Support NeoGAF

[Fix]

http://www.dignews.com/feature.php?story_id=8813

Seems like developers are a new form of migrant worker.

That’s a good point. In the last few years I’ve heard a lot of comparisons to the movie business. Some people believe that we’re heading towards their employment model. In the movie business almost everyone is self-employed; the camera man, the sound guy, the wardrobe person and so on. A movie gets green lighted and the team is assembled just for that project. They hire the crew just for the length of the shoot, then they disband and everyone goes on to other projects. The production company doesn’t pay for employees sitting around doing nothing in-between projects. It could work in games too, but I’m not so sure how I feel about it personally. Regardless, we’re currently hired as ‘employees’. If we were freelance we’d charge a heck of a lot more to cover our expenses and the shortness of the contracts.

The way the industry actually works now is that we almost have that model; employers seem to think it’s OK to pay non-freelance salary and lay everyone off between projects. It’s ridiculous. There are even unscrupulous developers out there, (don’t ask me to name them), that intentionally lay people off between projects for their bottom line, not because they can’t survive. As for the rest, the business model for developers is extremely flawed. If a developer has a success they make a bundle, the profits are just massive. If they produce even just an average selling game it’s a struggle to make the development costs back. What’s wrong with that picture? Why is this business so different to other media industry? We rolled over $9.4 billion world-wide last year and yet if you look at the ratio of profit to expense it’s pretty dismal. Personally I believe that we don’t know the market. We’re not professional or diligent enough to know what sells and what doesn’t. No-one expects the publishers to come up with hit titles every single time. Every movie studio in the world for example, releases duds. If you look at the ratio of completed to cancelled projects however, and after that the ratio of successful games to those that barely make their costs back, we’re clearly doing something wrong.

Unfortunately, most of the time the developer bears the brunt of those failures.

Plenty more. Very insightful article about company closures and moving about.

 

[Dragmire]

Thank you. That was an interesting read. I wonder if that kind of stuff goes on in Japan.

 

[Warm Machine]

On a movie a camera is a camera and only a few people actually deal with it. Sets are sets, actors actors, and crew is crew. There are generally very few things on which gambles are made.

Games are much different as the engine and tool set required for each game is most of the time unique to that product. It is changing and publishers are sick of the build the typerwriter before writing the novel approach to development.

The movie industry model won't work for games unless the underlying engine that powers the game is standardized. In essence MOD teams work with standardized tools all the time which is why they can pull it off.

What he is describing is very similar to the animation industry where people come on under contract, get paid a bundle and then leave as soon as the project completes.

There are some really great things I wish publishers would adopt when it came to development. 1st thing first is to know what you want the final game to be before a single line of code is written or a pixel is plotted. 2nd, is the ability to make decisions and stick to them. 3rd is to have confidence in the people making the game and minimize the second guessing.

On the developer end the team and company making the game just needs to be accountable and responsible for kicking the thing out the door on time, schedule, budget, and with a high quality level.

 

[Sho Nuff]

Thank you. That was an interesting read. I wonder if that kind of stuff goes on in Japan.

Oh hell yes. Team to team to team to team.

 

[android]

Oh hell yes. Team to team to team to team.

And one of the forum members (john tv i think) from Japan was saying that they get paid less as well.

 

[Fafalada]

1st thing first is to know what you want the final game to be before a single line of code is written or a pixel is plotted. 2nd, is the ability to make decisions and stick to them. 3rd is to have confidence in the people making the game and minimize the second guessing.

1st is never gonna happen. Even in bussiness applications segment where demands of the market are much more clearly defined, the big clients (which is a very close equivalent to publishers in games) often have no freaking idea what they really want at the start of the project.
And games only have more random elements to contend with.

 

[BreakyBoy]

Not to mention thaT getting a game with solid (forget about "great") gameplay on the first shot without any sort of playtesting is about as possible as getting struck by lightning.

Yeah, it's gonna happen eventually, but not often, and I'll bet that most publishers will opt to go with what they know works rather than risk creating a dud and subsequently spending the money to dev it. Hell that already happens to a large degree, what am I talking about...