Originally Posted by
Neb6
Good article.
Mentions a lot of important issues:
- project budgets spiraling out of control, coupled with the pressure to sell tons of product in order to recover costs.
- the wrong people making the creative decisions/too many cooks in the kitchen.
- falling back on 'what sold last time' comfort zone advice from investors (this is what's plaguing the film industry right now).
- biased reviews (not all that different from the payola system that influences what music gets played on commercial radio).
I think scaling projects down to smaller budgets with smaller teams could help. Of course then there'd be the argument of. "Can we still sell it at the price of a bigger/badder game?" Question is, do they HAVE to sell it at the $60.00 introductory price to make a profit if the budget was lower and the game was good enough? I suppose it then enters the realm of marketing budgets. Distribution is a pain too. Ugh. It seems they've worked themselves into a corner.
For me though, there are a lot of things that cost money that I don't need in my games. So if they need so save money, they can:
- model less cars for racing games (I only need a maximum of ten vehicles to choose from).
- skip the elaborate intros and cut scenes for racing and flight games (I don't need these either).
The shotgun approach to game development might be a smart approach for some studios. Same idea as Sundance Studios for motion pictures. Fund four smaller projects with what you'd normally fund one and if two out of four do well, then you're okay. If one does amazingly well, then you're still okay. That would also give the designers more flexibility and take some of the pressure off of them.