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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.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
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?
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
"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
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
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.
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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