Pra quem se interessa por games... ((e a pergunta: por que eh que o cara nem comenta sobre quem faz jogos livres? porque essas pessoas, estatisticamente, nem existem?))
f ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Julian Kücklich Date: Oct 31, 2006 10:00 AM Subject: [My-ci] The Games Industry and the Crisis of Creativity Dear list, This is a piece I wrote for the my-ci conference newspaper about the games industry and creativity. While it probably tries to do too much in the limited space available, I think it manages to raise some pertinent issues. Your feedback is most welcome. - Julian. --------- The Games Industry and the Crisis of Creativity A spectre haunts the videogame industry – the spectre of E.T. The Extraterrestrial. The game, which has been elected Worst Video Game of All Time by Electronic Gaming Monthly, was one of the last games produced before the Video Game Crash of 1983. Atari made five million copies of ET, most of which, according to legend, were buried in a New Mexico landfill because people wouldn't even take them for free. What had dealt this mortal blow to the American videogame industry was a crisis in creativity. As videogame journalist J.C. Herz recounts, "a tide of ticky-tack clones washed 1983 Christmas videogame sales into the garbage disposal. … A flood of less-than-thrilling games triggering a vicious cycle of discounting and loss. The more games merchants relegated to the discount bin, the more game companies slashed their prices just to compete." The game industry's revenue dwindled from a staggering 3 billion dollars to a mere 100 million. Game companies folded, and staff was laid off. To add insult to injury, a Japanese toy manufacturer beat the Americans at what they considered to be their own game. Three years after the crash, Nintendo introduced the Nintendo Entertainment System, which outsold every other system on the market at that time. Twenty years later, it seems like the videogame industry is ready for the next crash. The market is awash in derivative titles, and innovation is mostly confined to increasing frame rates and polygon counts. Sales of the new Xbox 360 have been sluggish, and the PlayStation 3 is expected to be shunned by many gamers for its 600$ price tag. And while the quirky Nintendo Wii has generated quite a bit of advance buzz, not a single unit has been sold so far. The games industry is still relying heavily on intellectual property created in other sectors of the entertainment industry, such as television and film. And when games companies succeed in creating their own IP, they usually exploit it mercilessly by creating sequel after sequel. The shelves of game stores are full of licensed games such as the Lord of the Rings series, and sequels of successful games such as Grand Theft Auto 3. In the highly competitive games market only outstanding titles will recoup their costs. At the same time, however, creating games that break the mould is seen as a business risk. Hit titles can cost up to 6 million dollars to produce, and this figure is expected to double or even triple during the lifecycle of the next-generation consoles. For many game publishers failure is not an option. Concentration is often seen as the only viable strategy to avoid risk. Super publishers such as Electronic Arts own successful franchises which generate revenue year after year, which allows them to spend more on the marketing of games which are not yet an established brand. The example of The Sims shows that this strategy can enable publishers to create new successful franchises, which generate profits over an extended period of time. Third-party developers, i.e. developers that are not owned by publishing houses or console manufacturers suffer the most from the publishers' risk-averseness. Not only do the contracts with the publishers require the developers to conform to a very tight schedule, they often also have to part with the rights to their intellectual property after the completion of the game. In addition they often receive only a fixed payment rather than royalties on units sold. For the people working in game development this is bad news. During the "crunch times" before the release of a new game, 80 hour work weeks are normal. And increasingly, crunch time is no longer the exception but the rule. Job security is also an issue, because developers tend to retain only core staff when they cannot immediately find a follow-on project after having finished a title. The crisis in creativity thus directly affects the people working in the games industry. Nevertheless, the computer games sector is still regarded as an attractive employment opportunity, especially among hardcore gamers. Unsurprisingly, this is also the demographic from which the games industry recruits most of its members, thus creating a giant feedback loop. And labour in the games industry may well become even more casualised. Computer game modification is a practice that still generates innovation for the industry, but it is also a breeding ground for teams of workers who are content to work long hours without adequate compensation. While some, like CounterStrike's creators Minh Le and Jesse Cliff, may hit pay dirt, most will remain nameless, unrecognised, and unemployed. -- julian raul kücklich, ma http://www.playability.de http://particlestream.motime.com _______________________________________________ my-ci mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://idash.org/mailman/listinfo/my-ci -- FelipeFonseca .''`. : :' : `. `'` `- Orgulhoso ser MetaRecicleiro http://fff.hipercortex.com http://metareciclagem.org
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