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If you enjoy reading this site, you might also want to check out these Think Services sites:
 Game Career Guide (for student game developers.)
 Indie Games (for independent game players/developers.)
 Finger Gaming (news, reviews, and analysis on iPhone and iPod Touch games.)
 GamerBytes (for the latest console digital download news.)
 Worlds In Motion (discussing the business of online worlds.)
 Game Set Watch (the Group's alt.game weblog.) |
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Opinion: How We Can Reshape The Game Industry
by Tim Carter
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February 4, 2009
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[In an impassioned opinion piece, designer Tim Carter argues that the industry's current studio model is set up to develop game companies, not to develop games -- backing an alternative model that follows the film industry's system and better rewards creative talent.]
Is the game development industry a software development or entertainment one?
Sounds like a dumb question, but the way it does business, a disinterested observer would wonder.
The game industry is about fun. It sells products that compel and engage; take people to worlds and let them attain personas they could not in real life. These are all elements of creative entertainment.
Yet, business-wise, this industry sees itself heavily as software development, not entertainment. Game designers focus a lot on company management while their filmmaking, novel-writing and music-composing contemporaries are off to the next project. If you want to share in the wealth for a film you're making, you sign a good contract and that's over with.
If you want the same in the game industry, you have to split time between developing the game and running the company that's making it. Or, you can give away your best work as an employee in a large studio -- but you'll be doing just that: giving away your best work, the studio and publisher reaping the lion's share of rewards if it leads to a hit.
Why? Should this be the case? And what effect does this have on games?
An Inherited Business Model
The game industry probably did not consciously choose its business model so much as inherit it. The pioneers of the game industry were not in show business. Gary Gygax was an insurance man; Sid Meier and his contemporaries software engineers.
They undertook business in the classic manner (operations-based) because that's what they knew: make a company to make a product or service that meets a need, then operate. When the entire roster of a company consists of five people, you can get away with this.
But when you need a hundred people to make a game, does this way of working still make sense? What fallout will using a business practice ideal for making widgets or providing financial services have on what is, after all, an entertainment venture?
Perhaps it might lead to a creative crisis.
Beyond The Creative Crisis
The creative crisis of the game industry is well known. Game companies stuck making sequels, trapped inside old and stale genres; innovation done on the backs of tiny self-funded indie developers; massive publishers staying only with the tried-and-true -- unoriginal takes on space marines, alien invasions, WW2, orcs and elves.
But there has been response to this. High-level parties have declared, "Okay, everyone, let's start innovating here." Sincere attempts have been made.
But there has been little examination and questioning of the underlying process used to make games. So isn't this just whipping a horse? How can using the same fundamental process that brought us into the creative crisis now facilitate innovation for the larger game projects that form the backbone of this industry?
Outsourcing & Prototyping
To be fair, there have been two progressive strides: outsourcing and prototyping.
But are these enough? Can we tack them on and, voila! -- it's all better?
Outsourcing follows the film industry somewhat. Actually, it follows almost the entire outside business world, not just the film industry. Do architectural firms possess heavy construction fleets in-house?
Instead of maintaining large, cumbersome pools of internal personnel who have little to do between projects, the outsourcing model strips the studio to a few key creators who then subcontract bulk work to external suppliers. Makes sense, and the game industry is moving toward it.
Prototyping is merely an acknowledgement and application of some disciplined process toward something we've done a long time. To innovate, you have to spend time fooling around, dreaming up new ideas, puttering about inventing things, building prototypes before the raw work of actually making the final product.
This has always gone on in game development, but in the past was camouflaged within GANTT charts dutifully produced for fearful money types who wanted the cake of innovation and the eat-it-too of straightforward scheduling. (Anyone remember the anonymous Slashdot programmer who said you might as well write "and here the miracle happens" right on the MS Project waterfall chart?)
So, today, we've "outted" prototyping: it occurs, and needs to. Let's pony up for it (somebody other than indie game jammers, that is). Let's do it with discipline: agile, spiral, iterative methodologies. It's happening.
Then why, if we've done these things, do we still see homogeneity in games? Why is the staleness of "grind" still so prevalent? Why are we still afflicted by sequelitis, on the one hand, or no ambition beyond being making what are really toys, on the other?
Well:
- We don't use a project-based business model.
- We don't cast projects.
- We don't package projects.
- Game designers don't claim their power.
Project-Based Game Development
The traditional game industry model -- development studio makes a vertical slice, pitches it to publisher, publisher advances the production funds, owns all the IP, markets and distributes it and then pays a royalty (less the advance) back to the dev studio -- is not really set up to make games, per se.
It's more set up to make game companies. Each game is just a vehicle for the company. We're really talking more about game company development here than game development.
In any conflict between the needs of the development studio and the needs of the game, guess which loses? The game. The game is there, ultimately, to further the development studio's agenda, not the other way around.
Since the company's purpose is to stay alive and operate -- pay overhead and salaries -- the easiest route to do this is to follow the path of least resistance: make sequels; work within comfortable boundaries; don't push it.
To do a really new game, our game development studio here will need to spend a million or more of its own money making a vertical slice, to show to decision-makers for a greenlight.
Said decision-makers don't seem to have as much imagination as those in other industries -- are little inclined to read a game design the way a film producer reads a screenplay -- wishing to passively wait until games appear nearly complete before greenlighting. The burden to pay for early visualization -- the design phase -- thus falls almost entirely on creators.
If, for some reason, the studio does get a really new game greenlit, it will usually retread its static roster of staff and technologies for this new project. Nobody wants to let go of old key talent in favor of hiring new persons perfectly suited to the new project. Again, the game is a vehicle for the company, in the same vein as a factory. But should a game studio be a factory?
Many key designers are held as employees and expected to kick in their best work for a mere wage, no share in the benefit if the project is a hit and no incentive to reveal their best work, often held under a "we-own-your-dreams" contract by the employer.
A talented game designer in this system holds his prize projects close to his heart, hidden until some day in the future when he and some partners might jump ship and start their own game company to realize this dream game. Hoping that when that day comes, possibly years later, the original passion and vision will not have slipped away.
This doesn't cultivate talent and creative projects. It controls them. There are probably only two kinds of original IPs that can be initiated in this system:
1.) gigantic projects based on yesterday's games, funded by large publishers, staffed by chiefly static rosters of talent (who sell all their IP rights, even residuals, to the publisher; waive their creative moral rights, seek no rights reversions and so forth); or
2.) small indie casual titles
By contrast, under a project-based system, the company making the game is a vehicle for the game and core talent. This is how it happens in film.
The spirit is "If you build it, they will come." It's still a business with a profit mandate, but it's tailored to entertainment requirements: focusing on making the best possible individual title, the result of said quality leading indirectly to large sales.
Each game is a project -- its own company. Projects are assembled in slates, mitigating risk, allowing for more creative chances to be taken. What usually sparks a project is an early game design, by one or two individual designers, which is shopped around. This project is then cast and packaged (see below).
Everything is outsourced -- even the core team members. There are more financing tools, utilizing film finance experience, such as optioning and negative pick-up deals. The game is made virtually during early prototyping; but in late prototyping and full production, a temporary office is set up for the core team. Large outsourcing companies work from their own permanent facilities.
Once the game is done, everyone exits. This is also a strength of project-based development. The temporary office is wrapped; the IP rights of the finished game assigned to the marketing company (typically a publisher that funded the project through a slate) for distribution. Core talent and outsourcing suppliers all go their own way: take a break, or on to the next project elsewhere, each free to follow an independent path
Since grunt employees are working for outsourcing suppliers, they do not suffer the kind of mass layoff that we are seeing occur every time a major publisher wraps a project: their company is just off the project, and is on to the next.
All talent, core and non-core, is protected by standardized crediting procedures, allowing them to efficiently build a resume to move rapidly from project to project. Core talent, who actually created the spine of the game, is featured up front, on the box -- this lets a key developer promote the only brand they have that ultimately matters: their actual name.
Casting & Packaging
This system works on casting and packaging.
Casting is to find the best person for the project -- not the company. If game developers Anne and Jim are best suited to Project X, choosing them will strengthen it. This is starting to happen in game development, though it's not that formalized, and the concern is often over what technology or game trope Anne and Jim and experienced in rather than what core sensibility they bring. There's a subtle but vital difference.
Packaging is related to casting. Packaging is starting with a game design -- a prototype, design document, et cetera -- and attaching elements to it -- core creators, technologies, outsourcers -- based on what that design needs.
Packaging is not throwing a game design into a static team of developers with a static set of middleware tools, concerned more with the team's or studio's agenda than the design's. Another subtle but important difference.
Packaging is actively scouting out new designs, building an ensemble of creators around it, a roster of production outsourcers, and then raising money. Star talent "attaches its name" to a project it feels worthy -- advancing the investment rationale.
Packaging has a kind of perpetual motion, absorbing some of the greenlighting basis. That's why it has its name: do it well and you're handing it to an investor "wrapped up with a bow on top", a no-brainer. Here's the design, this key talent believes in it, let's make it.
It's difficult to explain its snowballing quality in a methodical way. It works on relationships, hustle, and intuition. You have to trust it and see it in action. It's bootstrapping on steroids.
We're starting to see some of what we might call casting applied in the new core-team/outsourcing paradigm. Perhaps many wish to leave it at this -- without actually going to a project-based system.
But isn't project-based game development inevitable? When a game studio strips from 100 to 10 or so key creators, what is holding those last 10 together? Misplaced loyalty perhaps? Is your loyalty to nine other people, or is it to seeking the depths of your own talent? Are you here to develop game companies or games?
If the system is going to reinvent itself, why strip it down but then stop at the core team? You're still left with the old situation -- static genres, cranking out sequels, constrained by the talent of the unchanging roster you're "glued" to -- except in a 10-person situation instead of a 100-person one.
You still have your idols and status quo. Perhaps you have even more status quo, given there's less anonymity in a 10-person boat than a 100-person ship.
Project-based packaging recognizes game creators can be independent professionals. Just because they haven't been cemented together the past five or ten projects doesn't mean they can't be put together as an ensemble for one -- as ensembles have in other creative fields for years -- and then go their own ways once the project wraps.
An ensemble is unlike a team. An ensemble is a temporary group of creators who bring divergent sensibilities and principles to a project and are prepared to stand for those even if it causes some internal tension.
A team, on the other hand, is a group so invested in sticking together, its members may suppress their own creative views to maintain cohesion (we call this "groupthink": hey, this game may succeed or fail, but I have to live with these guys...).
A team's goal is essentially institutional: to propagate its own existence, whatever reason it was brought together. An ensemble is not institutional -- or you might stay, it propagates itself only through that which it makes. The cast of Seinfeld is no longer together, but what they made lives on.
Thus an ensemble -- working in a project-based system -- is foremost concerned with what it is making. Creative tension may occur between members, but this is welcomed: it leads to heightened output, raising the bar, a "studio hothouse" effect. Each ensemble has a unique chemistry. Ensembles can afford this, being made of free agents who may go their own way after a project wraps. Teams cannot.
The power of packaging depends on appreciating the ensemble concept. On talent being cooperative but also separate. It depends on the "name on the box: individual recognition. Glued to a team, you basically go with the group, with little power to attach your name -- to wield your individual vote of sorts -- to this or that project.
Fluid in ensembles, top-level talent moves about and influences what should or should not be made. In the film industry, a major star likes a screenplay, attaches their name, and that greenlights it: that's classic packaging. Talent realizes and wields its power.
Packaging can unite the incubating drive of the small ensemble with the production power and market appeal of a large budget. The game industry simply doesn't do this, which probably underlies the creative crisis.
Package the design and small core ensemble; get investment; coordinate prototyping and production work through outsourcing. We need a route other than tiny indie casual development, on the one hand, or large productions driven by static companies, on the other.
Realizing Game Designers' Power
Ultimately, casting and packaging forges a project by seeking and growing its most elemental working part: the individual creator. Individuals are essential: not just talented ones, but the best of those; as free agents under a fair contract; who are rewarded for success; who seek to follow their own creativity to its depths; bringing their vectors of ambition in line with others going in mutual directions on projects.
This is cultivation of talent, not control of it. Developing and respecting game designers, not binding them. Individuation of creators has lead to greatness in film, theatre and music. It could lead to that in the game industry, too. If we let it.
In a free agent system, creators license their IP in a different way: through an aggressive contract.
In the present game industry, creators basically toss all their IP into a development studio and count on being compensated for any hit they help make through their ownership and management stake.
But the additional organizational workload is a distraction from focusing on creating IP. And this can be a tenuous strategy: you can be diluted; you can be forced out; your studio can get bought out and the projects you tossed into it, eager to make, now shelved by new management; companies are ever-changing.
This company/team focus is institutional in its nature. Its main concern is propagating the ownership vehicle of the IP (the company); its secondary one to propagate the IP itself. This gives us the creative crisis.
A similar institutional practice used to exist in film. It was called "the studio system."
The film studios then were like the game publishers now. Writers, for example, would work in offices on studio lots, like employees; executives would assign them scripts to write; star actors and directors were kept under tight leash; an unchanging roster of talent and technology was used on each new film, regardless of the film's needs. The range of output from the old studio system was very limited.
Then, several decades ago, core film talent questioned this. This gave us the agent-based system we know today. In film, core talent doesn't waste time managing companies as a means to share in the wealth from their creative work.
They do assign their IP, as they must, but by drawing up a new contract each time they do, clearly laying out all ways said IP may be used and how they, personally, will be compensated in each case. And then they just make the IP.
This example can serve game talent, too. There is little compensation you can get from ownership of a company you cannot get through a strong, specific IP licensing contract; one that means you can leave the administrative hassle for other parties better suited to deal with and then focus on your work.
A solid IP transfer agreement can make a creator personally wealthy -- can give you a share of the wealth from a hit (including from ancillary sources), your name on the box, consideration for sequels, and so on.
Remember: even if you're a principal owner of a development studio -- even if that studio retains all the IP rights -- you, as individual creator, still have to assign your IP. In a sense, the holy grail of "developers owning IP" is an illusion. It's always a company that owns it in the end. Not you. Think of your own creative ambition. Seek a better deal.
This new practice, also gives an instant exit for core individual creators -- so they can promote their name (their own name) and go on to a new project. Forget the added distraction of being company manager, which offers no easy exit.
If you are a core owner-manager of a game studio, you've taken on the burden of steering that studio and managing that IP for far longer than the duration of a single project. You're stuck. You can't focus totally on your personal design ambition here. And your studio is now associated with its first game: again, you wind up making sequels.
To compensate for this immobility, key game creators seem to do a lot of analyzing, deducing, explaining and so on -- at conferences, in web articles, or what have you -- about what "we" need to do in the game industry, and about how to make games. Sometimes giving away trade secrets.
While in other entertainment fields, core creators "speak" to each other by, as free agents, moving on to the next project and getting it out there, and developing a mystery and aura around their talent.
Some may try to mitigate game development's creative immobility by "democratizing" game design (without wondering if there isn't a better way to do so). By condescendingly making "everyone a designer" to disguise the reality you are bogged down here with little hope for a shot to really become a designer (no quotation marks).
Again, we inherited this system without questioning it. Do you really want to do sequel after sequel, et cetera, inside the same technology framework, the same talent roster, project after project, while also managing a development studio?
Do you only want to work in a two-person shop with no way to make a really ambitious project based on your design? Have you ever thought that after your first-person shooter set on an alien spacecraft, you'd like to do a persuasive game on pharmaceutical exploration in the Amazon, and then a real-time strategy game on the English Civil War? Imagine that kind of creative freedom?
In the film industry, a director goes from doing a trippy caper movie about heroin addicts, then years later totally reinvents the rules of the zombie genre (rules which, by the way, game designers obediently follow in titles like Left 4 Dead), and then does a romance movie about a poor kid in India on a TV game show (Danny Boyle).
Why can't the game industry facilitate the ability of its core talent to explore its dimensions the way the film industry can?
The screenwriter William Goldman famously said, "Nobody knows anything." It's a way of saying that if Jill has the special gift to make a piece great, instead of trying to dissect and analyze that gift and pry it from Jill's hands -- to "know it, "as the game industry attempts -- feed Jill, support Jill, fund Jill, market Jill; and then reward Jill for success. Because the equation for making a hit is essentially mysterious and unknowable.
If we want to capture the magic we know games can have, we must stop treating core creators as cogs in a machine. We have to help them realize their power.
Those who insist on dissecting these organic and mysterious elements of gamemaking -- treat it as a kind of static science rather than a living art -- will never realize this value prospect. They'll kill it -- reduce it to dead mechanical parts, classically focusing on exactly the wrong thing; not "getting it," like the fool who looks at the sage's finger when the sage points to the moon. Again, are you making games or game companies?
Film and other mature creative industries have people who really care about individual talent. They've learned you can thrive and profit being project- as well as company-focussed. This also helps explain why films are important -- influencing the culture, identity and policies of entire nations -- while games remain largely trivial entertainment.
Daring new films command the attention of top thinkers; draw tens of millions to televised awards ceremonies. Do games? Do our decision-makers even care?
The Challenges of Free Agency
Science-fiction great Arthur C Clarke famously identified the two main barriers to innovation in all fields: failure of imagination and failure of nerve. These challenges we also face in creating a free agent game development universe focussed on making projects with a spirit of largesse.
Can we see games this way? Can core talent claim its power?
The Challenge of Imagination: Developing Design Literacy
A free agent, scouting, packaging paradigm must formalize to some degree the discussion of designs and concepts. To imagine the game unmade. To develop a clearer framework for discussion: design standards.
The challenge of imagination is to work on designs, themselves, the way in films much work is put into the screenplay prior to the film; or in architecture much is put into the blueprint before building.
True that no design survives contact with gameplay. But to obsess over that is to miss the point. Even effective prototyping depends on first imagining and documenting gameplay (i.e. designing), then building a prototype, then re-documenting design, tossing out old code but retaining what you learned and repeating the process in a new iteration.
So the "moon" of the design informs the "sage's finger" of the new code, which informs the design, which informs new code, and so on, as a master swordsmith folds the steel then hammers it, folds and hammers, folds and hammers.
We're following Einstein's advice: imagination is more important than knowledge. Imagination, the design. Knowledge, the code.
But in a free agency paradigm, we're also talking about selling the design. To this end, game designers must learn to write stripped-down, effective, engaging documents that convey the fun and sell the vision. Designs that can, themselves, be read and sold.
Pitch documents aren't enough. Sure, it's a great way to get to know your project, but unless you're an industry giant like Will Wright, we can't execute a deal on that.
Designs that are semi-organized notes and stuff thrown together, ad hoc, for designers' own internal purposes -- not meant to be read by external parties -- also won't work in free agency.
You need to draft a design understanding it's also a marketing tool: will journey beneath many eyes in a quest for buy-in. You need good writing, editing and diagrammatical skills. To move design drafting from an implosive, pedantic process to an externalizing, disciplined and visualizing one.
This also means those who greenlight projects need to better visualize designs -- in a sense becoming designers themselves.
In this process, the software development is heavily supported by middleware and is recognized as an important means to gameplay: a price of admission: the sage's finger where the moon is the meeting of design and player.
Does the design have something to say? Even though a game has a player, the designer shapes its overall experience. That is its lasting value. Remaining when the ensemble has long parted ways.
It is to miss the point entirely to argue a design has little value because no game can be made directly from it without adaptation. That utterly dismisses its legal and business properties. Neither is any screenplay filmed precisely -- but a screenplay can still be the bedrock of a package: you can do a deal on it: it can be a legal hub as well as a creative one.
Standardized literary forms -- the script, sheet music, blueprints -- have lead to legal and business practices which brought theatre, film, music and architecture into agility and profundity, and innovative freedom and fair compensation to their core creators.
No game could ever be made directly from a design document without being adapted, but doing a deal on a design -- optioning it as a literary work -- is a way to facilitate a new project. A way out of the prison of corporatist-agenda game development.
Every new game starts with a conversation -- even if it's two employees talking in a cubicle about jumping ship make it. Without formalizing this conversation -- through effective design, scouting, packaging -- it is a long, cumbersome, oral process plagued with demons: lack of foresight; resistance to visualize things unmade; the catch 22 of needing to see things built before deciding on a little funding; confusion of social and creative talent; chatter, slang and gossip; core messaging that drifts with each retelling; chasing after fad and gimmick.
A process leaving many projects with true merit untouched while others of mediocre quality are greenlit. (Assuming you care whether projects of merit are greenlit.) Vision requires all the stuff that brought humanity out of the jungle. Formal, disciplined communication, with both firmness and flexibility. Deep literacy. Imagination. Describing and perceiving stuff before it's made. That's why it's called "vision."
The Challenge of Nerve: Facing Free Agency
The final challenge to free agency is one of courage.
It's very telling that in film, core creators are among the most powerful industry participants, but in games producers, studio heads and other largely executive or managerial types reign supreme.
Do the core creators of games have the courage to assume their mantle?
There's probably a lot of risk-aversion among the game industry's creative types compared to those in other entertainment industries. Maybe because there's an element of calculation in gaming and game development -- of gaming the system.
When you play a good game, you learn to game it -- to find the exploits. But gaming the system of game development itself -- playing the exploits (cranking out sequels, controlling talent, and so on) -- is not a route to innovation. Because it's underlain with fear.
True artistic development is about knowing your talent, claiming it in your guts, and using it to passionately reinvent. Knowing your worth and expecting to be rewarded for it. In other media, new growth has always come by rewriting the rules even as the game is being played. From Rembrandt to Van Gogh to Picasso; Duke Ellington to Elvis to The Clash.
To enter a world of free agency is to be prepared to sacrifice, patiently, knowing this risks amounting to nothing. It is to face true fear. If you have a game design hidden close to your heart -- your game, your vision -- to realize it in free agency means to believe in it.
It means to design to at least first draft, then to shop this design around: sell and promote it in the uncertain world of people and aesthetics (compared to the nice, clean predictability of rules and technology); redraft and prototype as much as you can on your own dime or with your few partners; to talk about it and develop mindshare for it; and, if greenlit, work for the duration of a single gig then start all over on an entirely new project. None of this carries guarantees.
It means to be prepared to work for times alone, away from the comfort and security of the group and steady employment.
The price to continue discovering the depths of games is to work as individuals within ensembles, envisioning games, believing in them, and working them in the space of imagination and promotion before that of technology and production. This may scare the hell out of core talent, but it's the panorama of a free agent game development universe.
But here's the good part: The added payoff a designer can earn from a hit will sweeten this deal greatly. The appearance of badly needed organizations such as a Game Designers' Guild (for health, unemployment and other assurances) will help mitigate risk. Some companies are already starting to build this future. There isn't just risk in the Wild West -- there's also opportunity.
We believe history is due to repeat itself: that the game industry is where the film industry was around 1950 -- when that industry began to transform from a large, bloated system to a light, agile network of virtual studios and talent mobility.
So I guess this brings up the classic questions. Who will be an early adapter? Who wants to be in on the ground floor? Who has a game design, close to the heart, they know will change the world? If we ask to see it, will you have the guts to show it?
[Tim Carter is the CEO of Core Talent Games, which packages and produces free-agent-driven game projects. A freelance game designer and producer in Toronto with film industry experience, Tim has worked as core and consulting game designer for companies such as BreakAway, Amaze Entertainment, Kaos Studios, and most recently on a hospital pandemic training game for Simquest funded by the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense. Tim also teaches game business and design at the University of Ontario Information Technology in Oshawa, Canada.]
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Would enough developers be willing to give up full time jobs in exchange for free agent / freelance work? Without a critical mass, this type of system seems unlikely to work.
How does the "Game Designer's Guild" you described differ from the IGDA?
The freedom to take creative risks doesn't mean much when the market doesn't buy into the result.
But the tools used by Bioware, Blizzard and 2K are as different as night and day. There are some similarities sure, but nothing like film. One of the most useful things about a cohesive studio is it creates a large collaboration of people all literate in the same set of tools and techniques. It's no coincident that Prince of Persia and Assassin's Creed were both made by Ubisoft Montréal- they have a team and toolset adapted to making that type of game.
Until the actual nuts and bolts of making games gels a lot more (and in a way that doesn't leave everyone beholden to Epic and other middleware companies), the Hollywood model simply isn't really going to be feasible, all other issues aside.
Dennis: Enough freelancers could work this way if they were able to work on their own games, contractually, while employed - until we reach critical mass.
How does a Game Designers Guild differ from the IGDA? Does the IGDA do collective bargaining? Does it offer group health insurance?
Benjamin: An employee mentality would never work in free agency.
Michael: Let's set up a system more friendly to the innovator.
Nels: The point isn't about craft - it's about deal-making, compensation, how you look and discuss the core creative and visionary stuff. Reducing it to a craft - or "how to use tools" - is a good way to undermine any visionary thing. As long as the visionary doesn't know precisely how to get to final execution (the craft), focusing on craft can be used as an excuse to undermine vision. Edward deBono (the "think out of the box" guy) tells us you don't need to know the precise route: you can also start with the destination and work backward.
Taure: Life isn't just a pendulum swinging back and forth. Each swing backward teaches us on the forward swing. One thing the film industry got right: compensating core talent.
It takes a great team to make a great game. I've yet to see the "visionary gatekeeper (with outsourcing)" model deliver something memorable. Cobbling together a team and then launching forthwith into a game project is not a recipe for success.
Note the careful, planned growth of Ensemble, the priorities they set, the low turnover rate, and the games (and sales) that resulted. Same with Insomniac. Same with a whole bunch of studios that consistently develop high-quality games that sell well.
Hollywood has a name because it's a place. If you have a family and you want to make movies in the free agent model, you move to LA and are within driving distance of almost any job you need. The games industry is more diverse, and you might have to uproot yourself every year or two: a perfect gig for a single guy or gal, but not so much for a family.
Making the problem worse, consoles rotate every 10 years (or so) and that causes extra R&D time with new tools and new engines. After putting in the time and money on the new tech and training, why would you want to bring in new people who have to learn it too?
Last point, I have found that creative types tend to perform better as a team on video games. Once they understand each others strengths and weaknesses, they can anticipate issues and avoid wasted attempts. Many times I find that designers develop relationships with certain artists, and just work better with them and vice versa. It's clearly evident when one team is moved onto another project to help finish a game. There have been many articles that say the payoff for this is limited because the time it takes to teach and integrate the new talent detracts from the original team's ability to work.
In short, it works for movies because movies are all done basically the same way. Each game has it's own set of rules, and if you have to learn the rules each time you start it will take longer to get things going (if at all).
Besides, movies just aren't all that creative anymore, much less immune to sequelitis.
But let me ask a pointed question. Despite the flaws in the current game development system, some good games do get made. And despite the improvement of Hollywood today over the old studio system, we still see many movies get made that are bad either artistically, commercially, or both.
So if that's the state of affairs today, where is the impetus to come from for radically changing today's game development system in the ways suggested?
I agree?? I think we are saying the same thing but I'm not sure what you're point was.
Free agency doesn't really look like a positive to me. Look at the movie biz, most hollywood types are in constant turmoil when tv shows are not renewed and writers and actors are scrambling to find jobs. There's the ugliness of unions, which only exist because of the brokenness of the hollywood way of business. The only hope is to strike it big and become one of the few overpaid individuals in that business or struggle your whole life as some extra in the backgrounds like the rest of that industry. I agree that free agency is absolutely about marketing yourself; frankly that sucks. Personally I think this industry is already too much about who you know an what you've done (lately) instead of what you have to offer. Free agency will only make it worse.
Hollywood is comprised of a model which is completely standard and specialized for what they do, they don't change platforms (camera, film type, shot types, etc) every 8 years, actors are talented individuals who "act" in varying roles, producers schedule, screenwriters write (scripts are all written in the same format as your mentioned) and directors put it all together as the primary visionary on a shot by shot basis. You can go to Film school, and at the end, know everything there is to making a movie. There is no guarantee that you’ll make a GOOD movie, but that’s where talent comes in. You can go to school for 4 years to learn how to game program, but that doesn’t mean you’ll know anything about PS3, 360, DS or other specific platforms. Who trains those people? What studio projects are going to want to take on students and train them for a year or more, only to give them up to a “guild” after the project is over? I guess you could do an internship, but again, a primary motivator for any company to hire out of school and train someone on a platform is that you can hope that person stays with you and contributes to your company, therefore paying back the initial investment over time.
I think this model could stifle innovation more than help it. Look at Hollywood, for every unique movie; you get 15 sequels or stereotypical genre flicks. Hollywood makes ‘em for the same reason game publishers do, it’s safe money, and pubs (as well as studios) are driven by the bottom line. You would have your 3-4 amazing games each year, the same way you have your 3-4 amazing movies every year. But don’t we already have that in the game industry? And more?
I believe games can and should be vision driven, but beyond that vision, they involve assembling a team of programmers who are familiar with the technology required to build the game. What about talent level? You can contract a camera operator and for the most part you won’t have wild variations in the skill level of that camera operator, but the final quality of games is completely dependent on the art / tech / sound talent involved.
Also, most (not all) people involved in Hollywood live in LA, due to the need to be on site to perform their tasks. How would you deal with the geographically diverse game developers? You NEED at least a core team of programmers, artists on site to make a game, and more so for a AAA game. Would you expect people to relocate depending on the project, or would a HUB (like LA) be set up for the game industry?
Finally, I don’t know if the volume of potential work in a game guild will approach the film industry. For an actor, camera operator, etc, they have options to do commercials, television, straight to DVD movies, promos, etc. Games don’t have the variety that film does.
Great article though :) I do think we’re moving closer to this model, but doubt it will ever mimic Hollywood.
Primary resistance: people used to working comfortably long-term for a company as employees are going to be quite nervous about becoming film-style freelancers. Some mechanism of transition needs to happen.
Also, there would need to be a change in how companies think about, develop and use their technology. The film model works in part because at a fundamental level, the basic tools are the same and haven't changed in a hundred years: cameras, film stock, lights, sets, props, actors etc. are a known quantity in many ways.
In contrast, the game industry is redesigning its cameras with every game - sometimes from the ground up. Code innovation is a great thing and of course must continue, but I think that to effectively make a game in the style of a film, the project has to *choose an underlying technology and toolset that is already as stable as possible* and "live within" that technology.
The trend of middleware is addressing this, so that's a positive sign. But really what I'm talking about is kind of divorcing the software development from the creation, just like film productions don't (for the most part) have people sitting around developing new cameras to shoot through.
I suppose the tech development could be taken into account, but it would require a very very different organizational structure and schedule plan than currently is common.
The odds of getting our personal creative vision (especially if it s unconventional IP) into a game anytime soon after we graduate is dim at best. Our vision as young designers will be used to polish and iterate and expand the vision of those more experienced than us. Now don’t get me wrong personally I can’t wait for the chance to expand my skills and learn from the thousands little mistakes of those that have gone before me and be a better designer as a result. From our instructors to articles such as this, all the literature and fantastic games on shelves and the ones I play the more I learn the more I realize how much more there is to learn. But through this whole process our best will be held back and worked on in our free time. A couple of my fellow students already do this and have no plans to share there gems until hopefully one day they can realize their vision.
Still though sequel-its runs rampant we keep seeing (mostly) the same old thing with higher poly counts. One side we have a huge demand for innovative entertainment and a least by my own observations on the other a group of inexperienced but passionate hardworking individuals who will do whatever it takes to meet that demand. To me it just seems regrettable that demand and those that have the passion to meet it seem too far apart. Perhaps some changes in the system would help the best ideas come forward.
Thanks for writing this piece Tim and I am sure we will be talking it over during the week.
(Kevin Maloney is a proud member of GD12 at Vancouver Film School and his opinions are his own. He makes no claim to represent the school or his fellow classmates. He does however have to get to Flash and is looking forward to GDX this weekend. bDon’tStopBelivin=TRUE; //sets hope)
Regarding the article, it is a very interesting idea. Games behave similar to movies, which makes the comparison valid. Maybe in a future, both models can coexist.
I support the call for visionaries to step up. That's how we progress. I just think it's a bit early to say we can adopt this model to produce console games that would make any type of splash. There is no way a team formed this way can compete with today's AAA titles and complete a project in a sane amount of time. Taking on Halo, Call of Duty, Madden, and Guitar Hero is no trivial task. The tools available nowadays just aren't as cool as what's being developed in-house.
Having worked with the creatives AND the suits, I would say choose your platform(s) wisely. If you want to be able to feed your kids, follow the installed base. Let's use this approach for iPhone game development. Then Wii or WiiWare, followed by XBLA and PSN. Then, if you market the h*ll out of your game, there's a chance to be a critical and commercial success.
Once the model is proven with smaller stakes, then we can start taking legitimate cracks at the mega-franchises.
There's a lot of folks out there now in "networking mode", let's take advantage of this opportunity to connect with new folks and sow the seeds for a new paradigm.
Would members of this Game Design Guild (modeled on the Screen Actors Guild, then?) have to fight to find agents and elicit proper representation from these agents? How likely is it, given its lucrative nature, that an agent system would develop, discouraging the employ of free-agent designers?
Hollywood is also a poor model for innovation, as can be seen by those movies given the biggest bankrolls. For the number of movies made each year, the actual number of truly innovative films that reach the market are incredibly small.
So where's the benefit?
It seems that one of the primary arguments is centered on compensation. Sure, it's great to be paid more, and sure, you can get paid more as a contractor than as a regular employee, but will you work on a project in games that will return a residual in the way film does? Our medium is incredibly ephemeral. Buy a PC game. Let a decade pass, and tell me if your PC -now- can play the game you bought -then-. Will consoles truly remain backward compatible? Is that cost-effective? Yet, a movie made a decade ago can still generate income for the studios as well as those involved, if their contracts were worth anything.
That also brings up the question of who will negotiate points on behalf of the designer.
Because games require engines and tools that are, at least to some degree, proprietary, publishers and developers are well within their rights to demand through employee agreement that the talent at the studio -- full-time or contract -- refrain from developing independent projects during their employment. This can -- and has -- caught people who have thought, "Oh, this is only a little side venture, to help build my portfolio." Because these agreements are widespread and because people -- especially in a down economy -- are drawn to the security their jobs represent, it is doubtful that a critical mass will be achieved.
The arguments presented appear to sing the praises of freelancing and outsourcing, yet using freelancers and outsourced talent isn't a silver bullet. In fact, because these people tend to work in a distributed manner, away from the studios that employ them, they never really understand the development hurdles faced by that team, much less develop a fluent understanding of the tool chain or the team synergy needed to make a game come together.
In the end, I'm left thinking that this article simply echoes a theme that has been a distraction for the industry, namely, "How can we be more like Hollywood?" My question is, "-Why- would we want to be more like Hollywood?"
If film producers had to basically re-invent the film/video camera, more or less from scratch, each time they wanted to create a film, would they still have the current "free agent" system? Game creators have no option to walk into a camera store, drop down a credit card, and pick up all the tech they'll need to make a game. Most companies invest huge amounts of time and money just into creating the platform to make a game on.
In terms of the Independents who are making all this innovation, they're mostly either Programmer/Artist teams or solo Programmers. I have yet to see a hit game designed by an Artist or a Designer without the help of a Programmer. If you know of one, please clue me in.
A lot of times it's the tech that is the starting point for a game, and not creative inspiration. It surely doesn't work that way in film. Films don't have to "one-up" the previous year's technology to provide a compelling experience. But with games, it's always the case that players expect new mechanics and interactivity, and this requires new tech. In films, people actually want to use an archaic film camera to capture "that look". Imagine a game produced now using an engine from 1980. Think it would be a blockbuster?
I predict that, until a solo designer can walk into a store, drop down a credit card, and walk out with all the tech he needs to make a cutting-edge game by himself, we're not going to see this change. As long as Indie game creation is more a pastime from Programmers than Designers, same situation. Until it's easy to create new and compelling interactivity through visual scripting methods that Designers and Artists can handle, same situation.
While it doesn't entirely match up with what's being discussed here(Ion Storm had a lot of people new/inexperienced to the industry when they started), it does have some relevance, particularly when you start to look at some of the problems they developed later on-- the code passing through too many hands, people experienced with the engine having to re-learn due to all the custom tweaks, non-cohesive behaviour within the team(artists and level designers at each others' throats), and so on.
On the one hand, you've got the hollywood system that is being proposed here... on the other hand, you've got a cautionary(if old, but I'd argue it's still pertinent today) tale. There are a lot of very real problems that can erupt out of not approaching development with a permanent team. I've seen it said many times in many ways that new game companies should be concerned with initially, just shipping a game-- any game-- because early on, you're going to be spending as much time getting the team shaken out and working well as you will producing. Others have written on the subject of 'threshing vs. production', the ratio of time spent actually making progress on the project versus the time spent managing it or building infrastructure, as being the major issue with new teams. It just strikes me that taking a freelancing model in the game industry is nearly the same as being a start-up studio on a constant basis, and practically begs for a constant stream of time eaten up trying to turn a bunch of contract people into a team, which would be better spent on producing game content.
I myself have been questioning this model with the creation of an LLC through a group partnership for a specific project, with the assumption that we’d do more work in the future together. While the LLC served the purpose of this project, I can see how making each game its own LLC/company makes a lot of sense. The majority of the group in the LLC I’ve been working with moved on to other things. Not because of any falling out, but simply that the projects that I am involved with now need other talent and skill sets. If I had another gig that did need them, I’d be sure to call on them.
I say this, not as some fan of breaking up “the establishment”. In fact my paradigm was that I had to make a company with a staff and follow the software factory model… this article’s concept has simply made me realize that times are changing or rather, don’t have to be like everyone else (meaning either film or software factory camps). If you look at what’s going on with the growth and legitimacy of the indie developer scene, it’s no longer a bunch of us “mod” guys, but rather… smart and lean teams working together on ideas and making great innovation. I've worked with people all over the world and people in my own town.
I’m absolutely certain that this model would and in fact has worked for me, I just hadn’t thought of it in this perspective. Sure we are not dealing with unions or agents (god help us), but it’s very likely that the two may even to some degree exist side by side, but I think that the future is with the independents… with markets like Steam and the iPhone platform and even Microsoft’s XBLA/Community outlets are showing that direct to consumer models are less risky and more liberating than banking on the approval of a publisher for money… been there, done that… not interested in doing it again.
The article about everyone in the game industry becoming “peons” in some film like structure is just funny because I see most people who are in the industry already are peons except the publishers… and publishers are frail / unstable forces themselves… so you have masses of understandably concerned / fearful employees (I’ve know a number of friends who’ve lost their jobs due to the existing industry’s instability) . Folks would scare us into thinking that an open market would mean breadlines and welfare checks, but the existing model already sends thousands out the door, largely due to the bad decisions of a limited few who are also the ones making the big bucks…
While this concept is in its infancy and will need to tackle unique situations that come from interactive media, to dismiss it as completely wrong is shortsighted. Every artist and programmer I’ve ever worked with has been more or less a freelance person. When projects come along, I call on them to see if they want to get involved. Pretty simple. Who knows who is simply how the world works. If I know someone who’s smart, is a can do kind of person and someone I enjoyed working with in the past is going to be the person I want on my team. My friend at a recently belly up development house is certainly a great example of how hard working individuals who move to another state can find that they are now in bad shape because a publisher went south….
The game industry might not be as California-centric as Hollywood is, but most folks in the US do not have game development studios (most don’t even have one) in our home town, so many of us who want to get a job have to move, and hey, big surprise that California would be the most likely state you’d want to be in if you want access to the most possibly job openings.
The main point of this article, I think should be that the current system could be better… I personally would like to consider alternatives. The existing model can be improved and this is the first serious concept that offers a solution that is plausible if not for the entire industry at least those who perhaps would like to be game developers without feeling like they have to go down the existing path with all the turmoil we’ve seen…
If every company were to collaborate on the programming of their projects(ignoring the IP scenario that makes this nearly impossible in many instances) we'd eventually arrive at standardized engines for all common game types, and well-understood extensions for each one. Subsequently a sub-market of tools for these engines would rise. That is the point at which we may start seriously considering free agency. But at the moment, company culture and company technology have so strong a relationship that you can't break the former and hope the latter disappears.
My opinion is that we've been sidetracked by consoles and by the retail marketplace. Consoles encourage proprietary methods, and retail exerts too much control over IP by limiting product demand(a process which trickles down to publishing, marketing, and finally to the developer). To achieve free agency we need to make the barriers to entry small enough that there is little distinction between an "amateur" and a "professional." Right now games are very much a professional and specialized pursuit.
In film history, the main attractor towards the free agent model was the star system. Stars gained recognition and started negotiating their contracts on a project-per-project level instead of sets of movies or timed contracts. Then directors followed, then the rest of the staff.
But the problem in doing the same in games, as some people have hinted at above, is that the craft is different, few positions are isolated instead of team based, and even fewer are in a place where they can get enough exposure to actively renegotiate their status every time they join a project. The only case of this, really, is the star designer, but in the current system those guys are the head of an organization, a different company to the producer/distributor that owns its talent. Even if Will Wright started negotiating his next game with a different publisher every time for budget, pay and creative control, he'd still be the head of his studio and drag his people with him. Such a move wouldn't be conducive to engineers suddenly deciding to go freelance. In fact, it wouldn't change things that much for most of the people and resources involved.
What is needed is a shift towards raw creativity from the excessively technological nature of the business as it is. Again, as some people have stated, standardization of middleware will continue to shift focus from programmers to designers. That shift is the part of the process that can be promoted by the industry. When we reach a time when the average game nerd can tell who designed the levels in his latest game, we'll be onto something.
Your idea, at best, seems like it would only really apply to designers. And only lead designers at that. Your real goal seems to be to turn designers into the rockstars that movie actors and directors are able to become which may be possible, but the majority of the game development community could care less.
I don't know that much about how the camera and set crews in a movie studio work, but I assume they don't need to rebuild the camera every time they need to make a new movie, or design scissors and sewing machines when they need to make new costumes. These are the reason design studios exist. So that you can develop the technology to make games without having to start from scratch every time.
Also, the idea of a designer shopping around his game ideas is completely inane. I don't remember who the quote is credited to originally, but it is definitely true that ideas are worthless, it is the ability to make them into the reality of a game that matters. Saying, here is a great design for a game means nothing, because the real time (and creative) investment is in creating it, which is the real job of a designer, not just coming up with a great "script" for a game. This methodology works in film because, comparatively, not much needs to change to turn a well written script into a movie. This is definitely not the case in game development.
As Benjamin said, the games industry is not the movie industry, so don't treat it as such.
I do believe Tim's system could work for design studios, rather than individuals. A company can have all the components (staff) to create great games, come up with ideas of its own and shop them around to publishers. This is the real analog to the film industry that I believe fits, though it is a collaborative setup, rather than an individualistic one, but games are (and should be) a more collaborative undertaking than films tend to be.
Currently companies that accomplish this and come up with a great game are bought by publishers and turned into sequel houses. Having design studios that are able to be creative without being tied to a specific publisher is really how innovation will be injected into the industry.
The point is not the tech. It's the deal. It's free agency.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edison_Trust
After that, it took the U.S. Supreme Court to break the studios (distributors) away from theater (client display system) ownership, in the anti-trust case 1948 United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movie_theater#Post_1920s_:_modern_era
See any parallels there (with parenthetical help)?
Generally, game concepts begin with a committee of producers cobbling together ideas from various films and sometimes—though less often—books in order to showcase new technology and gameplay mechanics. Only late in the process do many game developers get around to hiring a writer (or writers)—and it shows.
Now, quite a few people have already commented on how filmmakers don’t reinvent the wheel each time they go into production, and that’s true. But, honestly, is it necessary for game developers to continually build brand new engines? The Unreal Engine is still being used over and over. Sure, it’s modified for each title. But the much-anticipated BIOSHOCK 2 isn’t being built from scratch.
This tech-first approach is often defended by the idea that it takes a lot of people to make a video game. Well, guess how many people it takes to make a movie.
And yet films generally being with one person: the writer. Sure, a string of producers quickly queue up to add round after round of notes. But even then, the concept has its roots in a single cohesive vision. Not only does it show but it allows room for plot and character development as well as threading of actual themes. Such tried and true story elements can only deepen and enrich the game experience.
One last note: It’s been said that no one wants to play a game that uses technology from 1980. Well, probably not. But, if you look at titles like BRAID and N+, you’ll find games that, at least on the surface, are barely more advanced than old skool arcade games—and yet they’re immensely popular. The point is, you can add all the bells and whistles you want, but the game ultimately just needs to be fun and engaging.
Anyway, that’s just my four cents.
Cheers,
Shad
A better solution would be going to something more like a TV model. In this model a full game would equate to a full season. Instead of making the full game then releasing the full game, the studio makes a fourth or a third of the game and releases that piece of the game. This means there is less possible loss of money, and with less possible loss of money means publishers are more likely to fund a more experimental game.
After the first part of the game is released the publisher can weigh the sales and reaction to judge whether or not to continue funding the game or not. As well it would mean people can be less picky with the games they buy because the consumer would only initially have to invest $20 instead of $60.
Smaller investments mean smaller risks, smaller risks means more risks taken.
The only reason the movie system even works is because of the theater system. People only have to make a relatively small investment of $7 to $10 to see a movie. If people had to pay $30 to a retail store to see a movie I guarantee the movie industry wouldn't be as stable as it is today.
As well I do believe part of the problem comes from organization within individual studios that allow for down time for certain jobs. There needs to be a system within studios that allows for every individual to immediatly to start working on the next project without any down time. This probably means that the studio needs to always have another game ready that all the members of the production team can immediatly jump to, and have work to do.
All in all any current system out there is not suited for the game industry. Yes there are things that the game industry can learn from and steal from the movie, TV, and other entertainment industries, but if we want something that is best for this industry we are going to need evolve into.
Of course the fix for all of this is for everyone to stop being greedy and switch the focus away from making money to just making the best game possible. Just say screw money, everything we do is out of our love and passion for games, and just hope that the hopefully increased quality increases sales of every game meaning we all get rich and can go home happy. Sigh...what I would give to live in a utopia.
And I don't think this model excludes innovation. What innovation needs is people that are properly matched and are willing to pull together in the moment of risk-induced difficulties. One willing to take a pay-cut to avoid layoffs, or forgo an end of the year bonus to hire a few more people that would benefit the team longer term.
Long-term innovation is an innate human quality that requires a nurturing environment more than a business model. That nurturing environment has never been a monopoly of economic conditions, it is made of healthy, long-term human relationships where the "can-do" attitude arises by the lowering of interpersonal barriers and by the -lack-, rather than presence, of internal competition, admittedly something of an heresy in mainstream economics.
So ultimately: no, the priority is not necessarily making a game. The priority is having a meaningful life while helping other do the same. Doing what precisely is up to you, and it can include making games. But "meaning" does not normally arises in the short-term relationships that would emerge from the model advocated.
Still, thanks for writing the opinion. I might disagree but it has stimulated an healthy debate, a positive thing.
I can understand that sentiment, but in practice teams of 100 are often times laid off at the end of projects; while it seems like a more stable scenario, it is often times just an illusion of security.
Evolutionarily speaking we have spent 95% of our past (over 95,000 years) working and living clans of approximately 150 people. That, by the way, also turns out to be the average number of people we send Christmas cards to nowadays, which I interpret: in terms of social networks, we haven't changed much. We still are pretty much like our ancestors tens of thousands of years ago: most comfortable (and effective) working closely in teams of 5-7 people that are part of a larger community of 150 people on average (including families and friends). This is largely disregarded by businesses because a business is not normally a self-serving entity. It is a shareholder-serving entity. Hopefully things will change as more and more businesses become cooperatives and mutuals, where even customers can truly participate.
At the last Austin GDC, some people gathered to discuss about Game Design becoming an academic discipline: something you can really not just to teach, but also research, at universities, and the key observation compared to film industry, it's that the whole **process** of making games it's not standard yet.
I agree with Tom that the current system goes to the benefit of companies, but the hollywood system has it flaws too. I think the most urgent thing to do it's to define the problems the videogame industry face -creative crisis, companies over games- and then define necessary conditions to have a chance to solve them, like proper crediting, and then figure out how to implement them. The agent system it's a way to do it, but it needs careful consideration.
The length and passion of the comments reflects the interest of this subject, that it would be great to develop beyond a comments page.
Cheers!
Problem is, that designing a game is developing the game with the design of the whole team. Modelers, texturers, animators, level designers, sound designers are all creative during game development. Even programmers, often reduced to technology delivery, are creating cameras, controls, etc. and creating the posibilities for all the others. That means if you want to make a really good game you need a creative teame during the whole process of 2-3 years (not just 2-6 months as in most films). To have a creative team also means, you need good producers and leads, leading this creative force to a game, not just a lot of cool creative stuff kicked when the money runs out.
Animation film is an interesting comparison - large companies making cool animation films. And they don't even have to fight with ever changing and advancing PC or console techs.
As one already said - the idea is nothing. You have to develop it and hammer a hundreds of pages game design document out of a cool idea of a lone game designer. For this you need the team, all the creative and experienced graphics, level design, sound, programming... and they need to function together in a highly unstable process. For this you need at least a stable core team used to working together.
If you standardize all the tools and outsource all the workforce you freeze the possibilities. You can make games in fixed genres based on different stories. Sounds like movies - eh? This would be the end of 90% of all the creativity the games industry has shown over the last 20 years.
But to say that a design isn't enough - that a financing decision can ONLY be made on an executed demo - is a route to the creative crisis. Sooner or later people have to design it. Better to work out more problems sooner and get financing in there then. Otherwise, it's status quo: innovation done on the backs of tiny developers, which means little innovation as it's often risk-intolerable for little developers to do that (for all games except casual ones).
Also, the comparison between actors/directors/etc with artists/designers/etc is accurate... the truly gifted/lucky/etc do get known and become somewhat famous. But don't think that there aren't tens of thousands of bit part actors or community thespians that aren't famous but think they deserve to be.
So there is the possibility with hard work and lots of luck (luck being the key) you too can become a B designer or even on the A list artist, but the odds are low and that's called real life - no matter what industry.
There are people that go into every industry thinking they are going to rule the world some day and there are people that get into a career based on what they enjoy doing. Just because you call yourselves artists or designers doesn't mean you hold the lock on creativity.
Most who have found their calling find something creative about what they do... even accountants. In fact if you ask most game programmers (or any programmer for that matter) whether they think their job requires enormous amounts of creativity they will generally say yes. And its creativity where we all think we are different and why we all think we should be rich and famous some day. In the end, though, it doesn't take talent to be rich and famous it takes luck.
And so a lot of people would rather be paid consistently and sufficiently well (its a white collar job after all) than to be a starving artists with the minute possibility of becoming uber rich and famous. They forgo the risk for stability... nothing wrong with that.
So basically none of this could happen without lobbying congress for a fundamental change in IP laws.
Because if they see a screenwriter or a writer-director come with a good script, they want the person. The relationship. All the creative work that person will do in the future. Again, they believe in cultivating the people, not just taking the IP that comes out of them.
But either way, you're point on IP is simplistic. Inventive gameplay is subject to patent. We've already recognized that in our submission and free agency issue. Even if you ultimately release said gameplay into the public domain, if you're speaking to a financier and you're under NDA - if they take that new gameplay and release it in another game elsewhere, they are opening themselves up to a lawsuit.
Encouraging independent development is still the best way to fuel new ideas. Inexpensive access to great development tools is the future of inventive game design.
@André Blechschmidt
Standardizing development tools only limits games to the scope of the tools themselves...
In this sense I disagree about the relationship between standardizing tools and creativity. More standardized and streamlined tools would benefit everybody--provided they are powerful.
More robust, inexpensive, and user friendly the tools would: encourage independent development, bring more ideas to the table, and (ultimately) produce more a creative and inventive game.
Mirror Movies? I don't think so - too different, tech and midset particularly (game engines and consols, linear vs interactive)
Pump-and-Dump project management? More likely, but then the outsourcing group, will eventually become a game dev studio and the cycle begins anew. Never ending franchises are probably imune to this too.
Value the individual? Yes. And more likely to come with the public hunger of indie games (Jon Blow) acceptence of virtual telecomuting and dispered development.
For years I worked one side or the other as a producer for Third Party develpment and could do 90% of my job anywhere with email and cell phone.
Hollywood doesn't have to be a place anymore - just a state of mind.
Heath insurance? Be smart with what you do get paid and buy a private or co-op program. There are ways around that issue for sure. In my mind it's a very small part of the bigger puzzle.
I think this is the way to go. Better for the people making the games and better for the games, too. If some unionism and co-op style organization were also included, you'd have a large number of very happy game creators making more diverse and innovative games.
Then I read articles like Jim Mummery's Opinion piece (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22115) and see that there are still too many stale minds running the show. Mummery's piece is the harsh but realistic view of game development as it exists now and, as near as I can tell, represents how Mummery views it should always be.
The future is xenophobic as seen through Mummery's eyes; this as the industry as it slowly cannibalizes talent, driving them into more openly creative and stable jobs, and excludes willing and brilliant new blood because they haven't been beaten down by the industry's backwards business dealings.
On a final note, several of the comments here claim that the film industry standard of having writers who 'shop around' their script will never work in games, where any designer can 'shop around' a design document. As Carter puts it, "those who greenlight projects need to better visualize designs -- in a sense becoming designers themselves." To anyone reading the article, it should be clear; the fault in being unable to shop around a game design like a script isn't with the designers (although Carter mentions they need help too), but with the people who control which games are produced being unable to see the potential in documentation rather than production.
When the people who control the production of games get off their high horse and learn to recognize brilliance and not wait expectantly for a near-finished innovative game to fall into their laps, then we'll start getting somewhere, and we can finally ship something other than Prince of Persia 12 or Call of Duty XII.
I'm seriouly thinking on becoming a peon programer and forget game design...