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Things seem to be regressing to a point - going back to the "good old days"

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Gatt:

@ Opt2not (Because I have some weird bug with quoting that won't scroll the screen,  sorry for the twitterish response)

I'm really interested in your take on my thoughts...

I've long thought that the problem isn't that the buisness is changing,  but the buisness model was doomed.  My impressions from alot of Gamasutra reading,  and random developer quotes is that gaming is currently a Blockbuster driven model.  Either your game sells millions or it isn't worth making.  So essentially any idea that might sell "Ok" isn't explored as it isn't "Sufficiently profitable",  or in other words,  Publishers want only Halo/Starcraft sales and if the game definitely won't sell 10 million units it isn't worth making.

I ask,  because I'm strongly of the opinion that the gaming industry needs to convert to the Hollywood buisness plan.  Diversify and budget to the average expected sales.  Meaning,  a Horror Movie isn't likely to crack 100 million or 200 million sales,  so they don't budget it as a blockbuster and it gets by without ultra-special effects.  So if a TB Strategy game isn't going to sell 10 million,  then don't budget it like Halo.  I believe that like Hollywood,  such a model would do well,  and occasionally you'd have your "Saw" where you sell ridiculous numbers of copies above expected.

IMO,  what's occuring is a result of the Blockbuster driven mentality and the failure to diversify rather than changing economics.  IMO they flooded the market with "Guaranteed millions of sales"  Shooters and their kin,  resulting in Gamer fatigue of too many extremely similiar titles.  That's why I'm curious if you think the Hollywood model is feasible.

nox771:

I'm not a game developer, but this whole thread got me thinking about some posts I saw just a few days ago talking about book publishing (I'll link them below).

IMO, the problem facing big game studios these days is the same type of problem facing the big book publishers - which is that moving forward they are simply not going to be needed as much any more (well to be more specific they are going to be relegated to a niche).  The big difference these days is electronic distribution.  Once upon a time, to publish something like a game, you needed someone with money and connections - they had to print the discs/manuals/boxes (in large stockable quantities), ship them to retail outlets all over, and pay for advertising.

These days an indie studio can simply distribute their game through Steam (for PCs), or the Apple store, or Google market or whatever.  Maybe they pay a little bit to get some front page ad time, but compared to a publisher it costs very little.  Since the costs are low the games are likewise cheaper, which in turn yields more customers (the book links below talk about price and royalties extensively).  This is what has happened in the book world, which arguably is more of an extreme case since you generally have a single author, versus a whole team for a game. 

Developing now one might just need a small group of programmers and artists who can make games and directly sell them to customers.  This is further helped by the fact that a lot of what used to be really hard coding, got replaced by off-the-shelf game engines (thank-you OSS, ex. Spring Engine, Cube Engine).  Even without an engine there is serious money to be made by smaller developers (I'm quite impressed by Minecraft, a million-plus sales is pretty good).

This whole model of distribution is new, but I think it is growing quite a lot.  As indie studios pick up on that they will in turn grow and fill in the middle ground you are talking about.  As far as the large developers (EA, Activision, Blizzard, etc), I think there will always be a place for the high-end games (I like large immersive games like Fallout3), but I would not mistake failure on their part with failure of the industry as a whole.

My 2c, and if anyone is interested these are some good, interesting threads from some authors on the benefits of self-publishing:
Ebooks and Self-Publishing - A Dialog Between Authors Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath
Best Selling Author Turns Down Half A Million Dollar Publishing Contract To Self-Publish

Gatt:

Nox,

I agree with your assessment on how very valueable Digital Distribution is.  I've actually had an idea tossing around in my head that I believe would substantially increase Indie Devs visibility and feasability,  as well as permit them to create very high quality games of all shapes and sizes.  I just fear that my idea is outside of the scope of my ability to realize it alone.  There's a specific issue limiting the Indie's ability to impact the market that I've been contemplating how to address,  specifically "How does one aquire a team of sufficient size to create a reasonable quality game?"

That's the difference between book publishers and Indie game devs.  One person can write a novel,  but for a full-fledged game on a major platform(PC, Xbox, PS3) you'll require a fair number of people.  Depending upon the scope,  it could be 20-30 people.  I've ideas on how to solve the problem,  but the solution looks to be subject to the same problem.  I suspect I need several people,  and no way to aquire them.  I've submitted my proposal to a few incubators,  but since it contains the phrase "Video game" I suspect it gets tossed right out.

Edit:  Because I think my post is a little unclear...The greatest game ever conceived could be sitting in a word document file somewhere in the middle of nowhere because someone with skills has a great idea,  but needs a few more programmers,  artists,  and sound people,  and he'll never be able to form an Indie because of isolation,  whereas the novelist could bring the idea to fruition. 

DataWest:

On another note,

The music industry is also experiencing a similar change. Gone are the days of complete records. Now as a society we have embraced the quick .99 cent pop song. What goes around comes around though. In the 40's and 50's singles were king.

nox771:

I would agree with that also.  I don't think a new indie venture could go straight from nothing to a full, boxed-quality retail game in one shot (not unless they had substantial VC backing).  I would expect that it would require bootstrapping of some sort, producing some quick web-based games, maybe mobile releases and such, until they could get the finances and scale the dev team from a founding group of two or three people up to a full team (the standard startup model).  The new aspect of it is the ability to actually distribute the small games to do the bootstrapping (at low cost).  Prior to Steam or the various mobile markets that option didn't exist, so it wouldn't have even been possible. 

As far as forming a team, you are correct, and that is probably a serious obstacle to indie game devs (I would tend to think that being able to self-publish removes a bigger obstacle for a startup though).  However I think this is an age old problem of knowing people, having contacts, and so on.  I know in my city there is a site someone setup specifically for gathering together web developers.  They have hack nights and stuff.  I'm not a web dev either, but if I were I could make a lot of contacts like that.  Maybe game devs need something similar.


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