Perfectly Peculiar Pixels [#28]

The ‘articles’ I present you have always been selected and written with the intention to pique your interests in a way that makes you explore further. In the interest of brevity, this leaves a lot of things unsaid. Today is rocking-the-boat-Sunday (if anyone asks), as I attempt to hold your attention on one topic instead.

An argument often coming from the AAA industry, when it comes to the price of video games is that “games are becoming more costly to produce”. The above video from Tim Caine will explain why, much better than I ever could, but it all boils down to games having gone from a garage-passion, to an industry which behaves as if it’s producing a commodity, say metric screws. This is understandable, to a degree, as it’s become an industry that brings in more money than Hollywood does, the previous benchmark of creativity turned business. Ironically now suffering from similar issues…

Sony has by all accounts been an innovative company. Unlike Apple who mostly looks at the technological landscape and decides it is too ugly, and too consumer friendly, before churning out a beautiful, irreparable product, Sony has pioneered brand new media and entirely new devices.

At some point, however, innovation gave way to imitation. Ever since they had the innovative idea of blaming the poor reception of a bland, copied-homework-without-understanding-the-subject-matter, gender-swapped movie on misogynistic fans aligned with the wrong political choice, that has also become an industry standard. Never mind that the 2016 Ghostbusters was already the third misguided and unnecessary remake in recent years, after Total Recall and Robocop. Both of these were also flops, and rightly so. Having made the mistake of not gender swapping their lead characters, they became irrelevant faster than Sony’s Betamax format did for home users.

This “innovation” was quickly picked up by the gaming industry, sitting on a veritable goldmine of possibilities, yet somehow starved for innovation. That’s if we discount the bean counter’s innovations of course! Lootboxes, subscription models, microtransactions, pushing out truncated games to sell episodic downloadable content, early access… you might want to teach the financial department people to code, they’re clearly more creative than whoever is in charge of the actual development…

Outside of graphics boldly making their hike across the uncanny valley, games have been stagnant for a long time. In 2019, I had the “privilege” of queueing in line for a ticket, which allowed me to queue in line at a specific time, to enter a specially constructed, secretive theatre, built inside a convention hall, assuming I would get to play a demo of Cyberpunk 2077. Instead, I was greeted to a well-rehearsed presentation where the lady presenting, professionally, and without a hint of irony showcased the features of the game, one of which was - a day/night cycle. A feature present in games since 1983. If you want to go beyond a mere palette swap, GTA3 did it in 2001. If I were to be particularly snarky, however, I might even point out the studio’s first Witcher game had it in 2007. Unless it drastically changes the gameplay, mentioning it is as important as saying your obviously 3D game is in 3D.

I was personally never as invested in music or film, so a band ‘selling out’, never bothered me, nor did I ever snobbishly exclusively seek out indie filmmakers while scoffing at blockbusters, but now that games are mainstream, I cannot help but sympathize with fans of those mediums. Of course, there is a fundamental difference with games. Studios come about, art is produced (though not always), studios fail, and the talent often scatters to different studios. Meanwhile, the original IP is held hostage and made to slave for their new corporate masters, ad nauseam, or worse yet, like in the case of Operative: No One Lives Forever, is left to rot.

All this was to preface my main point - it’s a great time for indies. Competition is higher than ever, money is tight, studios are failing left and right, and yet it’s never been a better time for one thing. Making. Good. Games.

A developer expressed outrage at Team Cherry pricing their store-server breaking Silksong at 20$, because being a solo dev, ‘they can’t possibly deliver the same amount of content’. I guess I should have voiced my outrage when a remaster of a popular point and click adventure game dropped the same week as my first published title, silly me. Another lamented that the studio has ‘a duty’ to let journalists play their game, and being a famous studio, to uphold the delicate pricing balance, taking the concept of a Titan of the industry a little too literal.

The game’s predecessor, Hollow Knight, was reportedly, first thought up at a gamejam in 2013, then taking another 4 years to create and publish. Afterwards, they proceeded to drop four FREE DLCs. Following the first game, the studio took another 8 years to quietly, like slipping a flashbang through a door that’s slightly ajar, release Silksong. It took them 12 years to break the internet.

What should this tell you, as you embark on the journey of creating games? Ray Dalio, a billionaire hedge fund manager, teaches his kids to ‘make your work and your passion the same thing, and don’t forget about the money’. Baldur’s gate 3, Schedule 1, Claire Obscur, and indeed Silksong all have one thing in common: they were done with a quiet passion for their craft. Since it has never been easier to make games, it is natural that a certain amount of slop appears. Yet the journalists who advocate for everything but innovative and entertaining gameplay, still struggle, whether through genuine misunderstanding or purposeful denial, to undersand why multi million dollar proudctions fail when they abandon the audience they are aimed at.

At the same time, it is a hard time for indies, with global unrest, failing economies, and an increasing cost of living is not making it easy on anyone. The only cure for it, is the same as for the protagonists of this story, passion. Work on your games because you can’t imagine doing anything else. Work on them because you’re trying to say a story that needs to be told. Work on them because nobody made a game play like yours does before. Understand that, like the biggest musicians, and the biggest companies, the best studios come from ‘garages’. Or don’t. But understand that the players are also strapped for cash and will gravitate to games that they get the most out of.