Constant flux of the biz

Hi there,

I am posting this as a post I read from RocketPoweredRodent on another thread "Australian games industry" made me think...

This industry is nearly 50 years old (ok.. you can argue about whether pong really can be considered the first video game, but we've come along way from the bedroom coder, hobbiest roots) and all the problems that have caused mass studio closures and walk-outs over the years are still lurking there, waiting to happen.
Every console iteration, every games street date missed, every blue-sky game idea design plan has the potential of taking down a small to medium sized games company. Even the fall-back plans I've seen companies make ("let's get into mobile gaming, it's lower risk"), can backfire. So with all this in mind I was wondering what people think are the 3 most important stabilizing events that need to happen for this industry to settle down and stop the boom-bust cycle currently prevalent throughout.

Here are my 3...

1) The management structure is wrong. (Not got a better one, but I know the current one has to be wrong, and needs sorting)
2) The relationship between hardware vendor/developer at the concept stage of a console needs to be sorted, so developers can begin to plan their tools/tech before the devkits first arrive
3) The workplace has to change. It's not just varied culture, varied sex & race that is needed in the industry, but varied working practices. Maybe if more programmers/artists were told to sit down and play through their current game, games wouldn't get to alpha and everyone say "That camera system's just so shite, I've been saying this for ages". I mostly see designers and QA people playing through games to see how the game plays, and they are in the worst position to fix anything about it. This is related to point 1), but I think this is more to do with schedules only accounting for modular design/implement/test phases, rather than a wholistic team appraisal of the entire look/feel of a game.

Just my thoughts..

Feel free to argue the toss, but I just cannot stand apathy.. this industry has far too much of that already!!

 

50 years old? How do you work that out? The first videogame I ever saw in my life was on a home built computer - the first computer I ever saw in fact. This was years before the first TV games (tennis, squash etc), and let me tell you mate I am NOT 50 years old!!!



However you raise an interesting question, I have pondered this myself. What will change? I imagine that this process of absorption of small entities into large corporations will continue until there are several big guys battling it out for market share. Any uniquely hot talent that pops up will be approached for acquisition with hefty sums on the table.

When I first started in this industry, it was perfectly normal for a bunch of cool guys who were fed up with the BS to organize a deal with a publisher behind the companies back, quit, and make the games from their bedroom until they had a real company going in an office etc. In fact, I did exactly this.

But now I cannot imagine in a million years doing it. Who the f__k would give you a project? HOW could you do it?

Like you say you have to start on mobiles etc - but many of the guys I know who did this are STILL doing mobiles several years later and are regarded as a different industry basically.

Some other possibilities to the ones you pose that come to mind :

The trend in games may change. Instead of doing these massive 3 year epic projects, we might be doing something else. I cannot imagine this really as now the public demands these huge products that we make.

New technology could be invented which just blows the whole console thing away.

At the end of the day, this is a business and if it becomes too risky to make games, the big money will go elsewhere. If you have to now invest 20 million into a single game and wait three years for what might be a total flop, this is a risky business.

This in itself will create change. I personally do not plan to stick around long enough to find out.

 

I think you hit upon the biggest thing: spreading around risk. The publisher model does this to some degree, but going forward we need to be smarter about spreading around the risk of a miss (and most of them are) in exchange for a smaller reward when we get a hit.

Similarly, the big publishers have to get smarter about retaining (and even improving) the independent corporate culture of their acquisitions, lest they continue to get ground down into nothingness and tossed away like so many disposable dreams. They have the umbrella security the first group lacks, but a lot of them lack or lose the autonomy to do the sorts of things that would make great gaming. Bungee jumping ship from Microsoft should have been a huge wakeup call to everyone.

And, of course, we need to rein back our funding ambitions so that we have capital to absorb losses. I've seen far, far too many studios surviving from game to game (or milestone paycheck to milestone paycheck). Counting on invisible royalty checks to stay afloat once "this last greatest hit is released," nearly all of them have folded.

And there needs to be a mechanism to vote bad managers off of the island. A single bad manager can wreak havoc with an entire project.

 

One thing which has to change is all the redudant work everybody is making. Studios are using middleware and full blown engines more than was common in the past, but I think this needs to progress even further. If you'd have a couple of really kick ass, feature rich and super well design engines with sane licenses I think a lot of the risks could be migrated. This goes for middleware in general. As of now I think a lot of it is to poorly designed and to inflexible. There's certainly good stuff out there, but often less than enough time seems to have been spent thinking about diffrent potential use cases.

Another big flaw associated with the same subject is that documentation seems to be an afterthought that is often written by the programmer that created the code, or atleast someone who is very much in the know. This is something I really think should change. Naturaly all code that is written by yourself needs to have less comments and will need to have clarification at diffrent areas than the intended client.

This is naturaly coming from a programmers pov

 

I have to agree with the following:

1. Our production model is outdated and is too risky for all involved.

2. Management actually needs to manage. "Crunch times", unrealistic milestones, and missed deadlines are unacceptable.

3. Everyone involved in these games needs to know the game inside and out. It's ridiculous that the people who have the smallest voice, QA, are the only ones who can realistically compare what has been made with what is currently available to the market.

Unfortunately for us, I believe that the points I listed are codependent and cannot be attacked one at a time. What gives me hope is that the best in the business, on both the hardware and the software side, have given us a great set of guidelines to build off of in respect to resolving the first. And hopefully this can help us gain some headway with the other two.

The Blizzards, the Rockstars, and the Maxises have shown us that the most profitable model, for everyone, is to turn your game into a brand and cultivate it over time. A lot of developers cringe at the thought of this because they see game franchises and sequels as a way to homogenize the industry. IMO, they are fools!! World of Warcraft, GTA: San Andreas, and The Sims are shining examples of what can be created when the will and money are there.

The hardware manufacturers have given us platforms to grow our brands. Sony and Microsoft have the PSN and XBLA - the perfect places to start out a game idea and build what I like to envision as "game developer credit" with investors. In between that and the Next-gen consoles you have the lower cost entry points of the Wii, last-gen consoles and the handhelds. We need to start making better use of these outlets.

I own a retail business and when I try to compare that to my work in games it makes the latter seem like its in a fantasy land. I cant just go to a bunch of investors and say I want to compete directly with Walmart on the global scale. They are going to want to see proof of my product competing on the local scale, state scale, and national scale before we can even talk about global. I think this is one of gaming's biggest flaws. Too many games are trying to jump to the $60 next-gen title without going through the trials and tribulations that are necessary.

 

My current boss and I usually commute together and he told me once a phrase which make me think about this. He spent 10 years in bussiness programming and system administrator before moving to the game industry, and he explained me what were his philosophy when he entered the industry (5 years ago):

The way he manages the team mirrors that objective. His first priority is not to burn out the team, then to deliver the best game possible. I think that he accomplishes that because he is always taking preventive measures so we have never* had a unreallistic schedule. The other team in my company doesn't have this priority order, their priority seems to be to deliver the best technology and demos they can, so they stay late quite frequently (almost every milestone or new critical change to the code), surprise work trips, and the like. Probably, there is people out there would like that kind of work, but after you hit 30 I think (I cannot say because I'm 24) you began to prefer the calm over the storm.

I think the industry begins to understand that. With studios like Relentless which say they never crunch. I am sure passion helps making amazing games but, at least in my field (programming), expertise is tremendously helpful too. Why take the hard way if we can avoid the known pitfalls?

*: In fact, we had once, for upper instances preasure, and each item on this schedule has given a tremendous ammount of trouble during the project.

 

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