"the games industry is dead" - seemingly

ObeyGiant

Here's the Slashdot article

BlitzKrieg

publishers want more sure bets because with rising costs come rising risks.

and

and that is that the publisher pays for the entire game; it handles the manufacturing, the marketing, the distribution, the advertising, practically everything, much the way it used to be in Hollywood pre-United Artists. But, as the film industry matured, it took on a more sophisticated financing structure. Today, for example, studios don't pay for a movie by themselves. They pay a percentage and then other parties pick up the other 66%; it's usually a three-party investment package. But not in the games industry

if this is not indicating games are going the way of hollywood i dont know what is. Who wants to start a dogme 95 for games...rules would be?

Kazaanova

Are you kidding, or just really, really naive? I don't think anyone in their right mind would argue that (commercially successful) games are getting anything but insanely difficult to make.

A big thing about the PS3 is that its really developer friendly. I'm not quite sure how it works, but its something along the lines of the PS3 doing the grunt work, like rendering a tree and stuff like that.

But I'd agree that it has gotten a lot more difficult. There are a lot of games that are in development for 2 or more years. Thats insane when you think of it. Take Snake Eater, the production values on that were amazing.

Similarly, Elixir shut down last week because they couldn't afford to keep making 'innovative' games

Thats terrible news. Elixir had some really class different games. Its only recently I've started to notice when a game company closes down, because recently they've started to be good ones.

Worst case scenario would be games getting so hard to make that there begins a decrease in the number of games made. But then I think they'd stay at that level(they'd have to), and over time new game developers would catch up and there would start to be as many games as there are today.

It can be done, its not impossible. Look at Bethesda Softworks, 10 years ago they were producing this:



Do you think that 10 years ago if someone had told them that they would be producing something like
Oblivion that they would of believed it? They wouldnt even be able to imagine it.

Ciaran500

Kazaanova wrote:

A big thing about the PS3 is that its really developer friendly. I'm not quite sure how it works, but its something along the lines of the PS3 doing the grunt work, like rendering a tree and stuff like that.

The PS3 will not be developer friendly. It use a proprietary chip (cell) which devs will need to develop code for, just like the emotion engine it will take year to refine.

Kazaanova

The PS3 will not be developer friendly. It use a proprietary chip (cell) which devs will need to develop code for, just like the emotion engine it will take year to refine.

Cell uses the same code that the PS2 chip used. So devs wont have to develop new code for it. Now, whether or not the current chip is dev friendly, I don't know, but I know that Sony are aiming for it to be easy on devs.

BloodBath

Well, obviously you haven't been listening. Recently, Oddworld Inhabitants quit the games industry completely, heading off to pastures new (Hollywood), claiming that the unrealistic demands on developers in a risk-averse environment drove them from games.

Similarly, Elixir shut down last week because they couldn't afford to keep making 'innovative' games - the high cost of development meant that no publisher would back their original IP.

Hell, I even posted Greg Costikyan's speech at GDC, which also explained how hard it is to make new games. From that same GDC talk, Warren Spector also talks about how hard it is to make new games. There are hundreds of examples of games developers moaning about how hard it is to make new games. I don't know how you haven't heard any.

It's becoming more expensive. Development teams are getting bigger, production times longer and the risks are larger. The flipside of the coin is that good games make massive amounts of money. I'm not surprised the oddworld team has gone belly up. They are a bit of a one hit wonder. Developers can choose to make their own engine e.g. valve taking 5 years to make hl2. Another company can come along and use that pre-made engine which is very scaleable to make their own unique game in less than a year. Most of the hard work has been done already. There is a relatively small company that's willing to take risks in a saturated market. They spent their entire profits from HL1 and more to fund the production and it paid off. With the amount of competition a lot of the small guys will suffer. How is this different from any other entertainment market though?


BloodBath

Ciaran500

Kazaanova wrote:

Cell uses the same code that the PS2 chip used. So devs wont have to develop new code for it. Now, whether or not the current chip is dev friendly, I don't know, but I know that Sony are aiming for it to be easy on devs.

Link?

The cell is a completly unique chip. Theres no way the PS2 code will just work on the cell processor.

Retr0gamer

Ciaran500 wrote:

Link?

The cell is a completly unique chip. Theres no way the PS2 code will just work on the cell processor.

The PS2 chipset is very small at the moment. i wouldn't be surprised if the chipset is part of the PS3 and could also be used as a means of PS2 emulation. They did the same with the PS1 chipset as part of the sound hardware for the PS2.

Kazaanova

Ciaran500 wrote:

Link?

The cell is a completly unique chip. Theres no way the PS2 code will just work on the cell processor.

http://news.com.com/PlayStation+3+to+be+easy+on+developers,+Sony+vows/2100-1043_3-5606515.html

Ciaran500

Where does it say the cell uses PS2 code in that article?

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2379&p=1

"With Cell, Sony has effectively traded hardware complexity for programmer burden, but if anyone is willing to bear the burden of a complicated architecture, it is a game developer."

"game development houses often develop and optimize for the least common denominator when it comes to hardware, and offer ports with minor improvements to other platforms. Given Cell’s architecture, it hardly looks like a suitable “base” platform to develop for."

Kazaanova

Ciaran500 wrote:

Where does it say the cell uses PS2 code in that article?

I'm not saying that developers wont have to develop new code, just not completely new code.

promising that Cell would adapt many existing development tools rather than force developers to learn whole new languages.

Retr0gamer

I think we are going to see a lot more developers relie ever more on middleware since they just won't have the resources to make an engine from scratch.

BloodBath

The flipside of the coin is that good games make massive amounts of money.

I quote myself. Even bad games make massive amounts of money. Look at the sims :rolleyes:


BloodBath

BlitzKrieg

worse the fifa series...

ObeyGiant

BloodBath wrote:

It's becoming more expensive. Development teams are getting bigger, production times longer and the risks are larger.

Since games development is becoming more expensive because games are getting more difficult to develop, and development teams are getting bigger because games are getting more difficult to development,a nd production times are getting longer because games are getting more difficult to develop... would you agree that games are actually getting more difficult to develop?

(note: In each of the above, I mean 'commercially successful games'. I realise that 20 lines of SDL code can make a 'game'. Just so we're clear.)

BloodBath wrote:

The flipside of the coin is that good games make massive amounts of money. I'm not surprised the oddworld team has gone belly up. They are a bit of a one hit wonder.

Er.. better make that a 7-hit wonder. Each one of their games did well both critically and commercially. And this is part of the problem - in the most recent example of "Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath", they had a fantastic game (seriously, play it.. it's a lot of fun), reflected in the almost unanimously good response it got from reviewers that would have sold a lot more copies if EA had actually gotten behind the product and given it the kind of marketing they claim it deserved. This would have turned a $20million game into a $100million game.

And this is another part of the argument. Good games, even without a decent level of innovation, are being left by the wayside in the current system as publishers hype the latest sequel or MTV-friendly piece of pap.

BloodBath wrote:

Developers can choose to make their own engine e.g. valve taking 5 years to make hl2. Another company can come along and use that pre-made engine which is very scaleable to make their own unique game in less than a year. Most of the hard work has been done already. There is a relatively small company that's willing to take risks in a saturated market. They spent their entire profits from HL1 and more to fund the production and it paid off. With the amount of competition a lot of the small guys will suffer. How is this different from any other entertainment market though?

I've read and re-read your post, and I'm not sure you're fully aware of the situation.

Yes, the middleware market is now bigger than ever, with all sorts of game engines, physics engines, sound engines, animation tools available to developers. It's possible one could piece together something without the ability to write even one component from scratch. If you were so desperate, you could even throw something together using open-source technology (Irrlicht for the graphics eengine works well with ODE - the open source physics engine). But this does not make things dramatically 'easier'.

Even mods for Half Life 2 are slower to come and harder to program because of the complexity involved in getting everything working together. This is in spite of the fact that Valve have done everything they can to make it as easy as possible for people to mod their engine. Sometimes "easy as possible" still isn't particularly easy.

BloodBath wrote:

With the amount of competition a lot of the small guys will suffer. How is this different from any other entertainment market though?

Again, I think you're being terribly naive about this whole thing, for more reasons than I care to go into right now, so I'll just touch on one - currently, the 'small guys' are suffering because there is virtually no other distribution system. They are being held over a barrel by the distributors, who are the investors, meaning that if they decide something is too expensive, or won't provide a significant return, they can cancel it and the developer is out of luck.

There's a lot more going on here than just simple "games are getting too hard to develop for". Although most everything revolves around money, I don't think there's any way to sum it all up in one sound-byte-worthy sentence.

BloodBath

Since games development is becoming more expensive because games are getting more difficult to develop, and development teams are getting bigger because games are getting more difficult to development,a nd production times are getting longer because games are getting more difficult to develop... would you agree that games are actually getting more difficult to develop?

I agreed they were getting more difficulyt about 10 posts back.

There is no doubt they are getting more difficult but it's not exactly at epidemic proportions.

Er.. better make that a 7-hit wonder. Each one of their games did well both critically and commercially. And this is part of the problem - in the most recent example of "Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath", they had a fantastic game (seriously, play it.. it's a lot of fun), reflected in the almost unanimously good response it got from reviewers that would have sold a lot more copies if EA had actually gotten behind the product and given it the kind of marketing they claim it deserved. This would have turned a $20million game into a $100million game.

I meant the one type of game. Strangers wrath was a break from the norm though. There was no way in hell it ever would have made $100 though even if EA had pimped it.

But this does not make things dramatically 'easier'.

Your saying not having to make a games engine from scratch does not make things dramatically easier? Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines was made in a relatively short period of time using the source engine and was a great game.

Even mods for Half Life 2 are slower to come and harder to program because of the complexity involved in getting everything working together. This is in spite of the fact that Valve have done everything they can to make it as easy as possible for people to mod their engine. Sometimes "easy as possible" still isn't particularly easy.

That's because most mods are made by a small team and the game is only out a few months. No mods make full appearences this soon after a release.

Again, I think you're being terribly naive about this whole thing, for more reasons than I care to go into right now, so I'll just touch on one - currently, the 'small guys' are suffering because there is virtually no other distribution system. They are being held over a barrel by the distributors, who are the investors, meaning that if they decide something is too expensive, or won't provide a significant return, they can cancel it and the developer is out of luck.

Again how is this different from any other media market? The film and music industry operate the exact same way. There are many distributers a developer can go to. There are even some other distribution methods arising. Again Valve are an example and at the moment it looks like HL2 and any expansions or mods will only be available through steam. Now this isn't ideal by any means. It requires people to have a fast internet connection which a lot of people don't have so they will probably hav to find another distributer seeing as they have settled with Vivendi Universal. What's stopping any of the other companys going to another distributer?


BloodBath

ObeyGiant

BloodBath wrote:

I agreed they were getting more difficulyt about 10 posts back.

Oops, my mistake.

BloodBath wrote:

I meant the one type of game. Strangers wrath was a break from the norm though. There was no way in hell it ever would have made $100 though even if EA had pimped it.

It was a unique, fun game to play with a broad appeal that sold modestly well in spite of a perceived lack of backing from the distributor. It's debatable whether or not it would have sold better with more marketing. Personally speaking, I thought it was better than Halo 2, which sold by the bucketloads, but that's just me.

BloodBath wrote:

Your saying not having to make a games engine from scratch does not make things dramatically easier? Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines was made in a relatively short period of time using the source engine and was a great game.

Ironic that you choose that particular game, since Troika games (the developers of Vampire: The Masquerade) recently shut their doors.

And I didn't say that buying off-the-shelf components doesn't make things easier. It just doesn't make things as dramatically easier. It doesn't turn it into "slot in component A, a little bit of sound, a bit of physics, bingo bango - we have a game!". One of the major headaches involved with middleware is actually integrating it with your existing technology (or other middeware), which can often take as long as writing your own custom software. So yes, it makes things a little easier, but it brings its own difficulties.

BloodBath wrote:

That's because most mods are made by a small team and the game is only out a few months. No mods make full appearences this soon after a release.

Yes, yes - they are coming, just slowly. And it's taking more people to develop them than before. This is because of the relative difficulty of writing mods for Half Life 2 compared to Half Life 1.

BloodBath wrote:

Again how is this different from any other media market? The film and music industry operate the exact same way.

Not quite.

As Warren Spector points out: "We’re the only medium that lacks an alternate distribution system. All we have is boxed games sold at retail. This is changing a little. But think about our competition for your entertainment dollar. First run, broadcast, reruns, DVDs.. you name it. hardback, paperback, e-book. Theatre release, pay-per-view, video, DVD. We put our thing on the shelf at Wal-Mart, it sells or it doesn’t, and OMG you just blew 10m dollars."

BloodBath wrote:

What's stopping any of the other companys going to another distributer?

Well, often because they can't. I'm not saying this happens in 100% of the cases, but a lot of the time a developer locks themselves into a deal with a publisher based on early prototypes or concepts. When the publisher yanks the chain on the game, they keep all the rights to the game, meaning the developer simply *can't* go to another publisher.

Ri_Nollaig

BloodBath wrote:

I quote myself. Even bad games make massive amounts of money. Look at the sims :rolleyes:


BloodBath

there is nothing wrong with the sims sims 2 is a good laugh and was orginal when the first one came out
...granted EA have milked it to the end and still dont plan on stopping and have made it the biggest selling pc game of all time

Kristok

I dont know he could be right, i mean its not like the games market didnt already die once before. And I saw these game shots recently HERE and have to say if this is what games on the next gen consoles look like at launch it wont be that long into their lifes that photo realistic games start to appear and once you get photo realistic games its really the end of the road, I mean why buy another console when the one you have already plays games that look real. Ps2 is what 5 years old ? how long will ps3 be round, probably longer.

steviec

Kristok wrote:

I dont know he could be right, i mean its not like the games market didnt already die once before. And I saw these game shots recently HERE and have to say if this is what games on the next gen consoles look like at launch it wont be that long into their lifes that photo realistic games start to appear and once you get photo realistic games its really the end of the road, I mean why buy another console when the one you have already plays games that look real. Ps2 is what 5 years old ? how long will ps3 be round, probably longer.

Wow I've never seen those shots before, they're impressive!

Still though, I don't see how arriving at photo-realism is gonna kill the industry. As someone said, there's more and more parrallels with the film industry. And it's not like they need to keep making breakthroughs in special effects and things for people to keep coming to films(yes I know there's a lot of big films that ride on their special effects, but there's also a hell of a lot that enjoyed both critical and commercial success that could just as easily have been shot 30 years ago technology wise)

If the technology starts levelling off, developers will actually have to start resorting to innovation to keep gamers interested, just because you can't improve your graphics engine doesn't mean you can't come up with new features, new ideas, new control systems, a great story depending what type of game it is.

Kristok

well when we get photo reaistic graphics then the hardware upgrade that gives the industry a push every couple of years will be pointless. Games like say gt4 or half life 2 etc that rely on pushing the graphics will be pointless as your 10 year old game will be just as realistic as the new 2015 game.

I dont think it will ever die but I could imagine a point where it slows down to a point that we only get a new game every other week just like new movies in the cinema because it takes too long to make the games to be releasing them at the pace they are made now.

tHE vAGGABOND

Just to dip into this thread:

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines was made in a relatively short period of time using the source engine and was a great game.

It was a good game...but the company that made it went out of business about 2 months after the games release as no one bought it

There you have the RISK element; you can spend money here, there and everywhere - but one bad move and you go out of business. Which is why you dont go 2 months without hearing about another dev team somewhere going bust..

The games industry turns over more money and makes more profit than the movie business on a whole and pretty much country by country - its not going anywhere. The only thing that will happen is that the number of developers will shrink, and games will come from a smaller number of people.

Ri_Nollaig

tHE vAGGABOND wrote:

Just to dip into this thread:
It was a good game...but the company that made it went out of business about 2 months after the games release as no one bought it

There you have the RISK element; you can spend money here, there and everywhere - but one bad move and you go out of business. Which is why you dont go 2 months without hearing about another dev team somewhere going bust..

The games industry turns over more money and makes more profit than the movie business on a whole and pretty much country by country - its not going anywhere. The only thing that will happen is that the number of developers will shrink, and games will come from a smaller number of people.

but it was also full of bugs and didnt use the source engine to its full

bizmark

Indeed it was buggy as hell i gave up trying to finish the game because a door wouldnt open in the second last mission :rolleyes: thankfuly the game only cost me 10 euro when it was 2 weeks old so i didnt feel to cheated

Originally Posted by Kristok
I dont know he could be right, i mean its not like the games market didnt already die once before. And I saw these game shots recently HERE

Jesus imagen GTA with that engine :eek:

BloodBath

It's very impressive alright but we are still a long long way from a realistic in game enviroment. Think of the massive detail in the simpliest of things. A tree with thousands of leaves that blow in the wind. Rain falling onto a dry road and gradually building up until it's flowing down the sides. Games are starting to look very realistic but theres more aspects to making a realistic world than just visuals. There will still be plenty of hardware upgrades for years to come.



BloodBath

bizmark

I was thinking the same thing myself personally id love a game world that is truly massive the size of a country a continent or even the earth itself don’t think consoles or pc hardware could cope with that for many many years to come.

uberpixie

bizmark wrote:

I was thinking the same thing myself personally id love a game world that is truly massive the size of a country a continent or even the earth itself don’t think consoles or pc hardware could cope with that for many many years to come.

MMORPG?

bizmark

uberpixie wrote:

MMORPG?

Well ya but there powered by many servers arent they? im thinking more along the lines of gta with a play area of 100's of miles or a god game like Black and white 2 with world sized maps all playable in single player in your front room from your console or pc

uberpixie

bizmark wrote:

Well ya but there powered by many servers arent they? im thinking more along the lines of gta with a play area of 100's of miles or a god game like Black and white 2 with world sized maps all playable in single player in your front room from your console or pc

GTA style game is better over a fairly large area than a huge one.

If the area is too big it's harder for a player to get to know(important in gta).

A huge area also means a lot more "filler" and more development time.

Better a smaller, well laid out area than a huge bland one!

If you want world sized maps play Civ 3 or alpha centauri?

If a map gets very big for a strategy game like black and white 2, the experiance gets diluted.

Better to have a fairly large area where a player can keep a good mental map of whats going on without getting bogged down in huge amounts of micro managment.

More space is just more things to forget about distracting you from the main game. My opinon anyhow :-)

Best game i ever saw for huge level design was gothic 2. Every time you went back to an area you discovered something new.

Best of all was no part of a map felt repeated/copied and pasted.

They really spent a lot of time on the level design on the first few areas and it shows when you play it.

monument

bizmark wrote:

Well ya but there powered by many servers arent they? im thinking more along the lines of gta with a play area of 100's of miles or a god game like Black and white 2 with world sized maps all playable in single player in your front room from your console or pc

At time when I’ve had lots of time on my hands I have given a good amount of thought to this, but always with multiplayer worlds – MMORPG, a 3D MMORTS, a mixture of both, or a half-baked idea of a MMOFPS.

One possibility for a single player GTA style game could be where the game could be updated, and the world/map could expand, as well as old sections changing (for example a cities would change like real cities) – with new missions using old and new... But developers going away and making something slightly newer and different (or the delusion of such) sounds better to me.