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What's Wrong With the Games Industry
Gamasutra has up a piece by game developer Stephen Ford, entitled What's Wrong with the Games Industry (and How to Make it Right). The article covers the idiosyncrasies of game development, such as the problems of pitching a title, making a demo, working to publisher expectations. It then looks at ways to make the same-old same-old 'right'. From the article: "One amazing fact that has yet to permeate the strata of the industry is that most of their employees have the equipment that they need to do their jobs at home. One example is freelance audio engineers, who do most of their work off site and mail the files in. However, for code, design and art there are still large levels of resistance to the idea that you can effectively export work off site and maintain control. On-site control is an illusion, and while the camaraderie of a large office space is nice, it is also the least financially efficient way of getting production work done in an age of broadband."
"it is also the least financially efficient way of getting production work done in an age of broadband."
Have you got -any- proof of that? Some people do NOT work well away from the office. I'm guessing that game programmers, designers, and other game-jobs have huge amounts of people in that category.
In fact, anyone with ANY interest in games has a compulsion to play games. Try having a doctor do paperwork at the golf course and you'll see exactly the same thing. The temptation is just too close at hand.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
But the King Cause is simply this: Most game development management is pretty incompetent. most game development management --> most management
Fixed.
On-site control is an illusion, and while the camaraderie of a large office space is nice, it is also the least financially efficient way of getting production work done in an age of broadband.
Tell that to whats-his-name who never returns my e-mails!
Here's one clue for you: "RIIIIIDGE RACER!"
it really depends on the situation.
team-based on-site coding does improve productivity. its much easier to shout over at someone to find out information or get something done, instead of exchanging emails or ims. emails and ims are easy, but not the fastest or most efficient way of doing things.
Well, Pokemon: Burnt Sienna certainly isn't helping things.
No, they starting being written in force in about 1994-5, when the industry started becoming much more corporate. (EA was well into their acquisition scheme by then, and that was a huge part of it). And just because these articles are commonly written doesn't mean that they aren't on to something. Do you really think that there aren't problems in the way the business of making games is done?
An article that complains about buzzword compliance yet finishes with the phrase:
"Welcome to the games industry, version 2.0."
I was almost fooled for a minute...
I quit!
Sounds like many game companies need to learn a newfangled idea (not really) known as "pipelining". You have various projects happening concurrently, with each project bubbling to the top as the necessary parts of the previous one are completed.
This would require good management, more normal working hours, and game development on a more normal schedule in order to happen. These things have been an antithesis to game companies, who have always struggled under tight timetables to get the game out while it's still technologically impressive. One is forced to wonder, though, is the technological death march really worth it? If your company's very existance is dependent on producing blockbuster after blockbuster, then you may be in a pretty bad position. No one can maintain a permanent streak, which is why you're probably only employed as far as the next game.
As much as I dislike EA, they do understand. (To a certain degree.) They have tons of projects in parallel, assuring that resources can be used and transferred as necessary. There's no "negative weight" holding the company down, save for post-launch vacations. If they would smooth out the development process, they could let everyone have lives so that they wouldn't need the post-launch vacations. Then their negative weight would reach pretty close to zero.
Games just aren't getting that much more impressive as time goes on. We're reaching areas of dimishing returns to where we can probably slow the pace in exchange for focusing on making good games that are fun, and have been properly QAed. There's no need for these last-minute additions or patches. Especially as the market revolts, and moves more and more toward console gaming. (Where proper QA is a requirement.)
Gamers want good games. Technology is only a canvas on which games are painted. It should not be the be-all-to-end-all of the game. If companies can reorganize around making high-quality games on more reasonable schedules, then I don't doubt that costs would lower and the products would improve.
My 2 pennies, anyway.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The gaming industry has lost it's imagination. Innovation is gone, instead companies are trying things like making crappy games for simultaneous releases with movies, or perhaps banking on previous successes...Doom 4 anybody??? No takers?? really??
First off, you have a lot of copycatting going on. Everybody wants in on the big trend, so they're trying to recreate the big game of the year. There aren't many that aren't essentially clones of some other game. Ico, DDR, Katamari, Okami and Gitar Hero are new games. Most of the rest are pretty generic, to the point where if you've played one game in the genre, the rest are rentals -- because other than the graphic art, they play identically. And that's not even counting the sequels of the generic games.
Secondly, especially for TV/movie games, most franchise games are made with very little understanding of what made the series good to begin with. http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/strategy/startrekl egacy/screenindex.html?part=rss&subj=6152227 This is just one example. I don't know how you could watch a show where 90% of the time, they negotiate their way out of danger and decide that the best thing to make with the franchise is a shooting game. I won't even bother bringing up Anime franchises.
Do you remember the scene where the workers trudge into the factory doors, who fade into the mouth of a giant monster devouring them?
This is what's wrong with the game industry: It eats people up, chews them out, and then hires the next batch of fresh, ready-for-overtime young talent.
You can't take the sky from me...
" What's Wrong with the Games Industry? "
Sony
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
This article is a bunch of high-concept fluff. I work in the games industry and to me, the only problem is a productivity problem. We waste a lot of time, not because we're lazy bastards, but simply because:
I'm sure small projects are better than large ones. But I'm always amazed when people totally overlook the time wasted on all of the above.
But you lose style points for not doing it with a regular expression.
EA is creating a gaming monoculture. The 'risky' (read: innovative) games are killed off in case they offend, and it's all about churning out high yield, low quality products. EA doesn't care about extending a game's life, they just care about making a sequel.
Content!
A.K.A. SEX, Violence, and FUN. In no particular order of preference......
Where is the RPG that has the following included, and not done with half-ass AI or graphics??
- FPS: where is the multiple in-game sections, where you're now in an FPS ala Q3, UT, or HALO2?? And NO! There are no TEAMS, unless its in-game PAINTBALL!!!
- Flight Sim: Where is the section of the game where you are now flying an F22-Raptor, Apache Helo. , WWI Bi-plane, P-51 Mustang, Millenium Falcon, SS-Enterprise, Light-cycle (?)
- Obscure storyline: Where is the shady side off life going to implemented into the game? Oh, now I have to go buy death-sticks from greedo, not shooting first and killing him, but rip him off, and take them to the damn sand people?? Or, you have to meet Ilsa, the assassin nymphomaniac at the strip club, offer her a 'job', she promptly 'services you', when the cops bust in, and you have to pay them off, else you are taken to the alley and disposed of.
When games become more obscure and strange with content with f'ed up little nuances that shouldn't be there, but nonetheless are there, and funny to boot, THAT is when games will garner more support. NOT because of the shiny overcoat, because of what you have to do to beat them.
This of course brings me to the next point.
AUDIENCE!!!!
It is VERY unfortunate, probably tragic, that though some games are created FOR ADULTS, they are ultimately being persecuted because CHILDREN might play them. And this is the END-ALL killer of the Game Industry. I know the latest tragedy that is "BULLY" was avoided by a Judge with some common sense, but how many Judges are like that out there?? You can bet your ass Jack (I have to much damn time, won't you think of the children) Thompson isn't going to stop going after this Industry.
Until the Game HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE Industry ponies up and says the following, "If you purchase this product, It is possible someone might make a game that YOU may not agree with. Be aware of what you are planning on playing, what your kid is planning on playing, and what there friends are planning on playing. Some of it might not be suitable for your, or their, VIRGIN EYES and EARS!!! If it pisses you off, don't buy it STFU, GBTW, and let those who want to play it, play it!!!!!"
The Game Hardware/Software manufacturers are going to have to take a stand at some point, it is going to be a hard one!!!!!
... to do their jobs at home.
This will never happen since there's no trust in the video game industry to allow this to happen. When I worked at Accolade/Infogrames/Atari for six years, it got to point where people weren't trusted to do their jobs at the office. As a lead tester, I spent so much time documenting that everyone working on my project was doing work for every minute, that I barely saw the games that I was supposed to be testing. Before I left, management was talking about replacing the cubes with half-height walls and having all the video screens positioned towards the cube entrance so the managers can see if everyone was working when they walk. If you got this going on in the office, don't expect to be working from home.
One amazing fact that has yet to permeate the strata of the industry is that most of their employees have the equipment that they need to do their jobs at home. One example is freelance audio engineers, who do most of their work off site and mail the files in. However, for code, design and art there are still large levels of resistance to the idea that you can effectively export work off site and maintain control.
"Hey, we were able to cut costs by not hiring a salaried Audio Designer or building a decent sound studio onsite -- turns out there's a hundred suckers willing to pay for all the equipment themselves in exchange for no job security. I wonder if this system for taking advantage of creative professionals can be used against any of the other seats on the development team...?"
Seriously, we seem to have a slashdot article about what's wrong with the gaming industry posted once every month...
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
It'd be very simple. All you'd need to do would be to go to EA's head office, wherever that is, and shoot everyone in the building. ;-) Then lather, rinse, repeat for every other large "publishing" company (Vivendi, Activision, etc) in existence.
;-)
These companies are the game industry's sole problem, IMHO...and for as long as they exist, things are going to stay broken. Think about it...every single megahit game that's ever been released (with the possible exception of The Sims) has been released entirely without these middlemen being involved. They don't contribute anything of worth themselves, and they try and get in the way of people who actually *are* creative.
When things have worked, they've worked via a small company consisting purely of artists, who've developed and released a game primarily for creative reasons. Said artists have not had to worry about money at all...because when you create a game for the right reasons, it'd actually be more difficult to *avoid* being swamped by the massive tsunami of currency that will be forthcoming thereafter.
Not to mention Zelda: Generic Magic Object. But that's Nintendo so it doesn't count in the minds of Wii fanboys.
(I actually don't mind sequels and remakes the way the Slashdot crowd seems to hate them. I liked the Matrix sequels more than the original. I just could never get into Zelda. Let Zelda Die.)
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I know the latest tragedy that is "BULLY" was avoided by a Judge with some common sense, but how many Judges are like that out there??
Actually there are a lot of judges out there who are very reasonable and full of common sense. You mostly hear about the foolish ones but there are plenty more who put careful thought into the choices they make even if the subject matter may repel them.
You make a great point though about all games being judged based on what a child might do with it. What I think will help that though is more game makers being willing to commit fully to adult games instead of skirting the line by also targeting adolecents - yet that is where all the money is.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I work for a large defense contractor (think Raytheon, Boeing etc.). Most of what I do, I can practically do from anywhere be it the office, home or a coffee shop. Well, the coffee shop would be problematic, I do handle classified and controlled information so passerbys might not feel comfortable thinking any moment Secret Service will jump in and erase their memories.
OK. So, aside from having to handle sensitive information or hardware. My more mundane activities can very well be handled at home or where ever I may connect to the internet.
For some reason, this is the way most corporate work places operate. Joe walks in, plays like he's a well brainwashed representative of society and socializes with co-workers while smoking, drinking coffee etc. Then he walks over and turns on his computer, and checks his email where for another hour to three hours he's pretty much doing the same thing for distant co-workers or on-site co-workers also playing with their emails. Then, he does some actual work, maybe an hour, may four at most. We are at 6 hours now. Then he spends another two hours away from "production" interests, to handle things that will sadly have more an impact for upcoming review. He asserts his politics and opinions on the new name tags to be issued. He sends out a memo essentially complaining about the coffee maker being a mess everyday. He sends his opinions down to maintenance becuase he thinks the power outlets need to be verified or checked.
This is a "busy" work day.
An average day... he might do one hour of "production" work, and BS for the rest of the day. For managers that joke about this "horror" to themselves... Managers are even worse than the workers. Managers typically do nothing of their inherent model suggests, this isn't being said jokingly either. Mangers really do nothing, even when they think they are doing something.
It's the feel that something is getting done. It's why we have meetings and all the sort. The last time a Meeting ever amounted to something, was when this one nobody held a meeting in the back of a German beer pub, later to wreck havoc across Europe. Ironically, even that meeting resulted in disastor and mayhem.
Just like Meetings make us feel like something is getting done... the same feeling is derived with actually seeing other people gather. Really, reporting to work, for most people who use a Computer, is a huge big-picture meeting! We get up, endure the assanine daily routines of office politics and becuase of this, that's work.
Personally, my best work comes within the first hour of waking up, and the wee hours of the night when I'm fully relaxed and able to focus becuase there is no distractions. I can listen to music, without fear of someone taking offense. I can chose to go sit outside and ponder something without fear of someone thinking I'm not doing anything. I can take as many breaks as I want, I can lounge in the comfort and safety of my own home. I enjoy the food at my own home. I enjoy the 50 dollar couch I have over the 150 dollar chair at work. I can wear something comfortable at home (Any man who says slacks, a tie, and a collared cotten shirt is "comfortable" is either very ignorant or out right lieing to your face. Even if it might be physically tolerable, it's still mentally uncomfortable to have to dress that way and worry about spilling coffee on it.). Sweats pants and a t-shirt, now you can't get more comfortable than that. I want to be at home anyways!
And if there's any better real life example of how much more people are willing to work when at home, we only need to ponder the speed, effectiveness, quality of OSS software development over proprietary counterparts 'minus exceptions of proprietary protocols etc.'). At home, I'm much more willing to work much more, becuase a great deal of it won't even be considered "work".
But, try to tell your boss that! That's the tricky part. He'd rather pay you for less product, just to see you once a day abide by ru
Throughout the entire article, I kept seeing two names being implied even though only one was explicitly mentioned: negative, game industry = EA; positive, game production company = Blizzard. (You can extrapolate that Blizzard's parent company, Vivendi, is a much better industry master than EA because they stay out of Blizzard's business and let them produce.)
EA executive response to this article: "Those bastards! How dare they slander us. Let's see if we can sue them so we can fund Madden Football 47."
Blizzard (or Vivendi) executive response: "Cool. Folks, let's make sure we're still not doing any of that archaic, corporate crap."
Excuse me Stephen Ford, can I get some credentials? Do you work at EA? do you work at my company? Have you worked at a real company? How many? How many dev cycles? Finding your name on a Flash development site makes me wonder a bit. Or are you Steven Ford who talks about online gambling as an Analyst for Collins Stewart
I'm sorry I'm sick of listening to Gamesutra guys because most of them either don't know anything, or just have skewed ideas with only their personal experiences to go on, and usually those experiences suck or are non applicable to normal companies.
My company keeps a game project going at a time as well as one in flux. Most people find the office easier to work at than home, and it helps communication greatly, it keeps people focused, and while it costs 5K, that money is made up in wasted time. 5K per person isn't bad when you have a multi million dollar team.
Why not maintain a code-base, guess what? You don't sell them to make a profit. A good engine can work for every game you make not just the first one. Company at which I works uses the same engine and tweaks it every game, that works wonders especially when you consider we work on similar systems every time. It's true our first 360 game needed a lot of time (4 years dev cycle not fun) but we're running two products based on that engine now, we consolidate the similar stuff, and branch the non similar stuff. Money saved? 3 engines for the price of 1, you figure it out. And if something is bad in project 2 and great in project 3 we can bring the great system over to project 2. If it's something similar.
My company works, if yours doesn't that's fine but why tell us what's wrong with the "game industry" when there's not much wrong with the industry. The particular companies are the ones who have problems. His complaints sounds like a whiny guy who wants to program what he's working on, not constantly get bothered, and not get different scope changes. His only good advise is to blame management, but maybe his company sucks. Mine doesn't. If you don't like the company, change companies. If you don't like the industry, change industries. Just because this doesn't jib with you, doesn't mean it's a problem with everyone or everywhere.
In the beginning, there was fewer game devs, the skills was not as common, nowadays there's schools that teach just what you need to code games. Thus, employers have a larger assortment to choose from and thus can place higher demands on the employee. As the company wants to increase it's profits it works to improve the profit margin by increasing productivity, and the typical company hive mind and the company execs usually does just this by introducing elements of taylorism or fordism and thus the industrial mode of production has entered the workplace and the positive workplace atmosphere dissapears and in the long run the innovation and creativity. I do so understand why it's hard to produce cool and entertaining games in a white collar industrial factory.
Hard for me to take anything this one says seriously. Every time I see his username I think that somebody has just given him a Dirty Sanchez. People who speak other non-English languages might understand.
-AC
Hello, you lose one internet for the day. Cheers (:
I know a few game coders and I'm honestly concerned for their well-being if they don't have to get up in the morning, take a shower, eat something and go into the office where they are forced to interact with other humans.
I have seen firsthand the results of 36-hour codings sessions and the psychological and physiological damage done by the outrageous demands of the software industry on young programmers.
Just because management puts up a nerf basketball hoop and stocks the fridge with Vault, they're expected to be seen as "cool" by their underlings who are then expected to push themselves beyond human limits.
Please don't mod this as "funny" because I'm dead serious. People are getting hurt out there.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Hello, you lose one internet for the day. Cheers (:
Never mind, it was under the couch cushion.
?!?!?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm sick of all these articles floating around the net which question the state of the video game industry.
Is gaming dying? Hell no! The games industry is perfectly healthy, and still rapidly increasing in popularity within mainstream culture.
Yes, it takes millions of dollars and several years of full-time work to produce a game of today's standards. The same could be said for movies, which people don't seem to have a problem with. Yes, it's difficult for small-time developers to start making money if they aren't backed by a publisher with the resources and capacity to drown the entire market in blimp-loads of advertising. But again, the same could be said for the film industry.
True, there are as many sequels these days as there are original titles, and this is because developers realize that their market potential is greater if they simply make an updated version of a previous hit. All the fans of the original will buy the game, so you have that concrete foundation already in place. All the critics of the original game will probably pay attention to it just to see if it has improved at all. In short, the game will automatically generate enough interest to ensure a healthy number of off-the-bat sales.
Creativity isn't being stifled solely because large projects are too high-risk. I don't know how most of the people making this claim define "creativity", but personally, I don't WANT to see people inventing crazy new genres that have their own steep leaning curve. I like existing gameplay formulas, because I can jump in and immediately start playing. Half-Life isn't a "Quake clone." It's just a game with a similar control mechanism, and that's as far as the similarities go. Give me another 2 billion first-person shooters with the same playing style, and I'll be happy so long as they keep providing me with new stories to get involved with, characters to learn, puzzles to solve, and so on. Genres don't get "stagnant."
The industry has never been better, and it's only improving with time. Please stop making ridiculous claims about how the entire hobby is circling the drain just because highschool buddies Joe and Tod probably won't make a trillion dollars with a copy of Visual Studio and a single good idea.
And Atari is in a bad financial situation at the moment, having failed to produce a big hit game in quite a while, and generally have been churning out crap.
Maybe TFA was actually on to something, after all?
Why is that every other game that comes up seems to be based on super-computerish resources? Graphics and special effects seem to be the order of the day and where the main focus of the games industry is...yes, they're nice,may earn more $$$ but I think this kind of competition it's on the whole degrading the games industry. Whatever happened to nice, simple, clean, crazy 2D fun?? The Games Industry is beginning to resemble Hollywood more and more, in terms of products that require teams of people, millions of bucks, a dose of creativity and an injection of ethics & morality.
-----------------
If it's not about the money, well, it IS about the money.
See parent and gp posts. Couldnt really be any more clear than that.
What's wrong with Legacy? It's being written by DC Fontana. She's written a lot of Trek before so I'd think she'd be pretty up to speed with the universe.
.good flick. I think that was some of Farah Fawcett's [sp?] best work.
From Gamespot:
Fontana has deep roots in the Trek universe, having provided stories for the original TV series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: The Animated Adventures, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and even the unofficial fan-made spin-off Star Trek: New Voyages. The rest of her career is dotted with work for other sci-fi TV series, including The Six Million Dollar Man, Logan's Run, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Babylon 5, and Earth: Final Conflict.
--
Logan's Run! Logan's Run!
Bill McNeal: What is your favorite movie?
Dave: Logan's Run.
Bill: Good flick. .
Anyway, she seems to have some good pedigree for the game.
You can't expect people fresh out of school to be able to just jump into a "work from home" routine . There's alot to be learned from working with others. From being right there and being able to point at A, B and C and learn.
It takes alot of disciline to work from home. Also takes motivation. You CANNOT have salaried people work from home. There has to be a "risk". (ie: payment only on delivery, contracts for every deliverable) etc. It basically means a whole 'nother level of paperwork n crap to manage.
(coincidence: Kapcha word is "oversees")
That is one of the most bizarre statements I've read in a long time. A union is nothing more than a bunch of workers getting together and asking for something as a group instead of as individuals. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's nothing like extortion.
Clearly, there are unions which do stupid crap, but finding "the idea of belonging to a union distasteful" is just a very weird sentiment.