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Sing it to Me One More Time
By Corvus | May 13, 2005
There’s a game out, Dungeon Lords, which hasn’t been receiving the best reactions from consumers. The developer claims that DL is “a new breed of epic Fantasy RPG, a unique combination of RPG and Fighter game action in full 3D” which means it’s another Enclave, Severance, Blade of Darkness, or Deathtrap Dungeon. I played a demo of DL, which is evidently an alpha of the game, so… nothing like releasing some bad press to try to get people to notice you, eh? Even putting the terrible animation, clunky controls, flickering graphics, and poor performance aside, it didn’t strike me as the sort of game I was going to rush out and buy. Many people; however, did rush out and buy it, only to be shocked at how bad the game is, or unfinished, or something. Frankly, I had stopped paying much attention. Then I found a link to this thread over at RPGDot. As you may remember, I don’t much care for the doom sayers who proclaim the death of PC gaming. So, of course, I followed that link and read the post in question and decided to offer a rebuttal to Plague.
I wanted to take a moment and talk about this movement on the forum that seems to largely consist of the end-user and customer sense of entitlement for those who bought Dungeon Lords. Please read on and see my 10 points below.
Customers are entitled to a fully baked game. Developers are not entitled to release shabby, incomplete titles that do not provide the experience they advertise. The bait and switch marketing approach is an old showman’s technique that need to be abolished from the art of making games.
You don’t know me but I used to make video games. Now I manage a large non-profit company in the healthcare industry here in North America. Why? I earn more money per year than I would earn in a decade making computer games and I actually have a great deal more time to play them.
Historically those of us in the industry in the late 80′s and early 90′s believed there was potential for making large amounts of money in games. Considering our costs for a few years we were able to do quite well with limited investment.
Thank you for letting us know where your priorities lie.
He then goes on to talk about his company’s history and how, in their pursuit of making more money, the quality of their games started to decline. I think the lesson there is pretty self evident. True, we need to make a living doing this, but if you really want to make games, living the life of a rock star seems more distracting than productive. He goes on to say:
Today I see a much safer distribution channel for console developers, much smaller costs and losses and a broader audience to consume what is developed. This hurts real badly. I can’t stand consoles and to me they represent the lowbrow, unsophisticated in the gaming world. The kind of player that wouldn’t appreciate Ultima Underworld or Dungeon Lords or a flight simulator and just as soon accept KarateKing on there Sanyo telephone while waiting in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
First off, the small costs claim is just silly. The figures I see that are being spent on console titles are pretty astronomical. With the release of the next generation of consoles with HD, they are about to get much worse. Then he mentions Ultima Underworld in the same breath as Dungeon Lords. Inexcusable! He’s also a console hater, which seems ignorant to me. There are plenty of titles on consoles worth examining, Pikmin, Wind Waker, Fable, GTA, Beyond Good and Evil, Katamari Damancy. All games that show you can release quality titles with depth of gameplay or story, on the console. Some of them, Katamari Damancy, were made on very low budgets indeed. Not because it was for a console, but because theeir focus was on gameplay, not graphics. To claim that consoles are the evil is to ignore all the PC market shovelware crap you find on the shelves of stores. It’s not consoles that are the problem, it’s the development/publishing model that developers have bought in to.
Now the meat:
There are a number of reasons why I think we’re going to be lucky to see PC games developed to a level we would like:
Business Indicators:
1. Major companies ultimately have a stake and control over what is made, how long it is made for and when they expect a return on their investment. The days when games were created, developed, distributed and maintained by a small group of clever, dedicated gamers are over (or hiding from the big companies).
Black Cat Games. Stendhal. Glest. Spiderweb Software. Of course these people are “hiding from the big companies” they want to focus on making quality games without the pressure of bloated budgets and publisher mandated deadlines. Black Cat Games are bringing their excellent Alien Swarm mod to HL2 and to retail. Again, PC development isn’t over. It’s going independent. Not to mention the big boys still developing for PC. Companies such as Blizzard and Bioware. I’m not disputing the first sentence of his claim. That’s very true. It’s just not the whole picture.
2. The cost of forming and providing for a staff capable of creating a PC video game with 40 hours of game play content, art, sound and something akin to clever coding is between $6 and $15 million dollars per year.
I’m going to ask my business partner to research that number. I suspect that it’s pretty spot, if not a bit low, on for companies that are affiliated with big publishers. I imagine it’s considerably less for independent studios.
3. The average lifecycle of a development project for a medium sized entertainment title is between 14 and 24 months. Scope, Quality, Cost and Time are all adjusted to fit the investor’s budgets. As the investors become larger and more profit oriented (we all do when we’re over 30) they constrain Cost and Time, which ultimately impacts Quality and Scope.
Again, the focus on money. We all become more profit oriented when we’re over 30? I didn’t. I become less willing to compromise after 30. Seeing the bitter, angry reactions to growing up of people like this man child kept my fire for life, art, and storytelling stoked and fueled.
4. After R&D, debts and interests, licenses and fees, publishing and distribution costs my company was lucky to see between $4 and $7 a copy for everyone’s hard work.
So change your distrobution model. Change your development model. Or… make such a great game that that it sells like gangbusters and $4 to &7 a copy is enough.
5. There are no major technology companies creating strong frameworks or “toolkit” technologies that can be used by smaller companies at low cost to decrease their time to market. Although making games is an inherently human process, licensing technologies saves a lot of time, but remains too costly for many small companies. We once hoped Microsoft would remedy this for the PC, instead they built the XBox and pretty much ensured the death of the PC games market. They’re a bunch of committed capitalists, God bless them!
Garage Games licenses their engine for for what, $100? Popcap and Three Rings have opened their source code and/or released free toolkits to developers. Studios, like the aforementioned Black Cat Games, use free, studio released, mod tools for Unreal Tournament and Half Life 2 to create professional titles. There are incredible support communities built up around those editing tools as well. Small companies such as Juniper Games use tools like the Wintermute engine. Add the open source programming language, Python, and Python tools such as PyGame, and you have a vast pool of free and affordable resources for independent game development. Turning a flawed… no, completely wrong premise into an excuse for capitalist bashing is not the best way to make your point.
6. Most of the management and leadership in the entertainment industry has never worked in technology outside entertainment and have no idea how to create good, quality technology on time. They may have experience in business or entertainment, but none that I have ever known have come from a technology company with any viable experience.
And we’re slaves to this system because… Why?
Compensation may be one thing stopping that move, but I think the mix of Hollywood and Media company ownership will ensure that the worst possible CEO and creative types remain in control of these “pet” divisions of their corporations. Great game designers usually make terrible business people. Great technologists often make disastrous business people. Ultimately there are far too many terrible, terrible business people in games and entertainment.
That’s changing. Again, Blizard, Bioware, Valve. Game designers are growing up.
7. Game prices have been fixed for a decade. While the price of cars, rent, food, gas, etc. has risen every few years the actual game sticker prices (other than f*ing Doom 3) have stayed the same. I attended a meeting in 1994 with marketing and consulting firms to discuss a change to the $39.99 price tag. Their market research indicated 90% of the market would not buy a game over $50. Nintendo and Sony can be blamed. Their death grip on the price of their titles, profit sharing plans and fixed license costs really forced the smaller American companies to fall in line.
So charging more for games would be the answer? How much money should one charge for a 20 hour visual gore fest with no discernable story, mediocre voice acting, and little to no replayability? $100? $200?
8. The traditional distribution channels such as EBGames, etc. have all been purchased by similarly large, profit driven corporations. They demand a very large cut of the sales in their stores. I once had a title go to market that took longer to negotiate with Electronics Boutique than develop and test. These leeches need to be tamed and while electronic distribution will kill them in the future, America’s bandwidth is generally so poor and costly (thanks to other large f*ing corporations) that it isn’t feasible to avoid them entirely.
Since he’s taking off the gloves and getting testy, I’ll reply in kind: Bull. Shit.
9. Game industry people are some of the cleverest people around, but their tight budgets, bad management and rush-rush-rush reality limits their ability to do anything with a focus on quality or reliability. The fact games run at all simply amazes me. Technologies and best practices simply aren’t invested in; employers don’t invest skill development in. Time and market pressures have convinced these now very large game companies that behaving like a real software development company is impossible. They must produce, publish, profit or die.
It’s true. There are many companies who suffer from this. There are many who don’t. Change is possible and I’m not talking about career change.
So I would really appreciate it if you would sit down, stop filling this forum with your uninformed, whiny, “sense of entitlement” and play this – or any other game that I HOPE, but fully doubt you purchased.
Now his true face is revealed. He bought the game. You probably didn’t buy the game. He was a game developer. You are just a consumer, and probably a lying, uneducated, thieving one at that. So sit down, eat whatever crap you’re lucky enough to have spent your $50 on, and shut up.
Bah. Plague, you know who is responsible for all those problem in the industry you mentioned? You are, my friend. It takes two to tango. A lack of respect for your community (i.e. the people who buy your games and weave them into stories), a focus on money and profit, and a pig headed sense of your own entitlement are the attitudes that have brought the industry to where it is today.
If you’re going to make money your master, you have no right to complain when it makes you its bitch.
I have two over arching points to make.
1) If the industry does not evolve, it will die. I don’t question that. I think to claim that the industry won’t evolve is misguided and foolish. As long as there are people who want to play games on the PC, there will be people making games for the the PC.
2) If I ever treat any of my community with the arrogance and lack of respect that this ex-game developer shows, I hope someone reminds me of this post and suggests I go manage a non-profit in the health care industry, because at that point I will no longer have the right to call myself a storyteller, much less a game designer. You have my permission to remind me of that at any point.
Tagged:Carnival, Social. | 6 Comments »
May 13th, 2005 at 8:06 am
Hrm, couldn’t get the trackback to do anything … but definately noted:
http://cathodetan.blogspot.com/2005/05/story-versus-profit.html
May 26th, 2005 at 9:54 pm
[...] gives should get a standing ovation for the defense of PC Gaming and independent PC Gaming here. Bravo, Corvus. Bravo. Guild Wars has enthralled me lately, but Ethic is right – the pathing and inst [...]
May 27th, 2005 at 8:32 am
A really excellent read, Corvus. I found it late, but I’m glad I found it.
I honestly believe that there will be a huge reaction to the immense costs of developing next-gen console games. If, say, a publisher had 20 million to spend on development, would they be foolish enough to risk everything on one console title or spread the risk over a number of less-costly PC titles. Of course, this argument assumes that publishers have the mentality to think like this
May 27th, 2005 at 10:26 am
Great article.
May 27th, 2005 at 11:14 am
Excellent Corvus, you made many good points. I am very intrigued by independent games like Gish, Mount & Blade, SAIS, Darwinia, etc., but is there a website devoted to promoting such games? The major game preview/review sites mention these only when major news breaks (like when they find a publisher), but they never seem to devote any continuing coverage to the games and their developers. I only seem to find information on indie games by reading vast amounts of blogs and through word of mouth. I don’t mind scouring the web to find cool games, but for the developers’ sake it would be nice to see these games mentioned a bit more.
April 30th, 2006 at 9:26 am
[...] Corvus gives should get a standing ovation for the defense of PC Gaming and independent PC Gaming here. Bravo, Corvus. Bravo. [...]