Game Developers Burn Down the House

Plenty more excellent writeups to share as the Game Developer's Conference comes to an end. Gamespot has The Dark Spirit of Silent Hill, discussing how to craft the spooky survival horrors. Alice has worked her fingers to nubs writing on the Wonderland blog, and offers up Can MMOs Develop Mass Appeal?, and Burn the House Down, a ranting session between Warren Spector and some other surly curmudgeons. From the post: "But I have to say something so I want to say how this business is hopelessly broken. Haha. We're doing pretty much everything wrong. This is at the root of much of what you're gonna hear today. Games cost too much. They take too long to make. The whole concept of word of mouth, remember that? Holy cow it was nice."

hard to read.. alt text of "Burn the house down"

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeez, if there was one thing that could make up for missing Will Wright's talk earlier, it's sitting at his feet while this session was delivered! So my mood is slightly improved, although we have to wait between 2-6 weeks before GDC posts the recording (if they do so at all). Anyone find a transcript or a recording out there yet?

So, my notes on the last session of the day. Hosted by Eric "Stage Presence" Zimmerman, the panel was feisty, passionate and speed-talking. I got most of it, bar the detail (who needs it?).

IGDA Session: Burning Down The House - Game Developers Rant
Warren Spector, Brenda Laurel, Jason Della Rocca, Chris Hecker.

Eric: We do not live in a perfect world and this is not a perfect industry. I'm moderating this panel of illustrious curmudgeons who have a lot to say about what's right and what's wrong with this industry today. Every GDC and in the corridors of the companies where we work, there are complaints. Grumblings. This year it's quality of life and working conditions in the industry. The idea of this panel is to bring out those rumblings, bring them to light. So without further ado:

Warren Spector:
First of all I don't hate you, Will Wright. I just had one of those "I'm not worthy" moments in the elevator. YOU ARE the 800lb gorilla.
[argh what did Will SAY already? alice]
OK. I don't feel very ranty actually. I tried to bail on this panel. But I have to say something so I want to say how this business is hopelessly broken. Haha. We're doing pretty much everything wrong. This is at the root of much of what you're gonna hear today. Games cost too much. They take too long to make. The whole concept of word of mouth, remember that? Holy cow it was nice.

Wal-Mart drives development decisions now. When publishers minimise risk by kow-towing to the retailers, you have a serious problem. When every game has to either be a blockbuster or a student film, we got a real problem. For my end of the game business all of our efforts are going into reaching a mainstream audience who may well even not be interested in what we do! My first game cost me 273,000 dollars. My next one is BLAH millions. How many of you work on games that make money? 4 out of 5 games lose money, according to one pundit who may be lying, admittedly. Can we do any worse if we just trusted the creative folks entirely instead of the publishers?

My point is coming. We're the only medium that lacks an alternate distribution system. All we have is boxed games sold at retail. This is changing a little. But think about our competition for your entertainment dollar. First run, broadcast, reruns, DVDs.. you name it. hardback, paperback, e-book. Theatre release, pay-per-view, video, DVD. We put our thing on the shelf at Wal-Mart, it sells or it doesn't, and OMG you just blew 10m dollars. The publishers not respecting developers, this is not the problem. We have a flawed distribution model. There are very few ways of getting a game done these days. Developers.. why should we get a huge return? We're taking some of the risk, but the $10m, the marketing space, the retail space all belong to someone else. We have winner-take-all business that carries a lot of risk. So .. we have to find alternative sources of funding. Chris Crawford used to rant about how we need patrons.. I don't care if it's wealthy patrons, I don't care what it IS, but it's critical that we divorce funding from distribution.

We need alternative forms of distribution too. I'm not saying publishers suck, although I do believe that in many cases. [laughter] If the plane went down who would care about the marketing guys? We need another way of getting games out there and in players' hands. If any of you bought half life 2 at Wal-Mart, please just leave the room. Has everyone bought Bioware's online modules? JUST BUY THEM, OK, even if you don't have the original games! We HAVE to get games into gamers' hands. So I'm not saying publishers are evil.. if

Re:"games cost too much"

[space_jake]

You're looking at it from a consumer end of things. From the developer's point of view the cost is there! I think Half-Life 2 took something like 50 million dollars to make. Hell licensing the Quake 3 Arena engine alone costs quarter of a million dollars. Games used to be able to be made by a team of half a dozen. Lucky if you can get by with 20 nowadays.

Re:zerg

[cold fjord]

Maybe you need to read that again. Maybe you should start with this paragraph (I added some boldface to help make the meaning clearer):

We

need alternative forms of distribution too. I'm not saying publishers suck, although I do believe that in many cases. [laughter] If the plane went down who would care about the marketing guys? We need another way of getting games out there and in players' hands. If any of you bought half life 2 at Wal-Mart, please just leave the room. Has everyone bought Bioware's online modules? JUST BUY THEM, OK, even if you don't have the original games! We HAVE to get games into gamers' hands. So I'm not saying publishers are evil.. if we do all this and go direct to our consumers with games funded some OTHER way than EA or whoever.. we'll keep more of the money.. we have to find someone to pay for it and find a buyer after. We need Sundances. Independent Film Channel. Equivalents of those. Just try to find some way of funding your stuff that doesn't come from a publisher.

They are saying the need new ways to distribute the games so the developers get more of the money, not that the games should be pirated and the developers therefore get less money.