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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.'"
"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.
"We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams
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.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
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.
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.
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.