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DD: I don’t think so. I think what it means for the publishers is, they look at their quarter, they look at their development cycles, and they look at the release schedule, and then they basically say, ‘We’re going to develop these games from here, and they’re going to go to masters in January’. Say it’s some kind of horror game, and it’s January, February, March – whatever. But since it’s a horror game, they want to release it on Halloween, they can hold it, and release it then, and then do all their titles like that. It’s basically a change in cash flow, and so what it essentially says is you’ve got to be able to create a game and then be able to sit on that game for several months in order to release that game at the appropriate time. This is something the movie industry has done for quite a while now: you release it in the time that’s best for that piece of entertainment. If it’s going to be a feel-good Christmas title, the best time to release it is at Christmas. If it’s an action flick, they’re often released in the summertime. If it’s a serious drama, that’s often in November. The film industry has staggered these things, and that’s what our industry needs to do as well. It’s not like games are going to cost any more, it’s just that the cash flow has to be adopted. Right now, publishers and developers are releasing a game as soon as it’s gold and mastered – all I’m saying is, wait for a while. Build up some of the marketing. Instead of doing it before the game is done, do it when it’s gold and mastered, or maybe just before that, when the game is near final and you have a really strong idea of when you’re going to be able to release it. Then go from there. I think you’re talking probably six months cash flow, on average, but I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. I think long term for the publisher, it becomes a much, much more controlled model. You’re going to get higher quality product, and a much more predictable launch and cash flow than you would with any other model. It’s a natural maturing of the industry. I think this is inevitable. I think if games are going to start costing more and more, people are going to start getting to the point where they’re doing $50 million marketing campaigns – they’re not going to risk $50 million if someone misses the launch of their title by a month. It would be just catastrophic, and you’ve probably heard this: in the games industry, games are getting more and more expensive. That’s not only to develop them, that’s to market them as well. If we’re going to be mainstream entertainment, we see something like, as an example, Halo 2 being the biggest entertainment launch in the history of the world, it’s going to get to the point where to plan that is going to cost so much money, that you’re going to be guaranteed that the project can not slip. The bottom line is, it can not miss its date, then.
The biggest risk for marketing is if the game slips because when you have to go ahead and buy that television time and trailer time and buy the marketing in the magazines three months in advance and get that shelf space in to the distributors and the retailers, if your game slips, you’ve missed that. So a lot of companies will just throw 300 people on the game, or 500 people, just to make sure that game gets done in one month. As much as try, that is just not good for the game, and everyone knows it. The best way to deal with these problems is to get the game done, then set the date. At the end of the day, as an example, Halo – I don’t think it matters when that game ships, it’s going to do well. GS: Do you think we will still see a flow of media from the game during the production period, to some degree? To continue your point about the movie industry, you still have stills from the set coming from movies in production. DD: I think stuff like that will continue. The only thing that I think is going to happen, is that you’re going to stop seeing…well, right now, we’re seeing some things that are so early in production, and it just shouldn’t be shown. When you have untextured models and you’re trying to show a vision of gameplay in the future, as an example, or if someone says, ‘Please ignore that’, I think that kind of stuff is going to go away. You might see some production shots, or some things that are early but the whole idea of having some kind of show where someone sits down and plays the game before it’s done, I absolutely think that’s going to go away. As a matter of fact, it pretty much already has. It’s really going to be very similar to the movie industry because if a thing’s not looking as good as it possibly could, you don’t want the chance that it’s ever going to get any negative press. It’s just not worth it. You might as well wait. It’s so expensive a process, you might as well just wait for the right time. I think you might get some fringe people showing whatever they can, but I just don’t think they’re going to be the major titles or AAA products. This is basically a matter of risk management, and when you’re doing something that’s really big and really expensive, you just can’t take the risk of showing it until it’s absolutely right. You might do some preproduction shots, and there will be some previews, and that might occur when you’re closer to done but you’re never going to get it to the point we’ve seen where people are showing games three or four years before they’re complete. If that has not gone away already, it certainly will. GS: You’re seeing it becoming closer to what the movie industry does with previews coming out, say, six months before the release of the film? DD: Yeah. There could be some preview shots, and some films, as an example, shown at Cannes Film Festival, but at that point they’re already done and they’re looking for major distribution. So that still could be the case. That could be a model that people follow, but at the end of the day you’re going to get the game done, you’re probably going to get some kind of preview two or three months, maybe four months before its release and then you’re going to get demos that are out probably about a month before the game is out, and you send copies out to the reviewers four months before. It’ll get staggered like that, so you’ll need about a six month window. So, if you want to get a magazine to review it, and you want it to be the final copy, you’ve just got to make sure that, four months before the game is released you give them the final version. That’s how it works. The consumer shouldn’t see a difference at all, except that what they will see is that reviews of the game will actually be accurate. How many times have you seen reviewers go, ‘Well, if this gets fixed it’s going to be great’? Or, when they write reviews and it’s crashing every two minutes? They have no idea how the game feels because they just can’t even play it. Those kind of things will go away, and I think it will be better for everybody. |
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