Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes "If you've been following Greg Costikyan's recent rants (such as Death to The Games Industry), you would have seen mention of one developer's attempt at breaking the traditional games publisher funding model. Well, their game is now in the stores, and whats more it has been getting some pretty good reviews, but has anyone heard of it? Judging by some press, the marketing has been somewhat underwhelming. So the question is, is there still a viable space for good games developed outside the traditional corporate publisher model, or does E.A. already own the future of video games?" Moreover, when indie developers have to go up against the likes of EA and Steven Spielberg, what hope can they have for matching that kind of success? At least one company thinks they can do it by offering games for direct download. Is direct purchasing enough of an incentive for your average gamer to shell out money on something he's never heard of before?

amitlu writes "In the Friday edition of the Escapist, Joe Blancato challenges the industry to compare itself to skilled labor of the past, and says it's time to organize. From the article: 'If we continue at the rate we're going, we're either going to be worrying about a bunch of college-aged kids with computer science degrees working at McDonald's, too disillusioned to continue in their chosen field or worse, the position they previously held was moved overseas to a more bottom line-friendly locale. For the sake of trying to save money on production costs, why not ship off art production to Romania? Or customer service to India? But to paraphrase the old cliché: First they came for the artists, and I said nothing...'"

amitlu writes "In the Friday edition of the Escapist, Joe Blancato challenges the industry to compare itself to skilled labor of the past, and says it's time to organize. From the article: 'If we continue at the rate we're going, we're either going to be worrying about a bunch of college-aged kids with computer science degrees working at McDonald's, too disillusioned to continue in their chosen field or worse, the position they previously held was moved overseas to a more bottom line-friendly locale. For the sake of trying to save money on production costs, why not ship off art production to Romania? Or customer service to India? But to paraphrase the old cliché: First they came for the artists, and I said nothing...'"

amitlu writes "Allen Varney wrote about EA's conquest of Origin in the Escapist this week. He covers much of EA's departure from its original values, and even has some quotes from the Garriotts, including, '[CEO] Larry Probst was often not supportive of the things I was doing, but I respect Larry because he was always clear, rational and consistent in his lack of support'"

amitlu writes "Allen Varney wrote about EA's conquest of Origin in the Escapist this week. He covers much of EA's departure from its original values, and even has some quotes from the Garriotts, including, '[CEO] Larry Probst was often not supportive of the things I was doing, but I respect Larry because he was always clear, rational and consistent in his lack of support'"

hapwned writes "Jason Della Rocca, the executive director of the International Game Developers Association, unmasks the hypocrisy of governmental interaction with the video game industry. He expounds: 'Why is it that the cultural and artistic merit of the game medium is so hard to accept? Are games simply too complex for digital immigrants to grok? Why can't they see games for the powerful medium that they are? Is the word 'game' honestly so damaging as to demean the entire creative output of the industry, to reduce it to an empty pastime? Or, are the politicos enacting an entirely different drama where the industry is their hapless whipping boy and the sincerity of their intentions to "save the children" need to be questioned altogether?'"

The Escapist has a piece looking at the rationale behind joining a Guild, and what it takes to enjoy the experience. Guilds are a core component of most Massively Multiplayer Online Games, but they're also one of the hardest to get right. From the article: "If guild members don't get what they need from their group, whether that need is companionship or gear, they are going to leave it. The guilds that thrive are not the ones that recruit hundreds of members with no common interests - in this case, finding members might be easy, but keeping them would be impossible. Similarly, if players refuse to accept the costs of a guild such as sharing loot or defending castles, the guild will have a harder time functioning as an efficient unit. The guilds with higher rewards and lower costs are the ones that will last."

hapwned writes "Following up on Greg Costikyan's first part of his article from last week, The Escapist goes for round 2 vs the Game Industry. Costikyna goes on to explain what they should do instead: 'One thing developers can try to do - and should do, if they can - is to take over that first additional piece of the value chain. They should try to fund their own development. If you can fund your own development, you get some big advantages. First, you can negotiate a higher royalty rate with the publisher, because they have less capital at risk. Second, you are not utterly at the publisher's mercy during the development process; if the publisher-side producer wants you to do something really stupid (and horror stories abound), you can tell him to screw off. And third,you can retain ownership of your own IP, so if you build a successful franchise, you (rather than the publisher) reaps the benefit.'"

The Escapist has up an article from the end of the week discussing the exploitation of favorite gaming icons from our past for modern day profit. From the article: "Every year, dozens of gaming legends are subjected to cruel and unusual treatment in the name of profit. Such animated icons as Mario are forced to perform tasks beneath their golden standards so their owners may earn a few extra dollars. Do you have a ridiculous game idea? Throw Donkey Kong in there and suddenly you're sitting on box-sales gold! I come to you today with a plea; a fervent hope for a cause that I hope many players will join: We need to stop the exploitation of gaming icons." Coincidentally, Gamespot has an article up entitled The History of Mario Sports Games. That's called synergy, folks.

Greg Costikyan has an article up on The Escapist railing against the current state of the industry. Bigger budgets, obese publishers, and creatively dead franchises that continue to see publishing are snuffing out the opportunity for innovation in an increasingly mainstream market. From the article: "For the sake of the industry, for the sake of gamers who want to experience something new and cool, for the sake of developers who want to do more than the same-old same-old, for the sake of our souls, we have to get out of this trap. If we don't, as developers, all we will be doing for the rest of eternity is making nicer road textures and better-lit car models for games with the same basic gameplay as Pole Position. Spector is right. We must blow up this business model, or we are all doomed. What do we want? What would be ideal? A market that serves creative vision instead of suppressing it. An audience that prizes gameplay over glitz. A business that allows niche product to be commercially successful - not necessarily or even ideally on the same scale as the conventional market, but on a much more modest one: profitability with sales of a few tens of thousands of units, not millions. And, of course - creator control of intellectual property, because creators deserve to own their own work."

hapwned writes "In yet another interesting article from the Escapist, Allen Varney has a piece on the ludicrous amount of money you can make from small, downloadable flash-type games that most Americans play. From the article: 'Which American designer personally made the most money last year from computer games he or she designed? Not the most money for a company, mind you, nor for a studio or licensor, but individual, take-home, taxable income. Was it a famous game god? John Carmack, Will Wright, Sid Meier, Warren Spector? Probably not. It was probably some guy you never heard of who wrote some little shareware game you never heard of. Those "casual games" - the puzzles and Mahjongg tilesets and card games and Breakout clones and match-three Bejeweled-type things - are downloaded, and sell, in numbers some game gods only dream about. Over the lengthy life of a successful casual game, the independent ("indie") designer can make serious, serious money - high six-figures and low sevens. Personally.'"

The Escapist has an article up discussing what they refer to as The Greatest Generation of Games, ala the people who fought in World War II. From the article: "The decade between the Fall of Atari and the Rise of Doom was a dark age for many gaming companies, as wave after wave perished in an onslaught of returns and red ink. Arcade gaming vanished, seemingly, overnight. Computer gaming seemed like it was going to be relegated to geeks; console gaming, to children. But just as modern society was birthed only after the fall of Rome swept away Antiquity, so, too, modern gaming was born from the ashes of the Golden Age, with products from upstart companies like Nintendo, Sega, and Electronic Arts."

The ever interesting Escapist has a piece up examining just why Planescapes\ Torment is such a perennial favorite among gamers and designers alike. From the article: "The strangest, and one of the least successful RPGs from Black Isle (the company that brought you the Icewind Dale series), Planescape: Torment, which was released in 1999, took a risk by using the alternate Dungeons and Dragons campaign of Planescape, a not-really-fantasy, not-really-futuristic world that's mostly defined as unstable and bizarre. Strange and unruly dimensions intersect at the city of Sigil, where most of the game takes place, and your character, portentously called The Nameless One, wakes up in a mortuary with amnesia, a battered shell of a body that cannot die, and just one friend: a flying, talking skull. And the game gets stranger from there."

An anonymous reader writes about an "interview with Warren Spector about his thoughts on licensing movies for games. From the article: 'At these Hollywood meetings, the same thing has happened to me more than once, with multiple people...I describe the game I want to do. I tell them I can deliver you a triple-A title for this cost...Spector names a high figure; no one has ever yet written a check that big...They think it over. Then they say...What could you do with twice as much money?'"

This week's Escapist has an article discussing the future imperfect, which touches on some of the same issues (seriously, this time) that the farcical Pointless WasteofTime did this past weekend. From the article: "What is the future of the massively multiplayer game? And I think: More importantly, how long before that future gets here? I've been waiting for ages. Surely with all that soul searching and 'post-mortem analysis' the developers can't be far from that elusive next-gen ideal? Surely someone will spot all the best bits and make a game to end all games? Won't they? Ach, maybe it's hopeless. How can I really know? How can I predict what games are going to do in a year, let alone a couple of decades? Who could have predicted the rise in professional gaming, or the importance of mods, or the black-market virtual cash cultures, or the thronging game cafés of the Far East, where people can lose their lives in arguments over virtual items?" His ending argument is that gaming will tend towards the wiki mentality: Everyone participates.

hapwned writes "In the latest Escapist issue, Allen Varney explains how he built the latest version of the Paranoia RPG from the ground up in an Open Source fashion. From the article: 'Fans vetted the playtest rules and contributed lots of material, like coders on an open-source software project. It wasn't really open-source; everyone knowingly surrendered their material to PARANOIA's owners, without hope of compensation. (The blog disclaimer read, 'All your rights are belong to us. No bloody Creative Commons here! Bwahahaha!') But - this is the key point - they pitched in anyway, hoping they would benefit by getting an improved game.'"

The Escapist this week has up a feature called Gamer Nation, with a look at the games-centric attitude of South Korea. From the article: "The coolest kids in Gamer America high school go out for the StarCraft team. Gamer America's Commerce Department heavily funds a Domestic Gaming Agency to promote games to your mom and your grandma and the world. And there's a Gamer America network TV channel (not cable, network) broadcasting online game tournaments round the clock. No, wait, there are two channels. Sounds like an EverQuest fever dream? A console fan's Robitussin high? Okay, Gamer America doesn't exist - in America. But it lives for real - right now! today! - in the Republic of Korea (RoK)."

The Escapist has an editorial up talking about the war currently raging in the trenches...and not the console war, for once. The new handhelds are duking it out for position, and he makes some interesting predictions. From the article: "Sony's stumble will clear the way for Nokia's N-Gage powered smartphones to be the #2 platform in handheld gaming. I see it developing into a PC-like platform. Think of it like this: Everybody has a PC. Everybody uses their PC for work and web. Some people also use it for gaming - enough people to make the PC, as a platform, the second biggest; it's the same concept with the smartphone."

A new online gaming mag has launched with an impressive array of contributors. Entitled The Escapist, the magazine appears to be going for gamer culture and commentary, as opposed to specific product information. Jennifer Buckendorff goes into what it means to be a gamer in Gamer Like Me, Kieron Gillen comments on the scapegoating of the games industry in Culture Wargames, and Tycho Brahe talks acceptance in The Mainstream is Coming! The Mainstream is Coming!. From Buckendorff's article: "Am I a gamer? I review video games for various sources, including a major metropolitan newspaper. In May, I made the rounds of E3 for ten hours a day. I have a carefully selected games library, and my adoration of GTA dates back to the London expansion pack, when I used a double-decker bus to evil ends. I grew up in the arcades, standing on tiptoes to feed quarters into the slots. I give game recommendations to friends and acquaintances as if I were reading their tea leaves. But, in the opinion of some, I am not a gamer."

A new online gaming mag has launched with an impressive array of contributors. Entitled The Escapist, the magazine appears to be going for gamer culture and commentary, as opposed to specific product information. Jennifer Buckendorff goes into what it means to be a gamer in Gamer Like Me, Kieron Gillen comments on the scapegoating of the games industry in Culture Wargames, and Tycho Brahe talks acceptance in The Mainstream is Coming! The Mainstream is Coming!. From Buckendorff's article: "Am I a gamer? I review video games for various sources, including a major metropolitan newspaper. In May, I made the rounds of E3 for ten hours a day. I have a carefully selected games library, and my adoration of GTA dates back to the London expansion pack, when I used a double-decker bus to evil ends. I grew up in the arcades, standing on tiptoes to feed quarters into the slots. I give game recommendations to friends and acquaintances as if I were reading their tea leaves. But, in the opinion of some, I am not a gamer."

A new online gaming mag has launched with an impressive array of contributors. Entitled The Escapist, the magazine appears to be going for gamer culture and commentary, as opposed to specific product information. Jennifer Buckendorff goes into what it means to be a gamer in Gamer Like Me, Kieron Gillen comments on the scapegoating of the games industry in Culture Wargames, and Tycho Brahe talks acceptance in The Mainstream is Coming! The Mainstream is Coming!. From Buckendorff's article: "Am I a gamer? I review video games for various sources, including a major metropolitan newspaper. In May, I made the rounds of E3 for ten hours a day. I have a carefully selected games library, and my adoration of GTA dates back to the London expansion pack, when I used a double-decker bus to evil ends. I grew up in the arcades, standing on tiptoes to feed quarters into the slots. I give game recommendations to friends and acquaintances as if I were reading their tea leaves. But, in the opinion of some, I am not a gamer."

A new online gaming mag has launched with an impressive array of contributors. Entitled The Escapist, the magazine appears to be going for gamer culture and commentary, as opposed to specific product information. Jennifer Buckendorff goes into what it means to be a gamer in Gamer Like Me, Kieron Gillen comments on the scapegoating of the games industry in Culture Wargames, and Tycho Brahe talks acceptance in The Mainstream is Coming! The Mainstream is Coming!. From Buckendorff's article: "Am I a gamer? I review video games for various sources, including a major metropolitan newspaper. In May, I made the rounds of E3 for ten hours a day. I have a carefully selected games library, and my adoration of GTA dates back to the London expansion pack, when I used a double-decker bus to evil ends. I grew up in the arcades, standing on tiptoes to feed quarters into the slots. I give game recommendations to friends and acquaintances as if I were reading their tea leaves. But, in the opinion of some, I am not a gamer."

Orsonwarcry writes "Kieron Gillen went to Prague to speak to Bohemia Interactive, known best for Operation Flashpoint. He goes on to discuss the effects of bias on simulation games. 'In other words, a simulation is never just a simulation. Equally, freedom is rarely actually free of designer- imposed desires. Even in games with the most self-expressed mandates of "choice" for the gamer, it doesn't mean that there isn't a message. In Deus Ex, the generally politically liberal Ion Storm Austin created a world where you could choose between violence and pacifistic approaches, but the charismatic characters urged you towards peace while the monsters suggested violence.'" Some interesting stuff in there.