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What Happens When Gaming Auteurs Try To Go It Alone?
An anonymous reader writes: As news that Cliff Bleszkinski, Epic Games' legendary former creative, sets off to found his own studio, a new article takes a look at how six other gaming auteurs have fared after leaving a major developer or publisher to go it alone. The results, surprisingly, are mixed: while some, such as Double Fine's Tim Schafer, have gone on to far greater success, it doesn't always work out that way: just look at John Romero's Daikatana. The article also makes a good point that Peter Molyneux is striking out with a start-up for the third in his career now, but it may not be third time the charm: Godus has been far less well received than Black & White or Fable. Can Cliffy B avoid making the same mistakes?
That's probably because we don't see the aloof emo hero who in between fighting off a plethora of barely legal teen girl love interests, has hour long mid-combat philosophical debates with his enemies as being particularly appealing. Most of us find this just plain stupid.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Why is that surprising?
Table-ized A.I.
Daikatana failed because it sucked, and was three years late.
Romero's skills were GROSSLY oversold
The game was GROSSLY overhyped.
And they burned through an obscene amount of money trying to be a "rockstar" studio (spending lavishly on facilities and trinkets, rather than putting the money where it belonged, in the game.
On top of that, the studio couldn't deliver titles on time to save their lives and was basically had all the makings of a terrible reality TV show with constant infighting, turmoil, etc, etc.
Basically the only thing Ion Storm did RIGHT was to found their Austin office (which kept its nose clean of all the bullshit coming and going from the main Dallas office). Ion Storm Austin actually gained a rep for producing solid work.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
...pay enough attention to game design to consistently produce quality games. Not that they can't, mind you, but it seems pretty clear to me that game devs tend to have their attention split between designing a game's mechanics and appealing to a broad audience. You end up with a game that isn't too far afield of what you tend to see these days, but that tries to compensate by having gameplay features designed to be marketed as 'innovative' and conducive to creative and emergent gameplay. A good example is Watch Dogs, marketed as a game centered around hacking but designed as a GTA clone with a hacking gimmick.
Games are an awkward state of limbo these days, publishers know they have to start pushing out the impression of creativity and devs try to figure out how to do that without alienating the average player. The mentality sticks, and developers everywhere end up glossing over technical details, focusing instead on the impression a game will make.
That is not telling the complete picture. I had dinner with Romero a few years back at one E3 and specifically asked him "Why did Daikatana fail?" not knowing how that would go.
He said 2 reasons:
* Hired people in the wrong order. He said you need to hire your most experienced people *first*.
* He messed up.
The design was only part of the problem.
The results, surprisingly, are mixed: while some, such as Double Fine's Tim Schafer, have gone on to far greater success, it doesn't always work out that way
This might be a surprise to people who know nothing about startups or business but it should not be to anyone else. Here's the reality: Startups often fail. In fact, the overwhelming majority of startups fail. Being an "auteur" may improve the odds of a soft landing significantly but it does not remotely guarantee success because there is no way to guarantee success.
The reasons for failure are many including poor business skills (there is more to running a company than running a project) and unconstrained egos. The usual bad luck and mayhem that sink projects can also sink companies that only have one project.
the concept of auteur was developed in the context of film, but the idea extends obviously to games if you have half a brain and aren't totally ignorant.
see, with books and plays, it's pretty obvious that the author or playwright is the person who deserves the credit. with music, it was the composer. and so on. films were different. by analogy with plays, maybe the screenwriter should deserve the credit; but the script doesn't really determine the movie, does it? the big name actor matters more than the screenwriter, for better or worse. so who deserves the credit? after a lot of to and fro, the French determined that the director is the person who matters. this is, pretentiously, called 'auteur theory'.
it's exactly analogous with games. if anything, the persons described in the summary are even more auteurs than directors are, since the division of labor is even less distinct. they are the movers and shakers; the ones with vision (or, perhaps in the case of Romero, the charlatans who have masqueraded as such).
in short, you're an overly literal fuckwit with no real insight.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky