PA Developer Blog

I read an interesting study the other day, it  compared games to movies. We all know games don’t make nearly as much as movies. What you may not have realized is how much it costs to make a game. The budget of a game can often rival the budget of the average film (we’re not talking the Superman Returns of the world, although that does happen on occasion). Game companies are pumping out more and more money on development and getting only a little more back. The gaming industry is headed for rough times if it doesn’t learn to manage it’s development costs. Yes I’m well aware that games are very expensive to make, the more we push the limits of technology, the more it costs to develop the games. The problem being that people expect the games to cost the same no matter how good the technology, which they have every right to expect. So what are game companies doing wrong?

The answer to that question is, the big guys aren’t really doing anything wrong, companies like EA and Blizzard are making money. EA is quickly becoming a monopoly because it’s just got so many games in the works at any given time a failure or two isn’t going to kill them, hell they barely even notice the speed bump. Sure their profit margins are shrinking, but they’ve got a long way to go before it’s a big problem. The companies who are really feeling the crunch are small and medium sized companies. Without the cash reserves of the big guys it’s a real battle for them to keep up with them. EA is swiftly becoming a dangerous monopoly. The danger is we’re heading for a world where everything is EA.

There’s an answer for small and medium companies, they need to change their focus and take some risks. Game engine licenses have helped a lot, and they help companies like Epic stay in business. The number of companies licensing the Unreal 3 game engine is indeed unreal. The problem with this is we end up with a lot of games that play the same. A license of the Unreal engine gives you a lot of choices, but few companies concentrate on changing the game play and spend their time on the glitz. Small companies need to not only embrace different gameplay models. They need to change the rules or fall into obscurity. There are a couple of things which are doing a lot to change the way people play and buy games, small companies need to not only look at different gameplay models, but different business models as well.

XBox Live, the internet and the Wii’s online capabilities are going to change the way people get their games. The ease of getting a game out there, combined with inexpensive development tools (XNA, the Torque Game engine) there’s a real possibility for a gaming renaissance, where story, gameplay and original thinking drive the industry and steal some of EA’s thunder (let’s face it, EA is the new Microsoft and they aren’t going away). I’m trying to do all those things with Pandora’s Asylum. Not only am I looking at new gameplay models for my turnbased game, but future games. I’m looking at a story thread running through out Pandora’s Asylum’s games and I’m looking to whole new business models. Hopefully those things combined with a low cost of development tools and a small design team help me truly build Pandora’s Asylum into the next big gaming empire, we’ll just have to wait and see.