Game Companies Prepare for Next Console War

domanova writes "The BBC has an article up about the difficulties games companies will face in the next round of the console war. I don't play games, and my programming is in a different world, but the last lines of the article struck a cord. "Mr Hasson said games developers were beginning to realise that they had to be more business-like. 'There are still some developers who were involved in games from the bedroom coding days. Some of them are still making games for peer group approval - that has to stop.'"

Comments

Struck a cord?

[Anonymous Coward]

Struck a chord...

what???

[xerxesVII]

"Some of them are still making games for peer group approval - that has to stop."
i realize this is a business guy making the statement, but god...
peer group approval is what gives us the crazy stuff like katamari damacy, warioware, and others. if that stops, we get stuck with nothing but incremental sequels to racing games, sports franchises, and the army men series.

Re:what???

[Fr05t]

" if that stops, we get stuck with nothing but incremental sequels to racing games, sports franchises, and the army men series."

I thought we already were. New creative games are becoming far and few between. It's sad but soon enough the "mainstream" game industry will be the same as Hollywood cranking out the same crap over and over again. Once and awhile there will be something new, but for the most part anything genuinely new will be from (or at least I hope) small independent game companies showing their thing at indie-game festivals.

Re:what???

[Austerity Empowers]

He's got two problems:

1) Is that most "peer group" targetted games fail. Mostly they appeal to too small a segment of the population to make any money even if they make it out of development. Many don't get that far as they get too complex and too niche.

2) Games like Katamari Damacy that come out of left field screw up his pre-existing business of selling licensed sports games, another FPS with fancy new graphics etc. etc. I.e. innovation takes away some of his market share. Until he owns it, he's losing money.

This isn't really new. Look at Hollywood. Most movies are nothing but old ideas with new faces designed to target a specific market and get some easy cash. But we do rarely get a new, good movie that stands above the rest. They're hard to pick out, but they're out there.

Businessmen are classically short sighted. They only see things as they are now, and make decisions that way. Once something new comes in they're scared until they can make money from it. Then they love it. If you made a bundle off every gas powered car sale, wouldn't you be afraid of someone who sold electric cars?

This HAS TO STOP!!!

[AtariAmarok]

"Some of them are still making games for peer group approval - that has to stop."

Just what we need: more games designed for approval by committees of the type that think "Elektra will be a great hit movie!", and fewer games designed for game-players.

I would argue that...

[larsoncc]

The problems in the game industry stem, in large part, from being TOO "business-like".

Re:I would argue that...

[Moby Cock]

Here, here. I would agree. I am concerned that the games industry will go the way of Hollywood. That is, controlled by huge corporate entities that tend to homogenize content. We see some of that already in games. For example: Medal of Honour was a great game that had interesting content and was fresh, now there are at least 50 WWII themed games and more to come. This is what happens in Hollywood too. When a film (or TV show) is a hit, there are countless bullshit knock-offs to carpet bomb the public. LOTR was well recived and fresh, and this spawned turds like Troy, Alexander and that Crusade movie due out this year. The are reducing LOTR to the epic battles and missing the point that the story was compelling not just the cool action stuff.

I fear this is the future of the games industry. One or two really good titles a year and then hundreds of cheap imitation and derivative works. I hope I'm wrong and that the industry can use the new hardware to really show us something new and special, but I have my doubts.

Re:I would argue that...

[Lu Xun]

I think the "90% of everything is crap" ratio comes into effect here. There are still some great movies released, you have have to look for them. Even if the game industry gets overwhelmed with 1001 "me too!" clonegames, good games will still be produced. Even mods can create a great game experience, even if the original game wasn't so hot. You just have to ignore the crap.

Who has to stop?

[IndiJ]

Mr Hasson said games developers were beginning to realise that they had to be more "business-like".

"There are still some developers who were involved in games from the bedroom coding days.

"Some of them are still making games for peer group approval - that has to stop."

Mr. Fred Hasson appears to be a bloody fool. If games are no longer made for peer-group approval by like minded peers, they'll be like movies made for focus-group approval by bottom-line conscious busybodies - bland, homogenized and utterly uninspiring.

He may have some basis in common sense though. Developing games is becoming harder and harder to do for small developers. But instead of forcing independent game developers to fold or become hollywood schlockmongers, maybe the industry should find ways to make development easier so games can be developed by people that will make great games, instead of just big hits.

Re:Who has to stop?

[ivan256]

Developing games is becoming harder and harder to do for small developers.

That's just not true though. Developing games that appeal to gamers who are interested into shooting their friends from the first person perspective with cutting-edge detail is harder, yes. There are plenty of small developers that continue to do just fine by appealing to those of us who are more interested in gameplay though.

If you want to make a high profile game that is going to sell millions of copies, you can go Hollywood and take your chance that your non-movie-licensed title will be the one in twenty to make it, or you can concentrate on a smaller audience and overall game quality you can respect yourself in the morning and probably put food on the table...

The reason we're seeing comments like this is not because the independant game developer has gone away, but because as the games market has grown and tons of marketing dollars have been poured into the market, the smaller developers have slipped off the radar. Remember that the journalistic machine is lubricated with cash... I'd bet more people play independant games than mainstream games (think about all those flash games, PDA games, etc...), but the trade rags only write about the ones that produce advertising dollars.

He's saying it from a perspective of cost...

[the_skywise]

By "peer group approval" I think he means that teams and developers are getting bogged down in making the "perfect" game or a work of art that will be approved by 99% of the world instead of 90%.

It takes a lot of cost and effort to get that last 10% and it breaks the back of a lot of companies. So in business sense, it's better to ship a product that's "good enough" than to never ship one at all because it wasn't "great".

As a consumer of games, yeah that's a moronic statement! We want GREAT games!
But in reality it doesn't pay the bills. Unfortunately it also means we're going to get saddled with commodity games... like "Aviator: The flight simulator"

More Business nonsense written my MBAs

[neomage86]

These type of decisions are made by people who understand business but have no understanding of the gaming industry. Are they really arrogant enough think that with a 2-year MBA they understand the needs of a specific industry better than content to producers who have been in it since the 80's. Producing for their peers is exactly what they should be doing. Coders peers will be among the most discerning critics. Only by pushing each other to new levels will Game producers ever achieve the next level of realism.

Don't change the focus of something great...

[Dutchmaan]

As soon as you make business your main focus, you fail. What makes these games great was the dedication that went into making them. They were great games because the designers WANTED them to be great. When you add a business man to the mix it goes from what the developer wants to be doing to something he has been instructed to do. The job that was great now becomes a 9 to 5 drudgery and it shows... ask anyone who was does anything creative.. once the work is no longer your own, you pretty much lose the desire to make it great and just count the minutes until you can get home to the projects you really love.

This business man is just wrong... I've seen it too many times... change the focus to money and you lose the soul of the product.

Does it?

[RyoShin]

Some of them are still making games for peer group approval - that has to stop.

If you're a company like Electronic Arts, you've already gotten rid of the notion of 'peer approval'- you're now shooting for the 'lowest common denominator', innovation and new ideas be damned. The executives of companies like EA are modern day Scrooge McDucks- they have a vault of money that they regularly swim in, and if a game doesn't do too well because it's just "Hot Girls Drive Cars 2007", well, they're okay moving to the shallow area of the pool for a day or two.

However, how many things on the Internet are as popular as they are because someone was shooting for the general public? Not that many. Some guys thought something was cool, got together, and put it on the net to share with friends and the common person that stumbles upon it. This is how we got things like Red vs Blue. Did The Brothers Chap ever dream that Homestar runner would garner such a larger crowd?

I think that many of the smaller companies should stick to the peer group. For one, if you're trying to impress your friends, you'll go all out. You'll think of new things. And, certaintly, you wouldn't make something you hated. The more you like a project, the better the chance that your friends will, too.

For two, the best kind of advertising anyone can get these days is still word of mouth. I could see that sexy car on TV with the buxom woman standing over it licking her lips and I would just think 'eh'; but if a friend came to me and said "This is one sweet ass car," I would at least give it second thought. In the same way, a group of guys make a game for friends to enjoy; Those friends tell other friends, who in turn tell more friends, and something gets at least a cult following. And everyone knows that cults will pump out a lot more steady cash than the indifferent masses.

Smaller companies without the cash cushion have one of two options: Make a mediocre copy-cat game that has moderate-everything, and thus will sell to the masses, or make something different, innovative, that was just an idea among your peet group. The first will likely garner enough money. The second will either tank or make you rich.

I'd rather see companies take the risk of trying to make the friends happy. Plus, if they release small, free games for the 'friends', who in turn spread it around, people will come to know the brand and will be interested in the bigger, better games that cost money.

Re:Everybody develops for their peer group.

[FroBugg]

Close, but not quite. The line from the article roughly translates to:

"I have an MBA, and I wanna write video games."

You know who has to stop?

[Brainboy]

Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. Stop producing more, and more expansive to develop for consoles. Actually that's not truly fair. They are, at least partially, hardware companies.

What actually needs to stop is developers and publishers getting a hard on everytime a new console comes out and jumping on the bandwagon. It takes a couple of years to get used to developing to a new platform. It's just the nature of the beast. Developers are adapting to the new hardware, seeing what they can do. Little innovation takes place in this phase, because developers are already try something new, the hardware, the graphics. Once that has been figured out, developers can (though unfortunately they don't always) then push other boundaries such as new and different gameplay. That's why a majority of what innovative games there are happen 3+ years after a console has been released.

The problem is now, a next-gen console gets released after 4 years, roughly. Like sheep, developers follow the hardware companies to the new console, instead of sticking to a stable, easier to develop platform. Where they can continue to push technical, but even more importantly creative boundaries.

What developers need to do, as a bloc, is say 'No' to the new consoles. 'We're not ready to change yet' And the big developers and publishers need to realize this to. They have more clout and actually make the hardware companies change what they are doing. There needs to be wake up call in the industry. Yes, its partially the developers fault for the lack of innovation, and publishers also share the guilt, but it's hard for developers to explore the field of possibilities when the hardware companies keep pulling them forward.

Re:Don't knock it.

[Dmala]

When you pull into your driveway, do you randomly fall into an invisible pit that it takes you four hours to escape from?

A businessman at Namco..

[Anonymous Coward]

..almost kept Katamari Damacy from being released in the US since "it would likely underperform".

Informal Poll

[Mitaphane]

I thought we already were. New creative games are becoming far and few between. It's sad but soon enough the "mainstream" game industry will be the same as Hollywood cranking out the same crap over and over again. Once and awhile there will be something new, but for the most part anything genuinely new will be from (or at least I hope) small independent game companies showing their thing at indie-game festivals.

I was just curious because I recently noticed how bad it's gotten so I did a poll of my games(the number of non-franchise/sequel games vs. total number of games for the last-gen systems compared with the current gen systems):

(Last-gen PS): 21/28
(This-gen PS2): 5/18
Right now I don't see that number getting any better. Any one else care to share some numbers?

I know video games being sequelized to the point of oblivion has been around for a while(I'm looking at you CAPCOM). But this year has seemed worse than most others: Metroid Prime 2, GTA: SA, HL2, DOOM 3, Halo 2, Tekken 5, Silent Hill 4, and I'm sure could go on if I wanted to. At least one good thing that sets video games apart from Hollywood sequels is that the bad sequels are the exception istead of the rule. Putting that aside, I am starting to feel tired of playing the same games over and over again.