We the Entertained

The Future of Computer Gaming Needs Definition Now—Tomorrow Is Too Late

By Steerpike
August 2002

Baby Grows Up

After terminating Orson Welles' contract following the failure of The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942, RKO Radio Pictures adopted a new slogan that appeared before all its previews—"Showmanship, not genius." To this day it stands as one of the most damning quotes in the film industry. In a single stroke, MGM honcho and RKO Pictures owner Louis Mayer had, in coining that phrase, announced to the world that artistry was less important than income.

The computer entertainment industry is approaching a similar fork in the road, where the business itself must decide whether the focus of the medium will be on showing publishers the money or showing gamers the quality. Historically, any industry in its infancy—like ours is—tends to follow the money. And not without good reason: there's no point in staying in an unprofitable business, and money is a useful shield against pundits and ignoramuses who attempt to poison or control the burgeoning medium. (Remember the Hays Code? The Comics Code? The Television Decency Act? Every entertainment medium has its Tipper Gore, its Senator Lieberman; some truly want to protect kids, most don't know enough about the medium they rail against to have the right to an opinion.) Before you think that computer games are safe from such attacks, remember that the industry is currently engaged in a battle for free speech protection—a right so fundamental that many in the biz still refuse to believe that it's in danger.

The business is growing up, about to pop out of its egg and burst into feathery glory on monitors around the globe. It's eighteen billion dollars a year, more than thirty thousand jobs, and more technical expertise than most industries could hope to leverage. Right now is the time for the gaming press to step in and start a serious debate on what we want this medium to be like for the future—the debate must be loud, it must be open, and it must be right away, while the birthing process is as yet undone.

Jennifer Olsen, Editor-in-Chief of Game Developer magazine, noted in the August issue that there's a significant difference between developers with a "rock star complex" who set off to start a studio and tight, well-run businesses that happen to produce games. We all know who Olsen is talking about; the rock star in question is now essentially out of the business and his studio's future lies in considerably more qualified hands. This is a business, and most businesses have no room for rock stars—even the rock 'n' roll business. Rockers just do the creative stuff; managers see to the operation. And that's the way it should be.

But Olsen goes on to make a series of comments that mirror my own view: that the gaming industry is growing up. It's becoming a respected medium in its own right. However, the implication of her statement may be that our business submit to the same follow-the-leaderism inherent in film and television—that is, showmanship not genius. Specifically, Olsen says, "With publisher's tolerance of risk nearing all-time lows, a consistent track record of sensible business dealings is any studio's best asset right now." There are two ways to interpret this.

Interpretation #1 (The Right One): Move it or Lose It

Studios are responsible for producing a quality product, on time and within budget. If they fail, they deserve to lose the respect of the industry and the support of their publisher. As games get more and more expensive to produce, tighter controls should be placed on the developers to prevent the sort of money hemorrhage that we saw with financial catastrophes like Daikatana or, if you prefer, the ongoing laughingstock that is a game endlessly in development—the Team Fortress 2s and Duke Nukem Forevers of the world.

There are many examples of the fundamental lack of consumer conscience and business acumen on the studio side. A well-known one begins here: the advent of the internet has allowed developers to play fast and loose with their audience by releasing products that are far from finished and showering gamers with patches to make the product work. When it's easy to distribute a patch, and gamers have demonstrated that they'll buy a product that's known to be buggy, studios have no particular impetus to adequately test a game before shipping it. Anyone who bought Ultima Ascension or Pool of Radiance knowing about the game's shortcomings are nodding their heads; we had ample warning about those titles, but many chose to buy them anyway and wait for the patch. Consumers of the game industry's output are guilty of supporting businesses that provide faulty products. It's difficult to make a stand and not buy a game you're excited about even though you know it's buggy. Irresponsible developers depend on this; some make a business plan out of it.

To wit: I drive a Nissan XTerra. I did some research and then got the vehicle. If, in the course of my research, I found out that it had a history of, say, blowing up, I would have gotten something else. I would certainly not have purchased the thing and then waited for the auto industry's equivalent of a patch—a massive and expensive product recall. Though computer games rarely explode and kill the player, the comparison is essentially a valid one.

I remember well the first game I ever patched—Crusader: No Remorse. The internet was still being invented by Al Gore back then and I had to call Origin and get them to send me a floppy with the patch on it. I guarantee that if the situation were the same today, we would see longer development cycles and more stable games.

The bug problem is symptomatic of an issue with the lack of business control Olsen complains about, not with overall development process. Difficulties with production are to be expected; the fact is that most games today are complicated things. They take years and between two and fifteen million dollars to produce. Teams of twenty or more usually work on them. And yet many both inside and outside the industry can't help but believe that games are still developed by two pimply teenagers in the garage of a parent's house—because that's how it started. With this kind of image, it's not surprising that development problems exist. The games industry has an ongoing inferiority complex that it may never shake off.

That is not to say that our industry is alone in experiencing development hiccups. Hollywood is famous for the same problems (Waterworld) and it's not only been around longer, it's seen as being a true business. In fact, Hollywood follows the same production model as gaming—huge distributors give money to smaller groups that go out and produce the movies. It's essentially the same, and occasionally plagued by the same problems.

The specific example of irresponsible testing and overpatching goes a long way toward illuminating the fundamental shortcoming of the development side: the reason that many studios don't have strong business plans is because the people working there—even the executives—are either too busy developing the product to worry about the business aspect, or (more likely) because none of them have the kind of business experience required to create an adequate model. Those studios that do have a strong business policy almost invariably succeed, and if they fail, it's usually because of external forces rather than their own ineptitude. Studios such as the pre-overhaul Ion Storm, on the other hand, were much more interested in being "cool" than in running a business. Meanwhile, well-run companies like Blizzard chug along toward inevitable financial success with no fear of incompetence-fueled implosion.

Developers, by nature small groups that look to conglomerate publishers for the money required to make a game, will read Olsen's statement and think that she wants studios to start taking some responsibility for their own future, rather than depending on regular checks from Eidos or Microsoft to keep them afloat.

The problem is that developers are not the decision makers in the industry, and publishers will read Olsen's remarks in a very different way.

Interpretation #2 (The Wrong One): Show Me the Money

There are essentially five major publishers that run the business: Activision, Sierra, Electronic Arts, Eidos, and Microsoft. Others such as Interplay, Cendant, GOD, and so forth hold slivers of varying sizes. Studios are either wholly owned by these publishers or work with them on a project-by-project basis. The publishers then duplicate the CDs, box them up, and ship them out to stores through an infrastructure of distribution channels too costly for small studios to maintain. It's a good system.

The trick is that when a game fails, the studio gets burned in the reviews but the publisher may wind up taking the initial financial blow. Publishers rarely go out of business, however, because though they front the money for these games, they also get the vast majority of the profits. Studios that receive funding from publishers are expected to pay back whatever the publisher ponied up, and if a game is a retail failure, then all the publisher's fury comes crashing down on the hapless studio.

Looking Glass, for example (you didn't seriously think I could go an entire article without mentioning them, did you?), knew it would have a medium-sized hit on its hands with Thief 2. The first was a big sleeper hit and (in my opinion) one of the best games ever made. Furthermore, Looking Glass's incestuous relationship with Irrational Games meant that there would be buckets of money coming in if either of the two got around to making a System Shock 3. So from the perspective of an outsider looking in, the studio appeared to be on pretty solid ground. But since any early profits from Thief 2 would go to the publisher first, they were going to have to wait six months or so to see cash.

When good old L.G. collapsed, it was with the suddenness and violence of an atomic explosion, and the ripples were as widely felt. About four weeks after Thief 2 shipped to very positive reviews, an emergency board meeting confirmed what most executives already knew: there was no money and Eidos, the studio's publisher, couldn't help. That day they issued a press release, laid everyone off, and shut down. End of story.

But why did it happen? It happened because though Thief 2 was making money, the money wasn't going to get to Looking Glass in time to save it. It happened because Eidos was also in financial hot water. It happened because Eidos had been writing a check a week to cover Looking Glass's incredible burn rate during the final months of production, and it was sick of throwing good money over bad.

I know people who want to run up to John Romero on the street and scream, "You killed Looking Glass!" at him, because the dark underside to this tale is that Eidos was also publishing Ion Storm, and Ion Storm was wasting so much money that they managed to tap out their huge, multinational publisher. There is a theory (and, inexplicably, a poem) about the death of Looking Glass that implies in no uncertain terms that Eidos allowed the company to die because Ion Storm was more likely to generate press and sales than Looking Glass was. We never appreciated Looking Glass while they were in business.

There is validity to the theory (and poem), but frankly I doubt that it's the primary cause. Eidos tried to buy Looking Glass in the days just before the fall and the deal didn't work out—in fact, Eidos went to heroic lengths to save Looking Glass. Looking Glass didn't fall apart because its publisher was more interested in Ion Storm, it fell apart because it couldn't pay its bills.

How does this story apply to Interpretation #2? Simple: publishers are rarely interested in games that "might" work. They are rarely interested in games that appeal to a "segment" or a "niche." They want hits. They want Half Life, Warcraft, Resident Evil. If every game was as good and sold as well as those hits, then publishers would be very cheerful companies. Looking Glass was not famous for hits; it was the Orson Welles, the genius, of the industry. Ion Storm under John Romero was showmanship and little else. (Ion Storm under Warren Spector, as it is today, may be a very different animal; ironic indeed that the villain of Looking Glass's collapse is now developing Thief 3).

Since out-of-the-ordinary games, and games that appeal primarily to niche players, do indeed appear with astonishing regularity on shelves, it should be noted that publishers are not the big bad wolves of the industry. They'll gamble on projects that Hollywood would never even dream of. But though they'll take these risks, it scares them to do so. And if the gaming industry as a whole gives them reason to believe that they shouldn't roll the dice on titles like Sacrifice and Thief, then they probably won't. That's why interpreting Jennifer Olsen's remark is so damned complicated.

Publishers, by nature mighty corporations with lots of money that provide the cash for small developers to make games, will read Olsen's statement and think that she wants the publishers to support a safe, dependable system that designs games known to be effective—a scary thought indeed, since Deer Hunter and Barbie Fashion Designer represent games sure to make big bucks.

What did Olsen really mean with this statement? I tend to think that she was aiming her remark at the developers—publishers have little patience for failure or tomfoolery right now, and if too many studios fail to run their businesses correctly, then the publishers will grab the reins and say once and for all that only known equations will be supported—or, to put it another way, the industry's slogan will become "Showmanship, not genius." But I can tell you that if the industry, steered by the publishers, refocuses entirely on known-quantity titles at the expense of innovation, our hobby may well find itself in the creative equivalent of daytime television.

Blurring the Line

Just like movies, there is a huge crop of games that don't fall too far to either side of the "artistry" versus "profitability" equation. Many of these middle-of-the-road games have been not only huge blockbusters, but have pushed the envelope of the medium as well—and therefore deserve special applause. Let's look at two of these games, and see what we can learn from them.

Half Life is a prime candidate for a precise shade of gray that succeeded. It pleased Sierra, the publisher, because it leveraged a known-to-be-successful franchise: Half Life was powered by the mighty (and mighty moneymaking) Quake 2 engine. It pleased Valve, the studio, because it brought new depth of storytelling, scripting, technology, graphics, and value to the then somewhat-tired first person shooter genre. More than any other game to date, Half Life perfectly balanced the wishes of the bean counters with the desires of those at Valve who sought to expand their art form.

Gamers were the real winners when it came to Half Life. People still play through it even though it's nearly five. It was by turns terrifying, hilarious, intoxicating, and exasperating. New life was breathed into the aging technology by adding skeletal animations, a tightly controlled storyline, no set "levels" in the classic sense, and the most terrifically potent use of scripted events yet seen. It spawned Team Fortress and Counterstrike, the undisputed masters of online play, along with two forgettable expansion packs; and whatever the game cost to make, it's paid for itself.

Lesson to be learned from Half Life: One hit does not a superstar make. Valve has produced nothing since the title's initial release. Team Fortress and Counterstrike were fan mods snapped up by Valve; the cheap Half Life knockoffs Blue Shift and Opposing Force, along with promising semi-sequels like Counterstrike Condition Zero, were farmed out to Gearbox. The long-awaited Team Fortress 2 has fallen into the vaporware category (I'm not holding my breath), and Half Life 2 doesn't even appear to be in development. And industry buzz is that Half Life's publisher, Sierra, is getting pretty tired of watching Valve do what amounts to four years of nothing.

Our second example takes us into the second most popular genre in gaming today, and another golden oldie: Blizzard's Starcraft. Blizzard Entertainment had already built a name for itself and was a highly respected force in the business thanks to its work on the Warcraft series and Diablo. Owned and published by Cendant, now part of the Sierra media group, development of Starcraft took several years—necessary since Blizzard needed to produce a sufficiently original game to contradict the already-prevalent claims that they were doing no more than creating "Warcraft in space." Cendant was content to let Blizzard take its time, since the company had a proven track record of success and this new title was pretty much the same thing that Blizzard developers had been doing all along.

At a time when a handful of games were going to 3D, Starcraft shipped as a sprite-based isometric title in 1998. And despite enormous similarities to the Warcraft series (it really is Warcraft in space, more or less), it also contained tremendous practical and technological improvements. There are those who to this day consider Starcraft to be the best real time strategy game out there; I'm one of them. Even Blizzard's own recent Warcraft 3 doesn't hold much candle to it. More importantly, years after its release, it remains a strong seller, and the Brood Wars expansion pack flew off the shelves in 1999. The publisher was happy.

Playing Starcraft is like watching a movie from three perspectives. The story of the game is so intricate and well-written that many die-hard multiplayers who often have no interest in the single-player experience took the time to experience it. Technical and unit control is effective, and though there's no doubt that the game is lacking in originality, it's less that Starcraft is something innovative than it is the perfection of many previous attempts that makes it so great.

Lesson to be learned from Starcraft: Fan loyalty and a strong work ethic will protect a studio from anything. Shortly after Starcraft's release, it was learned that Blizzard's Battle.net online service secretly took information from users' Windows registries. The outcry was ferocious, and Blizzard issued only the most lackluster of apologies; some expected that the incredible arrogance and foolishness displayed by Blizzard in their handling of the situation would lead to the end of the company. But the fans forgave them—not something you see every day. Meanwhile, Blizzard continues to develop quality product. It may take forever to release a game, but once out, the game is absolutely stable and bug-free. Knowing their strengths, Blizzard has pulled the plug on near-complete projects simply because the result wouldn't have been good enough to carry the Blizzard name. Humble they are not—they still haven't apologized adequately for the Starcraft registry fiasco, they crush any attempt to combat the police-state they maintain on Battle.net, and Warcraft 3 tips the scales at $60, $10 more than most, but Blizzard is a game studio that knows its feet are not of clay.

Both of the titles described above walked the thin line between showmanship and genius quite well. They sold like crazy and are consistently ranked in the top ten of "all time"—a concept that has always bewildered me since Stephen Hawking assures us that "all time" is not quite over yet.

Showmanship vs. Genius: Fight!

I would love to say that it's possible for studios and publishers to find the golden mean between great games and great profits every time, but it's an unrealistic viewpoint. Sacrifice was genius and sold terribly. Deer Hunter was crap and sold brilliantly. Meanwhile, not-very-bright pundits like Derek Smart, designer and independent publisher of the Battlecruiser series, go around making trouble for both sides of the industry by claiming that there's something wrong with the system that is currently in place.

There is nothing wrong with the publisher/studio system on a philosophical level. If publishers ceased to exist, then studios would lack the funds to make the great games we expect to see on our shelves at Christmas. If studios ceased to exist, publishers would have to take up the reins of development as well as publication, and the whole industry would sink into a complicated morass of bureaucracy where everyone knows what a good game is but no one knows how to make one.

John Carmack, whom we all know and love as the creator of the Doom series, posted a scathing notice a few months ago in his .plan file. He accused those who described the medium as an art form of "sophistry," and essentially argued that we were all missing the point; that games are entertainment pure and simple, and that there's no more art in them than there is in your average issue of Penthouse. I disagree with him; partly because though Carmack is a programming genius whose contributions to the business have warped us ten years ahead of where we'd be without him, he couldn't write a grammatically correct sentence if his life depended on it. Also, a cynic might argue that he opposes the concept of computer games being an art form because no one in their right mind would call Doom art—it's just a lot of fun. Also, considering the alarming rate at which people get fired from his company, I have to question whether or not Id Software would qualify as "well run" in Jennifer Olsen's philosophy.

You're not going to catch me advocating that Civilization III be placed in an art museum alongside a Picasso. But I also wouldn't suggest that Citizen Kane be placed there, and those who believe that film isn't (or can't be) art are very much in the minority. I have a degree in film, I know that it's art, but I also know that there's plenty of non-art in theaters today. The Scorpion King is not art, it's entertainment; but its existence doesn't in any way detract from those films that are both entertaining and artistically pleasing. As with Half Life and Starcraft, one need look no further than a Lord of the Rings or a Magnificent Seven to realize that movies, like computer games, can be both entertainment and art—showmanship and genius.

Film has walked this path for years and seems quite comfortable there: releasing pure entertainment (Rollerball) and pure genius (Titus) at either side of the spectrum, but also managing plenty of Half Lifes (The Sixth Sense) that are both entertaining enough and artistic enough to keep both sides happy.

Television, on the other hand, is pretty much all about the almighty dollar. I'm certainly not one of those irritating people who doesn't own a TV or has a Kill Your Television bumper sticker or even only watches public access; I'm just fully cognizant of the fact that most TV plays to the lowest common denominator. There are far fewer purely artistic shows on TV than there are purely artistic films, yet film tends to be a lot more expensive to produce.

The industry press is beginning—slowly—to move toward acceptance of gaming as more than simply an act of passing time. Sites like ludology.org go maybe a little too far in arguing that video games are not only an art but a science as well; sites like this one confidently write and support the act of looking at games in a grown-up manner.

And they should. Time and again demographics indicate that the majority of computer gamers—I'll leave consoles out of this because I am not an expert in that field—are married men between the ages of 18 and 35. Most of them have children and rewarding jobs outside of the computer industry. That's what the research says, and who am I to doubt it? Furthermore, we're finally (finally!) seeing women welcomed into the business, not only as gamers but as industry experts and game-makers as well. Another curse broken. Do most people, in and outside the industry, still think of us as dateless teenagers who read hentai comics and go to a LAN party instead of the prom? Yes. But in time we may see that perception changing.

All I'm advocating, and I encourage other thinkers in the industry to advocate the same thing, is that we don't allow our beloved games industry to fall to the television level. If we do, if the publishers suddenly start supporting only games that appeal to a massive audience, then our hobby is up in smoke. Conversely, I cringe at the thought that the artists of our industry begin taking themselves so seriously that every single game becomes a Galapagos or a Bad Mojo or even a Black & White. We would do well to follow the same paradigm as film—that is, make plenty of Serious Sams so we can splatter each other all across our monitors, but also plenty of System Shocks and Dungeon Keeper 2s and No One Lives Forevers so we can still have a cerebral experience every now and then.

There is a more compelling argument in favor of this plan than my own personal taste. Judge Steven Limbaugh (yes, he's Rush's nephew, God love those conservatives) argued that computer games do not present any ideas or cause the generation of such in the half-melted brains of those who play them. It was based on this idiotic postulation that our industry was suddenly stripped of free speech protection. Don't worry overmuch about that; even other judges are wondering how often Limbaugh was dropped on his head as a baby, and it's only a matter of time before his decision is struck down. But if the question ever comes up again in a court of law—and it will—wouldn't it be nice to brandish Morrowind or Alice under the nose of the black-robed specter on the bench, insist that he play it through, and then ask him to dare to convince us that it didn't make him think?

Electronic games are actual additions to life, not merely prepackaged entertainment nuggets intended for consumption and disposal like a bag of Sun Chips. We shouldn't care whether or not the word "art" is applied to them. The best of them demand that we explore the nether regions of our own imaginations, wherein we find adventures and people and stories and ideas we never knew lurked there. The worst of them entertain us, however briefly, before winding up in the closet. Considering how many things in this world whose only crime is making us feel good are frowned upon or outright illegal, we the entertained have a holy responsibility to not only defend that which we love, but to take a hand in its future as well.

I want to hear the thoughts of gamers other than myself. Send me your comments, criticisms, and hate mail at steerpike@fourfatchicks.com—let's start the debate right here.