When Game Development Goes Bad 30
Thanks to Boomtown for its article discussing an insight into the failure of a game developer, in this case developer Escape Factory. The post-mortem styled interview touches on problems with engine licensing ("We had no PS2 experience whatsoever, which is why we chose to use the Unreal engine, lured by its promise of PS2 compatibility. Unfortunately, that compatibility ended later in the process"), as well as how developers present themselves to publishers ("We thought it was all about making the best game in the world, but in reality it's all about making your publisher think you're making the best game in the world") - there's more information in a post-mortem Powerpoint presentation at Escape Factory's official site.
The article speaks for itself... (Score:4, Insightful)
no shit, sherlock? (Score:5, Insightful)
maybe though one should not consider what is the 'best game' by merits of entertainment value, but by merits of possible sales vs. cost of making.
also, don't fall into vaporware in game engines, it's bad enough to fall to vaporware promises when you're the end user.
more like (Score:0, Insightful)
In other words... (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words :
"We forgot to make enough eye candy to fool our publisher."
Re:The article speaks for itself... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not as easy as it sounds.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest sin mentioned in the article isn't the trips (which can really help to build team spirit and loyalty), but rather talking about they should have fired the "least qualified people" and kept paying the founders. In a small gaming studio, there's no room for "least qualified" people. All your developers need to be top-notch and should ideally have multiple skill sets. If there's an obvious person to fire when the budget cuts come, that person probably should have been fired before the budget got tight.
The article also highlights the problem with the current developer and publisher relationships in modern game development. In reality, the publisher cares very little about you or your company, and cares even less about the creative aspects of game development. They look at the developer simply in terms of income potential.
Now, before any publisher types get their panties in a twist about this, let me give an example. I was watching the Mallrats DVD last night and watched the retrospective with Kevin Smith. He talked about creating the movie, and how people insisted that the movie's budget be at least $6 million. Mr. Smith was perplexed by this, since his previous film, Clerks cost $27,000 (if memory serves); the people in charge of the budget knew what a movie like Mallrats would cost to develop and wanted to make sure they didn't fall short on the budget before finishing the movie.
Yet, if Kevin Smith were a game developer, he would have asked for less money than it really required to make the game and probably wouldn't have even gotten that. Then when the costs ran over budget, he would have had to go back to the publisher and renegotiate a less favorable deal in order to get the money he should have gotten in the first place to finish the game. I've personally been in the industry for over 6 years now, and I've never heard of a developer getting more money than they thought they needed as Kevin Smith did with Mallrats.
Unfortunately, the publishers are only too happy to eat their young in order to profit. The publishers care very little about the business health of game developers and only care about the bottom line of how much the game makes. Sure, it's their perogative as a business, but it hinders the long-term growth of the industry if it does not cultivate talent to expand the market in the future. One "failure" like Escape Factory shows and they're done for. In the movie business, the "failure" of Mallrats was followed up by a series of wonderful movies including Chasing Amy and Dogma. We'll never know if Escape Factory could have done bigger and better things.
Sadly, the problems don't just stop there. As the article points out, you have to make the publisher think you're making the greatest game ever. That often means you have to lie to them. A friend of mine was working for an online RPG ("MMOG") for a large publisher. He had worked on previous online RPGs, so he knew the pitfalls. So, when the publisher came around to ask the status of the project, he was honest about the shortcomings. Other online RPG projects run by the same publisher didn't have the experience; they weren't able to accurately gauge their progress and told the publisher everything was fine even though they were many, many months behind where they should have been. In the end, my friend's project got cancelled while the other projects were still funded. In the end, the other projects ran late, had terrible launches, and one has already been cancelled after launch.
In the end, running a game development studio is not an easy task. Publisher callousness towards the developers makes it even worse, causing problems for the long-term health of the game development industry. This is my view of things as a self-pubished, self-funded independent online RPG developer.
Re:Not to feed the troll, but he is modded 5 (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not to say that indy studios have no place in gaming... Pretty much every genre has started in one way or another at an indy studio. But rhe cost of developing a full retail box versus the cost of a pure shareware title is as different as the outcome.
When read as a genuine desire for funding, it's clear that your statement was not intended to be insulting. I wouldn't mind 600k to develop a pet project of mine into a full shareware title.