Fri 23 Jul 2004
Just read the news on EA’s montrous revenues and profits. They cleared $24million of profit just in Q1 (on $432 of total sales for the quarter)! They expect to haul in $3billion+ for the year. Wow, that’s big business - congrats to them.
Yet, despite EA’s meteoric success, can we say that the overall game industry ecosystem is healthy? I don’t think so.
The “starving artists” that make up the majority of the indie game dev scene must pain to see this kind of news. Never mind that fact that EA has gone on the record as saying the small guys won’t survive…
It is ironic timing that there’s a big feature article at Gamasutra talking about the plight of indies (and how GarageGames is here to help). Certainly, a lot has been said about the indie sector, and its viability. Even news on those bucking the trend and companies specifically supporting the independent sector.
Yet, you’d think that EA would be willing to “donate” some of those massive profits into the indie scene. Perhaps they could fund an indie festival or contest (like the IGF). Perhaps offer grants to indie developers working on wacky, far out there projects. Maybe invest into a company like GarageGames, with no strings attached. Maybe fund a group of veteran developers for a year just to mess around with stuff, with no actual demand to produce something shippable. Or, fund stuff like the IndieGameJam or Experimental Gameplay Workshop. Hell, why not start an Experimental Gameplay Fund, or foundation!
(To be fair, EA’s $8million funding of USC is very commendable. And, in all honesty, I don’t know if they are doing any of the stuff (or similar) I mention above.)
Anyway, other media/entertainment industries have realized long ago that they need the indie/underground/fringe scene to keep things fresh, to inspire and to reinvigorate the mainstream. As game design guru Eric Zimmerman often says, “the game industry is all center and no margins”. Other industries have found ways to support the margins and make it viable to avoid the starving artist syndrome (eg, think indie record labels or movie studios that are funded by the mainstream guys, etc). What was margin in the music industry a few years back is now part of the mainstream (Moby style electronica comes to mind)… The cycle continues.
The current condition of the game ecosystem is such that the margins are not (yet) viable and as such the center continues to become ever more narrow (witnessed by the usual complaints of risk aversion and games that suck).
(As a counter point to indies being the font of innovation, some would question the commonly held belief that innovation can only come from the indie scene…)
So, what can be done to save the ecosystem?
July 26th, 2004 at 2:03 pm
Maybe if there was some public body of top end developers who could review and then vouch on the public forum for certain games they like. There are people in the industry that the media will listen to and maybe with these people saying “this game is great, check it out!” then the media will give indie’s some attention. The only way to compete with money is with clout. Like it or not it seem to me that if your publisher has a lot of money and gives media breaks on stories then your game is getting heavy press, usually better then the game deserves. Now, the mass public doesn’t seem to know that there are better games out there, maybe a game like Doom waiting to be played!
July 30th, 2004 at 1:18 am
Our frozen city is host once a year to the Sundance Film Festival and associated sub-festivals, such as SlamDance and numerous imitators. This post of Jason’s got me thinking - I’ve watched Sundance go from being a pure, somewhat rebellious indie festival to the big studios’ wapati hunting ground for the next Blair Witch that it is today. So how do/did those indie films get funded?
Certainly the way many start-up indie game studios fund their projects: sweat and credit card debt from passionate people. But indie filmmakers also have grants available through the NEA and private arts grants. Many film students are able to lay the groundwork for their projects using the resources afforded by their universities. And indie filmmakers are by nature master networkers - they have to be.
It seems to me the indie game scene is missing a couple of these elements. First, games aren’t recognized as a canonical “art form,” so the whole machinery of funding for the arts - flawed as it is - is closed to indie game architects. Second, while we’re seeing more and more interest from major universities in creating programs to train future game studio employees in individual disciplines, how many of them are teaching “Game Making” holistically, the way filmmaking is taught? That sort of approach, it seems to me, would better equip visionary indie game makers with the skills successful indie film directors are forced to develop: the ability to network, find workarounds for the hurdles big studios simply pay to leap, and collaborate with like-minded talents to help one another find what’s needed to see their individual projects to completion.
I’d love to see EA plow some of those profits into a Sundance for indie games in the future. Or better yet, wouldn’t it be cool to see such a venue created the way Sundance was launched by Robert Redford? That is, as the brainchild of an individual such as John Carmack, George Broussard, Tim Sweeney, et al; who’ve made their fortunes starting from indie roots, and love the art form so much they want to create a showcase for work that takes risks?
The .plan file version of my two cents, then, is that the game industry should be paying more attention to a struggle that early filmmakers had to fight and comic book creators are still fighting: game making is art, and it deserves to be studied, nurtured, celebrated, criticized, and taught as such.
CS
August 15th, 2004 at 12:23 am
As an indie game developer, I agree with you. And moreover, as a game academic, I agree doubly: I’d love to see companies with massive profits fund more long-term academic research programs. And, to be sure, I’ve done my share of complaining about margins, risk aversion, etc.
But, I think it comes down to this: indie developers have to find ways to make the market work within their own business constraints. We need to build new independent distribution strategies, use and support alternative platforms, support one another, and share our results. There is a market for more than the EAs are willing to pursue, and I’m still hopeful that there are ways to pursue it without the support of the big guns.