Back in the late 80's a rep. from Lucas Arts would come down to So. Cal. to visit Dave Warhol and his contractor minions at the time (that would include yours truly) and take us all to Islands for lunch. He used to talk to us about making hit games, things like how many kids were playing NES games head to head, how many times a player tapped a button in a minute in a typical hit game and, drum roll please, how the hit games were making most of the money. This has been a fact of game development since at least then, almost 20 years ago, and has continued to the current game dev. budget arms race we have today. I don't know how the original conversations went between the folks who started the whole mess, but I expect that it went a little like this:
JD: "Chip, have you noticed that the top games out earn the median sellers by about 500%"
Chip: "Heh, heh, you said median"
JD: "Shut up..."
JD & Chip: "B- VUS"
A clever and knowing glance is exchanged by the two young MBA's.
Chip: "JD, are we thinking the same thing..."
JD: "You know it baby. If we spend 3x the current dev. budgets to earn 5x..."
Chip: "You sir, are a financial frikkin' genius"
JD: "Should we knock off and go golfing now?"
Chip: "Got my sticks in the rocket sled - let's hit Hooters afterwards for lunch."
This development eventually led to small armies of game developers working on a single
game for years. A situation that led to a lot of us - visit many of the ex-pat's or,
as the head dude at Manifesto called me, refugees, at
Indie Gamer - bailing out and going
indie. Make games our way, sell them direct to consumers who want to play games not
designed by committee whose choices are driven by quarterly profit. And now, our little
slice of heaven is under siege as the bigs have taken notice of us and are starting to
eyeball our playground. Here's a link to what I am on about:
EA enters the casual market.
I know, you're thinking she looks harmless enough... and dude, that's how it always starts.
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