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Peter Molyneux Asks For Gov't Help For Small Shops
spot35 writes "Maybe the gaming industry isn't as healthy as I thought. Peter Moluneux has gone on record stating that creating a successful video game is too expensive for the smaller developers. According to this BBC article he suggests that the government helps the smaller developers to keep them afloat.
This other article gives a very brief profile of the man."
This sounds suspiciously like film subsidies (the gov't gives money to moviemakers to help them make movies). Look at what film subsidies have done for the British film industry. Fifty years ago, the British film industry was in great shape. Actors were easy to find, and the techs behind the scenes (camerapeople, lighting, etc.) were plentiful and extremely competent. Now look at the British film industry. Sure, a lot of movies are filmed in Britain, but most of them are American productions. Even the James Bond films are financed by an American studio (MGM).
Beware of subsidies...
I beg to differ. Consider that the (arguably) most popular online multiplayer game (Counter-Strike) was created in a "small shop" - what was it, one guy?
Also, there are a ton of good games chugged out by small shops - consider Serious Sam.
Granted that small shop wasn't located in the US, but those are but two examples without blinking. I'm sure you can come up with your own short list of successful games produced by small companies.
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A few years ago, the game industry had (for the time) much better graphics than independant companies would use. Grand Theft Auto, however, still made its rounds. Large game companies are good at making games that are good logical progressions from other games on the market, but small game companies innovate. It's true that Rockstar did wind up selling the Grand Theft Auto name to a larger company, but they now have resources to make other games. Just as when, according to the article,
it was all geeks and nerds, who had long hair, ate pizza and drank Coke
there is not a huge market for the long-haired developers. Instead, there is a slightly smaller crows watching them, but independant games still have the ability to spread like wildfire. It's a wonderful thing when the geeks and nerds can write games, get it seen by a few hundred people through an independant gaming site, and if it's good enough, have them tell their friends and so on. I think this is much better than getting all of the attention of the thousand-person video-game crowd of the yester-year.
In the long run, we're all dead.
Thanks for beating me to the punch, Dalroth.
You're right. Accepting government money (in the form of a loan, tax break) only invites the government to poke their nose deeper into your business.
If a smaller business can't make an AAA game, maybe they should focus on a simpler game that is just as fun to play?
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"A government funded artist is an unprincipled whore!" - Jubal Harshaw, a character of Robert Heinlein.
:-)
Of course those that want to accept the money to produce a game should be free to do so. Just add the warning on the packaging
But small businesses ARE the requirement for competition.
Otherwise we will have few huge companies which will control different parts of the market and won't compete directly with others (like EA + Sports games).
Perhaps Mr. Molyneaux's perspective is tinted by the relative success of 'Black and White' and its expansions in the face of a hostile American market.
For those not familiar with the game, Black and White is an innovative 'God' sim in which you literally play a god. You have your peasants worship you and command a anthropomorphic animal titan to do your bidding. It's quite interesting and it's quite intriguing. Not only is the 3d game engine great, the AI in the game is astounding. The animal titan really seems to 'learn' from you and from his own actions.
There was a significant problem with 'Black and White', however. Lionhead and EA shipped the game well behind schedule and with a truly horrible number of bugs still in the game. It crashed frequently and the animal AI had some very serious problems... Your animal learned to become more evil by harvesting fish, for example. In-game quests were broken and hidden features were put in the game that could only be unlocked with 3rd party tools. There were long freezes due to the game's auto-save feature and many, many actions you could take that would crash the game or would somehow 'lock' you. Many features promised during development simply weren't in the game. It was really quite miserable. The game was fun to play, but so punishing that it quit being fun well before you had come close to exhausting even a fraction of the content there.
Since Molyneaux is a huge name and people were eagerly expecting the game, the backlash was dramatic. Players demanded a patch to fix the problems, but at the same time. It was almost four months in develoment from release. Interest in the game waned. Just when the patch was released, a number of rule-changes were added into the patch to address multi-player concerns. Unfortuneately, these changes made the single-player game vastly more difficult. The patch was required if you wanted to download any of the extras or install any of the expansions. This put players in the position of You could choose to play without the patch and subject yourself to frequent problems and lock yourself out of all other upgrades, or you could install the patch and play a game that wasn't fun any more, even with the upgrades and expansions.
Accordingly, the expansions didn't do half as well as the original game release. I've heard rumors that the sequel is being scrapped because of poor expansion sales.
The problem here is not with Lionhead studio's small size, but with their game quality. Molyneaux and crew developed what should have been a revolutionary game, but crippled their own work by bowing to release deadlines, unrealistic expectations, and the angry, but loud demands of a very small minority section of their target audience.
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I want to add a few things more while I'm thinking about it. I don't think my original post went far enough.
The last thing in the world I would want MY tax money spent on is to support sketchy video game companies for products I might not necessarily agree with (yes I do play and enjoy Vice City) or products which are most likely going to fail and suck (9/10 games are absolutely pathetic in my experience).
Government money should be used to guarantee that ALL markets remain competitive (not just the video game market). That does not mean subsidizing dreck, that mean preventing monopolies. Government money should be used to provide education benefits to our children. Government money should be used to provide health care for our people. Government money should be used to provide infrastrucutre and public services. Government money should be used to provide protection and safety from those who would do you harm.
Government money should NOT be used for pork and that's exactly what this request is. You want your government to do something usefull for your industry? How about asking them to provide regulations that guarantee worker safety. How about asking them to enforce regulations that provide appropriate vacation time, or guarantee that programmers only work 40/hours a week when they're paid for 40/hours a week.
We have enough pork bullshit going on in our governments as it is. This is what government money SHOULD be spent on.
Bryan
All the damn AAA games are too big, too complex, and most of all, too focused on GRAPHICS at the expense of Gameplay. All the big studios are spending all that money on trying to make realistic (that is, indistinguishable from live movies or TV) displays.
What ever happened to the good old games? Adventure and Zork had no graphics at all, just text. Rogue/Nethack just use ASCII symbols. The early Wizardry games had stick figures. And I still enjoy going back to old Phantasy Star games on my Sega Genesis, primitive graphics but so what?
We need to stage a revolution, bring back games that can be played on an AVERAGE PC, with a built-in (mobo) video controller, instead of one of these ATGTXYZ Roadrage controllers that cost more than some entire PCs.
Boycott the "AAA" games (not difficult if you're running Linux or anything else other than Windoze!), bring back the garage-shop game developer, don't worry about selling games at Best Buy or those places, market "Indie" games over the Net.
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America's Army is just one example of computer games produced for state PR (read: propaganda).
I don't know that I'd consider America's Army propaganda... an advertising/recruitment tool would be a more appropriate parallel.
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...government financial support is the worse idea possible.
I agree. There are small-business allowances for government contracting, where small-businesses are given awards just because (brace yourself) they cannot compete on price but have a powerful congressman on their side. Yuck.
There are whole industries which are extremely unhealthy and artificially propped up by the government. Defense contractors, airlines, Amtrack, etc. It seems that, when the government gets involved, the outcome is more often worse than better. The main reason is that government bureaucrats don't give a rat's ass if they are actually productive. All they really need to do is blow the budget, and that's all that matters to them.
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Good evaluation. Reward the market loser, and penalize everyone else by forcing them to support the market loser. A ridiculous scam if I've ever seen one, obviously designed to benefit special interests at the expense of the taxpayer. Is it surprising? Not in the least. The bigger the government, the more we're going to see these kind of scams put into action.
My feeling is that a small or one-person team can do a lot given current tools (granted there is a lot for one person to cover) and at least will not fall into a bunch of backbiting and/or large scale corporate stupidity. Too many "big shop" games are either knock-offs, or without any real playability.
I have a terrific concept for a commercial game I'm trying to develop, so we'll see how the small fish does in my case... ;-)
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but government financial support is the worse idea possible. Things change, times change, and most especially business changes.
Amen. Big companies buy up small ones, big companies get bloated and create less niche content, new small companies come up with niche products, now tons of small companies producing niche products, that are now mainstream.....rinse and repeat. its in the natural cycle. as long as the playing field is level. Govt. support makes a level playing field NOT level. If the products are worth buying, people will buy it.
The problems is people freak out on one end "oh my god, there are too few big companies! Its a monopoly!" and on the other "oh my god, there are too many small companies! no standards!" instead of understanding its the ebb and flow of capitalism. Its like "sea level" which is simply the average of low and high tides. It is the ebb and flow, the changes from big companies, then small companies, dominating that helps fuel innovation. Once again, as long as the playing field is level, or as you so elequently put it, "As long as competition reigns supreme, the market will thrive and that's all that really matters"
The swings from big and small company domination are a good thing. Nothing grows in still water.
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They are. If EA doesn't get the money from one advertiser, they either don't bother to put an ad there or put a parody ad in its place ("New Prune-flavored cola! Cures constipation and gives you a caffeine jolt!"). Sometimes, as a condition of licensing the IP for the game (logos, uniform designs, and such), the league or club will require that their sponsors be included in the game (I believe the NFL does this with the recent Madden games).
Molyneux wants to make big games with a huge budget, but is finding that its not that profitable. Rather than find a more appropriate design, the UK government should fund the development? Oh yea, DOA Extreme Vollyball was definately a pinnacle of modern expression, and a clear example of why they should fund this new expansion of the arts. Seriously people, there's another group of developers in the UK thats not only smaller than Molyneux but also successfuly. Introversion has released a successful game to the PC market without support of a publisher for distrobution and marketing. Their game Uplink is a nice combination of gameplay that doesn't require a 30+ minute investment of time but still lets you make progress in the game.
The companies Molyneux cited all suffered from liscencing exposure. Crawfish made several quality GBA games. Unfortunately they were all ports. The bad deal with ports is while the liscence does come with an instant fanbase, it raises the standards for your first game (can't put off features like multiplayer in a street fighter game, even though you haven't figured a way around the slow bus speed yet), and even if you do pull it off to critical acclaim, the liscener will probably do it in house instead, ala Goldeneye/Rare.
On the other hand, I'd love to see cheaper games, and if the UK is willing to foot the bill on it, I'm game!
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In agreement I have to say that if you are pursuing a competitive first person shooter, etc... you require a large staff with many graphic artists, prgrammers, etc. You are also going to pour lots of money into marketing and getting big names for voices etc. Additionally, getting into some of the console markets is near-neigh impossible unless your a well known and established company with millions.
However, in disagreement I offer our own experience. In our view, an indie is most at risk if they (1) accept funding from investors and (2) try to release games that mimic the current genres and (3) do not pay close enough attention to stability (e.g., support issues).
Our game has been fairly successful, and continues to grow, due in part to the fact that it bucks the traditional genres. We have no problem staying afloat because we funded the venture out of pocket and never once accepted money outside the company. This allowed us to retain total control over the direction of the game. Because we retained total control we also had the ability to ensure that we did not release anything until WE were happy and WE were certain it was stable.
It is apparent that it will be a slow and steady climb for us (our first release was in 2001) to get to the point where bigger names take notice, and console manufacturers want to talk - but as with anything, if you are tiny and innovative you can overcome most obstacles and become a david among goliths (sorry :).
I'm one of the co-owners of an independent game company right now so I feel like I have a few things to say on this subject. His premise is flawed, IMO.
First of all, we heard this same argument on the Dreamcast homebrew development list back in the day when John Byrd (Sega DTS guy) was on there. He literally said that a couple of guys in a garage can't make a game these days. It was basically the same thing Peter Molyneux is saying now. I told him it was BS then, and I'll say it's BS about this as well.
The problem is one of scope. This same thing applies to movie makers, musicians, anyone. If you start out with the goal of wanting to be a world-wide phenominon, then you are probably going to fail unless you have the bookoo bucks. That's not how normal business people start though. You find yourself a niche somewhere where you can establish yourself, and then you work upwards from there. If you're passionate about it and stay on it hard, and more importantly if you have the talent, then you'll usually get a couple of key breaks eventually. If you don't, then perhaps you should try something else. Or, if you're like me, there's probably no failure too grand to keep you away from it. :)
You also have to look at the indie film and music scenes to see how this works, it's not that difficult. You find something you can do within the budget you have available to you; you spend time and track down people who have similar interests; and then you band together and make something that will lift all of you up to the next budget level so you can produce something more interesting next time. It takes patience, yes. It definitely takes a load of hard work. But you don't need a "worldwide AAA game" to be successful, just enough to pay yourself to continue your work.
There is also, of course, an element of "right place at the right time" but that tends to be purely luck (though it can be engineered occasionally).
And before any of the trolls start... our budget: $0 and a few hours of free time each day.
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"And yes, you can rag capitalism, but the fact is: when you cut taxes (to a degree) you increase the amount of taxes collected."
It's a good thing you put "to a degree" there, because this is only true if the extra money is then invested (like you did), and creates more wealth that can then be taxed. Failing that situation, lowering taxes can actually be a bad thing.
Both taxes and investment redistribute wealth, which is nearly always a good thing for an economy. However investment is the better method because it gives money to those who create yet more wealth, and jobs. Note that lowering taxes != increasing investment unless there is a shortage of supply.
During the Reagan years there was a shortage in supply, so cutting taxes was a reasonable idea. Now however, there is a massive glut of supply, so the idea of cutting taxes for investors is crazy, because this money won't be reinvested. What's needed is something like a double tax credit for the first $20K for each employee hired. This would create a lot of low paying jobs that would help people get by a lot better than no jobs at all.
I was hoping for a thread like this to begin.
Over the years, I've been a large purchaser of games. I've got all sorts of games, FPS's, RPG's, Action, Adventure, Puzzle, you name it. What I have noticed, though, is that almost every game that I thought was insanely *cool* have come from the U.K. Let's start with Lemmings. Lemmings managed to hook my dad into playing non-stop, he kept going and going. You have to understand that pre-and-post lemmings, my dad is decidedly not a games guy. It was the first game of it's kind, and it was perhaps the best lemmings game that came out.
Populace, Relentless, Syndicate (the original mafia), Theme Park... These all came from somewhere in England (usually Bullfrog, sometimes Psygnosis). Compare this to 15 iterations of Wolfenstein 3D, each building graphically but little else. Not until Half-Life, which included a bit of a story, and Deus-Ex were FPS's actually innovative. No, Unreal was just the same as all the others at the time.
American games tend to have one thing in common: Push the hardware limit. Doom ran on a 386, although slowly and in a tiny window. Quake demanded a 486 DX/2 66 and higher to run. Quake 3 demanded a 3-D accelerator. It seems that the U.S. is the test bed for all the newest technology, and it's up to the U.K. to implement it with any of that addicting story/gameplay.
SimCity was the first "Sim" game. It was fun. Every other sim game the came after has sucked, with exception of SC2K. SC2K extended the graphics, but didn't fuck too much with the gameplay. It was really fun. SC3K and SC4 suck ass. SimEarth sucks ass. SimTower sucks ass. SimFarm, wtf? SimAnt (cool premise, boring game). The best game that came out was origially done by the Japs in A-Train, anyone remember that? Maxis just bought the rights to it, and managed to kill the game.
So yeah, Peter's got a point. As long as the heads of business don't steal the money, I think it would benefit the U.K. to pony up some cash. They are the imaginative ones. We, Americans, are the inventive ones.
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