AGC: Gamasutra’s take on the talk
Gamasutra – AGC: Koster Says Game Industry Dinosaur ‘Doomed’ is the best “summary article” thus far, I think.
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Gamasutra – AGC: Koster Says Game Industry Dinosaur ‘Doomed’ is the best “summary article” thus far, I think.
Comments are closed.
Gamasutra recently altered their description of you as the “legendary MMO designer” to the “renowned MMO designer”.
You were legendary during the sale, but as soon as you left the lot, you lost value. 😉
The Kodak camera didn’t destroy the market for professional photography. The video camera didn’t shrink the market for Directors of Photography in Live Action Filmmaking. I’m sorry Raph, the statement about artists in games being less necessary due to user created content just isn’t backed up by historical precedent through analogy in other markets. Granted distribution of work is changing, but work is not. Work pays because it’s work, i.e. it’s effortful, not easy, it shows, and people pay for it.
It’s why Comic-Con gets bigger every year, it’s why people don’t throw away comicbooks any more. Artistic effort isn’t disposable ever; it only gains in value over time. It’s what history has shown. From the lasco cave paintings no longer available for public consumption to guernica. Artists drive this business more than anyone wants to let on. Art above all else, gets me to try a game, gameplay makes me stay. But you can’t get me to stay if I won’t even knock on your door. Art brings the knocks. You don’t get the knocks, you don’t get the business. You die. Dinosaur or not.
I didn’t make that statement. (The bracket is an editorial insertion by the article writer). What I stated in the talk is that the pressures inherent in digital distribution and lower budgets for more disposable games will force less focus on assets and use of alternate techniques. 2d art, procedural art, stylized art — just LESS art and less INTENSIVE art than now. This means less artist jobs.
Sorry for the misinterpretation. I’m in total agreement with you on alternate visual techniques. God is it needed. From Photographic cutouts, to you name it. Imagine a game done in the style of Lottie Reiniger with a decent budget?
There are so many precedents of visual and narrative forms not even touched on by mainstream publishers. Indeed, it’s going to be a much wider world unfolding.
“What we’re seeing here is that other people have come out around us and said, You have a good thing going, but the entire infrastructure is just broken, so we’re going to take all the good bits and money and all the customers you think are not good enough. The market got broadened for us by other people.”
Great quote, however I found the term “other people” a little troubling. I’ve always considered Runescape, Habbo Hotel and even Neopets members of the games industry. When Andrew Gower was writing the original Runescape in his basement or wherever, I don’t know that he thought of himself as being “outside” the games industry. After five years as a TAD in console games, I quit to concentrate on MaidMarian.com full time….but I never though of myself as being “outside” the industry because I do web games.
That gang of ten or so major publishers may be in trouble but I think the industry will adapt. Runescape and others like it may be what the future looks like (I hope so for my own sake) but Runescape is and always was part of the games industry…so everything is going to be just fine…..just no boxes.
Group inclusion is a funny thing. You aren’t outside the game industry until all the people involved in a particular discussion agree that you are. =P And they have to keep doing it (implicitly) in any other particular discussion.
I think the “other people” refers to the people who aren’t sitting there in front of him. But that’s a rather large assumption.
That quote more specifically was referring the media companies coming in and acting as publishers. I have made the point several times that some of the larger casual games “publishers” to day are Lego, Kellogg’s, and Cartoon network — not game industry at all. I agree Runescape is part of the industry. But it’s on the edge of it, certainly — not part of the publisher infrastructure, not an ESA member, doesn’t go to E3, doesn’t submit to ESRB…
The part most publishers will seize upon is your bit about alternate revenue streams.
So we can look forward to “Don’t have Orc breath – Use Crest toothpaste!” ads in our next massively multi-consumer online roleplaying game.
In fact, I hereby coin “MMCORPG” to mean “MMORPGs which include large amounts of in-game advertising”.
In one form or another, all the big publishers have a green light process that set out the parameters for appropriate risk on a new game. This tends to create a very small box around the types of projects they would consider appropriate to move forward. Many designers, artists and coders have received that blank stare from their superiors when it comes to game pitches that involve innovation with distribution or revenue models – or at best, a “great idea, but I’ll never get this past committee with the current guidelines” type response. At least the “other people” are demonstrating that other models can work and when the pain becomes great enough, the publishers may be forced to see the light. It’s too late for the ones that are one disaster away from going under, but it’s realistic to expect to see a new batch of companies emerging that recognize the fundamental changes occurring and embrace it.
I guess the frustrating part is that many game employees recognize the trend and the risks to their own employment but are unable to communicate this to their execs under the current management structures. An “I told you so” just doesn’t cut it when your job is at risk. Although the writing is on the wall, the publishers are reticent to reinvent themselves until the messed up financials of a typical next-gen game really start to affect the bottom line. Although we’ve had some major hints of that already, the full effect won’t hit for another year or two. Some publishers are still under the illusion that the PS3 will all of a sudden make the balance sheets look right.