Irrational No More

An anonymous reader writes "Cory Banks at Gamers With Jobs has an interesting look at Irrational Games becoming '2K Boston'/'2K Australia' on the eve of the Bioshock release. It's not just about 2K and Irrational, publishers re-naming independents to generic studio names has obviously been going on for a long time. 'Rockstar Games is often credited with the Grand Theft Auto series, but the games were developed by Scottish developer DMA Designs, who were bought by Rockstar in 2002, shortly after GTA III came out, and quickly renamed Rockstar North to build up the brand recognition associated with the mega-blockbuster. Rockstar isn't even a development company at all, but a collection of development studios owned by Take-Two, sharing one brand name. The general public hardly knows the difference.'"

Comments

Sad but true...

[ravyne]

Its currently a sad fact that the game's industry is becoming more and more anonymous in many ways. There are so incredibly few "superstar" game developers - Miyamoto, Carmack, Wright, Kojima, Itagaki... If I spent some time thinking, I could probably come up with 10 or so names that have some notoriety outside of very small circles. Smaller devs are being assimilated by the big players, team sizes are growing nearly exponentially with each new generation. Its becoming a commodity business, where faceless masses simply provide a product; and it takes a great deal of personality out of the industry.

On top of that, the publishing model works much like the music industry -- The publisher fronts money to the devs, and they don't see a profit until their royalties have paid off the development in full, sometimes with interest. Thats why there's so little innovation, and thats why a single bad title can fold a studio.

Re:Sad but true...

[Control Group]

I don't think it's quite as bleak as all that. Yes, it takes larger and larger teams to produce the full-immersion virtual worlds of GTA, Elder Scrolls, or Gears of War. But that doesn't necessarily have to be as depressing as you make it out to be.

For one thing, the full-on AAA title can still take its direction - its flavor, focus, feel, and maybe another word that starts with f or two - from one person. I think we can, as we so often do, look to the movie industry for the logical end point of this sequence. It takes a massive army of people to produce a modern movie. But that doesn't mean that you can't have individual people make names for themselves. Peter Jackson, Guy Ritchie, the Wachowskis, etc. all put their distinct stamp on a work. The key is to have someone making the top-level decisions who has a good vision to work towards.

The other encouraging thing, of course, is that we aren't at a point yet where it's impossible to make a quality, even popular, by yourself or with a small group of people. Geometry Wars and Line Rider come quickly to mind as examples. The bar is higher than it used to be, of course: the hobbyist/garage developer is forced to compete solely on gameplay, since they have no hope of competing with iD's, Epic's, or Valve's latest engine (although the availability of a product like Torque makes even this statement not as damning as it could be).

But I don't think we're at a terribly high risk of entering an era where individual names are lost to a sea of undifferentiated product. Your Mark Reins, CliffyBs, and Peter Molyneauxs are and will continue to be pivotal figures in the industry. I think we're going to continue to see such names come up.

The only risk I see on the horizon, really, is if PC gaming eventually dies. Right now, there is no real publishing barrier to entry into the market. If your game really is good enough, all you need is a web site and a file host. Consoles, however, change that dynamic. Maybe Microsoft's nascent foray into user-produced games will eventually turn into a real option for hobbyists, but if it doesn't, there's still no way to break into the console games industry unless you're already established.

Which is a shame, because there could be fantastic potential, there.

what?

[u8i9o0]

Take-Two bought DMA Designs in September 1999.
Take-Two is the parent company of Rockstar Games.
In 2002, all they did was rename DMA Designs to Rockstar Studios.
(see: March 19, 2002)

The overall issue: companyA is now called companyB.
From my experience, the biggest impact of a company name change is that a lot of stationary needs to be replaced.

From the article:

Even in a community as level-headed as this, the thread about the name change is ruthless, posters furious that Take-Two would claim any credit for the eventual success of BioShock and sully Irrational's good name with brand recognition bollocks.

Maybe I'm crazy but perhaps they'll re-brand it because they pay for everything.

Re:The general public doesn't care

[CatrionaMcM]

"Not only won't the general public notice the swallowing of small developers, they wouldn't care if they did. Why should they?" They should care, because the small developers are the ones with a bigger incentive to try something new. If they make a bland, generic game that's just like all the other bland, generic games in the genre, the general public will buy a ever-so-slightly different generic game from the big studio name they recognise. If a small developer makes something new, then they have a better chance of getting noticed. (Yeah, I'm an optimist)