Creative Downturn Article

Good article, especially this part: However, trimming the fat from those teams is hard work. Everyone on the team will fight their corner, claiming their intrinsic worth to the profitable project. Each middle-manager will act like a minor feudal lord, jealously guarding his painstakingly accumulated collection of vassals and subjects. Team sizes, all too often, end up being more to do with office politics and power-grabs than to do with the actual requirements of making a game, and extricating a small, lean, efficient team from this quagmire requires a huge amount of work and some very tough decisions.

We discussed this very issue just yesterday. Processes that involve three departments that could easily be managed by one department but whenever you raise this issue everyone involved claims how important they are and that it has always been this way. It's funny how many people complain they have so much work to do yet when you actually want to optimize how things are done then nobody wants to listen.

Good read.

...the slow but increasingly assured rise of independent games as a commercial force in the market........the studio system is no longer alone, and its role in creating commercial success will soon no longer be a monopoly....

Best thing to happen to the games industry in a decade. It was becoming pretty stagnant.

^^ I agree, if the likes of World of Goo can be put together by a couple of guys and find its way onto the Wii, I have high hopes that the downloadable element of all the current systems (and soon to be the DSi) will keep the creativity flowing and open the eyes of some of the big developers.

Intresting read . games industry seems to be a bit like music industry ( in the past ) before it became all pretty boys and girls and clever producers, targeting 12 - 15 year olds. We may be entering a time of inovation . I hope so . It would be nice to play somthing that you never imagined you'd play . maby its time to put the developers on compulsory ' medication ' and make them trash hotel rooms and stuff .

Good article, thanks! I strongly hope the conclusions reached in it will prove to be true.

Didnt the halo series start as a RTS game? so rehashing an old idea isnt really a risk now is it?

p.s. i didnt read the article just amused you put a halo pic up :)

I'm still playing the first x-com at least once a month, and since it was released in 93 it must've been developed doing the 87-93 period where the ecconomy was doing a lot worse than it is today. :p

Oh really, against all economic markers, this is a depression that is at best 3 times worse than 87. Ask a trader if you like?

Isn't this the exact same article that went live a couple of weeks ago?

Gaming isn't being hit by recession, the cuts would have come anyway, smaller, more independent title may suffer.

Stardock are independent and been making good monies for a while.

"The explosion of creativity which will be created by this change is only beginning. Certainly, barriers to entry still exist, but they are slowly coming down - and I anticipate that it won't be long before services like PlayStation Store and Xbox Live Arcade start to offer developers the same level of easy access to market that something like Apple's iPhone App Store does."

What about the "Community" games on Xbox Live? How is access to this marketplace from a developer's point of view more difficult than the iPhone?

Just stop making shitty overhyped shooters...tnx

Creativity...lol

...it has always been this way.

That phrase is bandied about by so many. It's the club that's used by the fearful to batter down basic common sense. "Yeah, we always crunch rather than properly plan - its always been this way". "Yeah, we always just hire more producers and throw them at problems, rather than actually figure out what the issues actually are - its always been this way". Etc... I hope things change, but there are a hell of a lot of folks out there with a very vested interest (they think) in things staying the way they've always been.

Nice article EG! I'll get onto how the downturn has already been affecting companies in the likes of the UK from my own perspective in just a sec, but first, in terms of selling something it's just all about timing the release of it well.

You could have a cracker of a game, original, bright, new and stunning that a month before release, people would have bought in their droves - but when it was released it falls into an unfortunate swathe of big titles that it becomes more about marketing power than any creative power.

Remember the big slew of games when games as big as GTA4, PGR4, Halo 3 and Bioshock all came out in one big boom very close together? All deserved peoples time and money but people just didn't have time or money to give it to ALL of them, I know I certainly only managed to get GTA4 at that time, but I certainly wanted all of them. Times like that come mainly down to brand awareness and marketing power, the game itself almost becomes irrelevant at this stage.

And as far as the acceptance of development 'crunch' being a necessity of game development - WAKE UP! It doesn't have to be that way. It's only that way because the management don't really understand the implications and consequences of the demands being set from the top. And from my own experience it seems the people who say crunch is "ah thats the way it is" are usually the same cheeky gits that do half as much work as the poor sods who have to give up their evenings and weekends week after week in order to reach their bloated expectations within a ridiculous time limit. The people in the trenches, the programmers, the artists etc actually make the game and the producers etc will revel in the glory, having "pulled it all together" at the end, as they often love to say - but did they really pay the cost for their oversights and mistakes? No, that cost is usually paid for by those that sacrificed their time and both physical and mental health in order to meet such ridiculous demands, due to the fact if they didn't, their jobs may be at stake. There's having passion for what you do, but there's also being exploited because you have it.

Crunch will get worse as long as morons keep getting into positions of power that don't really understand the processes needed by the talent (the needs of art, sound, design, programmers etc) to create the damn game. It is a problem that will only get worse for the bigger companies. More middle management, more yes men, more - excuse the French - bullshit, more screwups, more crunch, high turnover of staff, less personal investment from all involved = lower quality of games. Big companies are bloated with a lot of chaff, while the talent hit glass ceiling after glass ceiling, due to it being so bloated any individual achievment a person may contribute gets lost, because they are just a number.

Also, if things stay the same, there will be a heavier reliance on outsource companies as companies start cutting corners even more. Companies based in "cost-effective" parts of the world which churn out art "assets" which are just, for want of a better word, sweatshops. The amount of middle management types that treat things like art creation or code as dirty words is rather depressing. And things such as the sound tech and sound engineers often get overlooked by the very nature of their work. All that will matter will be the bottom dollar more than ever - so you'll see more and more "assets" being produced by sweatshop outsource companies, by the big mainstream AAA title developers. The other option being games are just scaled down, maybe less profitable - which just isn't going to happen is it? Try telling that to a publisher big wig and they'd just laugh at you for suggesting such crazy things as responsible game creation. And the reason for outsourcing is because management has utterly failled in its job - but the people who will pay will be the talent who can't find in-house positions in the likes of the UK because big companies are exploiting foreign workers for a fraction of the cost. That is not good news for all the budding graduates and aspiring younguns in this country is it? It's certainly not nice to look up the ladder and see stagnation, and jaded frustration waiting for you down the line.

For me personally, I am seriously considerring something on the independant side of games. No job is safe anyway - look at how many jobs the likes of EA and Activision, widely considerred to be the most stable companies at the moment in this economy, have let go recently, and that's in the cheaper territories such as America and Canada, so if those guys are finding it tough, then I'm sure Britain will follow suit. I also would bet that the ones getting the boot were the low-level talent, a good proportion of them being young and new (last in, first out), who just did their job as they were told, and the ones who were truly reponsible for their games poor business are still employed, free to make even more shitty decisions and demands on whatever future games they decide to infect. I am growing wearry of the big, AAA side of the games industry in that it often chews people up and spits them out, they just make "product" like any other factory. These are talented people going to waste. And it IS getting worse, no amount of sugar coating will change that.

What may happen is more and more people just get fed up with being taken for a ride and decide to simply leave it altogether. It isn't exactly the best paid job in the world, and the liklihood of payrises now as certain as hell freezing over, you may actually see people take videogames back to a hobby, something they do in their free time. I know many in the industry who actually do this despite working on AAA videogames full-time, they do it because they aren't getting their fix at work - simply because the games they are making are soulless pieces of shit they don't give a damn about, they are told to sit at their desks and work like any other desk job. There are also so many I know in the industry who have just stopped caring altogether, dreams up in smoke, up to their neck in tough and frustrating work, and all that matters to them is getting paid. These people are making videogames!!!! Since when did making videogames have to be so devoid of fun and joy? It's dire, utterly dire. It seems in order to have a future in big game development, you will need to lose your passion altogether, and become a machine, unquestioning to authority, humourless and politically correct, thoughtless, resigned to making "asset" after "asset" for the rest of your professional life. As soon as people start viewing their games job like any other crappy job you can get with minimal effort, that's when they will leave - why bother with it if you get nothing from it besides a wage slip you could get from any other poorly managed desk job? I can see those without any personal commitments or "anchors" start to leave - the young, the unmarried, the ones without kids or mortgage commitments - they're the new blood and sparks of creativity that will simply turn around and say "sod that!" when it's those very people that companies will need to hold onto if they want new ideas, diversity and their long-term services - so it makes you wonder if creativity is actually valued by big companies at all. To me it's just something they like to say, it's just lip service, another form of PR, just empty words. In reality, they don't want creative or free-thinking people at all, they want what they believe is creative, which isn't being creative at all, just a pre-defined version of it that you must conform to. The games industry general diversity policy will take a monumental hit, I believe, people will be told what to think and what to feel more and more, rather than being encouraged to express their own opinion and individuality. They only want yes men, people that are employed to stroke their own ego as opposed to being honest and passionate.

Sorry if that's a bit down, but I'm just telling it the way I see it. I do agree with some of the article, but the proportion of talent that suffers in the industry I think will be much greater than the talent that are satisfied with their jobs and what they do. For every wonderful game we play where you can tell just how much fun the developers had making it, we should spare a thought for the others shackled to their desks polishing turd after turd just to make some other git rich. I want to see great games, but I also want to see a great industry - where the people involved also get treated fairly. That's what I think matters, more than profits, more than shareholders, more than any of that superficial bullshit that is infecting the industry at the moment. The economic climate will no doubt be used by big developers and publishers in order to exploit people, their excuse being "the economy is making us do it" when really its "we're sacking loads and overworking everyone else because we think we deserve to preserve our profitability despite it really being utterly contemptable behaviour. Nobody really understands what we do to our employees, they just buy our games, and we just ain't gonna give up our private jets anytime soon for some humanitarian do-gooding!".

The quality will come at a greater cost than you may initially think. Just think about that next time you buy the latest hyped up blockbuster.

GhengisNaan +1

Couldn't have said it better myself. The Games Industry has the worst production department in any forms of computer development.

What GN said. In spades what GN said. In particular...

Crunch. Study after study shows that it destroys productivity, that more mistakes get made not less, and that the workforce burn out, and that the end product suffers. And who does the 'best' stuff in crunch time? The guys who do the good work during the normal 9 to 5. So, the good guys get burned out and the rest just coast along. Crunch is just evidence of bad project planning and bad personnel management, and yet so many companies seem to shrug their shoulders during half-assed planning meetings and just say "Well, if it all goes wrong, we can just crunch". Or, worse still, they timetable a crunch period. "We can work normal hours for two years then get the team to crunch the last six months." Yeah, coz that always works...

@ GN

Don't think this just applies to the game industry; this mentality pretty much applies in any industry you work. Middle management usually are in the worse of jobs as not only are they passing the shit downhill but they are getting more shit and pressure from up top who know even less than them what its truly like at the bottom. Try and put yourselves in their shoes, they have been given a deadline from their boss which is not negotiable, things start going wrong and they have to make decisions. You will never always agree with their decisions but could you make them decisions yourself? Its how they then communicate them decisions to motivate a team that counts and I'm sure like any other industry there truly are some real arseholes about. But all senior management will see is the deadline met not how it was achieved. It sounds like the progammers, artists musicians etc. need to think about joining a union. It wouldn't take too long to do away with Crunch, not with the rates of pay they would negotiate for doing them anyway, the only trouble is you would need a very high percentage to join all at the same time and all be willing to stand side by side. I'm sure the Unions lawyers would love to go head to head over an issue like that and all it would cost the members is the monthly fee, usually around Ł10 a month!


Anyway.....

At the moment I think were getting quite a good mix with games. We are getting the AAA franshises that everybody knows and enjoys at least one, two or more ie FIFA, COD, Halo, Gears etc. These are then balanced out by the more creative low budgets games which occasionally throws up with some real gems like Flower or Braid. This is definately a good time to be a gamer. Its also good to see the way EA seem more willing to take chances as well with the likes of Deadspace and Mirrors Edge. And to anyone who says all the Xbox has got is grey/brown FPS; play something like Banjo - Kazooie Nuts & Bolts where once you get over the fact you are not racing at 200mph or trying to commit genocide with a variety of big guns you will find a whole lot of fun to be had.

MrChuckles - thanks!

Embra - thanks to you too!

wayneh - I totally see your point, and I agree that their position is hard. My point was the whole system is backwards, I wasn't really dumping on middle managemnet exclusively. It is hard to tell who is really at fault - the men at the top demanding something they know very little about but wield all the cash - or the managers below them that say yes to everything, out of little else but fear? Or could it be the teams themselves not up to scratch (which again really comes back to bad managemnet for not utilising strengths and instead overloading a teams weaknesses and shortcomings) Either way, that's the issue of big game development - there are simply too many people involved that just do not know what is involved in creating a given title. Demands are set from the top, targets are promised with little foresight or full consideration, hence crunching when the shit hits the fan. Crunch can also come about from simple lack of direction or vision, and it's at those points when I genuinely have sympathy for middle management, because that is a desperate battle they're fighting. But it's one that could be resolved if, like you said, more people stood side by side, or simply had the power to say "no, this is ridiculous" in unison, and for those concerns to have a voice and for it to be heard. The trouble is, the ones with the power to step in, simply ignore it as pessimism, it's not what they want to hear, so they don't hear it. Also the bigger a team is, the less of a tight knit unit they are. A union, like you say, would be a step forward.

The amount of times I've seen issues and concerns with scheduling (put forward by a lead who has noticed the flaws in the plan) get blown off and ignored by management and directors only for them to be legitimate threats several months later is absolutely atrocious. What it often results in is crisis-management, and as a result, that company looks for more money for outsourcing and other last-ditch save-all money-wasters because the shit has hit the fan and they're now panicking because they ignored the warnings that they were told about when there was still time to act. It comes across to me as nothing more than sheer arrogance and stupidity when you ignore the experts warnings or refuse to pass them up to the people who need to hear it due to some misguided loyalty to maintaining a positive outlook. There's being positive, and there's sticking your fingers in your ears and going "lalalalalala!". I don't know why companies go through crunch after crunch after crunch thinking that what they're doing is somehow successful. The word "crunch" sounds too nice and easy-sounding for such a money-wasting period of development hell.

It's quite funny and appropriate, because we've gone full circle, as it's for that the same reason why we've all ended up in this economic downturn in the first place when you think about it :P. The games industry will not be immune if it doesn't learn from those same mistakes, and in terms of the big AAA companies, they are acting just like the banks at the moment - not good enough.

I'll shut up now.

This is an excelent article, thats all i can say.

Funny how this is exactly what I've been saying for ages. The industry is a joke, both in terms of production, process and practicality. It shouldn't take 20 million to make a AAA game by even the most amazing stretch of the imagination. Not on the wages they pay the programmers and artists who work in the industry.

Instead we end up with super large and expensive teams who are so inefficient that communicating, let alone produce a game in a reasonable amount of time is impossible. In real work terms it actually takes no more than about 6 months to a year to create a game from scratch. Somehow this is stretching out to multiple years. From my own experience I have spent weeks in a games office waiting for a producer to make a decision that should have been made during the pre-production phase. I've sat through endless meetings where nothing was decided simply because no-one felt secure enough to make the hard decisions.

I'm moving towards the indie scene and have been for a few years now. The fun has indeed gone out of working for large games companies. A few years ago I went the contractor route and haven't looked back. I work on a lot of AAA titles and simply move on as the project ends. As a result I am able to more openly express my opinions on what I see wrong with a company or where I think they need to change.

@Ghenghis

It is bloody depressing when you put it like that isn't it? Well said though. Good to see an article that's well written, and a slew of comments that are intelligent and well thought out. Makes a nice change!

I've been in crunch since last summer. Yes, summer 2008. To say I'm burnt out doesn't even come close. Add to that the fact that management are useless, and one particular person seems to have a grudge against me, and I'm seriously considering leaving.

But where would I go, if the same thing will essentially happen all over again somewhere else?

There is a little hope though. If you have a look at http://www.relentless.co.uk/ you can see they seem to have the right attitude with regard to development. There's also an interesting Finnish study on there on the effects of working long hours.

Its fitting that they would have Master Chief as the picture for a creative downturn.

Why take risks at all?

gamers have proven time and again that they'll only buy something with lots of shooting and swearing in it.. and having a guy in a space suit wont hurt either.

To JAF

I bet you get told how much your efforts are appreciated, and that loyalty will be noticed, etc, etc. Bet you get told what a team player you are. I think there's a book somewhere, called something like "Meaningless Platitudes Vol.2", that those phrases are drawn from.

Best of luck, mate. Hope it all goes well. :)

I assume some of you work for games companies . I cant give an opinion if your right or wrong , I dont know enough about it , all I know is that it sounds about right . you'll propably be all ' let go ' if any of your mates read this and grass you up to the ''company ' like the 16 year old school leaver shredding paper 8 hrs a day and daring to write on her facebook entrys that she found it boring . dismissed for ' lack of respect ' . very 1984 . employers Imagine that they own your soul 24 hrs a day .

I think I've been in crunch for about 1/3 of my career, and that is over 10 years long.

And how many times have the managers said 'No more crunch on the next project!'

I'd hate to think what would happen if we got a 'Games Industry' trade union togther, we could all go on strike in demand for better working conditions.

Sure, 'some' people get paid well, very well in fact, but if you aren't one of them, and you are working in an industry which is geared around university leavers willing to work 60+h weeks (like i did), then when you reach 30+ yrs old, you really don't want to be doing that anymore, you have other important things in your life..ooh, like a family...

At some point someone will realise that the really experienced guys who know how to do it all have left to go and do something more rewarding.

:(

@GhenghisNaan
Amen