Typically, speakers at GDC's annual developer rant panel take to the microphone to rant for their allotted five minutes, but this year, design veteran and SpyParty creator Chris Hecker let the industry do the talking for him.
The video above, titled "Fair Use," was edited together from a handful of publicly available video streams from triple-A game publishers and developers. It was presented without further commentary from the author, and we're doing the same.
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The video had me in stitches for the entire length of it.
Perfect ending too.
I am amazed by the originality and inventivness of Bungie's next game whos name I've already forgotten. Sphere? Ball? I know it's not Halo.
It truly shows what's the state of the AAA games industry.
But now, picture how things would change, how the world would react, if a handful of people suddenly developed super-human abilities...
I agree core gaming needs to be razed and rebuilt from the ground up. But AAA games didn't go Hollywood. Because Hollywood can produce Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter AND Lincoln in any given year.
So yes, many (if not most) AAA games are now over the top, cartoonish and immature. But if AAA gaming went Hollywood, then where are the game equivalents of Lincoln, Argo, Life of Pi, etc... ? They don't exist because AAA games are now about pretense instead of substance. Publishers and developers would rather create the pretense of originality, creativity, accessibility, etc... through marketing, advertising and media manipulation than assume the risk involved in actually delivering an original, creative, accessible, etc... product.
I wish they had, then we would have at least people like Christopher Nolan or Guillermo del Toro showing us that intelligence and action aren't contradictions and people like Darren Aronofsky or Alejandro González Iñárritu showing us, that you can make successful movies with the best paid actors in the world without compromising your idea.
This is what happens when you make games based on what the majority wants.
The fact that anyone claiming that any game with that central mechanic still is "completely new compared to halo" just adds to the point Hecker is seeming to make?
These games have absolutely nothing to do with what the majority wants. If they did, there would be far more diversity in the market. The games are based on what publishers believe represents the lowest level of risk. Even though this means custom developing the games for, and targeting them at a small minority of the audience. In other words, they prefer the risks involved with trying to sell a large number of copies to a minority of the audience instead of the risks involved with trying to sell an equal number of copies to the majority of the audience.
And minutes 2:30 to 4 are like the punchline to a long bad joke. I wish I could find a video that encapsulated how I feel about corporate management, financial workers, and anti-academic politicians as succinctly as this has about the current state of game development.
Lots of people do enjoy them, however. Millions of people in fact.
I would call it "Trying to sell a rethread as something new."
I wish people would just stop complaining about the games other people are making and make the games they want to see.
The second clip I'm not completely sure what's exactly the joke. Details certainly matter and the talk wasn't wrong, so I guess it's about the possible lack of anything very technically groundbreaking to talk about CoD in a D.I.C.E. summit.
The whole video is about companies that want to be at stage with their games' logos on the big screen but don't really have anything to say, so they make up all kind of filling talks trying to make it seem like there's anything really awesome there. The graphics appeal wears off quickly so they can't just show 20 minutes of gameplay or else it's going to actually backfire as a hype-building move, so they have to make up all that nonsense to fit that stage time.
Climbing through accurately depicted armored doors in a HUMV during a scripted event is supposed to be some notable feature? It's a bit funny... and it's a bit pathetic. One wonders if they believe their own words. After all, nobody actually wants to wake up each morning to make another superficial disposable entertainment product. Ok, some people actually do... but I think most don't but egos are fragile things. We want to believe that our work particularly in massive creative enterprises is worthy and so it's easy to buy into the cheerleading surrounding development of "the next great product that everyone on the team should be proud of."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jcwsfns7KPQ
And people can criticize games or the industry or parts thereof AND make the games they want to see at the same time. It's not polite to suggest people be quiet.
"I think the point here is to show that some AAA games are simply dishonest. They are dishonest in their levels of innovation and so dishonest in their marketing and perhaps they're being developed, promoted and consumed by delusional people. It's well beyond "over hyping." It's the emperor's new clothes."
Video isn't working for me - I assume it's clips taken from various pre-release Spore presentations?
I'd advocate an entire crash of the industry.
Sure, it'd be terrible.
Sure, Alfred would say how men like myself wish the world to burn.
Sure. Whatever. I wish I could make a video with half the stories that we go on. There's two extremes pulling at the industry, and AAA is only one of them. The "indie" scene has become a problem in that it's blotted to the point of anything not being published by EA, Ubisoft, or Activision is considered "indie", and a lot of the times these games are held to the same standard we would judge a AAA game with because "Oh, the little guy made it. Wow, look at this art TRUE INNOVATION EVERYONE".
Another factor is this sudden adversion to violence (particularly with shooters), and it seems to be the "hip" thing to be on. "Oh my, yet another shooter? Sickening". It's funny really. Danger Close, the studio responsible for Medal of Honor: Warfighter, and whom I had the pleasure interacting with quite a bit, made a game that did tell an emotionally engaging story while still using some of the modern shooter elements. Completely unnoticed, and shot down by nearly every gaming publication. Spec Ops: The Line would be the only game in recent memory to have that "double-take" from the industry.
That was my rant. Truthfully, if we want to change things, just step up and do it. It really is that simple. Some may fail, others may succeed. Publishers don't make the games, we do. If they see that enough people are willing to branch out, then they'll start to listen.
@Merc Hoffner
Very good point on your statement above. Can't like it enough.
The pitch for the superhero game was ludicrous though.
If publishers could predict what would sell well I would expect revenues in the console space to be growing, not declining.
That's exactly why publishers rely on what has sold well before. They really don't know what makes a great game, so they try to recreate what's already been proven. Less of a risk. As recent figures have shown us, you can only live in the past for so long.
The problem is publishers aren't allowing consumers to steer the focus of development. They are allowing a sub-segment of a sub-segment of the core audience to steer development for the entire (non-sports) core market. COD games may earn a billion dollars annually, but it doesn't change the fact that the best selling COD titles have only reached a maximum of 17 percent of the active worldwide installed console base. And non best selling titles typically reach between 1 to 5 percent of the active installed base.
So publishers are attempting to generate all of their non-sports core revenues by targeting virtually all AAA games at between 2 to 10 million players. Completely ignoring the purchasing decisions and habits of between 50 to 60 million players in the existing console audience alone in the process.
Something's lost in not watching it with audience reaction. There's a youtube clip of it live that's worth viewing.
The most moving thing for me was that while the audience snickered and giggled at some of the clips, Chris just stood silent, and I thought he looked sad, disappointed even. It upset me.
While awards don't necessarily correlate to sales, I hope that games like Journey kicking the ass of ALL the AAA titles at both the DICE awards and the GDC awards helps the message get through a bit. People are looking for more than just the same old junk-food games.
It's the abuse of language.
When you actually have a game that does something new and has these interesting characters you care about, it is hard to find words for it that still have a meaning.
"We now have 16 times more memory for our war porn shooter, so we can make it a lot more porn and a lot more war!"
...from a parallel universe. I don't know which one I prefer.