BioWare On Why Making a Blockbuster Game Is a Poor Goal 192
BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk spoke at the 2010 Develop Conference about the current focus within the video game industry on making huge, blockbuster titles, and why that is the wrong approach. Quoting Gamasutra's coverage:
"'While blockbuster game creation is everything that most game developers working today growing up wanted to do, it's precisely the wrong thing to chase in gaming's contemporary landscape.' Risk-taking from publishers and investors has dramatically declined in recent times, the Mass Effect and Dragon Age studio-runner noted: 'As a result, innovation and creativity [are] being squeezed. Where the bottom of the market had dropped out at one point, now it’s the middle of the market has dropped out. Unless you can be in the top ten releases at one given time, it's unlikely that a triple-A game is going to make money.'"
Zeschuk also commented that consoles aren't necessarily the future of game platforms, and that BioWare is experimenting with smaller scale MMO development in addition to working on their much larger upcoming Star Wars title.
Hypocrite (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, they are remaking the same exact game since Knight of the Old Republic. Take a look at KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect. Always the same mechanics, always the same basic plot. While they are very good at it, they are not very "creative".
Re:Hypocrite (Score:2, Insightful)
In other news.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Gaming must go back to its roots (Score:4, Insightful)
Bioware needs to jump ship from the cinematic epic and graphics shell game and take stock of the history behind RPG gaming.
If the Indie gaming scene is anything to go by, funds and personnel do not a great game make. Why don't Bioware practice what they preach and make a low-budget series, with the chief emphasis on hiring talented personnel with experience playing the finest RPGs of the past twenty years. It sure beats hiring expensive singers for your musical score, scores of artists and programmers, not to mention the marketing bill which inevitably follows big budget titles.
Gaming ought to, to some extent, go back to its roots by abandoning the constant, unending improvement of graphical quality to the neglect of gameplay. I started gaming as a kid in 1991 and have more memories from the 1991-1997 time bracket than 2005-2010. The only outstanding memory of Mass Effect I have is of Shephard emerging, alive and well, after a boss battle with a soaring musical score playing and stoical gaze on the part of the character - I wasn't awed or impressed, but amused as it outcome was obvious even before the tension of "Where's Shephard gone?!" played out for a minute.
On the contrary, Chrono Trigger, a simple RPG with graphics not much beyond classic Link to the Past, has so many memories with its 16-bit score and pixelated graphics. The budget and levels of personnel are dwarfed by these cinematic titles out today. I could ramble on about more titles as example but I believe most readers browsing games.slashdot can fathom a few personally.
Re:BioWare has thrived with "blockbuster" games (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends. If you see it as an investment (it costs you, and you want something back for your precious time), then it's poor value. If you see it as "play time" (you pay $50 to enjoy yourself for 40+ hours), then it's excellent value for money.
You misunderstand (Score:5, Insightful)
If it was that strawman, yes, that wouldn't be much information.
What he's saying is that is that of the games that try to be the biggest, baddest, most epic ever, only the top X will be making a profit at all. Most will actually make a loss.
And that is something that seems to escape most people, sad to say. From people going into making games with delusions of being paid a million like Carmack, to kiddies who think that pirating a game is some kind of act of resistance to some uber-rich fatcat who's only charging 40$ for it because of greed, to people starting some monumental epic as some mod and expecting to finish it with 5 people in a few months, to fanboys arguing that a publisher is the incarnation of pure Evil if they had an upper limit at all for budget and didn't give the team an infinite limit on money and time to produce the perfect game, to ultimately the devs end publishers who increasingly compete only in that segment. The fact that there's a finite amount of money to chase in that segment seems to be genuinely news to most people.
It's not even a matter of "get off my turf" as some other poster made it sound. We have the equivalent of, say, 90% of the car makers deciding they want to compete only at the Bugatti Veryon end of the market. Or 90% of the computer manufacturers deciding they want to make only supercomputers. Sure, it's great if you do manage to sell the next Bugatti Veryon for 1 million a pop, but there are only so many buyers who will buy at those prices. If actually all major companies, from Ford and Fiat and Volkswagen to Bugatti and Ferrari decided to make only supercars in that segment, that most _will_ make a loss. Same here. There simply isn't enough money in the market to cover the costs of _everyone_ who wants to make the next super-game.
Re:Oh my! (Score:3, Insightful)
Why waste your money on developing an add-on and hence an additional source of revenue when you can develop an out-of-control DRM system which adds problems for the paying customers and will be cracked within days???
Re:BioWare has thrived with "blockbuster" games (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah. I got Oblivion shortly after it was released (4 years ago, I think), and with all expansion packs and mods, I'm 120 hours into the game, and I still have completed only half the quests and not even the main storyline (my second playthrough, so I wanted to check out all the sidequests and skip the main quest).
So for me, a 50$ investment has bought me 120 hours of entertainment and I'm still into it after 4 years. If you compare it to cinema, or bubble gum, that's unbeatable value, from a "blockbuster" game.
Re:BioWare has thrived with "blockbuster" games (Score:5, Insightful)
Strange not. He is talking about the industry. He say that if you are not already here (on the bioware position), is bad strategy to move to that position, because will probably get you killed.
Lets say the bridge that companies like Bioware have crossed, has burned. Anyway, why I am saying things like this? read the article, or better, assist to these conferences for a direct version and not a second hand one *lowbrownface*
Milking (Score:1, Insightful)
Indies are never going to make a huge impression because for the most part they simply don't have the 'wow' factor to add to their games, even if they're good concepts. So they're stuck making good little games, which don't really account for something more then a 'cool little experience', but the gamers where the money is don't want just that. So indies end up needing investment anyways to make anything really great.
That aside, I'm pretty sure a AAA game WILL make oodles of money. It will not be a regurgitated game from Blizzard which now just excels at milking people, it'll be made by a little no name company that was able to pitch their idea to the right people. Too bad Relic botched DoW2.
And yes, sometimes unheard of games are really sweet. I still have not played a game so far that beat the experience I had playing Tribes 2.
Re:Typical Slashdot drivel. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Translation (Score:2, Insightful)
Correction: "Making a blockbuster is harder than you think and if you screw it up you won't make a profit therefore doing something innovative yet unproven is sort of risky so your publisher would prefer if you didn't do that and instead stick to what has worked in the past so basically creativity in the sense of doing something new gets thrown right out the window and you'll just be making an iteration of something you've already done."
Re:Hypocrite (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is exactly the guys point: when you're spending that much money on a game, you can't afford to be creative, because if your new idea tanks you're left with a huge bill for developing it. Much safer to make something like another game that was previously popular.
Spend a tenth as much developing a game, and you can afford to take ten times as much risk, and maybe you'll get a runaway hit. Probably not, but it doesn't really matter that much...
Re:Gaming must go back to its roots (Score:5, Insightful)
"Bioware needs to jump ship from the cinematic epic and graphics shell game and take stock of the history behind RPG gaming."
Bioware needs to do no such thing. They are among the successful ones competing in the overcrowded £35+ game segment. Mass Effect was my least favourite Bioware game for a very long time but it was massively successful.
What they are really is saying is that unless you are as good as them, you are unlikely to make any money in the Blockbuster game segment and you might as well focus on smaller, simpler titles in the £20 range. This is clearly self-serving (they'd make more money with less competition), but it is also true and it probably would be in the interest of gamers.
There are too many games and games studios that fail and go bankrupt, striving for that epic. If they had just taken a somewhat narrower and leaner approach, they might have survived. And us consumers might have gotten a great (although less flashy) game instead of a pretty but bug ridden mess released in desperation.
I blame World of Warcraft. (Score:2, Insightful)
Takes one to know one (Score:5, Insightful)
So? He knows what he is talking about.
And Jade Empire WAS creative. So was KOTOR. Yes KOTOR was Baldur's gate in Space! but THAT was also creative. An RPG set in space? Unheard off!
Mass Effect married many new elements to the Baldur's Gate style RPG. Sometimes you can create something new by cobbling together old parts. Coat of many colors.
As a side note, I think some people put to much emphasis on creative. Just because something is new, doesn't mean it is good. New Coke was creative, it was new, it was different. You want a bottle?
I wish Lucasarts stopped being creative and released one of their old style games, when you knew when you saw their logo, you were in for a good time.
Same with Bioware. Dragon Age 2 not creative? Who the fuck cares. Give me more off the same.
The plot is indeed always the same. But there really aren't all that many plots that you can put into a game. Yes, I have written a story line for a RPG in which you are NOT the hero. That is creative. I think it even works and might oneday turn it into a simple game. BUT I also realise that JUST the creative bit of you not being the hero isn't enough to make it a good game.
Bioware knows that a hero needs an enemy to overcome. Because the same enemy gets boring there usually is a plot twist that reveals a darker enemy behind the original enemy. There are simple game mechanics behind most of the plots.
Just as in a porn movie, somehow people always find a reason to have sex, often with attractive people. No pizza has ever been deliverd to my door by a randy teenager. Nor have I ever had to discipline a wayward schoolgirl with melons the size of melons.
Fantasy has rules, perhaps even more so then reality.
"For the developers" (Score:1, Insightful)
The title conveniently leaves out 'for the developers'.
He is just pointing out its a poor goal simply because the risk is higher.
When the budget is high, stakeholders prefer a tried and tested formula and leaves little room for the developer to be creative. Hence all the carbon copy 'blockbuster' games these days.
With all the carbon copy games, you aren't guaranteed of making alot of money. You won't enjoy the development process as you are just cloning game after game, and adding few gimmicks here and there.
So, you better have a good workplace culture or else no one will work for long there.
Re:BioWare has thrived with "blockbuster" games (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:BioWare has thrived with "blockbuster" games (Score:4, Insightful)
You're absolutely right of course. The question now is, what is the purpose of life? To indefinitely create more value, or to have fun and enjoy yourself?
At some point in my life I decided that life is very enjoyable without being a millionaire and that being immersed in fantastic game worlds is something I enjoy. So my equation is: enjoyment > more value than necessary.
Re:Gaming must go back to its roots (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you enjoy Dragon Age before or after the bugs that were not fixed until late February; close to four months after release in a patch which itself caused further issues?
My beef with DA is that it lacked a convincing villain. We had a big bunch of orc-like Darkspawn, led by an infested dragon who periodically rose up to take over the world. The motives therein were not addressed at all; apparently motives were revealed in the expansion but since I never bought that having heard mixed reviews about...the plot.
None of the richness of the Jon Irenicus character; he was just one elf with prodigious talent who had been treated appallingly by his own people and as such became evil and sought revenge. But he felt a lot more intriguing and threatening than the thousands of darkspawn. His dialogue was a major driving point for Shadows of Amn - far more compelling than the grunts of darkspawn and the mighty roar of its Old God dragon.
Don't get me wrong, DA was a good RPG. I got over 100 hours out of it; but it never got me thinking like Shadows of Amn. You're entitled to your opinion, but you have to admit that there's an argument that DA's plot was inferior to Baldur's Gate 2's.
Also BG2's budget was small in comparison to DA's; true it was big budget at the time. But the time was 2000; a decade ago when things hadn't got quite as out of proportion in spending/graphical terms as they are today in 2010.
Re:BioWare has thrived with "blockbuster" games (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd like to play devils advocate for a moment...
If every game maker shoots for blockbuster games, the vast majority of them will fail and the companies will fold. This could lead to a "mediocrity vacuum" where there are no decent developers putting out games that are simply ok. This is bad for the industry, and bad for consumers.
To translate this to your example it would be as if every kid on the playground is aspiring to play in the NBA, and the ones that fail quit basketball altogether.
While this dude sounded really condescending in his statement, I think his point is valid. Not everyone can be top dog. Not every game can be Game of the Year. There is a market for lesser games.
Re:Maybe (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd say it's the studios that have given up on the graphics card wars. More correctly, I believe they've all but given up on the PC entirely. There is a much larger market for consoles at this point, which is why the majority of new AAA titles for the PC are just ports of the X360 version with the same plasticy graphics, controls which don't feel quite right with keyboard + mouse, and Games For Windows slapped on for good measure.
Re:BioWare has thrived with "blockbuster" games (Score:5, Insightful)
Millionaire asks Fisherman, "Why do you just sit there fishing and relaxing, making just enough to get by, when you could apply that time toward something profitable?"
Fisherman replies, "What would that get me?"
Millionaire says, "It would expand your business, bringing in even more money."
Fisherman asks, "To what end?"
Millionaire tells Fisherman, "As you bring in more money, your business expands further. Your initial time investment will bring in exponentially more value."
Fisherman prompts, "And then?"
Millionaire states, "Once your business is large enough, it can stand without you. The money you make just by having the business exist means you can just sit back and..."
Fisherman finishes, "Relax? That is what I'm doing now."
And Millionaire was enlightened.
Re:Not 'Why try?' (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In other news.... (Score:1, Insightful)
It's not. Look at Mount & Blade, hardly a blockbuster, but they're making money, and it's a fun game.
Re:BioWare has thrived with "blockbuster" games (Score:2, Insightful)
40 hours of video game costs $50 (I only usually buy games after they drop down below $35, but anyway).
40 hours of movies at the theater costs: $200
40 hours of rub downs costs: $2,000 (happy endings not included)
40 hours of watching television costs: your soul
So, the video game thing actually seems like a bargain.
Re:BioWare has thrived with "blockbuster" games (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it is. A good RPG can keep you busy for 80 hours or more. A good strategy game will offer nearly unlimited replay value. A good shmup may take hundreds of hours before you get that 1CC. I like the 40 hour cinematic game format, but it's hardly the epic some people make it out to be.
Re:Takes one to know one (Score:3, Insightful)
An RPG set in space? Unheard off
Star Ocean? Rogue Galaxy? Starflight?
They are on to something (Score:2, Insightful)