Matt! Awesome! I'm coming up this April to see Dad before moving up to Auckland. I'll be sure to catch you then.
IN MY OPINION:
I need to voice my opinion somewhere, and since I don't have a microphone or a stage... Or a cult... This seems like the ideal place to do it.
*ergh hmm*
Things are looking good for Game Developers at the moment. The old model of having a publisher dominate you while your company slaves it's arse off for a mere 20% is falling to pieces. To quote Corey Bridges (One of the big boys at netscape etc): "Publishers are dead, they just don't know it yet". (Doesn't that make you feel all tingly inside?)
Corey's a well respected fellow, and if he says it, I respect it.
EA is also working this out for themselves. Their failure with Westwood taught them an important lesson: You can't force greatness. The publisher has to back off, let the creativity flow and then sit around the money fire to reap the profits. They vocalised this at 2008's GDC conference.
Of course, I worked this out long before either of those guys. The signs are a plenty and it's pretty obvious that the model doesn't work. Well, I for one am not going to be a part of it. Too many great franchises have fallen at the hands of big business. When I start my company (for real), I'm going to take some risks and figure out a way to circumvent the publisher. Whether I do this through internet distribution or by making the game free (battlefield heroes free, not cave story free) or through something completely different will be up to me. What do suits know about gaming? I say, give the power back to those who know what fun is. Give it to the Game Developers.
The Game Developers are the ones who get into the business for the fun, the publishers are the ones who get into it for the money. You can test who is right through a very simple formula:
fun ►(leads to) money.
It's that simple. People only play games to have fun. That is the core of gaming. If a game isn't fun, people don't buy it. The more fun a game is to play, the more people will buy it. Publishers have got the formula wrong. In their opinion:
money = fun.
Their idea of fun is to pour millions of dollars into any concept, in the belief that the more you spend, the more you will make. However, without 'the fun', a game is nothing. You can have the sharpest graphics, the crispest sound and the prettiest picture on the front of the box, yet it is all for naught if the game isn't fun.
Gaming needs to be broken down to it's roots once more. Back to when you made a game to have fun, you played games to have fun and you shared them with others because they were fun. Most of today's games are too safe, are too rigidly controlled by the publisher and are based on
six-month-old data that tries to provide a text book definition of fun.
You tell me, is that fun?
