Risk aversion, funding mistakes block gaming masterpieces

Ars talks with 2D Boy co-founder Ron Carmel about why a well-funded, mid-size game development studio is the key to unlocking the first true gaming masterpiece.

<a href='http://meincmagazine.com/gaming/news/2010/11/risk-aversion-funding-mistakes-block-gaming-masterpieces.ars'>Read the whole story</a>

 

[Alfonse]

These two factors are preventing the medium of gaming from reaching it's true potential, according to Ron Carmel—one half of World of Goo developer 2D Boy and co-founder of the Indie Fund—who spoke on the subject during the 2010 edition of the Montreal International Game Summit.

... What? World of Goo is about as far from the "true potential" of videogaming as it gets. And yet that's what 2D Boy chose to produce when they had the limitless canvas of videogaming potential to work with.

I'm not sure why it is that we should be listening to this guy.

"Why put money into a project that is not likely to do well commercially when you can put it into projects that you know will?" Carmel told Ars. "Also, even if money weren't a consideration, try justifying having your top talent working on ambitious artsy projects when you need them to make sure your golden goose lays its egg in time for [Christmas]."

Let's assume that we all agree that Team Ico constitutes "top talent." Does this guy honestly think that putting Team Ico on, say, Call of Duty is likely to produce good results? Does he think the old Infinity Ward team (before the split) would be able to produce Shadows of the Colossus?

Some people are better at some things than others. This comes in part from what they have worked on previously. There is no interchangeable "top talent" that you can just throw onto any old project and expect to get good results.

"The Mona Lisa isn't great because it's a great idea, and neither is The Wire, or Macbeth, or any great musical piece or painting or film."

Of course, Carmel falls into the exact same trap that so many other people do. Macbeth was commercially viable! So was the Mona Lisa, and most of those other great musical pieces or paintings or films that he doesn't mention.

What, does he think Shakespeare or Leonardo were paupers? Does he think that these guys were completely unfettered from the commercial issues regarding their works? Has he ever picked up a history book in his life? Shakespeare in particular almost always included low-brow humor in his works ("Did you bite your thumb at me?" "No, I simply bit my thumb.").

The "great works" have almost always also been commercial successes. This modern notion that Only Something That Is Obscure Can Be Art is bullshit and always has been. Yes, there are great works that pass unnoticed. But there are just as many if not more great works that are popular and commercially successful.

Completely ignoring commercial possibilities and issues is stupid. It doesn't make something more artistic; it just makes it sell less.

The lack of critical analysis of Carmel's comments in this "article" is baffling. See, this right here is what's wrong with modern journalism. They just regurgitate what someone says as the absolute truth, without asking anyone else or thinking about it in any way.

And can we stop "The Wire" masturbation please? Is that possible? Is there an alternate Earth I can go to where people don't love this show? Or where this show never existed? The same goes for any Goddamned thing that comes out of Team Ico.

 

[Barbas]

Milo was the closest thing to a concept car I ever seen in a video game.

And I think the way that Tim Schaffer seems to be working with his new studio is pretty close to what Carmel is talking about when he mentions medium-sized studios

 

[dawvee]

As a fan of more avant-garde games, this sounds like a very good idea, but I wonder if the analogy to film is really appropriate. Yes, many major studios have art-house subsidiaries, but to say that large game publisher could do the same is to ignore the fact that there's an established history of art-house cinema pre-dating any major studio's involvement by several decades. The major studios didn't foster that genre, they're just johnny-come-lately's, tapping into the established audience for that type of film. The other motivation for the studios, of course, is the prestige value associated with those projects, with outlets like Cannes, Sundance, the Oscars, and so on.

From the large game publishers' perspective, it's unclear whether there is much of an audience for art-house games, and even less clear whether there's any prestige associated with creating them. That could certainly change, but it's not likely to unless someone else starts making them and demonstrating their viability first.

 

[Sixpounder]

I think Capcom did exactly what Carmel suggested with Clover. It's too bad that Capcom shut Clover down, because Clover made some damn good games.

 

[sc3252]

And can we stop "The Wire" masturbation please? Is that possible? Is there an alternate Earth I can go to where people don't love this show? Or where this show never existed? The same goes for any Goddamned thing that comes out of Team Ico.

While I didn't agree with what you said about 2D Boy(I loved the game), I completely agree with you about this stupid fetish they have with Ico.

 

[Eldorito]

I think Capcom did exactly what Carmel suggested with Clover. It's too bad that Capcom shut Clover down, because Clover made some damn good games.

Worth noting here that the Clover team went on to found Platinum Games, another group that falls well into realm of this article (they made Mad World on the Wii, as well as Bayonetta, all with the support of Sega)

 

[Isolateral]

Does this article go beyond "big is a problem, small is a problem, so let's go with medium-sized!" ?

 

[Eldorito]

"Why put money into a project that is not likely to do well commercially when you can put it into projects that you know will?" Carmel told Ars. "Also, even if money weren't a consideration, try justifying having your top talent working on ambitious artsy projects when you need them to make sure your golden goose lays its egg in time for [Christmas]."

Let's assume that we all agree that Team Ico constitutes "top talent." Does this guy honestly think that putting Team Ico on, say, Call of Duty is likely to produce good results? Does he think the old Infinity Ward team (before the split) would be able to produce Shadows of the Colossus?

Some people are better at some things than others. This comes in part from what they have worked on previously. There is no interchangeable "top talent" that you can just throw onto any old project and expect to get good results.

You're missing the point, Call of Duty never steps outside of the bounds and tries something truly ground breaking, because in doing so it might not sit well with the masses and they might hurt their franchise. It's better to play it safe and invest all in the big league. The team behind Call of Duty won't make Shadows of the Colossus if given the chance to make a truly great game, they'll make their own game. As it stands, they make the corporate game they're paid to do.

"The Mona Lisa isn't great because it's a great idea, and neither is The Wire, or Macbeth, or any great musical piece or painting or film."

Of course, Carmel falls into the exact same trap that so many other people do. Macbeth was commercially viable! So was the Mona Lisa, and most of those other great musical pieces or paintings or films that he doesn't mention.

What, does he think Shakespeare or Leonardo were paupers? Does he think that these guys were completely unfettered from the commercial issues regarding their works? Has he ever picked up a history book in his life? Shakespeare in particular almost always included low-brow humor in his works ("Did you bite your thumb at me?" "No, I simply bit my thumb.").

The "great works" have almost always also been commercial successes. This modern notion that Only Something That Is Obscure Can Be Art is bullshit and always has been. Yes, there are great works that pass unnoticed. But there are just as many if not more great works that are popular and commercially successful.

Uh, there was 15 years between starting and finishing the Mona Lisa. Plus Da Vinci was the very essence of what is being argued here, he was put up by a king and left to do whatever (François I later bought the painting and gave it as a gift, so it wasn't exactly an attempt at being profitable), do you think Activision would fund a game some guy to just work on projects as he sees fit, without any kind of corporate interference? The difference between Activision and François I is that François I, while motivated to get great works out of the whole deal, left Da Vinci with the freedom to create what he viewed as good. And while good things are generally profitable, not all profitable things are good. In gaming, what's profitable tends to be to copy blindly something that has already made money, which is why we had a bajillion WW2 FPS games. The big huge risk taken was modern warfare, now we have a bajillion modern shooters. If you were a developer, would you really want to be making a 500th sequel to a game, or would you rather take the $40 million budget and make something new?

 

[matt_w]

There are a couple special cases that no one has mentioned here. If you a are corporation and you have a video game legend working for you. they often let you go do whatever you want and some times flop. Miyamoto, Will Wright, Sid Mieres come to mind.

 

[akatsuki]

I think that is what XNA and other attempts have been.

Really what should be going on is "proof of concept" games. You make the game, ignore graphics for the most part, have bad or no voice acting, and just spend time on the key aspects of story and gameplay. Show it off to execs and see if it gets any traction for the full treatment. Sort of how storyboarding works for movies.

Alternatively, just do your own thing, and if the game is compelling it will develop a bit of a following. To my mind, it is not a matter of if but when we will see a Minecraft rip-off on a console.

 

[fletc3her]

Nintendo has published some really strange games in the Art Style series. I have a hard time thinking of Brain Age, Wii Fit, Pikmin, WarioWare, or even Professor Layton as surefire wins. The failure of Wii Music shows that sometimes people just don't get a game, or necessarily even think of a title as a game. It's hard to remember how outlandish Wii Sports was when it came out. Sure they make a lot of safe bets like Mario and Zelda sequels, but they also throw in really off-kilter titles like Chibi-Robo and The World Ends With You.

The video game market has rotated through control schemes at a dizzying pace. Over the last couple decades we've seen Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, PlayStation Eye and now Move, and Kinect. Compare, a Mac from 1984 to a Mac today, mouse and keyboard, to an NES from 1984 to a Wii today, d-pad to motion control.

 

[OmniThought]

Epic, Id, Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Ico, just a few examples of the inbetween's that may or may not fall on the bigger side, but are willing to take risks. Rockstar takes some risks as well. I don't think that big studios are all averse to risk, but Activision and Call of Duty, as well as the plethora of sequel games from other studios, slates the perception to the view that most studios are averse to risk.

 

[Galeran]

If it makes you feel any better, Alfonse, I had to Google "The Wire." (I've sort of created my own alternate world where TV shows don't exist unless they show up on Netflix Instant Watch.)

I bought World of Goo for Wii, played it about halfway through, and then again for PC as part of some charity bundle, but never installed it. I'm not really sure it transformed video games. I do like puzzle games, and this was a good one to be sure.

If I Googled hard enough, someone who plays a lot more games than I has probably come up with some nice game taxonomy and identified the first games to exemplify each branch/leaf. Maybe World of Goo is the first physics-based real-time puzzle game. But were getting pretty deep into that taxonomic tree.

 

[Proditus]

I think the main point to look at is that small studios are in a bad rut right now. Back a few years ago, independent studios were everywhere. Some faded into nothing, some made it big. What we're left with are the ones that made it big, and they're too afraid to fall from their high seats of power to break the mold. Why? Breaking the mold carries risk. You either make something awesome, everyone loves it (i.e. Minecraft) or you flop and the last few years of your life were for nothing.

Another point to add though is that the big names in the industry still attempt to be innovative. Look at the world of motion gaming. The Wii was probably Nintendo's greatest risk ever. Now look at how well it sold. Is Nintendo a small indie company? No. But that didn't stop them from doing something new, reckless, and something no one had ever seen before. Now, more recently, the other consoles are attempting to be "me too" after the success of the Wii. I will, however, give it to Microsoft with Kinect, because that is also a bold move in the world of motion gaming.

There are some pretty good games that are breakthrough concepts all over the place. Granted, there aren't as many of them, but they're there. The gaming industry isn't as stagnant as people would like to think. It's usually doing something old in a new way, but that's what people like to play. Would they release 14+ Final Fantasy games if people got bored of it? They're all Final Fantasy games. We know what to expect of them because there are always standards that are followed. But people keep playing them because they each offer something new to the formula. But for all the recycled games out there, there are new ones that do well, and this trend is not likely to stop. New technologies result in new opportunities. Let's allow for a new generation of consoles to come out and see what studios can do with the technology that's given to them.

 

[grimlog]

Uh, there was 15 years between starting and finishing the Mona Lisa. Plus Da Vinci was the very essence of what is being argued here, he was put up by a king and left to do whatever

I.E. funding the Mona Lisa was a commercially viable route for Francois I. Arguing for gaming companies to take a non-commercially viable route (such as taking 15 years to make a game) is pretty much pointless.

Also, why do gaming companies have to have internal, 'forward thinking' studios. In the science and engineering world, companies often task unviersity teams (aka grad students) with cutting edge work, they pay little for it, and even if the work is widely published they get a head start by having access to the work early.

The movie world is similar. Cheaply made indie movies that get buzz at film festivals get signed up by major studios. That's pretty much what the Weinstein brothers do. What's preventing game studios from adopting already existing approaches?

 

[Sixpounder]

The importance of World of Goo, is that 2D Boy proved that you don't need to be a huge development house to make a good and successful game. In terms of money invested to profit ratio, I'm willing to bet World of Goo has a better ratio than most of the bigger titles.

As for risk, well, somebody at Nintendo was smart enough to pick up a copy of Blue Ocean Strategy and Innovator's Dilemma, and apply it to consoles.

 

[nitrogen]

World of Goo is a work of art. It has a unique visual style and mostly-novel gameplay, and a soundtrack that would be worth the price of the game alone. That game was not about pushing the envelope of technology, but rather an instrument for taking the player on an emotional, visual, and intellectual journey. That, to me, is art.

 

[darkowl]

If you let developers do their own thing with no constraints and financial abandon, you get 3D Realms' Duke Nukem Forever. And we all know how well that went as now a completely different developer is finishing it.

 

[Gary Patterson]

Great. The very first reply completely missed the point of this article.

It's not that World of Goo is a groundbreaking piece of art, it's that the developer realised that the current big studios are playing it too safely and possibly missing some great new game because the next instalment of some football franchise is a safer bet.

It doesn't even matter if the people behind the indie fund had ever written a game. That's not relevant.

Arguing that the fund is worthwhile is interesting and to the point. I'd say that it is, and that nothing is lost by its existence.

 

[TheDissolver]

If you let developers do their own thing with no constraints and financial abandon, you get 3D Realms' Duke Nukem Forever. And we all know how well that went as now a completely different developer is finishing it.

Not only Duke4, but Daikatana, Messiah... GOD, Ion Storm, and Shiny basically operated based on these principles. All have folded.
Let's not forget Origin, Looking Glass... Heck, Bungie was well on its way to suffering the same fate under Microsoft.

 

[imagremlin]

@TheDissolver

What? Bungie? That was the exact opposite. Under Microsoft they would have been mandated to create Halo games until the end of their natural lives.

By leaving they can now create whatever they want.

 

[Eldorito]

Uh, there was 15 years between starting and finishing the Mona Lisa. Plus Da Vinci was the very essence of what is being argued here, he was put up by a king and left to do whatever

I.E. funding the Mona Lisa was a commercially viable route for Francois I. Arguing for gaming companies to take a non-commercially viable route (such as taking 15 years to make a game) is pretty much pointless.

So why was throwing money at Da Vinci to do his own thing so viable? Sure, the resulting painting was a masterpiece, but Da Vinci could have just as easily taken a 15 year nap and produced a crayon drawing of a horsey.

That profitability isn't the main focus doesn't mean that it's not commercially viable, I never stated that it should be non-commercial. If you want profit without risk, you take FPS franchise x and create FP franchise x+1. If you want something new that could be just as popular but involves a lot more risk, you fund a talented group to build a game. You don't just throw money at them and let them loose, but let it develop.

Also, why do gaming companies have to have internal, 'forward thinking' studios. In the science and engineering world, companies often task unviersity teams (aka grad students) with cutting edge work, they pay little for it, and even if the work is widely published they get a head start by having access to the work early.

Universities also tend to have a strong historical stance of doing this, with highly qualified staff and often have some of the best equipment in the world for scientific research. The same doesn't exist for game development. That said, there could be a push towards this, I know EA sponsoring a university in Vancouver (art/tech school, seems a great idea), but they're more likely just to hire them and give them the training they'd need to make a high end game.

People do start somewhere and build their way up, they don't start work on CoD overnight, but with such a new industry it's hard to have the education background and facilities for this to work.

The movie world is similar. Cheaply made indie movies that get buzz at film festivals get signed up by major studios. That's pretty much what the Weinstein brothers do. What's preventing game studios from adopting already existing approaches?

I think that's the point of the indie fund. Indie movies still have funding from somewhere, whether major studios (which often fund independent studios), art grants, private donors, whatever. A big point is that profit isn't the main goal with these films, but commercial success and creating a level of popularity still is, it's how these films come about.

 

[Kressilac]

The funding side of video games has nothing to do with control schemes or art direction or letting the artist be the artist. It has everything to do with the risk aversion of publishers and the reluctance of traditional VC to step in where publishers refuse to step in. I have a bit of direct experience with this topic in my search to fund Ages of Athiria.

I had been told by numerous LA, Chicago, Boston and a couple of international investors that they will not invest their VC money in video games in the same way that they will not invest in movies. VC invests in platforms, so when Facebook or Zynga goes looking for money, it's not for Farmville, it's for the content delivery network they've built to push games to consumers. Ultimately, that's why Metaplace was bought by Playdom. It wasn't for My Vineyard. Most of these VCs told me that the reason they invest in platforms and not games is that games are totally unpredictable from a market standpoint. The public is so fickle about what is good and what isn't worth their money that it is essentially gambling to invest in a game and I can't say they are wrong. It took me 10 years of searching for funding to realize this point. I swore up and down that they "didn't get it" or "were too old" or "too risk adverse". Pick an excuse. In the end it was a fundamental market viability question that provided the answer to why game titles don't get funded. Publishers are no different than traditional VC. Both have stockholders that they need to keep happy and unless you can overcome the fickle public hurdle, you're not getting funding, period. Revenue generating alphas, dozens of years of experience with successful titles, an innovative platform; these will all give you a shot at overcoming the fickle public argument but without something, it's gambling and even with two of those three, it's gambling.

So what's the answer? There's a couple but the company that tries to raise money for a venture fund is not the answer for all the reasons above. I suspect the VC company with that focus will raise one round of funding and never see another round again. Sequoia Capital they will not become. All one has to do is look at other industries where there's a need for systemic creativity.

- Proctor and Gamble has perfected the art of inventing new products and bringing them to market but they're willing to fail on a few dozen products before seeing one become a hit. That's a coporate culture that is nonexistant in the video game publisher world.
- Indie movies have creative ways of funding new movies. Completion bonds haven't made a splash into the world of video games yet but they are widely used in the indie movie scene.
- There is no equivalent to the screenplay writer guilds within the game industry. A budding game designer has to do all of the heavy lifting of legal to get things off the ground and the legal wheel is invented again and again for each designer. Contrast that to the screenplay writers guild where they provide all of the legal framework standardized between publishing house and independent writer to dramatically reduce the cost of entry for experimental films.

Video games have a long way to go from a financing standpoint. Movies are a great model to follow and it would help for publishers to adopt a culture that cultivates innovative ideas. Not every innovation is going to become the next Wii but there's no doubt that something needs to change before we're playing CoD 1245: MW 650, 50 years from now.

 

[JPan]

Movies are a great model to follow and it would help for publishers to adopt a culture that cultivates innovative ideas.

Innovative ideas and movies? Not so sure. I have the impression that I have seen the 5 millionth superhero movie. I think that movies are more similar to games than anything else.

 

[Matt_H]

@Alfonse

So you don't like World of Goo or The Wire or anything Team Ico ever made. I can see why you'd want to move to an alternate Earth; you're obviously not from this planet.

 

[ilovedawkins]

So basically the perfect games design team is basically Valve?

Limitless money no real deadlines and focussed teams.

 

[princec]

As a struggling indie games developer myself: why would anyone want to fund a bit of software (yes never mind games) that isn't going to make any money back unless as an act of charity or vanity?

The reason why the next in the series of CoD is a safe bet for the publishers is because - shock horror - it's what people actually want. You know they want it, because they buy it. It's not playing it safe - it's giving people what they want.

Cas

 

[PMD]

Studios funded indie movies and music to bring good art to wider audiences. I'm sure publishers could do the same with games, but there is less incentive as the internet now allows good games (and movies and music) to get spread around for free.

Edit: I'm not talking about pirating. I meant good indie games getting covered on videogame websites and spread by word of mouth.

 

[jdietz]

Team ICO hires tons of people during the implementation phase. They spend a lot of time with just a few team members in the design phase.

 

[Uncompetative]

Big deal.

So, someone mo-cap'd their pooch.

 

[Jakal]

These two factors are preventing the medium of gaming from reaching it's true potential, according to Ron Carmel—one half of World of Goo developer 2D Boy and co-founder of the Indie Fund—who spoke on the subject during the 2010 edition of the Montreal International Game Summit.

... What? World of Goo is about as far from the "true potential" of videogaming as it gets. And yet that's what 2D Boy chose to produce when they had the limitless canvas of videogaming potential to work with.

I'm not sure why it is that we should be listening to this guy.

So let's see... he makes one of the most successful and critically acclaimed indie videogame titles of all time. You just bitch about how it sucks, then bitch some more about how Team Ico's efforts all suck, too (which are the most lauded examples of "games as art" and amongst the most atmospheric titles ever made). The real question here is why the fuck should we be listening to you, as you obviously know jackall about gaming.

Let's assume that we all agree that Team Ico constitutes "top talent." Does this guy honestly think that putting Team Ico on, say, Call of Duty is likely to produce good results? Does he think the old Infinity Ward team (before the split) would be able to produce Shadows of the Colossus?

That's great, but he sorta never said that, nor implied anything which could be construed that way. Go go reading comprehension?

Of course, Carmel falls into the exact same trap that so many other people do. Macbeth was commercially viable! So was the Mona Lisa, and most of those other great musical pieces or paintings or films that he doesn't mention.

Mona Lisa and Macbeth were commercially viable? Lol. Please forgive my prior comment that you're clueless about gaming... I'd like to revise that to "clueless about everything."

The lack of critical analysis of Carmel's comments in this "article" is baffling.

U mad, bro? The lack of cells in your "brain" is what's baffling.

 

[squidz]

The problem with the article is the basic premise is wrong. The article is assuming there's a fundamental problem (no high concept videogames) and lashes out on how to fix that problem. However, that problem is simply non-existent. Look through the comments, and even some of the statements in the article. This shortage of "innovative" and "risky" games simply doesn't exist. Sure the Halos and the CoDs of the world get all the press, but that's because they have advertising budgets. Pick a platform and you can quickly find a fair number of these innovative titles.

PS3: Flower, Flow, Littlebigplanet, Pixeljunk series, Fat Princess, etc
Wii: Pretty much any game that doesn't use gimmick versions of the motion controls
360: Dance Central, XBLA titles, (I don't have a 360 so someone help me out here)
PC: Humble Indie Bundle titles, Minecraft

The entire article is based around the faulty assumption that there is a problem. We might be a little dry on the innovative titles for the past few months, but that's because we just went through a recession, and video games have a tremendous lead time. Carmel can try raising his concerns again when they're actually valid. Someone should remind him, though, that if he can come up with a half dozen examples of current games that fit his definition, then there probably isn't a shortage.

 

[Kyeotic]

The problem with the article is the basic premise is wrong. The article is assuming there's a fundamental problem (no high concept videogames) and lashes out on how to fix that problem. However, that problem is simply non-existent. Look through the comments, and even some of the statements in the article. This shortage of "innovative" and "risky" games simply doesn't exist. Sure the Halos and the CoDs of the world get all the press, but that's because they have advertising budgets. Pick a platform and you can quickly find a fair number of these innovative titles.

PS3: Flower, Flow, Littlebigplanet, Pixeljunk series, Fat Princess, etc
Wii: Pretty much any game that doesn't use gimmick versions of the motion controls
360: Dance Central, XBLA titles, (I don't have a 360 so someone help me out here)
PC: Humble Indie Bundle titles, Minecraft

The entire article is based around the faulty assumption that there is a problem. We might be a little dry on the innovative titles for the past few months, but that's because we just went through a recession, and video games have a tremendous lead time. Carmel can try raising his concerns again when they're actually valid. Someone should remind him, though, that if he can come up with a half dozen examples of current games that fit his definition, then there probably isn't a shortage.

This.

 

[mikiev]

According to Carmel, ..., the proposed studio would also need to work in an environment where profitability isn't a concern. .... "It shouldn't be that difficult to take a few million dollars to fund a team of 10 working on something forward-thinking," he said during the keynote.

a few million dollars? profitability isn't a concern?

Does Carmel want funding from the National Endowment for the Arts?

With all the markets developing for for indie games e.g. XboxLive, whatever the Playstation equivalent is, Apple's App store, Android marketplace, etc - let alone something like Valve's Steam - isn't there a literal sea of innovative ideas and people with proven abilities to invest in?

With an homage to Flowers vs Zombies incorporated into the Cataclysm patch of WoW, and Microsoft trying to imply that Angry Birds was running on WinPhone7 at release, I can tell that some companies are not clueless with regards to how popular some quality indie games are.

I just have to scroll through the long list of games I'd never heard of - on Steam - until Valve ported Steam to Mac.

I now have a Bootcamp partition on my iMac, and am tyring-out some of the Windows-only games that are available on Steam.

The problem isn't quantity, its wading-through the steaming piles of "me-too!" crapware to find the interesting, quality games.

The investors who can do the wading for us - or fund the people who would do the wading - and setup a site with a hand-picked selection of quality titles should make a killing. And since everyone's idea of what is good, quality, & fun-to-play is different, there should be room in the market for several sites showcasing hand-picked titles.

 

[Frimmel]

For the risk adverse I'd always thought you didn't put all your eggs in one basket. While commercial success is indeed important that success is typically founded on quality work. There is no rule that quality work can not be done on a smaller budget. And no reason something on a smaller budget can not get the hype treatment of a Black Ops.

Speaking from the view of film, I'd much rather give up a "Transformers 2" in order to fund 5 smaller films and get the chance of five "District 9"s.

 

[DaveSimmons]

> the key to unlocking the first true gaming masterpiece.

Planescape: Torment was released in 1999. Perhaps you meant the "next" gaming masterpiece?

 

[Penforhire]

The only way to remove financial motivation is to work for some insane game genius. Otherwise why should studios take risks? There has to be a payoff. Are any of today's blockbusters the result of something grown from an indie title?

And when some mad game genius gets his way we get very mixed results anyway. Kazunori Yamauchi's Gran Turismo is turning into the new Duke Nukem joke. Peter Molyneax is another example of near brilliance but also a whole lot of flop.

 

[WamBam26]

The last bit about the Mona, Lisa Macbeth and The Wire was used to illustate the preceding paragraph, not the article as a whole. I read it as ' these works are great not just because they were great ideas but because they were executed well'. I don't think he was commenting on whether or not they were profitable enterprises though I understand where some might be confused.

 

[Panick]

I think the main point to look at is that small studios are in a bad rut right now. Back a few years ago, independent studios were everywhere. Some faded into nothing, some made it big. What we're left with are the ones that made it big, and they're too afraid to fall from their high seats of power to break the mold. Why? Breaking the mold carries risk. You either make something awesome, everyone loves it (i.e. Minecraft) or you flop and the last few years of your life were for nothing.

That depends on what you define as "for nothing". Plenty of indie filmmakers make movies they know will never get them noticed and will probably never gain any sort of audience. They do it for the experience and because it's what they love to do. Indie game designers tend to be cut from the same cloth. They do what they do because it's what they love. If they make it big great! If not they learn from the mistakes they made and they make another go at it (usually under a different studio name). I think one thing indie game developers need that many don't have is business sense. There are several small indie developers that by all rights should be doing pretty well but are really struggling because they took the success of a certain title as a sign that they could stop sweating. The minute they did things went down hill rapidly.

And full on comparisons of indie films to indie games don't really mesh well. The big movie studios fund small "indie" studios for a couple of reasons. First, they know most of the award garnering films are probably going to come from those studios (especially when those awards are being given out by critics or members of the Hollywood community) and, as stupid as it may sound, those awards matter to them. Second, it gives them a place to send that director/actor/writer who really wants to make that deeply personal little film so that they can recruit him to make a bigger mainstream title later. Neither of these things is true in the gaming world and as such big publishers have no reason to risk anything on games without high profiles and high earning potential.

There is also the fact that people don't follow the developers of games the way they do their favorite directors or actors. All they care about is the title of the game. Call it Rock Band or Call of Duty and it doesn't matter who worked on it, it will sell a ton of copies. And none of that is going to change anytime soon.