Dangerous trends: When the bankers take control

Reflect on your all-time favorite video game(s). What are the parameters of all that gaming goodness that make you so love those game titles above all others that are "out there"? Now reflect on who the people are that made those games soooooo lovable. Who designed and developed those games into the masterpieces that you grew to love? Nine times out of ten, those people were, first and foremost, devote gamers themselves. Gamers making games for others that love games that they will love to play as well. When a gamer designs a game, his or her foremost thought is to make a Work of Art that hopefully others will remember fondly, and maybe even drag out of the closet years later to play "just one more time". Passionate people making games that they want others to be passionate about as well.

Too bad those passionate people aren't in control of the industry anymore.

Have you noticed that it has become almost impossible to acquire a game these days with just ONE company's logo on it? First, there's the logo for the game company that actually developed the game, e.g., Firaxis, BioWare, Infinity Ward, Black Isle Studios, etc. But then there's that second logo, which belongs to the game's publisher: 2K Games, Activision, Akella, Atari, CDV Software Entertainment, DreamCatcher Games, Electronic Arts, Sony, Strategy First, etc. The reason why you're seeing sooooo many two-logo games is because it has become incredibly expensive to develop a game all the way from raw idea to polished finished product. For instance, the phenomenally successful Modern Warfare 2 (which pulled in a whopping $550 million in it's first five days from launch) cost "$40 to $50 million to produce". (LAtimes.com) That's just the cost of production. If you add the cost of marketing, advertising, and distribution, the cost jumped to around $200 million. Whatever figure you cite, you're talking a LOT of money paid up front, just to make the game ready for consumer consumption. In short, the amount of money that one must speculate to turn an idea into a game is HUMONGOUS, and it all must come from somewhere, and it must be made available long before there is even a dime received as Return On Investment.

As demonstrated by the aforementioned Modern Warfare 2, the _potential_ for making Big Bucks on a game idea can be astronomic. Then again, a game in development may turn into an incredible money-draining failure. Take for instance, Battlecruiser 3000AD, which started development in the late 1980s. It's development effectively burned out developers Three-Sixty Pacific, Mission Studios and Intracorp before it was finally released in 1997 by Take-Two Interactive. Just Take-Two alone sank @$618,000 into what was described as one of the buggiest games ever released. Then there's the tale of Shenmue, probably a record-setter for most expensive game development ever. It cost $70 million to bring Shenmue to the marketplace -- where it sold about a million copies for about $55 apiece. That means it cost $15 million more to develop than what it took in. (More game content for future releases was developed at the same time, contributing to the cost, but that’s still money out the door before any of that future ROI materializes.)

Most developers don't have that kind of money just sitting around. Even companies known for cranking out successful games, such as Firaxis with umpteen Sid Meier titles (whose name essentially guarantees a BIG distribution, no matter what the price will be) can't afford to carry the costs of development alone. First, there's the cost for developing the IP (Intellectual Property) into game form. Then there's the hard assets overhead cost for buildings and equipment rentals/purchases for anywhere from 6 months to three years. Then there are the umpteen thousands of man-hours for programming, graphic design, QA, betatesting, playtesting, et al. And it's VERY true that the more that goes into a game -- the game content = hours of gameplay potential -- the development costs WILL ratchet ever upward. Referring again to Modern Warfare 2, the developer, Infinity Ward, started in 2002 with 22 employees . In October 2003, they were acquired by Activision, which allowed them to expand to a staff of nearly 100 people. And for the last two years, those nearly 100 people were focused almost entirely on MW2. (Note: Keep in mind that game development is NOT your 40-hour work week kind of business. More like 60-90 hours/week. Do the math to calculate how many man-hours went into MW2.)

Enter the Bankers.

Most game developers live hand-to-mouth. On their own, they wouldn't have any money flowing in until they've actually delivered on a game. Left to their own finances, they would be motivated to kick a project out the door ASAP, just to maintain their cashflow. That's like delivering one premature baby after another, just because mom can't afford to be a baby incubator for the full nine months. And like a premature baby, a game kicked out of development too soon would be seriously undersized from what it should have been. For you and me as consumers, that would mean there would be a serious gaming goodness deficit. Most particularly, _good_ developers really, really do NOT want to send forth their brainchildren underdeveloped, unlikely to live up to the potential that was soooo crystal clear in their fertile imaginations. So they do what any good, responsible parents would do for the sake of their children:

They sell their souls.

Just like Dr. Faustus, in order to get what they want -- the ability for them as gamers to develop games for other gamers -- they go to those that have the necessary Big Bucks that can make dreams into Reality. They essentially take out a HUGE whopping mortgage on the game to be developed. Unfortunately, unlike most any other banks which simply foreclose on delinquent accounts because the money was spent unwisely, game publishers tend to write in clauses that allow the publishers to have creative control over many of the game's features. "You WILL release this game to market in time for the Xmas sales season." "You WILL make this game available for these platforms." "You WILL NOT keep this game in development until it's perfect. (That's what patches are for.)" "You WILL make any changes that we 'suggest'." "You WILL 'dumb down' this game, so it will appeal to even more consumers." Etc. Because the publishers can dictate the timetable, as well as being able to nix much of the content, you and I do NOT get a game that is "all it can be". We get an abbreviated game that is doing what is most important to the bean counters: be out there making money for the publishers.

Unlike game developers, bankers are NOT interested in making a game into a Work of Art. They're not even interested in producing a quality product, just as a matter of course. Those elements are only of concern in regards to how they may adversely affect sales. Bankers are _only_ interested in ONE thing: How Will This Make Us LOTS Of Money? Pretty much everything is calculated for its cost/benefit impact. So additional game content that developers might want to insert, just to flesh out the storyline even more, must be filtered through "How many more sales is that additional content likely to generate?" If the answer is, "Not all that much -- but the consumers will love the game that much more!" just is not persuasive enough to people whose hearts pump cashflow instead of blood. Furthermore, "buggy but workable until the patch is issued" is actually preferable to "Perfect in every way!" And as an ever growing trend, a game concept that is produced as three 10-hour gameplay title-plus-expansions, selling for $55+$25+$25=$105 is MASSIVELY more appealing (to the bankers) than a single 30-hour title selling for $60.

To make things even worse for gamers in general, the bankers have started to not simply bankroll the developers, but to own them outright. That makes it ever sooooo much easier for the bankers to keep iron control of those flighty genius types that get too dreamy-eyed. As in, those that want to give the consumers more bang for their buck can be tossed out whenever the bankers think they're not biddable enough. (Did you notice just how often that word – “biddable” -- was used in Dragon Age: Origins? One wonders why _that_ word was so much on the minds of the BioWare designers.) This aspect of banker-ownership has been strongly highlighted recently when Activision, which acquired Infinity Ward in 2003, sacked Jason West (former Call of Duty 4 project lead and until recently the CTO for Infinity Ward) and Vince Zampella (former CEO and Studio Head for Infinity Ward) for “breaches of contract and insubordination”. What kind of “insubordination” would you expect from two people that have been the driving force behind the Call of Duty franchise from the very beginning? A franchise that Activision actually boasts has raked in over $3 billion for IW’s owner, Activision?

What we have here is a failure to communicate. What West and Zampella want to do is make good games. Activision apparently wants them to do something else. And now, once again, it looks like Money is doing the talking, so it’s Creativity that has to walk out of the picture.

We face an ugly future. The bankers, whose only god is the Almighty Dollar, are systematically taking control of one of our very few escapes from a dismal Real World. By taking control of our games, with the intent to suck out the color and substance that make them so entertaining, by restricting how much gaming goodness is permissible before the bean counters intercede and cry, “Enough!” Making us poorer, both in our joy and our wallets.