On the Subject of Money

Random TnA

Back in the day games tended to be developed by gamers, for gamers. It was a nerdy industry, consumed by nerds, and none of them (us) cared. There were good, imaginative, innovative games which we all enjoyed and everything was good. Then, like any sizeable subculture, it began to be groomed and exploited and commercialised by big business. I'd suggest that a great deal of the responsibility lies at Sony's door, because it was really the original Playstation which triggered the transformation of gaming into a fashion, or at least the attempt to expand gaming beyond nerds and into the hands of the regular yahoos.
As a result, games are no longer developed by gamers for gamers, they're produced by corporations for their shareholders. Game development is being driven by anonymous "investors" who quite likely have no interest or experience in gaming, and whose sole focus is to maximise dividends. You don't do that by innovating, or by producing a high quality product for a niche market like authentic flight sims. You do it by churning out derivative, lowest-common-denominator trash which can be mass-produced, in terms of the sheer number of titles that are published, especially when you include sequels. So-called games which require minimal R&D, little development outside of slapping some new levels on an old engine, and end up forced down the throats of mindless console zombies by a bulldozer of marketing.
Or you hitch your pony to whichever social networking or consumer gadget phenomenon is flavour of the week, like Zynga do, and knock out some worthless, bullshit flash games which make next-to-no money per player, but which get played by trillions of Facebook obsessives.

The sad thing is, there's an increasing trend within society to consider that to be the "correct" direction for the industry. To question games that dare to be different because they're "doing it wrong", and "you'll never sell 100 million copies unless you make it simpler" or "you mustn't use that complex, gorgeous engine which will only run maxed-out on a high-end enthusiast PC". Because everyone, apparently, should aspire to be Mark Zuckerberg, and become unfathomably rich by creating something dumb, but glossy and accessible. Ignoring the fact that Facebook's success owes a great deal more to being in the right place at the right time than it does to offering anything particularly clever, innovative or useful.

So what we end up with is a torrent of tedious shooters like Halo, latter-day Call of Duty, or Gears of War, or trivial rhythm action games like Rock Band or Guitar Hero. And then we get their sequels. More and more sequels. Games mostly played by people who don't give a shit about games, but who want to have a laugh with their mates before going out clubbing (or before their mum makes tea). People who would probably be equally impressed by a bit of coloured rag on a stick. Wooo, look at the flappy rag!
And the businesses behind them are unrepentant. Even if they try to excuse their selling out by blaming piracy, or the used games market, or whatever it is this week, the fact is someone waved big bucks in their faces and they sold their souls. I don't blame them, but it sickens me when they try to pretend that they're still working to produce interesting, intelligent games when they can barely speak for all the corporate cock they're busy gobbling, and when the games they actually produce prove otherwise.

Which isn't to say there aren't people out there who would love to be able to go back to the days of pushing boundaries and developing the sorts of games they themselves want to play, and to hell with what some dickhead slouched in front of an xbox with his dickhead mates, or some dickhead reviewing his investment portfolio thinks of it. The problem those people have is that despite the console builders' best efforts to hold it back, technology has advanced to the point where it's simply not logistically possible for a small group of people to build a substantial game from the ground up, at least not outside of more manageable genres like puzzle or stylised platform or strategy games. Occasionally something will punch through from the underground, perhaps from people modding established games, and might get picked up by a big developer as happened with Portal and Left 4 Dead. But there aren't any garage crews building games of the order of Call of Duty or GTA or WoW or any other big name you care to mention.

Of course there are still a handful of sizeable independents out there. Valve is the obvious one, and are to be commended for holding out against the whorish charms and promises of public sale. I don't believe going public can ever be a good move for a creative industry. Of course neither have Valve really come up with anything interesting of their own (as opposed to buying mod groups, tarting up their work and selling it) since Half-Life 2, so they need to get on that. And hire some decent writers while they're at it.

So the future's looking bleak, but the game's not over just yet.