PAX 2011: Publishers Are Followers, Not Innovators, Says Indie Dev

[Tiamanti]

I wonder if this guy knows that Starhawk's already been announced and is built around space combat. Good thing a small indie studio like Sony was able to self publish it.

Starhawk (2012) is a PS3 exclusive and it's not build around space combat.
The gameplay is similar to Warhawk. A new system called "Build n' Battle" lets players build structures such as bunkers, defenses, and armories in the midst of battle, giving the game a real-time strategy (RTS) feel while remaining a third-person shooter. The game also includes flying mechs.
Flying mechs that all flying you get.
It will be planetary combat only.


Back to the topic.
I personally miss the Freelancer and despite it's years I still take it out one a year and play it for couple of days because its good. And I miss the experience.

 

[MajorDolphin]

I'm absolutely ready for a space shooter or even a space MMO that isn't just a screen saver. I've wanted a StarControl MMO for years. This generation of consoles was supposed to give us all the things we wished for back when we were still blowing into our cartridges just to get the game to work. Instead, we get easy on the eyes yet dumbed down or stripped games that make PS2/Xbox game play look godly.

Publishers are not followers, they're evil pieces of shit that suck on the life force of good developers and turn them into husks. Honestly, the gaming industry would be better off without publishers.

Church. The developers have the money so stories about dirty publishers and corrupt practices rarely get covered by gaming sites and magazines (they bow down to the advertising dollars in most cases). So the truth about the industry is kept under wraps for the most part. Quality of games and innovation are also hurt by the maximizing of profits. In the end, we're the ones getting screwed when we buy unfinished games or unsupported titles. I don't see how anyone can defend publishers that are right at this second coming up with more ways to squeeze every last cent out of us with concepts like CoD monthly subscriptions and "pro" codes that devalue our games the minute we install them. They're also the same guys behind privacy invasion agreements like Origins, bullshit DRMs, and annoying always online crap.

 

[GaltarDude1138]

Good God, yes, get the space shooter sim back. Then maybe LucasArts will bring back the Rogue Squadron series...

Or X-WIng and TIE-fighter could work as well.

EDIT: When I first saw the article, I thought, "Where's Yahtzee's 'Fun Space Game: The Game'"?

 

[Soveru]

Please do proper fact checking next time. Freespace not freefall

 

[Andronicus]

I'd love to see the return of the space-fighting sim, and in a big way too. I tried EVE, and the scope of it is enticing, but there's just too much grinding to do, and the combat, at least at the early levels, just isn't worth the effort. It would be nice not to be forced to pay a monthly sum for the privelage as well, the swines

Also...

Chris Stockman has been around the block, man. (heh)

Terrible. Absolutely terrible. You should be ashamed of yourself Greg.

 

[Jake Martinez]

I just want to dismiss this notion about production budgets and games -

Most of what you see in terms of expense is not applicable to all game genres. The production budgets are on the rise due to two main factors:

1) Increased overhead due to the current development model enforced by most publishers.
2) Increased art direction/action costs (more art, more models, motion capture, more voice acting, more design, licensed music, big name actors, etc)

In the first case, the actual model of development has a lot of inherent costs associated with it. For an analogy, you could say "It doesn't take 100 people to make a car, but it takes 100 people to staff the factory that would make that one car."

In the second case, these production values are really mutable across genres. For instance, in a space sim game, you probably don't need dozens of voice actors, or motion capture actors, or studio/video equipment animating the models with the mo-cap and doing the lip dubs, etc. Also you just don't need as many art assets either, or as much character design, etc.

A space sim would actually be really cheap to make relative to a large sandbox game or story driven game. Most of the work would actually be procedural or physics based (and handled by programmers instead of an army of artists and actors).

So yeah... production costs have gone up because of the way game companies are doing their work these days and the genres they are choosing to invest in.

 

[LorienvArden]

Publishers are businessmen. They are all about maximising profit. Is there anyone that still does not understand that concept?

Taking Risks and explorint new terrain is called invention. The process of turning an invention into profit is called INNOVATION .

An Innovator has a HUGE deal of time to reap the benefits of his risk before the early followers can imitate his model and compete with him which far outweighs the initial risk.

In any technology oriented field, innovation is the one and only way for a company to pull ahead and compete with declining margins due to competitors from the east who will undercut your price without any problems. Sadly, innovation has become a buzzword for any kind of cleverness over the last years, burrying the true meaning of the word under a metric ton of meaningless PR Bullshyte.

The gaming industry is focusing way too much on marketing and has become too big for its own good. The reason why these companies are so shy to take risks is that their stakeholders demand steady profit. Since most companies can't innovate as well as they can imitate they can't convince their stakeholders that innovation would be benefitial to the company as a whole. The techinques for innovation minimize the risks and guarantee some degree of sucess, depending on commitment, so saying that they couldn't do it because they have too much to lose is plain and simply wrong.

As long as the industry is not under any pressure to turn out innovative products, they won't. The industry has sucessfully domesticated their customers into buying whatever they ship right now.
Take a look at the typical movie-tie-in game. Just a quick cash grab without too much hassle. Cover based dirt simulators aka "modern shooters" - copy, paste change the bad guys name for bonus.
As long as the market buys the same game time and time again, the innovators will always be on the sidelines of the show - the small companies that give us a Bastion or a Magicka every now and again.

As far as I am concerned, I only see arenanet as a truly innovative company on a larger scale in the industry at the moment.
Petroglyph also seems to go the right direction, but I'll wait and see how their "end of nations" turns out before coming to a verdict on their businessmodel.

 

[ike42]

I agree with the article, a new space-flight sim would be fun. I'd really like to see a Privateer remake, but since EA owns everything that was Origin I doubt that's going to ever happen.

 

[I forgot]

I think I demoed this game. If it's the same space sim we're talking about, I fucking hated this game. Why? Slow, boring and Inverted controls and no option to fix them.

 

[praetor_alpha]

I'd be interested! Until then, I keep checking to see if anyone's on the Eternal Silence servers. Now if Bioware would make a space combat sim in the Mass Effect universe... OMG!