On The Business Of Developing Successful Games 29
Thanks to InsertCredit for their article covering a recent game-related lecture at an Entertainment Law and Business conference. One of the more interesting discussions covered is how game companies should develop their games. A representative from Electronic Arts indicated they do "...most of their work in-house these days. This increases consistency, but he admits that this method can put something of a damper on creativity. So they've got what they call EAPs (Electronic Arts Properties), wherein they work with/invest in games made by other companies, and then distribute them as their own." On the other hand, an Activision executive claims that "...developers prefer to be left to their own devices, counter-culture individuals that they are. So Activision prefers to purchase them entirely, allowing them to exist undisturbed. He says that in this way, they can develop the games they want to develop, and not have to deal with any of the bureaucracy." But which approach really creates the best games?
So EA is responsible for the lack of creativity? (Score:1, Insightful)
What's your definition of "best"? (Score:5, Insightful)
It depends on your definition of what the "best" game is:
Is a successful game one which is creatively successful or one which is financially successful?
For every ten games (and I'm being generous) that try to push the envelope, creatively, only one succeeds. Even with a creative success, in the vast majority of cases, it is critically successful but doesn't pay the bills well enough to keep the developer in business, especially when the next couple of "creative" ideas don't pay off well and sink what profits were made.
EA makes its money the same way the movie industry does. It produces to a formula that it knows will make it a consistent small profit. It may not be creative but, ten years down the line, they'll still be in business while most create houses won't be.
What about companies like Origin or Blizzard? Origin got bought out by EA and how many of the original creative types are still there? Blizzard became such a hammered part of the Vivendi Universal empire that most of the original senior people left earlier this year (World Of Warcraft may be an old style Blizzard creative success but will it remain so after years of having to appease VU's moneymen?).
Sadly, safe but boring, not original but risky, is what keeps games companies in business - and the ones that recognise that (like EA) can always just buy the few who make it anyway (like Westwood and Origin). Yes, there are a few ids but there are much bigger EAs.
Re:An answer... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, makes a good case for the opposite to be true....
which one is better? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:EA is dangerous (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a big EA fan, particularly since my preferred console (out of the three I current use) is the Xbox where they refuse to play ball with Xbox Live. That being said, they manage to put out titles like SSX3 (improved immensely over its predecessors), Madden (even the hardcore football gamers are hard-pressed to declare an absolute winner between Madden and ESPN/2kX), LOTR: TT and ROTK, Need For Speed Underground, NBA Street, The Sims, SimCity...
Whether you like their approach or not, EA does put out good games. Great marketing or not, if the games weren't there they wouldn't be making money.
As for your title claiming EA is "dangerous": Get some perspective. Videogames are a hobby and not a life-or-death situation. Further, even if you were to assign videogames more importance than they deserve, EA (unlike Microsoft, for example) has plenty of competition out there and we're in NO danger of EA controlling all videogaming.
Depends on who they are working with (Score:4, Insightful)
As one of the recipients of the "buy and then leave alone" method (for Day of Defeat [dayofdefeat.com]) I'm personally a fan of that method. DoD's creative side is still "owned" by the same team that made it to start with, but that same team doesn't have to worry too much about owning marketing, product release issues, E3 booking, etc. etc. etc. They get to stick to making the game, which is what they do best.
Re:EA is dangerous (Score:2, Insightful)
You claim that the only reason Battlefield 1942 "stays alive" is because EA markets it well. Do you actually believe that? In this age where you can get dozens of opinions of a product from the Internet at a moment's notice, do you actually believe people are buying Battlefield 1942 just because they see some ads for it? Why are Battlefield 1942 quite popular then? Wouldn't people abandon the game once they realized that it wasn't good?
Your argument is flawed. I could continue but this should be enough.
Storytelling (Score:3, Insightful)
I can only hope that this wasn't listed by order of importance.
Storytelling is a prime reason people make and buy games, and I would rather see this improved than overly-drawn-out cinematics that take up space on the disk that could be used to make the engine and AI better.
This truly doesn't seem encouraging (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem lies in the 3 steps back the games took in complexity, technicallity and everything else that requires the gamer to actually use his brain. For me at least that spells L-E-S-S-F-U-N.
What's happening today is a collective takeover by large corps over many successful indipendant game makers, game makers who didn't make mass money but made very good games, at least as I, not an arcade gamer, am concerned. Said corps couldn't care less about me, as I'm not where the big money lies. The big money lies in pointa-clicka-no-thinka couch-potato arcade games, aka console games.
While earlier the arcade market co-existed with the more sophisticated PC game market, the big producers are all for buying out every last successful PC brand and its developer, and riding that brand into yet-another-dumbed-down-arcade-title. And since they're wielding the heavy paychecks, there's no way to resist them (other than to cause the vast majority of consumers to stop buying consoles, which doesn't seem like it's going to happen anytime soon).
I was outrages by Might and Magic 9. A wonderful technical hack-and-slash game that successfully earned its bread for 15 years.
I was saddened by Heroes of Might and Magic 4, which looked like HOMM3 only without half the widgets.
I was frustrated at Ion Storm having sold out to a
Unreal 2 wasn't even a game. It was an engine demo. Again, someone who wants money trying to call his product a "game". Wolf in sheep's clothing.
And the list goes on. Black Isle went under, and with it all hopes for not only technical, but sophisticated, well-made RPG's like Torment or the first two Fallouts.
Freelancer could have been a wonderful technical game, but some design decisions to dumb it down (not being able to take more than 1 mission at a time, forcing the plot on you _before_ you could explore the world), killed the game.
Since Deus Ex 2, I really can't name one _good_ sophisticated game that hit the market. I can name a lot of glamorous-graphics ones like Max Payne II, but sophisticated? Zilch. Nada. Not a single one.
And reading the article above lays my suspicions out clearly: people with my expectation of a game are a dying breed, and 'good' sophisticated games - From Star Control 2, to Ultima 7, to Privateer and to Deus Ex 1 - won't be around no more.
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust.
Re:This truly doesn't seem encouraging (Score:1, Insightful)
Many PC gamers wrongly attribute the complexity of games with their depth, which is simple not the case. They want a bunch of numbers and widgets and useless baroque complexity (witness, 99% of the complaints about Deus Ex 2) to make them feel smart and justify what they're doing as something more productive and educational than merely "playing a game" - as if that's something one should feel ashamed of. As if a game that's simple to learn, and that might just induce a few non-videogamers to try one out, is a bad thing.
Look no further than the ancient game of GO for a model of elegant simplicity. Widgets can rot for all I care.