Author:
Simulacrum
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Date:
6/8/2015 11:05:19 AM
Subject:
RE: FallOut 4
What johnny said. A Github-like resource bank might jumpstart some small companies who otherwise wouldn't enter the market. What you need are more small outfits with interesting concepts like TaleWorlds and Robot Entertainment (pre-OMD Unleashed, that is).
But really, there are two main problems with the gaming industry as it is right now.
1. Safety in formulas.
2. Bad management.
While you have a tiny percentage of publishers who like to take chances (Paradox, for example), the vast majority won't fund a major title unless they see guaranteed profit. Successful franchises have built-in safety, so you keep seeing GTAs, Assassin Creeds, Call of Dutys, Mass Effects, Tomb Raiders, etc. If someone tries something new (e.g., Dishonored), it has to have all the ingredients for safety -- a million cutscenes, mostly linear objective-based design, Unreal Engine 4, etc. It has to behave like something successful prior to it. Watchdogs, for instance, would never have been funded if it hadn't been GTA with hacking. Euro studios like Larian sometimes try new things, but they usually have a reassuring track record and a fairly adventurous publisher.
Which brings us to management. Doing new, adventurous things takes time. Time is money. The most financially successful publishers want formula/franchise games not only because of their pedigrees but because development practices are already in place. New iterations bring new features, but the base manufacturing methodologies don't change much. This makes these titles easier to organize and supervise. When your teams are in-house (Ubisoft) making the same widgets, your management scenarios become less experimental.
Hollywood has made movie production a science with very predictable metrics. They only occasionally take big risks. The days of D.W. Griffith, Francis Ford Coppola, United Artists, etc. are long gone. Movie companies can scrounge very high capital investment because, generally speaking, they can guarantee insane budgetary and preparation discipline functioning in accordance with unforgiving schedules.
The game industry is very slowly figuring this out. The big companies are starting to understand that developers' leashes can be only so long. The Obsidians of the world may be creative, but you can't fund an indefinitely moving target (feature creep, engine revamps, ongoing experimentation). These things need to be locked down and non-negotiable before development starts.
Milestones need to be thrown out. Hollywood doesn't have milestones. They have budgets and schedules. Barring bad location weather, actor illness, or other "acts of God," you finish your movie when you say you will. Does this mean that big-budget movies become formulaic? You betcha. But you hopefully exercise your creativity within that formula and move the industry forward.
The movie industry analogy is no more perfect than any other comparison, but if the game business is ever going to mature, it has to adopt -- or adapt -- the stabilizing methods of movie-making and maybe even other industries. I would suggest looking into dairy farms.
