Innovation - How AAA and Indie Games Can Learn From Each Other - Extra Credits

Hey guys, we're going to be talking a bit about innovation today, which seems like an appropriate time to try something new. Hey Allison, come here. Hey, you want to try out a new art style? Any kind you want. Go nuts. All right, we're ready. Switching over in 3 2 1. Hey, not bad. That feels weird. All right, let's get to it. You know, I hear a lot of bitching that innovation is dead in the American game industry, but that's not really true. I'll tell you what the real problem is. The real issue is that we have two game industries at odds with each other, and neither of them is fully equipped to bring innovation to the masses. First off, we have the growing indie community, which bewails its unrecognized genius and screams sell out whenever someone in the community actually manages to make a hit. And then we have the mainstream AAA industry, which often claims that it can't afford the risk that innovation requires. AAA games are expensive, they

say, and it's better for them to play it safe. And yet they manage to make multi-million dollar flops all the time anyway. So, now that I've insulted a sizable portion of our audience, let's look at this issue in a little more detail. To give you some context, James started writing this episode because of an argument he'd witnessed between two friends at GDC Austin. Here is what most of the debate sounded like. And just for fun, let's give them British accents. Oi, mate. I just saw your latest title. What's with all these desaturated shooters? Desaturated shooters, my filthy little urchin, sell. Or in your case, flop. I saw the numbers in your last title. You mean the numbers which said it out-sold your entire back catalog by a factor of a thousand? No, man, whatever. At least we're doing something new, and we're doing it probably for a 20th of the budget of your title. Okay, well And if you ever get a budget, Sonny Jim, you'll be making first-person shooters like the rest of us real developers. Oh, real developers? Is that what you are now? You're a real developer? So, what does that make you, guys? It makes you bedroom coders on your Sinclair Spectrum.

Guys! Thank you. Okay, well, you get the idea. This sort of conversation is occurring pretty regularly in the game industry, and though hyperbolic, parts of it are rooted in truth. Thing is, the indie scene doesn't have a great track record when it comes to sales, and whenever something does sell, a segment of the community tends to go into clone overdrive. Just look at the App Store. And really, the indie community is often driven to innovate by its lack of resources as much as by any particular urge toward innovation. Indie developers work within much greater constraints, which requires ingenuity. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that the advances they make are often not as polished as they might otherwise have been. On the flip side, the major publishers and AAA studios are often more concerned with guaranteeing a good game, rather than aiming to make a great game. Even if a AAA title is just good, it will likely make a profit, and we're talking about big numbers here. So, even a small percentage positive return is significant. Besides, when AAA games bomb, they really, really bomb.

That means a lot of money, or more charitably, a lot of jobs. This means that a responsible AAA studio will try to mitigate risk, and one way to do that is simply to emulate things that are popular. We gamers may whine about it, but copying what's already popular helps to keep the books in the black. But for all the weaknesses each side of the industry has, they also have their strengths. Many members of the indie community are genuinely interested in moving the medium forward, and the constraints they work under can help to generate some brilliant ideas. They're also very rugged. They get more done in less time and on a smaller budget than any other group of developers you will find anywhere. And as for the AAA studios, well, some great works simply require a big budget. The Sistine Chapel wasn't cheap, neither were The Godfather movies. Without the AAA industry and the enormous budgets it commands, we wouldn't have our Final Fantasies or Fallouts, our Grand Thefts or our Call of Duty's. I don't care how many of these games you may personally like or dislike, not having these titles would be a profound loss for the gaming medium. Besides, not all art is about innovation. The AAA community are

masters of polish. They take diamonds in the rough and reveal their true potential. Without the attentive eye of all those designers, artists, and programmers, many great ideas would be left to languish in a half-finished state. All right, so now that we've covered the pros and cons of both sides of the industry, we can get to my point. If you look at any other entertainment industry, you'll see that they have found an answer to this divide. All the major publishers have established indie branches. Fox has its Searchlight Pictures, Sony Music has its Red Distribution arm. So, why haven't we tried this? Why isn't there an EA indie or Activision Independent Publishing Group? Bringing these two sides of the industry together would solve multiple problems. Number one, one of the biggest drawbacks to indie development is that it lacks support. Sure, indie developers have accomplished some amazing things on those limited resources, but at the same time, it really hampers their ability to create a polished product and get it to a large audience. Having the distribution channels, marketing, funding, quality control groups of a major publisher on their side, that'd be a huge help. Number two, innovation's a big risk for AAA studios,

but not for indies. Having an indie publishing arm would allow AAA developers to safely test the waters at low cost and only commit large investments toward the innovations that prove themselves worthwhile. Number three, what's better for the consumer is, in the end, better for the industry. Besides the cred a publisher would get for putting out all those innovative games, an indie publishing arm would provide some titles to fill those post-holiday doldrums. And, like with other entertainment industries, a publisher could easily play up its successes while letting the failures vanish into obscurity. Much like the way Fox played up its discovery of Slumdog Millionaire and Juno, but let Fat Girls quietly slide into the Searchlight catalog. But, how could we go about putting this idea into practice? Well, James has been working on it, and he's come up with some guidelines. It's a bit too long to read it all here, but I'll hit you with some bullet points. One, the most important part of making this a viable business model is making sure the publisher gets total ownership of everything the indie branch publishes, allowing them to hand the successful

ideas to their main AAA team so they can run with it. Indies, I know that idea really hurts, but this is the trade-off for having the funding to get the job done right. Two, the indie branch must have room to breathe and create. AAA publishers, make sure you are helping them to accomplish their goals. Otherwise, you squash the creative spark you brought them in for in the first place. These are their ideas, not yours. Three, the industry tradition of only hiring experienced people isn't going to cut it here. You want to find the best indie teams? See what they can get done. Have them bring in a prototype. If it shows promise, give them a milestone to hit, something difficult but achievable. If they pull it off without cutting too many corners, then bring them on board and give them some money to work with. Four, keep these indie project budgets aggressive and tight. These guys are here for the love of the medium, not the salary. You want them lean and hungry, working hard for that big percentage you'll give them when they make you a hit. There's a lot of other great stuff here, but we're running out of time. If you want to read James's plan in greater detail, I'll post a link. Innovation is

something that our industry needs, but the current system isn't built to deliver it on a mass scale. Bringing the indie and the AAA sides of the industry together would allow us to leverage the virtues and reap the rewards of both. We've got the chocolate and the peanut butter right here. Let's mix them up already. See you next week. Oh, real developers. Is that what you are now? You're a real developers. So, what does that make us? It makes you bedroom coders on your Sinclair Spectrums. Let me tell you this, the industry was founded on bedroom coders. Well, America was founded on pilgrims. It doesn't make it the way to continue forwards. I think we come back. That was pretty good, actually.