Hey guys!
We're going to be talking a bit about innovation today
Which seems like an appropriate time to try something new
Hey Allison, c'mere
You want to try out a new artstyle?
Any kind you want, go nuts
Alrigh, ready?
switching over in
3 ... 2 .... 1...
Hey, not bad!
Wow that feels wierd
Alright let's get to it
You know, I hear a lot of bitching that innovation is dead in the American game industrt
but that's not really true.
I'll tell you what the real problem is
the real issue is that we have two game industies at odds with each other
and neither of them is fully equiped to bring innovation to the masses
First off
We have the growing indie community
which bewails its unrecognized genius and screams "SELL OUT"
whenever someone in the community actually manages to make a hit
Then we have the mainstream AAA industry
Which often claims it can't afford the risk that innovation requires
"Triple A games are expensive" they say
And it's better for them to play it safe
And yet, they manage to make multi-million dollar flops all the time anyway.
So now that I’ve insulted a sizeable portion of our audience
let’s look at this issue in a little more detail.
To give you some context
James started writing this episode because of an argument he witnessed
between two friends at GDC Austin
Here is what most of the debate sounded like
And, just for fun, lets give them british accents
Oi, Mate, Just saw your latest title, what's with all these desaturated shooters?
Heh
desaturated shooters, my filthy little urchin, Sell
Or in your case, Flop. I saw the numbers of your last title.
You mean the numbers which said it outsold your entire back catalogue by a factor of 1000
Oh man, whatever. Atleast we're doing something new
And we're doing it probably for a 20th of the budget of your title.
Dan: Ok, what-
And if you ever get a budget, sonny Jim
you'll be making First Person Shooters like the rest of us REAL Developers
Oh, real developers, is that what you guys are now, you're a real developer Dan: Guys? um, thank you
So what does that make us? Dan: Guys?
It makes you bedroom coders on your Sinclair Spectrums.
Dan: GUYS!
(Cry of exasperation)... Thank you.
Ok well, you get the idea.
This sort of conversation is occuring pretty regularly in the game industry
And though hyperbolic, parts of it are rooted in truth
Thing is:
The indie scene doesn't have a great track record when it comes to sales
and whenever something does sell
A segment of the community tends to go into clone overdrive.
Just look at the app store.
And really
The indie community is often driven to innovate by it's lack of resources
as much as by any particular urge towards innovation.
Indie developers work within much greater contraints
Which requires ingenuity
and that's not necessarily a bad thing
but it does mean the advances they make are
often not as polished as they might otherwise have been
on the flip side,
the major publishers and AA studios are often
are often more concerned with guaranteeing a good game
rather than aiming to make a great game.
even if a AAA title is just good
it will likely make a profit
And we're talking about big numbers here
so even a small percentage positive return is significant.
Besides, when AAA games bomb, they really, really bomb.
That means a lot of money
or, more charitably, a lot of jobs.
This means that a "responsible" AAA studio will try to mitigate risk
and one way to do that is to emulate things that are popular.
we gamers may whine about it, but...
copying what's already popular helps to keep the books in the black.
But for all the weaknesses each side of the industry has, they also have their strengths
many members of the indie community are genuinely interested in moving the medium forward
and they contraints they work under can help to generate some brilliant ideas
They're also very rugged
They get more done in less time and on a smaller budget
than any other group of developers you will find anywhere
and as for the AAA studios?
Well...
some great works simply require a big budget.
The Sistine Chapel wasn't cheap.
Neither were the godfather movies
without the AAA industry
and the enormous budgets it commands
we wouldn't have our Final Fantasies or Fallouts
our Grand Thefts or our Call of Duties.
I don't care how many of these games you personally like or dislike
Not having these titles would be a profound loss for the gaming medium.
besides, not all art is about innovation.
The AAA community are masters of polish.
They take diamonds in the rough and reveal their true potential.
without the attentive eye of all those designers, artists, and programmers
many great ideas would be left to languish in a half-finished state
Alright, now that we're covered the pros and cons of both sides of the industry.
we can get to my point
If you look at any other entertainment industry
you'll see that they have found an answer to this divide.
all the major publishers have established “indie” branches
Fox has it’s Searchlight Pictures
Sony Music has it’s RED distribution arm
so why haven’t we tried this?
Why isn’t there an EA-Indie, or
Activision Independent Publishing Group?
Bringing these two sides of the industry together would solve multiple problems:
Number One:
One of the biggest drawbacks to indie development
is that is lacks support.
Sure, indie developers have accomplished some amazing things on those limited resources
but at the same time it really hampers their ability to create
a polished product and get it to a large audience
Having the distribution channels, marketing, funding,
and quality control groups of a major publisher on their side would be a huge help.
Number Two:
Innovation's a big risk for AAA studios
but not for indies
Having an indie publishing arm would allow AAA developers to safely test the waters at low cost
and only commit large investments towards the innovations that prove themselves worthwhile
Number Three:
What’s better for the consumer is, in the end, better for the industry.
Besides the “cred” a publisher would get for putting out all these innovative games
an indie publisher arm would provide some titles to fill those post-holiday doldrums
And, like with other entertainment industries
a publisher could easily play up its successes
while letting the failures vanish into obscurity
much like the way Fox played up its discovery of Slumdog Millionaire and Juno
but let Phat Girlz quietly slide into the Searchlight catalogue
But how could we go about putting this idea into practice?
Well, James has been working on it and he’s come up with some guidelines
It’s a bit too long to read it all here, but I’ll hit you with some bullet points
1. The most important part of making this a viable business model
is making sure the publisher gets total ownership of everything the indie branch publishes
allowing them to hand the successul ideas to their main AAA team so they can run with it
Indies, I know that idea hurts, but
this is the tradeoff for having the funding to get the job done right.
2. The indie branch must have room to breathe and create
AAA publishers, make sure you are helping them to accomplish their goals
Otherwise, you squash the creative spark you brought them in for in the first place
These are their projects, not yours.
3. The industry tradition of only hiring experienced people
isn’t going to cut it here
You want to find the best indie teams
see what they can get done
Have them bring in a prototype.
If it shows promise, give them a milestone to hit
something difficult but achievable
If they pull it off without cutting too many corners
then bring them on board and give them some money to work with.
4. Keep these indie project budgets aggressive and tight.
These guys are here for the love of the medium, not the salary.
You want them lean and hungry
working hard for that big percentage you’ll give them when they make you a hit.
There’s a lot of other great stuff here but we’re running out of time.
If you want to read James’ plan in greater detail, I’ll post a link.
Innovation is something that our industry needs
but the current system isn’t built to deliver it on a mass scale
Bringing the indie and AAA sides of the industry together
would allow us to leverage the virtues and reap the rewards of both.
We’ve got the chocolate and the peanut butter right here, let’s mix them up already.
Seeya next week!
Outro Music: “Everything Remains Jurassic” by Posu Yan
Subtitles by C.Storm.