The Sdyney Morning Herald has a great article up questioning whether games can transcend to being a new art form, citing various journalists and gamers designers for and against the idea. Local game developers, John De Margheriti (Micro Forte), Steve Stamatiadis (krome Studios), and Brendan McNamara (Team Bondi) also give their opinions on the suibject matter, and you get a small insight into the background of two of those studios...
The airy Pyrmont warehouse that is home to the games development company Team Bondi could be the modern renaissance studio. Team Bondi has been working for more than two years on a $30 million film noir game for Sony called L.A. Noire, inspired by the work of hardboiled crime authors Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy.In a vast space that the company is struggling to fill with qualified staff, young programmers, writers, designers and artists, including a few women, sit around clusters of desks. At the centre of this quiet, concentrated energy is game director Brendan McNamara, who pads around the office in his sneakers.
The article also shows a rare glimpse of the game that Team Bondi is working on with a picture of a modelled character of a well known Australian actor.
More favourite quotes:
"About 90 per cent are people running around shooting at something."
Someone needs to do a little market research... try 15 per cent. Or maybe we should all just ignore Sims, Sports and Driving games.
"The founder of Micro Forte, John De Margheriti, is not one of the latter. Considered one of the fathers of the games industry in Australia, De Margheriti is an energetic firecracker of a man."
Sorta spaeks for itself.. geez.. Id personally consider Alfred Milgrom and Naomi Besen as 'fathers' of the Aus game industry.
"Team Bondi has been working for more than two years on a $30 million film noir game for Sony called L.A. Noire..."
Classic.
Good topic.. riddled with some petty commentry. "It isnt art", "yes, it is!" .. hehe love it. If games are art, then people need to recognise the popularist forms, and for some reason games like the Sims, and GTA always get people turning their nose up a bit. If it isnt art, then woopee.. :) Imho.. it can be considered art, but has missing components (like the cultural acceptance) so will depend purely who you talk to, as to how it is percieved ;) Like any good art form.. ;)
if team bondi some of the key guys from getaway and brendan at the helm, god help them.. getaway took around 4 years to make and what a massive disappointment.. absolutely terrible game and the only reason it sold anything was the sony hype machine over rating it. They now have 3 years to make the game? 3 friggin years? even the next getaway was awful.
I think there is more to the Getaway selling 4+ million units worldwide, on a single console platform, than just mere hype. Not saying it is the greatest game in the world, but, I don't think hype alone can generate those kind of sales - there are other factors relating to gaming experience that I think are key to that.
Though I have to admit, I own an XBOX not a PS2, so I have never played the game - I can only go off of game reviews. I just don't think it is fair to slander those responsible for a 4m+ selling title, when most local developers haven't had a title that has sold more than 1m+ units.
I might add, 1m+ units on a single platform - those that have generated that, have done so with a multi-platform release and even factoring in unit sales from sequels.
i guess many games have been crap and sold a lot of copies... black monday got a game rankings score of 60(percent) so that shows it was pretty bad, the getaway got 76(percent) not that good either. Hype can certainly sell a game... it has to be at least average i guess to sell more than 1 million units, but hype and heavy marketing can sell a mediocre game.. if you don't know that .. then you don't know this industry that well...
I'm sorry, but you are wrong.
It is not "hype" at all that is solely responsible - you have to have something worthwhile, something attractive to the gamer to hype in the first place. Otherwise no matter how much you hype (market) it, it will fail to recoup investment.
And don't tell me that I don't know this industry.
There are lots of examples of very poor games that have sold large numbers. I agree with gobi.
I am wrong? haha funny.. hey i'm not saying you don't know this industry, maybe just not that well... I think many people in the industry would agree with what im about to say tho.. let's look at EA for example.. I would say there games are attractive to the gamer, but are they good games? probably not.. but if they didn't hype/market there games they wouldn't sell zip.. they can tell you that. They are the pioneers of being able to sell anything.. even if it is terrible haha.. they have marketing budgets of 10 million dollars for a single game.. then lets look at ICO, critically acclaimed, had lots of attraction to the gamer, but wasn't marketed... i think it sold like 100,000 copies. I do agree that the game has to be marketable, has to have some appeal... but be a good game? it doesn't have to be. PS3 is over hyped.. is it any good, noo... hahah will it sell.. yesssss... hype is responsible.. it's not the only reason.. I remember "enter the matrix" game from atari was awful, it was over hyped and marketed because of the film.. still sold 10 million copies.
gobi - you are exactly what Cynical Fan said. Wrong. This point of view is a classic developer centric point of view. You think that spin alone can sell a product, and move it from the shelf. On the small scale, it can. And small.. is in the terms of a few thousand. But to sell a million units, you need to have consumer support - regardles of what _you_ think of a titles, some people are fanatics over hardware, or games.
Your example of enter the matrix, and ICO are only personal opinions. What do you define a good game? There is simply no gauge for that. Just because you didnt like it and reviewers didnt like it, doesnt mean people didnt rent it, then go an buy it? Doesnt mean that many Matrix fans just love the game? What you think was hype that sold this, is more to do with market targeting through franchises - Nintendo is a great example of this with its Mario, and like franchises. EA does it with many movie tie ins.. and so on. Why shouldnt they? The people love the movies? And you think they are going to hand over 80 buks a game for a dud.. in the millions? Thats naive.
Most gamers that buy games often rent them first (see the various papers on this).. so these people are not uninformed about the game, and most have actally often played the game more than once before purcahsing. The view gobi is pointing out is a classical "I know what makes good games" type view.
Look at games like Madden, and Sims, and Rollercoaster Tycoon: Madden and Sims get a fair deal of hype and marketing, but roller Coaster Tycoon is right up there in sales? Hype drives the sales? Try again.. hype is a minor contributor.. but doesnt get millions of ppl to outlay the cash.
Also. back on the the 'good game' thing, I think its actually a classic misnomer that because a game sells millions of units, you think its poor it must have been marketing that did it. Had it ever occurred to people, that there are people out there that have quite different tastes and liking for games, that maybe you dont comprehend. Id suggest ppl like gobi do some homework. I have found even locally that your generic gamer isnt anything like what you meet on a forum or a chat room. Many gamers I have met from the country for instance, love the Ratbag Sprint Cars series.. these people are general blue collar types, and play sprint cars as a bit of a wind down at the end of the day. Now I never even considered there would even be ppl in Aus that would prefer playing these games.. and thats because I didnt think of the target audience, and how there is a huge sprint car following here and in US. So whats the difference between that and fans of the Matrix?
There are many examples of games that were hyped and didnt sell overly well, its just that we rarely get the hype here in Aus (mainly because our market is minute). But games like Summoner 2 on PS2 (word got around like nothing else.. even though it was heavily hyped), games like Luigis Mansion, a release title on the GC - remember all the hoo harrr about the torch light effect? Sold horribly. and it was a launch title (heck Fanatavision on PS2 sold better).
The fact is the majority of titles that get made these days will not sell into the top 100 titles, so that means less than 300,000 units. Many of these games have had the same hype driven dribble as others.. but they failed on various levels as games. So how do games get into the high unit sales.. never on hype alone. You need at the bare minimum a game that will stand up to the publics scrutiny (usually via rentals) and be accepted in the general gaming circle.
Dont think for a minute that the 100 million PS2 audience for example, spend days and days pouring over reviews and forums about a game - they rent it, at their local vid store. They know alot better than most of us, what they like, and what will sell, and hype wont do it.
Finaly gobi - you obviously dont know much about EA either. Seen last months US sales? Maddens.. again.. dominates sales (was biggest seller units and money wise last year) and will likely be biggest seller again this year. Now you tell me, how a game that has some of the top mocap around, some of the best anims, probably one of the most polished interfaces, and full of so many minigames its freakish is sold purely on hype. Thats plain bull.
EA do something NO OTHER DEVLOPER DOES, they guarantee a minimum good quality of product for EVERY game. Talk to people working at EA, you'll find they arent the massive 'evil empire' ppl keep stupidly making them out to be. They are just damn good at what they do. They know their market FAR better than any other company - hell who else would have the balls to sell a game like the Sims and make it the biggest selling game series of all time? You think thats all due to hype and marketing? Its due to quality - there isnt an EA game you can name that hasnt got the near top level art, interfaces, animations, audio, stories, and so on. They produce products that people now are brand aware of - they see quality when they see EA. I could name tuns of half assed THQ, Infogrammes, and others titles. There isnt any of EA's that I can class as flawed (and I have played ALOT of EA games since 84) - you think thats got to do with hype? And to be building games since the mid 80's like that? There are a couple of other publishers starting to do similar things.. like Take Two.. Ubisoft.. but again, you cant blame EA for knowing their market, to label their success based on hype is nothing short of ignornat.
Are paragraphs too much to ask for?
Also, i can't really disagree with anything Grover just said, but surely some of this is just semantics. ie. if we weren't so lazy to label it as merely 'hype', but rather said some thing along the lines of 'games that value production values over interesting content, and use a marketable franchise or movie tie in, god its depressing that these are 90(percent) of our industry', you begin to have a reasonable point, i think..
The point that Grover makes about difference of "taste," is a good one and strong point. I think we often forget that we are hardcore gamers, that reviewers are hardcore gamers. But, that the average gamer may very well not be one.
They may overlook things that we would make a big stink about, because, the game offers them an experience that is very appealing to them in gameplay mix, scenario and graphical appeal - to put it simply.
"EA: They know their market FAR better than any other company - hell who else would have the balls to sell a game like the Sims and make it the biggest selling game series of all time? "
When asked at a recent GDC, Will Wright said EA marketing tried to kill off the sims about 5 times. Will may have knownthe market, but EA marketing were not on board for a long time.
grover, you make some good points... you really spent a long time writing that haha.. i couldn't be bothered to read all of it.. in the end we all have our opinions and there are many reasons why a game sells.. its a subjective topic... and could be debated for a long time.