IGN took a look at the woes and
hardships of major developers and the ridiculously expensive games
they create this week. It would appear that the arms race toward
higher and higher costs to produce major titles has led to some
concerns in the industry: There are risks in spending millions to
make millions, surprisingly. But is that really what's going on
here?
 |
| Those poor souls... |
Major publishers have put themselves in
the exact situation they wanted: Making games so expensive that only
a handful of developers could put out highly polished games on a
regular basis. This position is now being reconsidered for two
reasons: 1) In this economy, publishers are lucky that instead of
buying a $60 rehash of Call of Duty every two years, consumers don't
just put shotguns in their mouths and 2) it turns out that lots of
smaller developers are putting out games that don't cost millions of
dollars and are still making a profit. If major publishers were able
to squeeze out this competition and ignore the shitty economy, they
would certainly do so.
The article makes companies like EA
come across as heroes for valiantly taking multi-million dollar
"risks" by pumping out sequel after sequel every year.
These issues are not unique to the gaming industry, but they are
related to the console life cycle. The extended length of the most
recent console cycle has led to a dearth of new ideas, allegedly,
because consumers are less willing to spend money on an aging
console. What this actually means, operationally, is that major
publishers are sitting on their best ideas until the next line of
consoles are released. This has historically been true, and has led
the industry to introduce new consoles every few years as a way of
reinvigorating the market.
Will extended console lifespans lead to
an ever-increasing dearth of innovation and ideas? Of course not.
It only will in the case of major publishers. The article itself
admits as much, describing the rich independent games market. The
subtext here is that the gaming market, ultimately, is synonymous
with the big publishers, and that's to be expected from IGN. Yet the
"plight" of these industry giants is anything but.
Economic conditions and the market are not strangling creativity;
they are taking care of that themselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment