Slashdot Mirror
3D Realms' Scott Miller Warns Warner
firstadopter.com writes "Scott Miller of 3D Realms, maker of Duke Nukem and non-maker of Duke Nukem Forever, is panning Warner Brothers' recent re-entry into the videogame industry. He cites the lack of focus of conglomerates and aversion to risk-taking on original brands as the heels of Warner's future downfall, suggesting of their new gaming division: 'Focused [game-only] publishers will always lead us in making the best games... It's just not as important for a [diversified into films/TV] company like Warner to really try hard in a area that, in the end, doesn't mean life or death to their company.'"
3DRealms has been focused on Duke Nukem Forever for 5 or 6 years now and they still have nothing but vapor. They're hardly a company to talk about video gaming anymore since they can't even get a simple game out the door. License the damn Quake 3 engine and make Duke Nukem Forever with that instead of jumping around redesigning engines every year. 3DRealms is like a kid with ADD when it comes to their flagship character. The fun thing about Duke3d wasn't that it had great graphics (it didn't), but that you could hold up a buck to a stripper and say "shake it baby". We must have more of this in the next version!
All that's gonna happen is the maket will have more "garbageware" floating around obscuring good games. These "Media Giant" companies that try and make an extra buck by tying in a crappy and hastily produced game, than advertise the living hell out of it, just make it harder for the small unknown studio to promote what possibly might be a good product.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."-THG
"He cites the lack of focus of conglomerates and aversion to risk-taking on original brands..." Original brands? Duke Nukem Forever..?
..how about a little less telling everyone else how to run their company and a little more Duke Nukem Forever development, mmmkay?
At this rate, the PlayStation IX will be out before DNF.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
[insert DNF comment here]
;)
That pretty much sums up the comments so far
Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.
Wouldn't be a surprise at all, afterall this is the Warner brothers that killed Atari. Then after poisoning the brand sold the whole thing to the Tramiel's who repeated stuck knives into every part of it. (And everything else)
Doesn't he remember Atari? T-W owned that from '76-'86, their most profitable and inventive years when they made great games.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Then, there's the obvious:
(ahem)
Well, at least Time-Warner will **MAKE** games that will have an opportunity to suck.
Thank you, thank you very much, I'll be here all week!
Drive safely, remember to tip your wait staff and try teh fish!
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
There is an assumption amongst "focused publishers" of games that leading edge (techniques, graphics, sound, action) counts. It is an assumption that holds true for (probably) most of the gaming market. Nevertheless, the current gaming market is arguably a niche market, and "focused publishers" either aren't aware of this or at a loss to exploit the bulk of the market.
A market means having (a) customers who want your product (b) who have money (c) enough to afford the price which is dictated (at minimum) by your development costs.
The current game publishers are pretty good at (a). There are millions of gamers out there who want the product. The problem is that the vast majority of those gamers do not earn an income. Those that do eventually find that they have less time for gaming in order to do something called "living" or "working" or "getting a wife and kids". Slashdotisms aside, the age profile of gamers is heavily slanted in towards youth and lack of income.
In other words, current publishers aren't a whole lot of good at (b) or (c), or "finding the deep pockets". Games are pirated or obtained occasionally via Mommy or Daddy's money.
So where are the publishers going wrong? To me that's simple. I don't play games anymore because I don't have much time to, and few modern games are entertaining for a person who only plays occasionally. Games are written for gamers, and gamers are highly skilled addicts. This means they get their "hit" from the challenge and, to get value for their money, they require game that is lengthy to complete. Something challenging to a skilled gamer is, even on easy levels, not very entertaining to me when I want to relax for half an hour.
TW is, by comparison, an entertainment company. While many people (especially here) can't stand them, they nevertheless understand how to cater to the mass market ... and I'm guessing they're going to do just that.
Why play in the highly competitive leading edge games market when you can combine non-interactive media with yesterday's techniques (that have been made into a Microsoft SDK), at a fraction of the cost, and target a far larger market that also happens to have money?
Its all about understanding your market. People who earn money (more particularly those who have "responsibilities") tend to be more price sensitive when it comes to products they aren't sure they will get their money's worth from. You may not be able to sell a $50 game to such people except at Christmas, but a $10 game a month will slip right under their radar.
There are also other markets that aren't currently served by game publishers. Do you remember interactive fiction books? They give you a paragraph or two, you decide what to do, and get a "goto" for another paragraph. There's thousands of them out there, and children and young teens love them. It would take one such book, a week of VB, and one day in your average TV series studio to turn the book into multimedia interactive fiction (30 second clips rather than paragraphs). TW could flog off stuff like that at a quarter the price of a game and still make a killing.
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
I think diversification is good. Look at a company like 3Drealms, the critics in this case. They haven't diversified (to my knowledge) and they solely make games. And yet, DNF hasn't shown up yet. They don't appear to be "really trying hard".
On the other hand, a large movie/tv company has easy access to its properties (movies, tv, music) and usually has the capital to hire good game designers. It's not like we look at Warner Brothers and think "When they make a movie they take all their resources away from their other divisions."
Warner is a big company, I'm sure the games division will not overlap the other divisions and will exist on its own yet share accounting and intellectual properties of the other divisions.
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
this is saint patricks day right? not april fools day?
this article sounds like a complete joke!
where is duke nukem forever? this guy has no business criticizing anyone the software development arena. his company can't even get a game out the door after 5+ years of development.
their only goal is to keep selling crappy throwback games based on the vague "when its done" promise of a future non-existant title.
good one though..made me laugh out loud reading this.
He cites the lack of focus of conglomerates and aversion to risk-taking on original brands as the heels of Warner's future downfall, suggesting of their new gaming division: 'Focused [game-only] publishers will always lead us in making the best games...
This is a man who really knows about "risk-taking on original brands." Look at the Duke Nukem brand: How risky is it to take eight or more years to release a sequel? Even "focused" game publishers like Epic Games and ID Software aren't willing to take risks like that with their flagship brands.
There are people who played Duke Nukem 3D when they were in junior high school and they've now graduated from college and there is still no sequel. There's a risk that, when/if Duke Nukem Forever is released that no one will even remember the original. If all game companies took risks like 3DRealms does, stores wouldn't need nearly so much shelf space for video games and consumers would have a much easier time of it.
Actually, this will be TW's -third- attempt at publishing games. In the early and mid '90s, Time Warner Interactive released perhaps a dozen games across a range of platforms. To its credit, these included Software Sorcery's first game (Aegis: Guardian of the Fleet), the Saturn version of Virtua Racing, the PS1 version of Return Fire, the sequel to the classic Amiga game Firepower. It also put out a real stinker of a fighting game called Rise of the Robots. Of course, it's one thing to have good taste in cherry-picking games that other people develop and quite another to make them yourself. I hope for the best, but Scott's warnings are well-considered. Peter
It's just not as important for a [diversified into films/TV] company like Warner to really try hard in a area that, in the end, doesn't mean life or death to their company.'"
So Sony must make some real crap as they are one of the more diversified companies on the planet. Oh, and Hitachi - their stuff is all crap. Sheesh, just because a company is diversified (USUALLY considered a good thing) doesn't mean that they can't do most, if not all of those things well.
The only "original brand" WB is working on right now is the Matrix MMORPG. And yeah, they do seem to have a lack of focus now that Ubisoft backed out of that game.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Maybe after they release Duke Nukem: Taking Forever, will that guy have room to talk about Warner Bros.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
'Focused [game-only] publishers will always lead ...
The focused [game-only] publisher in question needs to put out the game they've been leading for seven years now before they talk about leading the market ahead of the conglomerates.
Focused [game-only] publishers will always lead us in making the best games... --Scott Miller
Let's face it, Scott-- an illiterate dirt farmer from South Buttcrack, Arkansas could lead 3DRealms in making games. You're not telling us anything we don't already know.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
I was (un)fortunate enough to work for them for about 6 months in the end of 1993. They were having trouble with a couple of launch titles that were supposed to be bundled with Apple's then-revolutionary A/V Macs. I remember lots of problems with the DSPs. That and working on the worst game ever.
"HellCab"
I do have this really cool paperweight that they gave out to the execs that year: it's a big chunk of the Berlin wall with the following inscription: "This is a remnant of the Berlin wall, which stood as a barrier against the free exchange of ideas, information, and culture. You helped bring this wall down"
Nice sentiments, but unfortunately the company was run by a bunch of asshats that had no concept of game development. I have no faith in the new group being any better: if they're anything like the last bunch, they'll be too busy trying to keep up with the Joneses to build good product -- the fact that Sony Digital has a couple of MMORPGs is not a good reason for Warner Brothers to have one.
"The Matrix" franchise is not going to age as well as the "Star Wars" franchise has. Nor the "Lord of the Rings" franchise for that matter. They should focus on the console market and getting a couple of good games on the market instead of cannibalizing their "IP" (emphasis on the "P" rather than on the "I").
Which reminds me of the cheesy "Comedy Central" CDs we did. Nothing like spending all day watching Rosie clips in QuickTime 2.0 to make you want to start drinking in the morning.
Oh yeah, and mod me down all you like, but the Game Industry could stand to at least attempt to adhere to some Software Engineering practices.
Like Analysis and Design. Or milestone releases.
- learn to swim.
Like a pregnant crack-whore.
Next?
- learn to swim.