Top 5 Countdown, Day 3
All this week, I'm doing a countdown of what I deem to be the top 5 threats to gaming society in America. If you miss a segment, you can catch it in the links below.
1/30/06 - Threat #5
1/31/06 - Threat #4
And now to continue...
When Bigger Isn't Better
Its a common belief that, with most things in life, bigger is better. Your bankroll, your office at work, your home, your Apple Cinema Display; as they say, "the more, the merrier." Unfortunately, the old adage doesn't necessarily hold true when it comes to the corporate world and its business models.
#3 on my list of "Top 5 Threats to Gamers" this week is Conglomerate Game Studios. We all know who they are, and we've seen both the good and bad they're capable of. For example, EA Games is known for the amazing variety of games it publishes, franchises like Command & Conquer, Medal of Honor, and the huge array of sports franchises under the "EA Sports" label.
What you may or may not be aware of, however, is the working conditions that developers work with when working for a publisher such as EA. Just in the past year, there has been public attention drawn to the blog of an EA employee. His blog details the horrible time constraints, unrelenting pressure, and lack of downtime between projects that--as it turns out--is practically the industry standard. Of course, that isn't to say that only the big game farms push their employees thusly; one of my old college buddies took a game design job with a small company, and he left the job only months later after being driven to the point that he never wants to work in the industry again. What made it worse was that he went to college to do that kind of work.
Putting working conditions aside, the game development industry is something that most gamers follow pretty closely; after all, what they do impacts our personal (and frequently professional) lives. What really makes the big-name development studios so bad isn't how hard they push their employees, but the effect that such a big entity has on its own products, and on the rest of the industry.
I'm going to pick on EA Games again (sorry guys, its nothing personal; I really do love your work), or rather EA Sports. Take their NBA Live franchise: there's a line of games that effectively never changes. Certainly, you don't want it to change too wildly; the idea behind the game's development is to make it as authentic as possible. However, each iteration of sees very little change over its predecessor. With the exception of console changes, these games saw very little improvement in graphics, literally no change in gameplay mechanics, and no innovation. The only real changes the average gamer ever saw was updates to the team rosters to reflect those currently in the NBA. Even their Medal of Honor franchise has seen little improvement since it first hit the original PlayStation. Certainly, the graphics have improved, but little else has improved. Of course, I'll be the first to stand up and say that Medal of Honor: Allied Assault was and remains to be one of my favorite FPS games, but that's because of all the fun I had playing the multiplayer mode.
Companies like EA operate like this: they develop a few games on their own, but most of their product line comes from other developers that they've "acquired" (bought up). This is how the Command & Conquer line came to be an EA title; Westwood Studios was devoured into the greater beast that was EA. Its a two-edged sword, and not at all unlike playing the game Monopoly; on the one hand, the larger publisher/studio can secure their financial placement in the industry by owning more intellectual properties (IPs). However, with so many "properties" to oversee and invest in, the parent company is less compelled to take risks. This lack of ingenuity leads to a track record of sequels (as mentioned before, look at all the sports game franchises under EA Sports; a new version is released every year) and very few new innovations to the franchise or genre as a whole. Of course, when they do decide to take a risk and invest in something new and unique, they don't finance it as well as they do their "tried and true" franchises. The results are games like Psychonauts from Double-Fine Productions and published by Majesco. Psychonauts was a game that was really inventive and fresh, but lacked the marketing budget to properly spread the word, and its sales reflected that. Sadly, too many games end up overlooked because of their lack of support from their own publisher.
All of the above only really reflects how a publisher's desire to be big forces them into a very small corner. The problem is, a company's decisions can also adversely affect the gaming industry in its entirety. For example, EA Sports bought the exclusive rights to develop games for pro athletics. Yes; that means that EA Sports and only EA Sports can develop officially licensed games for the NBA and NFL. This is why you see games like Midway's Blitz: The League. Because Midway couldn't make a game truly representative of the NFL, they made games that are terrible, unauthentic (the "league" can't be the NFL), and actually have very little to do with even playing football. And because EA owns the rights to make the official games--which forces their competitors to make crappy knock-offs--EA doesn't feel any pressure from competitors, so it doesn't strive to make its games genuinely better. The same applies to 2k Sports and their exclusive rights to MLB games.
When companies strive to become bigger and better, they invariably narrow their outlook and inventiveness. Sure, its a safer way to invest your money, but you can't contribute to the health and longevity of a franchise, genre, or even the industry if you refuse to think outside the box and take a few risks. The gaming industry needs risk-takers, inventive thinkers to help keep our shelves stocked with refreshing new ways to play. Besides, who wants to play yet another Doom when you could be playing the next Psychonauts?
1/30/06 - Threat #5
1/31/06 - Threat #4
And now to continue...
When Bigger Isn't Better
Its a common belief that, with most things in life, bigger is better. Your bankroll, your office at work, your home, your Apple Cinema Display; as they say, "the more, the merrier." Unfortunately, the old adage doesn't necessarily hold true when it comes to the corporate world and its business models.
#3 on my list of "Top 5 Threats to Gamers" this week is Conglomerate Game Studios. We all know who they are, and we've seen both the good and bad they're capable of. For example, EA Games is known for the amazing variety of games it publishes, franchises like Command & Conquer, Medal of Honor, and the huge array of sports franchises under the "EA Sports" label.
What you may or may not be aware of, however, is the working conditions that developers work with when working for a publisher such as EA. Just in the past year, there has been public attention drawn to the blog of an EA employee. His blog details the horrible time constraints, unrelenting pressure, and lack of downtime between projects that--as it turns out--is practically the industry standard. Of course, that isn't to say that only the big game farms push their employees thusly; one of my old college buddies took a game design job with a small company, and he left the job only months later after being driven to the point that he never wants to work in the industry again. What made it worse was that he went to college to do that kind of work.
Putting working conditions aside, the game development industry is something that most gamers follow pretty closely; after all, what they do impacts our personal (and frequently professional) lives. What really makes the big-name development studios so bad isn't how hard they push their employees, but the effect that such a big entity has on its own products, and on the rest of the industry.
I'm going to pick on EA Games again (sorry guys, its nothing personal; I really do love your work), or rather EA Sports. Take their NBA Live franchise: there's a line of games that effectively never changes. Certainly, you don't want it to change too wildly; the idea behind the game's development is to make it as authentic as possible. However, each iteration of sees very little change over its predecessor. With the exception of console changes, these games saw very little improvement in graphics, literally no change in gameplay mechanics, and no innovation. The only real changes the average gamer ever saw was updates to the team rosters to reflect those currently in the NBA. Even their Medal of Honor franchise has seen little improvement since it first hit the original PlayStation. Certainly, the graphics have improved, but little else has improved. Of course, I'll be the first to stand up and say that Medal of Honor: Allied Assault was and remains to be one of my favorite FPS games, but that's because of all the fun I had playing the multiplayer mode.
Companies like EA operate like this: they develop a few games on their own, but most of their product line comes from other developers that they've "acquired" (bought up). This is how the Command & Conquer line came to be an EA title; Westwood Studios was devoured into the greater beast that was EA. Its a two-edged sword, and not at all unlike playing the game Monopoly; on the one hand, the larger publisher/studio can secure their financial placement in the industry by owning more intellectual properties (IPs). However, with so many "properties" to oversee and invest in, the parent company is less compelled to take risks. This lack of ingenuity leads to a track record of sequels (as mentioned before, look at all the sports game franchises under EA Sports; a new version is released every year) and very few new innovations to the franchise or genre as a whole. Of course, when they do decide to take a risk and invest in something new and unique, they don't finance it as well as they do their "tried and true" franchises. The results are games like Psychonauts from Double-Fine Productions and published by Majesco. Psychonauts was a game that was really inventive and fresh, but lacked the marketing budget to properly spread the word, and its sales reflected that. Sadly, too many games end up overlooked because of their lack of support from their own publisher.
All of the above only really reflects how a publisher's desire to be big forces them into a very small corner. The problem is, a company's decisions can also adversely affect the gaming industry in its entirety. For example, EA Sports bought the exclusive rights to develop games for pro athletics. Yes; that means that EA Sports and only EA Sports can develop officially licensed games for the NBA and NFL. This is why you see games like Midway's Blitz: The League. Because Midway couldn't make a game truly representative of the NFL, they made games that are terrible, unauthentic (the "league" can't be the NFL), and actually have very little to do with even playing football. And because EA owns the rights to make the official games--which forces their competitors to make crappy knock-offs--EA doesn't feel any pressure from competitors, so it doesn't strive to make its games genuinely better. The same applies to 2k Sports and their exclusive rights to MLB games.
When companies strive to become bigger and better, they invariably narrow their outlook and inventiveness. Sure, its a safer way to invest your money, but you can't contribute to the health and longevity of a franchise, genre, or even the industry if you refuse to think outside the box and take a few risks. The gaming industry needs risk-takers, inventive thinkers to help keep our shelves stocked with refreshing new ways to play. Besides, who wants to play yet another Doom when you could be playing the next Psychonauts?
posted by IcarusFountain at
5:27 PM
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