Ask me about the Video Game Industry

[GBP04]

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describe your dream game, the game you would design if you had total creative control and lots of resources? not unlimited resources though, just lots. like, imagine you were in sid meier's or gabe newell's position, what would you do next?

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I know there's a lot of questions but it would be really cool to hear your response to this one.

[Mark L]

I don't understand why you can't tell us what you worked on. But anyways I found your comments about how developers hate working with playstation quite interesting.

[JuntMonkey]

From the 80's through mid-90's, adventure games were the dominant genre for PC games. Now they're nothing. Any thoughts on this?

[cbloom]

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From the 80's through mid-90's, adventure games were the dominant genre for PC games. Now they're nothing. Any thoughts on this?

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Mmmm well tastes change. Most people now want a very action packed 10-20 hour experience, whereas in the older days a game that short was considered a ripoff and people wanted 50-100+ hour games. Adventure games are one of the oldest type and were really pretty lame gameplay, though some had nice stories. Major release games now can't target niches, they need to be on consoles & target the mass audience. There have been some adventure games made somewhat recently and they generally tank because the audience isn't there. Niche games more and more are just being made on small scale with lower production value and you can find them on the internet.

edit : basically I dunno, we make what the market wants. People always say they want more innovative games, or they want hard core RPG's or adventure games, but not many people buy those; people buy "Lord of the Rings Team WW2 Shooter 2007" or whatever the flavor of the moment is.

[JuntMonkey]

Thanks for the adventure game answer. On a similar but slightly more interesting note...

Open-ended 3D platformers (Mario 64, Donkey Kong 64, not Ratchet & Clank) are a very small portion of the market. However, games like Mario Galaxy, Banjo-Threeie, and a 3D Donkey Kong (if it existed) are highly anticipated and will probably do well. So why not more? Are 3D platformers much more risky and expensive than WW2 Lord of the Rings Halo Spider-Man Shooter? Why not an open-ended Batman 3D platformer?

Cause again, unlike adventure games, there is clearly demand for certain franchise 3D platformers.

[GovmentCheese]

I lived in a house with 3 other guys who all worked for the same video game company. They worked the most insane hours of anyone I've ever met. If a milestone was coming up - 80 hours a week, minimum... it was crazy. One of them is now working for LucasArts making some very good money - probably enjoying his employment.

I, for one, wouldn't take that job... Designing would be all kinds of fun, but putting in the hours would be insane. None of the people I knew who worked there had much of a life outside of work... I mean, how could they?

[JuntMonkey]

Yea the hours thing was another question. Can you give a rundown of what the hours are like at different stages of development?

[cbloom]

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Cause again, unlike adventure games, there is clearly demand for certain franchise 3D platformers.

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That's the problem with platformers. There are so many well established franchises, that's what the customers want. For example the "Sly Cooper" games were really excellent but sold poorly because they weren't a major franchise; same thing with Psychonauts. To break in you have to do something really special, and while there is demand in that niche there isn't enough to sustain more than a few franchises (and even those aren't really huge sellers these days)

[BukNaked36]

Any thoughts on a game company to invest in? Somebody that is well run and should have good stuff in the pipeline would be ideal.

I've seen you mention Blizzard favorably, who else is well respected within the industry?

[cbloom]

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Yea the hours thing was another question. Can you give a rundown of what the hours are like at different stages of development?

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That's one reason why a lot of people get out of the industry. Games usually take 2-3 years to make. You usually work on some type of milestone schedule which means a deadline roughly each month. It's 40 hour weeks in the early stages, but you might crunch and do 60 hours the week of the deliverable. Near the end (in the last year of dev) you would do 60 hour weeks with 80 hour crunches. The company will be ordering meals in to the office, producers will come around and hand out snacks so you can stay at your desk, etc. You start working 6-day weeks then 7-day weeks. Some game companies have their sh*t together and it isn't so bad, but long hours in "crunch time" is more the norm than the exception.

The smart guys work in prepro & concept design or music/scores so they don't put in the long hours in the crunches.