This is an outstanding little article on Gamasutra that I thought was worth sharing. I think it’s spot-on in almost every aspect.
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Pretty interesting.
Your interest shouldn’t be in creating artistic games, it should be in running a business and being self-employed. I believe that creates some different driving forces behind your actions.
This phrase hurts me in a way. It also holds the truth of the world in a way. I completely understand and have to somewhat agree to a point. Its great advice for someone starting a business. I have seen the same idea applied to other artists and it works. You are much more likely to be successful. In my opinion the world deserves better art than that which was churned out in the interest of profit. When the driving forces behind your art are monetary your art suffers. The best art in the world was created for the love of art and had no expectations of financial return. The best music in the world is from the heart and some of it rarely gets heard. So I say if you want to create games for a living then start a buisness and follow his advice. If you want to create the best art humanity has to offer then love what you do to the point you will starve to keep do it because you likely will. I see nothing wrong with art for the sake of art, in fact I think it brings forth the best. I also understand wanting to create a business doing what you like to do.
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I settled in the middle I guess you could say: I freelance full-time and spend some of my free time creating whatever inspires me at the moment. It not only pays the bills but removes any and all pressure of releasing a game beyond getting my clients’ games ready for the public. The freelance work keeps me focused on the job and my free time is my play time, currently spent on a third person controller. This free time not only gives me valuable experience but pacifies my need to create world after world and play in them.
Everyone has to find what is best for them; it took me about 2 years to realize that I am much happier with what is now my current setup; turns out I don’t have much ambition to release a game - something that is a lot more work than most think. It’s not that I am afraid of the work and I put a lot of effort into helping my clients’ projects succeed, even after the pay stops. It makes for good business relationships, repeat work and admittedly, a sense of pride when good reviews come in.
Sometimes my side projects are pure art and sometimes they are pure programming. A lot of them fall in the middle, but not a single one of them could be considered a completed game, and I am 100% content with that. And with my clients game scheduled to release on Steam next month, I am happy with being listed in the credits as lead developer and not the creator/owner/publisher/etc.
There is a world of options beyond the goal of releasing a game on Steam or in an app store. If you treat it as a hobby, it will remain one. If you treat it as business, you are more likely to succeed, assuming your definition of success is based on sales and the ability to keep a roof over your head via game development alone.
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I really dislike the idea of aiming to create video games that are “art”. I think that in itself is really pretentious. My aim is always to create a great video game that people want to buy so that I make money. If I do my job REALLY well, then my game will be a thing of beauty that some people might call “art”. That’s just sugar on top though - I don’t think it should ever be my goal. I don’t think you can AIM to create “art”. It’s something that just occasionally comes about through very well executed technical implementation.
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Yes. Most great games are made with this mindset. I buy and play a pretty good number of them. I absolutely agree this is the correct way to make games. Art is different though. Movies are generally made with the same ideas in mind and I agree thats a smart buisness decision. A movie can be art, so can a game. A game can tell a story and immerse you in a world. A game can make you think and feel it can frighten and thrill you. I’m not trying to say all games are art. There is something to be said for the buisness way and it does bring games that are fun. But some things are made in this world just for the sake of art. I have played games that were not the best in terms of gameplay but I loved watching. The art kept me interested and thats a good thing. Rarely a game will combine the two and thats even better. I think its a wonderful thing when someone pours their soul into something because they want it created as opposed to needing to get paid.
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I have a similar opinion as yours regarding the relationship between art and business. Probably what the author of the linked article really meant was that one shouldn’t ignore the business aspect, in case he or she is considering to make a living out of making games.
For hobbyists, or those ambitious professional developers who are willing to spend some money they earned from other games on their dream project that might not sell, such concerns may not matter that much. And personally, I also want to see more of such people in the field, because I find the more interesting kinds of games usually come from those artistic minded types.
It reminds me of a paradox that I observe in the music business - and I don’t even like to call it as such, ‘music business’. Since they created an industry out of making music, musicians have enjoyed things that they never had dreamed before, like going on a world tour, or using state of the art recording equipments, and so on. And with that money they could make better songs, make them known to more people, and inspire musically talented among them to follow their suit.
But as the business aspect grew larger, writing music became more of a calculation than of an inspiration - a calculation to find a kind of songs that the most number of people would like and mass produce them. And that’s how I believe the pop & rock music scene has ended up where it is now, when its last remnant of creative energy has exhausted sometime in the late 90s or early 2000s.
The way I see it, the gold rush among indie game developers resembles much like how everyone wanted to start a band in the 90s, when the industry has grown enough to inspire and support large number of amateure musicians.
I don’t want to see the same thing to happen in the game industry, so I wouldn’t support the advice that people should only care about the business aspect of making video games.
Maybe those two sides are not really separable, I don’t know. And I understand that video games mean different things for different people - for some, it can be a form of art, while for others it can be just a mindless past time, or a mean to make money.
Probably all it matters is to find an ideal state of equilibrium that ensures the industry to grow continuously while satisfying everyone involved.
I wonder if it could be an ideal role for the business side of the equilibrium to support the artistic side, rather than also to direct and mold it to yield the maximum profit, because I believe that was the point when the music industry began to lose the momentum and collapsed in its own weight.
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It would be nice to see a summary for the ones who don’t have a whole lot of time to read it.
Rather poorly written. The first point makes the initial claim “don’t dream,” as if it’s going to talk about something related to that. It then goes off onto a tangent that reads like we’re going to start talking about marketing (which would be good). But it doesn’t actually do that, and wraps up only having given half of what’s needed for “proper” advice (don’t just tell me what not to do, tell me why and tell me what to do instead).
Next two points seem fine.
“Your interest shouldn’t be in creating artistic games, it should be in running a business and being self-employed. I believe that creates some different driving forces behind your actions.”
I tell you, this guy is r.e.a.d.y. for AAA games! In short, this is an awful point unless you’re only in this to make money. And if you just want to make money…go be a “real” programmer instead, because they actually make money.
We might make the assumption that he’s only talking to mercenary individuals releasing mobile free-to-play games plagued with intrusive IAP, but if we don’t then that point is garbage.
I don’t “make” games (if you can call not having any full releases making games) because I want to make money. That might be nice eventually, but I’m interested in exploring different ideas that either I haven’t seen done before or have been neglected in recent years. As such most of this is meaningless to me. Even if I was interested in making money, abandoning any focus on artistic expression is a recipe for more crappy 2D platformers, for more crappy open-world survival (zombie) games, and all that chaff.
(note: after writing that sentence I googled “orangepixel” and checked out their website. The first two games in their scroll? Open-world survival and 2D platformer :P)
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I don’t see making a video game as a form of art any more pretentious than painting or sketching. The purpose of art is to both convey something from the artist as well as evoke something from the viewer; whether that art can be interacted with does not diminish it as art in my opinion.
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Worth pointing out that most games are not purely business-driven. Consider games like Nier Automata or Deus Ex or Dragon Age Inquisition or Mirror’s Edge Catalyst or Child of Light or Uncharted. These are games from some of the largest AAA companies and their development and design is not driven merely by a mindless desire for cash, but each one is thoughtfully packed with little details whose only purpose is to be “art.”
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Well I agree with what he is saying. I think if a person is doing it completely as a hobby / passion / form of expression that is one thing. That’s not really being an Indie, is it? I mean as in focusing on building an Indie Game Dev Business.
I think the guy is just saying Indie Game Dev implies you have a business not that you are making works of passion relying on one to strike it rich with no effort and thought putting into making it do so. It does happen of course. We know that. But it shouldn’t be relied on.
At least that is what I get out of it. Basically if you are going to have an Indie Game Dev Business then don’t forget the business part of it.
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If they’re purely monetary, yes. To me, though, the driving force behind my art is my art, and I recognise that money is a fundamental part of furthering my art. Money is a limiting factor, and it should be treated like any other limit - respect it if we want our project to succeed, and try to raise the limit over time if we want to make better stuff moving forward.
So, if my art makes money, then I can make better art.
I don’t want my games to make money so that I have more money (though that’s also nice!), I want it so I can make better games more comfortably. Obviously there’s a rule of diminishing returns there. Once I’ve got my team in place, we’re all financially stable and being paid comfortably, and we can afford to take some risks with the things we make, multiplying our income will no longer significantly allow us to make better games. But until I get to that point, yes, I have to think about increasing the money available to me, and I’d be naive not to.
Also, as I often say to people, this often doesn’t have to impact our creativity as much as naysayers would have you believe. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got more concepts for games I’d like to make than I could possibly put to use. A subset of them are potentially commercially viable, and a subset of those have better chances and/or fit my available resources better than the others. I’m not sacrificing the artistic side of my games by sticking to those projects. And, pragmatically speaking, if one of those is successful then it’s going to give me a better chance of successfully turning my attention to the others.
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The article was much shorter than I expected :-\
Dragon Age Inquisition is purely business driven, though. It is obvious in its every corner.
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Obvious in gameplay, sure. Obvious in world-building and lore? Completely false. They brought stuff to boil that had been simmering for 10 years. Gaider wasn’t throwing mediocre crap out there to make a buck.
Uh, he was doing exactly that.
Dragon Age was a rehash of themes found in many other mediums, for example the whole “Gray Wardens” thing along with oppressed elves was lifted directly from Sapcowsky’s work meaning Witcher (DA:Origins was released after witcher, by the way). Past that they were pretty much trying to build “our own dnd”. The lore wasn’t that great to begin with.
Now the difference here is that the first Dragon Age game had some soul in it, and was a fairly solid CRPg overall. Those qualities died out in the sequels. They even managed to ruin the Fade in the 3rd game - which was pretty much the only saving element in dragon age lore since the beginning, and they lost “grimdark” atmosphere that was setting original Dragonage apart from other titles.
Good, or even great lore is usually present in DND lore, except that a lot of it never makes it into the games (with exception of Planescape: Torment). Another game with a good lore is Elder Scrolls series, which had pretty insane construction of universe.
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I disagree a bit. The way I see it, creating something artistic is the goal, and succeeding in that goal should leave me very well rewarded financially if I make good business decisions. I don’t see any reason why someone who is interested in creating an artistic masterpiece should not be also interested in hedonism, or at a minimum in the power that money provides to change the world around oneself. In fact it would be kind of disturbing to me if this wasn’t generally the case.
I don’t agree at all.
I assure you I’m well aware that the basis for DA was “Our own DnD.” And the “Oppressed elves” trend certainly wasn’t started by Sapkowski. Where they took that with Inquisition, however, elevated that element above other many other games in the same vein. While games like the Witcher or Mass Effect wind up dumbing down and making their big bads less supernatural over time (the Wild Hunt went from a cavalcade of ineffable and inexhaustible hunters tracking down Geralt to mooks he and Ciri were cutting down like flies - the Reapers were similar), DA has done the opposite by Spoilers for Inquisition reintroducing elven gods, and introducing a magical Dwarven entity (and the potential for mage Dwarfs, though they already introduced that in DA ).[
Not only that, but while the elven oppression and their backstory of loss of immortality after contact with humans is a fairly standard affair, the reality that they caused their own downfall is a unique twist that puts things in a new light.
Not only that, but you have the old gods trapped in archdemon form, the forgotten ones who’ve shown up infrequently, the black city which has yet to be truly explained…the important thing about Dragon Age lore is that it’s not really in the past, like Elder Scrolls. ES has all these stories about past events, which is cool, but part of the special nature of the DA series is that “real” stuff is happening around you. The rebirth of an elven god, the waking of one of the original magisters who was in the black city (“It was black when we got there…”), the Titan, theQunari with their seemingly ineffable goals, even the spirit/demon dichotomy. There’s a ton of potential in that world. Origins was undoubtedly the weakest of the series story-wise (though superior in gameplay), but it provided a decent base to spring-board off of, and they’re doing a great job of that.
This isn’t new - they’ve been looking 5 years ahead since the series began - but relevant link: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-08-11-bioware-already-has-plan-for-theoretical-dragon-age-5
ES is around the same level, though it’s quite different. Nothing Obsidian’s done even comes close, though they haven’t had a whole lot of opportunity for their own IPs. The Divinity series has some potential, but they seem to have abandoned the original storyline (the clash between Damien and Lucien) for the near future while doing Original Sin 2…DA is in a pretty unique place right now.
I started reading the article.
Got to
Decided to take his advice and stopped reading.
Good article.
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You might find that the very second you start to think about an audience and what the audience wants, you stop being able to be 100% artistic the way you want to be, or to express in the way you want. Just even the mere thought of an audience puts into your mind a different way of perceiving, you start opening up to what other people think of your game, you start focusing differently, you start worrying about being judged and whether you’ll be able to please people, and this all undermines your authenticity and turns it into a tug of war.
In the extreme you might find that making something that you want to make for yourself will keep your project “free” from those influences. OR, you could go the other way and dedicate yourself to being sacrificial and giving up all self-interest and focusing only on what other people want - becoming a service of sorts, but maybe not enjoying one second of it. It’s difficult to be completely selfless that way while you yourself have an ego or an interest in making games or a like for certain types of games. If you want to put anything of yourself into it, then that ‘self’ becomes a mediator and has to be pleased just as much as the audience.
Either you’ll do it for the audience because you’re enlightened and have no needs of your own, or if you have personal needs then there will have to be compromises.
If we get straight to the point… I see DA as mediocre at best, and think that the series would’ve fared better if Gaider was fired. The dude appear to be responsible for couple of oddities that felt seriously out of place, plus Bioware was pretty much never able to write a decent character or a romantic storyline. I’ve seen much better scripts elsewhere (Shadowrun: Dragonfall, anyone?)
That’s the way I see it.
DA:I had a good art team, but whoever was responsible for the script/story, quests and gameplay thoroughly wrecked this game. The game is so mind-bogglingly boring that I’ve been struggling to finish it for 2 years since release date. Hopefully I can finally get to the end of it before the end of this year.
Obsidian had very solid Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, and Fallout: New Vegas. Some people apparently liked KOTOR 2.
Their QA department sucks, which is why some people nicknamed them “Bugsidian”, but they can deliver proper world building and storywriting when they put effort into it.
Dude… Unfortunately, I had been exposed to dnd rulebooks, and anything Dragon Age is offering is a bad joke in comparison.
If you grab things like, say “Fiendish Codex II”, you’ll find many pages describing, for example, such things as processing mortals into raw souls which are then used to create devils, myth explaining creation of the world, etc. There are piles and piles and piles of data, cities, names, creatures, etc. After dealing with that I find DA lore unimpressive in comparison.
By attempting to create “Their Own DND” the game got significantly reduced depth in its lore.
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This is a very, very old discussion. There are numerous works of fiction and analysis that focus on this subject. “La Boheme” is the opera that usually comes to mind. Modern audiences might be more familiar with the recent reinterpretation “Rent.”
Starving artists who suffer for their craft are a common concept. And there is an argument to be made in favor of a more bohemian approach. At the same time, I can’t really argue against someone who is trying to make an honest living. This is also a noble and reasonable pursuit, and one that takes the realities of life into account.
It is true that making games as a business, rather than just a craft, will affect how you make your games. This can’t be avoided. I’ve harped on this myself numerous times. There are some designs for games that can’t be reasonably monetized. Attempting to do so would spoil and compromise the design. A game developer with a specific vision in mind may have to sacrifice the business realities in order to make their design happen.
At the same time, great art and design are no guarantee of financial stability. The world is littered with stories of fantastic artists, designers, and writers who died penniless failures, but are today heralded as some of the masters of their respective crafts. Artistic integrity does not put food on your table. If part of your objective is to feed your family, adhering to ideals of art or craft may not be possible.
It’s also important to accept that a compromise between the two is also possible. Such compromises aren’t easy, but extremes can often be damaging to those that pursue them.
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