A new era in game development?
by Flybynight Studios · 07/28/2008 (8:57 pm) · 17 comments
The dawn of a new era in entertainment software?
While making my rounds of all of the game development sites this year I noticed a rather intresting trend. Failure. Or was it failure? Big software launches like "Vanguard:Saga of Heros", "Hellgate: London" and most recently "Age of Conan:Hyborian Adventures" all fell flat on their face and are in deep trouble fiscally. Sigil, the producers of Vanguard went bankrupt and sold their intrests in the game to Sony Online who immeadiately screamed foul and claimed they had been sold a lemon. Hellgate is simply going to stop being supported and is only alive till the servers go down. Conan, even after selling over 700k copies according to developer Funcom has sparked dismal reviews almost rivalling Funcom's last epic failure, Anarchy Online. There is that word again, failure...
What is amazing about all of the above noted "failures" is the tremendous amount of money that was thrown at the projects. Each one of those projects had 10s of millions of dollars poured into it that simply vanished as the project foundered due to either bad leadership, bad business practices or bad market research. Well ok some of them were simply poorly written code and design wise and no one wanted to be a part of them. So how can small little indies like Josh at Prairie Games put out a working MMO platform in less than 2 years with barely 2-3 people and yet these massive development companies cant get the job done right with literally five thousand percent more manpower and budget?
Dave Rickey, former lead developer for Mythic Entertainment on "Dark Age of Camelot" and ex-lead developer for the defunct Wish MMO, said in a recent interview that he can see the times are changing for game development. He thinks that the days of the insta massive hits like World of Warcraft and Everquest are over and the big development studios just havent got the memo yet. The people who are getting the message are the small groups of developers with a strong skill pool who are getting together and hammering out some very profitable and small scale niche packages. Dave took this a step further saying that he sees the future of online gaming as small bands of tight knit studios, maybe 4-6 people who all do their job well putting out smaller scale products with a target market of close to 10k subscribers. Why that number? Well first off, 10k subs is a very attainable goal for any software if it's well written and entertaining. Secondly, 10k subs at $15 a month is $150k a month.. 1.8 million a year.. Now I don't know about any of you but I'd be more than happy with a 20% piece of a million a year.
So what does this mean for up and coming software developers? Well apparantly nothing for the "big studios". As Dave said they still arent getting the message and dont understand that big dollar budget doesnt equate to financial success or even a decent product. I think the mainstream may finally be catching on to something us indies have known for years. If they put as much heart and effort into making their products exceptional as the indies do they wouldnt need a 50 million dollar budget to do it and they'd end up with a far more succesful product.
I think the game development industry is changing. Slowly albeit but definitely changing. Lot's of "specialty" studios popping up and making a very good living at selling game assets to "professional" industry projects. Art studios, modelling studios even the music guys are getting in on the action. Here is what I personally see for the future of game development. A project will be undertaken and require a core crossection of coders depending on the platform. Database contractors will be called in to conigure and design the dataflow for the projected needs and then subcontracts will be isued to modelling, art and music studios for assets as required. Keep in mind that the core of the project can be developed without all those things and really just requires the core team of coders. Really when you think about it I cant believe that the game development industry is so far behind the outsourcing groove that society has been thrust into over the past 10 years. Every other faucet of commerce has been affected by outsourcing, why have the game developers been so slow to catch on?
The cool part about the outsourcing of the game development is that it brings the "little guys" into play. People with an exceptional talent in their given field can make a decent living on contract work and studios can save literally 10s (hundreds?) of thousands of dollars by not having to carry a fulltime staff of people that, let's face it, sometimes just dont have the experience to get the job done.
I dont know... Maybe it was the two glasses of wine... Maybe the dwindling six pack that sits before me.. I just think that the investment capital of old is going to be alot harder to come by. I think it's time for the "industry" to stand up and take notice of those of us who are doing this out of sheer passion and determination and perhaps learn a thing or two about how to get the job done without spending millions. Some food for thought.. Dark Age of Camelot was developed in a grand total of 18 months from concept to release with a budget of well under 5 million. Lineage 2 was developed for less than 3 million.... How do companies like Artifact entertainment (Horizons, well over 20 million in Investment money lost before they declared bankruptcy), Sigil games (Vanguard, well over 30 million dollars flushed on this title. I believe at last count MS walked away from an over 20 million investment because they didnt want to be associated with a company that broken and messed up.) and countless others come up with these 10s of millions of dollars and have nothing more to show than a broken down product that doesnt work? When it gets down to brass tacks it's really almost criminal isn't it?
Food for thought indeed.
Mark MacPherson
Aakrana: The Forgotten Lands
While making my rounds of all of the game development sites this year I noticed a rather intresting trend. Failure. Or was it failure? Big software launches like "Vanguard:Saga of Heros", "Hellgate: London" and most recently "Age of Conan:Hyborian Adventures" all fell flat on their face and are in deep trouble fiscally. Sigil, the producers of Vanguard went bankrupt and sold their intrests in the game to Sony Online who immeadiately screamed foul and claimed they had been sold a lemon. Hellgate is simply going to stop being supported and is only alive till the servers go down. Conan, even after selling over 700k copies according to developer Funcom has sparked dismal reviews almost rivalling Funcom's last epic failure, Anarchy Online. There is that word again, failure...
What is amazing about all of the above noted "failures" is the tremendous amount of money that was thrown at the projects. Each one of those projects had 10s of millions of dollars poured into it that simply vanished as the project foundered due to either bad leadership, bad business practices or bad market research. Well ok some of them were simply poorly written code and design wise and no one wanted to be a part of them. So how can small little indies like Josh at Prairie Games put out a working MMO platform in less than 2 years with barely 2-3 people and yet these massive development companies cant get the job done right with literally five thousand percent more manpower and budget?
Dave Rickey, former lead developer for Mythic Entertainment on "Dark Age of Camelot" and ex-lead developer for the defunct Wish MMO, said in a recent interview that he can see the times are changing for game development. He thinks that the days of the insta massive hits like World of Warcraft and Everquest are over and the big development studios just havent got the memo yet. The people who are getting the message are the small groups of developers with a strong skill pool who are getting together and hammering out some very profitable and small scale niche packages. Dave took this a step further saying that he sees the future of online gaming as small bands of tight knit studios, maybe 4-6 people who all do their job well putting out smaller scale products with a target market of close to 10k subscribers. Why that number? Well first off, 10k subs is a very attainable goal for any software if it's well written and entertaining. Secondly, 10k subs at $15 a month is $150k a month.. 1.8 million a year.. Now I don't know about any of you but I'd be more than happy with a 20% piece of a million a year.
So what does this mean for up and coming software developers? Well apparantly nothing for the "big studios". As Dave said they still arent getting the message and dont understand that big dollar budget doesnt equate to financial success or even a decent product. I think the mainstream may finally be catching on to something us indies have known for years. If they put as much heart and effort into making their products exceptional as the indies do they wouldnt need a 50 million dollar budget to do it and they'd end up with a far more succesful product.
I think the game development industry is changing. Slowly albeit but definitely changing. Lot's of "specialty" studios popping up and making a very good living at selling game assets to "professional" industry projects. Art studios, modelling studios even the music guys are getting in on the action. Here is what I personally see for the future of game development. A project will be undertaken and require a core crossection of coders depending on the platform. Database contractors will be called in to conigure and design the dataflow for the projected needs and then subcontracts will be isued to modelling, art and music studios for assets as required. Keep in mind that the core of the project can be developed without all those things and really just requires the core team of coders. Really when you think about it I cant believe that the game development industry is so far behind the outsourcing groove that society has been thrust into over the past 10 years. Every other faucet of commerce has been affected by outsourcing, why have the game developers been so slow to catch on?
The cool part about the outsourcing of the game development is that it brings the "little guys" into play. People with an exceptional talent in their given field can make a decent living on contract work and studios can save literally 10s (hundreds?) of thousands of dollars by not having to carry a fulltime staff of people that, let's face it, sometimes just dont have the experience to get the job done.
I dont know... Maybe it was the two glasses of wine... Maybe the dwindling six pack that sits before me.. I just think that the investment capital of old is going to be alot harder to come by. I think it's time for the "industry" to stand up and take notice of those of us who are doing this out of sheer passion and determination and perhaps learn a thing or two about how to get the job done without spending millions. Some food for thought.. Dark Age of Camelot was developed in a grand total of 18 months from concept to release with a budget of well under 5 million. Lineage 2 was developed for less than 3 million.... How do companies like Artifact entertainment (Horizons, well over 20 million in Investment money lost before they declared bankruptcy), Sigil games (Vanguard, well over 30 million dollars flushed on this title. I believe at last count MS walked away from an over 20 million investment because they didnt want to be associated with a company that broken and messed up.) and countless others come up with these 10s of millions of dollars and have nothing more to show than a broken down product that doesnt work? When it gets down to brass tacks it's really almost criminal isn't it?
Food for thought indeed.
Mark MacPherson
Aakrana: The Forgotten Lands
About the author
#3
07/29/2008 (3:00 am)
Interesting article although I just wondered where you got your information on conan, I did a very quick look and from what I can see I was under the impression it was doing well (at least for a start) and the reviews seem pretty good overall according to metacritic www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/ageofconanhyborianadventures? 
#4
Anarchy Online has been up since at least 2001, and you're comparing that to Vanguard (which wasn't ever up) and Hellgate (which albeit still up, probably won't for too long). Funcom never laid off most of their employees, and there's a reason they had the money to develop Conan - yes, their mobile games division and Anarchy Online brought in the cash.
07/29/2008 (3:34 am)
You're exagurating a bit too much to make a point, IMO.Anarchy Online has been up since at least 2001, and you're comparing that to Vanguard (which wasn't ever up) and Hellgate (which albeit still up, probably won't for too long). Funcom never laid off most of their employees, and there's a reason they had the money to develop Conan - yes, their mobile games division and Anarchy Online brought in the cash.
#5
Huh? Yes it was...
07/29/2008 (4:52 am)
Quote:and you're comparing that to Vanguard (which wasn't ever up)
Huh? Yes it was...
#6
By the way, Vanguard has been "up" for over a year and is recovering nicely under SoEs direction. (Which is bloody amazing considering their track record.)
Sorry if I offended anyone, the opinion in my blogs are my own obviously and I have no problem standing by what I write. Not saying I'm the last word in game development, I simply was conveying a perception regarding the industry that I hope will come to pass fully in the next few years.
Peace.
07/29/2008 (6:31 am)
The point of the blog is more about the 10s of millions of dollors lost on "mainstream" projects but I do not feel there was a significant ammount of exageration to make the point. Vanguard released and failed miserably to teh point the company went belly up 3 months in. Anarchy online was THE single worst released product in the history of online gaming by all accounts. It now subsists on a free to play subscriber base with small pay to play expansions. Funcom stock dropped by over 50% in the first 2 months of release of AoC and the game has been hurt significantly by the unstable client, memory leaks and wild, flailing nerfs. Well I do not proclaim to know the inner workings of Funcoms financial status, it is clear by the ingame server populations that player retention has been brutally low and moral of the remaining playerbase is low. Perhaps "fail" is a strong word for AoC seeing as it claims over 700k sold boxes but the next quarterly report for Funcom will tell the tale I believe.By the way, Vanguard has been "up" for over a year and is recovering nicely under SoEs direction. (Which is bloody amazing considering their track record.)
Sorry if I offended anyone, the opinion in my blogs are my own obviously and I have no problem standing by what I write. Not saying I'm the last word in game development, I simply was conveying a perception regarding the industry that I hope will come to pass fully in the next few years.
Peace.
#8
They released a game that was pretty solid in terms of playability and had *lots* of stuff for the player to do at release. Plus there were hundreds of thousands of fans of Warcraft waiting eagerly for the product.
Vanguard and Conan both had tons of potential, but at release they were buggy and felt "unfinished" to a lot of people. I played WoW, Vanguard and Conan all on release day and I can tell you there are worlds of difference between WoW and the other two. It's no wonder that WoW took off and the other two are foundering.
Sure they can turn it around, but if you have a bad release, it's really hard to overcome.
But your points about the potential for indie development are right - this is a great time to be an indie. There is a lot of free or ultra-low-cost software out there that allows the indie developer to get a quality game up and running. All you need is time and talent... wonder where I could buy equal parts of those :)
07/29/2008 (6:40 am)
WoW was an "instahit" because of two things. Quality product at release, and the Blizzard/Warcraft name.They released a game that was pretty solid in terms of playability and had *lots* of stuff for the player to do at release. Plus there were hundreds of thousands of fans of Warcraft waiting eagerly for the product.
Vanguard and Conan both had tons of potential, but at release they were buggy and felt "unfinished" to a lot of people. I played WoW, Vanguard and Conan all on release day and I can tell you there are worlds of difference between WoW and the other two. It's no wonder that WoW took off and the other two are foundering.
Sure they can turn it around, but if you have a bad release, it's really hard to overcome.
But your points about the potential for indie development are right - this is a great time to be an indie. There is a lot of free or ultra-low-cost software out there that allows the indie developer to get a quality game up and running. All you need is time and talent... wonder where I could buy equal parts of those :)
#9
1) It's not new.
This is not the result of a "new era". The very first MMORPG was...c'mon, name that game. Not UO. ;) It was a much smaller game, called Meridian59, which crashed and burned, and was fairly recently resurrected. Then we had success from UO, AC1, EQ, and DAOC - but Anarchy Online and WW2 Online were EPIC failures. Strings of failures are nothing new in this business. What is new, perhaps, is the scale of those failures. NCSoft reportedly spent $105 million US$ on Tabula Rasa. Last I heard, they had about 40k players at this point, which based on industry averages means profits of about $2.4 million per year. At that rate, if the game somehow stays up for five years, they will lose over NINETY MILLION DOLLARS. With other games being kicked out for tens of millions, and failing to perform well, we're seeing similar but less dramatic fates.
WHY? Why these huge budgets? Producers are confused about what players want. In no small part, this is because what reviewers look at (oooooh, shiny!) and what players want (oooooh, fun!) are two totally different things. Shiny costs money, and lots of it. So in the race to get good reviews and awards, developers pour ever increasing budgets into art. Often without adequately checking to be sure the game is actually FUN.
2) There will NEVER be another WOW; the era of big games is over.
Well, we really already know that's not true. ;) WOW's not the biggest MMOG anymore. If you count Habbo Hotel, it has over ten times the number of registered users WOW does, and there's numerous other "little free games" that totally blow WOW's numbers away, even if you just compare unique users who play per month (more reasonable basis for comparison that total users!).
But WOW's still the biggest subscription games out there. And probably the most profitable, too. Right now, producers of new games are constantly striving for the same level of success. Which is utterly futile.
It's not futile because a hit like EQ or WOW will never happen again; it's futile because you cannot predict that level of success. An experienced person can say "ah, that will sell - we can make that work". But no one can predict the Harry Potters, Worlds of Warcraft, Pokemons, or Hannah Montanas. The ultra-hits. For everything that makes that ultra-hit level, thousands don't even come close. Trying to achieve that is futile, but not terrible.
BANKING on achieving that is suicide.
And that's what Tabula Rasa did. They banked on being the next WOW. With $105m spent, they would have needed to average over 300,000 players just to break even at the five year mark - no profit, just break even. Most subscription games don't get that many players. Gambling that you will is not good business. You can't bank on being a hit - it's just too random. Build your business idea around being a *success*. Remember, there have been numerous very profitable games with under 100k players. ATITD, with about 3k, makes a nice above-industry-average wage for the few people working on it.
07/29/2008 (7:49 am)
I agree with most of the blog; and it's certainly an interesting read. Couple of places where my opinions differ:1) It's not new.
This is not the result of a "new era". The very first MMORPG was...c'mon, name that game. Not UO. ;) It was a much smaller game, called Meridian59, which crashed and burned, and was fairly recently resurrected. Then we had success from UO, AC1, EQ, and DAOC - but Anarchy Online and WW2 Online were EPIC failures. Strings of failures are nothing new in this business. What is new, perhaps, is the scale of those failures. NCSoft reportedly spent $105 million US$ on Tabula Rasa. Last I heard, they had about 40k players at this point, which based on industry averages means profits of about $2.4 million per year. At that rate, if the game somehow stays up for five years, they will lose over NINETY MILLION DOLLARS. With other games being kicked out for tens of millions, and failing to perform well, we're seeing similar but less dramatic fates.
WHY? Why these huge budgets? Producers are confused about what players want. In no small part, this is because what reviewers look at (oooooh, shiny!) and what players want (oooooh, fun!) are two totally different things. Shiny costs money, and lots of it. So in the race to get good reviews and awards, developers pour ever increasing budgets into art. Often without adequately checking to be sure the game is actually FUN.
2) There will NEVER be another WOW; the era of big games is over.
Well, we really already know that's not true. ;) WOW's not the biggest MMOG anymore. If you count Habbo Hotel, it has over ten times the number of registered users WOW does, and there's numerous other "little free games" that totally blow WOW's numbers away, even if you just compare unique users who play per month (more reasonable basis for comparison that total users!).
But WOW's still the biggest subscription games out there. And probably the most profitable, too. Right now, producers of new games are constantly striving for the same level of success. Which is utterly futile.
It's not futile because a hit like EQ or WOW will never happen again; it's futile because you cannot predict that level of success. An experienced person can say "ah, that will sell - we can make that work". But no one can predict the Harry Potters, Worlds of Warcraft, Pokemons, or Hannah Montanas. The ultra-hits. For everything that makes that ultra-hit level, thousands don't even come close. Trying to achieve that is futile, but not terrible.
BANKING on achieving that is suicide.
And that's what Tabula Rasa did. They banked on being the next WOW. With $105m spent, they would have needed to average over 300,000 players just to break even at the five year mark - no profit, just break even. Most subscription games don't get that many players. Gambling that you will is not good business. You can't bank on being a hit - it's just too random. Build your business idea around being a *success*. Remember, there have been numerous very profitable games with under 100k players. ATITD, with about 3k, makes a nice above-industry-average wage for the few people working on it.
#10
I guess the bottom line is I've never bought into the mentality that more expensive = better. Sometimes the best things in life are free :)
07/29/2008 (8:53 am)
Wow I totally missed out on including Tabula Rasa yeah sorry that was probably the MOST epic fail in recent years. Thanks for posting that. It truely blows my mind that these projects get that kind of money based on what? A "gut instinct" that they are going to "rock the house"? Really mind boggling. IMO Richard Garriott is an arse though. The Ultima games were awesome but his ego was really something else.I guess the bottom line is I've never bought into the mentality that more expensive = better. Sometimes the best things in life are free :)
#11
On the subject of MMOs, anyone heard anything about Huxley? Thats shaping up to be something a bit off center (in a good way) so thats the next game thats likely going to disappoint me :)
07/29/2008 (9:25 am)
I think the main problem with Tabula Rasa and hence its ultimate failure was that it simply didn't actually do what it was said to do. I'm not even talking in a marketing hype kind of way (no hyped game is as good as it is said to be) but with TR they simply lied. They specifically stated it wasn't grind based etc; anyone ever played it? It is grind based as per most of the current gen of MMOs. Really frustrated me big-time!On the subject of MMOs, anyone heard anything about Huxley? Thats shaping up to be something a bit off center (in a good way) so thats the next game thats likely going to disappoint me :)
#12
About outsourcing though, the game dev industry IS using outsourcing, just changed the name: middleware. You have middleware for almost any piede of code you would ever need to do your game.
07/29/2008 (11:19 am)
Interesting reading.About outsourcing though, the game dev industry IS using outsourcing, just changed the name: middleware. You have middleware for almost any piede of code you would ever need to do your game.
#13
Middleware is all over the place and has been for years but I think the point to be taken away from this is that if big budget game projects HAD gone to a professional outsourcing studio for their 3D modelling, artwork, 2D assets, network layer, database engine etc.. they'd have ended up with a far better product at the end for a fraction of their end budget.
Case and point. DAoC used Net Immerse. Thats why their dev cycle was so short.. (18 months to be exact) Marc Jaccobs is no idiot (although he made some real whack design desicions for the game) and he knew that Net Immerse would save him 10s of thousands of man hours. An easy decision to make for what was at the time a mere $250k or so.
I'm actually at a loss this particular moment for coming up with a triple A MMO title that DID outsource their assets (Not the base game engine. Lots of those out there.) Lot's of smaller groups did it with smaller games etc and that is the whole point of my original post.. Why is it that these massive gaming projects cant get it done for so much less and instead we end up with epic failure after failure. It's almost like the proejcts never intended to do well and were simply put into place to milk the budget and investors of everything they had.
All subjective of course. Perhaps Im merely an eternal pesimist ;)
Cheers.
07/29/2008 (11:35 am)
My point being Novack that alot of the game industry ISNT using outsourcing or middleware.. :) I am not going to split hairs about what constitues midleware etc but the fact is these studios that failed miserably did so trying to "re-invent the wheel" so to speak. Vanguard used their own inhouse technology and staff to develop all of its assets. Bad idea.Middleware is all over the place and has been for years but I think the point to be taken away from this is that if big budget game projects HAD gone to a professional outsourcing studio for their 3D modelling, artwork, 2D assets, network layer, database engine etc.. they'd have ended up with a far better product at the end for a fraction of their end budget.
Case and point. DAoC used Net Immerse. Thats why their dev cycle was so short.. (18 months to be exact) Marc Jaccobs is no idiot (although he made some real whack design desicions for the game) and he knew that Net Immerse would save him 10s of thousands of man hours. An easy decision to make for what was at the time a mere $250k or so.
I'm actually at a loss this particular moment for coming up with a triple A MMO title that DID outsource their assets (Not the base game engine. Lots of those out there.) Lot's of smaller groups did it with smaller games etc and that is the whole point of my original post.. Why is it that these massive gaming projects cant get it done for so much less and instead we end up with epic failure after failure. It's almost like the proejcts never intended to do well and were simply put into place to milk the budget and investors of everything they had.
All subjective of course. Perhaps Im merely an eternal pesimist ;)
Cheers.
#14
07/29/2008 (1:04 pm)
No offence taken :) I'm just stating my opinion on, uh.. your opinion. It was a good read.
#15
But on the flipside of that is that the players involved in the games, will not let it go until something genuinly better comes along, Shadowbane for instance. The community is pretty small for an MMO and the free for all PVP attracted alot of people who then couldn't handle the heat and pissed off, and thus shadowbane stopped making money. While it's not real time combat it's still got quite a devout community which like it because whilst it's not real time and it does still rely on a decent amount of numbers (but what MMORPG doesn't?), there is a decent amount of skill involved and learning to play your toons is pretty key. Anyone who disputes this point in a one on one encounter, fair fight, is obviously blind - this comming from someone who doesn't play it all that often and usually gets my arse kicked, not using the spec toons and all the rest of it, but I geneuinly have a decent time because the community that is there is alright, apart from the fualty people who exist in all MMO's.
I think that's kinda what kills alot of MMO's, is that the user availiability of 'revolutionary idea's' is generally not all that vailiable to people because most of the time they spend the run stroking teir ego's to massive heights saying "oh yeah I'm gonna be so good' and then it comes crashing down around them and instead of adapting they just run back to WOW, which is like the safety net.
07/29/2008 (1:05 pm)
I think it's a shame that the makers of AoC, I havn't played it, but as far as I hear it's incredibly buggy. The thing I think is a shame is that the Combat looked geniuinly fun and original compared to what everyone else was doing apart from planetside. it seems to me that skill based combat for many is kinda out of reach, which is utterly depressing because that means that we'd rather spend hours and hours grinding relentlessly and getting the best armour and numbers, and then hit someone when we know we have the clear advantage, than to actually play a game with any skill. But on the flipside of that is that the players involved in the games, will not let it go until something genuinly better comes along, Shadowbane for instance. The community is pretty small for an MMO and the free for all PVP attracted alot of people who then couldn't handle the heat and pissed off, and thus shadowbane stopped making money. While it's not real time combat it's still got quite a devout community which like it because whilst it's not real time and it does still rely on a decent amount of numbers (but what MMORPG doesn't?), there is a decent amount of skill involved and learning to play your toons is pretty key. Anyone who disputes this point in a one on one encounter, fair fight, is obviously blind - this comming from someone who doesn't play it all that often and usually gets my arse kicked, not using the spec toons and all the rest of it, but I geneuinly have a decent time because the community that is there is alright, apart from the fualty people who exist in all MMO's.
I think that's kinda what kills alot of MMO's, is that the user availiability of 'revolutionary idea's' is generally not all that vailiable to people because most of the time they spend the run stroking teir ego's to massive heights saying "oh yeah I'm gonna be so good' and then it comes crashing down around them and instead of adapting they just run back to WOW, which is like the safety net.
#16
07/29/2008 (1:32 pm)
Quote:Interesting article although I just wondered where you got your information on conan, I did a very quick look and from what I can see I was under the impression it was doing well (at least for a start) and the reviews seem pretty good overall according to metacritic www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/ageofconanhyborianadventures?So, was my impressions of conan wrong or what?
#17
No by outsourcing means doing what we are doing by opening an office in India or china and having you art assets made there for a fraction of the cost that it takes here.
Good read though!
And yeah What kinda retard accountant lets a company invest $105 million on a video game in the first place. Sound like bad management all the way around.
But I'm looking forward to Huxley though!
07/29/2008 (2:30 pm)
@NovackNo by outsourcing means doing what we are doing by opening an office in India or china and having you art assets made there for a fraction of the cost that it takes here.
Good read though!
And yeah What kinda retard accountant lets a company invest $105 million on a video game in the first place. Sound like bad management all the way around.
But I'm looking forward to Huxley though!
Torque Owner Roland Orr
Roland Dynamics
It feels good to be a Indie developer, not being tied to the corporate dollar approach to game development.
I never looked at it from the view of a financial gain anyway. I just want to make a game that people will play and enjoy. If i can get one person to play my game when it is done and totally enjoy the experience, then i succeeded, my game that myself and my team sheeded bloody sweet and tears over was not in vain.
I am not looking for fame and fortune, i am looking to enjoy the process of making a game, and having people enjoy helping me make it and play it.
This is a view that the big game developers and publishers are lacking IMHO. They are failing because they have lost touch with their fan base, and the game players in general. they have lost the passion of the process and are thinking about the end dollar. Well, whoops! Wrong approach. Now your out millions, how sad for you big time game guys. They need to come back down to earth and see the industry for what it wants, not what they THINK it wants.