Everything is bad - and it's good
The Gamasutra resource regularly publishes articles by developers, art directors and game designers about the industry. We choose the most interesting ones and share them with you.
Rami Ismail, co-founder and head of strategic development at the independent Dutch studio Vlambeer, talked about what is wrong with the gaming industry – and why it is normal (at the request of the author, we do not publish his name and photo under the text and give only a link to his blog, – approx. editorial offices).
In an interview last year that I gave to the popular gaming resource Giantbomb, I was asked what I think about the state of the industry. I answered “everything is fine” – with the intonation that would make any normal person ask again.
Not all is well.
My wise friends advise me to always clarify vague statements. I’m clarifying. With indie developers – maybe everything is fine. With some segments of the industry, I admit, everything is fine. Yes, whole platforms are doing fine. But the industry is not. She’s not all right.
I have some grim news for you. For each segment of the industry. In mobile, the acquisition of users has never been so expensive – and this despite the fact that the cost of acquiring a “paying user” is often higher than the average income from this very user. Giants of the industry? They have to deal with the ever-increasing cost of development and the unwillingness of users to buy a game for sixty dollars. Novice developers are forced to run out of strength to be noticed in a crowd of hundreds of their kind.
Most of the major platforms squeezed developers into a narrow framework – for feathering. Did it help? Exactly to the same extent as it prevented.
The developers who started in 2010 are still for the most part not slowing down. And what about the developers who started last year?
As soon as the platform reaches its maximum efficiency, it becomes maniacally closed or super-open – with the same effect. Neither democratic politics nor a strictly controlled supply of games can in any way change the fact that supply exceeds demand: more games are being made now than ever in the past. You don’t need to have a higher economic education to understand: if the revenue from a paying user falls, the audience does not increase, and budgets, on the contrary, grow by leaps and bounds, then this is a problem. And serious.
Let’s talk about user expectations. Graphics – let it be more realistic than reality itself! Let the soundtrack be recorded by a Large Symphony Orchestra! Let the gameplay be super-addictive! Price? – well, we can wait for promotions or sales, right?
From the reports on the revenue of AAA projects, I realized that the gaming audience wants something new and improved at the same time. Something familiar – but revolutionary. Expectations are higher than ever. When Assassins Creed was launched, the general groan about the fact that a project of this size did not turn out to be licked to a shine turned out to be incomparable with the barrage of criticism that WATCH_DOGS got.
Let’s go back to mobile. Where to make money on it? The race to the top has already forced publishers to lower prices below the baseboard – it has become almost impossible to make games. There are people with money; they buy all the tickets for the departing train with money, they can afford it. And there are those who remain in eternal waiting at the station. They are under the illusion that they just missed their train, not realizing that there was no place for them on this train from the very beginning.
Ah! There’s also Kickstarter. Initially, it was a way to get around the problems associated with traditional publishing. Thanks to the people who managed to cheat the system (hello, potato salad!), everyone else has turned into cynics who will surpass the most fearful investor in greed and caution. Early Access, which is a great tool for getting feedback during the development process, was used to raise easy money so often that the number of people who added our current Nuclear Throne project to the vishlist to buy it after launch is twice as large as the number of those who actually bought it through Early Access. But it has been on sale for a whole year.
And what about the fragmentation of the media landscape? Previously, you had to look through a dozen special magazines. Then there were blogs and magazines. Now it’s magazines, blogs, Twitter accounts, video blogs, then everywhere. In this field, everything is changing at such a speed that you need to keep your finger on the pulse around the clock. Many developers do not have such resources, and everything ends up with the fact that valuable attention to their projects is missed.
Funding? Oh, I’m constantly being asked questions about funding. People have less than what it takes for an investor to take them seriously, but they want more than what a reasonable loan, grant, or fund can offer them.
The whole industry – we are trying. We’re trying a hell of a lot to make sure we’re okay. We talk only about our successes and achievements, but shamefully silence failures. We are ready to spend weeks on funny chatter about bugs in Ubisoft toys, but it takes us months to respond to the harassment that is happening right under our noses.
Do you want me to tell you what a failure is? Failure is when our audience believes that doing projects like Destiny is not a risky activity.
Do you want me to tell you what a failure is? This is when we evaluate games not at the price that we think they deserve, but at the price at which they have a chance to sell. We continuously harm ourselves and others in an endless attempt to make ends meet. Games are sold at a dozen for a penny, their prices are reduced by three-quarters, just to sell them at the holiday sale.
But we don’t talk about it. We want – no, we need – to tell people what game development is like, to show them what it is like, but we agree to show ourselves only in the best light. We all want to be a gourmet restaurant, not a mcduck that was closed for violating sanitary standards. Cutlet eaters want to think that their cutlets are made from environmentally friendly beef. They want to be sure that the chef has been studying his skills for ten years in the best establishments in Paris and sobs with joy every time he roasts a steak.
Of course, part of the responsibility for this state of affairs lies with our culture. Success is the only truth. Winners are not judged. To apologize is to admit weakness. Apologies are met with sarcasm. A sincere complaint is a reason to attack. Poor sales are a reason to experience a painful, deeply personal sense of shame. So let’s talk about success.
Our industry is full of victories! There is something to celebrate – and we celebrate on a grand scale. We’re talking about Papers, Please and Gone Home. We rejoice when Grand Theft Auto V makes Hollywood blockbusters on sales. Under the wing of AAA studios, professionals who do not know financial worries thrive. The quality of student work is growing exponentially. All over the world, the number of people who somehow devote time and effort to creating games is increasing.
And they make wonderful games! We make great games. The quality of games in AAA, in indie, in mobile is growing fast, faster, even faster. The games are great. Yes. The games, what we’re here for – they’re just great, they’re getting better every day. Everything is fine with game development. Maybe, as an industry, we are not coping. Maybe, as a community of creative people and enthusiasts, we have to deal with users who have never been more picky and demanding in the entire history of the industry. But at the same time, everything is fine with us as a community as a whole.
I am full of enthusiasm about what awaits the community, what awaits us as an industry. It may not survive in the existing form. Not everyone will stay. Maybe not me or not you. Maybe we’ll be fine. Maybe we’ll do something else. People ask me what awaits us – another 1983 (a year extremely disastrous for the Western gaming industry – approx. translator)? And I wonder – why did they wake up just now? Where were they when we suffered defeat after defeat the previous two years? Where do you think paid projects on mobile have gone? Do you miss console games with an average budget – do you remember there were such? But they have died out over the past five years.
There will be no spectacular train wreck, there will be no splashes of glass in slow motion. Everything will be different. We will lose at something, and we will rejoice at something, and we will continue to ignore our failures, and we will be fine.
We are a creative industry. We should know better than others that it will not be possible to become better by endlessly chewing successes, but only by learning from defeats. We are in this industry because we see something special in it. Don’t brag. No need to assert yourself. You don’t have to create myths about victories to justify your existence. We’re here because we care.
It is necessary to admit your defeats so that there is something to learn from.
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