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BioWare On Why Making a Blockbuster Game Is a Poor Goal
BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk spoke at the 2010 Develop Conference about the current focus within the video game industry on making huge, blockbuster titles, and why that is the wrong approach. Quoting Gamasutra's coverage:
"'While blockbuster game creation is everything that most game developers working today growing up wanted to do, it's precisely the wrong thing to chase in gaming's contemporary landscape.' Risk-taking from publishers and investors has dramatically declined in recent times, the Mass Effect and Dragon Age studio-runner noted: 'As a result, innovation and creativity [are] being squeezed. Where the bottom of the market had dropped out at one point, now it’s the middle of the market has dropped out. Unless you can be in the top ten releases at one given time, it's unlikely that a triple-A game is going to make money.'"
Zeschuk also commented that consoles aren't necessarily the future of game platforms, and that BioWare is experimenting with smaller scale MMO development in addition to working on their much larger upcoming Star Wars title.
Strange that it should be BioWare of all game studios to claim such, as they are one of the few creating huge games with a 40+ hours time investment, such as Mass Effect and Dragon Age. Also these games have been performing very well.
Well, they are remaking the same exact game since Knight of the Old Republic. Take a look at KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect. Always the same mechanics, always the same basic plot. While they are very good at it, they are not very "creative".
Meanwhile, billionaires say it's not all about money, and Hollywood stars say it's not all about looks.
This reads like 'Don't even bother trying to make games that are awesome.' They are actually trying to say, 'Don't overspend and try to make a blockbuster game just by spending money.'
It's perfectly possible to make and amazing hit game without the budget that Bioware and Square Enix put into games. Do games care about graphics and cutscenes? Yes. Do they care more about gameplay and controls? Absolutely. It's just a LOT harder to come up with good gameplay and refine the controls, so they throw money at the pretty pictures instead. It's never been a good idea, but they do it anyhow.
The #1 killer for videos games (for me) is bad controls. If controlling the character doesn't feel like an extension of myself, if the character doesn't always do what I think it'll do when I hit buttons, if the character is slow to react or I have to wait on its actions, it's absolutely killer for me. It's the reason I now rent games instead of buying.
Some of the better games, like Fallout and Resident Evil, I've never played because I felt like I was fighting the controls instead of fighting enemies. It's just not fun.
A coworker was just saying the other day that Sonic on the iPhone sucks because the controls are so bad, even though it was one of his favorite games. And that Street Fighter is amazing because the controls are perfect. Not a word about graphics or gameplay, just controls. (2 separate conversations, too, so it's not like he was comparing them.)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Bioware needs to jump ship from the cinematic epic and graphics shell game and take stock of the history behind RPG gaming.
If the Indie gaming scene is anything to go by, funds and personnel do not a great game make. Why don't Bioware practice what they preach and make a low-budget series, with the chief emphasis on hiring talented personnel with experience playing the finest RPGs of the past twenty years. It sure beats hiring expensive singers for your musical score, scores of artists and programmers, not to mention the marketing bill which inevitably follows big budget titles.
Gaming ought to, to some extent, go back to its roots by abandoning the constant, unending improvement of graphical quality to the neglect of gameplay. I started gaming as a kid in 1991 and have more memories from the 1991-1997 time bracket than 2005-2010. The only outstanding memory of Mass Effect I have is of Shephard emerging, alive and well, after a boss battle with a soaring musical score playing and stoical gaze on the part of the character - I wasn't awed or impressed, but amused as it outcome was obvious even before the tension of "Where's Shephard gone?!" played out for a minute.
On the contrary, Chrono Trigger, a simple RPG with graphics not much beyond classic Link to the Past, has so many memories with its 16-bit score and pixelated graphics. The budget and levels of personnel are dwarfed by these cinematic titles out today. I could ramble on about more titles as example but I believe most readers browsing games.slashdot can fathom a few personally.
If it was that strawman, yes, that wouldn't be much information.
What he's saying is that is that of the games that try to be the biggest, baddest, most epic ever, only the top X will be making a profit at all. Most will actually make a loss.
And that is something that seems to escape most people, sad to say. From people going into making games with delusions of being paid a million like Carmack, to kiddies who think that pirating a game is some kind of act of resistance to some uber-rich fatcat who's only charging 40$ for it because of greed, to people starting some monumental epic as some mod and expecting to finish it with 5 people in a few months, to fanboys arguing that a publisher is the incarnation of pure Evil if they had an upper limit at all for budget and didn't give the team an infinite limit on money and time to produce the perfect game, to ultimately the devs end publishers who increasingly compete only in that segment. The fact that there's a finite amount of money to chase in that segment seems to be genuinely news to most people.
It's not even a matter of "get off my turf" as some other poster made it sound. We have the equivalent of, say, 90% of the car makers deciding they want to compete only at the Bugatti Veryon end of the market. Or 90% of the computer manufacturers deciding they want to make only supercomputers. Sure, it's great if you do manage to sell the next Bugatti Veryon for 1 million a pop, but there are only so many buyers who will buy at those prices. If actually all major companies, from Ford and Fiat and Volkswagen to Bugatti and Ferrari decided to make only supercars in that segment, that most _will_ make a loss. Same here. There simply isn't enough money in the market to cover the costs of _everyone_ who wants to make the next super-game.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Why waste your money on developing an add-on and hence an additional source of revenue when you can develop an out-of-control DRM system which adds problems for the paying customers and will be cracked within days???
Not really any news - it's been known for several years and there have been other Slashdot articles to the same effect. It costs a lot to produce a top of the line game, which means that you need to sell a lot of them at a high price to make any profit. If a game costs several million to produce, you need several hundred thousand sales at $40 to break even. If a game only costs a few thousand dollars to make, you can make a profit selling a few thousand copies for a couple of dollars. There's a lot more room in the bottom of the market for making a profit than in the top. Companies like PopCap have shown this, but new entrants typically want to aim for the top, even though it's not a good business strategy.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It doesn't "just" mean that it's Massively Multiplayer, but it does mean that it is. Massive. And if it's not Massive, then pick a different word to describe it, you or you might as well just start speaking in your own personal lexicon, you chuwero muptard.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Correction: "Making a blockbuster is harder than you think and if you screw it up you won't make a profit therefore doing something innovative yet unproven is sort of risky so your publisher would prefer if you didn't do that and instead stick to what has worked in the past so basically creativity in the sense of doing something new gets thrown right out the window and you'll just be making an iteration of something you've already done."
How do you compete with it? Certainly not with DLC. And certainly not with yet another MMO that needs to build its userbase from scratch (BioWare's loyal fans are roleplayers; they couldn't care less about MMOs).
:wq
So? He knows what he is talking about.
And Jade Empire WAS creative. So was KOTOR. Yes KOTOR was Baldur's gate in Space! but THAT was also creative. An RPG set in space? Unheard off!
Mass Effect married many new elements to the Baldur's Gate style RPG. Sometimes you can create something new by cobbling together old parts. Coat of many colors.
As a side note, I think some people put to much emphasis on creative. Just because something is new, doesn't mean it is good. New Coke was creative, it was new, it was different. You want a bottle?
I wish Lucasarts stopped being creative and released one of their old style games, when you knew when you saw their logo, you were in for a good time.
Same with Bioware. Dragon Age 2 not creative? Who the fuck cares. Give me more off the same.
The plot is indeed always the same. But there really aren't all that many plots that you can put into a game. Yes, I have written a story line for a RPG in which you are NOT the hero. That is creative. I think it even works and might oneday turn it into a simple game. BUT I also realise that JUST the creative bit of you not being the hero isn't enough to make it a good game.
Bioware knows that a hero needs an enemy to overcome. Because the same enemy gets boring there usually is a plot twist that reveals a darker enemy behind the original enemy. There are simple game mechanics behind most of the plots.
Just as in a porn movie, somehow people always find a reason to have sex, often with attractive people. No pizza has ever been deliverd to my door by a randy teenager. Nor have I ever had to discipline a wayward schoolgirl with melons the size of melons.
Fantasy has rules, perhaps even more so then reality.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I find myself infatuated with Fantastic Contraption. It seems simple enough but once I got through the levels and was able to view other player's designs, I'm just staring at my computer muttering, "No fucking way.... Ju- oh what. the. fuck?"
Simple. Awesome.
Simply awesome.
No, more like 'Bioware doesn't aim to make a blockbuster game.. we've just been remaking KOTOR ever since we discovered it was a smash hit!'
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
I'd say it's the studios that have given up on the graphics card wars. More correctly, I believe they've all but given up on the PC entirely. There is a much larger market for consoles at this point, which is why the majority of new AAA titles for the PC are just ports of the X360 version with the same plasticy graphics, controls which don't feel quite right with keyboard + mouse, and Games For Windows slapped on for good measure.
I would say this was true a few years ago, and still true for a portion of the gaming population, however I wouldn't even say it's true for the majority any more.
There ARE non-AAA titles, and people do look at them differently. Indie developers are growing in popularity, and are viewed differently than the AAA games. There are also casual and those games you find on XBL Arcade, the PS3 store, etc. They might not be casual, or really indie, but they aren't AAA games, and people do view them differently.
I can say this for my self, and I assume there are others like me:
I have a price point for video games where I view them differently. For me it's $20. If a game is $20 (or less) I will likely pick it up if it interests me. I don't necessarily need a demo, nor do I hem and haw over buying it, I don't shop around for deals, etc etc. If I enjoy the game I'm happy, if I get a good number of hours out of it I'm really happy. If I don't like it and drop it in a week, I'm a little put out, but nothing big.
Anything over that $20 price point I have a much stricter limitation on. I have to try the game before I buy it. I have to see good reviews, especially from friends who I have similar tastes too. I will wait for it to drop in price, or go on sale, or whatever. This is all because I know that if I DON'T get a lot of play value out of it, specifically replay value, I'm going to regret the purchase a lot. I do hold AAA games up to a higher standard than I do indie/'cheap' games.
Oh, and don't forget that the casual games players are a (if I remember NPD's nubmers) majority of 'video game players' currently. These players are very specifically only looking for bejewled and it's cousins.
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
WARNING idealism below, Do not read this post if you cannot handle it.
#1 reason = OVERHEAD
The real reason games don't make money is the behemoth corporations controlling the industry and funneling the money into the hands of the pointy haired overlords. It reminds me of an article I read about 4 years ago about how CISCO did not produce a profit that year right before I read the article outing the CEO's compensation: 690 million(Sounds pretty profitable to me, how about you?). Overhead is a made up word managers created to confuse workers and hide the FACT that all of the money is going to them and not the folks who actually create these products. I.E. Overhead = Huge salaries for management.
This reminds be back in the day of Sierra ... remember them anyone ... They came out with excellent games like Heroes Quest and Kings Quest, but they put out a statement of why they are not going to create adventure games because (and get this) they are not AS profitable as First Person shooters back then, yes they were profitable, yes they can be made and people bought them by the droves, but they cost more to make and they couldn't pocket as much money. They also disappeared entirely despite being a highly successful company because the founders sold it off (Ken Williams) to a rather shady company CUC followed by greedy scandals. Activision owns them now and they are looking to unload them.
At the same time there is now a game called Battle for Westnoth it is a cute fun game and it is far better then many turn based games of the 1990s each new version is creative and enhances the game and it is free ...
There will always be startups, people that have vision and they will take hold, unlike movies that a low budget film can cost 1 - 2 million to create games can be created for far less. Even pretty graphic games (check out Myst and the history there). Most computer game companies started in some basement some place by dedicated gamers that wanted to build a really great game and they did but then with the influx of money comes influx of investors wanting the next big thing and many companies fold at that point because it is hard to meet the demands of investors and customers at the same time (Well normally it takes 3 or 4 release of game duds for the company to get absorbed).
The article is right in that once you start to chase the money it ruins the vision, the game, and the success, ultimately that attitude ruins the company especially in a market that the barrier to enter is fairly low, yet once the founders leave pretty much anyone that takes over will care about the money/shareholders first, customers second and product third.
As for the price of games ... well if you are like me and you play them on the PC and you wait about 1 1/2 years after release you get for $35 the edition with all the add on packs, all the extras and fixes and it is worth the $35.
Are the extra periods a substitute for a point?
Please, oh Great Punctuator, tell us exactly what number of players does it take to go between "multiplayer" and "massively multiplayer". 100? 1,000? 10,000? 100,000?
The first MMO style games had less than 100 players online in a given server. They grew to hundreds, and even thousands in some cases. The vast majority of the time, games support even more than this, but they are doing it by breaking up the player population into tiny fractions (world servers, shards, etc). World of Warcraft might as well be called Worlds of Warcraft, given the segmentation of the game based on world servers.
Now my example of a game that had potential and traits of a "small scale MMO", Neverwinter Nights can support 75 players per server (as I said earlier). Each server can connect to other servers to create a large network of servers, where each could represent an area or a zone, just like is done in many MMO's. This has already been done in that community, in fact.
So enlighten us, what is the magic number where it goes from "multiplayer" to "massively multiplayer"?