Slashdot Mirror
Behind the Guildhall - The Story of the Students
Sam Machkovech writes "Multiple stories about SMU's Guildhall game design school have already shown up on Slashdot, but none like this. My friend and coworker Paul dug into the motivations and stories behind people who dropped their lives to learn the art of game design in an upstart school, and what the story may lack in technical information, it more than makes up for in the students' accounts. Included is a particularly touching story about a student who survived the 2002 Sari Club terrorist attack in Bali. It also touches upon the excessive overtime and dedication that the job requires, which means graduates should be plenty prepared for their future careers."
I would love to learn hard core C++ and design 3D interactive worlds but spending 60 to 80 hours a week working is not my idea of a satisfying career. I know it's not the same thing but if you love programming and want to try to make a career out of it set your sites to application work in PHP/PERL/Java/etc/etc. just my 2 cents
-Dipster
"...graduates should be plenty prepared for their future careers."
We should be trying to remedy this work situation, not prepare people for it.
Don't be touting it quite so much when it has yet to produce anyone important for the game industry.
~Ilyanep
To get message, take amount of carrier pigeons at each stage mod 2. Then decode binary.
If people are aware of the situation that they are getting into, and choose to get into it anyhow, should government legislate it?
Now, I think employers should be required to divulge what actual working conditions are. Not just to prospective employees, but to the public as a whole. Then, as a consumer, I can choose whether or not to buy a product from a given company.
And all "subsidiaries" ought to display who their parent company is. I get sick and tired of a large company dividing themselves up... one division squeaky clean, the other not.
But bottom line: Make the information public, and you will find the need for gov't intervention decreases.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
It's like proper engineering but you dont get to blow shit up.
:\
On the other hand when you say 'I design games' people dont assume that you fix washing machines for a living
What we _really_ need to do is force executives to work a 80+ hour week whilst we go and play golf (or rather, drive around really fast in those little carts and ram each other). After all they can fuck the whole company over in 30 minutes a day between arriving late and leaving for an early lunch, how much worse could it be if the ever actually did do a full days work?
Beep beep.
If you love the work that you do and don't mind getting overly engrossed in it then it is not so bad working the long hours, but simply preparing students for the drudge and grind of the real-life workplace because it simply is the way it is just plain sucks IMO. Get them excited about their careers and then let them decide if they want to burn themselves out instead of preconditioning them for it.
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
Won't gov't intervention be required to make the information public?
:) Good point!
But, I think you now what I mean. We don't need another logic error riddled peice of legislation that creates a bigger problem than it was intended to solve.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I for one would buy games from companies that use only free range programmers
Depends.
The game companies can get away with all sorts of stuff because demand is huge vs. supply. I'm sure most of us at one point or another wanted to have a job that did nothing but involved games (or perhaps more correctly, to show our parents that playing games can be a job). A QA tester (which is probably where most people start) has a pretty nice job description - "Play games all day and report bugs" - sounds fairly enticing to sit in front of a computer/TV playing games - prerelease games, at that! Of course, while accurate, the true job is far more mundane, and the reality of it all sinks in (60 hour weeks, $8/hr, must find X bugs every week), and the "play" involves running into walls continually.
Others see programming as the way to go. Given the option (without knowledge of working conditions) of a boring job programming Microsoft Word, or some application using a database for insurance companies, and an "exciting programming job" as entry level game programmer, which looks more appealing?
EA and other companies have long treated employees this way - it's nothing new. Just until quite recently, it was more or less a poorly-kept industry secret (I can't recall when I first heard about it, but I knew when I graduated). Of course, I *did* apply to gaming companies, but this was more of "finding a job" rather than "I want a job in the gaming industry".
If people are aware of the situation that they are getting into, and choose to get into it anyhow, should government legislate it?
so - if a company has a policy to hire only 8 year old girls to work the sewing machines, but discloses it, they should be allowed to do it?
take your randian shit and go home. the only way capitalism works, is if it is well-regulated.
... hi bingo
The thing I find interesting about game programming is that it is the'last frontier' of art created for consumption by a mass audience that still requires a huge learning curve and cost expendature to be successful in.
Think about it- used to be that you needed a bazillion dollars, a ton of talent, and a lot of connections in order to successfully make a movie, or a record. Now? People are doing it in their basements with equipment that costs a few hundred dollars.
The big question is how long will it take for someone to figure out how to make designing a video game 'accessible to the masses' the way Digital Video and computer-based audio recording have done for those industries. I'll bet it won't take as long as you think...
---As my daddy used to tell me: "You gotta be smart before you can be a smartass."
This is just another system of control
The following text file was liberated from the president of the university. It's his welcome speech.
welcome.speech.txt
Greetings. The Master Control Program has chosen you to serve your alma mater on the Game Grid. Those of you who continue to profess a belief in the Users will receive the standard substandard training, which will result in your eventual elimination. Those of you who renounce this superstitious and hysterical belief will be eligible to join the coder elite of the Guild. You will each receive an identity disk. Everything you do or learn will be imprinted on this disk. If you lose your disk or fail to obey commands, you will be subject to immediate de-resolution. That will be all.
end of line
Frankly, I don't understand how people can do this for any amount of money or passion. You don't do good work when you're running constantly on 6 hours of sleep, and I'm surprised that any of these guys have any sort of a family whatsoever.
I think that if these sorts of conditions are typical in the gaming industry, it might explain why games in general have slid into the sequel-after-sequel hole and there's very little new or original stuff coming out. You can't think clearly when your brain is sleep-addled and you are living on beer and Cheetos.
I'd rather them spend three times as long producing games, so long as the games were actually original and entertaining, and not yet another boring sequel with an ending that sets up for YAYABS [yet another yet another boring sequel]. (Or, in the case of that guy Levy, some sort of social campaign inspired by the modern equivalent of strange women in ponds handing out swords.)
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
I heard it is a big time party school
it's just down the street(literallt).. you get a 'REAL' degree and not a 'diploma cert' that you get at smu.. and it's 1/10th the cost of the SMU program!
News to me! ...Team-based learning "is an absolute requirement for a sound education in interactive entertainment," says Richard Gray--or Levelord as he is known throughout the gaming world--the co-owner of Ritual Entertainment, maker of the popular military shooting game Counterstrike...
Agreed!!
Everyone thinks they're a game designer. Its not game design the companies are looking for, since EVERYONE thinks they're a game designer. Game companies are looking for highly intelligent programmers, or highly talented artists. Its EXACTLY like Hollywood, where they don't think they need writers, but they need big name actors and special effects.
Game design has some real challenges to it, and theres many things that seem like a good idea but isn't fun in a game. I'd be interested in taking an online course on game design just to see what they got right. I'm not saying I know everything, but I know some stuff like balancing mechanics, MMOG theory, etc. Like I said, everyone thinks they're a game designer, including me. And man is the industry hard to break into. I've had about 7 interviews in ten years and hundreds of job applications.
God spoke to me.
Your logic is flawed, but I agree with the conlcusion. A better example would be: if a company pays women less than men and discloses this, they should be allowed to do it? Children have less rights than adults, less responsibility than adults, and require more protection.
Just because a prospective worker is aware of the situation doesn't make it legal/ethical to deprive that worker of overtime or compensation. Instead of developing a reasonable number of games at a time, it sounds like developers with perpetual crunch time are working on twice as many games as they should be, overworking the employees and pretty much turning unpaid overtime and comp time into company profit, essentially stealing from the employee.
I know this isn't how it is everywhere in the game industry. I've read the EA stuff and heard the horror stories. Our management takes quality of life issues extremely seriously, which probably makes us the exception rather than the rule, but with all of this recent coverage it seems as if people are finally stepping back to take a look at what is really happening in this industry. This business evolved very quickly, with lots of passionate people involved who were willing (and happy) to work suicide hours in order to get the game out of the door. The days of a couple of guys making Doom in their basement and pulling in millions is long gone.
Of course, coverage focuses on the negative and larely ignores the positive. I doubt there will ever be a slashdot story about how employees at game company X are working 40 hour/weeks and loving life. I just Hope that the lessons EA employees seem to be learning will be taken to heart by more than those people directly affected by it.
Of course, having a title that sells a ton of copies makes all of this stuff easier. Someone should tell that to the EA execs.
thank you. I'd give you all my karma points if I could.
A better example would be: if a company pays women less than men and discloses this, they should be allowed to do it? Children have less rights than adults, less responsibility than adults, and require more protection.
... government regulation of business is bad, m'kay, and i took an extreme example, child labor, as a position where we do need absolute government intervention.
i think that i took a more extreme example. the poster above said that
i have no doubts in my mind that if child labor were legal, we would see it in america. why? because its legal, and the labor would be ridiculously cheap.
you're example assumes already in-place legislation and regulations, and the original poster was against... regulation of business in general, and i dont think that you can assume that he's for existing regulation.
i'm certain that if the topic were to be discussed, he would be against minimum wage legislation, as well as mandatory overtime, OSHA, and all other types of business regulation.
business regulations are there for a reason, namely that business will never treat employees, customers or partners fairly unless forced to.
... hi bingo
What I mean is that gaming thou now a HUGE BILLION $ industry is not innovating and experimenting like the garage gamers of the past.
I remember when shareware games were coming out at an incredible rate and selling their warez on BBSes and through mail order. There was a lot of really cool games and more importantly ideas! And this is were I think game development will eventually return.
Using internet and grid computing a game development team can be assembled from all over the planet and work as a single team. You don't necessarily need a multi-million dollar budget... just a good idea and enough folks interesting in making something different.
Hell if it hadn't been for MODs HalfLife would have been just another footnote in FPS gaming. Now its nothing but an average game living on a catalog of old products originally produced by college students!
Yeah we need big game companies and schools to churn out more programming and modeling slaves for them. NOT!
Now I understand what's wrong with their football team.
I realize this program is new, but I'd be very interested to know how many of these students get gaming jobs after graduation. I tried to break into the industry for a while, and came close a few times, but it's a very hard thing to do (looking back I'm happy with where I am now). If this program (and/or others like it) can prove itself valuable to game companies such they their students are quickly snatched up, it would remove a major hurdle for interested developers.
Does anyone know of any game design related accredited scholls that offer online education? I recognize the power of google, but it also brings a lot of crap up to sift through.
If you love the work that you do and don't mind getting overly engrossed in it then it is not so bad working the long hours ...provided that you're single, or don't care about your family, or otherwise have no social skills whatsoever.
Part of the reason I finally decided I wasn't cut out to be a programmer was because I felt guilty working overtime on projects while my wife and kids were expecting me back at home, and that wasn't even on a regular basis.
Your logic is flawed. In the example I am citing, the workers are over 18. They are intelligent enough to be programmers, therefore should be intelligent enough to make a choice about whether to take a job or not.
I am merely stating that we should be given all the infromation we need to make an intelligent decision.
And I see in another subthread, you bring up minimum wage. I live in the inner city, and work in my spare time with the children there. One of the biggest problems is a lack of jobs in these areas, and laws that make it very difficult to get jobs if you are under 18. Minimum wage and child labor laws stopped many abuses. However, it has created a wonderful mess... if you are under 18, and you want to earn money, it will either be through illegal means, or collecting a check for becoming a parent.
Yes, Capitalism needs to be regulated. But the regulation must be intelligent, or it creates two messes instead of one.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
It's called "the other side of the story". Not so big on slashdot; important, however.
How would that work? I mean, seriously...even if you open the door to the coop, they'd just stay in & play games. What can you do if your free-range programmers don't want to range free? Can you still use the "organic software" (now there's an interesting term) label if you gave them the choice, but they didn't take it?
huh?
At least the SMU students have proper grammatical skills.
Yes, governments or some power (Unions perhaps) need to be a counter force against the companies in situations like that. Look at the mill towns that sprang up in the South during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Working conditions there were horrible. Those people knew of the situation they were getting into as well. They had no choice.
Don't worry, the minimum wage cause a lot of those companies either to move or go out of business. A lot of the lobbying for the minimum wage was actually done by the Northern textile industry because they had to pay higher wages anyway. I won't deny the working conditions were horrible, but why do you way they had no choice?
Are you from Radical Entertainment? I have a family member who works there. According to him it's a great company to work for.
For the people living in these towns their choice was work in the mill or have no job at all. The mill WAS the town. At most maybe 2-3 mills in a given area and the owners of those mills were organized otgether to keep working conditions horrible. The same thing happened in the North as well (read The Jungle). Without some kind of group with power to represent workers companies will walk all over their employees.
I won't deny the working conditions were horrible, but why do you way they had no choice? That should read:
I won't deny the working conditions were horrible, that certainly was true, but why do you think they had no choice?
because the individual, living in a rural town, dominated by one company, has no practical choice.
his choices are work at the company, or starve.
there is no choice here, there is no mobility, there is only one option, work for the towns company, or starve.
the individual mass man has very little power in a business relationship, especialy one where his labor is a commodity product itself (i.e. production work), and his environment is dominated by one powerful business.
... hi bingo
This program at SMU is not worth it. You only obtain a certificate by going there. Im attending GLOBE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY in New York and I am in their Bachlor Degree program in Video Game Development. So far, I gotta tell you, I am very happy with the program. I know that I should expect horrible working conditions and average pay, but I have always loved the industry and my goal is to someday open my own company. No one talks about it, but there is a lot of demand for cell phone games, which are for the most part solo programmer games.
If you are interested in the GLOBE BACHELOR DEGREE IN VIDEO GAME DEVELOPMENTcheck out their website http://www.globe.edu/
You know, he's a pretty ordinary dude. And he is a a lot like those dudes described in the article, in that he's stuck doing a job that doesn't give much satisfaction. He grinds away, flying around a boring part of space, keeping the peace, dreaming about the glory of the NEG Marine Corps who won't let him in because he has to do his current job 'cause noone else wants to do it. Then he gets a chance to prove himself, and to get satisfaction from his own existence by doing a task that actually stimulates him on an intellectual and emotional level.
When I'm out there, gutting Skaarj, dismembering mercenaries and doing nasty stuff to equally nasty creatures, I think about the hard choices he must face every day. His responsibilities to the community and his friends. About doing what's right, but still true to himself. I make him excel in his work, but make sure that he never looses sight of what he is really doing it for, and that his life has consequences.
Unreal II is deep, really deep.
Ok, maybe it is a little mean for me to be lampooning what seems to me to be the noblest idea for a game ever (I don't mean Unreal II), but to me the idea of a role model, especially a racially based role model in a game is something that can never work. If you have control of a character in a game, that makes you intrinsically better than them. How can you be positively influenced by someone who you totally and utterly dominate? This sounds to me as unlikely as an abusive husband having a healthy and fulfilling relationship with the wife that he beats. Positive role models in games has absolutly no precident, and I am guessing that there is a good reason why. After all, is it just black people who lack a suitable role model in games? White people have Duke Nukem and the dude from GTA3, I think games are just naturally devoid of good characters of any race.
But anyway, I really wish the dude well, and I hope I am wrong about game psychology because I would love to see a game make a positive difference in someone's life.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
It could be argued, however, that these kids shouldn't need jobs. If they're under 18, they should be in school. Minimum wage jobs should be something they can do part time to save for college, not something that they're doing to eke out a living.
Will their condition actually be improved significantly by having access to sixty-hour weeks at three bucks an hour? That's a road to perpetual poverty, living hand to mouth, until they die or can start collecting Social Security.
~Idarubicin
In that episode George is denied an apartment because one of the other applicants is a survivor of the Andrea Doria (a ship that collided with the Stockholm in dense fog 21 miles off the coast of Nantucket ; thank Kramer for that info ;) )
Whereas the story told by the other applicant is supposedly true, George, in his pissed-off-ness, bagatalises the whole situation.
Bit from the transcript :
KRAMER: (Like a teacher) The Andrea Doria collided with the Stockholm in dense fog 21 miles off the coast of Nantucket. (Makes a clicking sound with his tongue)
(Everyone's taken back by Kramer's knowledge)
GEORGE: How do you know?
KRAMER: it's in my book - "Astonishing Tales of the Sea" 51 people died.
GEORGE: 51 people?!
KRAMER: That's it?! I thought it was, like, a thousand!
KRAMER: There were 1,650 survivors.
GEORGE: That's no tragedy! How many people do you lose on a normal cruse? 30? 40?! Kramer, can I take a look at that book? (Starts walking toward the door.)
(Kramer grabs his food, and follows)
KRAMER: Oh yeah. I also got "Astounding Bear Attacks"
I bet that's how some of the turned-down applicants to Guildhall must have felt ;)
" Frankly, I don't understand how people can do this for any amount of money or passion. "
Welcome to "do it for the love, not the money". May I take your coat?*
*Note that "do it for the love" is so important that every outsourcing story is going to have "those 'undeserving' dot.boomers should lose their jobs and vacate the field so that I 'deserving, do it for the love' can step right in."
Guess no one told them that love is little insurance against failure, and pain.
" I'd rather them spend three times as long producing games, so long as the games were actually original and entertaining, and not yet another boring sequel with an ending that sets up for YAYABS [yet another yet another boring sequel]. (Or, in the case of that guy Levy, some sort of social campaign inspired by the modern equivalent of strange women in ponds handing out swords.)"
Something to look forward to when everyone's an "artist" and all those "inefficient business models" are demolished.
if child labor were legal, we would see it in america
;) Nothing wrong with putting kids to work under some amount of control.
Child labor does exist in america, it's called farming. It is not unusual for farm kids to work 20 - 40 hrs/week during the school year and 60-80 during the summer. I think it's legal and it happens even if it isn't.
I don't really think there is much wrong with it either, yeah, I hated it as a kid, but it builds character. Props to dad for that
the farming labor laws are a totally different animal than normal labor law.
as for doing work for your dad building character... yeh... i've rebuilt two houses growing up, and am now working on my own fixer-upper, thanks dad.
... hi bingo
We should be trying to remedy this work situation, not prepare people for it.
The Merc is carrying an article just today on a lawsuit against EA [reg may be req'd] regarding deceptive work environment practices. It seems to me that companies that behave this way are just asking for unions.
For those with a short memory (I don't blame you. slashdot search is awful).
0 9/01/1249257&tid=117&tid=156&tid=8&tid =10
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/
Open Source isn't a "one size fits all" nor is it a "magic bullet" to whatever ails the world.
Would you rather buy a game from a company who guarantees that their programmers never work more than eight hours per day and are given a full hour lunch break and aren't expected to come in for overtime ... or a game from a company who says it has teams of programmers and artists working virtually round the clock, constantly working to create a product that is as good as possible and get it to the shelves as soon as possible.
Even if people knew, it wouldn't necessarily stop this kind of behavior. It might even promote it.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
What about a company that makes it it's policy to only emply 8 year old kids to deliver flyers? It happens all the time, and as an 8 year old I didn't mind earning extra pocket money. /only/ way it works? What are you basing that on? Take your absolutist bullshit and think a little harder before you post.
Look, regulation can and does cause problems. You might see something wrong with 8 year olds delivering flyers (or sewing), but is it right to force that view on to others, even if an 8 year old with a sick, single-mother decides she wants to work a bit?
Don't dismiss someone's views as a stereotype just because you think you see a flaw. That's the
Production time actually has basically no correlation to how "good" or original a game is. Once a game design is written down (new or sequel) it's simply in the company's (and publisher's) best interest to get it programmed quickly, so they try to make that happen. Slowing down the implementation time wouldn't change the game design at all.
The real problem with new ideas in games is that you can't prove to a publishing company that they will sell. If they have the option of mimicing something that sold tons of copies vs. trying something new, they'll go with the safer bet. It's just that simple. Same reason that so many new movies are sequels or based on something that's already popular (like comic books). The publishers want to back something that they know will make money.
Look for more original games from companies who don't care if a game sells well because they have the money to deal with it. The two that come to mind are Id and Blizzard. They can afford to work on any idea they want, set their own timetable, postpone the release until the game is really and completely finished, and then see what happens. Unfortunately they are the exception and not the rule.
That's the /only/ way it works?
yes mr. AC, the only way capitalism works is if it is well-regulated, and while we may debate whats well-regulated, and whats over-regulated, we will never discuss NO regulation as was proposed by the parent.
unregulated capitalism is barbaric, and not in practice anywhere in the world today.
... hi bingo
Hippies? Your comment has the ring of a fascist neo-con. What matters? More anal orifice oppression? What?
What's so touching about his story involving Bali? He was a block away. My cousin, a former Australian professional footballer had literally just walked outside of the club. He survived, but some of his friends didn't. (May they rest in peace).
Levy had no actual connection to the Bali bombing other than being a block away and thinking about it. Personally, I find the attempt to literally involve him with the terrorist attack somewhat distasteful, particularily when other people were actually killed and lost friends in it.
All for dramatic writing effect - cheap and nasty journalism.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
I read the article and couldn't help thinking, "how cool!" primarily because their experiences reminded me so much of my own.
As a computer science graduate from a major engineering school, I went through a lot of the same things, include the 100+ hour weeks, not sleeping for 4 straight days (thank you ephedra), and trying to coordinate and balance work in a team of with wildly disparate skills and strengths. While I hated it when I was doing it, I'm very proud of the fact that I did it. Of the 135 who started in my class, 13 remained to graduate five years later (five year BS program).
Our software development class was a lot like Guildhall in that the only object of the class was to write a game, in a team of about 7 people. We wrote an overhead scroller-shooter with 2-player cooperative network play, and a stand-alone level editor with 5 levels, 5 different types of weapons (including homing missles), sound effects, a musicial score, 7 different types of enemies, and 5 bosses (including one with the face of our professor) in just under 10 weeks. It was intense, but I learned a lot from the experience. I learned to cut down scope when required, to set up a flexible and correct object-oriented model with plenty of abstraction as early-on as possible, to spend the 10 minutes it might take to help someone get their code to compile because of a funny bug rather than have them waste two days trying to figure it out. I learned the value in leveraging existing technologies (we used DirectX and CDX) to speed up development, and the importance and difficulty of synchronization between network clients in a fast-paced game with lots of sprites.
I think that many schools are doing similar things, maybe not to the extent of Guildhall, but enough that those who survive are able to deal with similiar situations when they face them in the real world. I know that I have never faced a problem in the work-world as hard as the one I tackled (and solved) as my senior project (commodities trading price prediction). Granted I don't work at NASA or anything, but I'd say my work is pretty typical of a programmer, and given what I've went through, I have the confidence and the skills to take on just about anything I face.
What's my point? If you are thinking about programming as a career, go to a school with a program what will challenge you, not just in terms of what you can memorize, or what math problems you can solve, but also your ability to create complex programs, developed concurrently by a team. Put yourself through something hard, and if its not hard enough, then go beyond that and make it harder.
If you want to be a game designer, you design and analyse games all the time. If you don't, you don't really want to be one.
:)
This is similar to all who says "I want to be a writer, but I've just not gotten around to it". This is complete and utter bullshit. Anyone who wants to be a writer, writes constantly, whatever they are writing, that is what they do. Because that is what they want to do - and it is the only way to learn it and improve.
Otherwise, you just want to be the lead guitarrist that gets to stand in front and show off. But guess what, lead guitarrists practice all the time too. Because they love it, and because they want to improve.
It is really that simple. If you aren't doing it constantly, that is not what you actually want to do. I understand you might think so, but you are wrong.
And no, this is not necessarily directed at parent, because this was not touched in that post. Just pointing out a reality everyone and their dog should realise, and realise now.
Spine World
Come on guys, you might disagree with the parent's comment, but it is not a troll! Someone please mod it up so it's not at a negative score.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
Mod development for video games is now practical for small internet teams and is becoming practical on the commercial side--though the infrastructure has a ways to go for young groups/the masses to succeed commercially.
I've worked with some young programmers and map-makers...the map-makers have been able to pull off professional quality work...the coders...still some issues there, though it really depends on the engine imho. Companies like epic, with an application layer that includes their own scripting language and scripting source code for ut2004 (a solid extension and customization plan), have made it viable for new coders to do work without advanced math knowledge or real OO experience.
Artists and animators and level designers already have access to quality tools--though commercial use issues are still there.
Epic's and the industry's tools are moving forward at a rapid pace, as are changes in distribution systems that will allow small studios to profit (consider where independent stuidos will be in five years with tools like steam). Currently, the development and release side is already there...the profit isn't.
I encourage you to check out the MSUC contest winners and finalists when epic announces them in the next week or so.
Best,
Brian
brian@renegadegods.com