Why We Can’t Be Hollywood and What We Need to Do to Innovate
Matt posted in Playstation 3, The Industry, Wii, Xbox 360 on June 15th, 2006

Many people compare the video game industry to Hollywood. Most recently, Chris Crawford in an interview with Gamasutra, explained that Hollywood has less expensive “indie movies” that innovate. He as well as others asks why can’t the games industry do the same?

The answer while not obvious is really right before our eyes. As the cost of a movie goes down, the quality doesn’t diminish nearly as much as with games. For example, I could spend a few thousand on a good DV camera, get some friends together and make a very good movie. That hinges on me and my friends abilities. The lightening might not be as good, we’d have to film on location, and we wouldn’t have any big name actors, but it could be a very good movie that is competitive with a Hollywood film. Now, there are restrictions. We couldn’t have special effects, big name actors or anything like that, but it wouldn’t have to look really amateur if we had the talent. For example, one of the funniest movies ever is “Cannibal: The Musical”. Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame made it over their spring break when they were still in college. IMDB.com estimates there budget was $125,000. The movie had some really bad special effects, but it contributed to the campy fun. Napoleon Dynamite had an estimated budget of $400,000, and it looked perfectly professional. Sure, it didn’t have any big name actors, but I think Jon Heder is funnier than a lot of big name comedians. Garden State is another one of my favorite films and IMDB estimates their budget at 2.5 million. Sure, that seems like a lot of money, but compare that to the $40 million or more that many Hollywood movies cost.

Now, here’s the other important thing. These indie movies cost the same to see in the theater and the DVD pricing is usually about the same too. So, despite that the Blair Witch Project cost $35,000 to make, it was able to make $140 million in the United States because the ticket prices were the same as a huge Hollywood blockbuster. If tickets cost 1/10 of that of a blockbuster (similar to how indie games cost $5 when regular games are $50), then the Blair Witch Project still would have made a profit, but it wouldn’t have been the giant hit that it was. The fact that a company can make so much money off of something so cheap means they can invest in a lot of failures and still come out ahead. If the profit margin isn’t so incredibly high, then it’s more of a risk and not worth doing.

Games aren’t the same as movies. If you make a game for $400,000, it’s not going to be anywhere close to the quality of a next gen game that costs $20 million. This is why the film model doesn’t work as well when it comes to games. A better analogy would be the CG film industry. Almost all of the CG films are really high budget, and the ones that aren’t, really show. Hoodwinked cost $15 million to make and it doesn’t look nearly as good as Pixar or Dreamworks animated films.

So, good indie or cheap games aren’t going to be very appealing to consumers because due to budget constraints, that prevents them from making them at the same quality as other titles. Now, quality means a lot of different things to different people, but one of the things that adds to a game’s immersiveness is a lot of characters populating the world. An indie game can’t have that. An indie game probably can’t afford to have a lot of unique human characters. This is something indie movie producers get for free, but it’s a great cost for video games since they either have to be painstakingly motion captured or more often than not, modeled by an artist. Now, some people say that good graphics don’t matter for games. Nintendo is betting a lot that people don’t want better graphics. I think that’s incorrect. Just as some people won’t watch a black and white movie now that color movies are available (even if it’s Citizen Kane), many people might not be interested in old generation games when they can get the latest and greatest looking games. If you can have realistic looking characters, they make it seem more real, and that lends to the immersion. Even if it’s a cartoony world, if everything doesn’t look like it’s made out of polygons or plastic (unless you’re playing a next gen Army Men game), then that really adds to the experience. I think people want that immersion. As much as I love Katamari Damacy, the graphics are pretty bad to look at and the loose collision bothers me just because it takes away from the immersion. Katamari has innovative gameplay that can overcome that especially because the games were budget priced. But, I imagine its sales weren’t several orders of magnitudes greater than the cost like for some movies. Because of that, indie games aren’t as appealing to the publishers as they are for movies.

Here’s the question that the industry is asking: is there anything that can be done to reduce the costs of next gen development so innovation isn’t as risky? I’d say yes, but definitely not the extent that it is feasible in film. Middleware helps cut the costs. Before EA bought Renderware, Criterion was trying to position themselves as the common platform that would drive costs down. No graphics library has risen up to replace them, but presumably, one could be developed. Common objects and characters could be sold/rented or publishers could come up with asset systems to share across their developers. Potentially, generic characters could be developed to meet certain clothing sizes, and then clothing could be applied just like a costume. In the end though, the benefit a company gets by using their own custom technology and art styles always makes a game significantly better, so it might be worth going the extra mile in a lot of cases.

One of the reasons that Nintendo Wii is so appealing to developer and publishers is that the cost of development is a lot less. Since the hardware is similar to previous gen, the cost of development will be on par with last generation unlike the almost astronomical cost of the new generation. This will allow each product to be less of a financial risk, so developers can afford to innovate. Whether publishers will allow them to innovate or whether any creative uses of the controller remains to be seen. I didn’t think there was anything all that “innovative” at E3 for Wii, but it may take developers a while to get accustomed to it. Unfortunately though, any gameplay innovations developed for Wii that are based on the controller (which is probably where any innovation would happen) won’t be too applicable to Xbox 360 and may not be too applicable for PS3. Despite what Nintendo thinks, I think the future of the industry is going to be with bigger budgets and better graphics because as I mentioned before, they aid to the immersiveness. Sony and Microsoft suggest buying Wii as a second console, but even if Wii is a financial success, I think most gamers will buy a PS3 or Xbox 360 also because they want to get lost in a realistic world. Only time will tell in that regard.

In the end though, I’m not as pessimistic as most when it comes to the state of the industry because I see titles looming on the horizon (Gears of War, Assassin’s Creed, etc) that are new enough for me to be interested in playing them. Yes, I agree that overall the industry produces a lot of sequels, but honestly, who hasn’t bought one? Who isn’t planning on getting God of War 2 or playing the next gen Sonic the Hedgehog? For all Nintendo talks about innovation, their staple games have changed very little since the NES days. Other than I may be able to use a pointer to shoot an arrow in Zelda: Twilight Princess and transform into a wolf, the gameplay looks identical to Windwaker, which was identical to Ocarina of Time, which was the same gameplay of the original Zelda only with an extra dimension. The two Zelda games that tried to innovate (Zelda II and Majora’s Mask) are usually regarded as people’s least favorite in the series. So, it’s almost as if consumers reward companies for NOT innovating. Mark Cerny said in the GDC panel on “What’s Next?” that with every new IP, you don’t get a return on your investment until the 3rd sequel. This is part of why there is so little innovation. People will usually buy a sequel if they like the first game, so what incentive is there for publishers to innovate? If we as consumers really want innovation, then stop buying sequels! If enough people get sick of it, then the economics will change and so will gameplay. As game developers, its a lot harder to have a say about what we work on, but if we tried to put one new gameplay element or innovation that hasn’t been done before, hopefully, it will help the industry from stagnating, and it will be similar enough to an established game or genre such that publishers won’t be afraid of funding it. For example, if your publisher wants you to make a GTA clone, put an original spin on it by having some levels that allow you to be a modern day pirate in international waters. Maybe you can take the passengers of boats hostage, or pilfer their possessions. Maybe you can work your way up in the size of boats you can steal. Maybe you can put enough unique mechanics in it that your publisher will allow you to do a game based on that mechanic for the sequel. (My apologies if GTA or some other crime game already did that. I don’t play them because I find the content offensive…) Maybe my maritime piracy game mechanic doesn’t sound all that great or it’s been done before, but it’s just an example I came up with quickly. If your entire development team tried to think of an original gameplay innovation within the context of your project, then I’m sure you could come up with something.

Maybe the key to changing the industry is evolution not revolution. CliffyB in his Game Developer magazine article talked about how he was glad other games came out that used cover as a gameplay mechanic because Gears of War revolves around the concept of cover. The fact that other games are using it warms people up to the idea. Maybe if Gears of War showed up and was the first game to use cover, people might not be interested in it. “Hiding sounds lame! Screw that!” That might be the reaction had they not seen how it worked in Perfect Dark Zero and wanted more. All in all though, as consumers and developers we drive the industry. If innovation makes financial sense, then publishers will start supporting innovative projects. If people want to buy the same game over and over again, then why shouldn’t publishers give it to them? It’s a lot easier to do that then to come up with something truly innovative. Game developers like many artists, don’t get paid to create great art. They get paid to make money for the people funding them. This is an unfortunate truth, but within these confines, I still believe we can make great games.