Points of Interest

I think there’s a gulf in the games industry which has always existed, but is currently becoming more and more salient, if that’s not indeed the opposite of what a gulf is capable of doing.  Yuk.
In the blue corner, you’ve got commercial games.  High School Musical, Imagine: Fashion Designer, Carnival Games: that sort of thing.

In the red, you’ve got the fan favourites: Oblivion, Mass Effect, Bioshock.  Blockbuster hardcore games.
Somewhere in the middle, fiddling with their shorts, you’ve got your Sims, your Guitar Hero and your Grand Theft Auto -  anomalous hardcore/mainstream hybrids that everybody seems to enjoy.

Take a moment and peruse Next-gen.biz’s excellent roundup of the top 100 selling games of the last 12 months: you’ll see how all these pugilists square up to each other.  You may also want to view the conclusions which have been drawn: some interesting ones include the prevalence of the platform-exclusive title and the current state of the PS2.

I want to show some appreciation for both sides of the equation: look at the great, pioneering original IP titles in there and take heart.  There is a place for big budget, exciting games to be created.

Secondly, look at the great business that is going on in our industry.  Low-cost products are making mind-quakingly huge amounts of money.

I don’t want to hear a load of gibberish about publisher exploitation with these titles: publishers just do that because they are better at business than developers.  Most publishers don’t go bankrupt if one title bombs: they run a portfolio system so that their risk is managed intelligently.  They’re not beholden to anyone, and they follow money around like all good business people should.  Good developers do the same – look at Rebellion shooting up the Develop ranks, for example.  Portfolio system.

I, for one, would like to praise Ubisoft (who come in for a lot of flak) for this system on the publishing side in particular: check the financials.  What are the two franchises they’re touting?  Imagine and Assassin’s Creed.  One is cynical “shovelware”, the other is a fan fave (though it happens not to be a personal fave of mine).

I would like the specialist press to take notice of this a little bit more.  I have no problem with anyone giving Imagine: Babies or Deal or No Deal a 2% review – in fact, I enjoy reading and writing such reviews – but I don’t want to read nonsense like this any more:

47. Carnival Games
Wii Exclusive
1.1M
56%
August/Other (Minigame)
Global Star/Cat Daddy Games
Ben Reeves (Game Informer): “Just like a real carnival, you’ll feel cheated more than once playing these virtual simulations, but the real carny scam might be trying to sell this “discount” title for $40.”

This review quote contains an implicit criticism of the pricing strategy behind the title, admittedly wrapped in a dig at the game’s quality, but there nonetheless.  I don’t like “trying to sell” either: “Oh, those silly publishers, trying to get people to pay $40 for this game: they are scamming people.”  One point one MILLION sales: that’s a good scam; they should make a heist movie about it.
There is nothing morally incorrect about products like these, unless there is something morally incorrect about how they are produced.  That is a different issue entirely: end of story.  There are some happy studios out there with people making utterly crap games for a living: that’s a fact.  They treat it as a job, they go home at the end of the day – c’est la vie.
Why can’t our industry own up to what it really is?  I want to see a more enlightened understanding of it from those involved: not this adolescent divide between “good and bad” games.

At Mode 7, our CORE reason for being is to make interesting games that push forward gaming as a medium.  You may think that’s a little strange after this rant.  But the truth is, that is what we live for – we love certain things about games and we want to create those feelings for other people.

I am currently replaying Vampire: Bloodlines because there’s something unquantifiable about the atmosphere in that game which is unmatched by any other art I’ve come across in any medium.  I would love to make a game like that one day, it would be phenomenal.  But as I’m playing, all the time, I’m thinking, “Creating this game killed Troika.”  I do not want to be Troika: I want to live to tell the tale.

So that’s why we are going to be creating a portfolio system with our upcoming titles: you’ll see it, you might think it’s a bit crazy (let me tell you right now, it’s a bit crazy).  But it will work, and it’ll empower us to make some truly great games in the next five years.

I feel like we have grown hugely as a company by gaining the understanding we’ve worked towards in the last six months.  We have had to take some extremely hard decisions and some things are not resolved yet.  Know this: our resolve is set, and you will hear a lot more from us soon.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 12:33 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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