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| Time for change? | | By Psychochild | | April 15, 2000 | Cassandra's editorial "About Cash Cows & Cynics" raised some interesting points about the game industry. To the outsider, there seems to be no logical reason for how it all works. I'm here to tell you that things aren't much clearer once you're on the inside. Luckily, game developers tend to be creative types and Cassandra has given me a forum to share some of my thoughts and speculation with you.
Who am I? My specific identity isn't too important to this discussion. I am a game developer, a programmer with a strong interest in persistent-world online RPGs. I also fancy myself as a scholar.
In her wonderful editorial, Cassandra explored potential reasons behind the lack of real quality titles available. She mentioned that the big companies seem uninterested in fostering and retaining their talent. She also lamented the fact that publishers and big development houses never seem willing to take risks, and when a visionary in the industry suggests radical changes, people laugh and snicker at the crackpots. Perhaps I can shed a bit of light on the situation, and provide some solutions that people can think about.
I think the most important thing to understand is that the games industry is a creature of habit. In the beginning, the games industry was original and creative by necessity. They didn't have decades of existing art to reference, and the machines were miniscule in power compared to what we have today. It took a lot of creativity to come up with new and original games that could be implemented on the machines of the time.
Today, we make copies of last year's hit title, with slight variations if the consumers are lucky. We've tried to keep up with the curve of technology, trying to wring out every last bit of the machine we use to make the game to stay on the "bleeding edge" without taking the time to make the code bug-free. These habits result in the wave of clones and buggy games as developers overextend themselves to take advantage of new machines.
So, how does this relate to retaining talent? Easy, because this same habit has infected companies. Salaries are kept low because "it's always been that way...." People work long hours because their bosses expect them to do just like every other developer does, not necessarily because they feel inspired to add wonderful features. I speak with the voice of experience when I say it takes more than the mere desires of my boss to keep me productive after staring at code for 12 hours; I have to have a passion about the project that comes from within.
Cassandra said she doesn't foresee a change anytime soon in the industry, but I think we will. Someone once told me "you can always underpay an artist," which is probably true. The ability to express yourself creatively often soothes your soul when you can't soothe it with money. But, companies are demanding more return on their investment. They are starting to dictate more details, allowing less creative freedom. The attraction to real wages outside the industry that Cassandra mentioned becomes a lot more irresistible once you realize you are merely implementing someone else's specifications instead of contributing to the creation of a game. Given that, programmers might as well double their salaries and implement non-game specifications at some other company.
Game companies will have to either return creative control the developer, or they will have to pay developers what they are worth. This imbalance needs to be addressed. In my opinion, the obvious answer is a compromise of both. Fun games almost always come from developers with a passion for their project. People play games to have fun, so it makes sense that fun games will sell better. Fun games result in more sales, which allows publishers and large companies to pay developers what they're worth.
So, how does the force of habit affect the advancement and innovation of the game industry? Again, game companies like to take small steps when innovating. They know that the public is not going to buy last year's game without some incentive, such as a drop in price or some change in the game. But, they prefer to take small steps, because they never leave the boundaries of what is "most likely profitable" for them. To a gamer, these tiny steps are BORING!
Developers, on the other hand, want to take large steps in innovation. They look at others in the industry, and see how the cutting edge developers get the laurels. Wolfenstein 3D was a phenomenal game, DOOM was hugely popular, and Quake was beautiful. These games are the pillars of the first-person shooter genre; they were also games that took large steps ahead of the current state of the art. However, from a publisher's point of view, these large steps would have been risky. What if people didn't like the freedom of control Quake offered over DOOM? What if the consumers didn't like the drab colors, the odd weapons, the frightening monsters? We laugh at these questions now, secure in our knowledge that Quake spawned best-selling sequels, but a publisher would have been more cautious.
So, what is the solution? Again, it's compromise. As Cassandra pointed out, people think Richard Garriot is a loon for proposing that people could get paid for playing an online RPG. On the surface it is a rather insane idea, but being an experienced online game developer I see the brilliance behind his ideas. What Mr. Garriot needs to do is show what sane steps we need to take in order to realize his goal. Implementing his idea directly is entirely too risky, and probably unprofitable; the last thing we need is another large company riding roughshod over another visionary's failing company. By taking more measured steps, he could still outpace the competition and successfully implement his innovative grand vision.
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