E3 2010 thread of E3-ness and MASSIVE LEAKS

[Rii]

I guess my bigger point is - why isn't there a Sex and the City 2 game tie in? It's the hugest franchise of the year aimed directly at women, an audience that game publishers admit they don't know how to target, yet no one stepped up to the plate to try to come up with something that would appeal to fans of that franchise?

For all that she went overboard, I think there's at least a grain of truth in Heather Chaplin's rant at GDC last year:

Chaplin blamed the inability of the medium to move beyond male-centric power fantasies as a direct result of developer heterogeny and immaturity.

"It's not that the medium is in its adolescence, it's that you're a bunch of ****ing adolescents," she said. [....] Chaplin traced the paucity of more mature content in games to four basic ideas that frighten men the most: responsibility, introspection, intimacy, and intellectual discovery.

There's a real 'chicken and the egg' thing going on here. And underlying it all is the fact that - despite the 'rise of the creatives' (read: artists) - game development remains a niche enterprise closer to engineering than literature. And if anything, I think the shift away from the auteur model only makes that more evident.

 

[firehawk12]

Funny, I remember that rant now that you bring it up.

The weird thing is that there are women working in the industry who may be considered auteurs or at least important designers. When Kim Swift left Valve, the rumour was that she was frustrated by the fact that she wasn't allowed to participate in the GDC developer contest thing last year. The theme was "First Times" and she was supposed to present a game design based on her first sexual experience.

It's funny, for all the great advances in game technology, no one seems to be able to convincingly show two characters hold hands or kiss because those things very rarely happen in games. Instead, it's about how nice explosions look or how great the water effects are. That seems to sum up where the industry is at the moment anyhow.

 

[BigFoot]

It's funny, for all the great advances in game technology, no one seems to be able to convincingly show two characters hold hands or kiss because those things very rarely happen in games. Instead, it's about how nice explosions look or how great the water effects are. That seems to sum up where the industry is at the moment anyhow.

Well, there are a few nice character moments in games every now and then. There's pretty much all of Heavy Rain. The final minutes of Uncharted 2 come to mind as well.

However, U2 does also have some very nice looking explosions.

 

[firehawk12]

I think it's a cheat though if you have to basically mo-cap actors in order to get them not to mash heads together or whatnot.

Notice how in the BioWare games they cut to the back of a person's head when a kiss happens. No one has worked on lip technology because... well, I'm sure showing off awesomely rendered procedurally generated kiss animations at GDC isn't a huge priority for any developers.

(I realize it must be incredibly hard to even have characters hold hands without strange clipping errors happening all over the place, so I understand why games don't like to focus on showing human interaction. It's just a matter of resources and short of someone creating some kind of middle ware solution, no dev is going to worry about the mundane stuff like that.)

 

[Hermiod]

Chaplin blamed the inability of the medium to move beyond male-centric power fantasies as a direct result of developer heterogeny and immaturity.

"It's not that the medium is in its adolescence, it's that you're a bunch of ****ing adolescents," she said. [....] Chaplin traced the paucity of more mature content in games to four basic ideas that frighten men the most: responsibility, introspection, intimacy, and intellectual discovery.

Yep, that's the best way to get your audience to listen to you. Swear at them and insult them.

I can do the same. It's easy - ladies, make your own fucking games and quit fucking complaining about how guys make games for other guys. Thanks to the iPhone, it hasn't been this easy to get in to the games industry since people were churning out games for the Spectrum in their bedrooms and most of the top studios that still haven't been swallowed up by Microsoft, Sony, EA or Activision are small start-ups.

Of course, you'll just have to put up with the long days, shit pay and constant fear that your next title won't sell enough.

 

[DBR]

^^Is the pay generally considered shit? I really have no idea about the industry.

 

[Hermiod]

^^Is the pay generally considered shit? I really have no idea about the industry.

Depends on what your role is, but generally it's not all that great considering the pressure, long hours etc.

 

[clint g]

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Video_Game_Designer/Salary

Not sure how accurate that is, but it looks to be between the 40 to 60 thousand range. Not really alot considering the amount of work put into each game and the amount of education required.

 

[Arrqh]

As with most entertainment industries, it depends a lot on where you are and what you're doing. The average developer salary in the US is ~75k.

 

[Rii]

Yep, that's the best way to get your audience to listen to you. Swear at them and insult them.

It certainly got their attention, didn't it? And a million adolescent males momentarily ceased bludgeoning hookers to death in GTA to voice their objections.

Thanks to the iPhone, it hasn't been this easy to get in to the games industry since people were churning out games for the Spectrum in their bedrooms and most of the top studios that still haven't been swallowed up by Microsoft, Sony, EA or Activision are small start-ups.

And it's no coincidence that most everything of note in the industry is going on in that sphere. If Popcap isn't in your list of the Top 5 PC developers, you're doing it wrong. PSN releases are at least neck-and-neck with the retail PS3 catalogue in the department of 'being interesting', a trend I fully expect to continue. The only difficulty is in sorting the wheat from the chaff. The industry will move on, whether the 'core' is ready for it or not.

 

[Arrqh]

I really doubt the industry will "move on." There will always be a place for what we currently call the core as long as people are buying stuff and I don't expect that to change for a long time. When a game like Modern Warfare 2 sells +14 million copies, there's obviously a lot of adolescent males with a lot of buying power.

These other markets will grow, but it doesn't necessarily mean that existing ones will shrink.

 

[firehawk12]

Yeah, I don't think evolution needs to come at the expensive of current games. It'll take some combination of developer drive and publisher desire for more money to make it happen, but I have to imagine that growth in other genres of *content* will eventually increase dramatically.

 

[Rii]

I really doubt the industry will "move on." There will always be a place for what we currently call the core as long as people are buying stuff and I don't expect that to change for a long time. When a game like Modern Warfare 2 sells +14 million copies, there's obviously a lot of adolescent males with a lot of buying power.

These other markets will grow, but it doesn't necessarily mean that existing ones will shrink.

I was thinking proportionally, i.e. the 'face' of the industry will change.

That said I do await some kind of implosion in the saturated FPS market. Folks have to tire of shooting shit eventually; I know I did. The last FPS I truly engaged with as an FPS was probably the original Call of Duty back in 2003.

 

[gh4chiefs]

I do await some kind of implosion in the saturated FPS market. Folks have to tire of shooting shit eventually;

Bite your tongue.