The game industry is doing “okay” in this bad economic time compared to other industries. Primarily, Nintendo is rocking the house with their games, hand-held’s and consoles while mobile developers are showing some great successes in the industry. Many success stories in our industry are based on small titles, downloadable games of the more “casual” style while a few larger titles are experiencing slower than expected sales trends.
We’ve mentioned this in the past, but the tough economy gives many smaller developers great opportunities for success. While big publishers struggle to look good in the eyes of the investor, tiny developers can produce quality titles for minimal cash investment and time to market. Ten years ago, smaller developers tried to compete with the big boys making larger titles, cloning successful titles or simply asking investors to put it on the line for their game. Today, developers can create a small iphone app, a cute WiiWare title or exploit the XNA efforts of Microsoft for Xbox Live Arcade and actually have a chance.
There are still challenges with these smaller developers when working in the WiiWare and XBLA publishing channels, your game marketing and promotion becomes highly reliant on Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony for PSN. Tom Prata, senior director of Nintendo of America talked to Gamespot about this issue:
“Finally, there’s the problem of promotion. It’s not enough to make a great game if nobody notices it. Prata specifically said Nintendo will be devoting more resources to support the promotion and development of WiiWare games in the future.” (gamespot)
Of course, in the world of smaller game titles and downloadable casual games, you’re going to be at risk of finding a lot of “shovelware” — products that are only released to make a quick dime, often based on some license or popular theme/character. The great game titles will, hopefully, rise to the top and show themselves off amongst all the wanna-be money makers.
Those smaller developers putting a huge passion into their titles actually have a chance in this new industry trend. Game makers, internationally, now have a chance to grasp a small piece of the industry and make their dreams come true. The core audience may see this as a trend of noisly low quality titles, but I believe the industry needs this change to grow a new generation of developers based on niche interests.
While many can wait for their next release of Madden the rest of us will continue to spend a little money to see what the future innovators are going to be bringing to the table.
Rumor:
@Notch selling Mojang to Microsoft: I was a bit apprehensive when I first heard this story. Though we have no confirmation I’m taking the silence as to mean a deal is being discussed and nothing is finalized yet. The more I thought about it and after listening to your take on it I think it could be alright. I’m just concerned with what they might charge for using the PC version. I’ve also come to be used to Mojang having added features with each new version release and I hope that continues. I’m not so bothered by Notch selling the company since he’s walked away from Minecraft when he did the Full release a couple years ago. I hope that we will also still be able to use our own custom skins, resource packs and mods for the PC.
@Good games worth paying for: I do agree with the sentiment that quality games are indeed worth paying for. Like Skyrim was and I’m sure a lot of hard work went into that game. The quote “a terrible game lasts forever” is right when you have the Atari ET as an example.
@80’s shows: I got both the Dungeons and Dragons and Captain N show references , I loved both shows as a kid.
@FFVI: I knew I had forgotten to mention Terra from FF6, I feel that the first half of that game was about Terra and Celeste the second half the game. I remember the argument I got in with my friend over this when he noticed that I wasn’t using Edgar or Locke in my party and he questioned me “Why aren’t I using the main guys?” My response was “what main guys? Terra and Celeste are the heros and he got so mad and yelled at me that Edgar was the hero. How can he be the hero, or Locke, when you can beat the game without them at all? More over the whole story revolved around the Espers and the empire trying to use them.
And just FYI I am a guy but that doesn’t mean I can’t emphasize with women or feel rejected when I hear things like “Girls won’t like you if you play games, why don’t you play a sport instead?”
I also did misunderstand your point Paul, thanks for clearing it up.
@QOTW: I remember making a few custom units in CIV 2 and using the map editor. I’ve played around with programs like RPG Maker and other similar RPG games like Neverwinter. The amount of work in making even the smallest dungeons or quests is just tremendous so I have to give it to those who make entire games worth of content and quality work. You do get what you pay for.