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World of Goo Dev Wants Big Publishers To Build Indie Teams

Posted by Soulskill on from the and-a-pony dept.

Ron Carmel, co-founder of game developer 2D Boy, which created the indie hit World of Goo, gave a speech at Montreal International Games Summit in which he encourages large game publishers to put more time and money into smaller, indie-like teams. Quoting GameSetWatch: "'We need a medium-sized design studio. Something that is larger than a typical indie, but has the same propensity for of talent density, focus, and risk-taking,' said Carmel, formerly an employee of major publisher Electronic Arts prior to going independent. Notably, a focus on profit must be eliminated from the equation. 'Creating this within a major developer doesn't present a problem,' said Carmel. With a budget of $1-$2 million dollars, 10 staffers could be hired to work on 'creatively ambitious and forward-thinking projects.' He likened it to the automobile industry, which alongside its mainstream consumer products works on concept cars — few of which enter production as regular models. The concept car is, said Carmel, 'a marketing expense to build your brand, and say, "Look at all the amazing things we're creating."' It also helps with recruitment. Said Carmel, 'there's no reason the larger game companies can't do that.' He also said that developers must move away from the notion that a team comprised primarily of programmers and artists can create a great work. Why do Valve's games have such amazing environments? Because, said Carmel, 'Valve has architects on staff.'"

14 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. innovation? by lanswitch · · Score: 2, Insightful

    EA just reinvented the R&D department.

    1. Re:innovation? by ciderbrew · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's the main problem. He is calling for an R&D department; but it's all outsoruced to smaller companies. How do you bring all that together to help the main product?

  2. No, moron. by unity100 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    what this guy asks, was the thing which turned gaming from an innovative field into a mass manufactory of profits for shareholders' sake, and ushered in the "SequelToGreatGame XVIII" era. and the rehash concepts.

    if money is put to indie teams, those indie teams will get turned into just other manufactories for profit. and when they dont profit enough they will be shut down as divisions.

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    Read radical news here
    1. Re:No, moron. by ikkonoishi · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The company doesn't invest in an existing indie game team. It creates a indie-like team with more of a focus on innovation than commercialization to serve as a foundation for new series, and gameplay paradigms.

    2. Re:No, moron. by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      if money is put to indie teams, those indie teams will get turned into just other manufactories for profit. and when they dont profit enough they will be shut down as divisions.

      And then more money can be put into a new indie team - and the cycle repeats - Thats what he's saying.

      The World of Goo dev isn't entirely against the big factory type churn out profits game development - he understands that it isn't going away.

      All he's saying is that this small change in the structure will keep the gaming scene fresh - we won't get stagnated by Halo:umpteenmillion or Call of Duty over 9000. If they took a small amount of money that they spend on the bigger titles to help support the smaller shops, they essentially have an R&D Department that can give them a new product to manufacture when the big titles no longer sell.

    3. Re:No, moron. by Aggrav8d · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What the industry has done for many years is buy a promising young studio and grind it into a fine paste. OP is proposing they create an environment in which innovation can flourish and design is paramount. Baby Apples and baby Valves. That environment is, by definition(?), a *rich* environment - that is to say free of the distraction of the bottom line. On the one hand they're killing the golden goose they just stumbled across. On the other they run a farm to raise geese and hope one of them starts laying golden eggs, too.

  3. And what has he done lately? by Rogerborg · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Word of Goo was amazing, but the thing about small budget games is that you have to keep making them. You can't retire from your one hit wonder, although apparently you can segue into becoming an industry analyst.

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    If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
    1. Re:And what has he done lately? by zwei2stein · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Unless you make millions from just selling alpha version access...

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      -- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
    2. Re:And what has he done lately? by King_TJ · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And how often do we expect a team of 2 people to crank out hit games?

      World of Goo may have been a "1 hit wonder" that people can't expect to retire off the earnings of .... but I don't think it's fair to try to lessen the value of what they've said/done by complaining that they haven't released more great games already?

      Among other things, I really appreciated the fact that they did both a Mac and a PC version of World of Goo. I spend most of my time on a Mac these days, and it's still disappointing how often a good game title never gets a Mac port. You'd think a developer would realize that to boost sales of a game they spent (presumably) years working on, it's easier to just recompile the code for OS X and get it running well on there than to come up with a whole new idea and crank out another whole game. Mac users may only be 10-20% of the overall market (depending on which stats you use), but they're far more likely to buy YOUR game title you release for OS X than the typical Windows user is! They've got far less to choose from AND they tend to be more affluent and willing to pay for software.

    3. Re:And what has he done lately? by blahplusplus · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The games industry *IS* a hit driven business though, lets face it. In our youth we rented all the average games and only bought *the best*. The game industry model is a harsh one.

    4. Re:And what has he done lately? by Herkum01 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes, yes, yes we have heard it all before, why not compile games for Mac, it must be EASY! I tell you what, why use a Mac when all the programs are available on Windows? I am sure that the Photoshop is the same on Windows as it is on Mac, right? That is an easy decision just use Windows instead!

      ***End Sarcasm***

      If it were as easy as you make it sound, every 2 man operation would be making versions for Mac and Windows. The fact of the matter is that it is hard, and not necessarily productive. Sometimes you are going to acknowledge the truth, if you want to play those games, you are going to have to use the platform they picked because they cannot cater to everyone.

    5. Re:And what has he done lately? by VortexCortex · · Score: 2, Insightful

      it may make more sense to use one of the aforementioned API's

      This is exactly what 2DBoy did.
      They used existing cross platform libraries (and their APIs) such as SDL & Open Dynamics Engine. This allowed them an easy path to distribution on Mac, Windows, Linux & Wii...

      Therefore: It may also make sense to just use cross platform libraries or complete Engines such as Ogre3D and Unreal, foregoing the vendor lock-in provided by Microsoft.

    6. Re:And what has he done lately? by VortexCortex · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Stop spreading the "Cross-Platform is hard" FUD.

      It is hard when you start off writing the game using a system designed around vendor lock in... why wouldn't it be?

      It's NOT hard when you start off using a cross platform tool chain... In fact, it's dead simple.

      My exact same code compiles on Mac, Linux and Windows using Ogre3D or SDL (what 2DBoy used).

      The reason that Mac & Linux don't have Windows games is because the games were designed as Windows games instead of cross platform games.

      Thus I must reiterate:

      You CAN just recompile the code if cross platform support was planned from the beginning.

      P.S. I just love it when someone who is ignorant of the process tells me how hard it is to do the simple process.

      "Of course it's difficult to operate an internal combustion engine, or else we wouldn't all be using steam engines!"

  4. Re:In other news--- by nedlohs · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes, sometimes you actually have to do something you don't "enjoy" before you get to do the stuff you do enjoy.

    I'm pretty sure most small business owners don't enjoy huge junks of the work they need to do to get their business running and then keep it running.