Wideload's Seropian Talks Indie Game Freedom

simoniker writes "Wideload's Alex Seropian, who must recently finished wacky Xbox title Stubbs The Zombie, but also co-founded Bungie, has been chatting about how big-budget games are made, and noting: "I had a great experience at Microsoft. But being on the other side of the fence, there were a lot of developers that were making games for the Xbox for launch time, and a lot of them were struggling for one reason or another... a lot of them were struggling with trying to manage their finances, that cashflow, because they were living under the milestone payment system. And a lot of them were going out of business. And I thought, 'Gee, if I weren't doing this for a living, I'd think this is totally a loser business to be in.'" Seropian now suggests using a small internal group to make games and staffing up with independent contractors when each project starts. Why aren't all games done like this?"

Comments

So what's new?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Thus, for his new company, Wideload, Seropian chose to use a small core group, one that would be employed the entire time. Once they design a game on paper, they'll prototype the game, and do pre-production work on it. Then, when they have the funding to put it into production, Wideload will staff up with independent contractors (some work on-site, but most remotely). For the last third of the project, the original core will do all the post-production where they play test and tune the game.

So basically they outsource rather than employ developers. I can well imagine that when they have a few projects in the pipeline (which is what Seropian is after), they'll get together and say: "gee, we got so much going that we could hire two artists, a sound guy and 3 coders, and keep them busy full time. Be a hell of a lot cheaper...". A few years down the line, after having a few bad experiences with some offsite contractors, and being frustrated by increased and more difficult management effort, they'll probably run most of their stuff in house again.

I've seen it happen a few times in business software shops, and I'm not sure why games would be any different.

Authorized development

[Darkforge]

As I've complained before, the problem here is that you can't develop any games for the major consoles unless you are an authorized developer.

Before you can develop games for consoles you need to apply to the particular console company to become an approved developer. The exact process varies but it generally means proving that you are an experienced game developer with a financially stable company. The console companies won't approve hobby/inexperienced teams to work on their consoles.

Got a great idea for a video game? Well, too bad. You have to get approval first... and BTW, Nintendo doesn't like your idea.

Sure, you can code up homebrew games, but doing so requires hacking your console (which is something most people don't know how to do, and in many cases requires expensive/pseudo-legal mod chips or other hardware).

Next time you see an article about "indie developers", don't get them confused with the ordinary shareware/freebie game developers you see online. The consoles have no indie developers, and probably never will have indie developers. Nintendo, MS and Sony are all afraid that people will code up porn games (which they will) and will disable the console's anti-piracy features (which they will).

Re:Authorized development

[Radius9]

More importantly, they are afraid the market will be flooded with so many crap games that people will stop buying games all together because they can't get the signal through the noise. This is what happened with the Atari 2600. Its not that hard to do a game as an indie developer for consoles. It just takes more than what most people are willing to put in. If you can code up a decent game, with the hardware abstracted reasonably well, you are most of the way there. Pitch it to a publisher, it isn't that difficult to get a development kit, and if you coded it right, it shouldn't be too difficult to port. There's a reason those hurdles are in place though. People often forgot the flood of complete crap that killed the Atari 2600, and they give up on getting their title published before even trying.

Re:smaller devs do this a lot

[Nataku564]

I've seen code and products that come out of those shops. I don't really want to be playing a game made with that same process. Neither do you, trust me.

Re:Independant contractors

[Eideewt]

I suppose it depends on what you have them do. Maybe a competent but un-amazing modeler shouldn't be doing the always-onscreen main character by himself, but surely he could rough out content for his skilled boss to put the finishing touches on. In many cases, the best people might be more effective as editors.

Oh dear, not THAT argument again

[Moraelin]

You know, noone forces you or him to play a 20 hour game in a 20 hour burst. If he only gets an hour a day to play, then a 20 hour game will keep him entertained for 3 weeks. I fail to see why that's a bad thing. He's proposing, what? That if he only has 1 hour a day, games should be 1 hour long? He wants to have to buy a new game each day, or what?

Plus, in my book it's not the vendor that should tell everyone what the consumer really wants. Ask a consumer, if you want to know what the consumer wants.

It's getting on my nerves already, the way the games industry seems to think that just repeating some bullshit often enough will eventually make it true. And not just about the game length, but I'm already digressing.

Do gamers want shorter games? Since when? The usual complaint I hear from actual gamers is that some gamer was too short, not that it was too long. Buying, say, an RPG used to keep you entertained for something like 70 hours. (And I'm not even getting into the _good_ replayable ones like Fallout 2 or Arena or Daggerfall, which I've sunk _hundreds_ of hours into.) Now we're down to games which one can finish in one sunday afternoon. It's already getting 1/8 as much bang per buck. Is any actual gamer actually demanding that they become even shorter? Did anyone finish, say, Fable and go, "man, I so wish it had only half as much content"? Or did anyone who's played a Gran Turismo game find themselves thinking "man, I so wish this had only 2 cars and 3 races, so it doesn't need more than a couple of hours to see everything"?

I mean, seriously, wtf? Since when and where did consumers start demanding less for their money?

So I'll tell you what it is: bullshit PR. The vendor wishes they could sell you half as much stuff for the same money, or at least not much less money. So they proceed to tell you again and again that you really want less stuff. No, seriously, you do. Trust us. Would we lie to you? Again?

And since the same bullshit fallacies pop up again and again, let's dismantle them once and for all:

1. "But I don't have 20 hours in a day!!!" Well, guess what? That's what save and restore are for. Unless he has a bad case of Alzheimer's (so tomorrow he won't remember what he's been doing or why), he just doesn't have to finish a game in one day.

2. "But I'm no longer a teen who has all the time in the world!! Only those can put 20 hours into a game!!!" Well, that's bullshit. I've seen casual gamers sink more than 20 hours in a game. E.g., mom isn't gaming 16 hours a day either, yet that didn't prevent her from putting a lot of total time into playing Mercury or Lumines. She just did it in smaller bursts, spread over almost a year. E.g., there are a lot of casual playing moms and pops in MMOs, who did manage to put in as much as 200 or 300 hours into maxxing their character's level. It just was spread over several months, in some cases even over a year. So excuse me if I don't see 20 hours as some unreasonable total time for a game. You _can_ do that even without being 15 years old.

3. "But look how many games you've never finished!!! It just shows that games are too long!!!" Well, bullshit again. If a game reaches the point where it becomes too boring to continue, then that's the real problem, not the length: it's just a boring game. Yes, having too little content dilluted to fill some hideous number of hours is one way to make a boring game, but sometimes it's not even that, it's just badly designed. But even when that's the case, the real problem isn't the length, it's the lack of interesting content to fill that length.