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The Almighty Buck Entertainment Games

Razor Blade Games? 347

Posted by michael from the not-in-speakeasy's-case-certainly dept.
Oxygen99 writes "There's a story on the BBC News website regarding the financial impact on game developers of the next generation of consoles. The article states that while the cost of producing games increases exponentially as new technology comes online, consumer prices stay approximately the same, leading to an unsustainable financial environment for many small developers. With many small development teams already hurting from the crippling costs of development for the X-Box, GameCube and PlayStation 2, what happens when the X-Box2 or Playstation 3 arrives? Are the days of small scale game development over? Will we ever see a new Jeff Minter? Will the games industry go down the route of the razor manufacturers where consoles are almost given away with the games?"
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Razor Blade Games? More

Razor Blade Games?

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  • Pressure = opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TopShelf ( 92521 ) * on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:01AM (#6814214) Homepage Journal
    When economic pressures like this get built up, that provides an opportunity for someone to deliver a solution to some of these problems that reduces cost and/or time of development. For example, rather than producing Hollywood-caliber graphics on a custom basis for each game, perhaps that function is better served by standalone companies that create characters and associated animations that game developers can license for use.

    Bottom line is that the demand side will determine what happens here - if the market can sustain higher prices for games, the current trend could continue for a while. If a big-budget game flops dramatically, however, you'll see a restructuring of the process that could result in a major shakeout within the industry...

    • Re:Pressure = opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Cap'n Canuck ( 622106 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:10AM (#6814325)
      When economic pressures like this get built up, that provides an opportunity for someone to deliver a solution to some of these problems that reduces cost and/or time of development.

      What you're talking about here is a GDE (Games Development Environment). It SOUNDS like a great idea, but I don't think so. It would mean that every game coming out of the pipe would be the same, homogeneous product, using the same libraries, graphics, sounds, whatever. Blech.

      • Re:Pressure = opportunity (Score:5, Funny)

        by SomeoneGotMyNick ( 200685 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:53AM (#6814819) Journal
        every game coming out of the pipe would be the same, homogeneous product, using the same libraries, graphics, sounds, whatever.

        You just described the standing state of Shoot 'em Up Games(tm) for the past two years.

      • Re:Pressure = opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)

        by mbourgon ( 186257 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @12:30PM (#6815215) Homepage
        Yeah - except that a lot of this already happens. There's a physics engine (Havoc?) used by a lot of people. AI has been reused. A lot of games already license an engine. Take a look at Gamasutra.com or Game Developer for more details.

        And while I'm at it - this article really overstates things. Yes, it can take more people to develop for consoles. But games can still be built by small groups, and the games can be A titles. It's about not reinventing the wheel - look at some of the mods out there. Built by small teams that have the engine already. Remember, while eye candy helps, it's all about the gameplay.
        • Having looked into starting a gaming company personally, it's already really, really hard to do. Especially for consoles.

          It requires millions of dollars investment to produce the first game. Our estimates were $3 million of the game we had in mind (for the PS/2 using a from scratch engine).

          There are a variety of ways to get money, but it's definatly not possible to do it nights and weekends, or in a garage. A lot of this is the control that the console makers have over every aspect of the game release.

          Th

    • Enter The Matrix? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by yerricde ( 125198 )

      rather than producing Hollywood-caliber graphics on a custom basis for each game, perhaps that function is better served by standalone companies that create characters and associated animations that game developers can license for use.

      Licensing characters with animations? Movie license games are rarely[1] good games. Capcom and Virgin tried the licensed-character route in the 1990s, borrowing characters from cel-animated movies published by the company [disney.com] we love to hate [losingnemo.com]. The games (such as Chip 'n Dale's

      • Re:Enter The Matrix? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by vasqzr ( 619165 )

        That's not what he means.

        Let's say company A makes characters. Company B can either buy them or sub-contract them to create new characters for their games.

        Therefore, letting the game company worry about the game itself. This is commonly done with sound effects and music. (outsourcing, more than licensing though)

      • Re:Enter The Matrix? (Score:3, Informative)

        by ZorinLynx ( 31751 )
        The problem here is not the characters, but the fact that the games were not willing to explore any new ground story-wise.

        I mean, I remember playing "The Lion King"; all you did was play the storyline of the movie! I already knew exactly everything that was going to happen. Big whoop.

        Now, if they had made it more of an RPG, with an action component, and extended the universe with a new story, THEN it might have been interesting. Combining likeable characters you already know with NEW adventures might have

    • Re:Pressure = opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Monkelectric ( 546685 ) <{slashdot} {at} {monkelectric.com}> on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:45AM (#6814726)
      Agreed! Fundamental business model changes are at hand, but I think they'll be a tad bit different then what you suggest.

      What has been the trend in all entertainment venues right now? Movies? One of the worst years for movies, average drop of is HUGE. Games? Things could be better. Music? Teetering on bankrupcy.

      For whatever reason (bad economy?), consumers are a *little* smarter about what they're purchasing. People are tired of mindless teen movies, boring first person shooters, and bullshit pop music. Now I'm not claiming that every last consumer has wisened up, but that enough are atleast to reduce profits to critical levels.

      We are at a low low LOW for creativity on all of these mediums. Normally, companies expect a ceartin ammount of idiots will buy a shitty product no matter what. But now, people hop on the internet, talk to their friends, and now you only need to know someone who knows someone who tells you a game is bad. "Yea dude, this guy I know bought red faction, its fucking lame."

      I think what is going to happen is a market is going to be created for Independant movies/games/music. independant music is already here. I'm hearing *good* new inovative music and it just takes a little work to find it. I get to reject corpratism, I get to hear *good* music cheaper then I would, and good artists get my money directly.

      A few years from now? I expect independant games / movies should start to show up. However, thats just my hope. It could be that once the economy loosens up, people will go right back to buying shit. But I have hope :)

    • Middleware is the Solution (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Frogmanalien ( 521225 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:53AM (#6814813) Homepage
      Solutions will arrive automatically. Thankfully we've already seen the start of this via Middleware - software by a third party which is hired/loaned and used for development. PS2 and Xbox have successfully helped build an entire middleware community and a new source of revenue. Now small bedroom programmers can either be responsible for middleware or the "end game" software.
      Let us not lament- Sony is the current market leader and also happens to be the only manufacterer who opened up their console for easy programming (anyone remember the Sony Yazoo (or whatever it was called) for the PSX - a home development system) and is also selling Linux kits without a free cease and desist letter to anyone who uses linux on their PSX.
      There's still space out there for bedroom developers, it's just that bedroom developers are changing!

      Frogmanalien
    • Some industries change, and with that change sometimes the amount of participants decrease while the market expands. In many cases, the products pricing and quality changes along with the market. Just look at the automobile industry.

      I don't know if it will be good that smaller game developers will find it impossible to compete in the near future. Perhaps we may never even notice that they went away. Personally, I just think that the best talent outtheir will be hired by the more successful companies, and

    • Actually, I think coding is far more of a problem for consoles than graphics. Graphics ARE a big deal, but a good art studio can chuck them out pretty fast. In the future we may even get around to laser scanning real objects. Hire a cheap sculpter, contract with a laser scanning company and BAM!, cheap graphics.

      On the coding side tho, programmers are still expected to build 3D engines from scratch. This is made worse on consoles, because you're usually programming the hardware directly with very few APIs t

    • Re:Pressure = opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)

      by danila ( 69889 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @12:06PM (#6814958) Homepage
      I bet many people are thinking about whom they can sue instead. ;)

      But honestly, it's a brilliant idea. :) Some companies have already developed parametric character models. If we are to believe Valve, all scientists in HL2 will look different. And the upcoming Sims 2 will feature even greater variability. Improve this technology a bit, add extra controls, easier tools and you solved the problem of designing new characters. Want an evil villain? Move some sliders (ugly - 70%, evil - 100%, old - 60%, crazy - 80%, smart - 65%). :) A producer of the original system can update this a couple of time, until they can make completely realistic models that can be simplified automatically as necessary.

      The same can be done for other objects. Recently the Driver 3 developers said that their biggest cost is designing the world, even though most of the buildings are still just empty boxes. The solution is similar - create a parametric function-based object called "house" that could be tweaked from igloo to WTC. :) Same with objects. Finally write a world generator that would create a random world filled with these objects. Voila. All problems solved.

      • Re:Pressure = opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)

        by mausmalone ( 594185 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @01:37PM (#6815900) Homepage Journal
        I'd hate to paraprhase Dave Perry, since he hasn't had a great track record, but he said that a game developer must have control over every pixel on the screen at all times.

        he was... uh... referring to the decision to use a software polygon engine in the early versions of Messiah, IIRC... but it's a good point nonetheless.

        I've played a lot of games with randomly-generated worlds, and while the variation sounds like a boon, it just ends up becoming tired and boring. Think of Gran Turismo (to pick a popular example). Remember coming out of the roadways at the end of the SS Rt. 5 stage, rising back up onto the highway straightaway. Remember how it felt like you were soaring, as you broke out of a series of tight turns in a confined space and started rocketing down a straightaway at 200 mph in a wide-open space?

        You can't have that in a randomly-generated game... there's no experience.. things aren't planned.. they're just there. There's no personality to it, no cohesion in design.

        Now, I get what you're saying about using random world generator to take all of the extreme effort of crafting a play environment, but then you lose all control over the world itself. The play isn't crafted any more. The world has no personality.

        The only exception I've seen is Animal Crossing, but that's because you contribute to the world's personality so much, that it doesn't matter if the world is a little odd. Your environment doesn't play as big a role in the game as it does in others.

        Now, randomly generated graphics... that's a great idea. How about completely randomly generated trees? Give a few parameters to work off of, and a seed for a random number generator. This way, it'll generated randomly instead of being modeled, and will look the same every time. There's great opportunity for streamlining graphics production, but the actual play environment is an expertly tailored thing, and randomization would only screw it up.

  • I hope they start giving away the consoles. (Score:3, Funny)

    by mikeophile ( 647318 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:01AM (#6814227)
    It's too hard to make Beowulf clusters from old Gillettes.

  • Nope - vis a vis Bookwork (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cspenn ( 689387 ) <financialaidpodc ... .com minus punct> on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:03AM (#6814244) Homepage Journal
    Smaller shops will likely continue to innovate, especially in new markets like cell phones and PDAs, where compactness of code and short development cycles pay off quickly. You will not likely see Doom XXVIII on your Samsung NPH-3500 phone, but you might just see Bookworm coming soon.

    Don't be fooled into thinking that consoles and PC are - forgive the pun - the only game in town.
  • "consoles" are already given away with the games. Tiger Toys sells (used to sell? I haven't seen a Tiger box in awhile) those cheap plastic handhelds with cheap LCD stickmen games.

    I doubt we'll ever see the day when something like the PS2 or XBox is given away alongside a game, at least during the period of prime profitability for the console. They're simply too expensive to produce to be given away.

    Unless they're being obsoleted, I suppose, and then bundled into cheap bargain bin packs.

  • Increased maturity of a market => less place for little player.

  • Movie industry parallel (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MagPulse ( 316 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:05AM (#6814271)
    I see the game industry moving along much the same path as the movie industry did. Today, independent films are still made, movie enthusiasts support them, and they are a great way for individuals or small groups to get noticed and get on large projects that make real money.

    I am hoping that moviegoers are getting saturated by the overly formulaic movies they're being given, and will shift the focus back to smaller budget films that are more original. But I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with the movie biz right now. For those that crave original, small-budget films, there's no shortage of them.

    • Re:Movie industry parallel (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheOneEyedMan ( 151703 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:09AM (#6814315)
      The number of books published by small presses dwarfs the number if independant films. A major reason is that they are far cheaper to produce. To the extent that games aer like movies and not like books, there will be far fewer of them. In any case, the independent films only start that way. By the time the beauty pagent ends and a few of them have been chosen for mass distribution, the average member is far more commercial.
    • The parallel holds just partially... the technical aspects of doing movies don't change as fast as the videogame developement methods... I mean camera operators are not required to re-learn filming techniques every 3 or 4 years.
    • The problem with this parallel, is that advancing technology has made it cheaper to produce professional looking movie, by using digital cameras and editing suites. It has actually reduced the number of people needed to make a movie.

      With games, the advancing technology has made it more expensive to create a professional looking game. A professional looking game requires more people today than it did 10 or even 5 years ago.

  • SDK (Score:2, Interesting)

    by gsparrow ( 696382 )
    How much does it take to get started developing on these systems?

    • Re:SDK (Score:3, Interesting)

      by macrom ( 537566 )
      Not only does it take good money, but I know at least Sony and Nintendo want you to submit business plans, have financial and corporate backing, have already entered talks with a publisher, have a design for a game and also have some code maybe running on a PC to show for it. They don't let just any Joe Shmoe with money call up and order a dev kit. Things may have changed, but this is how I understood it to work a few years ago.

      On a side note related to this, I really wish Sony would resurrect the Yaroze

    • Re:SDK (Score:3, Interesting)

      by iansmith ( 444117 )
      Take the PS2 for example.

      For starters you need a $15,000 development station.

      Then you need to licence the SDK for an amount Sony will decide.

      Then for each game you need to spend about half a million dollars to get it approved and tested by Sony. They can reject you for any reason and make you pay to have it tested until they are happy.

      Then you pay Sony $8 for each game you sell, plus the costs to produce the special CD's the PS2 needs.

      Then do the same with Microsoft and Nintendo.

      Don't forget several

      • Re:SDK (Score:5, Interesting)

        by dackroyd ( 468778 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @12:30PM (#6815216) Homepage
        -1 Wrong:

        Then you need to licence the SDK for an amount Sony will decide.
        You need approval for your game from Sony in order to buy the development kit - this is to prevent the PS2 market being flooded with crap. Once you have your kit, all the Sony tools are free. (but not as good as the third party tools from Sn Systems.)

        Then for each game you need to spend about half a million dollars to get it approved and tested by Sony. They can reject you for any reason and make you pay to have it tested until they are happy.
        The testing procedure is paid for by the license fees per disk. Again this is a hurdle to prevent crap being released on the market - or would you prefer publishers to be able to publish buggy games in order to hit their deadlines ?

        Then do the same with Microsoft and Nintendo.
        Your first game doesn't have to be released on all three consoles - why not just target one.

        The consoles are VERY tightly controlled.
        Because there are already too many professional games companies making games for the market to support - it is not in anybodies interest in the market for amateurs to flood the market with sub-standard crap.

        • Re:SDK (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Aadain2001 ( 684036 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @01:59PM (#6816158) Journal
          I think you forgetting a great market that moved away from this kind of mentality and has not collapsed under a pile of crap games: the pc game market. Sure, they have crap games out there. But they don't survive. The good games become popular and the companies that make them produce more games. The setup of the pc game market does not prevent a 15 year old super coding genious from producing the Next Great Thing in his basement while still allowing for large companies like Blizzard et. al. to produce greate and not so greate games in mass. The console world can take a page from the pc game market and let the consumers decide what is a good game and what is a bad game.

  • Give us more, and make it hurt! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Wvyern ( 701666 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:06AM (#6814275)
    There will always be a high demand for the latest and greatest games/consoles from the pre-teen to the post-teen age groups. The thing is, we have gotten a taste, starting with Pong, and will never get enough until you jack us straight in, and get a virtual reality that is more than a messy abortion. Addiction is a word that comes to mind, and people will do anything to pay for their addictions.

    • Re:Give us more, and make it hurt! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:31AM (#6814578)
      Those of us who are older may have a slightly different point of view though. The only games that I play regularly now are years old, Grand Prix Legends, Red Baron 3D, Age of Empires. Throw in a bit of replay of Grim Fandango. Not to mention the classics like Asteroids.

      None of these require the latest screaming system to play, yet they all still represent the Best of Class.

      I havn't purchased a game in years, not becasue of cost. Not because of lack of interest. Simply because I haven't been presented with a game superiour to those I already play.

      It wouldn't take much to grab a few hundred more bucks out of my pocket, but the latest gee whiz bang twist to the same tired old formula isn't going to do it for me.

      Give me games instead of technology and I'll buy them.

      KFG
  • Well if a company can't make a game profitably, then maybe they shouldn't make games.
    Then some companies will go out of business, and we will be left with enough to supply the demand.

    Myself I'm just waiting for torcs to evolve a little bit more, then I'll be happy.

  • Golden age died along time ago (Score:4, Informative)

    by msgmonkey ( 599753 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:08AM (#6814301)
    The days of the 8-bit micro was the golden era when it came to small developers(otherwise known as geeks in bed-rooms/garages/basements). You'd have the same person doing the coding, graphics and sound and still have something that did n't look amaturish compared to the big guys. You just cant do that these days, and especially so because graphics and sound have much more prominence then playability did back in the day.

    I still remember those 1.99 games being available at my local newsagent. Ahh let the nostalgia begin :)

    • Today, the graphics are the main thing that gamers and more importantly, game reviewers look for in a game. If the graphics aren't whiz-bang and utterly spectacular, the game doesn't sell. I've seen countless gems of games with great ideas, sizzling execution, and mediocre graphics get savaged by reviewers. Not because the game itself was bad, but because the game didn't fit the preconceived notion of what a game should be. Meanwhile borefests like Tony Hawk are highly praised and widely imitated. "Loo
  • Just look at printers. You can purchase a new printer for nearly the same cost or sometimes LESS then purchasing new ink cart.

  • Consider the Film Industry (Score:5, Insightful)

    by plasticmillion ( 649623 ) <matthew@allpeers.com> on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:09AM (#6814319) Homepage
    I see a lot of parallels between video game development and the film industry. As the market has become larger and more global, consumer expectations have risen accordingly. The result is that the biggest moneyspinners in the future are likely to be "blockbuster" games written by larger companies with big budgets and teams (this trend is already abundantly clear).

    To me this is good news for gamers. True, it will result in a lot of lowest common denominator crap. But this analogy suggests a lot of positive aspects as well. For one, I personally happen to like blockbuster movies, and I'm glad that the market is such that someone can justify spending $300 mio or so on the LOTR trilogy (to name just one example).

    At the same time, there is space for the little guy in the film industry to some extent. Innovative filmmakers can still make a name for themselves on a superlow budget (e.g. Clerks [imdb.com]. In my view this applies even more to the gaming world, where a clever idea can be a huge hit without requiring dozens of programmers and designers to implement (consider Tetris).

    Anything that makes really stunning high-budget output possible is more than fine by me.

    • We'll start seeing more and more product placement in the computer games to offset the cost of the games, and for the companies to improve their bottom line.

      (advertisements in the background, as in sports arenas; billboards in the background of driving games, and then they'll start working the occassional coke or budweiser can in the hand of one of the main characters).

      Sooner or later, I wouldn't be surprised if more and more non-game companies start getting into the video game business to push more produ

  • Smaller developers... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Junior J. Junior III ( 192702 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:11AM (#6814339) Homepage
    Should develop smaller games. For every Grand Theft Auto 3, there's a Tetris.

    The Big Hollywood style productions can be handled by the huge companies, while the smaller companies can do innovative things like games that actually have gameplay value as opposed to eyecandy value.

    Gameplay value is timeless and largely not driven by technology. If need be, license the high end graphics from someone else rather than reinvent the wheel. But someone should be working on making games playable, re-playable, and fun.

    A prime area for small-time, moderate budget development? AI. *Good* AI, that learns and adapts, for example, is something I'd like to see. AI that gets lazy and complacent and forgets sometimes, for that human feel, and to prevent things from getting too difficult.
    • Exactly! Take for example Snood, an amazingly fun game without anything requiring advancced computer technology.

      • You mean Bust-A-Move (Score:2, Informative)

        by yerricde ( 125198 )

        Snood is a nearly-exact knockoff of Taito's Puzzle Bobble: Bust-A-Move, played only by players who are unwilling to either buy a console or install an emulator to get the Real Thing.

        But yes, I get your point that simple games such as Bust-A-Move can be fun without requiring too much of a budget. The problem here is finding that killer game formula, a needle in a haystack.

    • At last count there where about 100 Tetris like games. Are you realy sugjesting we need another?

    • Re:Smaller developers... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rinikusu ( 28164 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:47AM (#6814751)
      Indeed. And with increases in technology and programming API's, even independent developers can get more done with less "effort". Stuff like DirectX and OpenGL help free up some of the resources that would normally be used in creating custom API's, and, as you mentioned, various 3rd party engines are available to use so the developer can concentrate on gameplay, storyline, or even art-look.

      Consider Puppygames.com's Alien Flux. They produced a full-on arcade style game in 6 months, with just 2 guys working mostly part-time. It's written in Java, using OpenGL and a wrapper library they happily "give away" (lwjgl), and runs under Windows and Linux, and soon MacOS X (they seem to have troubles finding and keeping a MacOS X person with the expertise/time to keep the library up-to-date as the primary developers are x86 only). Is it Doom 3? No. Is it fun? Yes. Definately so. It's proof that you don't need a 10 million dollar budget to produce a good game.

      Other areas for small-time developers: Mindless action games. Puzzle games (see popcap.com). I'm even toying with the idea of a small, episodic RPG's (think monthly-bimonthy episodes at low cost (say, $5-10 module or use some sort of subscription).

      Anyway, I don't think the days of the independent developer are over. In fact, I think with the wider acceptance of Flash, J2ME, etc, the barrel has opened even wider.

  • But that's not what I really want to talk about - the supposed rising cost of game development. Making games like the games being made now, only bigger, will cost more. Making fun games which look good doesn't necessarily cost any more. On the newest systems coming out (arguably, on systems already out) you will be able to do amazing things with graphics without doing obsessive optimization. Also, since the platforms are in fact tending to converge on a single methodology, which is to say uniprocessor mach

    • Um, you will have to exclude the PS2 from your other uni-porcessor consoles up there. You are mostly talking about the XBOX, but it is not the most popular console.

      The PS3 will have even more processors than the PS2, so a game for the XBOX will be very different from a game for PS3. (MIPS 64 bit * 2 or 3 processors versus x86 32 bit * 1 processor)
  • things get bigger and more complex and so do the development environments. the big get bigger in this scenerio--for a while. there's almost always a new development--ie *nix--to bring things back to earth. in the end a good idea can overcome the cost of easy development.

  • Voodoo economics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Brahmastra ( 685988 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:14AM (#6814370)
    Why do video game prices have to go up because the the technology is improving? Computers have consistently become more complex, but their prices have been going down. The number of people playing video games is also going up quite rapidly, resulting in more customers for video game companies. Maybe they have to do more development, but that is the same for all new technologies. If video game companies are losing money, it's because of nothing but a crappy business model.

    • Re:Voodoo economics (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Outlyer ( 1767 )
      You're talking about two different things, and so-called "Voodoo Economics" has very little to do with this topic at all. That's a Reagan-era term for supply-side economics and deals primarily with fiscal policy.

      Technology on the CONSUMER end is improving, but if technology on the SUPPLIER end does not improve at the same pace, you have an increasing cost industry and consequently higher prices.

      Any imbalance between cost of production and cost to consumers in the market would normally result in price shi

  • Small development vs. large development (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tambo ( 310170 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:14AM (#6814376)
    (I think that the answer to this factoid observation is self-evident, but I'll post it anyway.)

    The costs of developing large-scale games only affects the developers of large-scale games. As noted abundantly by others, such games tend to fit certain well-defined genres: RTS, MMORPG, FPS, RPG... indeed, the whole reason we even have and know these acronyms is because the styles of games have become extraordinarily pigeonholed.

    That's not necessarily a bad thing. Take Medal of Honor: Allied Assault - the game only works because gamers have been trained to go along with the scripting and accept the monolithic linearity of the missions. If you do, however, you get a pretty grand experience.

    But the point is this: A few game niches have become so overproduced that independent developers can't hope to compete - but the rest of the market is wide open.

    And what a wide-scale market that is! How many genres have barely been tapped, or not yet invented? How do you even classify something like Popcap's Insaniquarium? Or PaRappa the Rapper, or Dance Dance Revolution? Those are pretty easy games to design and develop, and they're fiercely fun. Window dressing is extra - but for these innovative games, window dressing is secondary to gameplay. (What a novel concept!)

    Bottom line: Independent developers should not mimic Electronic Arts and try to compete in these highly stylized, overbudgeted affairs. But there's plenty of untapped gaming out there, just waiting for someone with a smidge of vision and a touch of imagination. Go get 'em, guys!

    David Stein, Esq.
    • Well spoken. (your ddr example is pretty bad tho, it was developed by a big name company.. konami)

      Too many game creators dont realize that the #1 point of a game is for it to be fun. Yes, its fun to look at pretty graphics, but that only lasts so long.

      Give me a solid control system and a fun style of gameplay, and im in. Thats why the megaman games have lasted so long. ;)
  • On the PC gaming front, we've already seen companies like PopCap Games [popcap.com] and GarageGames [garagegames.com] get around rising design costs by returning to something similar to the shareware model of the early- to mid-1990s, creating relatively simple, inexpensive, fun games. Maybe something similar would work for the console market.

    Oh, who am I kidding? Anything released to the console market without 3D graphics, genuine B-list actors providing the voiceovers, and 16.7 zillion colors is doomed to failure.

    DecafJedi

    • And, not to forget, the GarageGames model has another important point: the games use a common game engine, based on the original Tribes 2 engine. This is why these games, while not spectacular, look quite good and are also available for platforms like Linux and Mac.

      As the effort to create games gets bigger, re-use becomes more and more important.

  • Small players in the console market? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LWATCDR ( 28044 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:16AM (#6814390) Homepage Journal
    There never really was room for small players in the console market. Look at the old Atari days. You had Atari and Activision and them some other big compaines moved in. There where some little guys but not that many and they sort of lived in the cracks that the big boys did not want. Only home computers let little game makers live. Even then if you where a small company starting off you might do better starting with a less popular computer than the Atari, C64, or Apple. Writing for a getting a CoCo game reviewed might have been easier than getting an Apple II game reviewed.
    There is room for small game companies. Just not on the Playstation or the X-Box.
    • Look at the old Atari days.

      More salient than you might think.

      Atari's weakness was that it did not control the games publishers. There was no quality control, consumers were discouraged, and in the end the entire market suffered. When Nintendo and Sega started to reinvent the games console market the first thing they did was to strictly control who was publishing what for their systems.
      • Actually Atari tried to control game publishers. They even tried to sue Activision. They lost mainly because the 2600 was all off the shelf parts. The couldn't even stop people making clones.
        They tried to put an end to it with the 7800. That machine had an encrytion scheme to prevent third party games from using the imporved features.
        Like I said there has never really been room for the small guy in Consoles.
        BTW some of the worst games came not from third party publishers but from Atari. ET and Pacman did mo
  • Isn't this the exact reason why game mods are so popular? Regular joes with some creative talent (and a 3-D modeler) can enhance or completely rewrite a game using a commercial engine, letting someone else do all the non-creative technological development.

    I don't think I could count the number of FPS/RPG games out there that rely on the latest Quake or Unreal engine to do the dirty work.
  • Will the games industry go down the route of the razor manufacturers where consoles are almost given away with the games?

    Given that MS, for one, is already losing money on each console they sell, I'd say we've *already* gone down that route. But since this means that the console makers are losing money if not for the collection of licensing fees, I wonder what more widespread pirating of games will do to the whole industry.
  • Firstly, Old games were easier to make in part because there existed a great abundance of tools that helped reuse. Tiles are one example, but they only the beginning. There's a concept called meta tiling, in which a set of larger objects are built from a group of tiles. Like in Final Fantasy Legend games, all the houses look the same, with different (or no) signs. This way is very simple to describe a town your adventurers visit. These sorts of things haven't yet emerged in 3d gaming.

    Every few years we see
    • You are right, the primary reason that game development is more expensive is because the tool tech has not kept up with the hardware. It takes a long time for an artists to generate a high polygon 3d character.

      The rest of your post is not correct.

      The most likely way developers will deal with the problem of generating increasingly complicated worlds will be to create tools that do more of the work for them. More of the task will become procedural. Part of that will be using fractal algorithims to genera

    • Re:Two things will emerge (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Zigg ( 64962 )

      They say that only 5 percent of game players today complete a game to a developer intended "finish." So clearly a change toward shorter games would be beneficial.

      My biggest problem with this change is that games are getting too short. If I don't finish a story-oriented game, the real reason is that the game has suddenly become extremely difficult for no good reason and frustrating, not because I lack the patience to finish it.

  • No new Jeff Minters?? What a shame.
  • Hell.... we should all go back to playing Zork, Deadline and Leather Goddess of Phobos! I had more fun playing Adventure on the mainframe at Fermilab then anything that has come out recently.

    I don't want to watch a mini-movie or blow up demons.... I want to get lost in the game and very few games hold up to that standard today.

  • Nintendo is confronting this (Score:4, Informative)

    by GweeDo ( 127172 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:19AM (#6814435) Homepage
    Nintendo has feared that this was coming since they decided to create the Gamecube. They saw that more and more we are only getting sequal's and games with a Disney license since they are a sure fire seller. In response to this the former President of Nintendo (the mighty and wise Hiroshi Yamauchi) started a little project called the QFund. It has multiple purpose's, but one of them is to promote the idea of less expensive development (Nintendo has been doing numerous internal things to drop their production costs). The QFund has a few restrictions on it that help to this point. First of all any project gets money from QFund must finish the game in one year. If they go past that point they can loss funding. They also must use GBA connectivity. Some might claim that is a gimmick to get more people using that for Nintendo, but some of us believe this could actually lead to some real innovations :P
    • Nintendo should be confronting this by going around to independent developers that look good and dropping a development kit in their laps. The idea that they attach strings to funding for already-sequelled games as long as they crank them out quick is stupid, and if that's Nintendo's idea of innovation the GameCube will be the last Nintendo system I ever buy.

  • Old School. (Score:3)

    by _aa_ ( 63092 ) <j.uaau@ws> on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:20AM (#6814441) Homepage Journal
    I would like to see more development for classic platforms. Despite all the graphics and realism, new games are not neccesarily any more or less fun than games were in the early 90s. The development of emulators such as snes9x make it plausible for regular people to develop their own applications for the snes. It would be very interesting to see open source projects based on older gaming systems instead of the bleeding edge.

    Let the large developers have their bleeding edge. There's no reason that smaller developers can't continue developing on an older system. Or is the gaming community really so shallow that it will always choose the shiniest graphics, and the most dazzling effects over the content and fun of the game?

  • game engines, pricing, expectations. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AtaruMoroboshi ( 522293 ) <AnthonyNO@SPAMoverwhelmed.org> on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:21AM (#6814456) Homepage
    Game programers should stop re-inventing the wheel and use common game engines, at least for the graphics. I realize that lots of games have been made by liscensing the Quake 3 engine or Unreal engine, this seems like a potential way for smaller developers to have access to reasonably good looking technology to drive the PS3, xbox 2 or N5.

    One of the real problems is that there is little room for games with lower expectations. I'd be really happy to buy a bunch of ten hour games that had less technical wows but much heart, especially if their retail price was reasonable.

    How many gamers do you know that buy the latest games at $50? Most games sold at $50 are the blockbusters that sell to the general public rather than the hardcore gamers. But it's the hardcore gamers who buy more than 1 game every few months. I buy a ton of games but I've learned to be patient and buy games a month or two or even 12 later than the release date, simply to get the game for $20 or less. There is a big market for new games at lower prices that is not being tapped.

    Not everyone has 40 to 80 hours to sink into the latest rpgs and not every game needs to be Final Fantasy VII. I really love the Ikaruga's of this world. Final Fatasy VII cost $35 million to make and had a staff of over 100 people. On the other hand, 95% of Ikaruga was made by THREE people. (For instance, the music was written by the same guy who did the game's background art!)

    I kinda get the feeling that the industry might be heading towards another major evolutionary period, similar to the market crashes of the late atari era... I'm just not sure what it will look like.

    .
    • Not everyone has 40 to 80 hours to sink into the latest rpgs...

      Many older Nintendo RPGs made it a point to advertise "over 100 hours of game play." Now, however, I am finding it really hard to complete an RPG that takes even 40 or 50 hours. I think this is indicative of the greater and more complex time constraints many of us are facing.

      Given that people are now torn by cell phones, PDAs, PCs, gaming consoles, television, cable television, not to mention older avenues, such as magazines, newspapers, an

  • Misspent Resources (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EvilTwinSkippy ( 112490 ) <{yoda} {at} {etoyoc.com}> on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:24AM (#6814494) Homepage Journal
    New games don't take exponentially longer to develop. The problem is the black hole of CGI movies. How many games have you played that are simply a series of puzzles in between a boatload of Squarsoftish clips? Are racing games really that much more playable with photorealistic race tracks? I think it's cute that you can see a hockey player's breath, but if you are bitching about budgets, stuff like that is easy to cut.

    What is needed is for game developers to stop throwing money into the photorealistic hole. Anime is a perfectly acceptable graphic style designed for mass production. By reducing the amount of "detail" using artisitic license you can focus more on game play, scripts, and quality assurance.

  • The cheap razor / expensive blade analogy is often used with respect to game consoles, but there is an important difference: A razor (without the blade) really is just a cheap piece of plastic (or metal) with a clip on the end.

    So in the razor industry, no strange or clever marketing is going on. The manufacturers sell cheap-to-manufacture holders for cheap prices, and expensive-to-manufacture blades for expensive prices. That's all.

    With game consoles (or inkjet printers, for that matter), the situation

  • What impact does this phenomenon have on gaming on open-source platforms?

    It is already rare enough that game companies invest time and resources into Linux ports for popular games, and a constant increase in development cost is only going to further discourage the practice.

    Bioware's Linux port of Neverwinter Nights is going to become a thing of the past when game companies can't afford to put the time and resources into such a very small market share.


    • "
      Bioware's Linux port of Neverwinter Nights is going to become a thing of the past when game companies can't afford to put the time and resources into such a very small market share.
      "

      If it costs n% of the total development time to port the game to an additional platform with m% market share it should always be a profitable thing to do where n m assuming the same fraction of game players buy the game on each platform.

  • ...rather than games with better graphics.

    Something that irks me about recent games is that many of them are unoriginal, have worse-than-average gameplay... and a huge graphics budget.

    For instance, I find that WarCraft III gameplay is much, much worse than StarCraft (could just be my low-end machine with a crappy graphics card), and the heros and other additions don't make the game much more interesting.

    Similarly, Diablo II was probably the most unoriginal RPG I've ever played; the graphics are excellent

  • Why I Can't make a DOOM 3 clone (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Peterius ( 606003 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:25AM (#6814513)

    I've been programming for many many years on many different platforms, I'm an expert in C and x86 assembly and I've done a lot of stuff with OpenGL and a good amount with DirectX not to mention being proficient in just about any area of programming you could think of. The problem is that a game engine like DOOM 3 is not a stand-alone work. It is rather the evolution of the first DOOM engine through all the iterations of Quake. I could write the first DOOM engine. I could probably even write something like Quake 2. But as a small developer, I cannot possibly break into this market when I'm competing with people who are evolving and reusing code that they've had for years. They just keep making it a little better. I can't do that because I don't have years and years of succesful 3d projects to draw from and improve upon.

    No small developer can jump 6 levels of technology to get to the current state-of-the-art and compete with large developing firms. Programming, like everything, is an iterative process; so as games get larger(code-size) and more complex with more and better technology packed into them, it will be harder and harder for small developers to break in the market. Most of them end up buying a decent 3d engine from someone else. And with faster graphics cards and games like Warcraft 3 and PlanetSide, all games are beginning to rely on evolved technology. A small developer's game (whether its an FPS or an RTS or an MMORPG) can't compete with the beauty and speed of a large company's engine that has been revised and rewritten and composed of a multitude of high speed algorithms and computing tricks that have been drawn from a large code base. Which relegates us all to the realm of shareware...or, on the bright side, perhaps open source community projects.

    • I could write the first DOOM engine. I could probably even write something like Quake 2.

      I could probably write something like Quake 2... oh wait, I've got the whole Quake2 source code [slashdot.org] right here! Nevermind.

      If you're a small developer, the excuse of not having a basis to start from doesn't hold up. Carmack has graciously released his code to the public well before it became fully obselete.

      As mentioned in other responses, the majority of the work for a new game is in graphic/level resources. The fact
  • More/cheaper Linux boxes for everbody!

  • were they giving this guy [bbc.co.uk] when they took this photograph and where can I get some? I don't care how good Spider-Man on the Xbox is; it isn't that good. I doubt there is a game on the market on any platform that is that good.

  • large publishers emerge, just like movies or books (Score:3, Informative)

    by *weasel ( 174362 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @11:27AM (#6814548)

    consoles publishing is very similar to that of mainstream movies, print, and pc gaming. (independent pc gaming is fairly healthy now, but is about as 'popular' as art-house movie theatres)

    a console has a barrier for entry - just like getting your film into a loews cineplex, getting your PC game into CompUSA, or getting your book into Barnes and Nobles.

    -developers- can remain small - but small publishers evaporate.

    this is not a new twist in gaming, it's an emergent trend from the last 10 years. certainly, it's a market that costs money to break into. you either have it independently, or you pitch for it.

    what does it mean for the industry?

    well it nearly guarantees that games will continue to be as derivative as hollywood, and the ny times fiction list.

    Anything remotely 'new' will get beaten into the ground in long-running strings of sequels (gta, doom, die hard, and Tom Clancy novels are not so different)

    Innumerable 'knockoffs' will get published to try to ride the wake of what is 'new', and maybe once every 4 years something really cool and different from the norm comes out.

    but it will quickly be emulated, immitated, and desecrated.

    will it go the razor blade sales model?

    no. that's ridiculous. the razor-blade sales model relies on producing inexpensive pieces, and packaging them as an expensive whole. (even with 4 blades in a refill, gilette is making money hand over fist - even on the cute handle)

    Nintendo has shown that using your console as a loss-leader is not necessary (they make money on each console as well as each game) their lack of market share in the US and Europe is more directly due to nintendo's tight control over game developers, and their resultant small selection of games. microsoft and sony resorted to dumping, to try to capture large chunks of the market. with the new consoles becoming more and more complex, and incorporating more and more general functions - they most certainly will -not- be 'given' away. (xbox2 and ps3 almost certainly will carry pvr functionality)

    they may be sold at a marginal loss, so long as there is healthy competition in the market, but it would never come down to handing someone a console. primarily because there would then be no 'attachment' to the title. everyone would own every console in short order. What xbox/ps2 owner would pass up wind waker or sunshine if they didn't have to pay for the GC? likewise with ps2 owners buying halo, and xbox owners buying gta:vice city. and if there's no brand loyalty - well then who's to say that MS will -ever- get their money back from game sales to support eating the cost of the console? particularly from the 'casual' gaming market - who would buy maybe a half dozen games. (and most likely, the 2 best from each main system). 2 games does not cover MS loss on the xbox, or Sony's on the ps2.

    so what -does- this mean?

    it does mean the end of originality on the store shelf - but that's been not-so-slowly happening since the early 90s.

    perhaps if electronic distribution catches on, then this trend can be avoided - but i'm not holding my breath.
  • michael... wow... like we really care about your DSL problems.

    go to hell. fag.
  • ...for smaller developers, at least. Consoles are the playground for big developers, for quite a few reasons - they're technologically often very different to PCs (PS2), expensive to get development hardware for (but illegal to chip), expensive to license, hard to get publishing and distribution. So, smaller & independant developers/companies should be targetting computers instead. Download SDKs for free (including things like SDL, DirectX, whatever), low-cost development hardware, and easy, independant

  • Consoles will always have a high barrier to entry (e.g., just having to set up disc/cartridge distribution is pretty big).

    PCs and PDAs, however, will always be accessible to anyone who has one and can download and SDK (stir in a bit of creativity, and voila!).
  • I've sometimes wondered about this. Not so much from the console aspect, but as it pertains to computer gaming in general.

    On the one hand, developers these days have far more resources available to them. Unlike the old days where you had to write games in assembly because the machines couldn't handle the overhead of an interpreter, now developers have high level languages and can structure their code with OOP. They have extensive API's they can make use of, libraries to build upon, existing 3D engines

  • idiots (Score:2)

    by jafac ( 1449 )
    They should go back to developing for x86/Linux, to stop the console manufacturers from eating their lunch. In fact, some enterprising game developer should also come up with a stripped-down Linux boot CD format, so anyone with an x86 PC and a decent video card would be able to play their game, no matter what OS they run on their machine -

    Wait, didn't someone else come up with idea like 5 years ago?
  • Stop making excuses for market forces.

    There are no excuses.

    If capitalism can't produce the games you want to play maybe you should rethink your form of society. It seems to be working just fine for me. I love GTA3: Vice City.

    This is not a problem we can solve unless we're willing to look at all possible solutions. But most of you are too closed-minded. That's fine, not my problem. Just quite your bitchin.
  • Contrary to what capitalists would have you believe about art, more costly != better. Art includes movies, music, drawings, interactive theater, and video games (which are a combination of many forms of art).

    The only thing money does to art is to make it shinier and flashier. It does not make it "better," unless you're part of the breed (:cough: american idol :cough:) that is fascinated by and gives high regard to shiney, flashy things.

    There's nothing wrong with enjoying shiney, flashy video games (or a
  • I am somewhat certain that these smaller companies should be concentrating on new games, of a new style. You know, doing something different. You can't beat EA at their own game. You have to innovate. Look at the popularity of some of the simpler games, Tetris is a good example. Doesn't get much simpler/cheaper than that!

    Stop the herd mentality, open your mind.
  • Development costs aren't growing 'exponentially'.

    Tools are improving. Efficiency is improving. Developers can now farm out music, art creation, testing, etc. to contractors. They can buy in engines and middleware.

    Furthermore there is no hard-and-fast rule stating that just because a game can eat up $10 million budget, that that is the minimum that has to be spent to make a technically sound, playable and marketable game.

    Further-furthermore, each hardware generation has a larger user base, offsetting the

  • Looking at the wrong devices (Score:3)

    by mccalli ( 323026 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @12:09PM (#6815001) Homepage
    If the independents can't compete on the consoles or the PC, then they could move to places where they can compete.

    For example, there's a huge boom in Symbian and J2ME devices with the new mobile phones at present. Could code for that - that can't produce the effects which take up all the time on a big-hardware gmae, but it can sill be extremely playable. Sort of back to the late 8-bit/early 16-bit stages.

    The Gameboy Advance can use homebrew cartridges - why not have a crack at writing something for that? It's about up to the standards of the old SNES (I think it's identical except for sound channels, though I'm prepared to be corrected on that), and the old SNES had some truly brilliant games.

    I'd suggest that if the cost of developing for one platform starts heading for the stratosphere, then look around for platforms that don't have that problem.

    Cheers,
    Ian

  • Choose the GamePark! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BFKrew ( 650321 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @12:46PM (#6815365)
    If you are looking for a handheld console that has a free SDK, can be used with any development environment on Linux, Mac or Windows then have a look at the GamePark 32 [gamepark.com] which is available in Korea and soon into Europe.

    I recommend looking at the GP32 site [gp32x.com] though as it has better descriptions, reviews, news and gives you a great overview of what is possible. It is the first 'Open' console that's been produced and already has quite a 'bedroom' community that has sprung up around it.

    Not only it is open, it just happens to be the most powerful handheld console out there and there's ports of Doom, Heretic on it already as well as Atari ST, Gameboy, SMS, PC Engine and Megadrive emulators. It has a built in MP3 player and you can also plays DivX movies if you pay a small fee (3.50/$6) for the player. All the commerical games for it are very cheap too - most in the 7/$12 bracket.

    In short it is superb and runs on standard Smart Media Cards so once you've bought the console you aren't tied to buying proprietry hardware like the Gameboy.

    So, you have no excuses now - buy one, start developing and make money! :)

  • So what? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Derkec ( 463377 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @01:27PM (#6815797)
    They can't afford to produce for the console? Well, earn your stripes in the world of pc games. Once you can make money there, you can license the stuff for the consoles and move on.

    This really doesn't seem like the end of the world.

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