Indie Game Devs: ‘Forget It’
Developers tell aspiring game makers the ugly truth.
May 10, 2006
A panel of independent developers delivered a sobering reality check to aspiring game creators at the E3 expo in Los Angeles on Wednesday, warning those who harbor dreams of producing a game with a small team and reaping hundreds of millions of dollars from a big deal with Electronic Arts.
“You have a zero percent chance of success,” said Warren Spector, a game industry veteran and the current president of Junction Point Studios, a company that develops games for consoles and PCs. “The barrier to entry in terms of cost, quality required, access to a market… forget it.”
Fellow panelists echoed Mr. Spector’s sentiments, telling a room full of game company representatives, industry consultants, and members of the media that the path to entering the $7-billion market is fraught with more pitfalls than Tomb Raider.
While opportunities do exist, small companies and startups find it difficult to secure funding and distribution for their work. They often have to deal with past projects that pigeonhole them and potentially hamper future expansion.
While opinions differed on ways to overcome these problems, the panel reached a consensus on one thing: the need to have several elements in place before success is even a possibility.
“Don’t come to the traditional game companies and try to sell [them] an idea,” said Gordon Walton, co-studio director at BioWare Austin. “It won’t happen. Every company I worked for had a backlog of ideas that was too deep to work through.”
Instead, Mr. Walton said aspiring developers would greatly increase their chances of success if they could show actual implementations of their ideas.
“Publishers… are saying they won’t sign anything until they see a working prototype,” said Michael Scandizzo, president of Castaway Entertainment, a small company staffed with numerous former employees of Blizzard Entertainment, producer of the blockbuster multiplayer game World of Warcraft.
Double-Edged Sword
In a cruel twist of fate, panelists warned, companies that manage to pull together enough resources to produce a working demo, secure funding, and get their game distributed might end up shooting themselves in the foot.
Companies that originally intended to develop sports games but ultimately broke into the puzzle or casual games market won’t find it easy to return to their original area of focus.
“You can’t go make Bejeweled [a puzzle game] and then tell EA you want to make Madden,” said Mr. Spector, referring to Electronic Arts’ lucrative John Madden-inspired football game series, a perennial hit for the entertainment software giant.
While that may be an extreme example, past performance is the ultimate predictor—and potential limiter—of future performance.
According to BioWare’s Mr. Walton, companies looking to diversify might find themselves, in a worst-case scenario, back at square one.
“You almost have to start over again… which causes you to lose momentum,” he said, explaining how game titles create brand identities that can be both a blessing and a curse.
Jim Deal, president and creative director of Airtight Games, admitted that at one point his company considered starting a second firm to create games for the sole purpose of generating enough revenue to support the development of the title they wanted to make originally.
While they ultimately finished the game under a single company, he still thinks the idea merits some thought. However, companies considering such an option may need to face investors who are not necessarily enthusiastic about the idea of using profits from one game to fund an entirely different one.
Great Casual Hope
Despite all the doom and gloom, panelists and audience members expressed limited optimism about the likelihood of small companies breaking into the games market.
One area attracting a lot of attention these days is time-passing “casual” games. Difficult to define, but hardly short of participants, casual games are often classified as basic puzzle, card, or trivia games that are easy to play on a PC or phone and don’t require a large time commitment. They also require much less money to develop.
According to the Entertainment Software Association, 52 percent of all games played fall into the puzzle, board, game show, trivia, and card game category. Thirty-two percent of heads of households report playing games on wireless devices.
For aspiring developers, flexibility is the key, said Mr. Deal. Startups won’t get the chance to produce titles and build a company by going to a large publisher and demanding hefty sums of money for games using development plans written in stone.
Mr. Spector trumpeted a tried-and-true strategy for anyone looking to break into an established market. “Look where the big guys aren’t,” he said. “Embrace the chaos.”
Taken from: http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=16830&hed=Indie+Game+Devs%3A+%E2%80%98Forget+It%E2%80%99§or=Industries&subsector=EntertainmentAndMedia
Developers tell aspiring game makers the ugly truth.
May 10, 2006
A panel of independent developers delivered a sobering reality check to aspiring game creators at the E3 expo in Los Angeles on Wednesday, warning those who harbor dreams of producing a game with a small team and reaping hundreds of millions of dollars from a big deal with Electronic Arts.
“You have a zero percent chance of success,” said Warren Spector, a game industry veteran and the current president of Junction Point Studios, a company that develops games for consoles and PCs. “The barrier to entry in terms of cost, quality required, access to a market… forget it.”
Fellow panelists echoed Mr. Spector’s sentiments, telling a room full of game company representatives, industry consultants, and members of the media that the path to entering the $7-billion market is fraught with more pitfalls than Tomb Raider.
While opportunities do exist, small companies and startups find it difficult to secure funding and distribution for their work. They often have to deal with past projects that pigeonhole them and potentially hamper future expansion.
While opinions differed on ways to overcome these problems, the panel reached a consensus on one thing: the need to have several elements in place before success is even a possibility.
“Don’t come to the traditional game companies and try to sell [them] an idea,” said Gordon Walton, co-studio director at BioWare Austin. “It won’t happen. Every company I worked for had a backlog of ideas that was too deep to work through.”
Instead, Mr. Walton said aspiring developers would greatly increase their chances of success if they could show actual implementations of their ideas.
“Publishers… are saying they won’t sign anything until they see a working prototype,” said Michael Scandizzo, president of Castaway Entertainment, a small company staffed with numerous former employees of Blizzard Entertainment, producer of the blockbuster multiplayer game World of Warcraft.
Double-Edged Sword
In a cruel twist of fate, panelists warned, companies that manage to pull together enough resources to produce a working demo, secure funding, and get their game distributed might end up shooting themselves in the foot.
Companies that originally intended to develop sports games but ultimately broke into the puzzle or casual games market won’t find it easy to return to their original area of focus.
“You can’t go make Bejeweled [a puzzle game] and then tell EA you want to make Madden,” said Mr. Spector, referring to Electronic Arts’ lucrative John Madden-inspired football game series, a perennial hit for the entertainment software giant.
While that may be an extreme example, past performance is the ultimate predictor—and potential limiter—of future performance.
According to BioWare’s Mr. Walton, companies looking to diversify might find themselves, in a worst-case scenario, back at square one.
“You almost have to start over again… which causes you to lose momentum,” he said, explaining how game titles create brand identities that can be both a blessing and a curse.
Jim Deal, president and creative director of Airtight Games, admitted that at one point his company considered starting a second firm to create games for the sole purpose of generating enough revenue to support the development of the title they wanted to make originally.
While they ultimately finished the game under a single company, he still thinks the idea merits some thought. However, companies considering such an option may need to face investors who are not necessarily enthusiastic about the idea of using profits from one game to fund an entirely different one.
Great Casual Hope
Despite all the doom and gloom, panelists and audience members expressed limited optimism about the likelihood of small companies breaking into the games market.
One area attracting a lot of attention these days is time-passing “casual” games. Difficult to define, but hardly short of participants, casual games are often classified as basic puzzle, card, or trivia games that are easy to play on a PC or phone and don’t require a large time commitment. They also require much less money to develop.
According to the Entertainment Software Association, 52 percent of all games played fall into the puzzle, board, game show, trivia, and card game category. Thirty-two percent of heads of households report playing games on wireless devices.
For aspiring developers, flexibility is the key, said Mr. Deal. Startups won’t get the chance to produce titles and build a company by going to a large publisher and demanding hefty sums of money for games using development plans written in stone.
Mr. Spector trumpeted a tried-and-true strategy for anyone looking to break into an established market. “Look where the big guys aren’t,” he said. “Embrace the chaos.”
Taken from: http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=16830&hed=Indie+Game+Devs%3A+%E2%80%98Forget+It%E2%80%99§or=Industries&subsector=EntertainmentAndMedia