After reading psychochild’s critique of the industry’s failure to learn from WoW’s financial success, I keep asking myself: does this re-analysis tell us anything about how to advance the mainstream game industry?
This of course begs the question, what does he mean by ‘success’? Just as the Hollywood film industry and the North American record industry buried their heads in the sand when confronted with poor sales figures, the mainstream game industry blames production processes, business practices, and marketing techniques for mediocre sales, instead of taking a cold, hard look at the quality of the MMORPGs being released.
With that in mind, the “critique” that psychochild offers is rather illuminating: 1
1. Your game suck? Throw money at it. You’ve got tons.
2. Don’t make a game – make intellectual property. That sells.
3. Have 20 years of back-catalogue handy to force your next turd onto the shelves.
4. “Enjoy total freedom” – have so much corporate clout that you can bully your publisher into accepting any release date.
5. “Lie with statistics” – fool your audience into buying your game, because good games don’t sell themselves.
I apologize if this comes across as being terribly cynical, but it is frustrating to watch the mainstream game industry attempt to re-invent itself using the same dead corporate ideas that got the industry into a creative slump in the first place. It is especially worrying when these ideas come from industry representatives that claim to be concerned with re-inventing the medium in closed-door invite-only conferences. Of course, the author is only the messenger here and it doesn’t make sense to point the finger at him alone, but the message we’re hearing is pretty clear: we still haven’t learned anything from WoW.
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Nowhere have I see an analysis of World of Warcraft that questions its value in the game industry, and the creative advancement that it has brought to gamecraft as a whole. Instead, analyses of the game focus on financial success as the ultimate standard, and only demonstrate the ongoing irony of an industry that howls, “we must innovate; push the creative envelope!” while quickly balking at designs that “might not sell”.
If the industry is so concerned with making a purse of a sow’s ear, the first thing I’d like to see are experimental, dangerous, creative exercises; not evolutionary expansions of the same recycled gameplay/stories/genres that I’ve been playing since 1981.
That’s not to ignore the fact that giant, meandering, beasts of companies with hundreds of employees do have to release some sort of game with financial targets in sight, but as I’ve said before – these financial concerns can only be taken into account after creative considerations have been fully realized.
1(Keep in mind that the point of psychochild’s article isn’t to critique creativity in World of Warcraft – but it is noticable that the only lessons he covers are financially-driven. I would be interested in reading the possible creative/revolutionary game ideas that he sees in WoW.)
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Thanks for the comment on my post, although I think you missed some of my point. I’m really arguing that there’s not many lessons we can really learn from WoW because the game was created in special circumstances. (Also note that “learn lessons from” is sometimes a euphemism for “copy”.) My quasi-sarcastic “lessons” were intended to show that most companies aren’t in the same situation as what Blizzard was when they made it. The deep pockets, valuable IP, avid fanbase, and unique creative freedom just aren’t available to every company. Really, my core argument is that most developer shouldn’t try to copy WoW, rather most should focus on making something different instead of trying to achieve the impossible and inevitably failing to do so. Nothing is sadder than a failed clone.
Honestly, I’m with you on the indie thing. I’ve been an avid supporter of indie games; I just turned down a rather well-paid lead game designer position to work on my own smaller-scale project. I think that the way to get around the conservative attitudes about risk you mention is to start experimenting with games that don’t require massive budgets. Again, trying to clone, er, “learn lessons from” WoW is the exact opposite of this.
However, I will disagree with your assertion at the end: games are a business, and if you fail at the business aspects you will not succeed as a game. There have been countless games that weren’t even launched because the company making it had to close due to business problems. Financial concerns are an important, because my possible funding determines the scope of games I can make, as well as other issues like if I get to keep control of my IP or not. (The IP issue is one of the keys here, because very few developers get to keep the IP under traditional publisher/developer agreements. Yet, as shown in WoW’s case, it’s a large advantage to have a good, developed IP.)
I would be interested in reading the possible creative/revolutionary game ideas that he sees in WoW.
Honestly? Very few. Blizzard’s M.O. has been to take existing gameplay, refine it, give it an extra layer of polish, and release it to eager fans. Almost every major franchise they have is heavily “inspired” by other games. This has obviously been very, very successful for them, but WoW didn’t represent a revolution, it was an evolution of the games that came before it. Every significant feature in WoW was found in a previous game.
That said, they did do some things much better than the games that came before. I think the main thing is quests: no major game before WoW had quests that were quite so well organized and presented. At the core of this feature, Blizzard implemented a single-player game feature: the quest log. This is one of those things that I think would have made its way to online games sooner or later, Blizzard just got there first.
The other big thing is pacing; WoW gave the right rewards to players at the right intervals in order to keep them hooked at the game, particularly at low levels. This is the reason why people claim WoW doesn’t have “the grind” even though it has almost identical mechanics to previous games that were criticized for “the grind”.
There’s my thoughts. Hopefully some of this clarifies my position a bit more.
One final note for this massive comment: Project Horseshoe was actually a very good cause. Yes, it’s exclusive and “closed door”, but the group I worked with actually accomplished a lot of what we set out to do. The University of Texas’ Center for American History is establishing a video game archive (see: http://www.cah.utexas.edu/projects/videogamearchive/). We felt that an archive of this sort was important to preserve history. This is also a great way for people to be able to learn more about games, especially the older ones that didn’t require massive budgets to be fun, instead of only focusing on the very recent games. So, while exclusivity does rankle some people, the project did have an overall positive influence, IMHO.
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Thank you for the articulate response – this brings a lot of clarity (at least to me) that wasn’t apparent in the original post. I apologize that I didn’t catch the implied sarcasm – text is often a difficult medium to express tone in.
The problem with the indie movement, as I’ve said before, is that much of it also does nothing to advance gamecraft. Of the thousands of indie projects out there, many are as minimally creative as the blockbusters that they emulate. Not that I’m trying to generalize here, as I’ve seen some great stuff.
The business aspects are nothing to be ignored, of course – and I agree with your disagreement (?). Finances keep people employed and allow companies to attract the necessary talent to produce games. But that’s all assuming that the traditional ‘borrow $4 million from creditors and enter a dev cycle for 1.5 years’ formula is a guarantee of game quality – which we all know by now is not. If conservative publishers sit at the helm of the game business, there is absolutely no question that creative potential and innovation suffer deeply.
That being said, there *must* be other innovative (and agile) business models that produce quality games with smaller teams. It would seem relevant that developers conduct some sort of public roundtable discussion in regards to business model innovation and ‘niche’ development.
I think your analysis of World of Warcraft speaks for itself in many ways. In my view, Blizzard integrated game mechanics that have been around for 10+ years (ie. Might and Magic 6 had a quest log), and refines the mathematics for level advancement (ie. Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition, and almost every MUD built in the last 20 years). In many ways, WoW also detracted from game innovation by using an outdated levels-based system that was greatly out-finessed by skill-based systems years ago (not that I want to get into the nitty-gritty of levels vs. skills, but you get my meaning?). Making a game accessible (ie. salable to a large audience) can become a major detractor for innovation and creativity.
And thank you for defending Project Horseshoe – I think the U of T game archive was an excellent idea, and hopefully inspires other libraries to consider that kind of collection. In fact, I’ll be posting an interview with writer Stephen Emond about his new book in the coming weeks.
Thanks again for the articulate reply – the article was not intended to be overly critical – it was meant to stimulate some re-discussion.
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I apologize that I didn’t catch the implied sarcasm – text is often a difficult medium to express tone in.
Not a problem. If you knew me a bit better, I’m sure you would have picked it up. I sometimes get caught up thinking I’m writing for the same audience, so it’s understandable that someone could misinterpret my words.
Of the thousands of indie projects out there, many are as minimally creative as the blockbusters that they emulate.
Still, a slim chance of innovation is better than an almost zero chance. The issue here is as I said above, people are looking more at success (and sometimes at the financial awards that can bring) instead of advancing the state of the art. Even indies get caught up in that, wanting to be noted instead of someone that continuously works in the shadows making inventive, yet overlooked, games. I think this is understandable; part of why one wants to make great art is to influence people, and obscurity rarely does that.
I think that indies are the only feasible way that we will see any real innovation and change. If you take a serious look at game history, you’ll notice that the real innovation has happened outside the establishment. Companies like id and Blizzard were able to do great things because they maintained their independence; too often a fledgling studio signs away their (meaningful) IP rights and gets stuck as debt slaves to a publisher. Even The Sims was essentially made in the off hours at Maxis, and EA was essentially forced to publish it or lose all the time invested. Luckily for them it became a bestseller, huh?
It would seem relevant that developers conduct some sort of public roundtable discussion in regards to business model innovation and ‘niche’ development.
So, uh, organize one.
If you want to focus on MMOs, there’s the wonderful Indie MMO conference (http://www.imgdc.com/) that is looking for speakers. Volunteer to go talk to people active and interested in small-scale development to start a dialog about this. Or, find contact information for game developers and contact them to get a discussion going and post on this blog. You have my email address. Thanks again for the articulate reply – the article was not intended to be overly critical – it was meant to stimulate some re-discussion.
Not a problem. I’m often “aggressive” (that is, come across as an asshole) online in order to spur discussion. You were interested enough to read my article and discuss it, so I figured a bit more discussion was called for.
Have fun.
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Pingback from Anjel Syndicate » Creative game development on October 3, 2007 at 10:33 am
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Wow, cynical and without much thought. Has occurred to you that WoW isn’t the end all game you make it out to be and that it isn’t a whole new step in a different direction, but another step in the same direction with plenty of bells and whistles tacked onto heavily polished gameplay that Blizzard has poured tons of money into? Which I believe was one of the critiques you had. Also you want innovation? Shadow of the Colossus is far more original than most games out there right now and yet you shit on it for some obscure reason.
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Brainsaw – to whom are your comments directed?
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