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| About Cash Cows & Cynics | | By Cassandra | | April 13, 2000 | As most of you are aware by now, Origin Systems has recently had some high profile departures from their development teams. As significant as the exits by Richard Garriott, Raph Koster and Rich Vogel are, as well as the other two dozen who lost their jobs at OSI recently, things like this are pretty much run-of-the-mill as far as this industry goes. Job security in the games industry is notoriously lacking, what with companies like OSI laying off dozens at a time, not to mention other companies like Sierra, who have hacked deep and cut off entire limbs by killing off their own development houses. And yet you can't swing a dead orc without hitting a gamer who really wants to become a developer.
Oddly enough, even with all of the cuts going on across the industry, there are many companies that are looking for good help. Programmers, artist and whatnot are still in demand. Even so, we seem to be losing some very talented people to other industries. Why? Because they can get paid more for their efforts. Programmers, for example, earn significantly less in the games industry than in other businesses for doing the same type of work. Pretty sad, isn't it, considering that the games industry is a multi-billion dollar industry now, allegedly raking in more money each year than the entertainment industry. One has to wonder where all the money is going.
For instance, yesterday David Swofford told us that they currently have 172,000 subscribers in Ultima Online. Do the math. At $10 per person a month, they're raking in $1.72 million a month. That's a pretty large cash cow. Where's the money going? Sure, they have to pay their current employees and expenses, and still have enough left over for a profit, but one would think that almost $2mil a month could cover that. And we know EA isn't relying solely on UO to keep them afloat, not when they have their successful EA Sports raking in money hand-over-fist. So you would think that, not only could they pay their workers a decent wage, but they'd also have enough left over to fund new projects rather than killing everything but the feature cow.
But I'm not here to bash OSI or EA, they aren't alone in their practices. It's an industry-wide problem. Sure, the big names like Richard Garriott, John Romero, Sid Meier and those of the same upper echelon can command pretty high wages, but what about the worker bees? Even "leads" are underpaid for their efforts, and unlike most jobs in other industries, they work much longer hours than the normal 9-5, 5 days a week schedule. During crunch times, they can work 18+ hours a day for weeks at a time, rarely seeing family. And forget having much of a social life.
Unfortunately, I don't see much changing anytime in the near future. Companies will continue paying sub-par salaries and require super-human dedication and they'll continue finding people who just want to get their foot in the door who will accept such pay. We'll continue losing some very good talent to other industries where people can get paid what they should.
Why do I care, you ask? After all, I'm not a developer, right? I'm not one of the ones getting cheated. True, but it affects all of us anyway. Because the ones that end up doing the work are fairly new and honing their skills, we gamers will continue being served crappy games with loads of bugs. Its no real surprise that there are very few truly innovative or highly enjoyable games coming our way. Sure, some developers today have great ideas for games. But without the financial backing of the powerhouses, who can afford to make them? And as we've seen, the powerhouses these days aren't looking for new and exciting ideas, they just seem interested in serving up the same old retreads. Look at Command & Conquer, for instance. Its become the industry's "Friday the 13th" — just can't kill the damn thing and make it stay dead. :)
But its not just the developers/publishers fault, its our fault, too. We're the ones buying the crap that keeps getting shoveled at us, right? Gamers used to be in awe of games and developers. I remember playing my first graphical game after having played text only games. Matter of fact, I can remember when my Apple IIc monitor died and I had to use the TV. I remember plugging it in and being astounded that Solitaire was actually in color! Of course my Apple monitor was the nasty puke-green type, the only kind available back then, so I had no idea that the game was actually programmed in color. I remember sitting around for four hours typing in the code (in BASIC) for Centipede in my TI-99 hooked up to a TV set so that I could play for a half hour before bed.
Nowdays, gamers are a cynical lot. I was reading arcadian del sol's rant today on Lum The Mad's site in which he says, "Personally, I think 3D polygon graphics are still about 15 years away from looking good. Right now, the best 3D technology still looks like crap. I've built better looking "worlds" out of Legos." I find that to be a rather sad statement. I personally think the graphics in EQ are pretty good. Sure, not photo-realistic but we're talking about a fantasy world here. And yes, there are other games with better graphics, especially in the stand-alone pile, but that doesn't negate the fact that EQ looks pretty good for a game.
And then there's a multitude of others who recently trashed Richard Garriott after an interview was published a few weeks ago in which Richard talked about his newest idea, the game referred to as "X". The following is an excerpt:
Q: About X: you told that people could earn real money playing X... how?
A: Imagine... If you put on a play in the virtual world and could charge a real fee... Or, If you built a fun adventure with our editors, and people paid a fee to enter your theme park... Or, If you created some digital art that could not be duplicated, and sold it to them for their house... Or you made clothes etc... get it?
Q: Do you believe in a future where people could chose their personal world where to live? And then they can earn money only playing the game?
A: Oh, yes... I believe that if X works many people will quit their "real" jobs and live full time in the virtual world I am creating.
This, of course, had people laughing and snickering about how the man had lost his mind, he's a loon and is living on another planet. Sure, sounds a bit loopy on the face of things but the thing is that no one really knows what he was talking about. He hasn't gone into detail about what he's referring to, nor why he thought it would be possible. Remember, the game he is talking about is at least 4 years down the road. Garriott has always had a reputation in the industry as a visionary and in 4 years, who knows what is possible? People right now are making pretty good livings selling crap on Ebay. Just visit there sometime and do a search for Ultima Online, EverQuest or Asheron's Call and see the huge number of items that are being bought and sold. Virtual items, even, with no tangible existence outside their respective game are being sold for hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars. One Asheron's Call player sold his account for $5000 (its true, I even saw a scan of the cashier's check)!
But gamers have become so cynical these days that they can't see what might be feasible in the future, so they laugh about how someone with innovative ideas should be locked up for his own safety. So is it any wonder why we keep getting the same old tired games? We gripe and complain about how there's nothing new on the shelves but look what happens when someone tries to come up with something new. No wonder publishers are leery about backing a new and unproven idea. If the gamers who buy the games are so cynical, the suits who don't even play the games they publish, who answer to stockholders who have probably never played a game in their lives, must be even more so.
So if we have the same crap regurgitated at us time and again, we really only have ourselves to blame. |
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