State of the Industry

Yesterday I was "doing market research" on the IGDA forums when I stumbled onto a thread about how to best revolutionize the game industry. This thread had a link in it which eventually led to a chain of links. I was eventually led to a session transcript from this year's GDC where game developers were talking about what they think is wrong with the industry. This turned out to be the most fascinating read in a while for me, and I strongly encourage anyone interested in the short, mid, and long term health of the game industry to read it too. I'm serious. If you're reading these words right now, click on the link and bookmark it (it's a long read, and few people will read it all in one sitting). I'll still summarize a couple points:

• The industry needs to find sources of money other than the traditional game publisher
• We need more male archetypes in games. Right now we have the soldier, the criminal, and the athlete. Or some combination of the three.

There was also a passage that I found particularly interesting. During the Q&A session after the talk, someone asked the panel how a young student can hope to break into the game industry and be successful. Here's an excerpt from Jason Della Rocca's response:

I mean, you may not have all the skills of a full level pro designer, but now is your time to go do something freaked out and whacky and innovative. Don't make another Pacman clone, or another Breakout, I mean, how many freaking Breakouts on there--I mean--every other student project is a Breakout clone. So when you're working in a student project, use that as an opportunity to innovate and do some just wacky crazy stuff, and maybe that is what's going to make a difference to you." And sometimes they'll say, "Holy cow, that's really cool, I've never seen that." And maybe that's your ticket in.

When I read that, I flipped out, because that's almost exactly the story behind Katamari Damacy. That game was originally some Japanese game design student's final project, and next thing you know, he has a deal with Namco. Incidentally, Katamari Damacy is among the best games I bought last year, and I've been thinking about ranting on that game for a while now.

Anyway, even if I went on, there'd still be plenty more information for the curious game enthusiast, but I'll stop anyway. This talk might be between game developers, but the implications affect the entire ladder of the game industry. From the hot shot game publisher CEO who decides what games are made, all the way to the 13 year old kid who's using his parent's money to buy a game they probably won't monitor.