 How
To Make Big Money In Game Design
By Tim Carter (15 April 2007)
In
The Art of the Start, one of Guy Kawasaki's rules about
starting up new things is this:
Jump to the next curve.
One commenter put it this
way: "Great companies aren't created when a book retailer
says, 'We're going to change the way books are sold. Instead of
carrying 250,000 titles, we're going to carry 275,000.' Great
companies are created when you say, 'Instead of 250,000 titles,
we're going to carry 2.5 million.' Then you have Amazon."
In other words, incremental improvements are all fine, but
it's the paradigm shifts that break ground and make the big
bucks. This is true in
game development as well. And it can be summarized like this:
jumping to the next wave in game development means creating
new genres. New genres. Entirely new gameplay
experiences. History bears this out. If you look at game
genres, what you see is a flagship game followed by a ton of
"me-too" titles. The flagship game, in virtually every case,
commands the genre - makes tons of money. The me-tooers may do
comfortably well, but they never hit the zenith the flagship
ones do. Consider the following...
| Genre |
Flagship Title |
Huge Seller? |
| Tabletop Roleplaying Game |
Dungeons & Dragons |
Yes |
| Full 3D First-Person Shooter |
Quake |
Yes |
| Story-Based First-Person
Shooter |
Half Life |
Yes |
| Collectible Card Game |
Magic: The Gathering |
Yes |
| People Simulator |
The Sims |
Yes |
| City Simulator |
Sim City |
Yes |
| Computer Tycoon Game |
Railroad Tycoon |
Yes |
I could go on but I think you get my point. The killer apps
in games are the new genres and the flagship games that launch
them.
Now this said, there are periods between these genres where
focus in game development as a whole is oriented toward
improvement. The creation of a new genre is a maneuver of
lateral thinking - developing and refining it a process of
vertical thinking. This is a totally legitimate undertaking, and
it can be very lucrative (as most in the game industry know).
We now call "vertical thinking" linear thinking, but I use
the term Edward de Bono (who coined these "thinking" terms)
originally used because "linear thinking" now has undeserved
negative connotations. Interestingly, De Bono used it because
the whole lateral/vertical paradigm is symbolic of a primary
field of wealth exploration: mining - where the lateral is the
process of looking in new places for the gold and vertical means to
keep digging down looking for more in the place it was
originally discovered (literally, vertical - straight down).
To be fair, vertical thinking is a wholly necessary process.
I think it's unfair to disparage parties who don't strike out
pioneering as "stupid" or "dumb linear thinkers". If you have
the gold under your feet, you're a fool to not keep digging.
I remember, during my time in The NRG Group - an Internet
incubator where I consulted and did some serious game design -
talking with the people who vetted new business plans. One
junior executive, a calm and reserved guy, told me he was disappointed
they hadn't decided to invest in a web portal for the metals
industry that had come to them (this is about 2000). The
portal's business plan reflected tremendous experience and knowledge
of the workings of this industry,
and the project seemed sound. However, the decision-makers at NRG
(which is now defunct) disliked it because it was not something that was
supposed to change the world (again... this was 2000!
before the bottom fell out on the dot-com craze); it was just a
"boring" portal for the "boring" metals industry. Well, never
underestimate the money-making potential of seemingly boring
things! (Also, as a game designer, never dismiss things as
boring in a flippant manner. There are no boring games, only
boring game designers. They told Will Wright managing a city
would make for a boring game...)
However, what happens is somehow vertical thinkers develop this notion
that going off looking for gold in other places, when it's
"obviously" right here if you're willing to sweat and dig a
little, is foolish. They say, after all, what are the odds you can
discover a new genre? (Divide the number of new genres by the
number of game designers: those are your odds. Slim at best.)
You can see this perspective in game development when you read
Tom Sloper,
who dismisses any notion you can design a new game without first
paying the dues of developing a name building games as they are
now.
The lateral thinkers then point out that you become
indoctrinated when you do this: your ability to create fresh new
forms becomes contaminated by overexposure to existing forms.
Perhaps the most vivid image that conveys this very real danger
is from the semi-autobiographical play Long Day's Journey
Into Night, by Eugene O'Neill. One character is the father,
based on O'Neill's actual father. He is an actor who has built
his entire career playing a single part in a one man show - a
role done primarily for money, not art. The father reveals he
has played this part for so many years it has creatively
poisoned him. He tried to do different roles but was unable to
break out of the histrionic, ham-fisted method of acting that
paid so well (in the earlier part of the 20th century): the
years and years spent doing "the part" have carved rutted paths
through his creativity. He curses ever having done it.
Anyway, we find there are two opposing camps here. They both
have their points. The new genres are the milestones, the
chapter titles that usher in vastly new tracts of territory to
be settled. The development of the genres are the pages between
the chapters; the hard hands-on
work of doing the settlement of these newly discovered lands.
What I can say to you is this: yes the odds are slim at best
you may have the opportunity to help develop a new genre. The
statistics are against it. However, if you know anything about
statistics you will know this: the unusual happens!
Lightning does strike! If a person comes up
to you with a naive inflection, no experience in life and claims
with swaggering overconfidence that they have invented a new
genre, you can probably dismiss them. But if someone with a calm demeanor, well-educated and having done good work, experienced
in life and professional in attitude approaches you and says the
same thing, if you don't at least seriously hear
him or her out you're a damn fool.
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