Game Industry Thoughts
by Geoff Beckstrom · 02/10/2012 (12:45 pm) · 12 comments
So I have been quiet thus far my first 4 months here at GarageGames. I started the last week of September and dived right into final edits of the Torque 3D 1.2 FPS Tutorial and then went to updating (while learning on the fly) the iTorque 2D and Torque 2D documentation and then working with Dexter on education releases. There is still A LOT to do and with the help of Mich and Richard I am feeling much more at home and excited to tackle first rate documentation for all of GarageGames' engines.
I am not a Video Game Industry insider. I spent 5 years in the US Army as a 97Bravo counterintelligence agent. I specialized as an interrogator and a Japanese linguist (yes I speak fluent Japanese). After my time in the military I worked for a small e-learning company that survived on a large production contract with Dell Computers but ultimately went bankrupt after 6 years due to financial mismanagement (details and names removed to protect the guilty).
I spent the last 3 years working as an e-learning and instructional design consultant doing contract work. The diversity of the work is what I enjoyed the most, I had contracts with a Forex investment brokerage, a network marketing company, and a company that did after school chess lessons for kids in Atlanta. But the 90 hour work weeks and no health insurance for my young family that I enjoyed......not so much. After 8 years of living in Utah both my wife and I were ready to move to a larger and warmer city.
When I saw an ad for a Video Game engine production company looking for a Technical Writer with instructional design experience - in Las Vegas no less - I jumped at the chance and I hope that GG is as happy with me as I have been with GG so far.
Anyway - that's a quick background - from time to time I plan to give my thoughts on the Video Game Industry as I see it as someone new to the industry.
So unless you have been living under a rock (or locked into a Pandora blasting, caffeine driven game coding session for the last 48 hours) you have heard about Double Fine's Kick Starter offer asking for $400,000 to fund the development and filming a documentary for a new click based adventure game.
My thoughts are mixed on this. I played the Space Quest series while growing up and truly enjoy the click based adventure genre. I am happy to pledge $15 to basically 'pre-buy' the game and to have access to the Beta and the private discussion forums. I also think it is a positive for the economy in general and the video game industry specifically that as of this writing more than $1.4 million has been raised from over 39,000 people, over 3X's the original goal, in just a couple of days.
On the flip side I have some concerns. I don't blame Double Fine at all, Tim Schafer has broken the traditional model of funding a new game and given his business a significant amount of press and attention. But I worry that smaller and quite honestly more deserving projects are going to get lost in what will become a rush of middle sized, already well funded studios, and game developers running to Kick Starter to do a similar project and publicity stunt.
What I would love to see is for Kick Starter to create some sort of tiered system, based on company size, valuation, previous releases, etc and give some specific highlighting to what would be otherwise ignored projects. For example, Double Fine, would be a Tier 2 or Tier 3 project based on the size and valuation of the studio and anyone who wanted to pledge funds would have to first pledge a specific amount to a smaller Tier 1 project.
I realize this isn't a perfect solution and has its own inherent problems but Kick Starter needs to decide what its mission is going to be. Are they simply a for-profit site that will take a fee for raising capital for mid size studio projects or are they committed to helping "tens of thousands of amazing people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields."?
Those are my thoughts - what do you have to say?
I am not a Video Game Industry insider. I spent 5 years in the US Army as a 97Bravo counterintelligence agent. I specialized as an interrogator and a Japanese linguist (yes I speak fluent Japanese). After my time in the military I worked for a small e-learning company that survived on a large production contract with Dell Computers but ultimately went bankrupt after 6 years due to financial mismanagement (details and names removed to protect the guilty).
I spent the last 3 years working as an e-learning and instructional design consultant doing contract work. The diversity of the work is what I enjoyed the most, I had contracts with a Forex investment brokerage, a network marketing company, and a company that did after school chess lessons for kids in Atlanta. But the 90 hour work weeks and no health insurance for my young family that I enjoyed......not so much. After 8 years of living in Utah both my wife and I were ready to move to a larger and warmer city.
When I saw an ad for a Video Game engine production company looking for a Technical Writer with instructional design experience - in Las Vegas no less - I jumped at the chance and I hope that GG is as happy with me as I have been with GG so far.
Anyway - that's a quick background - from time to time I plan to give my thoughts on the Video Game Industry as I see it as someone new to the industry.
So unless you have been living under a rock (or locked into a Pandora blasting, caffeine driven game coding session for the last 48 hours) you have heard about Double Fine's Kick Starter offer asking for $400,000 to fund the development and filming a documentary for a new click based adventure game.
My thoughts are mixed on this. I played the Space Quest series while growing up and truly enjoy the click based adventure genre. I am happy to pledge $15 to basically 'pre-buy' the game and to have access to the Beta and the private discussion forums. I also think it is a positive for the economy in general and the video game industry specifically that as of this writing more than $1.4 million has been raised from over 39,000 people, over 3X's the original goal, in just a couple of days.
On the flip side I have some concerns. I don't blame Double Fine at all, Tim Schafer has broken the traditional model of funding a new game and given his business a significant amount of press and attention. But I worry that smaller and quite honestly more deserving projects are going to get lost in what will become a rush of middle sized, already well funded studios, and game developers running to Kick Starter to do a similar project and publicity stunt.
What I would love to see is for Kick Starter to create some sort of tiered system, based on company size, valuation, previous releases, etc and give some specific highlighting to what would be otherwise ignored projects. For example, Double Fine, would be a Tier 2 or Tier 3 project based on the size and valuation of the studio and anyone who wanted to pledge funds would have to first pledge a specific amount to a smaller Tier 1 project.
I realize this isn't a perfect solution and has its own inherent problems but Kick Starter needs to decide what its mission is going to be. Are they simply a for-profit site that will take a fee for raising capital for mid size studio projects or are they committed to helping "tens of thousands of amazing people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields."?
Those are my thoughts - what do you have to say?
About the author
Las Vegas studio director and operations manager.
#2
02/11/2012 (12:45 am)
i am no.2 
#3
02/11/2012 (10:26 am)
Quote:I specialized as an interrogatorJust wondering, as per your job description, was your work simplified by the lastest administrations pro torture stances?
#4
02/11/2012 (12:00 pm)
:) A common question Novack. I was never involved with any "enhanced interrogation" unless you consider forcing someone to listen to Brittany Spears for 24 continuous hours and sleep deprivation torture. 
#5
02/11/2012 (10:47 pm)
Yeah that's torture for sure, lol. 
#6
Being forced to listen to Britney Spears for any length of time should be considered torture ;)
02/12/2012 (8:56 am)
Quote:unless you consider forcing someone to listen to Brittany Spears for 24 continuous hours and sleep deprivation torture
Being forced to listen to Britney Spears for any length of time should be considered torture ;)
#7
Oh dear God! What has our military complex become?! That is truly diabolical!
BTW, "enhanced interrogation" would that include being forced to watch this: Evil Youtube Video
02/12/2012 (2:34 pm)
@Geoff,Oh dear God! What has our military complex become?! That is truly diabolical!
BTW, "enhanced interrogation" would that include being forced to watch this: Evil Youtube Video
#8
I guess I am completely clueless on this game industry topic. Do you see this source of funding for projects radically changing the landscape?
02/13/2012 (1:04 pm)
@Geoff,I guess I am completely clueless on this game industry topic. Do you see this source of funding for projects radically changing the landscape?
#9
I am not sure. It is certainly noteworthy and it does say that for the right names and the right presentation there is a demand. The total is now up to $1.7 million and 49,000 backers (an average pledge of $34.85) the pace has slowed significantly since the first 48 hours.
In my original post I stated that I think the change would be more to KickStarter.com than to the video game industry and it is interesting to me that the DoubleFine project is not listed on the home page kickstarter.com or the main project page at www.kickstarter.com/discover. KickStarter is not using this as a way to bring more attention to themselves as much as I thought they would.
Here is an interesting article about the budgets of video games - www.cinemablend.com/games/Tim-Schafer-Compares-Past-Video-Game-Budgets-Current-B...
So will it "radically" change the landscape of funding independent video game projects? Probably not. But it will be fun to watch.
02/13/2012 (1:16 pm)
@Frank,I am not sure. It is certainly noteworthy and it does say that for the right names and the right presentation there is a demand. The total is now up to $1.7 million and 49,000 backers (an average pledge of $34.85) the pace has slowed significantly since the first 48 hours.
In my original post I stated that I think the change would be more to KickStarter.com than to the video game industry and it is interesting to me that the DoubleFine project is not listed on the home page kickstarter.com or the main project page at www.kickstarter.com/discover. KickStarter is not using this as a way to bring more attention to themselves as much as I thought they would.
Here is an interesting article about the budgets of video games - www.cinemablend.com/games/Tim-Schafer-Compares-Past-Video-Game-Budgets-Current-B...
So will it "radically" change the landscape of funding independent video game projects? Probably not. But it will be fun to watch.
#10
It really depends upon how the funding applied. Independent game development ceases to be independent when backers dictate content or design.
For instance, I would not want to develop a title related to the Star Wars universe as there would be significant dictation on what could be in the game and could not be in the game. That is understandable as the trademark owners of that brand have significant investment involved.
I wonder how this would play out in the long run for people donating to these game development funds. If someone were to come out with a "kill <some group>" game or a "be an apostle of Jesus" game would there be backlash? How independent is the funding going to be? It certainly will be interesting to how it all pans out. Is there an agreement to pay back a percentage to the fund for game profits? That would be another interesting twist. If properly handled it could create a self building fund.
02/13/2012 (3:00 pm)
@Geoff,It really depends upon how the funding applied. Independent game development ceases to be independent when backers dictate content or design.
For instance, I would not want to develop a title related to the Star Wars universe as there would be significant dictation on what could be in the game and could not be in the game. That is understandable as the trademark owners of that brand have significant investment involved.
I wonder how this would play out in the long run for people donating to these game development funds. If someone were to come out with a "kill <some group>" game or a "be an apostle of Jesus" game would there be backlash? How independent is the funding going to be? It certainly will be interesting to how it all pans out. Is there an agreement to pay back a percentage to the fund for game profits? That would be another interesting twist. If properly handled it could create a self building fund.
#11
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/suckerfreegames/dungeons-the-eye-of-draconus
02/23/2012 (7:27 pm)
I did Kickstarter a bit ago, still working on the game in fact! It was a big help at filling our budget shortfall.http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/suckerfreegames/dungeons-the-eye-of-draconus
#12
It is just like Kickstarter but for games.
02/29/2012 (9:09 am)
There is a new site for Indie Game crowd funding about to go online in time for GDC. I can't tell you the URL yet because it is secret and will be announced in a press release during all the GDC events.It is just like Kickstarter but for games.
Torque Owner Glenn Thomas
Well I want to congratulate you on your success with garagegames, I sure it's an awesome place to work. I too was in Japan for about 4 years. I was an F-16 Crew Chief with the 14th FS in Misawa. I loved it out there but I'm far from fluent.
Another thing, congrats on the big leap as well, I debating between Vegas and Phoenix right now. I used to work with THQ and have a lot of industry friends in Phoenix or Vegas where the economy is about the same and I get a fresh start. I buying a house in one of those spots!