Looking around The Witchery during the pre-conference dinner at the Edinburgh International Games Festival, it really sunk home for me how far computer gaming has come since the days when game makers like Steve Russell or Richard Garriott were hacking. I was well aware of the financial strength of game companies like EA, Sony, and Nintendo, but I had not fully understood what that kind of size meant for the culture in which games are created.
Presentations at the conference like "Hollywood Model- Come On Up!" and "Videogames Are The New Rock'n'Roll" underlined that games are increasingly being integrated into the larger entertainment industry. The latter talk, by Steve Schnur of EA, stressed how major artists were providing tracks for EA games, and EA was also providing a new platform for introducing and selling new recording artists to the public. Long gone are the days of this kind of thing (more here), which were a separate genre of weird and wonderful music. (Which made great grist for musical analysis by musicologists like Robert Bowen.)
Envelopment by Hollywood is perhaps inevitable for the mainstream games industry. With the cost of MMOGs, it's no surprise that new virtual worlds are increasingly tied into other licensed IP. But what's lost in the transition to the Hollywood model? Aleks Krotoski has posted some thoughts, and Justin Hall and Greg Costikyan had some similar thoughts a while ago.
Perhaps the problem is that large-scale capital is required to produce games with the state-of-the-art technical snazziness? Is the answer to that problems simply the promotion of creative auteurs, who are given the freedom and control to direct large teams, sell games with their names, and take creative responsibility? Or if you're looking for true originality in games in the future, are you be better off heading over to the lower-tech, more independent offerings you'll find listed on Jay Bibby's blog or the MUD Connector?
Update (thanks, Phin!): A Good NYT article on the subject:
Movie producers are often criticized for running at the sight of original ideas, preferring instead to milk plays, books, news events, toys and even video games for their screenplays. Now the video game industry is returning the favor, and then some. Seeking to establish the medium as a mass market form of entertainment instead of a niche technology, the game industry has taken the playbook of the movie business. The results have been movie-based games, Hollywood-quality special effects, professionally composed soundtracks, celebrity voices--and even Hollywood-style economic problems, including ballooning budgets and a greater reliance on monster hits.
Or head on over to Second Life! We had a game design competition that was a lot of fun and created some great games. For me, a significant driver in the decision to leave game development in order to help build Linden Lab was the escalating costs of game development. The idea that a generalized environment could empower garage developers completely intrigued me 4 years ago and continues to do so today.
I think that the movie comparison is interesting. For movies, technology has driven down the cost of making a movie. Today, several thousand dollars get you enough digital equipment to make a movie of startling quality and one only need watch a few versions of Star">http://www.jedimaster.net/swk_videos.htm”">Star Wars Kid to see how good amateur effects can be. For the movie industry, independent films provide a source of original ideas and bench strength.
Game development, on the other hand, just gets more expensive as technology improves.
Posted by: Cory Ondrejka | Aug 19, 2004 at 16:55
I'd make an optimistic argument. The only reason a Hollywood model might fit for games is because there is a very high demand for very, very "good" games, where "good" is understood to mean "the most appealing things that money can buy." In the Hollywood model, aesthetics are left to take care of themselves, and they do (witness Blair Witch, Tarantino, Fahrenheit 9/11, [insert your favorite European or Asian film here]). Meanwhile, the raw taste for big, beautiful explosions, ocean liners splitting at sea, and mass charges by mounted armies, is expressed in the demand for high-budget films. If Hollywood-ism creeps into games, I don't think we will see fewer quality games in absolute terms (although their relative share will sink). Rather, we will see more and more insanely expensive-to-make titles. Perhaps there's a demand for that. All in all, it would be a good thing.
Posted by: Edward Castronova | Aug 19, 2004 at 22:19
Ted - Rather, we will see more and more insanely expensive-to-make titles. Perhaps there's a demand for that. All in all, it would be a good thing.
Really? But doesn't this lead to consolidation, hyper risk aversion and homogeneity? Insanely expensive-to-make means EA, Sony and Nintendo, plus a few others like NCSoft in the online space. Other than Nintendo -- who combines gameplay innovation with rock solid, established characters -- we don't see a lot of new gameplay ideas coming out of EA and Sony.
Obviously, cell phones, other portables and flash games are the disruptive technology and provide opportunities for new ideas, but if E3 continues the trend of the last few years, I think that high end games are going to be a lot less interesting.
Posted by: Cory Ondrejka | Aug 20, 2004 at 00:26
The problem stems back to writing code and drawing graphics. Sure making films is cheaper because digital cameras have dropped in price. PCs are also cheaper, but each new game requires a shed load of development work. As each game takes so long to create, the consumer expectation is that the next game will look, sound and play better than the previous one. Whereas the difference between Rocky I and II was just plot and different opponents.
The cost of games is a factor of team size, licensing fees (all those Hollywood actor's voices- eg Grand Theft Auto had Ray Liota, Deborah Harry, Jenna Jameson (porn star) and others) and other factors eg THX for games. Also, every year or two Microsoft bring out new features in their software, manufacturers add new effects to video cards and the old software can't be reused to any great deal. A state of the art game five years ago now looks as crisp as 3 day old lettuce.
Writing software is still like house building- you have to do it brick by brick and in the games industry, its no longer kennels that get built but bigger and bigger skyscrapers.
Its no wonder publishers prefer sequels to original ideas.
Posted by: David Bolton | Aug 20, 2004 at 02:40
I think “The Hollywood Model” means many things. Some seem very applicable to games, some less so.
If we look at the gross structure of the industry, then hollywoodisation does seem to be upon us. What I mean by this is:
The movie business is basically about managing fairly large chunks of capital though rationalising creative risk taking – other risks and costs are reduced as much as possible. Structurally this means that one gets vertical integration of the value chain i.e. single organisations own or at least control – finance, production, distribution and in some case display (i.e. movie theatres). This both allows costs to be cut as margin is centralised and allows greater control.
Raw talent – be it on screen or technical operates across this, though as Seamus Blackley (now a ‘Hollywood agent’ with CAA) explained there is a vast social network and set of seemingly informal processes such as the ‘meet and greet’ that are in place to control this too.
Now the games industry does seem to be taking some of this on. Publishers seem to be taking control even financial management techniques such as completion bonding are being used. Neil Young of EA's Maxis Studio talked about creating a structure within EA which managed risk in a movie type way (note he did seem to suggest that EA was too creatively risk averse at this point and the structure that he wanted to use was a creative unit system where up to 5 people could go create and then large teams could be added to the ideas that took off).
But
There are a few issues. If we compare the revenue profiles of shrink wrapped games vs movies – they are very different. Many shrink wrapped games rely on the Christmas shopping window, there is now ‘classic’ market (especially in the UK) that is softening the emergency stop of revenue but that’s pretty much it. If you look at film, box office first release is typically only about one third of the revenue, following this there is pay per view, video / DVD, broadcast tv etc., some money flows for years.
From a business modelling perspective, this is a very good thing, especially as it allows for long term portfolio planning as once you have started, at least some revenue, is almost guaranteed (and predictable as first weekend is a fairly good predictor of 5 year revenue).
MMOs kind of address this through subscription revenues, but the problem is that with a film you put your money in up front (I’m including first release PR and distribution here) then its pretty much just small PR and format distribution costs to go. With MMO you keep pumping money into it.
Shrink wrapped have similar issues – and no, sequels don’t address this as they have huge upfront costs.
What might address the cost / risk / revenue issue is changing the revenue model i.e. episodic titles; this will require a consumer mind shift, but looking at the numbers, it might just have to happen.
Another issue with the Hollywood structure is that reducing financial risk through centralisation of margin actually means that the publisher takes all the profit and everyone else (other than the fabled auteur) ends up as an artisan. This is very bad for a creative industry – to put my UK hat on for a moment, very bad for our games industry which used to have a very healthy balance of trade with the US but now seems to be turning into a code sweatshops.
Lastly, is this bad for creativity? Possibly but not necessarily. Bankable titles that might not inspire are inevitable, but there is room in the process for inspiration.
To me this was summed up at the game screenings on the last day of the festival. I sat through a demonstration of the movie-tie-in game The Incredibles – what I saw was so appallingly bad that it didn’t depress me it actually made me angry that people would be encouraged to buy this waste of HDD space on the back of what looks like a pretty good movie.
But, oh but… I also saw LEGO Star Wars which looked like the best fun of a video game I have seen in a decade. Created Giant Interactive Entertainment / Traveller's Tales LEGO Star Wars looked amazing and was jam packed with fun including features such as ‘drop in’ where a second player can just pick up a controller and drop into the game at any point (perfect for parents that want to join in with their kids).
There is hope.
Posted by: ren | Aug 20, 2004 at 04:47
Seems like there are two reasons for hope, both centered on niche play:
1.) the technical-barrier-to-entry to create a basic niche games is dropping...
2.) players tend to be sticky: if they fall into a niche they like, they will stick with it for a long time.
Posted by: Nathan Combs | Aug 20, 2004 at 07:01
Cory Ondrejka>Game development, on the other hand, just gets more expensive as technology improves.
This is a temporary thing.
Games only get more expensive because the target platform is a moving target. Tools, engines, libraries, art assets -- all are pretty much thrown out for the next project. As such, third party tools and components don't have the kind of shelf-life that would allow their technology to become commoditized.
Frankly, I see this changing. Now that the highest end hardware can just about handle any game logic you throw at it - a crossplatform API becomes plausible. With such an API, the individual platform can determine level-of-detail (of animations, textures, model complexity, effects, sound sampling, etc) depending on the capabilities of the end-user hardware -- while the core game experience stays roughly the same.
The standard APIs beget standard file formats, and industry standards - and suddenly all sorts of things become more plausible. Art asset reuse, script reuse, etc. Tools can become commoditized the way digital film editing suites are largely commoditized.
The industry will start to look more like music - where the primary difference between the indie and the professional, is the level of commercial polish, marketing, and distribution.
Posted by: weasel | Aug 20, 2004 at 08:04
.. agreed, games do not get more expensive to make as the tools improve, so much as the IP for those tools is increasingly guarded. we at selectparks made a title with expensive proprietary middleware, only to find later that several open standard renderers made shorter work and were more extensible with other libraries. this sent us on a total shift to open source entirely. however, larger companies can afford to reinvent the wheel (like writing yet another collision library, or yet another wheel) just to own the IP on that product. producers like tools to be expensive so there is a substantial dependence for financing to outlay production costs, which is a secondary means of inheriting IP for the game itself.
ironically, given the wealth of excellent open source alternatives out there (many of which i use) it is nearly impossible to make a small game with a small team. there is no legal context for small teams anymore, no publishing pipeline either. remember Prince of Persia? that was a father and son game development studio, and one of the more influential games by historical corollary.
more about this in this Digital Arts and Culture Conf Paper, Developers in Exile.
julian
Posted by: julian | Aug 23, 2004 at 07:40
.. agreed, games do not get more expensive to make as the tools improve, so much as the IP for those tools does.
we at selectparks made a title with expensive proprietary middleware, only to find later that several open standard renderers made shorter work and were more extensible with other libraries. this sent us on a total shift to open source entirely. however, larger companies can afford to reinvent the wheel (like writing yet another collision library, or yet another wheel) just to own the IP on that product. producers like tools to be expensive so there is a substantial dependence for financing to outlay production costs, which is a secondary means of inheriting IP for the game itself.
ironically, given the wealth of excellent open source alternatives out there (many of which i use) it is nearly impossible to make a small game with a small team. there is no legal context for small teams anymore, no publishing pipeline either. remember Prince of Persia? that was a father and son game development studio, and one of the more influential games by historical corollary.
more about this in this Digital Arts and Culture Conf Paper, Developers in Exile.
julian
Posted by: julian | Aug 23, 2004 at 07:43
What I find interesting about all this is that everyone is myopically focused on computer games.
I've been infected with a severe case of retro-ittis and am working with a game designer to produce a new board game.
I'm steering away from computer games, in part because I don't like anything I see at the store. It's all based on something else, which was an evolution of a third thing, which got it's main idea from something else, and I've played all of them to death 10 or 15 years ago.
I think the combination of risk aversion and youth marketeering has really made for a boring landscape of new computer game releases.
JHL
Posted by: Jeff Lotton | Aug 23, 2004 at 15:25
Jeff> ...myopically focused on computer games... working with a game designer to produce a new board game.
Perhaps. E.g. What title today can compete for sheer inventiveness with "Devil Bunny Needs a Ham" or "Unexploded Cow"?
http://www.cheapass.com/products/index.html
And I've heard Settlers of Catan is really great.
Posted by: greglas | Aug 23, 2004 at 15:38
Related article on cnet:
http://news.com.com/Video+game+makers+go+Hollywood.+Uh-oh/2100-1043_3-5319984.html?tag=cd.top
--Phin
Posted by: Paul "Phinehas" Schwanz | Aug 24, 2004 at 14:29
Another one here:
http://www.iht.com/articles/535549.html
JHL
Posted by: Jeff Lotton | Aug 25, 2004 at 14:47