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World of Goo Dev Wants Big Publishers To Build Indie Teams
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.'"
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?
Extra Credits make a compelling case
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/1923-Innovation
The results of these departments work would be the main product, since the main product is games. Creating smaller teams to work on new ideas rather than just have everyone making new Need For Speed/Sports titles would be pretty cool.
I'll admit I do enjoy a lot of the Need For Speed games, but seeing more slightly quirky original games would be great. EA already published stuff like Mirror's Edge, DeathSpank, and Brutal Legend (and probably more, but those are the ones I know about and enjoyed) in the last couple of years, all of which take a new direction on well established gaming concepts, but I'd like to see more of that kind of thing.
which is totally what she said
EA really didn't want Will Wright, Maxis and "The Sims" at first. He had to fight for it. Fortunately for teenage girls everywhere, it was a huge hit.
Spore would have been the next huge franchise, however EA got in the way and turned it into mush.
World of Goo could easily be a full franchise like The Sims, or Lemmings, but they're not going down that road, they want to innovate.
EA doesn't want to innovate, they just want "The Sims 4" now with extra add-on packs, so you can re-buy everything again.
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.
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.
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!"