October 22nd, 2008

Time For A Change!

In everything comes time for a change, at least once in a while. While Lara Croft is one of the most notorious game characters, and the hot chicks impersonating her at various game conventions changed pretty often, that's not what I am going to talk about next. Obviously, I won't go too much off the line, and still talk about the time for a change, but not with Lara, since there's something much bigger that feels the time for a change has come - the entire gaming industry!

Do you think this is not really something new? well, you may be right, and I started to feel this a few years ago, but this time is not about me, since Atari's Phil Harrison has spoken - gaming development reached the time for a change.

At the Unite 08 conference in Copenhagen, Harrison said

"Here is my EUR 10 million gift to this room - all of the mistakes I have made in software development have been based around one problem and one problem alone, which is accelerating through this pipeline without successfully and properly satisfying the requirements of each of the stages - and typically it involves going from concept to production in one jump."

I fully agree with him, but he should always keep in mind that today, most gaming companies put development speed above anything else, and that's only the fault of the tendency to turn games into 99% merchandise, and 1% art. A decade ago, things were a bit different, in my opinion...

Getting back to Harrison, here's how he concluded the speech - "I believe that a true 21st century business model is to do all of that [production] in the glare of the game-playing public, so you can expose that innovation to your consumers,. You may not charge them for it at this point - but why not deliver your innovations and experimentations directly to your players, and let them be part of the process of deciding which games to make?"

The answer to the above is very easy - a large mass of consumers will always be more demanding than a small team of developers and Beta testers. I may be wrong, of course, but these are only my five cents... feel free to drop your comments below, if you think otherwise!