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Game Industry Opinion Continues to Burn
The Game Developer's Rant session held at the GDC continues to reverberate through the industry. GameDev.net and Greg Costikyan's site have more details on the session itself, while Terra Nova's original thread on the subject has been followed up by an open letter to the participants from Matt Mihaly of Iron Realms Entertainment. From Matt's letter: "Anyway, please, just stop the whining. Stop telling people about how horrible the games industry is. Stop telling them that they can't succeed without radical industry changes. It's bunk and you should know better. Are you intentionally trying to discourage people from getting into the industry?"
Before anyone runs off half-cocked, this article is NOT about the poor employee treatment at development houses such as EA. This article is about one man (Can make a difference? Whoops, wrong show.) stating that Indie developers can carve a market, and that we don't really need the big boys to make good games. He agrees to the fact that most "Hollywood" style games do need big development houses, but he also points out that the Indie can create games with far more depth and interesting gameplay.
His end point is that we should be creating games for the love of creating games. And while he doesn't say it in so many words, that's what gave us such classics as Commander Keen, Duke Nukem', Wing Commander, Ultima, Wolf3D, and Doom. That vision has been lost, and now game creating is all about making money. Why create games when the same money could be better spent on creating a blockbuster movie or a market investment? i.e. Games != money. Have to agree with him there.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Its actually kind of annoying IMO...
I mean; come on; the industry has needed radical changes for how long? Like that in just about every industry though...
Funny how it was, back in the begining that games were developed at home, by individuals, who put in whatever hours it took to get the thing done, usually settled for a set price and/or small additional royalty for their work. If they were working a career job, it wouldn't have justified the hours, but a sudden flood of $30,000 can make people think they've struck gold. Dollar votes separated the winners from the losers. It was a lot like the early rock and roll music scene.
Now, it is a career profession, so like any other line of work you do what you have to, respond to purchaser demand, follow "me-too" the market leaders and give up on actually writing something which would be fun to play. Kinda like the manufactured pop music of today.
I stopped by EA at SDWest and asked them when they'd be re-introducing M.U.L.E. or Mail Order Monsters, while some golf and football games were sitting there. The guy didn't even know what I was talking about. That's part of what's wrong, the industry has driven a wooden stake through the heart of it's heritage and buried it.
"Think we can work John Madden into a new version of Ultima?" ...
"You see, the troll here has lots of hit points, but the elf is much faster, so he'll probably try and end-around and
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
is a good thing. That only leaves room for the people passionate about the industry.
There is no real value in most gaming nowadays. Super Mario Brother 35, or Sonic the hedghog 19, NBA basketball 2020. All of it is the same and has been played before. Sure, there are pretty graphics, but, what about game content and gameplay? I miss those years, I do. I like replay value, too. Everything now is, wow, that's cool... next.
Also, I don't like cross-platform games... Super special secret level on the PSXboxCube version.
"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- Sigmund Freud
This Matt fellow who is quoted would seem to be taking a covert stab at Nintendo, as they are they ones most pushing inovation as their marketing plan.
The game industry IS headed into a negative direction for developers and creative people. We're effectively pigeonholing anyone who wants to continue expereimentation with interactivity into a smaller, "indie" category, while letting the larger corporations continue to rampantly milk the larger audience with repetitious products and higher budgets. The only exception to this I can think of is Will Wright being backed by EA, and if it weren't for that I'd lost hope almost completely.
People bitch because they see movies today, and then see the game industry embracing the mainstream-movie-esque visibility and profit of the same scene. These same people love games and the possiblities within the medium, and do not want to see the industry turn into a generic-blockbuster-factory-for-profict-only show.
I am part of a small studio who makes first party games for the playstation2. I don't work 80 hours a week. During crunch time I might get up to 60 hours, but that's rare.
I don't understand why EA works their employees to death.
Seems that remark resembles comments made by Henry Ford and GM's Alfred P. Sloan...
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
While it is true that an indy developer can (and do) create great games, with excellent play and graphics and the whole whatnot, it is also true that you need big developers to bankroll games. I doubt that ,say, GTA:San Andreas, could have been created without the huge investment that was made in it.
Ubiquitously - A Ubiquity Developer Community
The most common complaint I hear from programmers that used to be in the game biz is that the hours are long and only the bosses made a decent living. My response is that you really shouldn't go into fields like writing, singing, or game dev unless you have a burning passion to express your creativity. If you're mostly worried about your IRA, learn how to write device drivers or accounting software. Not that this is great nowadays, but it's better.
Nexsan Technologies SATA RAID
Do it differently yourself. Quit whining about what everbody else is doing, do it different yourself. Yes it will be hard work, but it can be done.
This is true of other industries. It may be very hard, but it can be done.
History if full of folks who tried, failed, and tried again to do it differently. The whinners are never remembered.
On the other side is a market controlled by distributors. A great game can still do poorly if it doesn't make it onto the shelves at Wal-Mart, and lots of awesome movies get overlooked because they don't make it to the Cineplex.
This gives the movie studios and the game publishers the power over BOTH sides of the equation. The result is a string of predictable, safe, and highly derivitive products. The industry isn't "broken". You can't fix it. The market just works that way.
The good news is, it's still easier to make an indie game than an indie movie.
--This sig is in beta. Please let us know abut any errors you find.
These comments don't give me any desire to try and get into the industry. Admittedly I did use to want to develop games etc. previously (since about the age of twelve was when I decided it), but with the state of the industry I really don't see much reason to put myself through it all. Of course I still intend to make games, just small ones with my fiance, rather than big games in a large office where I may not even get an adequate say in how many hours I get to toil away each day.
Are you intentionally trying to discourage people from getting into the industry?
Now that you mention it, yes, yes I am. The new projection D&D board industry is just soooo much more potent at the moment...
Here are the key paragraph's from Greg's rant. Absolutely classic stuff!
-Start-
As recently as 1992: games cost 200K. Next generation games will cost 20m. Publishers are becoming increasingly risk averse. Today you cannot get an innovative title published unless your last name is Wright or Miyamoto. Who was at the Microsoft keynote? I don't know about you but it made my flesh crawl. [laughter] The HD era? Bigger, louder? Big bucks to be made! Well not by you and me of course. Those budgets and teams ensure the death of innovation. Was your allegiance bought at the price of a television? Then there was the Nintendo keynote. This was the company who established the business model that has crucified the industry today.. Iwata-san has the heart of a gamer, and my question is what poor bastard's chest did he carve it from? [audience falls about]
How often DO they perform human sacrifices at Nintendo?? My friends, we are FUCKED [laughter]. We are well and truly fucked. The bar in terms of graphics and glitz has been raised and raised until we can't afford to do anything at all. 80 hour weeks until our jobs are all outsourced to Asia. but it's ok because the HD era is here right? I say, enough. The time has come for revolution! It may seem to you that what I describe is inevitable forces of history, but no, we have free will! EA could have chosen to focus on innovation, but they did not. Nintendo could make development kits cheaply available to small firms, but they prefer to rely on the creativity on one aging designer. You have choices too: work in a massive sweatshop publisher-run studio with thousands of others making the next racing game with the same gameplay as Pole Position. Or you can riot in the streets of Redwood City! Choose another business model, development path, and you can choose to remember why you love games and make sure in a generation's time there are still games to love. You can start today.
-End-
Hahahaha, who's heart did he pull out? Just brilliant!
We need alternative forms of distribution too. I'm not saying publishers suck, although I do believe that in many cases. [laughter] If the plane went down who would care about the marketing guys? We need another way of getting games out there and in players' hands. If any of you bought Half Life 2 at Wal-Mart, please just leave the room.
This is one of the major gripes that people have about games. Acquiring a publisher just adds another person in the contract which brings about more legal hassle (remember Valve delaying HL2's Steam release to match the hardcopy release?) and more overhead. Given the nature of software, physical copies are completely overrated unless they have interesting bonus material. It would be much nicer if companies who make games that are primarily online (Q3, CS, all MMORPGS) just dropped the whole physical aspect. They could just tack on a BitTorrent client to a lightweight download/install program and just send it out to everyone. Then encourage people to make copies of the data files and distribute it to friends (since this is impossible to stop) and just sell the CD keys online. This would be just as effective for games that already require an Internet connection. They could also just give out the installer on DVD for free in stores and sell the CD key online or sell physical cards in stores that contain a CD key.
One of these days, the companies will catch up with the state of technology.
--
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Or try a free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox. (you only need 4 referrals)
Wired article as proof
I stopped by EA at SDWest and asked them when they'd be re-introducing M.U.L.E. or Mail Order Monsters, while some golf and football games were sitting there. The guy didn't even know what I was talking about. That's part of what's wrong,
Why would they reintroduce M.U.L.E? I have a working copy sitting on my desk as I type this. What would updating it bring? Mostly more complaints I imagine. I think nothing is wrong with the industry. Times change but sometimes people don't. Maybe its that the industry is still doing fine, and folks like you are the ones not changing with the times.
Reference your quote about "pop music of today". Its not yesterday anymore and in my humble opinion its good that we aren't going back.
I'll do you one better though. At E3 I'll grab some random EA employee at their booth and ask them if they would kindly start making decisions that will cost them money, cause their employees to lose their jobs and their stock holders to lose money. I suspect I'll get a reaction along similar lines.
Reference your quote about "pop music of today". Its not yesterday anymore and in my humble opinion its good that we aren't going back
Yeah, because britney spears and ashlee simpson is just SO much better.
fuck this worship of mediocrity.
Rather than respond to your whole Instant-Response-Just-Remove-Thinking-Broadly, how about a new M.U.L.E., which could be played over a network, wifi, phones, whatever? EA has latched onto these consoles, which are finally networkable, why not revive some of these old concepts and take advantage of it? Heck, as long as they don't go overboard with eye candy and music, these could have a decent ROI. The people who originally coded these games did it painstakingly in assembler, don't even get me started on what they had to do for graphics and sound (i did sound for one C64 game, it was a pain fiddling with those registers to get an auto sound right!)
Probably is more appropriate that indies go about it, but you can't quite make money on a multiplayer M.U.L.E. without attracting the attorneys of a company which has no plans to do anything with it anyway.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Iron realms makes text adventures.
Such games have not been published retail in approximately twenty years.
Players of such games are wildly at the fringes, and would probably happily admit it.
It would seem unwise to use Iron Realms' games, gamers, publication model, or general experiences as something that's generalizable in 2005.
Not that I disagree with all of his sentiments, of course.
It's called "false economy". EA believes that they'll get more work out of employees for less money by making them put in a rediculous number of hours. The problem is that EA fails to take note of how that impacts inidividual performance, team relationships, and overall morale. Not to mention the amount of experience they lose everytime they pitch out a burned-out programmer.
Management in such organisations are quite aware of what they are doing. What you say is very true in general. Unfortunately, in the games industry you have people lining up at the door looking for a way in. They can work their existing employees to death and if anyone has a problem with it, there are ten more people fighting to take their place. Hell, they could have daily whippings and there'd be someone who'd see it as a fringe benefit. Experience? They don't care. You need a couple of good developers at the top (and sometimes not even that!) and an endless rotating roster of 100 hours/week wage slaves working the oars.
Not saying it's right, just saying how things are. I'm trying my way at indie development myself because I hate this state of affairs and deep down, I completely agree with you.
Just make a new game.
If it rocks it will be played.
There's an article in the BBC's technology section relating to the progress of the UK games industry.
The sad truth is that the actual number of developers in the UK declined by 6% last year. Every time a company goes bust, the animators/programmers are forced to relocate. And given the difference in the cost of living across the UK and the world, it's preferable to move abroad.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Isn't Warcraft (et al) just M.U.L.E. on steroids?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
One of the questions about whether students could still make it in such an industry starting off on their own sparked a response from Jason, saying that first of all students need to stop cloning games for their school projects. He hates seeing how almost every student, when given an asignment to create a game, makes some damn Brickout or PacMan clone. Sure, they can't do anything hugely new, but this is really their chance to innovate and try something that's not the status quo.
I think the reason why students intimate past games for their projects is they really don't have time to do something new and it's easier to code off of a working example. Creating something from stratch can be a hugh undertaking sometimes. Most students are concern with getting the project done to get the grade.
Well hey, money isnt everything. Id quite like a job I enjoy with not much stress and enough money to tide me by - so I can spend my spare time doing something I want, not slaving to some corporation for my entire life like most of the other blind sods out there.
Unless you're OWNED by Vivendi/EA/Activision (or under some long term agreement), there's no reason why you should feel you HAVE to play ball with them. If your game is good enough people will pay to download it. If it sucks, sorry Charlie, that's natural selection for you.
No sig for you!!
You forgot to add, all the game piracy that drives the small guys out of business, thereby lowering the overall pool of innovators.
Heh, think you hit the nail on the head there. Out of the CS class I graduated with in college I'd say 50% would be willing to fight tooth and nail to get a job with a game company. It will probably always be this way as long as games get people into computers - and they probably always will.
"My response is that you really shouldn't go into fields like writing, singing, or game dev unless you have a burning passion to express your creativity."
Translation: "It's OK to be used by others, as long you love doing what you're doing".
"If you're mostly worried about your IRA, learn how to write device drivers or accounting software. Not that this is great nowadays, but it's better."
Translation: "It's OK to be poor. You'll just be a poor guy, with a smile on their face".
This article is about one man (Can make a difference? Whoops, wrong show.) stating that Indie developers can carve a market, and that we don't really need the big boys to make good games.
The console makers control access to the console bootloader. Therefore, independent game development firms still need the incumbent publishers if only to talk to the console makers.
It's amusing to see game developers in the same position we musicians have been in for years.
"Oh all I want to do is express myself, I don't care about the money and the fame, the inspiration and my love of my art is enough.."
Suckers.
That's how it starts, but you have to be realistic.
If you want to make a living you have to play the game (snigger) and work. Then, once you have learnt the craft and got some cash, you can make time to produce the art that is burning within you to get out.
It's how it goes, and it's funny to see people going through this process again, as if it never happened before.
You game developers are artists now. Deal with it.
Strangely enough, like us musicians you will find your best work was often done under bad circumstances, with despotic producers with unreasonable demands, and you will spend your hard earned freedom once you have made a few bucks trying to get back to the same excitement and pressure you got for free while scraping a living.
Have fun.
Developing games is much more glamorous than online shopping carts or B2B data transfers. I'm sure millions of corporate developers would jump into game development if they could. The supply of game developers is too large for the demand for video games. Development studios don't have to pay top dollar to attract workers. And they can't afford to anyway. Most games probably never recoup their development expenses.
Consistently good game developers do make lots of money, as they should. Aspiring game developers work for the love of the art, not the cash. Folks on the business side (marketing, accounting, legal, etc) never love their work. They get paid extra because their jobs suck and they wouldn't do it otherwise.
Management in such organisations are quite aware of what they are doing.
So EA deliberately killed the MOH franchise by switching developers in midstream and leaving MOH Rising Sun to a bunch of n00bs? At first glance, that seems absurd, but having observed how managers think, you could be right. The managers got paid (and bonuses too no doubt).
Buy independent
Where can I buy a new $150 box that connects to my TV and plays independent?
Is there some reason everyone on this forum sees "online" as a panacea for all the worlds ills?
Maybe people don't have, or want broadband (or the internet for that matter)?
Maybe people don't want to tie up their connection (BT or not)?
Maybe people actually want physical media (the whole shebang, not just the disk).
And last "try before buy" is easier to pull off by going to a BlockBuster, or local game store. Than it is "Quick! To the internet".
OK, without a major publisher, how is a small development house supposed to talk to the makers of the major game consoles? Or how is a small development house supposed to develop and sell its own console?
Tell that to Looking Glass Studios.
And why is that necessarily a good thing? Does someone have to be an absolutely committed gamer to work in the video game industry? Wouldn't a more well-rounded team, with other skills and interests, lead to better results?
I've been programming for over 20 years, and have been in the software industry for around 12 years. I've worked for a word-processing company, a tax-software company, an ISP, a defense firm doing electronic-warfare simulation, a defense firm doing 3-D battlefield visualization, and two video-game companies. It never once occurred to me that I should look to specialize my software in one particular field; the true strength of a programmer is to be able to pick up any field and program it. But your attitude is consistent with the sort of people that I've met in the gaming industry -- they genuinely don't seem to understand that. I remember when we lost our audio programmer, and the higher-ups were panicked about hiring a new one. I told them I had done plenty of audio programming, and they told me no, they needed a specialist. I gave them a little history of the sort of audio programming I had done on my own, and left them speechless. They simply weren't willing to believe it. When I was being interviewed for my second video-game job, the president of the company told me that what he liked about my resume was my console experience; what he didn't like was that I didn't have enough console experience. Talk about tunnel vision.
I was hired to my first video-game job as a sort of "opportunity" programmer; they knew I was good, though I only had informal video-game experience, like the Quake II mod Weapons Of Destruction. I've been doing assembly-language programming and other low-level hardware tweaking since I was 12, so they gave me the (HUGE!) PlayStation 2 Hardware Reference manuals, and told me to get on with it. Within 3 months, I knew the machine well and was rewriting large sections of our code to either use the vector unit or to squeeze better into the FUBAR memory model. I was finding stuff that seemed really basic to me, but all the best "game programmer" minds that had worked at that company for 10+ years somehow couldn't find them. I even achieved an order-of-magnitude increase in performance for our physics engine. Oh, I picked up physics simulation while I was there too. (I remember being told by my boss that I was now considered the PS2 and physics-performance expert in the company. The same boss that was speechless about my audio experience. LOL!) It's not "passion about the video-game industry" that drove me to these accomplishments. I just normally act this way at work. (I act this way at play, also.)
Besides, what sort of grown adults could be so passionate about video games? The same sort that suffer from arrested development, that's who. The social atmosphere at both video-game companies where I worked was positively middle-school. I remember being told, hush-hush, that so-and-so "just doesn't like you", as if that was supposed to be some life-altering event. It was, too: I got fired from both jobs for reasons that didn't rise very far above that. A rejection letter I received recently from a video-game company actually went so far as to admit that.
If the video-game industry wants to improve itself, then the people involved first have to grow the hell up. The rest of what you need to do will become more obvious once you do that.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
If your game is good enough people will pay to download it.
Not one of the three major consoles currently has a pay-per-download scheme, and whether the next consoles will have such a scheme is still in question at least until the next E3 expo.
"Demand better games. Buy independent and wait for the $60 mainstream pap to hit the bargain bin before picking it up."
You should spread this message to all the illegal P2Pers out there.
Sorry to interject - just in case it adds to the discussion I recorded and covered the rant session for Gamespot. The Wonderland transcript is great, just incomplete. If you want to see the whole thing, you can find the full transcript here.
GalenOld guy shaking fist "These kids today!"
Don't be that guy. Promise yourself.
Management in such organisations are quite aware of what they are doing.
I don't think they are, no. There's a reason the standard work week steadily moved toward 40-hour over the past two hundred years. It's the sweet spot between maximum output and reliability.
Crunch time increases output, but only in the very short term. After one or two weeks of this, the increased error rate caused by fatigue and low morale eat up the productivity gains, with progressively worse returns.
But don't take what I say as is -- look into the matter yourself, starting with Henry Ford and other turn-of-the-century industrialists.
...when I read this stuff is how much of the computer hardware industry is dependent on these guys. Seriously, these guys are supposed to be the reason why I should fork out AGAIN for 90% of my components to participate in their next risk-averse eye-candy gameplay-numbered-in-hours DRM crap. How much of the PC industry would just go away without it? I hope all goes the way of the console world and the rest of us with other uses for our PCs can be left to it.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
So EA deliberately killed the MOH franchise by switching developers in midstream and leaving MOH Rising Sun to a bunch of n00bs?
;)
;) I see we have the same "respect" for such people. ;)
I'm not too familiar with the franchise, so my comment will not be terribly informed. Hence forgive my use of generalities. Having said that, when things get taken too far and too many people leave at once, the strategy backfires. As well it should.
Of course a complete switchout of developers is going to come at a cost, and someone somewhere will have weighed up that the benefits of such a switch outweigh the costs. Or they took a bribe or got some personal benefit.
Also bear in mind that the success of a game in the eyes of their upper management is going to be measured in dollar terms, and the number of developers crying themselves to sleep at night and swearing to get out of the industry isn't going to be an issue to them. Nor the tormented cries of half the development team as they are axed on project completion. Royalties you say? Hope you got that in writing. Again, not saying it's right, just saying what the case is.
At first glance, that seems absurd, but having observed how managers think, you could be right. The managers got paid (and bonuses too no doubt).
Ah, upper management. The one profession where you can list spectacular failures on your resume and loot the company coffers and have them considered as positive points indicating that you are a bold risk taker.
" Why don't developers make their games and sell directly online? What the hell is the point of being in an industry driven by the "latest and greatest in technology" when your distribution model is based upon last millennium foundations."
A fair question, and there are examples out there of people across the spectrum (from movies, to books, to games) doing so. However there's one point that all the "do it online" ideas all hinge upon. "Faith"! What's that? Faith? Yes, faith that you'll have enough paying customers to not only make the initial work worth it, but that you'll earn enough to continue doing so. Think of it as the "Honor" jar you occasionally see. That then brings up the question of, are people "honorable" enough for the system to work, and are there enough of them? As well as the foreseeing question, will there continue to be enough to make this a career worth pursuing? Quite frankly there isn't enough long-term information to say so. And there's a plenty to point to people's less honorable side. e.g. there's a guy locally who was robbing those donation jars.
They already do that. Every gaming-industry ad I see requires a minimum of one published game. That pretty much filters out new people.
I also like how they almost universally mention being a team player with a strong work ethic, and a passion for video games, as important. Translation: you need to love working yourself to death!
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
My wife works in a technical position at a well-known game company. I'm going to be a bit vague here so that she can't be identified and this is also why I'm posting as an AC.
I am constantly appalled by the stories she tells me. It seems that the coders at her company have never worked at a real software company - by "real" I mean a company that produces specs, codes to standards, tests patches BEFORE checking them into the source tree, doesn't lose patches because of poor software revision control, and actually has more than two people in the QA group. In fact it seems that the sole function of the QA people is to record bugs as they arrive from whoever find them, send them where they need to go for analysis, and note when they are marked fixed.
In addition the management sucks - it's mostly people who have never coded a game "but have some good ideas". They seem to have no idea just what those "good ideas" translate to in terms of implementation time and cost. There is constant bitching by the people who do the work that they get new instructions from "on high" without any warning, usually in an email, and without any chance to give feedback on the changes. They don't even get asked for a time estimate - the due date is provided also. And as there are no serious specs, everything gets messed up between the producers, the designers, the programmers and the artists.
However, surpringly, my wife says this is better than other games companies she's worked for - at least she gets written instructions on what she's supposed to do. At a previous company she spent three weeks playing games all day because management was "reviewing work assignments" and then she had to work weekends (no overtime of course) to catch up with the schedule.
Salaries are depressed because there are thousands of kids who want a job at a game company. Job security is nonexistant, and turnover is around 30% per year. There is a serious lack of management understanding for people who put their life before their job. There are constant issues with office politics, particularly amongst management, with everyone jockeying for a better job on the next game.
Now I ask you, why would anyone want to work in this sort on environment? And the answer: because she loves games, despite all the agro.
Let's start with the good point I saw. Yes, you can produce some excellent games with virtually nothing. Elite is an absolute classic, and is most definitely not a text adventure. Sierra Online started with very little money and highly risque advertising. I'm not sure if US Gold ever had any in-house developers, they seemed to work entirely through contracts with home-based coders.
Now onto niche markets. There's a niche for text adventures, MUDs, etc. I'd say 99% of that niche is adequately maintained by the free (as in beer) free (as in free speech) software that is already out there. The standard engines meet most of the requirements a person might have for a text-based system.
Engines that I know of fall into three rough groupings - LP-based MUDs which use a C-like interpreter and "Tiny"-based MUDs which use a simple scripting language combined with triggers. There are also engines which don't fall into any category. A brief list of common engines is as follows:
Who, sanely and rationally, is going to try and compete in an already crowded market, where the competition is freely available and freely modifiable? There are places you can make money in the gaming market, but you need to carve your own niche, not hang onto the coat-tails of products you can't realisically compete with. If the niche you carve is any good, people will buy your products. Companies like Psygnosis started in this kind of way. They didn't start off as corporate giants.
Bad Point! Independent products are hard to market. His example was getting them sold in Blockbusters. Well, yeah, and I wouldn't expect to do well trying to get car mechanics to sell cheese, either.
If you want to sell indie movies, you go to indie movie theatres. That's why they are there. You sell to an audience most likely to be interested. If they're interested enough, maybe invite some movie critics along for the ride. Perhaps look at events like the Edinborough Fringe Festival and Edinborough Film Festival to circulate what you're doing. Meet the markets half-way, and you've a better chance of convincing them to do the other half. Do nothing at all, and neither will they.
Lastly, the difference between markets. There is no difference. The nike shoes produced by a 10 year old kid in a sweat-shop could just as easily be made by a 10 year old at their home. All they need is a design, materials and energy.
People make way too much of labels. Labels mean nothing. They used to indicate craftsmen and reliability, but companies have wormed their way out of anything approaching Quality Control and consumer protection. Especially in software, where you can buy a product and have no rights to complain if the product doesn't (and never will) exist.
the EULAs people happily accept amount to one thing. If you now have an unusable, empty disk - or even an empty box - you have voluntarily waived any and all rights to object or demand compensation.
They sell you a license, not a product. So long as the license is present and functionin
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The bottom line is that whoever controlls the money that funds the development ends up with control of all the things that matter.
- Lions share of the Profit
- Creative Control
- Ownership of the IP for the Game
Game developers want to create kick ass games that are original (as a general rule). Publishers want to create games that will generate alot of money. As long as the balance of power favours the publishers, guess what kind of games will be made?
We would all like to see more games as original as Katamari Damacy that sell competitivly with GTA3. But under the current system, that happens extraordinarily rarely.
END COMMUNICATION
Or they could say 'f*** you all, let's see you top the changes of the DS.' When even the Nintendo fanboys admit that Nintendo is taking a risk by breaking the mold its hard to say Nintendo isn't trying to innovate.
People who haven't watched the Nintendo keynote speech should do so ASAP. Compared to Microsoft and Sony's keynote speeches, Nintendo is the new radical in the video game market.
Absolutely! I just don't spend all my spare time playing video games. The problem, it seems, is that video-game companies see this as some sort of problem.
Yeah, I was absolutely stunned by how many of my classmates had never programmed a computer until they got to college. In both of my assembly-language classes, I was the only one that had any prior experience with it. That pattern repeated in industry...boy, were my co-workers clueless.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
"Yeah, I was absolutely stunned by how many of my classmates had never programmed a computer until they got to college. In both of my assembly-language classes, I was the only one that had any prior experience with it. That pattern repeated in industry...boy, were my co-workers clueless."
That's OK. I didn't learn how to do organ transplants until collage. Boy was I clueless.
Seriously while prior experience is an asset. It isn't the make or break that turns out people good at what they do. Being willing, and able to think and do does that.
There are people proably twice our ages, that prove that even those who get a late start can do well.*
*Name a writer that started their career late in life?
Oh yeah, and there's no source-code comments, no design documents, no institutional knowledge about the code, and no direction from your tech lead.
Oh, and the code was actually written by another company, and the publisher decided to fire them and give your company the project. (Actually happened to me.)
I wish video-game companies weren't the only ones responding to my online resume postings. Oh well.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
What'd you do exactly, cut organs into little pieces and paste them onto a big posterboard and then show it to Dada and Andy Warhol?
I'm gonna guess you didn't really learn how to do organ transplants in "college".
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
Most people's productivity goes DOWN, sharply, if you work them more than 40 hours a week for more than one week in a row. Doing 60 or 70 or 90 hour weeks is ridiculous. How many of those 70 hours do you spend twiddling your thumbs, zombieing back and forth between your desk and the Coke machine, or surfing Slashdot?
I figured early on that my optimum work week is about 32 to 35 hours. If I spend much more than that at work, diminishing returns kick in fast. Of course I still show up for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week--its just that the last hour is often spent surfing the web, because I don't have enough brain cells left to do anything else.
For more information about this phenomenon, I suggest reading these: FortyHourWeek SustainablePace
I read many comments from people related to an in the game industry, who all say the same thing: management sucks. I can only agree with this, I work in a game dev studio for nearly 3 years. I started as one of the first employees, and since then I have seen a HUGE amount of work being done by a crowd of young and motivated people. From the 25 people or so that started the studio, only a handfull remain, even if we grew up to 50 people at some point. Another studio nearby went bankrupt and the studio was only happy to acquire all those "people with experience". We`re back at 35 people. We have finished 2 games on 2 platforms, which both would make good budget titles. Alas, they have been in our closet for over a year, since no publisher wants to 'co-publish', since we don`t get title-id from mirosoft because our management fucked up some discussions with Infogrames, and because we may have serious copyright troubles with parts of the content (story, names,artwork..) That`s right. 3 years of existance, and not a penny has come in. A lot of good people have moved on to other companies, other jobs, other industries. Management is still fooling itself with good news stories every day, and frustrations sometimes run skyhigh with people exploding because they want to make things better and can`t.
Despite all this, I must say I have enjoyed working in this industry because I learned a whole fucking lot. The knowledge that I have been with every step of the development process makes me more confident. I know what is important in the development of a giant component based puzzle, how to organise it. I can estimate my development time, I`ve researched stuff I otherwise would probably never research. I`ve had a lot of fun seeing unpredicted behavior act out on the screens, and most of all, I finished a game with my name in the creds. Not many people can say this. It was always my dream to do it. When I got the chance, I didn`t say no, and to this day I don`t regret it. The experience *I* have is not all negative. And I would do it again. But I also have the feeling that the game industry is not forever and that I should start thinking about a stable exit route.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Two things---I have some sincere respect for the talent behind some of these games. WoW is as much a work of art as it is a game. I feel the same way about Lineage 2 - minus the apparent T&A fixation. The problem is that they all use the same premise: kill stuff, get stuff, level up, kill more stuff, get more stuff, level up some more. At least Blizzard started to introduce some variety into WoW's quests, but even they entail a lot of "kill an undetermined number x and bring y back to me".
That having been said, I still think there's a social element that provides some cohesion, despite the gameplay, at least for MMORPGs. And, there's also the competitive aspect - get up to a higher level, and you can start to make a difference during raids, castle seiges, or whatever. What I don't like is the fact that that once the "online" is gone, the game is done. In other words, you buy the game, but it's useless without the online service. You can't play with other players individually, and you can't play solo- it's an all-or-nothing proposition. I guess that's just the nature of the beast.
Maybe I'll consider giving a few indie games a try.
[g] Unfortunately washed out. But I did make a great lab assistant for Dr Frankenstein. :)
"Thay are never going to be the prettiest titles around, but I never feel cheated or dissapointed after a purchase. Pretty graphics only go so far . . ."
So does this mean all the geek girls will have a date tonight?
And it is true that management can tend to be autocratic, but this is usually caused by:
1. Unrealistic deadlines due to shipping and marketing requirements;
2. A tendency to attract dreamers who can envision something that may not be reasonable to do, or at least not with the money, people, and tools available;
3. A tendency for those who seek out gaming as a career - especially management - to push way beyond any resonable limits.
But the pay is ok, if not great.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Well a lot of time is already wasted because of build times. Then some more time is wasted because devkits have to be shared between developers to test their stuff. A number of hours are spent simply peddling forth and back between debugger and game, reproducing bugs.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Mode card battle games! And escort misssions! We LOVE escort missions!
Mediocrity thrives because the public will buy whatever's waved under their nose
I'd call you an elitist prick, except that you're right. Woe be the 10% of the population who actually use their brain right?
right?
Do you think marketers would be able to "create needs" in us if we thought for ourselves. Well they could, but I'm sure they prefer the model corporate citizen who fills the unhappy spaces in their lives with buying products who's images have been branded onto their subconscious cortex.
Don't blame the induhviduals, blame the culture which places making money as more important and worthy than anything else...
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
BioWare is a company that was rated one of Canada's top employers. They also happened to make successful, kick-ass games such as the Baldur's Gate Series and the original Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. They also have an incredible dedication to supporting their games after release. Heck, they are still improving their Neverwinter Nights (and releasing new content for $5/download) almost three years after the game's original release.
Gee, I guess it is possible to combine a good working environment with solid business success at a game studio.
The biggest problem is not that there is a lack of creative talent or that Holywood-style games are driving everyone else out of business. The biggest problem, as usual in every field, is the abundance of jackasses in power.
"At this point, I've given up looking for a software job. I don't think any committee will ever approve of offering me a job. I think I have no choice but to start my own business."
Become a home (or business) architect.
Ah, you noticed the reference to The Fountainhead, I see. :-)
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
Game content wants to be free in the same fashion that gasses expand to fill the available space.
It's been a long time.
Exactly. Apparently, what they really want is for everyone to get along fabulously as they run the company right into the ground.
I'm starting to believe that the CEOs of Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, etc. are the harbingers of the new reality in American business -- economic fascism. Under this model, creating a viable business is not the priority -- now it's all about conning investors into giving you money, paying yourself handsomely, and skipping out before the house of cards comes crashing down. I don't know how else to explain what I'm seeing.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
That was my favorite RPG of all time. But Mail Order Monsters was sorta fun too, same with racing destruction set.
I have it in my portfolio, but if you could do a real-physics race game, and allow users to create their own tracks with splines for loops/cylinders/elevation, then kick it on the net with rankings for tracks, you'd have a game that'd own super awesomely.
God spoke to me.
Yeah, we have a similar problem here in the United States too. My understanding of the scam is, some company find a foreign worker they'd like to import on an H1-B visa, but first they have to advertise the job, so they do so, and the ad features a mind-numbingly long list of nitpicky requirements that happen to exactly match the H1-B applicant, and when no one can match those criteria, they get to import their guest worker.
Gee, I dunno, how about your ability to apply experience and spot problems before they start, instead of stupidly running right off the cliff? The problem is the managers too don't have enough insight to avoid running right off the cliff.
Uh...er...huh? I don't even begin to understand that. Are you more expensive than 3 graduate students put together? Or is there a London in Japan these days? :-)
WHAT?!?! How about avoiding the situation with proper documentation and proper technical oversight??? Oh yeah, that would require brains and skill. Can't have that.
Get a higher degree in a subject where there already aren't any jobs? You sure about that? I'd love to get my Ph.D. in Computer Science, but don't see the point.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
Just a quick affirmation and approbation directed toward jd's superlative post. Insightful, interesting, and informative all at once. Tres bien!
Oh, baby, I can't wait to fill all your available space. Just look at this container, the curves...so nice and warm. Is it above STP in here or is it just me? I can feel myself expanding.
What about things like Neverwinter Nights? That have both as possible?
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
The game industry is trying to make itself look like Hollywood II to attract people to the field. But Hollywood II is located somewhere in China. China is simply in a better position to mass produce video games. The US game industry has nowhere to go but down, and all this bitching isn't going to do shit about it.
I don't care if you think I'm flaming, because I know I'm right and you're wrong.
Seriously, Lately I've grow further and further from the ultra pretty, super realistic looking games that everyone seems to be making nowadays.
There are tons of indepenant flash games which are much more fun than most of the big release games I've played.
The game community needs to get back to basics and remember that games were just as fun if not moreso without the glitz and glam.
And it is the most wonderful game I have played in years.
Now, I don't know if the games industry is going to take some path WIl Wright and Warren Spectre drag it down kicking and screaming, or if the EA megacorporate megabudget idiom will take over the industry completely; and either way, I don't know if "innovation", whatever the fuck that is, will result, or if it's a good thing. But looking at my Yoshi Touch and Go cartridge, I think that if what the game industry wants to go with the EA path rather than the Yoshi T&G sort of path, then it can fuck off and do it without me as a customer.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Uh...er...huh? I don't even begin to understand that. Are you more expensive than 3 graduate students put together? Or is there a London in Japan these days? :-)
Entry level graduate salary in the UK starts at 18K pounds (27K dollars). A senior engineer/applications developer in London could earn 50K pounds (80K dollars).
I frequently see jobs advertised, but the skill set is typically customised to whatever university the lead programmer/head of research came from.
On one telephone interview, they were only interested someone who was from Oxbridge and had written a book on Computer Animation.
Get a higher degree in a subject where there already aren't any jobs? You sure about that? I'd love to get my Ph.D. in Computer Science, but don't see the point.
For me, it was the first paid employment position that allowed me to continue working with 3D graphics hardware and have free access to research publications. Not forgetting being able to rent my own flat, live in an area with broadband and pay off my credit card debts, and get a free state-of-the-art PC.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
That's exactly what happened to me!
I got DoomIII, and was all geared up for it, but after a while it was just filler. Sure moving those barrels around with that cargo gripper was pretty spiffy, but once I hit "Hell" and was just shooting dead babies.. it sort of fell apart.
Now I'm being presured to get HL2, but from the recent dissapointments, my motivation to shell out the cash just hasn't been there.
And then I look at awesome indie games. For example one of my all time favorites is Elasto Mania. I swear I've lost months of my life from swinging ledge to ledge with my front tire. This stuff reminds me that a game can rock, even when it doesn't have music!
"Entry level graduate salary in the UK starts at 18K pounds (27K dollars). A senior engineer/applications developer in London could earn 50K pounds (80K dollars)."
... that should be $35K and $96K. It's called devaluation of the US dollar. 1 UK pound = 1.922 USD.
Not 27K dollars and 80K dollars
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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
"But I also have the feeling that the game industry is not forever and that I should start thinking about a stable exit route."
Architect.
games have been getting worse for 10 years or more now.
moving from a quality product to a mass produced product created ONLY to make more money.
Its ok tho. Piracy is also on the rise.
I've heard mention of that game, but never played it.
I don't think they are, no. There's a reason the standard work week steadily moved toward 40-hour over the past two hundred years. It's the sweet spot between maximum output and reliability.
;)
No offense meant, but I don't believe this for a second. Are you saying that the optimal output for all desired values of reliability and all work functions (from hard labour to deskwork) all fall at 40 hours? Even roughly?
People work 40 hour weeks because people work 40 hour weeks. They work 40 hour weeks because everyone else works 40 hour weeks. People are told they should work 40 hour weeks and so they see 40 hour weeks as what they should work. And who tells them this? People who work 40 hour weeks.
Try this experiment sometime. I've done this a few times. Say to someone that there is no reason for anyone to work more than a 2-day work week unless they want to. Whatever the answer, ask why. Disregard the "0-day work week" answers of course. A lot of people will say the 5-day work week (40 hours) is needed but can't explain why.
Heh, think you hit the nail on the head there. Out of the CS class I graduated with in college I'd say 50% would be willing to fight tooth and nail to get a job with a game company. It will probably always be this way as long as games get people into computers - and they probably always will.
A large google-like company with a decent reputation would probably cause a big shakeup in the industry. Until then, I think we're stuck with things.
Not 27K dollars and 80K dollars ... that should be $35K and $96K. It's called devaluation of the US dollar. 1 UK pound = 1.922 USD.
Whoa! I didn't realise the dollar had fallen in value that match.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
OK, so even if the Mac platform is starved for games, how can independents convince their customers to buy a $500 "Mac mini" console, a $20 TV-out adapter, and a $16 adapter for their PS2 controllers?
So if you're claiming that Flash games like this one can become console games, the problems remain that 1. a lot of un(der)employed indie developers have to work on near-zero startup capital, which means no spending $499.00 plus shipping plus tax for Macromedia Flash, and 2. I haven't seen one Flash game that tries to read from my USB gamepad.
You don't have to be condescending for people to have a problem with arrogance.
You can call me arrogant, but I think they reject me because they know I'm fully capable of replacing them, and they're too insecure about their job.
That's pretty condescending, even if you are only thinking it.
You clearly are very arrogant, and are incapable or undesiring of hiding it. Until you learn to do so, you aren't going to have much luck getting along with other programmers. I hang out with a lot of very smart game developers and none of them have any real tolerance for arrogance. I guess there's no good way to convince you to be less arrogant or beat the arrogance out of you online, but I hope you realize that it's a problem if you want to work with other people, and somethings gotta change if you want to get work...
One more thing: Sure I'm proud of my accomplishments and my ability
Strong pride is a sin, especially during interviews. If you are not comfortable with letting your accomplishments speak for themselves, then maybe YOU are insecure...
Hmm, I'm starting to think I have been trolled...
If you can land a job at a game company, and they're not working you to death, then I'd certainly say do that. I would if I could.
I know what you mean about J2EE/.NET. There's a lot of open-source business-management software out there, and I'm sure I could start a business installing and customizing such software for other businesses. I could start in my local area with personal contacts, and grow as much as I wanted to. Everyone else could do it too, and we wouldn't even be competing with each other until our reaches started to intersect. Great idea, right?
Well, first, it means you have to slog through a bunch of open-source packages, figuring out what they really do, how they're architected inside, and whether they're lame-brained piles of crap. Not an easy task. I'm immersed in only one open-source project right now, and one is enough! The next hurdle is figuring out how to make a profit on a service that's going to require a lot of customization and support. Plus, you have to be willing to throw yourself into what can be a really boring topic. I once worked for a tax-software company -- I loved the people I worked with, the software was well-written and documented, and they did their best to make it a fun place to work, but having to write tax software all day still eventually drove me buggers. I dunno, maybe the slow economy and tight job market would keep me focused this time. :-)
Is that the sort of dilemma you're wrestling with?
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
Too bad you're in Europe :-)
Hmmm, this was a Sega Sports sub-sub-contractor. And the boss' other 2 video-game credits on MobyGames were a sports game and a pinball game. Maybe it's a sports-game thing? LOL
For game-play code and AI code, you're right. For rendering, physics/collision, and vehicle dynamics, that should be made game-nonspecific and reusable.
Thankfully, third-party libraries for physics & rendering are coming up to par. 2 1/2 years ago, the internal code at my 1st video game job beat the pants off of Havok and RenderWare in our evaluations.
Apparently so! Wow. I don't think we have the same salary differential over here. My games-programming jobs were both well-paid.
Based on what you've told me, I think you should stick with your current game position. Work you love will always be worth more than work you hate, no matter how much you're paid. The stress of work you hate will spill over into the rest of your life. And, with the demand for business-software programmers, those salaries will probably remain there for a long time. No need to hurry.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
There are a few exceptions to that rule of thumb, but not many. Take cars though. My all-time favourite car game is Interstate 76. They had all fake cars with names suggestive of the real thing. That just added to the fun. Same thing with the Grand Theft Auto games. Using non-licensed things is better because you don't have to make it fully realistic, and because you don't have to treat the licensed things with "respect".