In the old days, game developers had ambition. This ambition was to make the best games and to explore new gaming frontiers. What can a computer do? Can a computer make you cry? Can the computer build the New World? Some successful game developers got their money and retired while some kept doing what they loved.
In these days, game developers still have ambition. But it is ambition of a different kind. The desire is not to make the best games and to explore new gaming frontiers. The desire is to ‘create an industry’ or to ‘create a lifestyle’.
Whenever I talk to indie gamers, I discover they are not interested in making games. They are interested more in ‘business models’ and how to create a lifestyle they want (the lifestyle is apparently vegging around, smoking pot, while they ‘develop’ in their spare time).
I have had the pleasure of knowing some very successful people including kids who have retired at the young age of 21 (meaning they never have to work in their lives… ever…). These people tend to be very quiet, no grandstanding. In order to achieve what they did, they lived a lifestyle that caused them to work more than you can imagine. Of course, it was not work to them because they loved it. The idea of becoming successful to live a ‘slothful’ lifestyle would be alien to them. What is actually common is that once these people ‘retire’, they almost immediately start up another business in a short time even though they don’t need to. It is extremely hard to force these people to stop, for a year, and do nothing. They are so addicted to succeeding they just can’t stop.
Game developers wanted the computer revolution to succeed. They wanted the gaming revolution to succeed. They wanted to make games that did things you couldn’t imagine. You would look at it and say, “Wow!” They wanted to push the boundaries and show us what games can do and what games ought to do.
Today, I feel like I am surrounded by a bunch of money grubbers. Today, everyone is a ‘game developer’ who is peddling some mediocre indie game hoping ‘to break big’ so they can ‘retire’ and have a ‘lifestyle’. The other side of that coin is they start an ‘industry’ of their own. It is like the mission of the gaming revolution doesn’t exist.
A good example of this modern game developer is Notch. On his website, he is polling his audience to hold a convention (!) for a game that he has not even completed yet (he says the convention will be to celebrate the final release of the game). Now, I didn’t fall off a turnip truck. The only reason why you do this is to rake in money. Most people polled on his site voted they would never consider going to such a convention (and people who visit his site are the enthusiasts). So Notch puts out another poll asking what location the audience would want the convention to be. The intention is clear: how to milk the audience for more money.
Notch regrets having promised that purchasers of the alpha would get the full game for free. “A promise is a promise,” he mutters. So once again, it seems his mind is on milking. This is perhaps why he wants to get Minecraft out the door ASAP and just throw on expansion packs to keep milking the game.
Lately, we hear that Mojang (Notch’s company) is interested in publishing other indie games. How else to interpret this to mean that Notch is more interested in becoming an ‘industry’ than actually pursue the gaming revolution?
“We are in a great spot right now, we can basically do whatever we want to,” said Kaplan.
Many have said this. And you do not hear about them today. Gaming is a very unforgiving market. The person who is in control is the market. You can only do what the market wants you to do. When people forget this, the market teaches them a lesson.
As an aside thought, it is not amazing how any success in gaming immediately leads to a swelled head? I swear there is no humility in gaming. Notch, who due to some skill and some luck made it big with a game, suddenly wants to create his own industry and hold conventions throughout the world? What the hell?
When the Wii was released, Iwata said Nintendo “must not get arrogant”. Yet, when it comes time for the next console to be released, the 3DS, he jacks up the price of the hardware and software, thinks the built in software on the 3DS will assuredly ‘create excitement’, and blames the marketing when the console doesn’t take off. For some reason, there is a sort of disease in gaming that success breeds arrogance.
If someone were to ask me what is wrong with gaming, I would respond that there is not enough ambition. And by ambition, I mean of the good kind. The ambition for the Gaming Revolution seems dead.
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