Why AAA Game Developers Suck

First off, I know my title is really harsh Developer's should be Developers. I recognize that Dragon Age:Origins being AAA title, was everything that Cliff Bleszinski is not.

Watch this video if you want to contribute to this thread please.
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Cliff Bleszinski recently gave a talk at GDC 2011 as a representative of Epic Games. His portfolio includes the Unreal franchise, Gears of War and helped out with Bulletstorm, Shadow Complex and Infinity Blades.

His talk is for game developers and how to succeed as a power creative. The problem I think is, his talk on being a power creative as a AAA game designer is not about the game. I do understand his presentation that game development is a business and it's about the money and selling it to publishers and investors. But it seems to me he has sold his creativity for game development for creativity in sales. His ideas for gaming comprise of gimmicks and trash that really have nothing to do with gaming.

Cliff Belzinski embraced what he calls the i-gen culture and encourages others to read a book about the Shallows, that our brains are never getting deep into anything and constantly shifting. His philosophy on how gamers behave certainly shows in the games. It's one outrageous moment after another in his games, with flashy demonstrations to keep the gamer's attention. He fails to keep gamer's attention with innovative game play and enthralling storylines and intelligent dialogue. Gears of War would be a perfect candidate. Personally when I game I don't want to tweet, I don't want to look at a website, I don't have the urge to check facebook (deleted), or check my email. I want the game that I spent $50 on capture my full 100% attention and compel me to continue playing to see what happens next.

The world we live in everything is talking and co-opt among multiple devices? I want someone to hack a door on an iPad when I'm playing Dead Space 2? I want to be at a cafe and receive a message from a friend and help him on the smart phone to solve a puzzle in a game? First off does he thinks gamers are complete losers that dedicate gaming to all sects of their lives? He continues on about providing cookies to gamers? Is that what gamers really want? Maybe we need the cookie because the game itself SUCKS! There is nothing else compelling to keep playing! We need to have devices interacting? What does that have to do with gaming?

IP, Intellectual Property. Intellectual Property is great for coporates because they can then cash on that idea beyond the game. But why should the game developer be focused on this? You can develop intellectual property from just about any idea, you don't need to focus on it to do so. That's why you hire marketing and PR staff. They can create and sell the IP. If game developers really take his talk to heart, well that breaks my heart. A power creative should pursue his dreams and creative ideas regardless whether he thinks at that moment it's a great IP. The executives and the marketing staff can resolve that issue.

My feeling for the role of a game developer should not be about the marketing as he emphasizes. There are just too many ways to sell your game without being dependent on publishers anymore. The Indie Game community is in a great position now with Steam, GoG, Stardock Impulse and just selling the game online yourself.

Most of Cliff Belzinski's methods of game development is massive waste of time and money. I believe he is among the primary reasons why Epic Games are so expensive to develop yet there is so little game content. He talks about gimmicks of integrating the available technology today like twitter, emails, smart phones, consoles and all into one gaming experience. These are gimmicks that you can sell to a publisher or investor. So he is suggesting people spend time and money and creative energy and stupid gimmicks instead of the game itself.

The focus seems to be not on the game at all. A power creative is about sales and selling your idea to others. Sure I can agree with that. But who should be you be selling it to? Sell it to the Gamers? Fact is gamers are buying because they love gaming. It's not necessarily because they think this game is amazing. When your choices are feces and slightly better than feces, then you buy the the slightly better feces. Are fans truly excited? Or are they just excited to play something that isn't feces?

Cliff spends time talking about how gamers are in an increasing distractive world. I disagree. I play games to get away from the highly confusion and distractions. I want to dedicate my focus and time on the game. Cliff's' suggestion for making games more fun are just excuses for lack of immersive game content. If the game content is immersive enough, then the gamer shoudn't have the impulse to twitter. Forget twitter, I want to find out what happens next!

Cliff spends time that many gamers view that he is a d-bag and praises himself for having thick skinned and using those insults as fuel. That attitude is awful. It is the gamers who are expressing their opinion of him and it is the gamers that he should care most about. But during his entire talk, it's obvious he wants to cater his popularity to corporate executives and investors.

The fact that so many of the game developers at this talk agree with him and interested in what he is spewing disappoints me. I can only think AAA games that will come in the future will continue to degrade in quality.

My suggestion is to support the Indie game developers. If you pirate Cliff Belzinski's games, I don't care. His games are gimmicks with no content and nothing immersive. Bulletstorm was fun, but there was no content. There was nothing interesting. Unreal series again have no soul. Gears of War uses gore and ridiculous weapons to attract gamers, but there is nothing immersive about that game.

Indie Games may be our only savior left for quality games. Games with genuine ideas that aren't just gimmicks, but ideas that strengthen the game mechanics, and something you can actually care about. Support the Indie game developers and prove Cliff Belzinski wrong, that it's the game that gamers care about, not about the next stupid gimmick he can think of.

Alternative to marketing your game and investment

There was a talk I remember watching about investment in games. Why not have gamers invest in your game? Provide small demos and tell gamers, be honest, this is our budget and this is what we need to complete the game. Invest $20 now to help us complete it and only pay $10 for the final product. Why not cater a game completely to the gamer? The cost of game development would be decreased substantially since you now don't have to pay your agent, the executives, the publisher, and so on. Marketing ane PR is yourself, you sell your idea to the gamer. Anyway this is far too simplistic, but if you are a power creative you'll have the innovative idea to make a new idea work.

 

Well is that the Gaming Industry has become very big. As with all big industries they need to make everything as mainstream as possible to appeal to the lowest denominator of people.

Gaming is no longer a small industry with a strong group of dedicated individuals.

Now it has grown to the point where it is on the same level of theater and movies and with that comes some streamlining.

 

I understand that and why I believe, it's even more imperative and important to support the Indie Game developers.

As a power creative, I believe these game developer's should develop games that sell themselves. Instead, Cliff's talk is all about creating an IP that one can sell to an investor and executive.

The problem I see is that executives and investors are not gamers. Some may be, but it does not automatically assumed they are. So what Cliff is suggesting is selling them ideas that an investor sees as a trend, or essentially a gimmick to attract sales.

Blizzard I think is one of the few game developers that have stayed faithful to their gamers. Yes there are gripes with their blizznet 2.0 and their massive marketing of WoW etc. But you can't deny for example Starcraft 2 is faithful to what RTS gamers want and the game has a great and compelling storyline for those who just want to play the campaign with some custom games in between. Starcraft II sells itself, it doesn't need to be sold to an investor and then marketed by a massive team. Gamers are sold on that, they don't need any more encourage, the game is enough. In both games, the game mechanics and features have a purpose, they are not gimmicks. Every transformation and skill in SC2 has an impact on strategy. Same for DA:O, sure the skills weren't fancy and with exploding corpses, but each skill in a difficult situation had an impact on decision making and strategy.

How many games can you say about that in the last few years? Starcraft II, World of Warcraft, Mass Effect and Dragon Age:Origins. Everything else to me, requires a bombardment of reviews and paying off reviewers etc to convince gamers this is something to buy in the sea of non-descript games.

 

You say "watch this video if you want to contribute to the thread" but I see no link to a video?

 

There is a youtube video embedded in the first post. Here is the link. YouTube - Cliff Bleszinski: The Road Ahead gdc conference

 

CliffB is not a developer.

He's more like a pop star or something along those lines.

 

The industry's a lot bigger than the market-driven FPS, RTS and MMORPG genres. If AAA game developers (please define, sales figures? Game popularity?) "suck", there's plenty of independent game developers and smaller developing studios outside North America who design games that are not published by the major publishers and whose products are worth a look.

The above is just personal opinion, but if the developers' products don't meet the high expectations of the wider gaming public, the latter can simply vote with their wallets and not buy the finished product.

 

Not quite well...

There are some devs that have not yet sold to "sales" *cough*activision*cough*, such as Naugty Dog or Media Molecule...Valve is already going that road with their overpriced hat store. Many devs still hold their ground as creative in games and not in sales, and besides those I mentioned I think I may mention DICE too due to BF3. If they DO promise what they are saying for BF3, then I think DICE is still creative and did not sold as for the sales.

My 2 cents.

 

AAA studios are not going to go away, and whether you like or not, they are needed in order for this medium to survive. What's needed is for more cooperation between the two development types. The video here explains it pretty well.

 

Yeah but I am fine with that. If gaming keeps going down the road it is going where the games are getting duller and more mainstream I can see Indie Devs taking off and getting a good niche following with a decent amount of money behind them.

Kind of like underground Action Sports, like Aggressive inline i can see indie games having an underground following with alot of people making a stand for them.

 

I don't get it, what are Indie game devs? Is it like freelancers of gaming?

 

Which is why I'm voting not to spend my money on Dragon Age II or any more Mass Effects !

 

It's obvious that music, film and gaming, all forms of medium have too many greedy fingers trying to make their riches without actually doing anything. The artists, the creatives are being shafted and forced to give the profits of their ideas to all these greedy fingers. The greedy fingers are constantly ensuring that the artists and creatives believe they are essential. This obviously needs to change. I don't see the solution in that video being innovative or a change at all. It's just assimilating the Indie developer into a miniature AAA studio where the costs are given to the greedy fingers and they are left with pennies and the consumer is forking over big dollars for little game content.

I also think innovation is thrown around too often. He claims innovation is not dead in AAA. I would agree, but it's only supported by a very few like Blizzard and Valve. Valve is a great company that sees Innovation in Indie/Mod community and then tells that community, work for us, we will fund your idea, take your time, polish it up, we'll provide the resources and have hit games like Portal (Innovative), and TF2 (Class based FPS on a large scale, innovative). Others labeled as innovations are merely gimmicks. Gimmicks that attracted the attention of investors who are focused on what the current trend is. Innovations set the trend, they are the "game changers." The gimmicks are the opposite, they mimmick the current trend with a slight flavor to attract attention for just a short time. A chainsaw gun? Please, that's not innovation, that's a gimmick. Press button, something awesome happens, carcasses explode. That's not innovation, that's a gimmick.

But that's not even what I'm talking about. Innovation isn't necessarily required or wanted. Look at Starcraft II. Look at World of Warcraft. These are games that did not remake the wheel with a new take. They did not try to do something completely new and innovative. But they are amazing games that would really well, polished, balanced and with stories and lores that gamers can care about and a fantasy world they can become immersed in. That's what I'm really talking about. The AAA games are so focused on what some believe will be the next gimmick, the next innovation, and whatever obnoxious idea that they think will be just enough to get a sale. The creative powers at Runic Games know this. They do something they know about and did it really well with Torchlight. Torchlight was developed rapidly, and cost effectively. It was populat because the game worked but it also had a well designed environment and enough story to carry the game and interest users. It was sold to the consumer at a reasonable price, and keeps the consumer interested in what might be next.

My biggest gripe isn't about what the next big thing was. That's what my wall of text was saying. I don't need to have devices communicating, cool ideas like leaving behind messages and hints for friends online etc. I just want amazing game content. Dragon Age: Origins was. It wasn't ground breaking. Dragons, demons, swords and magic are nothing innovative or new. Party based and real time action combat is not new. But it was done well with a great story and plot. Each character was polished and meaningful. DA2 went with the gimmicks. Press a button, something awesome happens, lots of effects, gore and explosions. But the characters were boring, the quests mindless, and overall story not compelling. What happened to DA2 where DA:O succeeded? Greedy fingers saw an opportunity and the time, money and creativity was spent to feed those greedy fingers rather than the game.

 

If you want to produce a movie, or record an album, or create a game it helps to have money. If you have a good enough idea, you can get on a "label" (large company that specialized in producing that media) who will help you sell your stuff and take part of your profit.

They are basically investing in you, so the argument is...are they creating/selling the game to us (the gamers) or to the producers (investors)?

Some examples: "Sony BMG"(music) , "Paramount Pictures" (movies), "Nintendo EAD (games)"

That is why you'll see hundreds of titles with these labels on them ^^^


Indie = Independent. Usually self-funded and self-produced. (Minecraft, Super Meatboy, World of Goo).

 

Well it just means the publisher, producer or studio is independent. Artists rarely ever release independently. It's just an independent label will be more willing to release their art, since they do not have the clout or notoriety that a superstar may want from a label.

Tripwire Interactive is nothing to scough at. But they are not part of a massive conglomerate like Activision, EA or Zenimax (Bethesda, ID etc). That makes then an independent producing Indie games.

CD Projekt are making Witcher 2 which is a hugely anticipated game. But CD Projekt again are an independent developer, they are not owned by any publisher, in some ways makes then an Indie developer also. But they did sign with Atari to publish the game in North America. But in Eastern Europe they are the publisher, and independently produced game in some ways. So you could say they are independent in Eastern Europe, but not so much in North America.

Crytek is an independent game developer, but they are published by EA. EA is not an independent publisher, so Crysis 2 not an indie release. But if Crysis 2 was to be published by say Tripwire Interactive, then yeah I would consider it an Indie.

 

After watching the video mushishi, I cannot but agree with you. Too much BS is said, especially the social aspect of games. More than being 'add ons' they are 'replace ons' of game content with less interesting gimmicks; and this is mainly propelled by the success of the achievements methodology (a very good idea totally wasted nowadays) which is referred as 'the cookie' by Cliffy.