Hi Sean,
I just read this article: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_221/6582-Why-Your-Game-Idea-Sucks
What struck me about it is how game design is portrayed as an interplay between designer and developer but the customer is never spoken of. There’s a lot of talk about pet projects and whatnot but never one word about actually looking what the customer wants. In regular software engineering the first step of designing a product is to check what the customer wants and in any course they’ll always emphasize how important it is to stay in touch with the customer to make sure what you’re making is actually what they want. How can you satisfy the customer if you treat him as a black box with the only input being products and the only output sales?
As in my “a Modest Proposal for Gaming”, the “Game Industry” is not only slouching towards segregation but desires it. The “Game Industry” wants to become like ‘Hollywood’, and I think it should run as far as being anything *like* Hollywood.
Hollywood is a very segregated place. “Artists” of the directors go over there. “Actors” are to go over here. The rest of the crew is to go somewhere over there. Currently, there is a story boiling about a famous director who was convicted of raping a thirteen year old girl with many in the ‘entertainment business’ (i.e. Hollywood) defending him. How on Earth can such an act be defended? It is because such a director is an ‘artist’ and apparently that means he exists on another plane of existence.
Here are the current ‘divisions’ I see segregated within gaming:
First, you have customers. They should not be called customers though. They are likened to more as the ‘riff-raff’. From this point on, they are ignored and are nothing more than numbers on a NPD list.
Now, we have the “Game Industry”. On the outer rings, you have the ‘analysts’ and the ‘journalists’. But when you move in, you find that the “Game Industry” is split between the “business side” and the “creative side”. In other words, the ‘suits’ and the ‘artists’ (at least, they like to call themselves artists).
These self-seen ‘artists’ believe that the ‘suits’ are ruining their ‘vision’ of gaming and holding them back. But it is these ‘artists’ that created the ‘suits’ in the first place. This laughable notion that business matters ‘harm creativity’ is only giving mediocre business grads power to control the money. And since they have control of the money, they will only make games that follow a formula or whatever else. These ‘creatives’ who see themselves only as ‘artists’ have themselves to blame.
How many writers, published and unpublished, are out there? Too many to count. They all want to become best seller writers. Yet, none of them will study ‘business’ matters such as selling and marketing. That is too bourgeois for them! Some of the best selling writers are so because of their knowledge of the business side.
Anyway, the source of the cancer that is destroying gaming is coming from this ‘manifest artist’ that developers and wannabe developers have. Their ‘vision’ is so amazing that customers are ignored. They respond to this as “well, we can’t have customers make the games,” which is not what is being said. The focus should be on what games customers want to play, not on what games the developers want to make. The reason why there are so many crappy books is because it is all about what a writer wants to write, he or she is not writing what people want to read.
It is also the reason why newspapers and television news are dying in America. It is about what they want to say, to hell with the audience. So the audience leaves. They blame everything but their content. They blame the Internet, the business model, anything but what they do!
Anyway, I read the Escapist piece and the piece seems to be more of a rant triggered by someone annoyed at everyone giving him ‘ideas’ as well as his students scared that someone will take their ideas.
Let the article speak for itself:
No one will ever steal your game idea. Ever.
If you’ve stuck with me this far, you already know that game ideas are usually worth less than the paper they’re written on. Even experienced studios with veteran developers and piles of shipped titles under their belts have a hell of a time selling a game idea based on a pitch. And if they can’t do it, you can’t do it either.
So we get it, right? Game ideas aren’t commodities. You don’t need to worry about your idea being stolen, because even if someone did steal your idea, they’d still have to sell, build, tune and ship it, at which point it would be a completely different idea arrived upon through the development process than where they began.
But if you still aren’t convinced, the other reason no one will ever steal your game idea is that no one really wants to work on any game except his or her own.
This is BS. Game ideas are stolen all the time. The “Game Industry” is little more than an asylum of copy cats.
Of course, he is referring to game ideas on paper. I am not.
I believe in the Sid Mier approach to game making. What is the Sid Mier approach to game making, you might ask? When Sid Mier was young and not the Sid Mier we know of today, he was playing an airplane game with a friend. He said the AI on that enemy airplane sucked and that he could make a better game. So that is what he did.
I like this approach.
Just make a better game.
Instead of forum dwellers being keyboard jockeys ranting and rambling on the “Game Industry”, it would be far more productive to harness that energy and put it into actual game development. There are some very famous games that were made by even as young as 16 years old. Anyone can begin making a game right now if they want. You do not need millions of dollars. In fact, you don’t need any money. Not to make the game and certainly not to market it.
I very much support and promote the idea of someone giving the “Game Industry” the middle finger and making their own game to show how awful today’s games are. Making a game and selling it to people is more ‘education’ than years as an employee in a game company or any ‘game design’ university classes.
But getting back to stealing game ideas, just look at Stardock and the game “Demi-Gods” which is ripping the ideas from DOTA mod from Warcraft 3 (and DOTA mod literally ripped and stole ideas from other War 3 mods which is why the map is so controversial in the War 3 mod community). Look at how the “Game Industry” steals every other game’s ideas.
So what is this person saying that the “Game Industry” doesn’t steal game design ideas? It doesn’t do anything but steal game design ideas.
Now, I am sure he is referring to the wide eyed kid who believes he is the next Miyamoto. But I disagree with his premise: that a person with a game design idea has to make a pitch to the publisher.
Well, I piss on your publishers. I can just make a game and put it out myself. Let me bend over, pull down my pants, and moon the ‘publishers’. I believe in the Sid Meir route. Just make the game on your own. If it becomes a success, shows you are making customers, then YOU get to set the terms.
This entrepreneurship used to be the ‘game industry’ in the 80s and prior. It is an absolute disgrace that any teacher of video games not recommend and teach students ways to do this. Bypass the “Game Industry” entirely.
The reason why this is not done is likely because the young person desires to become an artist and artists, apparently, aren’t supposed to touch anything on the business side as that would corrupt their holy and fabulous ‘creativity’. While some people are better on the business sides than others, game designers used to have that streak of entrepreneurism in them that has now been lost.
If you make your own game, make customers with it, and use that money to pay your electric bill, other game developers will be looking at you with respect. (Many can’t even do that in this day and age anymore.) You won’t be some wide eyed kid dreaming he is a ‘Game God’ going into the “Game Industry” or some forum dweller ranting and raving but someone who actually is in the game of making games.
Let’s put it this way: which is a better education? Is it attending ‘game design’ courses at the university? Or is it making small games or mods and studying feedback from customers or users?
Or to put it another way: which makes the better writer? Someone who attends ‘creativity writing’ at university? Or is it someone who actually sits down, writes, and then publishes that writing and studies the reaction of customers or readers?
Game developers make games. They don’t attend classes. They also don’t ‘climb the corporate ladder’. What the hell are you guys waiting for? Go make your game now. Stop the excuses. If you really want it, you will be working on it regardless of whatever someone thinks.
Perhaps the problem isn’t that ‘game design’ students are asking stupid questions. Perhaps the true problem is that there are ‘game design’ classes in the first place.
Be like Sid Meir. Say ‘this game sucks, and I can make a better one. Watch and see!’
The segregation has to stop. The game developers of the past did not see themselves as ‘developers’ and certainly not as ‘game gods’ or ‘artists’. They saw themselves as gamers. They saw everyone else playing games as gamers. For many of them, like Richard Garriot, they were making games for their friends.
There was no segregation. There were no ‘developers’, ‘suits’, ‘artists’, ‘analysts’, ‘journalists’, ‘hardcore’, ‘casuals’, ‘demographic A’, or ‘demographic B’. There were only gamers.
