What is wrong with our industry?

 

The games industry is ruled by the ego of the programmer
This is fundamentally a bad thing. Programmers are engineers - which is why we see every games company making their own engine, every company spending 90% of their time writing engine code when they should be writing games. Game design is done by these engineers, or people with this engineering background ("so they can understand what is possible and impossible") - which goes some way to explaining the glut of copies that the industry is suffering. It also explains the domination of established themes - space Sci-fi, sword/sorcery fantasy etc, since the programmers grew up with these niche genres. With the programmers responsible for establishing what is possible and what is not, the artist is immediately restricted in the worst possible way.

The programmer is ruled by the money of the publisher
Game developers often have good intentions but require the financial assistance of publishers, and have no protection against them. The majority of this money is used simply to re-invent technology that already exists. This also puts the game design in the hands of Corporate opportunists who are considerably more interested in profit than artistic expression. This unfortunate fact leads to the destruction of the last elements of creativity.

The publisher's primary aim is to produce an endless stream of revenue generators
Their interest in creating a good game is insignificant in comparison. All that money spent creating another generic copy while a more creative company is "consolidated" for daring to do something new.

The Games Industry stands on the verge of becoming an established artistic medium - one day maybe the greatest, yet at the same time it is in terrible danger of being swallowed by the Corporate world that supports it.

 

What is wrong with our games?

 

Fundamentally, Games do not need jaw dropping graphics.
Graphics that WORK are much more important - graphics that fit the theme or concept. We are not here to show off our skills at 3d engine programming. Again, the programmers ego has pushed the Games industry in the wrong direction.

90% Technology, 10% gameplay
It takes two years to write a game, and in most cases about 10% of that time is spent on game design, usually at the start and end. This is the wrong way around, since the game engines are fundamentally all the same and the games themselves are what is supposed to be different. The fact that every games company under the sun has written their own particle engine, or their own skeletal animation system, or their own physics library is symptomatic of the problem. THEY ALL DO THE SAME THING. They also all cost a fortune and take months to implement.

The common assumption "Above all else, a game must be fun" is FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED
It is also one of the reasons why the current "cutting-edge" games are still viewed as children's entertainment by the popular media. To say that any creative art form "must be fun" immediately limits the scope of any project attempted, and removes the possibility of games that have any real emotional depth or resonance - since this depth stems from conflict and drama, which are inherently negative emotions.

95% of the games available today could have been implemented using a very small number of established technologies and engines, requiring considerably less programmer time. They might not have looked quite as good, but they would have cost half as much and taken half as long to produce, freeing up time to concentrate on less trivial issues such as creativity and gameplay.

 

 

This is not a statement of intent

It is a statement of belief

It is a statement of our philosophy

This is our manifesto