Hard times ahead?

    Back when I started to dream of working in Games Industry, and actually realized that it might be true someday (this was somewhere around mid-90s, might have been 94,) the industry was pretty strong and it seemed like a perfect job in every aspect.

    But since then, alot has changed, lately I have been thinking that it might be a good idea to gather as many talents as possible and maybe even study the artforms used in film industry and comic industry, or any other industry somewhat close to the game industry. Rising costs in development and recent buyouts has made many jobs insecure, you can never know when your company if bought out and jobs laid off because the buyer just wanted the licences your studio owned and not the talent. Alot of threats these days.

    But the gameviolence media circus recently going around the world doesn't seem to help things at all, now it's not enough that you might get fired, or lose your job because of financial status, but you might get even sued becuase some asshole doesn't know right from wrong and decides to blame popular game X for his actions to get out of the heat.

    I know it used to be pretty bad in the film industry too, violence in movies was and still is an issue and comics got censored pretty harshly back in the Comics Code days, thank god those days are over.

    But as the popularity of video games seem to rise and they get more and more media time the issues they rise are equally big.

    But I'm pretty confident that this will be over sooner or later, but I don't like the current direction one bit, indy game developers don't have it so good anymore, compared to the old days of Lord British and Sid Meier or Peter Molyneux, they got it good back then.

    So, any of you who currently work in the industry had any similar fears, or are they just exaggerated by the media?

    Maybe I'm ignorant and the future will prove me wrong, but I haven't had any fears of this sort either, as well as the people I work with have never expressed such fears to me.

    You don't have time to think about it actually heh...you have different fears

    not worried at all. there will always be people who will try and stain our industry because they dont understand it (thompson) and there will always be buyouts, just like in any other industry. this is all normal. it's definitely still an industry thats worth working in. well worth it. i dont think this will change anytime soon.

    I just wish that if anything will change that it would be in benefit of smaller develoepers and indy developers. It has been long since anything good came out of the major players in the industry.

    I don't think the recent media frenzy is a reason to concern (heck we have that once a month in Germany, when papers got nothing else to write about), but I agree that some self grown problems in the industry may bite us in the ass later on. Games become more complex, require more people to create, increase development costs and risks because more copies need to be sold...

    The increasing move to 'big business' type structures in the games industry will make it harder to break into, but the industry is making way too much ccash for wanker like Jack thompson to put a dent in your prospects.

    Complexity is, I supppose the main concern, it's taking more and more time and effort to create a stunning map/model and get hired, so I guess that the time you're gonna have to invest to get anywhere is gonig to increase as well.

    Quote from Kosmo

    I just wish that if anything will change that it would be in benefit of smaller develoepers and indy developers. It has been long since anything good came out of the major players in the industry.

    Maybe the major players just aren't the major players anymore...

    Quote from TomWithTheWeather

    Maybe the major players just aren't the major players anymore...

    True, and to think about it, even if the time of powerful individuals making something that changes the whole industry it gone, you still can see that most major innovations that have huge impact on the industry come from smaller development studios. Well, I don't know how small something like Epic is but making the most popula engine to date, or might even be the most popular engine ever.

    And games like Farcry, Dawn of War, Fable, Chronicles or Riddick and ofcourse Pirates! have had tremendous success and actually deserved it.

    But sad buyouts have happened too, like Westwood, oh westwood, I'll always remember you. And failures that have happened to wrong people and wrong game, like Illusion Softworks Mafia which was one of the besst games ever made, but it didn't get that much attenttion.

    And things that you should be afraid of, like maybe one day someone buys Remedy and they lose their edge and the already seen changes in Blizzards management styles indicate that they are gradually changing in to something not so likeable (or maybe it's just my imagination).

    The future way for indie devs to break through will be with small mods going commercial on low prices. At least that it is my hope as mod developer...

    I don't think peoples jobs are at stake that much, but its increasingly harder day by day for people like myself who want a job in the industry to do so.

    I worked at Lionhead on "The Movies" for an internship for 6 weeks, and when I showed them my portfolio all they could say was "Its not got enough polys" or "If its not got Edge Loops then its no good".

    I felt that they were over looking the actual work I had done, some of the feedback I recieved felt more aggressive rather than helpful.

    Most of the people at Lionhead admitted they only got the job because they knew the lead in a certain area before hand, there were people there that to my eye daudled all day. I felt like I could have been a better contributor than most at the job.

    A couple of employees there were great however, but the general feeling was "go away I don't want to give you any confidence because your works better than mine, and I don't want to loose my job to you"

    Anyway, I know I can get a job after my degree. But as the industry stands I'm feeling I'd rather start my own company thats small and make games that don't look the best but are fun, rather than work for a big company that makes clone games because thats all their publishers know will make them cash.

    Just remember, the grass isn't always necessarily greener - you'll find aspects of this hardship almost everywhere, especially in 'creative' industries like the ones you mentioned - comics and film.

    Quote

    Anyway, I know I can get a job after my degree. But as the industry stands I'm feeling I'd rather start my own company thats small and make games that don't look the best but are fun, rather than work for a big company that makes clone games because thats all their publishers know will make them cash.

    Same here. The Project Offset team is the best example. My ideal game dev job would be something like that.

    One of the biggest problems is that publishers control the market way too much and bigger companies like EA make game development to appear like any other industry with their factory work and dumbed down game concepts.

    Project Offset is a great example what a team roughly 3 memebers in size can do when they have the drive for it instead of them working on a game to make them rich.

    Only time will tell if Project Offset actually becomes something though.

    It is one thing for a team of 100 people to finish a project on a standard development timeline, and it is a near impossible thing for three people to complete a game on their own in a timely manner.

    Certainly 3 is ridiculously few, but at the same time I think 100+ man teams are also counter-productive. I don't see any reason a smallish team (35 people seems a good sweet spot) can't still make solid, enjoyable, and visually appealing titles in a reasonable span of time - 2-3 years, maybe 1-2 years for followups with smart use of existing tech/content, maybe less if you're on BIA (don't worry, I mean that in a good way ). I think the problem is tools aren't quite evolving with the technology. With improved tools, people can be more productive at a higher level of quality in a shorter amount of time. Case in point: ZBrush. Entirely unified editors are also a step in the right direction - the educational title I worked on before Quake was on a free engine in which everything - modeling, animation, scripting, level design, AI placement, triggers, etc. etc. - was built and implemented in Maya and maya scripts/plugins provided by the engine developers, or the project's programmer.

    Smaller teams are for the benefit of everyone - fewer dependencies, less chance of communication breakdown, lower development cost (and thus lower minimum number of sales to turn a profit), etc. There's still a place for the little guy.

    Quote from Kosmo

    True, and to think about it, even if the time of powerful individuals making something that changes the whole industry it gone, you still can see that most major innovations that have huge impact on the industry come from smaller development studios. Well, I don't know how small something like Epic is but making the most popula engine to date, or might even be the most popular engine ever.

    Epic is around 60 people. They usually split into two dev teams (GoW and UT2k7) and I'd guess two or three of the programmers are dedicated R&D engine guys.

    As far as Project Offset goes, they have some decent technology, though nothing really different from UE3, but it won't go anywhere unless they start licensing it like crazy or hire at least like 20 more people to the team.

    Quote

    Smaller teams are for the benefit of everyone - fewer dependencies, less chance of communication breakdown, lower development cost (and thus lower minimum number of sales to turn a profit), etc. There's still a place for the little guy.

    This is what I'm hoping for.

    I'm still far away from a job in the game-industry (isn't this word a shame already - creativity cannot be industrialized), but it's my only goal, because this is a very young and not so strictly regularized area, which combines all arts.

    I also believe that companies like EA will grow even larger and when the fans are enventually sick of the 100th WW2 ego-shooter, they'll rip another promissing idea from a bunch of creative hobbyists and market it on a grand scale.

    But the day will come when a Quentin Tarantino of the games appears and will create an antipole to EA's junk food - at least for a while.

    The industry is in a growing point, old methods don't fly anymore, like every other industry game industry hasto evolve too, and the competition will get harder and things will get rough before they will get better, but like movie industry, indipendend movies are celebrated and there is plenty of room in there for a little guy.

    Charlie Cleveland aka. Flayra the leader of NS mod team and the founder of Unknown Worlds Entertainment has some pretty good ideas on how indie developer can make it, through a network of smaller developer teams that work on different parts of the game hired by the game developer itself, this doesn't necessarily mean that there is a studio that hires studios to make art for example, it could mean that a studio hires a freelancer to do concept art for them and put his own guys to work on art and programming, and some art is bough from outside (something S2 Games is already doing) and engine comes from outside, this cuts the development costs and time.

    I have on several occasions tought about finding my own studio with few of my friends who are also interested in working in game development, we would do graphics design for game developers to fund the work on our own game this takes the risk of working for 3 years for demo and then failing to get publishers interested on our project and going belly up.

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