Raph’s Website » Game folks vs web folks

Game folks vs web folks

October 27th, 2008 (Visited 3026 times) Tags: 3d web, web games

I missed this blog exchange a few days ago between Andrew Chen (web guy) and Adam Martin (game guy).

“4 major cultural differences between Games people and Web people” is where Andrew says,

Eyeball worship vs. Game genre worship

Distribution vs. Content

Utility vs. Experience

Open vs. Content gating

And then Adam says in “Cultural differences: game developers vs web developers”:

concrete revenues vs “future monetizable” growth

team-as-blob vs sliding scale of headcount

obsessive search for fun vs time-wasting activities

surprise and delight audience with something we liked and think they want vs randomly guess and test on live audience; iterate until done

very high minimum quality bar vs don’t worry, be crappy

high, strict specialization vs almost no specialization

money happens elsewhere, far down the chain vs show ME the money

Why does this stuff matter? Well, I happen to believe that over time, there’s only going to be one culture here (see the next post I am about to write!). So it’s interesting to see where the gaps in communication are going to occur.

One big thing that we have certainly run into is that putting larger projects on the web means that many of the web ways of doing things don’t quite work the way they do with smaller projects. And there’s no doubt that many of the lessons of web development need to be applied to how to make web-based or web-distributed entertainment products. In the end, you have to hybridize if you are going to push at the boundaries.

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Weds in the News « Izzy Neis wrote on October 29th, 2008 at 9:33 am:

[...] http://www.raphkoster.com/2008/10/27/game-folks-vs-web-folks/ [...]

Web versus Game Development - Thou Shalt Check for Null Pointers wrote on October 30th, 2008 at 9:25 pm:

[...] both a web developer and a game developer so this post over on Raph's web site struck a chord with me. Building web applications is mostly about content once the [...]

Ted Howard : Games People and Web People wrote on December 19th, 2008 at 9:21 pm:

[...] Koster says that the two industries will combine. I do believe that there will be some amount of convergence between the two, especially as the [...]

Amaranthar said on October 28th, 2008 at 6:53 am:

I think I disagree, but I’m not inside enough to know for sure. But wouldn’t it be better to use the utility of web design to get people into the experience of the game? Isn’t this what is happening now, actually, with the game’s web site > the game?

If you water down either side, is that good? Web vs. game seems like they each need to maintain their strong points, not adapt to the other. Of course, I can see you point that there are things each can teach each other,
I’m not sure though that you want to go all-the-way.

Federico Fasce said on October 28th, 2008 at 8:59 am:

Amaranthar: I believe that’s not exactly the point. The idea here is to see how games people and web people can get to talk, because each one of the two worlds has things to teach the other one. As a former game guy, I’m trying to understand which are the game design good practices that you can apply to web design (especially to complex, social, applications, in order to make them stick.

Arrakiv said on October 28th, 2008 at 12:09 pm:

I admit to being a bit Raph-influenced in this area, since I originally became interested in this topic after hearing him speak… But, while I may be outside of both industries, I do a fair bit of web design as is, and I do an awful lot of design in general. Its what I’m trained in, and I could quite easily get myself funneled into the web industry. That said, I also have a very strong interest in the game industry.

The two things do feel very different. I’ve done a little game design as a hobby and I’ve done a bit of web design. It seems to almost take on a different mindset when doing both… yet, there seems to be a fair amount of overlap. It seems like there are plenty of places from one to learn from the other. So, if I’m following the post right, I’m very much inclined to agree that, at some point, there will just be one culture.

andrew chen said on October 28th, 2008 at 1:53 pm:

thanks for the link!!

Prokofy Neva said on November 3rd, 2008 at 12:32 am:

The games make money, the Web 2.0 thingies don’t make money.

That’ll fix the culture quick : )

I love it, “Don’t worry, be crappy”. My new motto!

Amaranthar said on November 3rd, 2008 at 7:49 am:

Let us remember the greatest lesson of the 20th century, when someone smashed a Hershey’s chocolate bar into a jar of peanut butter and we suddenly had the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup and the world became a much better place. (I wonder what would happen if we smashed a Democrat into a Republican? I’d certainly be willing to give that a go. Several times.)

len said on November 3rd, 2008 at 8:03 am:

“I wonder what would happen if we smashed a Democrat into a Republican?”

You get Joe Liebermann or Arnold SchwarzenShriver.