Game Developers Becoming Similar To Hollywood Studios?

CNet is running an article that looks at the growing parallels between the major movie studios and some of the most successful game publishers, which have gradually turned into the juggernauts of the industry as they've absorbed a variety of smaller developers in recent years. "If we consider Hollywood — the model to which the video game industry is always compared — it doesn't take long before we realize that it's dominated by a handful of studios that effectively control a large percentage of the industry, while the independent studios are left trying to defy the percentages and get their innovative and artistic films to the masses. Since most fail, it's the big studios that enjoy profits as the independents try to find some way to stay alive." Gamasutra has a related piece suggesting the opposite trend: "Smaller, less expensive games made by smaller, more agile teams seem like a very logical step, now that the industry structure is better able to support it, with no less than three venues on which to distribute content as a small team. These are downloadable console, direct to consumer PC downloads via Steam-like services, portals, or direct sale, and iPhone and potentially DSi downloads."

Comments

Re:Steam?

[Sousuke]

It's better than all the limited availability nonsense the movie industry tends to pull.

Re:Steam?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, isn't it dreadful how Steam makes it so easy to buy games? I much prefered the old days, when you had to physically drive to a store and then drive home again and spend an hour swapping CDs. All this digital delivery is a right pain in the ass.

Re:don't forget..

[SwedMiro]

Even gerilla-marketing is expensive. Adding one market-guy salary to a small developer can break the budget. The margins in games developing is not what most people think. They are small and unless you get a big hit out there you are almost certainly going to be walking the edge for ever.

Re:Steam?

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to buying non-tangible product online without any manuals/booklets/maps/goodies, waiting hours or days for gigabytes of game data to download, slowing down your internet connection during that entire time, not being able to install/play those games without being connected to Steam or if they decide to let their servers become too busy, not being able to lend the game to a friend or take it with you somewhere else, being at the mercy of Valve et al if they decide to deactivate your game and/or account and not being able to play those games should Steam ever shut down or if Valve goes out of business.

Yeah, sounds like a fucking great way to buy a game to me...

Some big differences.

[EWAdams]

Hollywood can sell the same content six times (cinema, pay-per-view, pay cable, free cable, terrestrial broadcast, DVD -- not to mention airline sales, overseas licensing, etc.). Videogames only run on the machine(s) they're made for.

Movies can continue to be shown for decades. With a tiny number of exceptions, a game is dead meat within a year.

Movies have star power. The general public doesn't care who made the game.

Filmmaking is very nearly turnkey if it doesn't require special effects. Every game is a unique piece of software engineering.

A big film is 3 hours tops. A big game is 40-50 hours. That's a lot more content.

The economics of the two are very different, and the production models can never be the same.

Re:Some big differences.

[iamdrscience]

Movies have star power. The general public doesn't care who made the game.

Most people don't care which studios make a movie either. Games have stars just the same as movies. Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, Lara Croft, etc., they're all stars as well as characters that fall in from other media -- Star Wars comes to mind. Similarly they have behind-the-scenes "stars" as well, instead of well-known directors there are well-known game designers who add a cachet to their productions (Will Wright, Sid Meier, etc.).

Re:Steam?

[grumbel]

You can't necessarily make a good movie with a handful of guys and some talent.

Have a look at the recent Half Life short movie or movies like The Man from Earth or Primer, you very definitvly can make a good movie with a tiny budget. The only real disadvantage that a movie seems to have is that you need to have all the crew in the same place at the same time, while a game can be developed by people connected via the internet and can recycle lots of content from the parent game. But of course, a tiny movie budget won't give you the next Star Wars any more then a tiny game budget will give you the next Half Life, that however doesn't mean they can't be good in their own way.

including paying or compensating actors.

That's like saying you can't make a game without compensating the programmers and artists, but you very definitively can, because there are plenty people who do it for the fun of it, not the money.

Mouse Trap.

[Samschnooks]

I like to point out to engineers who have the attitude that if you build a better mouse trap, the World will beat a path to your door, how will the World know about your mousetrap?

Marketing baby!

hers's the problem with this

[DragonTHC]

developers != publishers

publishers are 9 times out of 10 owned by larger media conglomerates.

the few who aren't, have abandoned the art.

Re:don't forget..

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

marketing costs a lot of money.

You mistake cause and effect. Marketing costs a lot of money because the large entities (try to) make it necessary.

It's actually in every big media's interest to make marketing as affordable as possible, since they pour multiple billions into marketing each year. Your saying that the interests of Big Advertising can somehow outweigh the interests of Big Movie, Big Music, Big Game, Big just about anything else? Perhaps marketing costs so much because it works so well.

drown in the flood of games that are released.

Drown in the flood of marketing by the large entities, you mean.

Small games can easily slip under the marketing flood. The real problem is that under the marketing flood, there's a flood of flash games, indie games, open source project games, etc, all equally vying for your attention, with no effective method of marketing or spreading via word of mouth. I think the OP meant what he said.

A bad game with marketing will almost always outsell a good one with no marketing.

I'm sure you're right, and that's one of the more severely damaging aspects of copyright. In a free market system with interchangeable goods there's a limit to the value of marketing; make too much and your product becomes too expensive and people buy the competition. In a monopoly system with low product fungibility the limit is simply where lost sales are not lost to competition but to unaffordability, that limit is much higher.

There are two things wrong with that argument. Firstly, there is competition in copyright systems. You can buy (or, in some cases, get legitimately for free) other products from the competitors, but you just can't get an identical product. It just means that if you want that exact work, you have to take the distribution method with it. That's all.

Secondly, see my sig. If you want competition of distribution models over the same artwork, then the creator is not going to get any money, assuming the free market works (which it does in most cases). Consumers will typically go for the cheapest distribution. The artist not making any money, will typically result in him finding something else to spend his time on, something that puts food on his table. He simply can't compete with file-sharers.

You think that lack of competition is bad with copyright, you should see it without copyright.

It's an effect that's noticable in every monopoly protected sector, from pharmaceuticals to music; more money gets spent on marketing than on the actual product.

And what about non-monopoly protected sectors? I'm pretty sure that Coca-Cola spends considerably more on advertising than it does in production, or research into new formulas, etc. It's not a monopoly, yet it still "suffers" from the same problem. It happens with most large businesses, monopoly or not.

Which is rather tragic, as it means we're getting less of what we, as a society, actually want, in exchange for more of what we don't want.

Look, nothing is stopping you from searching from behind the advertising. Advertising doesn't actually make other goods harder to get, it just promotes them into the forefront of what most people will compare when they decide to make a purchase.

I think you're blowing this all way out of proportion. There aren't mind-controlling waves emanating from advertising. If you don't look beyond advertising, it means either you're lazy, you're stupid, or you're happy enough as it is buying from whatever advertisers serve to you. If the first applies to you, it's your own damn fault. If the second applies to you, then getting rid of advertising won't help you. If the third applies to you, then you're not complaining. What's your problem?

Re:Steam?

[hairyfeet]

So I should be punished for actually BUYING the full product with the nice box and manual? And folks wonder why piracy is on the rise. How about NOT treating your paying customers as criminals, how about that? It isn't like I was the only guy either. Look up HL:GOTY edition and screwed in Google and you will find countless stories JUST like mine.

Either you refuse to sell the boxed product and go download ONLY(and forget about anyone who doesn't have broadband or who has caps or like me that like a nice box and manual) or actually SUPPORT YOUR DAMNED PRODUCT!!! But screwing a customer who just handed you $50 is NOT the way to do business. I will NEVER buy from Valve again, and I buy lots of games, as I don't care for movies. But between all the Trojan DRM crap that makes a PC as unstable as Win98 and crap like this I'm frankly surprised they have any customers at all. But don't worry, I'm sure some hacker group will eventually find a way to screw Steam and then y'all will get the fun of dealing with their customer disservice. I've dealt with friendlier folks at the DMV.