) is the poster-child for procedural content. There's just a small problem - the industry in general isn't used to this way of doing things. Which just adds to the uncertainty.

There's more, but that's a start. This isn't supposed to be a thread where I pontificate and everyone nods (although I can, if people want, but where's the fun in that?) - talk about this stuff, and other stuff, and questions and suggestions - I'm all ears.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
22:21 / 29.04.06
What's the general consensus on the Rev (I point-blank refuse to call it Wii right now) where you are, rising? Given that it's probably (definitely?) not going to support HDTV and apparently isn't too far removed from the original Xbox in terms of sheer processing power, I'd have thought that development teams and smaller publishers would be looking at it with a great deal more interest than Nintendo's hardware has received for a good few years, for much the reason you've outlined above - that the 360 and PS3 are going to require a stupid number of people working on any one game to get it up to the expected visual standard.

Also, do you not think that this problem:

Making next gen games

might provide the answer to this one:

Hiring staff that don't exist

? Small, independent teams start going under because they can't keep up with the EA and Ubi-sponsored ones, leading to an increase in the number of experienced developers looking for work, leading to their being employed by yr EAs and Ubis? It's almost exactly what I don't want to see happen, but unless the Rev *does* manage to provide a safe haven for small teams and indie publishers, it'd seem inevitable, yeah?
 
 
rising and revolving
20:49 / 01.05.06
Definately on track with your thoughts. There's a lot of smaller studios looking towards the Wii with high hopes that it's going to be the Great White Hope - smaller dev teams, the chance to do something whacky and crazy sucessful.

The thing about hiring next gen teams is that sure, some small studios will go under and that gives the big boys more staff ... but even if *every* small studio went down the toilet tomorrow, there still wouldn't be enough people to go around.

Besides, there really aren't many small indy devs left these days. There's a few "big indys" like Valve, Blizzard (even though owned by Vivendi) and Bioware (even though now part of the Elevation partnership) - but even so.

It's a hard industry to be in now. Salaries are just beginning to go crazy though - opportunities too.

It's a shame I'm happy where I am, really.
 
 
Jake, Colossus of Clout
22:26 / 01.05.06
R&R- I'm curious to pick an insider's brains on the video game industry, something that I obsess about regularly.

Specifically, I'm curious about the way next-gen videogames are being marketed, and the direction they're taking in terms of evolution. It seems that the big attraction for the vast majority of next-gen video game customers is high-definition graphics with unbelievable polygon counts and the ability to play online with a gazillion other people. Personally, this doesn't excite me in the least. I have zero interest in playing another WWII shooter with shinier graphics and more thirteen-year-olds to throw racial slurs around while they fill me with virtual rounds. Video games, to me, are like a great book- something to be enjoyed by myself, to marvel at the craftsmanship and the "holy shit!" moments (in both plot and in-game action).

I like big ideas, innovative concepts and good stories. Pushing the boundaries of the processor and system, I feel, should be secondary to pushing the boundaries of what can be accomplished conceptually. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that I feel there is an emphasis on style over substance in the gaming industry today. The average gamer, on seeing whatever that new WWII shooter for the 360 is, says "Wow! Look at how great those Nazis look when I'm shooting them!!!" I say, "Why in the world are we still playing games about shooting Nazis?"

For instance, here is a list of the games I've played and loved over the past year or so: Planescape: Torment, Resident Evil 4, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Paper Mario, Baldur's Gate 2, Metroid Prime 2, Morrowind, Metroid Zero Mission, Zelda: The Minish Cap and MVP Baseball 2005 (I know this is a very mainstream title, but to the hardcore baseball stat-head, it was like the Second Coming). Right now I'm just starting System Shock 2 and getting towards the end of Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. A pretty diverse set of games, although maybe a bit Nintendo-centric, but I'd like to think that they all at least focus on great gameplay, and at best push the boundaries of the medium itself.

Now, you can see that flashy graphics don't mean a heck of a lot to me, as some of those games are almost ten years old, but I didn't bat an eyelash when I put down the gorgeous RE4 to pick up Planescape, with its clunky 3/4 view and primitive graphics. The fantastic gameplay levelled the playing field completely.

so, I've come, in a roundabout and somewhat self-indulgent way, to the meat of it. Why is the industry so focussed on Bigger! Faster! Brighter! instead of focussing on making thoughtful, clever, different games that are just fun as the dickens to play? I haven't played an XBox360 game yet, and I have no intention of doing so (since I can get Oblivion on PC, and I've not heard such great things about that, anyway), great graphics or not. I have a hard time finding something intriguing when I go to EB with a little extra cash in my pocket, and if it wasn't for the fact that I've only had a PC for about ten months, and so have a huge backlog of great PC games to wade through, I wouldn't have something to play unless I wanted to settle for a weak product.

So: Is there a market for people like me? Nintendo is the only big company that seems to focus on gameplay over flash, hype and marketable imagery, and their market share has been fading for ten years, taken over by the dearth of racing games and bloody, mindless shooters. The Wii seems like the perfect console for me, but the reaction to everything (the innovative controller, the new name, the lack of DVD support, etc, etc...) has been snarky and condescending from the majority of "mainstream" gamers.

What do you, as an insider think of the direction the industry seems to be taking? Can the Wii change the course? Or, in ten years will I be standing in EB choosing between Halo 7, Medal of Honor 18 and Street Racing XxXXxxXTTTRREEEEME!!1!11? Do people in the industry actually want to work on these games?

I know this post has been meandering (I'm pecking at the keyboard in between watching the Sox/Yanks game), but I hope I got my point, and my question, across adequately. This is something that bothers me, because I love video games, and the deluge of crass, unimaginative games (exemplified by almost every XBox title) has me very worried.
 
 
rising and revolving
12:54 / 02.05.06
Why is the industry so focussed on Bigger! Faster! Brighter! instead of focussing on making thoughtful, clever, different games that are just fun as the dickens to play?

So: Is there a market for people like me?

That's pretty much the root of the issue, looking at it from the inside. There isn't an existing market for people like you. Many of the games you listed sold OK to well, but with the exception of GTA:San Andreas (and isn't that a francise extension like Halo 7?) none of them really busted blocks.

There's this issue with games at the moment, and most especially with marketing - and therefore with publishers. As budgets climb into the stratosphere (see above comments about bigger teams) people are getting more risk averse. They don't want to sink 10 million into a possible success, they want a guarentee. So they look to marketing. Marketing says WWII sells, and francises are safe.

Which sucks.

We all know that the only sensible place to be is where everyone else isn't - so if everyone is making WWII games, you want to make something different. That's Nintendo's strategy (one of the reasons you like 'em, I suspect) - and it's done them well. It's right at the core of the DS - from design to game selection. Make the games no-one else is making.

Unfortunately, publishers (especially in the west, but also in the east) other than Ninty don't like risk, they like certainty.

It used to be that publishers would spread their investments quite wide - maybe banking on 20 titles each quarter, giving each one funding and advertisting spend. What happens now is they pick 3 of those titles (the "safe bets") and sink all their advertising cash into those. Which means that where you once would have had a broad range of 20 games, you now have a movie licence (LOTR, for example) a francise extension (Halo 3) and a safe WWII title (Call of Duty).

Personally, I blame Halo 2, which wasn't even finished - however, they spent more on advertising it than any game before (or since) and it sold like hotcakes. This has taught everyone on the business side the key lesson that results in the patterns you're observing

Original doesn't matter.
Quality doesn't matter.
People will buy what you sell them.

So, game development is becoming just like Hollywood in that regard. And therein lies some hope - the concept of independant game dev is starting to expand, and interesting and enjoyable things are happening in that space.

However, it seems unlikely that we're going to see a blockbuster summer action game (high budget, big title) that breaks boundaries soon. Too much money to be risky.

Gosh.

That's long, and a bit rambling, but I hope it addresses the question.
 
 
EvskiG
15:13 / 02.05.06
Here's a question: is there a future to the single-player computer game?

I rarely have time to play a game for more than 1/2 hour at a time, so I can't really dedicate myself to the sort of hours-long raids that seem to be popular in MMORPGs. What's more, I have no desire to play with a bunch of 14-year-old racists and idiots. But it seems that every time a good-to-brilliant single-player game comes out (Thief, Half-Life, SS2, etc. -- even the Civ games) the developer either has to include a multiplayer mode or get slagged in the press for not including it. And I assume this means that developers have to dedicate a lot of time to multiplayer rather than polishing and perfecting the single-player game.

Any thoughts?
 
 
invisible_al
15:58 / 02.05.06
One example of the 'Indy' developer using alternative ways to advertise their new game was Stardock's Galactic Civilisations 2. They've also been pioneers in digital distribution for their games, taking the radical step of having no copy protection on their game. Their alternative is to produce regular updates downloadable only if you have the proper code. They've already updated the game twice with improvements to the AI and extra features.

In part because of this stand against industry norms, they got a bucketload of free publicity from places like Penny Arcade. That and the fact you can build your own spaceships in a lego stylee...

It's also single player only and the lead developer has some interesting thoughts on wether strategy games need a multiplayer option.
 
 
rising and revolving
16:34 / 02.05.06
And I assume this means that developers have to dedicate a lot of time to multiplayer rather than polishing and perfecting the single-player game.

Welcome again to marketroid suits who only care about back of the box features that fit into their spreadsheets.

Games without multiplayer sell, on average, 18.7%[1] less than games with. Ergo, squeeze in a half-hearted multiplayer that no-one will actually play, or you don't get the deal.

[1] Statistic entirely made up. Just like the marketing people!
 
 
Spatula Clarke
16:50 / 02.05.06
Well, I'm not an insider, but I do want to reply to some of this.

Jake: So: Is there a market for people like me?

I'm not entirely in agreement with rising on this one. I'd say that yeah, there is, but the large companies aren't going to be supporting it. This point in the console lifecycle's an interesting one, because games start being released on the dying generation of consoles that would likely never get signed - in Europe or the US - at any other point in the life of those consoles. The big publishers start to abandon the old hardware as they focus all their attentions on the flashier stuff, which provides smaller companies with the opportunity to turn a profit by buying the rights for previously unsigned games and chucking them out as budget releases.

There's still going to be a huge demand for new titles on the older consoles from those people who don't have the desire/cash to upgrade. Smaller companies no longer have to worry about getting involved in an unfair fight, so they're more prepared to push product out without having to worry about forking out a significant amount of money on advertising.

That said, Microsoft have fucked things up a bit by rushing to release with the 360 when the Xbox still had life in it. Those small publishers are less likely to support it - or the Cube, due to its relatively small installed userbase - than they are the PS2. But yeah, some of the PS1's most intersting titles snuck out when nobody was looking, while people were anticipating/buying the PS2.

I'd also suggest looking at handhelds if you're after games that buck the trend. The GBA and DS are the obvious choices - the DS, in particular, continues to delight me with a surprising new release at least once a month - but even the PSP is beginning to show signs of life beyond barely reheated PS2 ports.

I want to take issue with this:

the deluge of crass, unimaginative games (exemplified by almost every XBox title)

but maybe not too much, because it's true to an extent. There *is* some really nice, individual stuff on the Xbox. Again, though, you have to dig for it. And Microsoft, bless their little cotton socks, did actually make a serious attempt at creating an imaginative, innovative software library in the machine's early days. It's just that the games generally sold like shit when compared to the more identikit releases, which makes it kind of difficult to blame them for abandoning that strategy.

But it bears repeating, if you're wanting consistent innovation and games that don't follow the crowd, you want a DS. Handheld development is cheaper and less of a risk than that on full-on consoles, and publishers like that sort of thing - cheapness, low risk. It makes them drop their guard and sign or finance concepts that they'd laugh out of the room if they were proposed for release on other machines. Also: import-friendly. Can be quite important if you want truly original games.

rising: Personally, I blame Halo 2, which wasn't even finished - however, they spent more on advertising it than any game before (or since) and it sold like hotcakes.

Again, this is slightly unfair. A great deal of Halo 2's commercial success, as far as I can tell, was built on its reputation as an online title, and in that regard it was largely deserved. The single player game is a joke, you're right, but the online is (or can be) pretty special.

Evski G: Here's a question: is there a future to the single-player computer game?

God, yeah. I forget exactly what the number of Xbox owners who signed up to Live was, but I'm sure it was somewhere in the region of 10%. And that's just those who signed up - how many dropped their subscriptions, or bought subs but only played online once or twice a month? Online gaming can provide some experiences that the player can't get offline, but it's seriously inferior in some really important aspects, and I'm sure publishers are well aware of this. Rising's bound to be able to be able to give a more authoratative answer to this, but you can prety much rest assured that single player gaming isn't ever going to disappear. Ever.

Further, it seems to be the case that in those games where an online mode is added purely as another tick on the back of the box, the online mode is stunted and under-developed, included at the last minute before the code is finally signed over. I doubt that the amount of resources being wasted on these modes is enough to seriously damage the development of the core, offline modes. And then you've got the increasingly popular tactic of giving the offline and online modes to different teams for development - Ubisoft have proved the value in this strategy (one of the few things they've done right in the last few years, imo) and I can only see it becoming a more widespread practice in the future.
 
 
rising and revolving
17:03 / 02.05.06
I'm not entirely in agreement with rising on this one. I'd say that yeah, there is, but the large companies aren't going to be supporting it.

Yeah, I agree 100%. I might not have been clear, but the issue is that marketing dept's go for the big nut - the 50% of the market who all want the same pablum. There's lots of other, attractive markets - but instead of going for one of the 10% markets that no-one else is addressing, they mostly go for the same 50% (white, male, 15-25) that everyone else is.

This :

A great deal of Halo 2's commercial success, as far as I can tell, was built on its reputation as an online title, and in that regard it was largely deserved.

and this :

I forget exactly what the number of Xbox owners who signed up to Live was, but I'm sure it was somewhere in the region of 10%.

Go together to prove my point, really. It's not that it's not a good multiplay title - but that wasn't the reason it sold like a bastard. It helped with all the PR and so forth, but ultimately it was because they advertised the hell out of it.

Oh, and because they bribed people to give them 10/10's by giving journo's free trips across the country and telling them if it didn't review well they'd never see another MS press release.

But you didn't hear that from me.
 
 
Jake, Colossus of Clout
23:32 / 02.05.06
Many of the games you listed sold OK to well, but with the exception of GTA:San Andreas (and isn't that a francise extension like Halo 7?) none of them really busted blocks.

I wasn't trying to claim that GTA:SA was an original game- I was just listing all of the games I have played and enjoyed over the past year or so. I probably enjoyed that game the least, although my girlfriend can't get enough of it. The camera was terrible, the combat engine would have been mediocre on the PS1, and the character models were brutally ugly. I just like big games with a lot of exploration, and GTA has that in spades. I also enjoyed the RPG elements that they added. The archaic combat and linear missions ruined a lot of the experience, but I played it until I got a fatal glitch that wouldn't let me beat one of the last missions, so I gave it up.

GTA3 was a revolutionary game when it came out, so at least the sequels have a pedigree. I was never impressed with Halo in the first place. It had a slick engine and some nice level design, but I thought it was a good, not great, FPS. That genre really needs a kick in the ass, by the way. I'm playing through System Shock 2 at the moment, and it feels fresher than any FPS since Goldeneye. It's seven years old. That's a problem.

They don't want to sink 10 million into a possible success, they want a guarentee. So they look to marketing. Marketing says WWII sells, and francises are safe.

This is what bothers me most of all. Why can't people see that WWII shooters, like any other gaming craze, are a fad, and will eventually stop selling? In the late eighties, beat-'em-ups were raking in the cash. Now they're a footnote. In the mid-late nineties, fighting games were vastly popular and there were dozens to choose from. Now it's Soul Calibur, Tekken and Dead or Alive, and that's pretty much it. As for the kings of that era,Mortal Kombat is a joke and kids don't even know what Street Fighter is.

It's going to take something shiny and new to create the next fad, so wouldn't it behoove the big developers to funnel some of the profits from their cash cows into trying to create the next fad, instead of just waiting for it to happen? Wouldn't you want to be the company that owns the next Rockstar when the next GTA comes out and sets the world on fire? Why make True Crime at all, for crying out loud? The imitation is not going to be a long-term moneymaker. What are the guys who made Bubsy doing nowadays? I'll bet they wish they had been working on Myst or Doom instead of a crappy Sonic knock-off.

To me, it seems like good business sense to finance the future as well as cash in on the present.

There's still going to be a huge demand for new titles on the older consoles from those people who don't have the desire/cash to upgrade. Smaller companies no longer have to worry about getting involved in an unfair fight, so they're more prepared to push product out without having to worry about forking out a significant amount of money on advertising.

That is very intriguing, and something I never thought about. This might be great for people like us who pay attention, but aren't those games sort of doomed to low sales from the start?

because they bribed people to give them 10/10's by giving journo's free trips across the country and telling them if it didn't review well they'd never see another MS press release.

That is too fucked up. I guess video game journalism is as spineless as its political cousin is these days. And Microsoft is as corrupt as ever.

{threadrot} Is Psychonauts as great as people keep telling me? Is that what I should get when I'm done with MGS3? {/threadrot}
 
 
netbanshee
17:16 / 03.05.06
Like Dupre said, take a look at the DS. Innovative gameplay with a library that can differ widely from one title to the next. Backwards compatible w/ the GBA and some older games. It also fulfills the quick game fix needed from time to time.

I'm anxiously awaiting the lite and I'm gonna purchase a nice lil library of DS games as soon as I get my mitts on the system. I'm thinking: Tetris DS, Mario Cart DS, The New Super Mario Bros., Animal Crossing and Castlevania for my first round of gaming. Wario Ware and related titles should soon follow.

The upcoming and current next-generation consoles are making me interested primarily for one feature: online community and support. I didn't get down with Xbox Live on the last go around and it's something that I sort of regret. Granted my interests often found me looking in the direction of the PS2 and Gamecube which didn't provide much in that kind of play (if at all).

I'm really excited this go around because it seems that each camp is aware of what potential online abilities bring to the consumer. Playing Geometry Wars on a 360 got me pretty excited and seeing Nintendo speak of reaching into their older library as well as to encourage Sega and other developers to re-release titles is a great sign. I think that a year out from now, we might be seeing small groups release their own games without incurring the typical huge development costs and market pressures that are commonplace.
 
  
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