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Game Developers Fear Hollywood-ization of Gaming
While the new generation of console hardware is something to look forward too, CNet has a story discussing the possible downsides to more beefy machinery. In specific, the increase in development time that next-gen games will require may "Hollywood-ize" the games industry even more than it already has been. Warren Spector, from the article: "Once hardware guys give us the capability to do something spectacular, someone's going to spend the money to do something spectacular...The quality bar is going to be raised. Someone is going to spend $20 million or $30 million or $40 million, and the rest of us who don't have deep pockets like that are going to have to find some way to compete."
You're absolutely right, and most people with a brain will agree with you.
But it's not the issue. The problem is that the studios that will spend $40 million producing a game will also spend millions to advertise it and put it in your face. How does an indie game, as wonderful as it may be, compete with the latest EA game as featured on MTV? (Did you catch the xbox 360 infomertial last night?)
As is the case in the movie world, distribution is everything. Marketing is everything. And unfortunately, when it comes to marketing, only one thing matters: the budget.
No budget, no voice; no voice, no sales. It's that simple.
Eh.
Funny, since I remember that the budget for Final Fantasy IX was already $40 million... and that was still on the original Playstation. I have no doubt they've gone higher since.
Comparing hollywood and video game production as a person who does neither, I'm still aware that hollywood has extensive prop libraries. What I find lame about the video game industry is that code and objects are so easy to store. Prop houses don't keep entire sets because they take up too much space. Entire levels though fit on a hard drive.
I'm not suggesting developers give away their material to competitors for free. Charge some money, but make it still cheaper for the licensors than re-modeling the wheel for the thousandth time. This should make development less costly and faster.
For coding the games, I know code is complicated, but can't some of it, particularly for games sharing the same engine, be modularized and techniques shared? Or does optimizing each game for maximum frame rate make this impossible? It just seems like there must be some things that can speed up coding.