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In music, there are essentially two models of working: the band and the orchestra.
Bands are small, groups of 1-5 artists working on albums, doing shows, having fun. They are generally undisciplined, chaotic, even crazy. They live a small, frugal and creative life and find success by trying.
Orchestras are driven by discipline. There is sheet music, everyone has their role, there is a conductor and a symphony is produced. Orchestras have a very craft-oriented way of approaching music, and they are capable of great harmonies etc. However life in orchestral music is very much a vocation. For every brilliant soloist there are a hundred tuba players, basoonists, viola players and flautists all essentially being paid to play in time.
The games industry used to be a place for bands. In real terms a lot of the old indie studios like id, Bullfrog, Sensible Software and a thousand others were really just hothouse rooms with a few guys and girls working on their albums games and having a go.
Nowadays the games industry is all about orchestras. A studio of 80 staff with production managers and milestones is not a band in which weird things happen, it's a symphony in which everyone has their music sheet and most are expected to play in time. It's a very thought-driven discipline sort of environment, with books on how to design, system architectures and serious tools. Which, if you're making big games, is probably necessary. Educationally speaking, most game development courses are teaching skills to help youngsters become a part of the orchestra, teaching them their specialist instruments.
The Fat Pyramid
They also teach their place. When they come out of their courses and off into the industry, they join in as juniors and are expected to work their way up patiently, from third viola to second viola.
What drives this is aspiration. The young acolytes see a generation of game developers before them that they want to emulate. They want to be the next Carmack, Schafer, Miyamoto or whomever and think that they'll join the industry to get some experience, which will help them become that. Young people typically have no real plan as to what they want to do other than 'make games' and see themselves as creatives.
I talked with a young designer friend of mine about this recently. She had just been let go from a company after another disappointing project, another couple of years put into working on something and struggling to make something happen as a part of a team. She's been in the industry for 6-ish years already, and was one of a team with a lead who'd been around for 10 or more years, and feels a lack of movement and frustration. I totally sympathised with her, but the sum total of my argument back to her was this:
"At the rate things are going you won't be a design director until you're 40"
Why?
Simply put, as the games industry's production requirements increase, the number of available projects decreases. At the same time the number of junior level positions continues to broaden. The orchestra needs more third violas but there's still only room for one conductor. The problem my friend has encountered is that the really senior positions of the industry are dominated by the same figures who dominated 15 and 20 years ago. It's plain bad luck on her part to have been born younger, and good luck on their part that they are older and so got in on the ground early. She can't be the next Schafer because he's only 41 and is going to go on being the next Schafer for at least another 19 years.
Back to Bands
The problem with the orchestral path is that it is uncreative. If you look at the rate of innovation in classical music, it is very slow compared to rock 'n roll, dance music and jazz. In the 20th century alone we've seen many new kinds of music rise and fall, from folk to metal, because the band structure enables comparatively fast innovation.
Orchestral music by contrast is very slow moving. Orchestras are built around a mindset of patience and repetition in a way that is artistic in execution rather than invention. Also because the orchestral culture tends to produce musicians who think in limited terms about music itself and so are incapable of really creating. Instead they improve.
The same is happening in games. Back in 1990 someone might be a creative director on a game as their
first or second job. Now it's a 15+ year sentence of different jobs,
years spent in scripting and testing and the like, like an orchestra.
Do any of us suppose that after 20 years of working in an orchestral culture of development that you are going to be able to suddenly think fast and loose and be creative? Of course not. Once you eventually are handed the directorship of a project you will do so with a mind laden with complicated concerns and institutional patterns of behaviour and thought that mean you will self-edit. You will create from within a limited mindset.
So. Young game developers. Listen Up, for I have only one lesson teach: Form bands. Don't get swept up in orchestras. Bands are the only way to make your dreams happen.
How?
Industry education makes out that there are so many skills that have to be learned before you can actually start to make games. But those early developers in the labels that we all loved back then didn't have college courses or a roadmap to tell them where they were going wrong. They didn't have design manuals or worry at all about the practise of doing things. They just tried stuff, saw what stuck. Why can't you?
The truth is that the skills that educators want to teahc you are ideal if you want to join the orchestra. They are vocational training which will probably get you into the industry but put you in place to do long service before you ever get to do anything you might want to do. It really doesn't have to be like that.
The internet in particular, whether through digital distribution, web games or social network games, offers a path. Freely available and easy to use technologies like Flash, Silverlight, Cocoa (for iPhone), PHP, Unity, downloadable console shenanigans and hundreds of other bits of tech are there. Free packages to create art, models and so on are there. And there are ways to make the money too, get your names out, all the rest of it.
I am very interested in seeing more young developers forming bands. I care about it deeply because I believe bands are the core of creativity in games and that orchestras are just the wrong way to go for those of us who have ideas we want to make. It's important for them and also for the bigger industry that a truly creative culture is reignited and kept going.
Do you agree?
(You can follow me on Twitter @tadhgk)
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So I must ask, how would you go about solving all of those problems?
There are two types of educational paths for design students- schools either prepare students for “orchestras” or “bands”. “Orchestra” students are likely to be hired by companies because they have a deep knowledge of a particular skill set the company wants. “Band” students are much more likely to struggle along unemployed. They group together and make flash and unity games like you mentioned, but these projects, with a few notable exceptions, remain on the very fringe of mainstream gaming’s attention. Few, if any, will ever grow to the size of a Telltale or Double Fine. In short, a band member might one day find that he can call himself a creative director, but he can never be a Miyamoto- he can’t make an orchestra’s games.
Working within a studio forces you to be creative in more constrained and specific ways than being an independent developer and this, in my mind, enhances the ability to think more critically and practically as an individual. Those are skills that are applicable no matter what you do. Game development in any position at the professional level isn't as free-form and forgiving as being an independent developer, but that doesn't invalidate the skills and experiences that it infuses into those who work hard at their jobs. Working in a studio requires a level of discipline, communication, creativity in sometimes stressful circumstances, and working within strict constraints. Those are all super desirable traits in any game developer (I use the term "game developer" to encompass art, programming, creative direction, and design).
That's not to say that independent work doesn't breed some of the most creative works -- it does -- but the independent developers don't make great things because they're "free of the man." Game development is a fucking hard field to make good work in; it's not about the mastery of a single instrument (to stick with your analogy), it's about the balance of a wide variety of instruments in a supremely cohesive way through crazy amounts of creativity, discipline, and all those other traits that are essentially to developers. Independent games creatively succeed because independent teams can afford to fail (ideally; this isn't always the case, of course). When you can afford to fail, you can afford to experiment.
And being able to afford to fail is something anyone can do with a little free time and hard work regardless of their career. A professional game developer can still be part of a band on the side if that's where their passion lies. If not, a professional game developer can still work hard to show that they have the skills and work ethics to actually surpass their peers. Advancement in the industry isn't an MMORPG.
Bands and orchestras both have their place and, as a gamer as much as a designer, I'd respect the work of both studios and indies. It's common conception to think that independent developers are chic and the only way for a creative mind to go in this industry, but I'd be pissed off if major studios stopped making games. I want to play those games as much as I want to work on them.
I've found that doing both enables a sort of "cross-pollinization" between the two environments: At home, I might work on a prototype to figure out if it was ok to kill feature X (and try to implement it in a game), and at the company, I'll pick up techniques and ideas that might be used at home.
I will say that - at least as part of the learning process - working in a studio is a good thing to do if you can't find a strong team on your own, because your ego is hard to control when you're always in 100% control of the process and have no obvious reference point; things become easy to overlook, and your work will tend to be unbalanced and lacking in some way that only becomes apparent in hindsight. In teams, your own faults and weaknesses are brought to the table every day, and you are freed to focus more on supporting everyone in doing the best work possible and learn from their experience as well as your own.
(caveat: if it's a big team you may find yourself penned up away from the other disciplines, and learn nothing substantial at all outside your own field.)
You raise some interesting points. I myself am a child of the studio system so I'm well aware of the constraints and discipline involved. It is, as I was saying, an orchestral environment. I'm not saying that orchestras are a place for slacker musicians to get lost in the crowd, they are very professional environments. However because of the need to work collaboratively on large complicated projects, they are not particularly innovative environments. The skill, as I mentioned, in an orchestra is learning to improve and exercise discipline, which is as far away from the anarchism of bands as you can get.
When you can afford to fail you can afford to experiment is exactly so. That's why, in music, band culture has streaked ahead in terms of innovation compared to classical culture. I disagree with the sentiment that side projects are enough though. Most people I know working in orchestras have their own side project but their job tends to eat a lot of their time and energy (not to mention their partners, kids, etc) and so those projects never really go anywhere.
A lot of developers would contend that working in games is a bit like a big MMO. Unfortunately it is often about who survives long enough without burning out or getting thoroughly bored.
Heed the words of the article if you want to have a career that's creatively and intellectually rewarding, because the only person that's going to do that for you is yourself.
I'd also like to point out that Indie Developers aren't without their constraints or conventions. It still takes serious discipline to stick with a game from start to finish. There's a lot you have to learn to make a game playable and enjoyable, even if you want to avoid Orchestra.
Luis,
I would say more the point *so far* has been to do that but now there are opportunities and ways for developers to side-step a lot of the perceived requirements to make a game and essentially redefine games as something smaller, less expensive and yet more interesting and fun than many high-profile games really are.
Fantastic article; the 'band' approach certainly can be a fostering ground for creative thought that the studio system just doesn't normally allow for, and-for a guy like me, who's an aspiring game designer and taking the personal time to teach themselves the tools they need and develop their own working style that best suits them, w/o an institutional environment be that mainly b/c they can't afford it at the time- is the most viable way to get something done. I have ideas *now*, and I want to execute them and bring them to reality *now*, not ten or even five years down the road. Besides I tend to think up ideas relatively quickly and thus like trying to get them realized sooner rather than later, when better ideas pop up in the head.
Of course, I've done my homework; I'm not just one of those guys *so* diehard on game design that they aren't developing skills for other fields "just in case"; that's something I'm doing, and knowing how tough it is for indie studios out there can-at times-be disheartening. My biggest issue on that front is that the majority of indies developers have no sustainable financial support, a group that can lend them the money they need, and Simon brought up an interesting solution in there maybe needing to be a "record label" sort of field in the industry.
What I find funny about that, though, is that-at one point-companies like Nintendo, Sony, and even EA *were* the record labels, but it was really way back in the time when the industry wasn't as it was now, or when those aforementioned publishers were still upstarts and seeking anything new and creative. Now that they're 'made' and now since the industry is so much more mainstream than it was before (say a decade ago), they're still "record labels", but they're only signing current clientele, renewing their contracts and just pumping out and sticking with what's proven to work.
So, if anything, there needs to come to fruition *new* record labels, new upstarts who are willing to take the chances Nintendo, Sony, EA, etc. used to take way back (and, in a way, some of them are dabbling in doing that now, but imho not nearly enough), and there should *always* be a stream of new 'record labels'/publishers, but it's likely even harder becoming a publisher than a developer in this industry.
I'm also under the belief of those like Trent, who say that it's possible to co-exist in both environments and take skills gained from one and apply them to the other. I even go as far to say that the existence of the 'band' and the 'orchestra' is necessary, b/c it's the 'orchestra' side (I feel) that fuels the growth of technologies that eventually become affordable enough for the 'bands' to get access to. While that doesn't make me want to intentionally go after the 'orchestra' model, it does fuel me to invest time in there, and makes me want to eventually be a part of it somehow, if only to see what technologies are developing and can be realistically available for the indie scene, which is where I'd like to make my profession in the game industry in. I can respect both sides, you could say.
So all in all, I agree w/ your consensus, and realistically for me to do what I would like to do it's much more capable of me doing that in the indie scene versus the major studio scene (though I have ideas that are likely best served in the studio scene, like any other would-be developer). However, I have no problems w/ being involved in the studio scene in *some* form, if only for steady pay and to keep up from the 'inside' w/ current developments in the mainstream industry that I think could have some benefit to the indie scene. But one thing's for certain; unless the studio development scene comes to a point where studios can get away w/ game ideas like they were able to back from the 70s' to the mid/late 90s', I'll be calling the indie scene my luscious home ;)
Also I am not trying to denounce the analogy, but the history major in me needs to give a tiny rant.
"The problem with the orchestral path is that it is uncreative. If you look at the rate of innovation in classical music, it is very slow compared to rock 'n roll, dance music and jazz. In the 20th century alone we've seen many new kinds of music rise and fall, from folk to metal, because the band structure enables comparatively fast innovation."
Part of the reason orchestral music took so long to evolve or develop was the limited amount of communication and transportation technology. Rock, jazz, rap and other 20th century music seems so fast pace and creative due to the radio, tv, transportation improvements, and the grand daddy of them all the internet. I can go onto a social website like Myspace and hear hundreds if not thousands of new artist--same goes for the radio or television. I can also go to concerts from artist who lived on the other side of the world thanks to trains, planes, and buses. During the age of Mozart and Beethoven the only way I would have heard their music is if I was apart of the upper class and lived in the area. These guys played for royalty and the elite, not the average Joe.
Ok rant over. Once again the analogy is still great. I just had to be that history guy. Thanks for reading.
You claim the rate of innovation in classical music was very slow, but the rate of innovation in folk music ("bands") at the time was likely as slow or slower. There was also a different idea of "innovation." Major composers radically changed the use of different instruments and, more importantly, the entire direction of harmony--how different chords were used--as well as formal structures.
Although the 20th century has seen a multitude of different popular music styles, with the exception of jazz (not coincidentally, another medium largely dependent on sheet music and composers, although obviously not to the same extent as classical music) there has been almost no harmonic innovation or evolution across all those popular music styles. They all use basically the same chords, the same structures, the same underlying harmonies. They just have different tone and recording techniques and tempos. That's completely valid as difference in style, but it's not fair to say there's more innovation going on than there was in the classical (and baroque, and romantic, etc.) eras; it just seems that way on its face to our modern ears, which are accustomed to that kind of musical change.
Obviously, it took the classical guys longer to effect change, but that has little to do with whether they were dealing with orchestras and bands--after all, didn't Mozart and Beethoven write pieces for small chamber orchestras of only a few strings? Didn't they write innumerable volumes of pieces for solo instruments? Rather, those longer cycles of innovation were due to the lack of any kind of instantaneous, worldwide communication like we have now. It's unfair to criticize them for that technological shortcoming. That's the same reason the folk musicians of the time weren't doing much innovating; I'd wager they were doing less, as they tended to be more rooted in straight tradition.
Anyway, I do think your point is well-taken as far as the industry as a whole, but I couldn't let my music education take that analogy without saying something!
You both mention that the band and orchestra shouldn't be a choice between one or the other. Trent also mentioned, "A professional game developer can still be part of a band on the side if that's where their passion lies.". My first question is, "Can they?". I'm not being sarcastic here, it's just that I have never heard of an orchestra requiring members to sign a legal document requiring them to agree that any musical product, classical or not, that they create belongs to the orchestra or to the conductor. Yet that is what most employment contracts state in the video game industry (as well as a majority of technical fields). This would seem to be a severe liability for any band of designers. After all, who would want to put in a huge amount of time and effort into a game with the possibility of it being stopped or co-opted by a studio simply because one of your band mates works for that studio.
I realize that alot of people might say, "My studio said that as long as I didn't work on it at my job it is all fine and dandy!". However there are quite a few studios that say, "you must show it to us first, then we decide.". Is there an easy way around this?
Classical musicians have far less at stake. It's not their art they're putting out. They are only tasked with recreating someone else's work as accurately as possible. People will generally be a lot more motivated to work on something they put themselves into. Aside from that, I can see how your analogy works on this level. I just think you took the band analogy too far.
Thanks for being the music major. :D
The increase in communication technology directly correlates with so many aspects of human society it's nuts.
Point is it started with bands of guys experimenting to create something new: hard technically, easy creatively (anything is new). Now it is at easier technically (all the middleware/tools), hard creatively (so much has been done), and the next step is easy technically, more people able to opt in and be creative. The reason I mention this type of progression is because it will destroy the Shafer is relevant for 60 years model. In my opinion your friend is just born at the worst possible time to be a game developer. Too late to easily get famous for creating just about anything, and too early to be able to easily be creative on their own. Not to say it is impossible now, but an indie game even if creative is hardly Shafer or Miyamoto status because they will never reach the quality of one of those guy's latest projects.
Agreed, worst possible time to become a game developer. But the way it seems to be, games are only gonna get harder and more expensive to make, everything being done is to get more graphics, more physics... too little to improve for creativity, maybe because also tool developers are not that creative too.
I think a lot of the criticisms given are totally valid though, you are a little harsh on the orchestra's. Having met a lot of musicians who have got to the top of their field wether it be bands or orchestra's, they both require a huge amount of hard work and discipline, neither more than the other.
But it is a different mentality, and we need more of the band mentality in games for sure.
The section on the Fat Pyramid reminded me of an old saying in Brass bands that the only way you move from 2nd Cornet to Solo Cornet is if guy on Solo Cornet dies.
Maybe it's just the band members, but so far I have seen little in the way of my own enthusiasm for any independent game project. Fortunately I know enough of all the other jobs to crank out the game myself, but it means lots of sleepless nights and banging my head against a wall on code problems a trained programmer could solve in minutes.
The Band idea only can possibly work if you find those diamonds in the rough friends who are in it for the long haul, or are one hell of a one man band.
As has been pointed out, you've confused playing with composing. An orchestral composer works just as alone as a band composer -- more so, usually.
We need Bejeweled AND Final Fantasy LXXXVIII; big games and small games; big teams and small teams. There's no either/or about it. Pick what you want to do and do it.
Yes--there is a vast irony that we view games as being on the cutting-edge of culture, while in reality they are oft but fronts for billion-dollar corporations and interests. Sure, they might have less of a dress code than Merrill Lynch, but they are even more corporate and conservative when it comes to enforcing strict company policy, which is generally anti-art and anti-soul--anti epic-poetry. And that is why games lack narrative, story, and soul. That is why games are being prevented from embracing the moral premise and becoming epic, exalted, classical art, as art is never created by the bottom-line-oriented groupthink MBAs--by the corporation, but it is created by the lone individual aspiring towards higher ideals. That is why Dante put Beatrice in heaven as the premise of Dante's Inferno, and EA begins by consigning her to hell.
It is easy to descend into hell, Virgil reminds us, but hard to come on up.
What's even funnier is how many indie game developers and overworked employees on roads to nowhere will jump to defend the vast and huge corporate interests that are debauching both the currency and culture, transferring epic amounts of fiat wealth as art dies. That's why I love this article! Start your own gaming venture!! Rock those ideas! Call the corporate bluff! Those MBAs mean nothing, and often are only ballast, as is arrogance!
http://artsentrepreneurship.com
Well, all of this creates vast and resounding opportunities to exalt games as a classical art form endowed with a moral premise and epic story; which my research/patents seek to do. Billions of dollars are being left on the table as the conservative, corporate entities, stifling innovation, truth, and art, are yet focusing on yesteryear's soulless, hooker-killing technologies; and that is why the majors are shedding both market cap and employees faster than Jeff Gordon and Dale Earndhart Jr. competing for pole position at Daytona.
Thanks for the great article!
Best,
Dr. E :)
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/author/DrElliotMcGucken/1169/
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/author/DrElliotMcGucken/1169/
To borrow the musician analogy, the self-taught musician may be able to play their songs, but not much else, because they've only taught themselves the stuff that they were going to use.
In addition, the "early developers" were all (or mostly) college-taught computer programmers, not starry-eyed gamers. They all had a clear understanding of code way before they animated their first sprite.
So, kids, don't try to be rockstars. Go to school. Please.
...after that, you can play all you want. 8)
It's going to be interesting seeing a "band" pull off a multi-year project without everything that an "industry" shell such as a company structure provides. Usually that includes lunch. It happens, but more often than not (remember what happened to Darwinia) things fall apart when the going gets tough.
Telling these kids to just have a go at it is like telling them to try to become the next president. It's not entirely impossible, but it's close. And it's not fair either. There are many topics that require more than basic mathematical understanding, and today's computing is a lot more complex than it used to be in the 80ies. That little bit of scientific understanding and maths education opens up a lot of creativity doors to these kids and, I'd say, a whole lot more doors than just the next killer game door.
Having said that, I stem from the demo scene era, so I wholeheartedly understand where the argument is coming from. And it is true. Bands are ideal to experiment and try to pull things off. There's a serious portion of fun to be had, and as long as it's basically all play and no real need to win, everything you pick up is going to help you along the way. Just eventually also remember that building games is about quality, not just fucking up your home computer..
It's interesting, I think I'm gonna make a compilation from game comunities about people complaining what's wrong with the games, those with good point of view. Don't many courses have a disgusting "accidents movie"?
http://gamedev.alaskajohn.net/index.php/2009/01/24/prototyping-and-game-bands-1?
blog=6
This morning, one of my 'game band' members sent me the link to your article.
You know, you can usually tell a "trained programmer" by the number of skull shaped dents in his wall, desk, and/or keyboard... ;)
I see a lot of attention given to the people on the stage, but how about those that are off the stage? Namely, the audience. To extend the metaphor, I would like to take a pause and give ample consideration to who the music (and correspondingly, the game) is made for.
I will be the first to admit that I won't particularly enjoy a typical classical orchestra rendition as that's not the kind of music I consume. You will find me rockin' out at other band concerts though.
Fundamentally, I believe we need to also actively consider the fact that there is a wide market out there with varied tastes and consumption habits. My wife does not appreciate hardcore titles and strategy games... I totally dig games that turn my hair white and are hardcore to that extent. She, however, plays certain casual games that look like they were made by indie studios and she feels that they owe no one any apology for it.
It is with this consolation that I am about to embark on my own adventure in making games. I do hope that it will be with a fair share of successes and if nothing else, a wholehearted romp and a great learning experience.