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OddWorld Inhabitants Leaving the Gaming Industry
Via Games*Design*Art*Culture*, a link to a Hollywood reporter story breaking the news that Oddworld Inhabitants is closing up shop in the games industry. Owner Lanning is apparently going to move the company into movies and TV, as a result of sour experiences in the current gaming industry environment. From the article: "As game production costs rise, publishers want more sure bets because with rising costs come rising risks. What we see is an industry which is rapidly discouraging innovation because people don't want to take chances on more innovative types of titles."
As they talk about in the article, they've been the victim of horrible marketing. I didnt even know Stranger had come out, which it apparently has. When that's the level of people's notice of you, you can't really succeed.
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
Probably not, since there is a lot of high quality open source programmers, but a high budget game doesn't just need programmers, it needs artists, sound effect designers, etc. etc. And those types of people aren't, in general, in the whole open source movement...
Once again, the answer lies somewhere in Internet distribution. Cut the risk-averse publisher out of the equation and get some nontraditional sources of capital, and the developer (with grassroots marketing support) is free to explore new avenues of creativity. If a game turns out to be successful through Internet distribution, then the developer can contract with a distributor to make hard copies of the game for brick-and-mortar sales.
Well there are MUDs. Been around for a while. Most of themare low on the graphics, but are involving none the less.
-- I like the cut of your thinking, young man. - me.
"And those types of people aren't, in general, in the whole open source movement..."
Well, that depends on how they're recruited. Artists etc need a portfolio to get a job. The best type of portfolio to develop is the kind where you've done work on a project. An artist that's in-between jobs or trying to break into the industry would be an ideal candidate to work on an Open Source game. That is, more or less, what I did. I did some pro-bono work for a garage game. Since there were no real deadlines for the game, I was allowed to pursue my work to the point of learning new valuable skills. When job-search time came, my work on that game almost single-handedly got me a great job.
Unfortunately, I don't think a lot of new-to-the-industry artists would see the value in this. It would take a little attitude re-alignment, but I think with a few success stories like mine, it could be done.
"Derp de derp."
In 2000 Lanning was all over the PS2 as being "too hard to develop on". They ditched the PS2 and turned it into a political move, going to X-Box with huge fanfare.
Now they're closing shop because their X-Box games needing porting back to PS2 and they'd made it impossible. It's no different to what small developers like Mucky Foot were doing one project previously - developing on the PC when their primary market was PS1, and forcing a poor backport - but this wasn't some fly-by-night Guildford spinoff, it was a hugely successful PS1 developer, and they should have known better.
Lanning de facto decided in 2000 never to support PS2, by writing for the more powerful console and making a backport impossible. The fact that he didn't realize that a backport was impossible until he tossed the code to EA and asked them to do it betrays a staggering lack of technical sophistication on Lanning's part. Lanning burned his bridges so brightly and publically and then 5 years later found he needed to cross the river. That qualifies the guy as a complete moron in my book.
This isn't a story about a small developer being unable to survive in a brutal market. This is a story about a large successful developer putting themselves out of business by making a series of schoolboy errors. And the fact that Lanning did it so publically and came out so hard on Microsoft's side against Sony (FFS!), for purely financial and political gain, makes me drool with shadenfreude.
I'm glad Lanning's out of the industry. He's done nothing but bitch and moan since 2000 and now we see the results. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.