For a while I tussled with your notion about it being wrong for game developers to make the kinds of games they want to make, i.e., make games for themselves. I didn’t quite get how else a developer is supposed to operate, until I read this article:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/1

It’s long, but the gist of it is Duke Nukem Forever never came out because the creator, George Broussard, kept trying to put the latest and greatest technology in it. The original Duke Nukem 3D was revolutionary for its time and it was successful, so the developer wouldn’t stop until he had everything in it that was the latest and greatest at the time. Whenever he’d see something new in movies and games, he’d want it added. Had so much faith in his franchise that he even compared it to Mario.

And of course, development took years and years until they ran out of money and had to give up, and now the publisher, Take-Two, is suing them. It’s almost like poetic justice that a publisher that focuses on core games (and deep in the red) ends up suing a developer for failing to complete what was meant to be the epitome of hardcore games. Neither Take-Two nor Broussard realized that by and large the gaming community long since moved on and lost interest in DNF.

All I keep thinking is whether they’d have released it tomorrow or 10 years ago, the game would have just been a generic FPS game with some mature content…not far removed from plenty of other FPS games that have come and gone in the last decade. It would not have set the world on fire. But the arrogant developer didn’t realize that he kept trying to innovate in a tired, overloaded genre with a character and premise that was already getting tired 10 years ago.

Now I get it. A developer needs to get off of his/her high horse and act on the market as it is, not as s/he envisions it or how s/he wants it to be. If nothing else, Broussard would have been better off releasing the game as a generic also-ran FPS five or so years ago and then moving on, but his is the most extreme case of developer arrogance I have ever read about. At least they would have had a tangible product rather than just vaporware.

Not that I care at all about DNF one way or the other; never did. But it made for an interesting read as to why most games that come out are bad (but many bad games sell well anyway). Developers have to rein in their ‘vision’ and listen to the publishers, and pay attention to the customers in order to have a place in the market. Otherwise publishers will pull the plug (or worse) and everyone’s bottom line suffers.

Focusing on developing indie games grows more and more enticing by the day.

While the story does talk about the lead director being obsessed about his project with constantly rebooting it, there is another story here that I think is more interesting. It could be written that Duke Nukem Forever was destroyed by a developer obsessing on perfection. But I think the real story is that Duke Nukem Forever got destroyed by the Red Ocean.

The problem with Broussard was not that he kept rebooting the project and not putting in deadlines. The problem with Broussard was his obsession to beat every other game which is what caused the rebooting and not putting in deadlines. Broussard saw game creation in terms of competing directly along the same lines against other games. If a game had snow, his game had to have snow. If a game had scripted scenes, his game had to have scripted scenes. Duke Nukem should have focused on being Duke Nukem and it would have sold very well. People want a polished game. They aren’t going to complain that it doesn’t have the latest engine or latest textures or whatever. Even in that time period, PC gamers weren’t going to care. I remember Starcraft being slammed everywhere in reviews because the game wasn’t in 3d as the RTS games at the time were. But Blizzard got the last laugh. (I was a “game journalist” then and almost reviewed Starcraft for the site I was working at. My friend got to review the game though.)

It is really stunning how Miller (the business guy) let Broussard burn through millions and millions of dollars.

The article got really interesting at the end when it talked about Take 2’s lawsuit and how it was going to be an IP grab, that Take 2 is trying to rip away the Duke Nukem IP away.

Steve Jobs has a wonderful saying: “Real artists ship.” The reason why I keep banging the drum about game developers making games for themselves and not for customers is for two reasons.

The first is that while I am not in the game industry, I am involved in another medium. I know I truly ‘grew up’ when I realized that I had to make what people wanted to buy, not what I, myself, wanted to make. Relying solely on myself couldn’t work because I am eccentric. Anyone who works in entertainment is ‘eccentric’ by default. The masses are not eccentric. What seems logical to yourself may end up scaring the customer away. It is a very tough pill to swallow to realize this fact. There are so many failed amateur writers, directors, and musicians precisely because they were obsessed on what they, themselves, wanted without looking at the audience. The audience is the reason why you are there. How absurd is the notion of seeing the person on stage focused on entertaining himself instead of the audience in the theater! Theater, in general, has de-evolved into doing whatever it wants. This is why theater has pretty much collapsed. This is also why the book industry has collapsed.

With the “Game Industry”, we have been presented with two sides: the big publishers and the creatives. The creatives want to make ‘art’ and the publishers always want the game on the shelf as soon as possible. Which one is right? Debates have flung back and forth for decades. But the answer is that they are both wrong. The third side is the audience. And not just the audience already in the theater, but the non-audience that is walking around outside. They, too, need a reason to come into the theater to see a show. Games need to be made to attract an audience. This sounds nonsensically simple, but it is so easy to lose sight of this very simple notion as the “game industry” gets bogged down in the ‘process’.

The other reason is that I remember how ‘game developers’ were in the past. They are nothing like they are today. There was no “industry” of how we think about it in modern terms. They were just gamers making games for other gamers. They were often poor, extremely intelligent, but made games because that is what they loved to do. They started off making games for their friends but were pleasantly surprised that they could sell their games too! They thought, “Gosh, could I do this for a living instead of getting a real job?” They were not making games to make themselves rich. They knew they would remain poor by making games. But they wanted to do what they loved. Iwata comes from this time period as an example as does Miyamoto and Will Wright.

Whenever I hear younger game developers wanting to make something ‘genius’ so someone can build a statue to them, I imagine them pissing on those pioneers who spent so many days in their garages making games. This idea of a game developer getting a gold star on the sidewalk like a Hollywood star is stupid and dangerous. The “Game God” worship is stupid and dangerous. It is dangerous because it is removing customers from the loop (those people who actually buy the games in the first place). It is also dangerous because it swells the ego of the developer to think they are “Great Artist”.

The conflict between creatives and the business types is not because of the nature of business but because of the nature of the industry. Creatives’ association with business is through the industry which has poisoned the idea of business to them. I understand the creative types because I am one of them. I wanted nothing to do with the business side. Just leave it all to the other guy. Let be bask in my creative awesomeness.

But time is a greater persuader than reason. I realized that the study of human nature really is the study of business. The salesman understands human nature better than the poet does. The marketer understands human nature better than the great artist does. I thought business was very dry, very inhumane. But when looked through the lens of human nature, you can see just how fascinating it all is. On the rare times I watch TV, I find the commercials now to be the most interesting than anything that is on. So I want to grab the collars of the creative types (alas, they never wear shirts with collars) and say, “Stop with the attitude! Business is fascinating! Learn it! Have a passion for it! It will make you a better creative person.”

A creative person can do whatever he or she wants to do… so long as it is within the business frame (i.e. making customers). I think much of the problem comes with the creative person beginning to grow an idea in their head and it gets squashed unceremoniously by the business side. So they blame the business side for “harming creativity”. But if the creative person knew more about the business side in the first place, their thoughts and work would already be existing in the correct frame. Their ‘plant’ won’t get crushed. It is as simple as making the cash register go *ding*. That is the developer’s true job: to make the cash register go *ding*. Make stuff that people buy. *Ding!*

I believe this is a very important ‘leap forward’ in our study on gaming. The problem with much of games is not that the developers are ’stupid’ or that they are not ‘talented’. The problem is actually an emotional one. This doesn’t surprise me because I learned quickly that business, which is said to be very dry, very crusty, is actually all about emotions. Money is an extremely emotional subject to most people. This is why most people do not have much money. It takes a certain emotional strength to grasp the subject of business and money. Meanwhile, there are countless underemployed ‘intellectuals’. Intellectual strength doesn’t seem to help in the business side (actually, it can harm). But emotional strength? Big time. Consider the salesman which is the cornerstone for understanding business (since business revolves around sales meaning it revolves around the salesmen). The salesman is a pillar of emotional strength, not intellectual strength or physical strength. He has to be in order to sell the product. I’ve been a salesman myself. You need that tenacity and that emotional strength to drive sales even when doors are being slammed in your face. Very few people can do it which is why they get paid so well.

The author of Dune, Frank Herbert, and Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card, do not get to make whatever they want. Frank Herbert ended up stuck doing nothing but Dune sequels. Card, recognizing that he didn’t want to end up like Frank Herbert, now is stuck writing sequels and spin-offs to Ender’s Game because he mixed his politics and religion into the stories he wanted to tell (those books didn’t sell so the publisher has forced him to do sequels to Ender’s Game… which do sell).

Shigeru Miyamoto does not get to do whatever he wants to do. It appears Miyamoto was the big name behind User Generated Content games like Wii Music. That blew up in Nintendo’s face despite a massive marketing campaign. So even when Miyamoto is given free reign, implosion can easily be the result.

Miyamoto was well aware of the desire to make more 2d Mario games by the market. But he wasn’t interested in making them. There is no other reason to explain why there has been almost twenty years without a new console 2d Mario game. There are stories that Miyamoto didn’t even want to make Super Mario World. He was more interested in trying to get 3d Mario to sell like 2d Mario instead of just giving us more 2d Mario. So Super Mario Galaxy was designed to make Mario as accessible as possible and even went into 2d often. But that is not what the market wanted.

In the Iwata Asks interview, the interviewees tell Iwata that they may not have the stamina to make another Mario game. I interpret this as them saying, “We don’t want to make another one of these! We are too old!” and Iwata responded to them that they are going to make more. The difference in sales of 2d Mario and 3d Mario is most acutely seen in Japan (where Mario 5 outsold Galaxy within its first week). But it is a good illustration how game developers, even Shigeru Miyamoto, do not get to do whatever he wants to do.

In another example, the Zelda team, if it had their way, would make all Zelda games in cell shaded style like Wind Waker. However, the market had a cow over this and there were many lost sales. The Zelda team was very disappointed by this as they would stare at the cell shaded art style and say, “But it looks so beautiful”. The Zelda team tried to do what they wanted through the handhelds, and I think Spirit Tracks with the train has been the final straw on the camel’s back. I bet the Zelda team will be ‘disciplined’ on handhelds like they have been on consoles.

I have used Nintendo as the axis of talking about games and business on this website not because I am so much a Nintendo fan but because Nintendo is the longest lasting game company that is both very creative and extremely good on the business side. Very, very few companies can put those two together. The business side creates the mandate “Thou shalt make a good customer experience” which disciplines and grounds the creative side. The creative side is still creative but they have to stay in that frame.

There are too many young people who want to make games who have no business doing so. They believe “I want to make the games I love” instead of believing “I want to make games people love.”

The origin for the creative types doing what they want to do comes from the realization that people are more animated and passionate doing what they want to do. This can end up making a better product. But it can also make a worse product without proper discipline.

Let me give another non-game example. Writers for Star Trek would complain how “pinned in” they were. They wanted to do “whatever they wanted”. I thought this was a ridiculous idea. Unlike other shows, Star Trek was quite fantastical and the writers got away doing stuff that no other television show could do. Star Trek also had a very generous budget which no longer exists for shows anymore. Ron Moore, one of those complaining he felt he was ‘pinned in’, made the reboot of Battlestar Galactica. The first two years of the show were decent because Moore was relying on other people’s source material. But as soon as Moore relied entirely on himself and his merry band of writers, the show spun out of control and made less and less sense. When a sci-fi show has to summon angels to get them out of a plot jam in deus ex machina fashion, you know there has been a writing trainwreck. And all throughout the series, the writers complained they didn’t have the budget of Star Trek. The moral of the story is that the creative types need not so much discipline but they need a frame. The frame of the business side is nothing more than ‘making customers’. Will your creative idea make customers or scare them away? When developers do what they want, they often end up scaring customers away.

Game developers are very much like Icarus and his wax wings. They see the sun called ‘art’ and try to fly off towards it. Then their wings melt, and they drown into the blue ocean. If they have some emotional intelligence and discipline themselves not to fly too high toward the sun but keep their eyes on the horizon, they will soar.

From Icarus:

Without delay, he fell to work on a pair of wings for the boy Icarus and taught him carefully how to use them, bidding him beware of rash adventures among the stars. “Remember,” said the father, “never to fly very low or very high, for the fogs about the earth would weigh you down, but the blaze of the sun will surely melt your feathers apart if you go too near.”

For Icarus, these cautions went in at one ear and out by the other. Who could remember to be careful when he was to fly for the first time? Are birds careful? Not they! And not an idea remained in the boy’s head but the one joy of escape.

The day came, and the fair wind that was to set them free. The father-bird put on his wings, and, while the light urged them to be gone, he waited to see that all was well with Icarus, for the two could not fly hand in hand. Up they rose, the boy after his father. The hateful ground of Crete sank beneath them; and the country folk, who caught a glimpse of them when they were high above the treetops, took it for a vision of the gods-Apollo, perhaps, with Cupid after him.

At first there was a terror in the joy. The wide vacancy of the air dazed them-a glance downward made their brains reel. But when a great wind filled their wings, and Icarus felt himself sustained, like a halcyon bird in the hollow of a wave, like a child uplifted by his mother, he forgot everything in the world but joy. He forgot Crete and the other islands that he had passed over: he saw but vaguely that winged thing in the distance before him that was his father Daedalus. He longed for one draft of flight to quench the thirst of his captivity: he stretched out his arms to the sky and made toward the highest heavens.

Alas for him! Warmer and warmer grew the air. Those arms, that had seemed to uphold him, relaxed. His wings wavered, dropped. He fluttered his young hands vainly-he was falling-and in that terror he remembered. The heat of the sun had melted the wax from his wings; the feathers were falling, one by one, like snowflakes; and there was none to help.

He fell like a leaf tossed down by the wind, down, down, with one cry that overtook Daedalus far away. When he returned and sought high and low for the poor boy, he saw nothing but the birdlike feathers afloat on the water, and he knew that Icarus was drowned.

The nearest island he named Icaria, in memory of the child; but he, in heavy grief, went to the temple of Apollo in Sicily and there hung up his wings as an offering. Never again did he attempt to fly.

Above: Older developers watch in horror as young developers lose themselves in the joy from captivity of “business” to fly too close to the sun of Art.