Business vs. soul
Okay, so I found this article and it gives me the chills... I wanted to post it and get some reactions, especially from the more business-driven members of the Belt. I'll skip the other stuff and post what's important here.
Activision games to bypass consoles
So.... is this an example of something out of context that sounds way worse than it is? Or is this just another example of a beleaguered business trying its best to stay afloat?
And amidst all this, what is the future for games as art? Do you think that with the economy and games being as expensive as they are to make we're going to see a further increase in indie developers producing all the truly innovative and artistic games?
Activision games to bypass consoles
During a 45-minute presentation today at the Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference in San Francisco, Activision Blizzard CEO Robert Kotick covered a substantial amount of ground. For one, the executive explained how he expects Activision games--specifically Guitar Hero--to bypass consoles altogether. The executive also showed off animation technology he hailed as the future of storytelling in games, pegged the next generation of consoles as being two years out or more, and explained openly why he wants a company culture infused with skepticism, pessimism, and fear...
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...When he wasn't promoting the company's games or technology, Kotick was celebrating its laserlike focus on the bottom line. He pointed to changes he implemented in the past as being particularly beneficial, such as designing the employee incentive program so it "really rewards profit and nothing else."
"You have studio heads who five years ago didn't know the difference between a balance sheet and a bed sheet who are now arguing allocations in our CFO's office pretty regularly," Kotick said.
He later added, "We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games."
If that sounds like it would create a corporate culture that isn't all sunshine and hugs, then it's mission accomplished for Kotick. The executive said that he has tried to instill into the company culture "skepticism, pessimism, and fear" of the global economic downturn, adding, "We are very good at keeping people focused on the deep depression."
[UPDATE] Below is the question which prompted Kotick's response and his full answer, verbatim from the archived conference audio.
Jeetil Patel, Deutsche Bank Securities - Analyst
"What do you think the retailers' willingness these days is to hold inventory on the video game side? Are they building positions today or are they still very reluctant and very careful of how they are buying?"
Bobby Kotick, Activision Blizzard, Inc. - President and CEO
"I don't think it is specific to video games. I think that if you look at how much volatility there is in the economy and, dependent upon your view about macroeconomic picture and I think we have a real culture of thrift. And I think the goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks that we brought in to Activision 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games."
"I think we definitely have been able to instill the culture, the skepticism and pessimism and fear that you should have in an economy like we are in today. And so, while generally people talk about the recession, we are pretty good at keeping people focused on the deep depression."
So.... is this an example of something out of context that sounds way worse than it is? Or is this just another example of a beleaguered business trying its best to stay afloat?
And amidst all this, what is the future for games as art? Do you think that with the economy and games being as expensive as they are to make we're going to see a further increase in indie developers producing all the truly innovative and artistic games?
Comments
Like, remember when you finished one really good game, another one was always right on the horizon? I miss that. Like...a new Zelda comes out, then a new Metroid comes out a month later, then within two months Super Paper Mario comes out. I don't think that's exactly the right timeline, but you get the idea. It used to be bam, bam, bam, one masterpiece after another.
But now...it's all about gimmicks, beating the competition, selling to new audiences, advancing the graphics,all while keeping the "nerds" just barely happy enough.
It's like an artist who makes a few masterpieces early in his career, then passes off shit as art, but people still buy it by association. Hell, same with movies, books...it's just a part of the entertainment industry. Once you've got fame, it doesn't matter if you product is shit, enough people will buy it to make up for those who boycott it.
tl;dr: They don't need us anymore, so they're making shit games.
Surely, there's not a whole lot of innovation in new titles... but again, was there EVER? How many platformers were produced for SNES? How many sequels instead of original ideas?
When the was no 1st person shooter that was ever even slightly decent, there were innovations to make them decent, but now... just brainstorm for five minutes or one hour, or for the rest of your career, try to come of with a truly innovative and unique gameplay idea or mechanic or storytelling technique.
I bet you each $200 that none of you come up with anything that is feasible or cheap enough to produce for profit with our tech that is really and truly innovative.
2d has been done, 1d can't really be done, 3d has been done, we've even (in a way) been making games that are 4d, and then we have these ridiculous 2.5d games that are just 3d with 2d sprites, or really innovative ones like Fez. Basically everything you can think of goes staight into the crap idea pit, the overdone hole, or the adding unnecessary gameplay heap.
If this is true, then the only thing I can think of is that Kotick has been in upper management for decades now and has been completely divorced from what people on the bottom think and feel; most of us had grandparents who told us "Work isn't fun! Work is work!" Maybe he subscribes to this pattern of thought.
I'm kind of hoping that there is some more context behind this, or that maybe he has a really dry sense of humor that is too hard to pick up when simply written down. It would make a lot more sense that way.
Knowing this, real innovation is understandably uncommon from major established developers. Not to worry though. Games have overall been growing in both ways. They are becoming more mainstream and commercialized even as they press into art territory. That said, big commercial games can contain art, but rarely are particularly artful as a whole. This is where the ever important indie games field gains importance. Art is sort of personal. A small indie developer can make something artful and innovative because they aren't necessarily under pressure to make money. They are often a small group of people or even just one person who would be approaching game development as a hobby. If they manage to complete something they try to sell it to recover some of their losses from making it. Sometimes they soon find themselves hired by larger companies and their innovation is pulled into the commercial games.
As for the seeming dry spell consider that as you play more and better games your taste becomes more refined. The bar gets set higher. You narrow your view of the field to specific genres. It should be no surprise that at some point you can't seem to find a good game anymore. Bad video games are as old as video games.
But Tak is right... though the medium may not be changing as much as it used to, the content can still improve. And I would argue that the stories and the worlds within video games has gotten worlds better than it used to be. I feel like it used to be rare to get a somewhat compelling storyline going, especially in the NES era. There just wasn't a whole lot of room to build an interesting universe, and I think that people really weren't thinking of video games as as much of a storytelling medium. But I think that the medium has had time to build itself up, learn from its previous incarnations. I also think that people are starting to try and find out what's possible in video game storytelling. Look at Indigo Prophecy. Not a superb game, but someone's thinking about new things.