♫ Music ("Penguin Cap" by CarboHydroM) ♫
Something's happening within the game industry.
Something big.
Everybody working in games
can just feel it creeping up.
We're coming up on a pivot point here, a sea change.
And it's not just any minor shift in the way we do business
(though, that will probably happen too).
It's something bigger than that.
Dramatic rhetoric aside,
we are in a very important juncture
for this industry and this medium.
And it's got us pretty excited.
So, bear with us, while I try to define what that change is,
how we got here, and what it means for us going ahead.
A lot of this is going to be exciting,
some of it may be a little scary,
and some of it may sound downright bad to some of you,
but just hear me out.
Before we get to talking about this big change,
let's talk about the numerous cause that are leading us to it.
They're all important in different ways,
so, in no particular order:
Number one: Game Schools.
For the first time in history,
game creation is being taught as a focus in higher education.
From the bachelor's degrees given out by
DigiPen or Savannah College of Art and Design,
to the Master's Degrees offered by more traditional universities
such as USC or CMU, people are now getting
rigorous formal training in game crafting
before they even setting foot in the industry itself.
But perhaps even more importantly,
these institutions are providing
the next generation of game developers
with a safe place to innovate and create
outside of a corporate environment.
Game schools are going to do to us
what Film schools did to film.
They're a place for wild experimentation and innovation,
where dedicated, energetic young people
can learn from each other and formulate new ideas as a group.
Our Coppolas, Lucases, and Scorseses
are going to come from these schools.
But it gets even better!
On top of the fact that students
will be leaving these schools with fresh ideas
and the know-how to enact them,
these schools will offer another opportunity
not granted by the industry itself:
The opportunity to conduct extended research;
the opportunity to study games without
having to find a guaranteed return on the research.
That's big.
Now, admittedly, these schools and the industry
don't always see eye to eye,
and communication between the two
still leaves much to be desired.
But that relationship is being improved every year.
Both academia and the corporate side of gaming
are beginning to see the undeniable value
in what the other does.
Number two:
the first generation of people to grow up
with video games in their homes is coming into its own.
we're turning into responsible even influential adults
Er, all right, well, not all of us... but a lot of us!
Not only do we have more money
to spend on leisure than we did as kids,
but we also have a great desire to see it legitimized,
to see it become as respectable as
playing golf or going to the theater.
But the film's we flocked to as kids
aren't the same films we watch as adults, are they?
Sure, we still enjoy our old favorites
but our tastes change and mature as we grow.
We roll our eyes now, at movies that would
have blown our minds when we were kids
Films that would once have put us to sleep
we now appreciate on a deeper level
We demand more.
And that's becoming true of our taste in games as well.
We're beginning to demand new types of games,
games with maturity and thought,
games that can fit into our hectic
and increasingly demanding lives
games that can be played,
respectively, with a spouse or family.
That demand is pushing the boundaries
of what we consider a video game to be.
It's opening up new markets
and forcing game makers to rethink
the variety of subject matter a game can cover.
It's even forcing the industry to consider
new delivery methods and platforms for these experiences,
ones which better fit into the lives of adults.
Number three: broadening demographics.
The term "gamer" has begun to lose all meaning.
At best, it's an outdated, pejorative stereotype.
But today, "gamer" doesn't just mean us.
It also means our moms and grandmothers,
that 5 year old out on the swings,
and the cop directing traffic.
Today, the gamer is the lawyer and the doctor and the movie star.
this broadening demographic
is calling on the industry to create games
which suit their unique diverse needs,
and the industry is slowly beginning to comply.
That grail of designer myth,
the universal game,
will soon become a reality
simply because the raw economics of
gaming's diverse new audience demand it.
Number four: distribution methods.
Six years ago, you had to be working on
a 30 million dollar project or
developing for the PS2 or the Xbox.
Since then, a quiet revolution has occurred.
Today, there are myriads of platforms
with millions of users which are easy
and low-budget to develop for.
These new distribution methods
have lowered the barrier of entry
to being a game developer,
which in turn has increased the amount
of content being put out
and people's willingness to take risks.
And that leads to innovation.
That innovation is happening right now,
on the App Store, Facebook, Xbox Live,
PSN, WiiWare, Steam,
browser-based games, and so on.
And it's going to have a greater effect
on gaming future than all the 50 million dollar
Call of Duty clones money can buy.
Number five: technological advances.
We're always going to be limited by the tech available to us,
but we've finally reached an important balancing point.
Since the inception of video gaming,
graphics capabilities have always been a limiting factor.
They pigeon-holed games as children's entertainment
and restricted the kinds of experiences the medium could deliver.
But today, we've reached an important milestone.
Game visuals have finally reached a respectable quality,
and because trying to push graphical fidelity
even further is crazy expensive,
from a business perspective
the most 'bang for your buck' is no longer
in searching for the next graphical plateau.
That's never happened before!
and it means that more money
is going to start flowing to other areas;
like R&D, design, writing, sound, music, and more.
Number six: tools.
As limited as we always are by technology,
we're even more limited by our capacity to use the tech we have.
But in the last 10 years,
game development has gone from an
impenetrable wall of cryptic, recondite arcana,
to something much more approachable.
We're still not to the point where making games
is as easy as picking up a camcorder
and hitting the on switch,
but James has seen eight-year-olds remake asteroids,
and today's college kids
are able to turn out next-gen experiences.
We're entering a period where the tools
available to us will drastically reduce
the cost and expertise required to
create marketable gaming experiences.
Of course, this means we'll see a flood of
mediocre amateur products,
but it also means more independence
from the triple-a industry system,
and an increased number of great works both from
within and from outside the triple-a industry.
So, that's a lot of stuff.
The combination of all these factors
has put us in a unique, incredible position.
Game schools mean:
more qualified developers are being produced,
and given a space where they're encouraged to innovate.
Lower cost platforms
are making experimentation economically viable.
Improved tools
lower production costs, while allowing
for a greater degree of amateur
and off-the-grid development.
Widening demographics
demand yet undiscovered game types:
the first generation to grow up with home consoles
is now in a position to fiscally incentivize
the creation of new game types,
further motivated to help games
be viewed as a legit medium.
And graphical fidelity
is no longer the main driver for development budgets.
So, what does that all add up to?
Simply put, what we think of as a game is about to change.
Today, we have passion aligned with economics;
we have new fiscally viable platforms,
mechanics, and genres opening up.
The old triple-a game industry and the big-budget studios
can't possibly employ all of that new talent
flooding out of game schools;
and that new earning potential for experiences
outside our traditional purview of video games
is an opportunity ripe for the taking for these young pups.
Artistically, this means we're going to be seeing
new genres, new subject matter, new methods of play.
People are going to be interacting with games
in ways we can't imagine ,
and through devices we cannot now conceive of.
The breadth of experiences the industry
will be asked to deliver a decade hence
will be limited, not by market, but by imagination.
Commercially, this diversification could
possibly end up fracturing the industry:
splitting it into a group of branching industries,
(much like the edutainment
or serious game industries of today),
but I think, more likely,
it'll just expand the range of people making games,
and maybe decentralize the industry a bit.
The big ships of today,
the publishing giants and console manufacturers,
they'll certainly retain control over the areas
they currently dominate,
but many of them are ill-equipped
to deal with the emerging markets
and smaller project groups that will herald this change.
The new platforms will provide new ways
for developers to get their products to market,
opening up space for a broad range
of smaller publishers and developers.
This in turn, will allow for smaller,
more focused groups to be commercially viable
addressing only niche markets,
which again will further our acceleration
toward a limitless spectrum of games.
We are today becoming one of the world's
most important mass-media.
We have the opportunity
at this particular turning point,
this brief moment in time,
to determine whether our medium
will end up like television at its worst
or something without parallel:
a grand interactive art.
Now, this concept scares a lot of people.
Often people criticize the games-as-art crowd,
claiming we want to take the fun out of games
or turn everyone into indie developers.
This is patently NOT what being an art means.
'Art' simply means, giving something back:
providing your audience with something
that enriches their daily lives,
even after they put the controller down.
and, in this way, many games
are already works of art,
but there's so much further we can go,
and every day I see companies,
large and small, taking strides in that direction.
Why?
Because making a profit
and creating something worthwhile
do not have to be concepts set in opposition.
No one's calling for the industry
to tear down their cubicle walls
or stop making blockbusters.
No one wants a world with only french art house games
steeped in onwe and devoid of fun.
all that's being asked is that we step up
and accept our place as a mass media.
This tide is coming.
I'm not sure it can be fought
but it can certainly be embraced.
Thanks for watching. We'll see you next week.