Interesting article about the current state of the video-games business:
Good thing we have technology like Unity3d I say 
Thx brokenpoly,
Interesting read but I don’t feel sorry for the industry. They have dug there own hole so to speak, you spend millions and what about four years to make a game and then forget everything you just did and start over it all over again on the next game.
It might be a little smarter to do like the movie studios did back in the day make a bunch of sets, props and actors that you could use over and over and then deliver a good story.
I liked the little blurb at the end about Portal getting a little smarter.
Yeah! I`m always a little surprised when I see dev-diaries where they “brag” about how they remodelled all the assets and stuff. Also, how many times have New York been modelled in 3d? I think at least 3-4 games that came out last year took place in a digital NY. Why not try to collaborate more when it comes to these kinds of things?
Part of the problem also is that when video games evolved it was more a sex, drugs and video games spirit which also attracted certain characters who again came up with interesting games.
With the time all got more streamlined and also aggravated different kind of people. Some veterans are still active and still making good games and of course there are also new ones who are doing a good job but a lot are just…
Bioshock is a good example for a fantastic game which makes clever usage of it’s budget and incorporates traditional skills very well.
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Some Developers also have to realise that creating games is a real business and not just a way to show off your development skills by creating stuffs that are pretty useless.
I’m saying that because, I think this is too often that we see studios creating their in-house engine that’ll be used for only that game (or will be completely modified for the next one). The engine takes a good year to make by a few developers, which cost a lot more than licensing an already proven game engine.
It seems that recently, studio have massively adopted the use of engines. Maybe now it’s cool to say that you’re game use Gamebryo or UE3 where it was actually a sign of weakness before… :?:
Anyway, things have to change. 5 years ago a game could be completed by a small team and a small budget and now it takes up to 1000 persons and 100M$. That’s a very steep evolution in only 5 years.
My opinion is that we are going to see a dramatic change in the way we create games. There will still be engines of course. But I think professional studios will use them and code in higher level language (kinda like Unity).
When you think about it, it actually make sense.
One of the reason why we are still massively using C++ is because most of game developers have been taught C++ and they just don’t want to change. Besides, studios have huge C++ frameworks developed through all the games they made.
But now with Unity, XNA and others, the trend will be that young dev will start game programming using managed language and won’t excel in C++ as dev used to (in the 90’ for instance).
I think it’s time to change. Managed languages allows you to be much more productive than C/C++. In a way that’s more interesting than the performance you lose.
But that just my 2 cts… for what it’s worth. 
Well, I think what has started happening a long time ago, and what will continue to happen is a split:
“Hollywood-game-titles” that are basically just gambling with massive amounts of money. Driven by the fear to fail because if you fail, you fail big time. Driven by greed because it’s not about creating a unique game but creating the next blockbuster which will make up for all the failures. “Games for the masses”.
“Independent Game Development”: People that have a vision and love what they’re doing. Games created as a form of artistic expression on all possible artistic dimensions (IMHO, game development is “the final Art” … for now ). Money can be made that way but it’s not all about money. As development and publishing costs are much lower for independent games, you don’t need to sell millions of copies to break even.
I think in the end, the game business will be not much different from the music business and movie business: There’s industry and independents.
I was reading an article that used the Sims as an example of some of the problems in the industry. (I don’t remember the exact numbers, but the scale is close) They pointed out that the first Sims had something like 1000 animations. The second Sims has something like 200000 animations. The rhetorical question being “Is Sims 2 two-hundred-times better than the first game?” Obviously not, but it still took 200 times the money/time/talent to make.
I was reading something Jeff Vogel wrote about how ridiculous it is that all the art assets gets thrown out every project. He asks if gamers would be all the upset to maybe see the same orc or the same dragon in two different games.
Another problem with the massive art assets is that they move the focus to the consumable part of the game. Dynamic game play can stretch out a game’s value for years, but most of the art assets have a short lived novelty. The GTA series is a good example of this. The first hour seems really amazing, but then everything starts to feel “flat.”
It might even be intentional. It’s known that in television, producers push for quality less than 10. 10 satisfies too well, but a consistently 7 show is much more consumable. You could watch it, and then another and then another and so on.
well, several things really.
BrokenPoly’s signature says a lot! When you combine a bloated IDE and a mammoth API, and then you try to run it on a catastrophically corpulent OS, that runs (crawls) on horribly mismatched drivers that were never coordinated by their authors so that they might actually function on in the same machine, and hardware from companies who design their components so that they can be the lowest bidder when they sell to computer manufacturers… You need to trash your PC and buy a Mac.
I will probably have more to add to this once in a while but what strikes me as really damaging about this industry, is overindustrialization.
That and too much focus on fluff and not enough attention to storyline, character development…
More later.
That’s odd… I just saw an article that videogame sales are up 13%
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118000107.html?categoryid=1079&cs=1
What really hurts the industrie is how mammoths in the business have trashed it.
Take EA. A few years ago, with 200’000 profit from a game it was a hit
Now its considered a flop if it ends with less than 1M+ profit. That per se is no problem.
The problem is the implications it has:
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What Games are developed? Right, the same shit users already know, because if they are familiar with it, they will potentially buy it. That this is a granted way that people will not see it justified that those games cost $90 for console / $65 for pc and instead seek ways to pirate them does not seem to be obvious enough for overpayed managers to be realized
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Graphic slut supporting games are primarily focused on, even if the game play is the worst ever. Last autumns Need for Speed as well as CryTeks superdemanding Tech Demo (Crysis) have shown that in their own specific ways.
That this focus is a way that will lead nowhere is pretty obvious already in the console market. Nintendo made it obvious in a way that smashed MS and Sony in a way like noone since 3DO has been flattened by its competition. Be it the TV based ones or the mobile:
Visuals won’t sell shit on the long go and its only a matter of time not of “IF” until Indies will actually show the big players how this business works in real in the 21th century, not how some total non gaming people on the management daydream of how it is. It only worked so far because Indies did not have ways to get into the business due to barriers.
But with technologies like Unity, C4, Torque on the PC, XNA, the iPhone SDK and the Steam Platform AppStore, Indies have worlds more power at their hand than EA and UbiSoft likely would prefer even in their worst Nightmares.
So you can pay 3x over the odds to be able not to be able to play the games at all or upgrade your hardware? :twisted:
I don’t think so.
There is one fundamental difference: In game development unlike movie and music, the indies have access to resources that are otherwise restricted to the industrie in some way.
Especially with Steam, affordable powerfull engine technology and platforms like iPhone and XNA on X360, Indies have power at their hand that no movie or music independent has because we have the power to create the stuff professionally AND the channels to distribute it professionally
Seriously. If there had ever been an avenue to sell music, as a nobody, as with games + the App Store, I’d have been making a lot more music. It’s all about the distribution.
Dunno about you guys buy my system can game just fine.
Not my fault if you chose a non upgradable system. :roll:
You do have a point about price, but you get what you pay for.
A good deal of what the Mac experience consists of for me nowadays is the Multi-Touch trackpad. I’m not going back.
People don’t seem to understand the way to upgrade Macs: you sell the old one, and buy a new one. Unlike PCs, these things actually sell on eBay for good money.
I’m sure the ones who are dying get a lot of headlines, particularly in the current economic climate. It’s very interesting to read about Steam’s price experiments:
One may question if the sales jumped because of the specific promotion news or the price point, but if it’s reproducible across other games, it should give major studios pause when considering the price tag for their games.
Hehe yeah the MacPro is pretty well designed when it comes to cooling.
Also I’ve heard great things about its memory performance from a friend who has one back when Intel was still on FSB connections for it.
Now that Core i7 is out thought, old Mac Pro likely won’t have much of a benefit on that end any further, but it will be interesting to see by when Apple will have new Mac Pro and if they will have Full ECC again as the Core i7 DDR3 on their own are still pretty rare due to the voltage requirements.
But graphic power wise its a joke, it only qualifies as calculation monster.
It is hardly able to compete with my old graphic card that makes the physx gpu in my system (8800 GTS 640MB SuperClocked from EVGA, only a few % slower than a 8800GTX). Against a GTX 280 (or even worse, 295), it does not even see the tunnel to see the light at the end of this tunnel
They upgraded the gpu last autumn, just that they upgraded it to a card that was outdated when it was introduced (ATI HD 3800 series, when the 4800 was already around).
With Apples past track in “actually of the gpu”, I will likely be on a DX11 GPU by the day your system finally gets a GTX 280 class gpu as an option, which is a shame.
But perhaps we can hope that it gets better due to OSX 10.6 and OpenCL and Apples targets with it.
It might be just me but i find it a tiny bit easier walking into a local store, buying a gfx card, putting it into the computer, installing drivers (if needed at all) and continue to work instead of buying a complete new system, setting it up, taking pictures of my old computer, making an offer, hold an auction, cleaning up the system, checking my bank account, package and send it.
Due to 10.6 i also could imagine some hope. Hasn’t nVIDIA for instance built a more power efficient version of the 9600GT? Might be something for the iMac, after years of 128bit this at least would give you a 256bit memory interface.