On July 4th, 1776, this nation became independent of the financial constraints that had been imposed by an overseas power and became self-reliant. Every year since then, this momentous event in American history has been celebrated with fireworks and community gatherings to raise a glass to the visionaries that established the country as an independent state which was no longer subordinate to the whims of a parent entity.
Independent, Autonomous, Self-Governing, Self-Reliant and Self-Sufficient.
The United States of America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. In many ways that could be the perfect background for a video-game, one in which the player has to battle against overwhelming odds to make his way through the numerous obstacles that the Land of the Free represents and which can be the difference between success and failure.
This week, following the E3 Conference, the nominees for the Game Critics Awards 2010 were announced (as reported by Bostinno’s Jennie White). Bearing in mind the exciting new game platforms that will be hitting our shelves later this year – including the introduction of 3D gaming – there were few surprises, with the domination of major corporations continuing to set the pace for game development.
Sony’s Playstation Move and Microsoft’s Kinect were nominated in the hardware section as both have the capacity to provide serious gaming competition to the Nintendo Wii, and our friends at Harmonix are in line to add more awards to their bulging trophy cabinet with the release of Dance Central (for Microsoft Kinect) and the third Rock Band title, imaginatively titled Rock Band 3. The rest of the nominees were the usual suspects: EA Sports was nominated for every sports game, Gran Tourismo 5 rocked racing, and HALO: Reach was apparently interesting enough to be nominated as well. Of course, Disney released another game that features a mouse.
What’s the common trait? Large corporations with large budgets and deep pockets drawing serious serious hype and. eventually, loads of money from serious gamers.
I should be pleased that gaming as an industry is attracting decent investment and global interest. It should make me happy that the economic downtown doesn’t seem to have affected the desire of developers to continue to make games that will appeal to a large section of society. The success of Harmonix is good for Boston; the nomination for an award for a game that hasn’t even been released yet should make me feel warm and fuzzy. The recent acquisition of Turbine by Warner Brothers was a significant moment for Boston’s gaming community, a show of faith in the excellent work that is done here on the East Coast.
I should applaud the huge strides being made to take games to the next level. Having been lucky enough to see a demonstration of Playstation Move at the recent Games Beyond Entertainment conference, I believe that it’s 360° sensor is going to take away the frustration that comes from having to constantly recalibrate my Wii controller and will provide a more satisfying gaming experience. As a gamer, these nominations should make me salivate for what is to come later this year.
But it doesn’t.
It actually has the opposite effect; it makes me worry about the companies that are struggling to survive the onslaught of product being released into the marketplace by multinational corporations — with far reaching marketing arms to tell us what the next must-have purchase is, rather than us telling them. It makes me think about the future, not in terms of innovation but as a conveyor-belt of identical games that are defined by marketing spend and not game-play.
Recently, I sat down with local developer Scott MacMillan of MacGuffin Games to discuss All Heroes Die, a strategy/role-playing game that had attracted decent press and interest following its launch at PAXEast, held in Boston in April. The company shares office space with FireHose Games (developers of Slam Bolt Scrappers — winners at E3) and we talked in an office that was filled with classic consoles and games, including Spore, Super Mario Brothers and Goldeneye (soon to be rebooted for the Wii).
MacMillan, who also runs the Boston Indies events at The Asgard in Cambridge, was passionate about game development and had wanted to start a videogame company to tell stories that could be “expressed through interactivity.” He fervently explained that “there’s a lot that we can do to expand the medium in what we are trying to say as artists and creators” and singled out Dejobaan Games as a company “not afraid to mash up completely weird concepts and push them into games.”
We talked at length about the release of Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption and the role of the corporate game developer who “may be able to say that I worked on Palomino #9”, as opposed to the indie developer who has had interaction with the entire game. The pride that Scott felt in the development of MacGuffin Games was evident throughout our discussion, and it isthe independent nature of the company that allows him to be as creative as possible. Then I mentioned Farmville and he asked to go “off the record.”
At the time, I didn’t realize what was happening with MacGuffin and several days later, Scott emailed me a link which suspended further development on All Heroes Die due to financial constraints. It stated “With the resources and time we have, it’s also one that currently can’t support the company. Graham (co-developer) and I have both been working without drawing any pay for our entire time on the project, and we’re at the point where we can’t continue doing that.”
The next project for MacGuffin was to be “one in the Social Media space” — in other words, a Facebook game. In our discussions, we had talked about the social gaming scene and Scott had been complimentary about what Zynga has achieved with Farmville, saying, “They have got the science of their games down perfectly, a Pavlovian response which makes (Farmville)something compelling.”
As disappointed as I was with the decision that MacGuffin had been forced to make, this is the unfortunate reality of the indie gaming industry at the moment:
Make games that make money, or be a martyr for your own creative motivation.
There are over 300 video game developers in Boston, many are designing games for Apple and the mobile space, some (Dejobaan, and FireHose) are producing games that have the spark of creativity that sets them apart from the mundane. But there are others who have the financial clout to dominate the space and who can continue to saturate the market with the same product, with slightly better graphics. The developers that have become part of the corporate gaming culture have the backing of faceless parent companies that are slowly squishing the life out of the smaller independents.
For example, the August issue of GamePro has a feature on Turbine, who are rolling out Lord of the Rings Online on a “free-to-play” basis, backed by Warner Brothers who consider it to be “a superior financial model” with the game relying on micro-transactions conducted through Turbine’s online store. This backing of Turbine by a huge global media corporation will have ramifications throughout the industry, as the article then quotes the president of Warner Interactive who says “Turbine has a clear merchandising platform that can be used across our entire portfolio of games. It can be used for a Batman game, for other Lord of the Rings games, for a Harry Potter game or even for the F.E.A.R franchise.”
Franchise, Superior Financial Model, Merchandising Platform — Words and phrasees that will spell the difference between success and failure, that will determine the path of indie developers as to how they want their creativity perceived and ultimately distributed.
Independence is to be cherished, but it often comes at a price. For indie developers in Boston and across the U.S., it may be too hard to keep beating back the flames of Big Gaming, and try to compete at every level. For these devs and designers, it’s becoming a personal decisision how best to achieve their goals when they are faced with insurmountable odds. It’s something so impacting the game development space it could even be the basis for a video-game!
