Post by Morreion on Mar 11, 2010 7:52:17 GMT -5
Scott Jennings: Call of Money (MMORPG.com)
Today, MMORPG.com columnist Scott Jennings devotes his column to a single thought: Activision lowers the boom on Infinity Ward, and illustrates a fundamental problem with game development.
Today, MMORPG.com columnist Scott Jennings devotes his column to a single thought: Activision lowers the boom on Infinity Ward, and illustrates a fundamental problem with game development.
So why do publishers even exist… and why do developers sign their independence and their future away so often? The answer, quite simply – money. It takes money to make competitive “AAA” products. A lot of money – in the tens of millions, rapidly approaching the hundred million mark (and in a couple of instances, such as Grand Theft Auto 4, exceeding that threshold). To get this money, developers contract with publishers – the publishers provide the funding, and the developers are promised a share of the profits if the game sells well. It’s a fairly basic relationship, but one that frequently breaks down, as both parties begin to assume the role of antagonists, and believe more and more on both sides that they and not their counterparts are responsible for their projects’ success.
And that, I think, is the ultimate direction that gaming needs to look to as well. Because in today’s development models, publishers are corrosive – both to the short-term well-being of development teams, and to the long term incubation of creativity. The things that make a good game – creativity, polish, and artistry – are not the things a publisher looks for when juicing up an end-of-quarter report to stockholders. A good development house works as a unified team, to ensure that everyone is invested in everyone else’s success. A good publisher thinks quarterly layoffs are a good start.
So, how do we, as developers, free ourselves from the shackles of the suits carrying suitcases of sweet milestone cash? Simple: small games, self-financed, distributed virtually and virally. This can – and often does – work for massively multiplayer games as well. They aren’t blockbuster hits, they can’t compare in breadth of content to what a Blizzard or EA can fund , and sometimes they rely on models such as free-to-play that most gamers don’t particularly like. But if you believe in the future of game development as a creative enterprise as opposed to, to use Activision CEO Bobby Kotick’s favorite phrase for what his company produces, “packaged goods” – the current publisher/developer model has to be overturned.
So, how do we, as developers, free ourselves from the shackles of the suits carrying suitcases of sweet milestone cash? Simple: small games, self-financed, distributed virtually and virally. This can – and often does – work for massively multiplayer games as well. They aren’t blockbuster hits, they can’t compare in breadth of content to what a Blizzard or EA can fund , and sometimes they rely on models such as free-to-play that most gamers don’t particularly like. But if you believe in the future of game development as a creative enterprise as opposed to, to use Activision CEO Bobby Kotick’s favorite phrase for what his company produces, “packaged goods” – the current publisher/developer model has to be overturned.
