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Gaming: Consoles killing gaming?
Fri, 27 May 2005

Random thoughts about the game industry: Historically, console generation lifespan has been a little longer than it seams to be for this current generation (though I'd have to check to substantiate this comment) and with consumer's getting grumpy and dev costs going up, can the industry support itself? Is the industry increasing costs to the point of hurting itself?

I've not looked up the release years, and given the next generation of consoles isn't actually available yet, I'm out on a limb here. But comparing the Gameboy Advance to Nintendo DS, XBox to XBox 360 and PS2 to PS3 -- it just feels like things are flying out the door to us with higher and higher price-tags (the GBA debuted a bit high but was still around $179 CDN if memory serves so Nintendo did alright by getting the NDS out at $199 CDN .. but the Sony PSP is $299 CDN which is certainly no chump-change.) Maybe its my lack of time to play games like I had 10 years ago that makes time seam compressed however, but perhaps everyone feels like me - that the consoles are coming too quickly. Or perhaps given the new consoles are "not just for video games" but are instead "media centers", perhaps no one will mind (as long as backwards compatability is present anyway.)

Anyway, the thought I had earlier today that spawned this post was this -- for each generation of gaming the costs have gone up. From the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 days, a lone programmer would produce all assets (core, audio, graphics) and get it out in anywhere from 3 months to 9 months, even despite having virtually no elegent tools. Later generations such as with the Amiga, Atari ST computers and Megadrive (Genesis) and Super Nintendo consoles took longer .. at least two people and often more working as a team in anywhere from 8 months to 2 years to produce a title. The tools were better, but the expectations were higher, with the consumer demanding (and rightly so, given the pricing!) quality artwork and audio and gameplay. Later along came the PS1 and Saturn with relatively good 3d graphics suddenly requiring complex level and model designs ... so cost has gone up generation after generation, but the smaller software houses have managed to survive. Well, some of them -- each generation a round of buyouts and liquidations eliminate the small guys, and today the mom-and-pop or small company simply cannot compete but we still have the small-to-medium bracket of companeis made up of a dozen employees sharing time across one or two projects, hoping they'll sell to cover their costs. Which is to say .. they're just getting by.

This next generation of consoles, with the XBox 360 and PS3 specs being announced already will of couse offer incredible opportunities for detailed artwork, and thus the art asset costs are going up again. Furthermore the complexity of these machines has gone way up, so engine code asset costs has increased hand over hand as well, so likely dev teams will have to increased at least 20-50% as well (total guess). The consumer will expect excellent physics and life-like animation and this will cost. Cost big. Halflife 2 didn't pop out overnight, and thats old news...

So my question is this -- as consoles advance, do they reduce the new developer blood in the industry? As new consoles come out, do they reduce the influx of creative new titles as software houses fear investing enormous sums to produce something innovative and thus risky? Evolution requires risk as Matin so nicely put in a blog-comment earlier this week, so do the new consoles kill evolution, kill the small guys, and ultimately hurt the industry?

One way to combat costs is of course to go to the open community.. the creative commons. Software houses could share re-usable assets such as physics engines, rendering engines, etc. Artwork and story-line tend to be unique to a game and not re-usable by others, but a lot of the internal goods, if standardized could be re-used. Is this the salvation of the industry? Could an open source movement help the small guys compete, or are the SDK costs from the market just too prohibitive? (And if so, will they realize that the small fish is a necessary part of the ecosystem, just as algae on the ocean surface fuels much of the teaming life therein?)

So there we have it .. will the small guy survive or be crushed? Will he flourish on the winds of common charity?

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