The following is based on a conversation I had with my brother.
Some new developments on the Infinity Ward story, regarding the leads forming their own studio, has made this incident an interesting event to follow because it so well follows the pattern of [what I believe will turn out to be] a successful example of Capitalism. Nonetheless, it’s interesting to observe, not only in this case.
My prediction and belief is, if the market is getting rid of innovators and replacing them with factory workers (like students fresh out of Full Sail or other cheaper more uninspired versions of labor), then you’ll see the consumers getting tired of buying the same game over and over again (rehash, clone, or copy where the product is essentially the same thing re-branded under a different title), and small game studios (innovators) will start to attract more consumer attention causing the main distributors to have to change. Such a concept could be largely credited to Valves success which probably is in part due to Steam.
I may also go as far as to say that even the “students fresh out of Full Sail or other cheaper more uninspired versions of labor” the company may hire to replace the “innovators” with will never yield the level of creativity or passion that an innovator has because it’s “just another industry/job” to them. What you’ll end up doing is flooding the market with so much “junk content” that it’ll suffer from the same problems the online casual game scene is suffering from (quantity over quality). Despite how hard the “trial by fire” may be, in the end, the small studio with a good idea will win.
The natural laws of Capitalism are strongly driven by consumers who want quality because it’s their hard-earned money they’re blowing on $50+ titles.
A small studio will create a ground-breaking game (Half-Life) and everyone else (big studios) will follow in their footsteps hoping to recreate such success. “Imitation is the greatest form of flattery”. Sure there will always be customers (newbies) for the “imitated” titles, but that isn’t where the innovation or money is to be had. The “newbie” market is unreliable when it comes to “loyalty” usually this type of consumer owns a Wii (offices, doctor’s offices, nursing homes, parties, etc), and made up of casual gamers who are apprehensive of spending more than $15 on a game. They’ll most likely rent their game or buy them used. I notice a lot of opposition to the used game scene from “big companies” (modern publishers), and if one bears opposition to the used games resellers one also bears opposition to the “newbie” market.
Publishers seem to be under the impression that good marketing is going to reel in customers. It might, but it’ll also reel in more pirates (most pirates could be classified as casual gamers that are too smart to invest in what they consider to be junk).
Many companies have it all wrong in that they think they own the world. Consumers own the world because their demands dictate the flow of the industry, and consumers want quality content.
The problem with the game industry, as it stands today, is that “the suits” don’t understand that it has always been driven by creativity. This holds true for industry especially the entertainment related ones. Unfortunately, more often than not, the creative folks are looked down upon.
The phenomena here is that the industry is going through the same phase as the “dot com boom” was for the web, where you will have a lot of non-inovators or non-creatives, with no concept of what the consumer wants (often mocking the consumer), in innovative and creative positions, throwing their investor’s money at stupid ideas, ego, and marble-plated bathrooms. When the “dot com bubble” burst only the innovators where able to “hold in there” because of their passion and love for what they where doing. Innovative people do crazy things like following their dreams, because innovative people are generally crazy, because innovation takes some degree of genius and “genius is insanity without success”.
You could surmise that the mainstream had been overrun by “newbies”. It appears that the content providers are becoming too outdated and old fashioned to keep up with content that caters to consumer demands. In many cases the consumer is being charged more for products that take away or have less than the preceding product. If you can destroy an entire building in Bad Company 2 with three C4 charges why take that away? (this is planned on being nerfed in favor of planting the charges on certain structurally important points) Most people think that’s epic, and features like this (despite their unbalanced nature) have and do become an icon for the “underground culture” that develops around the game. (Most of Valves games have good examples of quirks developing into icons of the game’s “underground culture”.)
It’s like Microsoft saying that Word’s “print to PDF” feature creates poor results, so we have to nerf the rest of the printing to balance it out. From my observations this appears to be how many modern publishers and studios think.
One might speculate that the scene will either implode, and the entire industry will be streamlined, or it’ll just keep going. Young studio births new genre with amazing gameplay. Big publisher / studio buys them up and franchises the crap as well as dead horse out of it.
So who wins and who stays?
Creatively, this is detrimental and bad, and I would conclude that you want to stay “small” where “less is more”, therefore the winner is the small studio and game. Small businesses drive the economy.
The loser is the big publisher / studio. Why? They get on the boat late. So they make less money than they could. Their lack of creativity is inefficient and inefficiency always costs more money than efficiency.
For example; Valve is still making bank on Half-Life 1. EA, Activision, and their ilk discontinue old classics, which, by the way, are great fun and do still have a following. I don’t know who brings in more money, but I’d deduce the publisher’s make more since they have more products which are a source of income… but Valve has it right by being it’s own innovator, publisher, and distributor. It owns itself so it’s not at the mercy of (what I’ll call) “suit fuckups”. To add another perspective to the picture, you could argue that “the suits” (the execs), in essence, aren’t fucking up. They’re making bank for themselves. That’s what they do. They operate on a different level of understanding, in terms of business. They want money. You want customers. Customers spend money. If they “destroy” you they will simply go on to drain some other franchise or industry altogether. Like war, they give nothing back. This is the “take all, or keep all” business model. It’s also the old-school business model.
I would deduct that thinking “big” is old and the best is to stay small and efficient.
Another easy mistake to make, is to blame the heap of poor content and bad companies out there on investors for making a bad investment by throwing their money at a bad idea. Investors are hardly to blame because it is in their interest to see a return in investment. If they ask you, “when can we get this done?”, they’re asking because they have limited resources. You’ll get investors by making promises. If you can’t keep them the fault is on you. Not your developers, artists, and other talent making you successful. Most would blame the team if deadlines aren’t kept but it most always boils down to horrifically bad leadership.
A successful product is driven by intelligent leaders, strong courageous teams and your own money being poured into it. There is most always sacrifice on everyone’s end involved. If you need investors then it almost seems the best to complete the product first so that you put yourself at the mercy of as few outside factors as possible. The less people involved the less risk of “being pulled down” and higher the chances of success.
But how do you pour your own money into your product? Other than a good strategic idea and knowing your own market, you do it on your own time. If you analyze the patterns of what became successful most always it was a good small idea driven by a small group of people that met a demand during a key point. First: “Yeah, let’s make something fun!”, “Dunno if it’ll work out buy hey, we can go without a paycheck for a while” Then: “Wtf, bank. HAHAHA!”
It’s important to have a small and effective concept when starting small, all too often start-ups will start out by trying to bite off more idea than they can chew.
Ideally it boils down to a bunch of creative people that are crazy enough to work on something on their own time and they end up hitting the proper note on the market, get successful, and then fund themselves through the revenue they generated. You get big by starting small and stay big by staying small.
In summary:
Consumer
Will always buy what they want, and ask for nothing more.
Fan
Will always want more than you’ve given them, and never realize what
they’re really getting.
Avid Fan
Legally questionable sexual favors are not a good form of payment for your industry.
Investors
If you use someone else’s resources and can’t deliver, don’t be
surprised if you piss everyone off.
Executives
The only goal is to accrue digits.
Creatives
Follow your dreams. Try not to have Investors or Executives follow
along with you.
Engineers
Making the most efficient product ever to be built. Try not to impress
Investors or Executives.
Distributors
You’re asking them to tell you what to do with your product. Think
about this one.
Leaders
Using your cerebrum saves lives.
Industry
What’s destroying the industry is poor leadership.
For more Casual Observations click here.