Originally I was going to do a Sixth Sense style twist at the end of this. You know, build everything up to a climax using clever dialogue and arguments, only to shatter the illusion right at the end. But I’m a straight shooter, so I’ll just go ahead and say it up front. Innovation and Risk in the gaming industry are not the same thing. While sometimes they can be used in the same sentence, and often compliment one another quite well, they definitely are not the same thing.
There are games that are risky business prospects for whatever reason; new IP, new developer, release window, going up against the newest Halo game (god I wish I could’ve stopped saying that when I “finished the fight…”); but not at all innovative. There are also games that are innovative but not risky for the publisher – for example I would be surprised if the Last Guardian didn’t sell in excess of 1 million copies worldwide.
Some people point to right now in the games industry being at somewhat of a turning point. Last year we had Braid, World of Goo and Little Big Planet and this year we’ve got the behemoths of the gaming industry turning to smaller, more conceptual videogames; enter Epic games with Shadow Complex and the PSN masterpieces Noby Noby Boy and Flower. Yeah, I can see where they’re coming from, there’s a whole lot of good stuff coming from the indie and small development houses. And you can spot the stuff a mile away. It’s innovative, interesting, usually sports a cool aesthetic and moreover, is dead cheap. But it’s not like Jesus has arrived for the first time and everyone is clambering to get a glimpse.
Now, Scorn me if you want, but I’ve seen all this before. And if you grew up here in sunny Australia, or over there in the miserable, dark, evil empire that is the UK, chances are you did too (no, I really love the UK, but as I write this the Ashes series is playing out, and it would simply be blasphemous if I didn’t take a shot at our ‘fierce’ cricketing rivals). You see, we had this fascination with this company known as Commodore from the early eighties right through to the early to almost the mid nineties. Its not that we didn’t love the Japanese for all their playing games in your living room on television madness; it’s just that there was something inherently cool about the ‘business machine’. I could talk about the history of Commodore forever. But I won’t, so consider this statement an abridged form of that discussion; the Commodore 64 was cool, yes, but the Amiga 500 was where it was at.
And for mine, it was the home of innovation for the best part of 10 years or so. I’m not going to take away the shine from Nintendo’s salvation of the videogames industry; I mean if it wasn’t for good ol’ Ninty I might be writing about books right now. And that’s no fun. Tolstoy is a grumpy bastard. But the Amiga was where a good number of genres we find on retail stores and on Steam took their first breath. And if you think I’m being a sentimental git; like your grandfather trying to convince you that Frank Sinatra is better than My Chemical Romance (he’d be right), how’s this for a breeding ground for talent: Peter Molyneux, David Jones. Not ring a bell? How about Populous, Fable, Lemmings or Grand Theft Auto? Chances are whatever you’re playing right now; it has some connection to the Amiga’s days of yore – and to continue the analogy, there was a whole lot of love making going on in the Commodore camp. And it was definitely a case of kiss and tell in these days as developers began to exploit the hardware and designed innovative games that broke the boundaries of game design at the time. Add to this a very fertile demo scene and you’ve got yourself a hotbed of originality; for the mostpart.
“So what does this have to do with the here and now” I hear you impatient Generation after Y’s ask? Well a hell of a damn lot actually. The current flurry of triple-A titles appearing from indie developers on services like Steam, XBLA and PSN is entirely reminiscent of the scene surrounding the Amiga 500 almost 20 years ago.
Let’s move forward 20 years and look at 2008. Mirror’s Edge, DICE’s brilliant first person runner was incredibly innovative in that we as gamers had never seen anything like it before. It was in first person, but it wasn’t a shooter. Not only this but it was a radical departure from any other control scheme I’ve ever seen, distilling it down to a small number of context sensitive inputs corresponding to simple actions such as ‘up’ or ‘down’. Yes, they did include guns, maybe a move to put at ease the minds of red blooded gamers who have never seen a first person view without a weapon at the bottom of the screen, but all in all, Mirror’s Edge provided us with an experience that you could not find anywhere else. Similarly, LittleBigPlanet from Media Molecule is the epitome of innovation and creativity thus far this generation; possibly even the biggest change up for the industry in the past five years or so, introducing a real community and incentive to produce good quality user generated content – an idea that outside of the PC community has not been seen. And because of this, it was risky
Braid too was innovative, and that’s as far as the comparison holds…
Back in the day it was entirely plausible that the game that you were playing was made by two guys in a basement, while eating mum’s leftovers from last night and drinking scores of Coca Cola. ‘Another World’ for example – you know that cult classic that everyone so fondly remembers for its beautiful animation and cinematic feel? Yeah, well that game was programmed by one such dude named Eric Chahi over a two year timeframe. The art, the music, the concept; all Chahi. And all on the humble, but terribly powerful for its time Amiga 500.
INTERESTING FACT : For those of you old (and cool…) enough to remember Deluxe Paint, all the graphics for ANOTHER WORLD were done using this rather simple, yet deep drawing tool. Deluxe paint was developed by Electronic Arts.
While that type of scenario is not entirely absent nowadays, the more likely scenario nowadays is a small team, you know like staff numbers in the ten’s rather than the 100’s. But even while Braid is an exception to the rule; with the game from start to finish being mostly developed and programmed by Jonathan Blow, it still costed in excess of the relatively small amount of $200 000 to develop. So obviously the advances in technology has almost made it a prerequisite that the teams be larger than they were back in the day, with this growth in team size, and in turn budget there is an inherent problem in dipping your toes into the creativity gene pool. And yes, as with any other business or industry, the game industry has a right (and a need) to make profit…
You know the saying the bigger they are, the harder they fall? Well that’s where the element of risk comes into it. Because rather than a bit of spare time and the cost of the equipment being wasted on something that is innovative, unique and in turn possibly terrifying to the general populous, the stakes are higher. Innovation is no doubt a catch-22. If Ubisoft, EA or Microsoft Game studios (I’ll leave Activision out of this, there’s no risk in releasing the same game 25 times a year…) release a game that is new, creative, something unlike what the market has ever seen before and it doesn’t perform at retail, chances are there will be no sequel, or worse case the studio will be dissolved. Clover studios at Capcom following the release of Okami is a prime example. And there are a number of reasons that the games may not perform at retail- high price points, release clashes with the Halos of the world and of course, the current GFC. Taking all this into account, if you were a developer, or more importantly a publisher, would you take a risk on something at the expense of your bottom line? If you’re even thinking about it; here’s the answer : Hell no.
Because of this underlying fear of underperformance of a title, innovation has become somewhat of a buzz word in the industry nowadays. Moreover, it is a term that from my view is vastly overused by developers keen to drum up interest in their games. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that none of the current generation of games aren’t innovative, but it’s not a pandemic running rampant through the industry at the moment (it may be different in the multiplayer space, but I am not really someone who indulges in XBL or PSN gaming).
So what should publishers and developers do? Let me preface this by saying that I’m not in the gaming industry, and I don’t pretend to swing above my weight. That’s not what I’m here to do. What I’m trying to do is to get discussion going (please comment), and moreover hear everyone’s opinions on the issue. But in my view there are a number of things that the industry could do to keep pushing forward.
- Continue the current trend of large publishers and developers acquiring smaller studios;
- Increase the prominence of digital distribution streams for more ‘niche’ titles; and
- Change the way the more innovative and unique games are marketed and packaged (Portal is a good example)
The aim of this article isn’t to rant and rave like a disillusioned and bitter senior citizen. For starters, I’m only 25 at this point. But secondly, I hold high hopes for the industry’s future. 2008 was a big year (arguably too big) and 2009 is setting itself up for a nice (again too big) flurry in Q4; followed by an even bigger flurry of titles in Q1 2010. But if publishers are smart, these niche and indie titles that would otherwise get lost in the waves caused by this year’s Call of Duty title, could carve out a nice little place in the market on PSN, XBLA and Steam. Valve were definitely onto a good thing with releasing Portal in conjunction with Half Life 2 Episode 2 – so lets hope that the industry stands up and takes note. And to all those that profess to enjoy these little gems that come around every now and then – go out and buy them. Cause in the end we may be a part of the problem…
So there you go, Old Gaulian waxes lyrical (again) about the plight of the gaming industry. Agree? Don’t agree? Got more ideas? We’d love to hear them!
You just like Another World because you get to play as a rednut that looks surprisingly like your good self Oldgaulian!
I won’t lie, that is the only reason Stubbsy. Its got nothing to do with the innovative gameplay, fantastic presentation, beautiful rotoscope animation….