INDUSTRY PROBLEMS WEEK
Part 2: Developers/Publishers
Catch-22: Not Just A Book
As you read yesterday, a large part of the modern gaming industry's problem lies squarely in the hands of the gamers themselves. However, gamers have a symbiotic relationship with developers and publishers; when we screw up in a consumer sense, we can incur a Catch-22 disaster in the blink of an eye.
Suppose the upcoming Tony Hawk 5, the latest iteration of the wildly popular skateboarding franchise, sells a couple of million units worldwide, as it almost certainly will. You may be a fan of these games, and may even own one or more of them yourself. That's perfectly fine; everyone has different tastes and preferences when it comes to games. However, even the most ardent Tony Hawk enthusiast cannot deny that at its core, the franchise has remained consistently the same from the first game; though factors like the removal of the time clock may change a gameplay element or two, you are ultimately playing the same game as you were last year.
But so what, right? It's fun! Perhaps. But it's also a great deal of fun for Neversoft and Activision, the game's developer and publisher, respectively.
Why? Both of these companies notice the amount of fun you and millions of other gamers are having with their game, evidenced by your spent consumer dollars. They also notice the rising development costs associated with next generation machines, which demand higher intensity graphics, superior sound that often must be licensed from various artists, and advanced physics engines to take advantage of their processing abilities. Finally, they notice industry calamities occurring in this new, high-cost climate; a climate where the once-mighty Sega is now a third-party developer posting its fifth consecutive annual net loss in 2001/02, and two of Japan's most prolific development powerhouses are set to officially merge this April due to increased costs and competition at home and abroad.
They look at all of these factors and think, "If it's not broken, why fix it?"
Tony Hawk 6 is born.
Recipe For Redundancy
So, we see how the gamer/developer/publisher Catch-22 occurs -- if we buy a game and make it a financial success, the developers and publishers are encouraged to make another similar game, which we buy, which encourages them to make a sequel to the sequel, and so on into infinity, or at least until the cycle is broken by gamers finally growing weary of playing the same thing over and over. In some cases, it happens rather quickly (Mortal Kombat) and in other cases, it's still going strong (Madden).
But the point of the example was also to demonstrate what kind of factors the developers and publishers of today are facing. Put simply, making a game today is a very difficult, involved, costly, and, most importantly, risky process.
In the days of the NES, making a game for Nintendo's little 8-bit console was easy, particularly if the game was not especially complex, such as a Tetris-type puzzler. Often, the meat of a development team consisted of four or less people, and in extreme cases, one programmer working in his basement could undertake much of the duties required to create a game. Because the cost of development was so low, it was relatively easy to recoup costs, even if the game did not sell extraordinarily well. As a result, developers and publishers could afford to take risks and breathe a bit easier if the risk in question did not pay off. Cookie-cutter sequels did exist, of course, along with the same "gaming recycling for profit" mentality, but it was not as common.
Today, game development can approach the financial and personnel levels of the production of a small movie. The GameCube, PS2, and Xbox afford developers the opportunity to make their games bigger and more technically advanced than ever before...but all of those bells and whistles come at a price. Solutions arrive every day in the form of handy development tools from both 1st and 3rd parties, but ultimately, these cannot compensate developers enough to approach levels of funding and staff comparable to the early days of gaming.
Taking the above into consideration, it becomes a bit easier to understand the mentality behind many developers' unwillingness to deviate from a successful game formula. After devoting copious amounts of time, money, and manpower into a product, it's natural for a developer to want as many odds in their favour as possible in regards to the game's sales.
And what better way to guarantee sales than to release something that's already been proven to sell well?
Punished For Creativity
The temptation to innovate as little as possible is compounded by the fact that often, revolutionary titles go relatively unnoticed. Take Ico for the Playstation 2, for example. Hailed by reviewers for its seamless fusion of an intriguing story with simple-yet-engaging puzzle gameplay mechanics, the game remains one of the most acclaimed pieces of software on the PS2, and is in fact ranked in the top 20 games for that system. The PS2 has a North American userbase well into the millions, translating into plenty of potential buyers for the game. Ico's release was well-timed; debuting in late September of 2001, it qualified to capitalize on the traditional Christmas rush, another sales-boosting factor. Given these facts, the game surely must've sold well, right?
Wrong. Ico experienced mediocre sales at best, qualifying as somewhat of an "underground hit," but nothing more. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, however -- arguably only a mere upgrade to 2001's smash hit Grand Theft Auto 3 -- was released around the same time of year as Ico (November of 2002) and has already sold in the millions.
Situations like this virtually scream at developers and publishers not to take a chance on something unique if they value their quarterly earnings reports. And though some innovative games do break through to sell incredibly well, they are more then offset by those that do not. For every Goldeneye, there is an Ico, Eternal Darkness, and Jet Set Radio Future.
Nothing From Something
However, innovation does exist. In fact, it has to, or else we'd all still be playing Pong. Though it may be less frequent in today's high-risk development world, it is still very much alive. After all, though the Tony Hawk games are arguably rehashes at this point, the initial game of the series was actually quite refreshing.
The problem is that such innovation occurs far too infrequently. Instead of following up their success with another equally original title, Neversoft and Activision decided to go sequel-happy with Tony Hawk. And instead of letting them go about their business, the rest of the industry followed suit, flooding the market with countless biking, surfboarding, and other extreme sports games, which, at their core, all closely resembled the gameplay system employed in Tony Hawk.
Certainly, it would be poor business sense to completely ignore what the competitors are doing, particularly if it's something lucrative. And a gameplay system that is well-made is certain to be reused; there's no sense in reinventing the wheel. But do companies really have to focus their complete and undivided attention on what's working and what isn't? What about worrying about making something fresh every so often? What about innovating for yourself and not standing on the shoulders of those who came before you? What about walking into a videogame store and seeing the same game hundreds of times over, repackaged in different boxes and being sold under dozens of different titles?
Sadly, there is no lesson to be learned here. Why should a company release a game to critical acclaim but lackluster sales? A developing company could be filled with employees with artistic integrity through the roof, but realistically speaking, they need to eat. And innovation, particularly in today's gaming world, rarely puts food on the table.
Sources: Game Rankings, IGN, N-Sider, NPSD Sales Data