Hard times ahead?

[Kosmo]

At times you guys bash EA a little bit too much, as if Satan himself was running the corporation, with the goal to destroy all games.

You all played BF2, maybe battle for middle earth or c&c generals, black & white 2 just came oiut, the new bond game, nfs most wanted also looks fun...

Well, it's not that EA is bad by default, but such large corporation, has alot of ongoing projects, alot of workers and it has to please the investors, they rush their projects out of the door, and along the way fucking them up. They have to make sure their projects make money so they can keep up all of their projects/jobs/investors, so they don't have the freedom of making what ever they want, and that is why I personally hate EA.

Making games is an artform, something that is made out of love and not for sales.

And nother thing, BF2, Black & White 2 and many other games are not made by EA, but most gamers that are not in to the industry still think that they did, because it is the biggest logo on the box, and first logo to appear in the game intro.

[-Stratesiz-]

Making games is an artform, something that is made out of love and not for sales.

That can be said about everything else like a movie, a painting, a new wicked looking toothbrush, a wine bottle and its label, a vacuum cleaner, a car, a print ad, an advertisement campaign, a building, a city, you name it. Unfortunately, without money nothing works. You sell a painting, you design a tooth brush to look good in order to increase sales, you design a car to be attractive, you make a game to earn a living. As for games, it's about mass sales since if you design a game for a niche market using the same amount of resources as any other big title, you would have to price it way higher, and since there is no market for "high-end" games, it's not worth it.

The bigger a project, the more resources required, the more perceived risk, the higher the incentive to reduce risks by playing it safe. Games of today can not be compared to paintings and such. It's a fact of life that we have to accept.

[hazardous!]

Making games is an artform, something that is made out of love and not for sales.

That can be said about everything else like a movie, a painting, a new wicked looking toothbrush, a wine bottle and its label, a vacuum cleaner, a car, a print ad, an advertisement campaign, a building, a city, you name it.

Basically I agree, but not at all on the advertisement. Ads have the only purpose to create a demand for the product among probable customers.

Unfortunately, without money nothing works. You sell a painting, you design a tooth brush to look good in order to increase sales, you design a car to be attractive, you make a game to earn a living. As for games, it's about mass sales since if you design a game for a niche market using the same amount of resources as any other big title, you would have to price it way higher, and since there is no market for "high-end" games, it's not worth it.

Most of real big financial budgets are used for franchising, licenses and patents - things that don't really exist.

There are small companies, making small games with small budgets and they sell them, making enough profit to live from.

Same applies for music and movies - what would we do without independent-labels?

So it's not all about mass sales.

The bigger a project, the more resources required, the more perceived risk, the higher the incentive to reduce risks by playing it safe. Games of today can not be compared to paintings and such. It's a fact of life that we have to accept.

Let me quote an earlier post to contradict this:

To quote John Carmack:

In the information age, the barriers just aren't there. The barriers are self imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you dont need millions of dollars of capitalization. You just need enough pizza [added] and [insert favorite beverage] to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the deadication to go through with it.

In other words: you don't always need money to make games and you don't always have to earn money with them.

Games like Half-Life are so popular, because there are thousands of people, working for not a single dime, to extend it, and because Valve supports them doing so.

Also we don't have to accept things, just because the big guys are doing it their way. If our ancestors would have done so, the USA wouldn't be independent and we'd still have monarchic rulership.

Ben Mathis wrote an article about this (the third part to be precise), which I mostly agree with.

http://www.mapcore.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3450

On EA again:

Sure EA has sold many good games. The problem that I and many others have with it, is that they are big and that they can't stop growing even bigger. They squeeze out franchise products - like FIFA or other sport games - one new episode, every year. Franchise is for making money, nothing else.

I have seen many people who worked for big players and small companies and every single one of them preferred the latter.

Finally let me repeat this quote again:

Making games is an artform, something that is made out of love and not for sales.

Because I think that whenever you make a statement about the games-industry, you should check if it complies with this fact - otherwise it's bollocks!

[FrieChamp]

And where are the guys who made BF2 now? They're looking for jobs.

Did I miss something? I only know that DICE bought Trauma Studios and shut it down a couple of months back, that was ice cold and had nothing to do with EA. If you refer to something else, let me know.

Finally let me repeat this quote again:

Kosmo wrote:

Making games is an artform, something that is made out of love and not for sales.

Because I think that whenever you make a statement about the games-industry, you should check if it complies with this fact - otherwise it's bollocks!

You need to realize that game developers fight day in, day out for making games a generally accepted form of art. They mostly love what they do and try to create something fun and original.

Publishers want to sell as many copies of games as possible to compensate the costs and preferabbly of course make profit from it.

So why do game developers team up with evil publishers in the first place? Because someone needs to pay the bills. If you can't, you will find yourself at the unemployment office faster than you will like to.

Yes, making games is great if you are passionate about it, but you can't live from shits and giggles. Game developers aren't robots. So please don't be too romantic about the whole creation of games

[Kosmo]

Yeah but sometimes our romantic view of the industry works and some might make millions of their piece of art, just look at Remedy, they have done exactly what they wanted to do and they hit it big, very big.

I understand that money is the necessary evil and sometimes it can fuck things up, publishers have pushed mind numbing mainstream action titles to the market and thusly killed the generic gamers view of anything else like Psychonauts or Mafia, and then the publishers wonder "why didn't our other games make so much money."

I'm going to use Dice as an example, few years ago there was a game called Codename Eagle by Refraction, the games singleplayer was so so, it had some very nicely planned missions with swapping uniforms and stealing vehicles, but the multiplayer.. WOW! Man me and my cousin played through weekends sleeping like some 2 hours and just tearing it apart in LANs and such, it was a blast, one of the best games I have ever played, AND only game you can have a motorcycle jump with it from a cliff jump out of it and enter in to a plane in mid air then jump out of the plane and enter a car when you hit the ground

Then comes a company called Dice, takes out the stupid singleplayer, leaves the multiplayer (because it was the start of the goldenage of multiplayer only games) gives it a WW2 shooter twist, and voila, everything is history. So gamers didn't even know about the game, it sold very poorly and it was prettymuch a flop. So what changed when Dice practically remade the game? Well... EA knows how to sell a WW2 shooter they have molded the market for WW2 shooters that they put out every week killing the market for everything else.

[-Stratesiz-]

Making games is an artform, something that is made out of love and not for sales.

That can be said about everything else like a movie, a painting, a new wicked looking toothbrush, a wine bottle and its label, a vacuum cleaner, a car, a print ad, an advertisement campaign, a building, a city, you name it.

Basically I agree, but not at all on the advertisement. Ads have the only purpose to create a demand for the product among probable customers.

Making fun and unique advertisements is a real challenge can be an artform in all its forms. ADs work with ads because they love how you mix different medias together. An advertisement agency is purely about superior creativeness that leads to profits.

Just think of Absolut Vodka for instance. Its ads are displayed in art museums! Just have a look at this site that collects Abolute ads: http://www.absolutads.com/gallery/view.php?letter=A

Let me further quote this from an article:

Kiefer said the Absolut ads are "more than just ads—they're art."

"What other ads do you see people actually collecting?" Kiefer asked. "Absolut ads get shown in galleries and sold at auctions. That's when you know you've created something truly special. Man, if I could get one of my Absolut ads displayed in a gallery somewhere—and maybe even take home a Clio in the process—I'd die a happy man."

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28248

Now that's just one example.

"Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century."

Marshall McLuhan

Unfortunately, without money nothing works. You sell a painting, you design a tooth brush to look good in order to increase sales, you design a car to be attractive, you make a game to earn a living. As for games, it's about mass sales since if you design a game for a niche market using the same amount of resources as any other big title, you would have to price it way higher, and since there is no market for "high-end" games, it's not worth it.

Most of real big financial budgets are used for franchising, licenses and patents - things that don't really exist.

There are small companies, making small games with small budgets and they sell them, making enough profit to live from.

Same applies for music and movies - what would we do without independent-labels?

So it's not all about mass sales.

Yes it's not all mass sales but lately, the trend has been a transition to bigger mainstream projects that mean more revenue. Several independent and commercial game companies have died recently due to the number of games they have to sell in order to reach the break-even point (Troika, for example). The number of flight simulators, adventure games (puzzle solving), role-play games, etc. is increasing since such games don't sell enough even though the costs are considerably lower. The number of first person shooters, for example, has increased.

The bigger a project, the more resources required, the more perceived risk, the higher the incentive to reduce risks by playing it safe. Games of today can not be compared to paintings and such. It's a fact of life that we have to accept.

Let me quote an earlier post to contradict this:

To quote John Carmack:

In the information age, the barriers just aren't there. The barriers are self imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you dont need millions of dollars of capitalization. You just need enough pizza [added] and [insert favorite beverage] to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the deadication to go through with it.

In other words: you don't always need money to make games and you don't always have to earn money with them.

Games like Half-Life are so popular, because there are thousands of people, working for not a single dime, to extend it, and because Valve supports them doing so.

No you don't but games are constantly becoming more complex which means that they still require more resources to create. And by resources, I do not simply mean money. Increased time costs are unavoidable, time that could be used in another manner to earn a living. A year has passed since HL2 was released and there still hasn't been any serious and big mods released.

Also we don't have to accept things, just because the big guys are doing it their way. If our ancestors would have done so, the USA wouldn't be independent and we'd still have monarchic rulership.

Ben Mathis wrote an article about this (the third part to be precise), which I mostly agree with.

http://www.mapcore.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3450

Of course not, but it's still getting harder day by day as games evolve to become even more complex.

On EA again:

Sure EA has sold many good games. The problem that I and many others have with it, is that they are big and that they can't stop growing even bigger. They squeeze out franchise products - like FIFA or other sport games - one new episode, every year. Franchise is for making money, nothing else.

I have seen many people who worked for big players and small companies and every single one of them preferred the latter.

Who wouldn't from a designer's point of view. The question is can you survive alone. Some can, some don't, but everything is getting more challenging.

[ginsengavenger]

And where are the guys who made BF2 now? They're looking for jobs.

Did I miss something? I only know that DICE bought Trauma Studios and shut it down a couple of months back, that was ice cold and had nothing to do with EA. If you refer to something else, let me know.

I'm well aware of the facts of the matter; my point is the volatility of the industry. This topic is getting scattered.

Strat you quoted The Onion in a serious light.... it's a parody newspaper :[

[-Stratesiz-]

Well the quote might not have been the best possible but advertising can still be an art form just like anything else.

[kleinluka]

Let's face it. Everything in this world is about making money. The sooner you wake up from the dreamworld that making games is all about love and passion the better.

Big corporations are very unlikely to risk launching a new IP that might not sell when they could just as well release an other sequel to an already established franchise that will guarantee them sales for the same production costs.

It works that way in any entertainment related industry. Change, difference and "NEW" stuff always comes with fear.

[-Stratesiz-]

That's a nice summary~

[NRG]

Let's face it. Everything in this world is about making money. The sooner you wake up from the dreamworld that making games is all about love and passion the better.

Big corporations are very unlikely to risk launching a new IP that might not sell when they could just as well release an other sequel to an already established franchise that will guarantee them sales for the same production costs.

It works that way in any entertainment related industry. Change, difference and "NEW" stuff always comes with fear.

Diddo. I agree with my friend Dan here. Sure, the individuals that make up the game companies might be in it for the passion. But make no mistake... at the end of the day, it is a business. It's about making enough money to a) remain self sustainable, and b) please the shareholders (perhaps not in that particular order either).

As for the issue of new IP's versus the old 'tested and true' formula, the problem with risky new IPs is that if it bombs miserably, this leaves a nice dent in the company's earnings. This leaves the shareholders in a bad mood.. share prices take a hit (and as a result, shareholders get into a worse mood). Tried and tested formulas that work are very integral to a large company's survival. It may take a while to mess up the value of a specific franchise due to it being released through the door too quickly.. but those sequals among sequals helps out. Just look at the evil empire (EA). They are very well known for this.

I wish it was alot more simpler.. many moons ago, smaller companies could take risks by introducing new IPs..(they could afford the dev kits, and the team sizes were farily small) I think the major problem these days is that with the advancement of console technologies... and the sizable teams that are needed to makes games for them are becoming a very expensive proposition. Just development alone is costly.. you have to factor in things like the obvious (salaries for coders [which can get expensive, VERY quickly I might add], artists, project co-ordinators, designers, animators, leads, etc.. ).. then add to this, people that are in marketing, Human Resources, etc.. it gets very expensive indeed. Small fish can't compare to this (unless your company's name is ID for example.. far and few inbetween)

To make matters worse, when a big fish eats a smaller fish, that smaller fish has no choice but to bend over and play by the bigger fish's rules. That smaller fish (which once was great with risk taking and creating great new and innovative IPs) now have no choice but to serve the greater interest of the bigger fish.

That does it! I can't stand fishing anymore! :wink:

But seriously, it is a great industry to at least experience.. but after being in this thing for nearly a decade, I can honestly say that indeed, alot has changed (and not necessarily for the better). My advice is this. Keep in mind that it is a business..If you are interested in getting into this industry, it is still worth it. You learn alot from it. You meet tons of talented and good people. You get to play with technology, you evolve a hell of alot as an artist, programmer/ whatever else...etc...... You truly learn a great deal. And when you have finally had your fill, then perhaps it is time to move on to different ventures...

Just my 2 cents... *cha-ching*

Cheers,

NRG

[Kosmo]

Discussion has evolved from person point of view to company scale, which is also good since different companies and different management styles create different environments for the workers.

Ofcourse these things are rather obvious, company has to make money, bigger corporations have alot more to answer for than smaller companies, and from medium sized company to large the management costs start to rise exponentially, risk taking is not an option because it involves alot more than just the risk takers, and in the worst case, if you take too big of a risk, you might end up losing it all, hundreds of people might end up losing also and you might even end up in jail.

But I think we all know everything about this.

But what changes for worker in small, medium and large company? Even if the large company can support the continuous development more securely than a small company, and because small companies take risks they might backfire. So is it that the larger the company the better you are?

[kleinluka]

In terms of EA being the badboy of the industry:

Billboard for Electronic Arts placed in front of a competitor's building. The text is written in ASCII code and tells: "Now hiring!"

[Kosmo]

That is pretty clever, I would have NOT made that ASCII thing out if you didn't tell.

But yeah, some of EA tactics are pretty bully like, they like rattling them cages, even if to see how the competition responds. They own few of the biggest licences, they have bought several smaller companies to make sure they didn't work for the competiton, they are easily the most agressive advertising company in the gaming industry, I can't remember when was the last time I saw a game ad in TV that wasn't EA game, maybe it was HL2.

It's not a fad that EA is well, not necessarily bad, but they act like any other big company.

[ginsengavenger]

heh, I remember that one. It's not that tough, at the time I ran the first three through charmap and it's obvious enough ;P