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Games Entertainment

Game Companies Prepare for Next Console War 79

Posted by Zonk from the game-making-is-expensive dept.
domanova writes "The BBC has an article up about the difficulties games companies will face in the next round of the console war. I don't play games, and my programming is in a different world, but the last lines of the article struck a cord. "Mr Hasson said games developers were beginning to realise that they had to be more business-like. 'There are still some developers who were involved in games from the bedroom coding days. Some of them are still making games for peer group approval - that has to stop.'"
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Game Companies Prepare for Next Console War More

Game Companies Prepare for Next Console War

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  • Struck a cord? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Struck a chord...

  • what??? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xerxesVII ( 707232 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @10:54AM (#11468789)
    "Some of them are still making games for peer group approval - that has to stop."
    i realize this is a business guy making the statement, but god...
    peer group approval is what gives us the crazy stuff like katamari damacy, warioware, and others. if that stops, we get stuck with nothing but incremental sequels to racing games, sports franchises, and the army men series.

    • Re:what??? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Fr05t ( 69968 )
      " if that stops, we get stuck with nothing but incremental sequels to racing games, sports franchises, and the army men series."

      I thought we already were. New creative games are becoming far and few between. It's sad but soon enough the "mainstream" game industry will be the same as Hollywood cranking out the same crap over and over again. Once and awhile there will be something new, but for the most part anything genuinely new will be from (or at least I hope) small independent game companies showing the

      • Informal Poll (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Mitaphane ( 96828 )
        I thought we already were. New creative games are becoming far and few between. It's sad but soon enough the "mainstream" game industry will be the same as Hollywood cranking out the same crap over and over again. Once and awhile there will be something new, but for the most part anything genuinely new will be from (or at least I hope) small independent game companies showing their thing at indie-game festivals.

        I was just curious because I recently noticed how bad it's gotten so I did a poll of my games
        • Note the difference between franchised and non-innovative. Franchised means using old characters, which does not necessarily mean old gameplay (see Metroid Prime, for example) and not franchised does not necessarily mean new gameplay (LOTS of games come to mind).
          • I'm in total agreement on this. Yes, Capcom is the absolute bigggest offender in the sequel area (No, seriously, MegaMan X8? You're kidding me, right?) But with the same old MegaMan franchise they've managed to produce MegaMan Battle Network (great fun, except they're starting to run the idea into the ground like everything else) and MegaManX Command Mission, one of the most fun console RPGs I've played all year (which, when I think about it, is a very, very sad thing).

    • Re:what??? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @11:30AM (#11469308)
      He's got two problems:

      1) Is that most "peer group" targetted games fail. Mostly they appeal to too small a segment of the population to make any money even if they make it out of development. Many don't get that far as they get too complex and too niche.

      2) Games like Katamari Damacy that come out of left field screw up his pre-existing business of selling licensed sports games, another FPS with fancy new graphics etc. etc. I.e. innovation takes away some of his market share. Until he owns it, he's losing money.

      This isn't really new. Look at Hollywood. Most movies are nothing but old ideas with new faces designed to target a specific market and get some easy cash. But we do rarely get a new, good movie that stands above the rest. They're hard to pick out, but they're out there.

      Businessmen are classically short sighted. They only see things as they are now, and make decisions that way. Once something new comes in they're scared until they can make money from it. Then they love it. If you made a bundle off every gas powered car sale, wouldn't you be afraid of someone who sold electric cars?

  • This HAS TO STOP!!! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @10:54AM (#11468798)
    "Some of them are still making games for peer group approval - that has to stop."

    Just what we need: more games designed for approval by committees of the type that think "Elektra will be a great hit movie!", and fewer games designed for game-players.

  • I would argue that... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by larsoncc ( 461660 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @10:55AM (#11468802) Homepage
    The problems in the game industry stem, in large part, from being TOO "business-like".

    • Re:I would argue that... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Moby Cock ( 771358 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @11:03AM (#11468926) Homepage
      Here, here. I would agree. I am concerned that the games industry will go the way of Hollywood. That is, controlled by huge corporate entities that tend to homogenize content. We see some of that already in games. For example: Medal of Honour was a great game that had interesting content and was fresh, now there are at least 50 WWII themed games and more to come. This is what happens in Hollywood too. When a film (or TV show) is a hit, there are countless bullshit knock-offs to carpet bomb the public. LOTR was well recived and fresh, and this spawned turds like Troy, Alexander and that Crusade movie due out this year. The are reducing LOTR to the epic battles and missing the point that the story was compelling not just the cool action stuff.

      I fear this is the future of the games industry. One or two really good titles a year and then hundreds of cheap imitation and derivative works. I hope I'm wrong and that the industry can use the new hardware to really show us something new and special, but I have my doubts.
      • When I think of the epic movies that are coming out these days, I more think of the success of Gladiator and the subsequent failures of Alexander, Troy, etc... I always thought LOTR didn't compare to these movies as much because it was the adaptation of one of the most popular fictional series, not just an epic movie where the viewers were going to embrace the characters and the stories for the first time.
        • And Gladiator's success can be traced to Braveheart, which, IMO, spawned this whole series of epic movies. Notice how they all have a speech by the person commanding the army right before the big battle like in Braveheart? It's getting tired and that's why movies like Alexander and Troy are failing.

          The same thing is going to happen to the video game industry. Honestly, I can't tell the difference between the WWII games out right now as they all look the same. Why buy a game that looks/feels almost iden
      • I think the "90% of everything is crap" ratio comes into effect here. There are still some great movies released, you have have to look for them. Even if the game industry gets overwhelmed with 1001 "me too!" clonegames, good games will still be produced. Even mods can create a great game experience, even if the original game wasn't so hot. You just have to ignore the crap.

  • I don't think the developers should ever have to be more business-like, at least not in the ideal situation. There's is supposed to be a creative job, akin to being the director of a film. Yes, there's a ton of technical aspects involved, but the main purpose of the game should be to make it as creative and fun as possible. It is the place of the producers/publishers to worry about the actual costs.

    It's pretty obvious that given some freedom and a large amount of financial support, a talented team will pr

    • Yes, the industry needs to protect and cherish its auteurs like Meier and Molyneux. There are the Woody Allen's of the game industry and their work is threatened by corporate homogenisation.
    • It's pretty obvious that given some freedom and a large amount of financial support, a talented team will produce a fun product, like Valve with Half-Life 2

      ...or like 3D Realms with Duke Nukem Forever!

    • I think that in the article they are referring the development house when they say developers. And I doubt that the author is against the idea of an independent game, he is simply pointing out the fact that as games become more complicated there will be a need for a greater number of people and a larger amount of money to complete a game.
      As the resources required to make a game increase so does the financial risk. Previously a small company could probably have weathered a bad title, but now the cost of mak
    • You're wrong. Developers need to think like businessmen too.

      It's quite possible to develop the concept of something, work out it's details and figure out what it's going to be, then right before you implement it or seek funding, stop. Then think more practically. Who wants this, how do I know? How much is this going to cost to develop? How many people are going to like this? Then maybe change some things to make it more palatable to someone who would pay for it.

      Artists have been doing this for ages, the b
    • Uh, no offense guys, but I clearly remember dealing with video game companies fifteen years ago, and for the most part, developers ran them like businesses, with clear producer-programmer-art-sound relationships, timelines, deadlines and, yes, even offices. And no surprise, most games out there are indeed "canned" products with low risk, guaranteed sales, but hardly blockbusters.

      Yes, the nature of the beast is that there will always be "bedroom programmers doing stuff for peer approval", just as there wil
  • Sony has run Planetside into the ground. They are so busy trying to bring in new money that they refuse to consider the current players. They have made several changes that may have brought in a few new players but still overall lost money because of the old players they drove away. Game companies need to stop thinking about making money because if the game is crap I'm probably just going to pirate it anyway....
    • Game companies need to stop thinking about making money because if the game is crap I'm probably just going to pirate it anyway....

      Or you might consider, you know, not playing it at all?

      I'm not saying this as an anti-pirate screed. I'm saying, don't you have better things to do than play crappy games? (Unless it's a springboard for other projects [somethingawful.com], but that's a rare case.)
  • a CHORD [reference.com]!

  • Who has to stop? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by IndiJ ( 842721 )

    Mr Hasson said games developers were beginning to realise that they had to be more "business-like".

    "There are still some developers who were involved in games from the bedroom coding days.

    "Some of them are still making games for peer group approval - that has to stop."

    Mr. Fred Hasson appears to be a bloody fool. If games are no longer made for peer-group approval by like minded peers, they'll be like movies made for focus-group approval by bottom-line conscious busybodies - bland, homogenized an

    • Re:Who has to stop? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ivan256 ( 17499 ) * on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @11:20AM (#11469171)
      Developing games is becoming harder and harder to do for small developers.

      That's just not true though. Developing games that appeal to gamers who are interested into shooting their friends from the first person perspective with cutting-edge detail is harder, yes. There are plenty of small developers that continue to do just fine by appealing to those of us who are more interested in gameplay though.

      If you want to make a high profile game that is going to sell millions of copies, you can go Hollywood and take your chance that your non-movie-licensed title will be the one in twenty to make it, or you can concentrate on a smaller audience and overall game quality you can respect yourself in the morning and probably put food on the table...

      The reason we're seeing comments like this is not because the independant game developer has gone away, but because as the games market has grown and tons of marketing dollars have been poured into the market, the smaller developers have slipped off the radar. Remember that the journalistic machine is lubricated with cash... I'd bet more people play independant games than mainstream games (think about all those flash games, PDA games, etc...), but the trade rags only write about the ones that produce advertising dollars.

      • The reason we're seeing comments like this is not because the independant game developer has gone away, but because as the games market has grown and tons of marketing dollars have been poured into the market, the smaller developers have slipped off the radar.

        Both you and Gulthek [slashdot.org] have valid points - Gulthek even names a counter example: Alien Hominid. I would add Katamari Damacy too, but I don't know if that was developed by an independent or Namco itself.

        But you're arguing that what we're getting is

        • But you're arguing that what we're getting is a schism between big budgets (money and/or hardware budget) and big imaginations. What I'm arguing is that it's possible to have big budgets and big imaginations - provided you put the time and effort into putting that big budget to good use.

          The problem is that creativity doesn't guarantee, or even drive sales in big budget titles. Creative gameplay will sell your game to a niche audience, but once you go big budget you need broad appeal. To get your big budge

          • Dude, you've argued yourself into a corner.

            Nobody is going to give you a big budget to play around with if you're not producing something that isn't related to something tried and true...

            However:

            Not having to appeal to your financiers frees you to explore, and having low expenses to recoup frees you appeal to a narrow audience. If your idea works there and turns out to have broader appeal, then you have a jumping off point into the big budget arena.

            Ding! Ding! Ding!

            And for the money shot:

            No

            • You are arguing that the only way a game will sell big is if it is like the competition and/or previous games.

              Hell no, I'm not saying that. I'm saying the only way you'll end up with a big budget for your game is if it's like the (successful) competition or like previous games. There's a huge difference there. A big budget doesn't imply success, and success doesn't imply a big budget.

              That's demonstrably crap (the top 20 games by sales here is a who's who of innovative and non-formulaic gaming for the pa

              • I'm saying the only way you'll end up with a big budget for your game is if it's like the (successful) competition or like previous games.

                I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this - i believe that your game being different, however slightly, makes a hit of it.

                You're kidding, right? That list is practically proof that the development market works as I've described.

                That's to be expected since the industry currently develops the way you describe. But try mapping that list onto two other lists.

            • Let the budget developers produce games that stand out

              How can a budget developer new to the field, with PC based playable demo of the game in hand, convince licensed publishers to even enter negotiations?

    • Mr Hasson is not too original, either. I remember hearing pretty much the same speech about six years ago. That time, however, I was sat across the table from former Acclaim CEO Greg Fischbach. As history shows, this is not a guaranteed plan for success.

      Some of what he says is true, though. The projects are getting more complex, the teams are getting larger. Both development teams AND management need to look how large scale non-games software development companies tackle scheduling, design, documentation,
    • Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. Stop producing more, and more expansive to develop for consoles. Actually that's not truly fair. They are, at least partially, hardware companies.

      What actually needs to stop is developers and publishers getting a hard on everytime a new console comes out and jumping on the bandwagon. It takes a couple of years to get used to developing to a new platform. It's just the nature of the beast. Developers are adapting to the new hardware, seeing what they can do. Little inno
    • Developing games is becoming harder and harder to do for small developers. ...instead of forcing independent game developers to fold or become hollywood schlockmongers....

      One need only look at the success of Alien Hominid to counter this argument. Simple, fun games are still well within the grasp of the independent developer.
  • .. Back when they decided it would be a good business move to release a game to coincide with the realease of the E.T. movie. We all know where that suave business aproach got us. Landfills anyone?

  • He's saying it from a perspective of cost... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by the_skywise ( 189793 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @11:08AM (#11468991)
    By "peer group approval" I think he means that teams and developers are getting bogged down in making the "perfect" game or a work of art that will be approved by 99% of the world instead of 90%.

    It takes a lot of cost and effort to get that last 10% and it breaks the back of a lot of companies. So in business sense, it's better to ship a product that's "good enough" than to never ship one at all because it wasn't "great".

    As a consumer of games, yeah that's a moronic statement! We want GREAT games!
    But in reality it doesn't pay the bills. Unfortunately it also means we're going to get saddled with commodity games... like "Aviator: The flight simulator"
    • That's not at all like how I read it. What I think they're saying is that there are still a few, ever decreasing number of developers that are developing the games they want to see, and that they're doing it so that other game developers/gamers would like it.

      Meanwhile, you have joe consumer who comes along and has been fed only the big franchise games, and hates this game that is by gamers, for gamers.

      Essentially, think of it like indie music or movies. They're doing it for themselves, or for their frie
  • Hmmmm...didn't EA start out as a company interested in peer approval? I'm almost certain that Interplay did--they sold themselves that way on their packaging, anyway.

    I'd much rather buy a game designed by a gamer than by an executive.

    At least market competition can't stop open sourcers from doing that--just from making money doing it. Maybe this is the coming age of the artist game developer.
  • Singers suround themselves with other singers. Actors surround themselves with other actors. A person in any trade is going to seek the feedback of others within their profession before seeking the opinion of outsiders.

    "Hey, I'm going to medical school to learn to ACT!"
    "I have 20 years experience as a chef, and I want a job as a reporter."
    "I work at Jiffy Lube, and I wanna write video games"

    Gamers develop games for other gamers and they know what they want. And it isn't "Deer hunter".
  • These type of decisions are made by people who understand business but have no understanding of the gaming industry. Are they really arrogant enough think that with a 2-year MBA they understand the needs of a specific industry better than content to producers who have been in it since the 80's. Producing for their peers is exactly what they should be doing. Coders peers will be among the most discerning critics. Only by pushing each other to new levels will Game producers ever achieve the next level of rea
  • I recently spent a considerable sum on a number of games I'd wanted to own for quite a while. I got into an arguement with my girlfriend about the money, and I pointed out to her that 30 pounds worth of game was likely to entertain me for about 30 hours or more, whereas a 10 pound DVD would work for about an hour and a half.

    One of the major drawbacks of having games companies behave more like movie film makers is that these games are going to start reducing in play time. Just as films are manufactured to
  • [Jason Kingsley] added: "We have been through five technology transitions and survived so far ... Each one has involved the death of some people.

    I hope that's a British synonym for laid off. From watching the Office, I thought the word over there was redundancy.

    • We told you the next gen of console wars were going to be bloody!!


      (And no, it isn't any sort of synonym for being laid off I've ever heard. I guess he means the death of some *companies*.)

  • This is the very attitude that is the problem with the games industry today. Funded developers are being forced to make decisions based on some bean-counters desire to make *more* money so that they can justify a big bonus or raise.

    But on the flip side I must thank them for opening up more doors for people like myself to sweep in as Independant game developers. We can provide the niche products that gamers still want but the studios won't do because it doesn't automaticly guarentee a million units or more
  • There's a reason why the "Indie Film" industry is booming, making a lot of money, and winning a lot of awards, and it's because they're doing what the opposite of what this guy says.

    I think you're going to see the same with Video Games in the future. As EA, Vivendi and the others turn into the massive "Studios" lots of little guys are going to put out some amazing stuff and make a lot of money because it isn't as someone put "Army Men 27."

    Maybe there isn't enough room for a massive amount of Indie Dev
  • 'There are still some developers who were involved in games from the bedroom coding days. Some of them are still making games for peer group approval - that has to stop.'

    Yes, let's make games for the broad-masses ; Just another WWII-themed FPS... or wait, let's make another race-game ripoff...

    Have a look at the stuff made by the several mod-teams around for FPS's : -that- is were innovation (for FPS games) is situated at the moment : Not in the offices of EA (to take an example) where the next WWII-theme

    • Irony: Red Orchestra, a WWII FPS-themed independant mod, just won US$1000000 in the MSU contest.
      • While it is a very polished mod ; I was very disappointed by them winning the contest.

        I think that they should have taken the unoriginal theme/gameplay a bit more into consideration ; then again, in the end they delivered the most polished (yet very unoriginal) mod as opposed to the others.

        I was more thinking of the -innovative- mods , that have been copied by "the industry" : Good examples of the past being TFC and CS.

  • Don't change the focus of something great... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dutchmaan ( 442553 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @11:38AM (#11469432) Homepage
    As soon as you make business your main focus, you fail. What makes these games great was the dedication that went into making them. They were great games because the designers WANTED them to be great. When you add a business man to the mix it goes from what the developer wants to be doing to something he has been instructed to do. The job that was great now becomes a 9 to 5 drudgery and it shows... ask anyone who was does anything creative.. once the work is no longer your own, you pretty much lose the desire to make it great and just count the minutes until you can get home to the projects you really love.

    This business man is just wrong... I've seen it too many times... change the focus to money and you lose the soul of the product.

  • Does it? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RyoShin ( 610051 ) <tukaro AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday January 25, 2005 @11:47AM (#11469554) Homepage Journal
    Some of them are still making games for peer group approval - that has to stop.

    If you're a company like Electronic Arts, you've already gotten rid of the notion of 'peer approval'- you're now shooting for the 'lowest common denominator', innovation and new ideas be damned. The executives of companies like EA are modern day Scrooge McDucks- they have a vault of money that they regularly swim in, and if a game doesn't do too well because it's just "Hot Girls Drive Cars 2007", well, they're okay moving to the shallow area of the pool for a day or two.

    However, how many things on the Internet are as popular as they are because someone was shooting for the general public? Not that many. Some guys thought something was cool, got together, and put it on the net to share with friends and the common person that stumbles upon it. This is how we got things like Red vs Blue. Did The Brothers Chap ever dream that Homestar runner would garner such a larger crowd?

    I think that many of the smaller companies should stick to the peer group. For one, if you're trying to impress your friends, you'll go all out. You'll think of new things. And, certaintly, you wouldn't make something you hated. The more you like a project, the better the chance that your friends will, too.

    For two, the best kind of advertising anyone can get these days is still word of mouth. I could see that sexy car on TV with the buxom woman standing over it licking her lips and I would just think 'eh'; but if a friend came to me and said "This is one sweet ass car," I would at least give it second thought. In the same way, a group of guys make a game for friends to enjoy; Those friends tell other friends, who in turn tell more friends, and something gets at least a cult following. And everyone knows that cults will pump out a lot more steady cash than the indifferent masses.

    Smaller companies without the cash cushion have one of two options: Make a mediocre copy-cat game that has moderate-everything, and thus will sell to the masses, or make something different, innovative, that was just an idea among your peet group. The first will likely garner enough money. The second will either tank or make you rich.

    I'd rather see companies take the risk of trying to make the friends happy. Plus, if they release small, free games for the 'friends', who in turn spread it around, people will come to know the brand and will be interested in the bigger, better games that cost money.
  • 'There are still some developers who were involved in games from the bedroom coding days. Some of them are still making games for peer group approval - that has to stop.

    Enter the independant developer - liken him to the independant movie maker. He's not as big budget, might not have all the glam that comes with a big budget production, but if he executes his product well, it's going to be a lot better than anything the big boys pump out.

    I've thouht for a few years now that video games were going to

  • A businessman at Namco.. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ..almost kept Katamari Damacy from being released in the US since "it would likely underperform".
    • The Sims is another fine example. EA thought it was a dumb idea and wouldnt guarentee the million unit EA wants its games to do. They only let it happen to shut up Maxis and bring them in line. Obviously we know how this story ends, but its still amazing that these same companies who want the next big thing wont take the risks in order to make it happen.
  • You're assuming that the aforementioned businessman wants to make great games and is deeply deluded about how they are made.

    On the contrary, he wants to pump out craptastic rewrites of crap with shiny new licensed properties associated to create 'synergy' and 'vertical integration' and recieve unreasonable piles of 'money' for his 'marketing savvy.'

    If games are still being made by people trying to push the envelope that's going to mess up his marketing plan, isn't it? Bad executive! No yacht for you!

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