The Mysterious Grassroots Gamemaster
There's a mysterious, secret guy called Grassroots Gamemaster. You can read about him here, and especially this post of his. He talks about how backwards the game industry is right now, and one of his best points is how people who know the most about the design of games are nearly never the ones who decide which games to make. Those decisions are usually made by people who wear suits. I laughed at his analogy of a money guy telling Thomas Edison that a lightbulb is not really what anyone wants but he'd like to hire Mr. Edison to be an inventor of something else (perhaps a genre platformer for the next kids movie coming out).
Dear Grassroots Gamemaster, I have a lot of positive things to say and one negative. The positive part is that you have exactly described me, I fully accept your arguments, agree with them, and would like to work in the environment you describe. To give you an idea of how true that is, it's hard for me to picture myself working as cog in someone else's machine where I get $0 for each additional copy sold for much longer. I don't care about job security, I care about doing something that has lasting impact and meaning, but those notions get lost in the shuffle as you described.
So when do I start? Let's do it.
I hate to give out jeers on something when I haven't really researched it, but at first glance I have to wonder what is up with the IGDA regarding Grassroots Gamemaster. He says someone threatened to kick him out of the organization for his views. Grassroots Gamemaster: what is the person's name who told you this? What is his position? What were his reasons? Also, I notice that the IGDA forums deleted pretty much all your posts. IGDA: Why did you do this? Deleting unpopular speech doesn't really sit well with me, especially when the message is so spot-on.
Again, I didn't look into this that closely, but that really worries me about the IGDA. I'm all for an organization that looks out for my interests by lobbying against insane anti-video game laws and that publishes whitepapers on the quality of life in the game industry, as the IGDA does. But really, deleting posts and threating to ban someone who is unmasking the game industry with such cutting accuracy makes me very, very uncomfortable.
Finally, Grassroots Gamer, since we're now going to work together and make great products and win the video game lottery and all, let's just get it out in the open now. I have one problem with you: you're a coward. People who post anonymously on the internet are cowards. Please put your real name on your site and keep saying what you're saying. Wouldn't it feel better to stand up and be counted for what you believe in, even though the people you currently work with might be mad at you?
There's a lot worse things to be than a coward. Being wrong is worse, and Grassroots Gamemaster is not wrong, so he's way ahead of the curve.
--Sirlin
February 12th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
I know that in the publication industry there are a few avant garde companies (such as The New Press) who are willing to put up the money to publish individual works of writing based on their creative, intellectual, and/or analytical merit, rather than their chances for commercial success. But it doesn’t look like the VG industry has any equivalent.
So a theoretical independant game designer with the talent and potential to make the ultimate video game must either be like Herman Melville and put off the real dream design until they have the financial security to be independant of the suits, or be like Michaelangelo and be lucky enough to find a group of patron suits that is willing to both put up the money and refrain from interfering with the designer’s vision.
February 12th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Well said. But as the Grassroots Gamemaster says, it does make financial sense to invest in someone who is absolutely passionate about what they are creating, and who will be paid proportionately to how much that thing sells.
February 12th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Melville and Michaelangelo are both poor analogies because they worked relatively independently. Film is a much better comparison because movies have very large staffs. And for the most part movies work the same way as games - movie studios come up with a concept then attach a writer and director.
I’m not impressed by what Grassroots Guy says. I’ve seen the same thing 100 times and I’m sure you have too Sirlin. There isn’t much substance there.
Game designer is not the same thing as director. To continue using the film analogy, Grassroots is arguing that designers should be treated as directors. But they aren’t the same. In film the roles are very well-defined and the director is unequivocally the guy in charge of the day-to-day stuff. In games there are often multiple designers and even the lead designer may or may not be the equivalent of the director in film.
For this concept to work there needs to be a single person responsible for the game, the way a director is for film.
The film analogy is flawed for a variety of reasons. For one, studios do micromanage movies down to daily shooting schedules, catering schedules, casting, etc. Movies are not “creative chaos”, they are amazingly controlled in a truly impressive way. Also the way movie studios fund projects is very arcane and would probably not translate to games. Movie studios can afford to fund creative projects in part because their own money is rarely on the line.
It makes financial sense to invest in someone passionate? Maybe. For a game that costs $500,000 to develop it might. For a game that costs $15 million? Probably not.
Nothing is preventing you or Grassroots or anyone else from trying to make this model work. If it make financial sense and can lead to games that sell well then why not? For all the talk of the problem with being risk-averse the true risk-averse person here is Grassroots, who expects other people to risk their own time and money on his theories.
People have been complaining for years about how game publishing works, and for the most part those complaints are valid. But what does that change? Propose a better model then prove that it works. That’s the real test.
February 12th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
I think that Valve builds games the best way (Nintendo probably does it this way too). They work in small, self-sufficient groups (cabals) that can design and implement entire parts of a game without any outside dependencies (no having to wait on department x because they’re swamped, and no getting shitty results from said department because of them being swamped). All the cabals still have to co-ordinate on a ton of things (art direction, etc), but at least each one has the power to realize any idea on their own without barriers.
So, to nobody’s surprise, I don’t like GG’s process model. It’s too EA-ish - “design first, then send it off to be built, no iteration”. You can’t build a game without letting the designers playtest and add to it at every stage of development. If the prototypes are of high enough quality that they can represent the final game… then you have the final game. As long as somebody implements something in the game, you’re going to need to iterate on it.
Of course, my above rant is completely wrong if GG meant that he hands full creative control over to the outsourcers - that didn’t sound like what he meant, though.
His overall point is spot-on though. Programming (especially on creative projects) is often stuffed into the production-line model when it’s an art, not a science. Valve and Nintendo make pieces of art - EA makes production-line shovelware purely for their quarterly and annual reports.
February 12th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
James M, er, of course there needs to be a design director in charge of the whole thing. I thought that went without saying. The alternative would be no one in charge of the whole thing, or suits in charge, or someone who isn’t focused on the overall vision of the project in charge. If your game is built under the factory model, sure you can have no design overseer, but if you’re going for Mario Galaxy or something Valve would make, or something Will Wright would make, etc, etc, then yeah, surely you’d want a design director.
PoisonDagger: No one as in the loop as this Grassroots guy could possibly advocate making games without iteration of gameplay. I have to give him the benefit of the doubt on that one. Considering his emphasis on finding the fun early, it would seem consistent to carry that through all the way.
February 12th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Grassroots Gamemaster = Sirlin?
February 12th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
“Design director” is a terrible name for the person in charge of the game’s delivery. Aren’t we talking about plain old directors? “Design director” implies they direct the design, not the entire project. Maybe it’s just a terminology problem.
You mention Will Wright. Isn’t that an example of someone who already has a fair amount of freedom? It seems to me that no clear single point of ownership is a part of the problem. If you can’t identify a single owner you can’t put a name on the box.
But more to the central point, if this is a good, workable, profitable idea, what is preventing Grassroots or yourself from implementing it?
February 12th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
I don’t even know what we’re arguing about. You need a person in charge of the project. I called that a design director. You can call it something else if you like. Yes you need one. Will Wright is such a person and that is why Spore is not some cookie-cutter thing, and is instead something special. (He also happens to have four great designers under him, hi Alex!) That there should be such a person was a basic assumption by Grassroots and didn’t occur to me that it should be explained.
The more usual case in the industry is, as Grassroots says, closer to “please put this certain box together for me Mr. Designer” than it is to Thomas Edison inventing the light bulb. Some kids move is coming down the pipe, they need a game for it, someone with some money decides it will be a platform game. It should be a pretty standard one with a couple things different. Please discard your breakthrough concept and make that, they will say.
Surely you know what’s stopping Grassroots and I without me saying it. Lots of money and finding the right set of people. All the money right now is in the factory model, not the Grassroots model. His method doesn’t need $20 million like it would take to make Gears of War or something, but it takes more than I happen to have in my bank account. Also, even if I had the money, I would need someone like him to run the company. I happen to know no one like him in real life. And if he had the money, he’d need someone like me to actually oversee the project. From the sound of his blog, he knows no one like me in real life.
All I can say is check out what he wrote again. Things really are as backwards as he says except at a few very rare places.
February 12th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
If you read his blog, he compares designers to screen-writers at some points, and to directors at other points, even though those two jobs are totally different. He rants about designers selling design docs and moving on, an then getting their name on the box, but how often to screenwriters get their names on the box?
“Actually, a design document can anticipate many gameplay and development issues that may arise. So you can’t really stand behind this excuse. If it is written well, by and large you may assume its author can indeed execute.”
No, you can’t assume that at all. Again here he is mixing up the roles of screenwriter and director. Some of it is frankly very naive:
“Hiring teams, finding middleware is not an issue. Just buy out the designer, take away control (though reward him handsomely, offer him a job, and reward him for any sequels you will make), and you will not need to worry about execution. “
Huh? You don’t need to worry about execution because hiring teams is trivial? Really? (No, not really)
It’s a mess. On one hand he points to Sid Mier as an example of a genius designer because he wrote Civ by himself, then he immediately follows by saying he can’t program and doesn’t want to learn because it would interfere with his grand creative process.
He constantly inflates the value of the design document and lauds the mythical genius designer who writes a perfect doc and thus ensures a perfect outcome. Note that he is not lauding the game director, just the person who writes the doc. But again he expect this screenwriter equivalent to be treated like a rock star director.
The problems with the gaming industry are fairly well understood and have been documented multiple times in a variety of places, including Gamasutra. The split between publishers and developers is very fucked up, that is true. But that’s been discussed much more cogently by others.
The notion that designers should write documents and do nothing else but be treated like major film directors is a silly nonsensical pipe dream.
Posts like this read like something I would expect to find on gamedev.net:
http://grassrootsgamemaster.blogspot.com/2007/10/catalog-of-excuses.html
February 12th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
I also have to say that his blog is full of the widest variety of bad analogies I’ve ever seen.
You are doing yourself a disservice by holding him up as some font of insight. Yes, you would like to work in the environment he describes because it’s a fever dream with no attachment to reality. It would sure be great to get a cut of gross revenue and your name on the box for very little work! Who wouldn’t want that?
It reads as very amateurish and he is constantly owned in his own comments sections.
February 12th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
A lot of what Sirlin and Grassroots talks about on this subject seems to resonate with what I’ve observed over the last 2 years. I’ve experienced it in a more general sense, but it’s the same basic pattern.
Like Sirlin, I’m trying to make my own mark on the world, emphasising on a contribution that has an enduring, meaningful (positive) impact on the world. I’m finding this requires a lot of upfront investment and has a high barrier to entry, not necessarily because I lack the appropriate skills or knowledge, but largely because of the pre-existing systems in the world and how they work. To clarify, when I say “systems”, I’m taking about the general notion of “career”, “jobs”, and the mindset that go with them. For most people, the words “job” and “career” are not used to point to their own creative self-expression and the tangible expression of that creativity; rather, they refer to things outside of themselves — things they are subservient to.
Most of the pre-existing systems in the world, as well as the people who use them, seem to get so completely caught up with “trying to live” that they completely miss out on *really* living — really doing something meaningful with their lives; something that “stirs their soul” or, as Sirlin puts it, is worth getting out of bed for. What’s worse, so many people I encounter seem completely indoctrinated with the belief that this is ok and don’t even seem to question it, or at least, they swallow it and effectively kill any creativity, drive, and ambition they had in the process.
On the other hand, I literally can’t put myself in a situation where I am forced to compromise on my values and the potential I feel I have to make a difference in the world, lest I experience great internal upheaval and a strong urge to escape into more sane environments that don’t treat people as tools to increase the bottom line or as the means to an end. Consequentially, this leads me to take action that’s very different to the norm, which I have to admit, it isn’t easy in a world that has little concept of the putting people ahead of profits. But to me, it’s the only action worth taking.
It certainly is a troubling state of affairs, but it’s not all doom and gloom, and there are thousands of people who don’t buy into the dehumanising group-think and are actively working to help people become aware of and fully utilise their potential. The difficulty lies in the transition.
What am I trying to say with my lengthy comment? No point, really, other then that “I concur” with what Sirlin and Grassroots mention. Sometimes it’s nice to take a few steps back and be reminded that what you’re working towards is a worthy, noble goal.
Perhaps if humans look back at this time period in a few hundred years or so they’ll say, “wow, people really used to live like that?!” =)
- Bruce
February 12th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
James M said:
—————-
“[Grassroots Gamemaster’s website] reads as very amateurish and he is constantly owned in his own comments sections.”
—————-
The dehumanised minions like to defend their group think. What will they do without it? Consciously choose what they’d like to do with their lives and go about it in a virtuous way, honouring their potential and using their time for things that actually matter?
*Gasp!*
;)
February 12th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
James M, you keep saying that the analogy - between filmmaker and game designer - doesn’t fit. No shit. It’s an *analogy*. In the same vein that Animal Farm, as an analogy for the Stalinist Soviet Union, still works *even though the Soviets weren’t talking animals*. Any metaphor, if you interrogate it long and hard enough, breaks down. How can you fault me for comparing filmmakers and game designers because game designers aren’t filmmakers? I already know that.
You’re missing the point. I’ll summarize it here. At the beginning of any game, somebody talks to someone else saying, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we made a game about [whatever]? We can call it [Game X].” This moment is the most vital, the most critical moment in the inception of a game. It’s like Columbus deciding to sail west instead of east. This moment now only happens in secret. It happens either in somebody’s garage or it happens between two or three guys in their cubicle working on a game neither of them gives a shit about - guys who then strike out and make a game company of their own to get Game X done.
Now what they have learnt in th game industry is to bring this moment out of hiding. Yes, they *do* go through a period of creative chaos - it’s called screenwriting (analogous to prototyping in game dev). But by the time they get to production, they have most of their answers nailed down - and it is no longer as chaotic. If you read my post carefully, I’m saying that.
But anyway, looking back to the Columbus analogy (even though, yes, I admit making a game is not *exactly* like marine exploration in the 1400s), the game industry says that knowing where you are sailing isn’t important. Instead, what is *totally* important is to have the ability to sail by ship - and to have the crew, ship, supplies and so forth. But the problem is, you have a bunch of guys with ships who know *how* to sail, but don’t know *where* to sail that will take us in a new direction.
My basic, basic point is to out that initial spark conversation about Game X. It’s not the ability to load and crew up a ship that’s important (i.e make a game company) - even though, yes, you have no expedition without the ship. It’s that navigator - who says we’re going off in this totally new direction.
February 12th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
I meant to say, top of the third paragraph, “what they have learnt in the film industry”…
By the way, Sirlin, the “coward” remark made me smile. Maybe, if enough of you talk in favor of this I’ll no longer be that coward. Right now, though, if I stick my head up too high I think I’ll get it shot off.
February 13th, 2008 at 1:21 am
One thing I’m not clear on: does he believe that the film industry is stuck in the same backwards rut that he claims the game industry is? Why or why not?
February 13th, 2008 at 2:54 am
Forty: I think the answer is “No”. Given that his paragraph right before yours explains everything the film industry is doing right, that he wishes the game industry was also doing.
One thing I’m a little unclear on: The “lottery ticket company” post that Sirlin links to. Isn’t that a bit unrealistic in many ways if you look at the industry. I’ll admit, I haven’t kept up on the financial statistics as well as I’d like for the last year or two, but in general my understanding is that games are much less profitable than films. In the film industry, if you make a crappy film, you just don’t screen it early for review, do your best to make the “most awesome trailer EVER!”, and there’s a still a half decent chance that enough people will be fooled into seeing it opening night, that you might manage to break even. In the game industry, you can make a totally awesome game (”Thief” comes to mind), and win a bazillion awards, and still not manage to break even, much less turn a profit.
February 13th, 2008 at 4:11 am
Couple unrelated comments:
1. Most movies are not profitable, but they don’t lose money either, due to the way movie financing works. The people who actually make movies have little financial risk — it’s a weird industry. Movie making is mostly a money-loser by itself, with TV, DVD, toys etc bringing in the real money, but the people losing the money are almost always outsiders so it doesn’t really matter.
2. Can we have a moratorium on terrible analogies? Nearly every one on GG posts is full of nonsensical analogies, and tons of analogies are usually indicative of weak underlying logic. Multiple paragraphs on Columbus? Please. Let’s stick directly to the topic at hand shall we?
3. I’m still waiting to hear whether designers should be treated as screenwriters or directors. From GG’s posts it’s clear he considers them the equivalent of screenwriters, but he expects them to be treated like directors. Directors get their name on the box because they are ultimately responsible for the final project. Screenwriters/designers are not. (This is important because the entire model GG is proposing is based on film)
4. The idea for a game is not in any way comparable to a movie script. For a dialogue and plot based movie a script/screenplay is an excellent picture of what the movie will turn out like. Movies are 90 minutes long, non-interactive, and a typically derived from a handful of formulas. A design document for a game does not capture the essense of the game in the same way a script does except in outlying cases. (Tetris, board games, games that are heavily rule-based, etc) And compared to movies games have a huge amount of variety. The idea that studios will pick up design documents and then produce based on them is formulated on a movie-industry comparison that doesn’t hold water. Nearly all of the well-known designers in games do more than write fire-and-forget docs, they are hands-on throughout the entire process and serve as both screenwriter and director equivalents.
To summarize:
GG expects designers to act like screenwriters but be treated like directors.
GG expects game production to follow the same pattern as movie production even though there is little evidence that model works in game production and the comparison of scripts to design docs is fatally flawed.
February 13th, 2008 at 4:25 am
Thief’s regrettable Achilles’ heel was its lack of fun at low levels of skill. It’s basically all ‘hard fun’ (with a little sprinkling of surprise and wonder) that a hardcore gamer loves but the more numerous casual gamer is hard pressed to get into before quitting out of frustration (see Sirlin’s article on SMG for more on that concept). When I played it, I had the patience to endure the early deaths and figure out the mechanics to getting around undetected. But I am an unusually patient man.
And I don’t have to be reminded that game design is a collaborative effort. With my Melville and Michaelangelo comparisons, I was simply taking the side of the designer as an individual with the same physical needs as any person. It would be just grand if passion for ideas could magically put food on the table, but it won’t.
February 13th, 2008 at 4:41 am
James M,
I think you are missing GG’s point and misinterpreting his ideal. I think it would play out like this: A production company of say 3-8 people would come up with a design, this design would likely be driven by 1 or 2 designers who would create a pitch document similar to the many that Sirlin and I have made. The company would then shop this script around to various potential financiers, including publishers. Then a pre-production phase would begin ala the Cerny Method. This phase would include iterative prototyping as a matter of course and the fun would be found. At the end of this phase the financier would have the opportunity to cut their loses or fund the full project. The production phase of the project may, or may not, be directed or produced by the same team/director as the pre-production phase, though I believe that the pre-production director should at least exert an oversight role during the production phase.
As for the Sreenplay writer vs Director debate, there are many famous directors who are known as Writer/Directors. Even if a Director is not the screenplay writer, they can direct writers to make changes to the screenplay. Just like a design director can direct changes to the combat designers.
February 13th, 2008 at 4:51 am
I have to disagree, James M. I see where you’re coming from, especially reading some of GGs blog posts. That said, his post here, despite the rambling Columbus analogy, is really quite clear, and explains what his stance is quite well.
I think, he’s basically saying that he wants potentially good design ideas to be given their due, and lead to game production. Rather than the current industry trend of building yearly sports game/move tie-in/generic FPS, and repeat.
The rest of it (i.e. everything you’re attacking), sounds like merely an attempt to suggest a plan that someone in the industry could feasibly implement, and that would help realize his goals. It really looks to me like you’re trying to read between the lines when you attack him, and there is in fact nothing there. I don’t know the specifics of the way the industry works, so maybe he’s right, and maybe you’re right… but you’re still coming across as an apologist and a whiner, on top of missing the point entirely. How about you try rereading what GG said to figure out what he’s actually saying, and then if you know the way these industries work as well as you claim try and say “Well, here’s why that won’t work, but try this…”.
Side note: I think you’re using too limited a definition of “design document” as well. You’re standard JRPG is basically a big movie script, with a page or two of game design tacked on. You’re standard puzzle game, is a whole bunch of gameplay related design documentation, with nothing else really needed. And most other games are somewhere in between… but you stack together some good gameplay documents, some good concept art, and a script if it’s the type of game that needs it, and you’re in business. That is, I don’t think it’s impossible to create something analagous to a movie script, it’s just more complex in the game industry, for the same reasons that playing a game is more complex than watching a movie. Also, one could argue there isn’t yet a “formula” for creating a solid design doc, in the way that it’s generally known how a movie or theatre script looks. But, that’s a bit trivial… there are actually a number of people in academia and such trying to find ways to formalize game design, eventually they’ll figure it out.
February 13th, 2008 at 4:59 am
DredNicolson: That is a flaw, but it’s not really enough. Ninja Gaiden is probably the worst offender ever in terms of only creating “hard fun”… and yet Team Ninja hasn’t closed it doors yet. Honestly, though, I think the success of Team Ninja, and the failure of Looking Glass both have very little to do with the specific gameplay elements of their game. I believe at the time, rampant piracy was pegged as one of the main reasons Thief didn’t sell as well as was expected, but even that’s not a complete explanation. There’s just a lot more that goes into a company than can be summed up in a couple sentences.
February 13th, 2008 at 5:30 am
IMO Grassroots Gamemaster’s correctly identifes a key flaw as it applies to game design, but turns around and tries to justify that flawed approach to other aspects of game production like art and programming. The key here is incentive — to get the best in people they need ownership of their game and the potential rewards. Farming out development of those beautifully crafted designs will get you mediocre results, which may be ok for many games but not if you’re doing something truly innovative. GG pays lip service to programmers and artists by saying that they can participate in incentives if they’re really hot stuff, but his derisive comments about elegant code say a lot about how he values these contributions.
GG has just replaced one grand emperor, the publisher, with another, the game designer.
February 13th, 2008 at 5:47 am
My biggest issue with GG’s proposed system is the idea that somehow this will necessarily lead to better games. This is belied by the very system he wishes to take inspiration from (movies). A cursory glance at the available offerings in the box office shows that this model doesn’t necessarily ensure a high level of quality across the field. There is, to me, no evidence that this new model would result in remarkably different products than are currently produced.
From a business perspective, GG seems to be arguing for something similar to a “stage-gate” process, only one in design teams are essentially freelancers rather than full time employees. While stage-gate processes do allow greater flexibility with regard to risk taking, as it reduces the risk involved with experimentation at the initial prototype levels, it doesn’t guarantee that radically different products will be produced. At the end of the day, the decision about what gets produced is still going to be dependent on the same economic considerations that “the suits” currently use to determine what gets made: potential profitability.
Part of GG’s argument appears to be the assertion that, were he in charge, he wouldn’t consider profitability, but rather the “quality of the design” when deciding which projects to pursue. Similarly, he claims he’d hire outsources based on “intuition and perception”. This is a meaningless standard, and sounds a little too close to “The current decision makers won’t make _my_ game idea, which is better than all the games that currently being made, but I would!”
There isn’t even a good explanation of why a financier would accept this type of arrangement other than out of charity, since he is giving up a portion of profits without any meaningful compensation other than the promise of the developer’s “A game.”
The reference to a lottery ticket in the title of the post is apt, because there’s no good reason for a smart investor to believe that “intuition” will lead to any sort of return. The _only_ way you could found a business on those principles is with found money. There are some interesting ideas buried within this screed, such as implementing stage gate models, intelligent use of outsourcing, and incorporating individual projects, thereby allowing the developers to retain a larger portion of the profits while perhaps shouldering a greater risk burden. But these good ideas seem to be tangled up with a chip-on-shoulder mentality that “if I were in charge, things would be different”, without any real consideration of the logistics involved in making things different.
February 13th, 2008 at 5:53 am
Doesn’t this assume that good games will sell well?
I’ve been in the industry for 7 years now, and I’ve seen many terrific games sell very weakly (Psychonauts, Rez, Beyond Good and Evil, etc.), and other pieces of absolute garbage sell over a million copies (Fifty Cent’s game, Madden every year, etc.).
The reason that publishers are the ‘evil emperors’ is because they go with what provides established money. I knew some of the members of the Psychonauts team… they really believed in that game so much that many of the team members kept working on IOUs, even after they lost their funding from Microsoft, before Majesco picked it up. They were really, really into it. They were 100% behind it, and the game was absolutely awesome. But it didn’t sell well at all.
It’s nice to believe that there is some sort of correlation, and sure, I’d love to see more ownership be spread around. However, the long and the short of it is… it’s a utopian dream that will only work for a select few (Shigeru Miyamoto, Will Wright, etc.), and most of the others who are in the middle of the pack will produce games that are also in the middle of the pack.
February 13th, 2008 at 5:58 am
Additionally, it seems the crux of GG’s argument is that:
“You don’t make money making shit.”
I think anybody who follows either the game or film industry closely knows that this isn’t even close to being true.
Quality may correlate with sales, but it doesn’t necessarily, let alone being the cause of good sales (eg. a company may tend to put more advertising behind their “best” titles, which leads to more sales, but those sales aren’t necessarily a result of the title being the “best”, they’re a result of the increased advertising.)
There’s simply no evidence presented that this would be a good investment for anybody involved. It’s all well and good to dream about the ideal way to structure an industry, but without beneficial results for all parties involved, its just dreaming.
February 13th, 2008 at 6:02 am
I think you’re misunderstanding him similar to James M, inkblot. Look at this sentence from GGs blog: “I know you have dreams tucked away in your little designers notebooks there. “. I don’t know any programmers running around with some special unique shader code that the suits tell him he can’t implement. Programmers are in a completely different boat than designers… they aren’t limited to the games industry in any way, and there just isn’t much art to what they do (I should know, I am one… there’s a huge difference between a good and a bad programmer, but take 20 minutes to compare their code, and it’s obvious who’s better, which can’t be said of comparing two design documents).
Also, there’s already quite a number of companies that are relatively good at recognizing people with good technical skills in fields like programming, and actually being nice to them, so they’ll hang around. It’s definitely possible to be a “cog” in the way Sirlin describes as a programmer, but it tends to just mean you haven’t found an ideal company yet, and should move on. For a designer, I get the impression, that the only possible way out is to start your own company ala Gabe Newell… that’s just not an option that everyone has access to.
February 13th, 2008 at 6:36 am
Sirlin do you play FPS games? Come work for my company!
February 13th, 2008 at 6:38 am
Charles wins this thread. I think he’s exactly right: GG’s model is probably a dream come true for a game designer, but there’s no evidence that it would produce better or more successful games.
February 13th, 2008 at 6:49 am
But clearly there are some designers in the game industry developing games based on their vision and not from being shoveled into a role for which a “suit” deemed them a proper fit.
Not every designer is stuck making EA’s Iterative Sports Game ‘XX, just like not every director is stuck making yet another Saw movie. Maybe there is a difference in the degree of difficulty in escaping that position between the two industries, but I can’t see (without more thorough convincing) how the game industry is so far different from the movie industry as far as stifling creativity, working on shovelware/crappy sequels, etc. goes.
February 13th, 2008 at 7:11 am
ink: That’s because his model is that the designer gets his name on the box and a portion of gross sales while doing very little work and not being in charge of anything other than the design doc. Of course it’s a dream come true for a game designer! A lot of money and credit with none of the responsibility - sign me up.
lion-gv: I’m curious, given your model, why the designer who wrote the original design doc and did no other work gets his name on the box and a percentage of gross sales. I don’t have a problem with companies soliciting game designs, that sounds like a fine idea to me. What is odd to me is the notion that the person who wrote the initial design doc deserves the lion’s share of the credit. It seems to me that the person who deserves their name on the box is the person in charge of delivering the product no?
Claytus: “I think, he’s basically saying that he wants potentially good design ideas to be given their due, and lead to game production.” Is anyone on earth opposed to this? Seriously, this is just a riff on “we want better games.”
Everyone: There are major problems with how the industry works, in particular the relationship between development houses and publishers. But as ink points out promoting the designer to godlike status is not a fix, just ego-gratification.
Soliciting designs may be a decent idea. (Although there isn’t any evidence that it is) But even if it is a great idea you still need a director-equivalent that implements and tweaks the vision. Building games is not like building a house, the starting blueprint is not nearly enough. A script is a far stronger starting point than a design doc (script elements translate verbatim onscreen, design docs typically don’t) but even in movies it’s the director that makes or breaks a film and gets his name in lights, not the writer. Ask some writers how appreciated they feel in the movie business.
There are two separate notions here:
1. That studios should solicit designs then produce them.
2. That the writers of those designs deserve great compensation, praise and fame.
1 may make some sense, although it may not. I haven’t seen anyone justify 2.
February 13th, 2008 at 7:12 am
To Forty’s point, I’m currently playing No More Heroes. Is someone here going to argue that that game was designed by corporate suits? Seems like a hard sell.
February 13th, 2008 at 7:21 am
Forty: the movie industry has production companies where talented people come together, do one film project, then are all fired by default afterwards. The game industry has nothing like this anywhere. Instead, you join a factory, the factory makes predictable things, you have job security, and tend to make $0 on each additional copy sold. Someone disconnected with games secures some kind of “IP” then hires people like Thomas Edison to flesh out the details rather than invent something.
If you guys want to pull the “no evidence” line, then I’ll have to respond by saying there’s “no evidence” that the current factory model does a very good job at all. Look at the potential of interactive software, and look at what games are today. Quite a huge gap. Luckily (very luckily!) we have Nintendo who is at least trying to show everyone else that you can get girls to play Nintendogs and make Mii’s (and making money hand over fist). But the majority of the “evidence” (released games) is pretty disappointing for the medium. It falls way short because it’s almost all factories and no production companies. Most of the best games are from factories that, one way or another, got someone like Miyamoto, Will Wright, Clint Hocking, CliffyB, or some other such visionary to have some say in things. GG’s method cuts to the heart of that.
February 13th, 2008 at 7:39 am
James M: The No More Heroes guy is one of those unique big name game designers, he fits into the exception that makes the rule, probably as well as Sid Meier or Will Wright.
Also, I reiterate that you’re trying to read too deeply. You are right that *you* are trying to comment on the two issues you mentioned. It’s not clear to me that anyone else believes your point #2. If anything, GG probably meant the “director”-style design positions deserved the same fame that movie directors get. Unfortunately, “writers” are still just called designers in the industry in the moment, so it looks like you’re just arguing semantics. (Also, I can’t imagine many people would just end their involvement with just a design doc, doesn’t GG go on and on about how the goal is to let the designer’s have a chance at creating their “dream game”, instead of being hired for generic FPS #46… as someone else here said, isn’t a role like a combined writer/director what we should be using as an analogy?)
February 13th, 2008 at 8:19 am
Sirlin, regarding this whole movie industry analogy:
The movie industry has evolved to a point where they can operate as you mention. There are strong unions for the various contributors to a production: actors, writers, staff, etc. There are production houses that specialize in one aspect of movie production like sound of CGI. This strong definition of roles is what makes it possible to bring the various parties together for a project, and more importantly to accurately predict the quality of the work that you’ll get back from a contractor. Little of this exists in the game industry. The game designer’s plight sounds a lot like how actors were treated in the early movie days: long hours, no ownership, and no creative control. If the movie analogy is accurate, then forming a designers union is a more serious and practical approach to changing the status quo.
February 13th, 2008 at 8:56 am
James M: in my model, the designer who made the original design doc DID do other work, including overseeing the pre-production phase and likely the production phase. Of course, once the design has been set in stone (there is a vertical slice and the overall scope has been defined) it might be a better use of their time to move onto the next pre-production project and have a trusted producer oversee the final execution of the game in production. They’d both likely get their name on the box :)
As for the whole name on the box thing. I don’t think that it is something that is supposed to be taken so literally. Another one of GG’s metaphors perhaps. It is speaking more to the lack of proper crediting in the game industry. Even the studio who made the game often doesn’t get their name on the box. Another point: putting a director’s name on the box separates them from a specific studio, more easily allowing them to take their clout elsewhere in the future, which is the broad goal here–a move away from the factory system and a move towards the production company system. If you’d like to know more about the case for free agency, I highly recommend checking out this video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6367535845332428775
February 13th, 2008 at 8:57 am
James M: in my model, the designer who made the original design doc DID do other work, including overseeing the pre-production phase and likely the production phase. Of course, once the design has been set in stone (there is a vertical slice and the overall scope has been defined) it might be a better use of their time to move onto the next pre-production project and have a trusted producer oversee the final execution of the game in production. They’d both likely get their name on the box :)
As for the whole name on the box thing. I don’t think that it is something that is supposed to be taken so literally. Another one of GG’s metaphors perhaps. It is speaking more to the lack of proper crediting in the game industry. Even the studio who made the game often doesn’t get their name on the box. Another point: putting a director’s name on the box separates them from a specific studio, more easily allowing them to take their clout elsewhere in the future, which is the broad goal here–a move away from the factory system and a move towards the production company system. If you’d like to know more about the case for free agency, I highly recommend checking out this video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6367535845332428775
February 13th, 2008 at 8:57 am
GG seems to have a mental aversion towards the technical talent (programming, art, music, etc) that goes into games (judging by his rant, probably due to an experience with a *bad* programmer/level builder who wasted time prematurely optimizing everything they did instead of looking for the fun first). He wants to glorify himself as a game designer (that’s perfectly fine - the idea men/women typically don’t get the credit they deserve), yet he thinks he can just ship off the development when his part is done instead of including the technical people as an integral part of the project. He’s living in a dream world where a 500,000 page design doc will get you better results than a team of competent in-house devs working with designers every step of the way from the first prototype (which will evolve into the final product).
I find it hard to take GG’s ideas as anything but an unattainable fantasy when he gets something that fundamental so incredibly wrong.
February 13th, 2008 at 9:19 am
There seems to be a double-standard in a lot of people’s posts here. I think GGs point is that noone is getting credit in the game industry, and if you compare to other industries, it’s usually the idea men that come out on top, and designers best fit that role. Why aren’t the people complaining about technical people spending their days protesting how gaffer’s don’t proper recognition on film sites? It’s not like there’s necessarily any negative for technical talent within GGs plans… they don’t get credit now, and in the future, at worst, they just still won’t get credit.
February 13th, 2008 at 9:28 am
Some of you get it. Some of you don’t.
The ones who don’t always project onto me. Put words in my mouth. Say things like “500,000 page design doc”, or go on about glory-seeking. Maybe in *your* world, all designers crank out bloated, poorly-written design docs. Maybe in *your* world, they aren’t true believers, just glory seekers.
The ones who argue status quo status quo with that beautiful line “no evidence” blow me away. This is an ENTERTAINMENT industry! Since when do you rely on evidence to make decisions in entertainment? Gawdamn it! You should be in science, not game development. Why are you making my life hell? Why are you so obstinant that the only way to someone like myself can pursue a vision is to make an entire company on their own (i.e. to become an administrator, which is not what game designers should be doing)?
I guess that’s just my point. The guys in charge are bean-counters; hair-splitters; technologists… campers. They don’t make a move without considering every single possibility - min-maxing like true wargamers. They need proof positive that a vision is real. Entire continents will sink beneath the ocean before positive proof will ever appear that this or that vision for a game design will work. So, lacking that, they fall back on what they know - the same old shit
February 13th, 2008 at 9:55 am
People are always projecting onto Sirlin too! It is amazing how many people critique what they haven’t even read, or haven’t read properly. I think that it is a result of 1) a lack of mindfulness: not seeing clearly that which one is observing and 2) a level of consciousness that only sees their world view as correct, or worse, a world view that is adverse to the notion of hierarchy.
February 13th, 2008 at 10:26 am
For the record, I do actually believe in your vision… at least, the “Let the real designers call the shots. The bean counters just want to push out the same old shit” part of it. As a technologist myself (I’m a programmer), though, I’m rather put off by the notion that we’re all bean counters that shouldn’t contribute any more than what your design document says and that all we’re interested in is framerates and polys and whatnot.
And I called it a half-million page design document not because it’s poorly written or bloated, but because if you’re shipping off a completely new idea to be implemented by some other company who doesn’t have intimate knowledge of your idea, that’s how long it will have to be. The alternative is to have the technical talent working with the designers from day one.
February 13th, 2008 at 10:30 am
“It’s not clear to me that anyone else believes your point #2.”
It’s all over GG’s blog. Honestly I don’t know how to respond to this, it’s one of his primary points. In multiple posts he talks about how designers who specialize in writing docs need to make their own name into a brand.
“I think GGs point is that noone is getting credit in the game industry, and if you compare to other industries, it’s usually the idea men that come out on top, and designers best fit that role.”
Hollywood writers would disagree. Seriously try talking to some writers sometime or read some books by them. Their fundamental complaint is that they are treated like crap and not shown any respect. Didn’t we just go through a writer’s strike grounded in these issues?
GG is presenting a totally false dichotomy between himself and the “bean-counters.” There are many flaws with the way the video-game industry works, that doesn’t mean a half-baked self-serving solution is the answer. It isn’t either/or. GG wants a million dollars and a pony.
Gamasutra has covered this issue multiple times from a variety of fronts. They’ve run things about the relationship between publishers and developers, milestone-based development, etc. They’ve run articles on how and when to outsource parts of projects. The difference is the people writing those articles have practical experience, put their words into action and have concrete and precise suggestions and objections.
February 13th, 2008 at 10:32 am
From his most recent post:
“Of course, if we did let go of the homogeneity thing, that would probably mean that (gasp) the game designers would demand their individual contributions be recognized - complete with their name on the box, a demand of a more substantial compensation, the ability to move from project to project as they (as opposed to their corporate masters) saw fit, and so forth.”
If people want to pretend that “name on the box” is just a metaphor then I suppose that’s find but I’m not interested in writing that is all metaphor and analogy without an underlying concrete argument.
February 13th, 2008 at 10:55 am
I thought GRGM’s ideal design company involved him investing in other designers? Seems more like he’s attacking the business end of the matter and wants to help back these amazing designers, as opposed to just get his own glory.
Either way, I like him. He’s a little crude, but I like the way he thinks, and I definitely like the spirit behind his writing.
February 13th, 2008 at 10:59 am
I think this GG quote sums up the two sides nicely
“This is an ENTERTAINMENT industry! Since when do you rely on evidence to make decisions in entertainment?”
It’s not ENTERTAINMENT (in caps!) to the people holding the purse strings. It’s an investment and a business. You as a creative person think you have a better way to produce the product, but it’s all a pipe dream unless you find some business person to back you. This thread is divided between those who are willing to entertain the fantasy and those who are more interested in options that are actually feasible.
February 13th, 2008 at 11:00 am
James M, I don’t understand why you find metaphor to be such a horrible means of arguing. Do not overanalyze the metaphor or take it any farther than need be and you can easily understand what he is getting at but is probably having trouble articulating without the metaphor.
February 13th, 2008 at 11:12 am
You still seem to have ignored the rest of what I said. My issue with your #2 point was not that latter half (i.e. the designers perserver money, fame…), it was merely that I don’t believe anyone else is using the term designer to refer only to “writing” position regarding the design document.
As for the other quote you responded too… it still comes down to semantics. You assume I only meant “writers” when I said “idea men”. (note: I do agree this was more a poor choice of words on my part than a mistake on yours, but still….). I still hold that a good designer shares more in common with a movie director than with a movie screenwriter, and that’s the comparison you should be responding too.
The whole thing seems partly hypothetical to me. GG has argued for a “free agent” approach to implementing design docs. But, given that there’s no system for that now, I don’t believe it’s currently possible for a designer not to become part of a project team on a game, and see the project all the way through. It still strikes me as you just trying to connect multiple posts of GGs that weren’t actually connected. Like that quote from his most recent post… that obviously doesn’t apply to someone analagous to a “writer”, because there’s noone like that in the industry at the moment.
It’s not like this is some new and wholly foreign concept. Sid Meier is a great example of a guy who did get his name on a box. Game projects now tend to be much larger than the little one man endeavor he started out with, so it’s not trivial to draw parallels. But, it’s also not clear why the approach is now to give credit to fewer people, the larger the teams become.
February 13th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Well said ink. The biggest problem with his writing is that there is no takeaway. People like Miyamoto and Sid Mier were able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, GG expects someone else to just hand him success on a platter. He can’t even make a compelling business case that his model would be better, so he’s failing even at the awareness raising and consensus building level. He’s unwilling to take any action and he expects to convince other people to act for him based on no evidence. What?
I should point out that ink has walked the walk and turned his own dreams (or some of them anyway) into reality, both with organizing SF as a competitive presence and the creation of GGPO. Other people on SRK whine about how their game doesn’t have a scene while ink did something about it. People complain about Kaillera netplay so ink made it better. I’m sure some of that was a giant pain in the ass but the alternative is endless complaining without progress.
Now unban me from SRK. I’ll play nice. :)
February 13th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
GG’s ideal production model is not a pipe dream. There are already quite a few production companies who are already using this model. You can choose to ignore it, but I’m choosing to embrace it. The traditional studio may be here to stay, but alternative models and hybrid models will become ever more common during the next five years. I will ride this wave.
February 13th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
You guys are haters who will never accomplish anything with that attitude. Being an apologist for the status quo where people in suits decide which small box you can “innovate” inside is a sad thing to be indeed. Interesting that the two people who do apologize for the status quo are not even *in* the game industry and for some reason don’t take the word of people who are such as myself, lion-gv, and Grassroots. I can’t say it any better than Grassroots did. We’re inside a very broken system. Maybe lion-gv could explain more details about how that newer model is taking hold.
February 13th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Sirlin I know you know what a false dichotomy is.
I’ve said multiple times that there are major problems with the status quo. One of the reasons I don’t work in the games industry is that I had my chances and turned them down because the status quo is so bad. I don’t want to take something fun and turn it into a terrible life-sucking chore. I’ve been to plenty of interviews for gaming jobs and and the typical gaming company is fucking amateur hour to the extreme. (I almost got a job working on that Bruce Lee game for XBox, ha, one of the worst games ever made. That would have been a fabulous two years.)
Nobody here is defending the status quo (I don’t think). What GG is saying is just a poorly articulated and self-aggrandizing version of what many have said for years. You can keep preaching about suits and apologists and small boxes but that is your invention. Do you think anyone here is in favor of studios deciding they need to make a game based on the fucking 7-Up “Cool Spot” or the fucking Noid? (LOL)
And again, I have no problem with studios soliciting designs or with outsourcing certain jobs. My problem is with the notion that it’s all about “the vision”, that the other pieces are basically afterthoughts, that people who merely write design docs deserve a percentage of gross revenue and their name on the box, etc.
Here are some good articles that have the same spirit as what GG writes but are much better articulated:
On dev philosophy and outsourcing:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060811/seropian_01.shtml
On a developer bill of rights:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051121/zimmerman_01.shtml
On milestone-driven development:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051027/buscaglia_pfv.htm
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3191/milestones_and_glass_houses_.php
I’d like to see where exactly I apologized for the status quo. Didn’t happen.
February 13th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
(I have a bad habit of posting twice in a row…need an edit button…sorry)
As far as never accomplishing anything with “that attitude,” a fundamental question is how do you get from point B from point A? If GG has any ideas they aren’t on his blog.
You think you’ve identified a problem. Now what?
February 13th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
re edit function. I’ve wanted it forever. Will upgrade site in next couple months and add it.
re false dichotomy, ok I accept the argument. Based on James M’s last comment, yes I was creating a false dichotomy, but I actually did think you wanted the absurd side of things. I now see that you don’t.
re all those articles, yeah I know those people. I have seen them deliver those speeches in person, even. Zimmerman is accomplishing the most of anyone mentioned so far in this topic because he is actually doing this business model. He is strongly pushing for investors who invest in a project, not in his company, and who leave all the creative vision to his designers (who, duh, know more about what’s what than the investors). More power to him, he is really doing this and succeeding. To top it off, he has made games that actually matter such as this game about surviving in Haiti:
http://www.unicef.org/voy/explore/rights/explore_3142.html
Grassroots gamer is just a more straightforward form of all these other guys with less tolerance for bullshit and more swear words. I personally like his style, except for the cowardice. ;) Speaking of liking his style, I just reread his comment #38 above. I particularly liked the last paragraph of that post. Thank god for people like Steve Jobs and Walt Disney who could see things that aren’t yet there, push past the enormous amount of negativity from “bean counters” and everyone else saying it will never work, and make things happen. Grassroots, let’s hang some pictures of those guys in our office or something. Or maybe in your apartment.
February 13th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
From what I understand about the big money entertainment industry, it’s surprising that anyone would aspire to be in a business like that. What was the last original thing that came out of Hollywood? What was the last good movie the came out of Hollywood? How many movies does Hollywood produce?
I’ll freely admit that I have no experience with game development, or large market software as a business, but I don’t understand how the process that GG describes is more likely to lead to a game like ‘God of War’, than a game like ‘Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones’. At the same time, we can look at games like ‘Grim Fandango’ which came out of Lucas Arts - a large studio production, clearly driven by artistic vision, and generally considered to be one of the best games in its genre ever made. Of course, big studios also produce notorious dogs.
February 13th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
The reason you aspire to get into a business like that is because it’s the best way to get in. Honestly, I want to get into game design. IMO, the best way to do this is to get to the top then control things from there. I have my own ideas for some badass games, and naturally, I’d want them to come out as I’d like them and not rush them to market before Black Friday as a piece of crap for the first X hours then the rest is crap (I’m looking at you, KOTOR2) or an absolutely great launch title that was obviously, pathetically rushed (I’m looking at you, Condemned: Criminal Origins).
So technically, I’d want to be like Capcom’s Keiji Inafune, or Tomonobu Itagaki. Both of which have all the artistic control to the point where Inafune developed Dead Rising and Lost Planet, and actually TOLD Capcom they were publishing them, and Itagaki actually refused to let DOA4 hit the market at the 360’s launch because he didn’t think it was perfected, and said that rushed games that get remedied by a half-dozen post-release patches were stupid.
Anyway, I want to be the Miami Bill Parcells of video games. For those who don’t know, Parcells is an ex-head coach who retired, became a football (and boxing) commentator, then came out of retirement as a Vice President of Football Operations. In his month or so of being the VP, he has put himself into such a position where he functions as the VP, general manager, offensive and defensive coordinators and head coach of the team. I want to do something like that…but with video game development.
February 14th, 2008 at 12:29 am
Reviewing everybody’s comments, I agree with James M that the really major sticking point here, and what causes me the most consternation, is the idea that you could deliver a design to somebody else, even a heavily iterated, prototyped design, and walk away and expect the product to be good.
Everybody I know who works in game design (and I do work in the industry) agrees that that’s simply untrue. Games are inherently dynamic systems that accept input from completely unpredictable sources (people). No designer I’ve ever worked with believes that you can create a design that will survive the first playtest. The on-the-floor decisions, the day to day management of the project is what makes a game good, not the initial concept. Case in point: a study was done that 2D platform games sold proportionally to how closely their jumping time mimicked Mario’s from Super Mario Bros. Think how easily that jumping time might have been “tweaked” if handed to a different designer.
I would be even less confident in passing off a design for a novel concept than I would be for an established genre. If I want to make a Bejeweled clone, I can comfortably hand that off to any other designer, knowing that he has a good sense for the work required. However, suppose I want to create, say, Katamari Damacy (the first time, before it had ever been done). Do you think anybody else is going to be able to create that game other than its initial concept designer? I absolutely do not.
Part of this seems to depend on the concept of designer ownership: you get the designer’s best work, because he’s invested in the concept. In this model, this is true _only_ of the initial “concept” designer. The designers on the floor are no more invested in this than they were before. You aren’t getting their best work.
Also, the company I work in has tried doing something similar, with having “prototype teams” that create concepts, and “production teams”, that create products. The result? The production teams get completely de-motivated, and the product suffers. If you’re basing your argument around a sense of creator ownership, you have to account for all the creators, not just yourself.
February 14th, 2008 at 12:37 am
Charles, no one walks away from anything. The designer is done when the game is done. Absolutely no one is claiming what you’re arguing against.
February 14th, 2008 at 1:02 am
Well, it could be construed that I was arguing that, but I really wasn’t. I’m just allowing for all possible specific expressions of this general concept.
February 14th, 2008 at 2:20 am
It seems a little strange to expect the game industry to change for some reason, or to criticize it (any more than any other artifact of capitalism) for what it is.
There are more would-be designers than there is capital to develop large games (or, moreover, than there is demand for games). The people who provide the capital are then the people with most of the control. If these people decide that a game is best made by businesspeople, that is their prerogative. Honestly it seems a little unlikely that there is enough of a market for games of real value to justify putting a lot of money into one.
If you don’t have an incredible track record and want to make a game which is not guaranteed to make any money, I think the solution is probably to make a game within your means rather than to wish for the industry to change and for someone else to pay for it. I am told and believe that a good programmer and a good artist can put together a good, polished game in 3-4 years if it is of a reasonable scope (and not 3D…). Granted, that is a considerable chunk of your life, but games will always take at least that many man years.
GG’s claim that learning to program would interfere with his creative ability is, not to offend, a little ridiculous. I would go so far as to say that, if you are going to try and be an independent developer, not knowing how to program is like being an author without being able to mechanically construct sentences; you are left at the mercy of someone whom you must pay to transcribe your ideas.
Of course, I know very little about the industry, being firmly outside of it, so my opinions are perhaps not very meaningful. I might like to design games at some point in my future, but I would rather be independent even than work for a company operating according to GG’s ideals. This sentiment is corroborated for me by the analogy to film, since the majority of movies I consider valuable do not come out of large studios, which generally continue to produce cheap entertainment (suspiciously like the game industry).
February 14th, 2008 at 2:41 am
Guess I’m done arguing with James M… I never thought he was wrong, just that, as in Sirlin’s last post here, noone was truly suggesting what he’s going to all this trouble to argue against.
A couple various counterpoints: Having done some CGI work in the past, I’ve often heard it repeated, that while most CGI guys are in the business to work in movies, and love movie production, games tend to just result in a better lifestyle. I can’t say how many people I’ve met who basically got married, didn’t want to deal with jumping from production to production all over the place in the movie industry, and got a games job, where they can hang around at the same company for years. Don’t underestimate that job security stuff, I’m sure for how much some designers seem to dislike the structure, many other people quite enjoy it.
inkblot: It’s possible GG was referring to the fact that in the movie industry, the real huge hits tend to be the movies that break industry trends, and succeed despite the suits thinking that they weren’t the “in” thing that season. So, in that sense, it’s easy to see that the safe businessman model is often wrong, and more importantly, pretty much never produces a real hit. Unfortunately, I don’t know how much that applies to games… the giant successes this last seasons were Halo3 and CoD4… unlike movies, it appears that rehashing sequels actually brings you out on top in the games industry, much more often.
spudly: It’s extremely difficult to aspire to be like those guys, especially in the US market. I remember reading about the Deus Ex guy, (Warren Spector???, I think), who basically said when making Deus Ex, he completely finished the game, and went to the businessmen, and basically said “give me 6 months to polish it before we release”, and somehow he got them to let him do that, and it really, really, really helped. I believe he said the entire boss fight with the german guy, was done during those last 6 months, just cause they wanted the storyline to contain endings for every character. He went back to work on Deus Ex 2, got to the end, and went and said “give me 6 months, like last time”, and they basically responded “this is an established brand, it’s going to sell as is just from name recognition, so we’re releasing it now”. And everyone knows how much that game sucked…
February 14th, 2008 at 2:54 am
As GG explains at length if you read the rest of his site, there are established mechanisms to go figure out which screenplays are worth making. They don’t require the screenwriter to “just shoot the first 20 minutes of your film.” This screenwriter is not good because he can’t operate a camera. (You certainly could shoot part of your script to generate interest, but there are ways to submit scripts and have them seriously considered.) Or for architects, “we can’t really look at blueprints but if you build the first 20% of this building, we’ll take a look.” This architect can’t operate cranes, so what can he really do?
The game industry really is very different (and worse) than the film industry in this regard.
February 14th, 2008 at 5:20 am
Jonathon Blow responded to GG’s most recent post, and I think he pretty much summed up the appropriate attitude.
The main argument here appears to be that requiring a working demonstration of a game is arbitrary and harmful. This is supported by analogy to architecture, film, and dinosaur hunting. None of these analogies are entirely relevant, though, because the opposing argument, which is not addressed, is that
A) We lack an effective way to determine the merit of a game based on its design doc (or perhaps it is not possible), and
B) It is practical to produce a working demonstration of a game’s principles without investors.
I cannot know how true A actually is, but it seems to be the sentiment of most developers I have encountered and it certainly makes sense (and is not addressed by analogy to film). This could even be an artifact of the immaturity of the medium, although it seems more likely it is more fundamental to the way people interact with games as opposed to a linear work of fiction.
In support of B, I believe the mechanic of Portal was developed by an independent group (of students, I think?). They did not go to a publisher and tell them, “we have this cool idea for a game,” from which it was obvious that it was a brilliant mechanic. They wrote a very rough game which took advantage of the mechanic and which actually demonstrated that it was a good potential game. Perhaps not the best example, but I wouldn’t know about this sort of thing except for exceptionally high profile games.
Fortunately, programming is much easier than construction.
February 14th, 2008 at 7:02 am
So Sirlin, what are the concrete suggestions for improvement? How do you or GG advise companies to evaluate design docs?
And all these analogies have to stop. They are merely clouding the issue. Games are not buildings, or movies, or ships at sea, or football teams!
February 14th, 2008 at 7:24 am
How to evaluate PITCH docs.
Step 1) designer prepares a pitch/concept doc/material
Step 2) designer pitches said concept to company X (they may be a partner in this company or they may be completely external to this company)
Step 3) company X gives feedback
Step 4) idea is pitched again
Step 5) company X decides which of the many ideas that have been pitched will receive pre-production funding
Step 6) designer leads a team to create a prototype, story boards, vision docs, TDDs, etc
Step 7) the pre-production material is viewed, feedback is given
Step 8) refinements are made to the pre-production phase material
Step 9) company X decides if this project will receive production funding
This is Stage Gate product risk management.
http://lostgarden.com/2007/01/project-horseshoe-report-building.html
The evaluation of the original pitch (step 2, above) is done by people who are trusted by company X’s owners to make judgments about what is good. If they suck, company X will suck.
February 14th, 2008 at 7:55 am
Paul: I don’t think the issue is really as black and white as you seem to be suggesting. There is a huge amount more variation between genres than you get in movies, and the necessary amount and type of preproduction work varies hugely depending on what type of game you’re making.
We clearly do lack a good way to describe elements of games in any sort of unified simple way, but it has been recognized as a problem. I believe gamasutra has several articles on this topic from people in academia, who are working to address this problem. I definitley doesn’t appear to be impossible at this point, just difficult.
Somewhat more important, is the distinction that even without a unified system for game design in general, many games are very easy to describe. Card games is one example, where a demonstration really doesn’t require programming knowledge… just cut up some pieces of paper and go. And yet, we get many computer games that are basically a card game at heart (Baten Kaitos, Culdcept… that stupid KH gameboy game). Proving some new FPS idea is relatively harder without some computer aided examples… but I’m sure some people can pull it off in writing.
As regards B, it still depends on the game. The Portal guys were a bit unique, in that they came from Digipen (a small technical school connected to Nintendo that only teaches games), so they were working on that initial concept as their main school project. Attending a more general university, or having a full-time job, and creating a concept like that as a side project is much more difficult in comparison. It does still happen, but I think the complaint here is more asking why things like that are forced to be side projects at all (particularly for people already in the industry), when there’s obviously potential for so much more to be done with the technology we have today than is actually being produced when you browse store shelves.
February 14th, 2008 at 7:57 am
Uh… ^^That was me, not Tim… is something wrong with your site, Sirlin? I realized as I was clicking “submit comment”, that the name box had been mysteriously altered.
February 14th, 2008 at 8:15 am
lion-gv:
“Step 1) designer prepares a pitch/concept doc/material”
Nothing in any of GGs posts says anything about concept art or other material aside from the doc itself. I think a lot of people are reading what they want to read into his posts, which is an indication of lack of clarity.
Your steps 2 and 3 gloss over the meat of the process. According to people here studios have a repeatable, well-understood way to evalute scripts. What is the equivalent process for games?
You’ve left it as smart people employ some internal calculus, rather than explain what the calculus is.
When studios look at scripts they have fairly concrete rules. They look at the structure (typical 3-act?), evaluate the cast size, cost of set pieces, determine what sorts of sets need to be built or what locations need to be scouted, what sort of CGI is required, etc. It’s not just “smart people you trust make the determination.” That’s not a process.
According to GG it’s possible to look at a design doc and figure out if it will make a good game. (And also figure out things like cost I would imagine) So what is that way? “Leave it to smart people” is not a real answer.
February 14th, 2008 at 9:18 am
What exactly is your point, James M? Cause it sounds like “yes, there’s a problem, and GG has identified that problem… but he hasn’t outlined a 100% complete solution that could immediately be implemented, so he should shut up and go away”. I mean, yeah, maybe noone will ever implement the stuff he’s called for, maybe it is partially inaccurate, and unrealistic… but doing nothing is still worse than having factual errors here and there. Why are you so commited to the “do nothing” option?
February 14th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Claytus: You are right about my comment. I do maintain that, since those are the two big issues, analogies to film or architecture fail to be useful. I thought of the example of card games or tabletop-inspired games after I posted, and I think that GG might be thinking more specifically of this sort of game in some of his comments (judging by his references to assessing the fun of a game on a “tabletop,” which makes no sense for most games which get published today). The validity of B also varies, but I think it holds for a much wider range of games than is implied by GG. It is certainly without exception easier than a construction task. I do not think the requirement is terribly unreasonable either. If I were in charge of investing in an unusual game, I would want to see some sort of strong indicator of the game’s potential. Perhaps that is because I am risk-averse, but it is certainly not because I am participating in some sort of hazing process.
The difficulty of assessing the merit of a game from the design doc seems like it is more than just a practical issue. If you can convey the quality of a game in a pitch, it seems hard to hold that the game itself can be bringing anything new or interesting to the medium, or doing anything that couldn’t be done in other media. You can only know that a game will be entertaining, looking at a design, if you can compare it to other games which have been entertaining for the same reasons. If you explained a platformer to me and I had never seen anything like it, my first reaction would not be “I can definitely see how jumping on Goombas will be immensely satisfying.” If you described a car chase and I had only ever seen dramas I would probably be similarly unresponsive. If e.g. someone approaches a random producer and says he has this great idea for a game to explore morality in a substantive way, I do not think he could really expect support. There is no real alternative to making a prototype and demonstrating that it can “work”. Changing this situation would probably require more significant changes than GG is describing.
This is without even referencing the bulk of design which (I am told and seems sensible to me) is inevitably done after coding begins and the game starts to take shape.
February 14th, 2008 at 10:11 am
James M:
“Step 1″
That’s correct, other concept material was not mentioned, which is why I added it for clarification.
“Steps 2 & 3″
It is going to vary company by company. I wonder what goes on in the minds at company X? Mostly this kind of thing is handled by publishers these days, but it is also done at some studios, and will increasingly be done with angel investors, private equity firms, and production companies.
I know that Publishers, for instance, build portfolios, so even if they like your game concept they might not pick it up because it overlaps with other things in their current or upcoming portfolio. Other factors would be perceived feasibility, profitability, developer reputation, market trends, perceived innovation, etc. For most companies it is really going to come down to what kind of risk are they taking and how much profit do they stand to gain, but others might care more about creating games that will be critically received and thus build their brand image.
“Leave it to smart people” is a starting point. By constantly re-evaluating the project in question a company can afford to fund just about any project that looks half decent and then cut their loses if they feel it isn’t going to pan out. Please refer to the Stop Gate article posted above.
February 14th, 2008 at 10:26 am
lion, I don’t have a problem with your model. In fact it sounds like a fine idea. Your formulation is more more reasonable than GG’s and has a value to publishers that can be clearly articulated.
My problem is with GG’s notion that it’s possible to look at a design doc and figure out if the resulting game will be good, without falling back onto arguments like “well I could do it, so just hire people like me!”
Again when evaluating screenplays studios have a pretty repeatable methodology. Same is true of book publishing to some degree. I don’t see that in gaming, in part because games are so diverse compared to other media.
Some of it is of course a matter of intuition and taste, but book publishers have a whole bunch of things they look for that can get a book rejected, including simple stuff like not double-spacing manuscripts. When studios review scripts/screenplays they can come away with pretty accurate projections of work, cost, location shooting, etc.
I need to be convinced that that sort of thing is possible for games as well. Not by you, because your model doesn’t require it. But GG’s does.
Maybe that means design docs have to be in a certain format and cover certain items. Fine, but I don’t see that being articulated anywhere.
February 14th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
I want to clarify GG’s model. His whole post was predicated on him winning the lottery. It was an “If I won $50,000,000, this is what company I would want to make” kind of thing. Thus he would be the person evaluating the design docs and deciding, based on his own criteria, which ones to put into pre-production. I think the other statement is “this is a pretty good way to make games that push the envelope more than the traditional model, I wish that someone else would do it so that I don’t have to because in all honesty I’d rather be designing games than running a company”. (Sorry for putting words into your mouth GG!)
And I think that as time rolls on, there will be more and more examples of companies like this. Already you have companies doing this kind of thing, ranging from Wideload on one hand, with a staff of 20 generating designs, Stop Gating them, and then outsourcing much of their production, and Nanaonsha on the other hand with a staff of 3, wholly outsourcing all production to a trusted studio under the guidance of a trusted producer once the basic prototype is complete.
February 14th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
err Stage Gate even.
February 14th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
There’s no point in me explaining Grassroots Gamemaster to people in this thread. He explains it all quite well himself. I also can’t believe how much he writes (puts me to shame there). To pick one of his thousand posts almost at random, this is a pretty good overview of things:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/letter_display.php?letter_id=1373
February 14th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Sigh… for real man, for real.
I’d just like to apologize to GG for putting way too many words in his mouth and for diluting his poignant message.
February 15th, 2008 at 1:58 am
I’ve got to say, I agree with James M’s arguments so far. I read what GRGM wrote, and he pretty much glosses over the criteria to be a good game, and further still over the criteria to be a good game that sells well. If it’s a “I know it when I see it” sort of deal, then it may work for him once he wins the lottery and starts his own production company, but what of the rest of us who should adopt this model?
I agree with some of what he says. He says that you get a better game from someone who is passionate about it than someone who isn’t. That I can believe, because it is always better to have someone who cares than someone who is just doing it for the paycheck. However, enthusiasm (like many qualities) is not binary; it’s a sliding scale. I’d personally much rather work on an action game than a FPS, and I’d rather work on a MMO than a sports title. Does that mean I’d rather work on an action game over the MMO? Well, I guess it depends.
Given the nature of the industry itself, it’s very difficult to predict what will and will not be a hit. Some directors are bankable… Will Wright, Shigeru Miyamoto, etc. But look at other ‘hot shot’ director types, like Tim Schaefer, Michel Ancel, Peter Molyneux, Hideo Kojima, John Romero, or Tomonobu Itagaki. They are all very hit or miss, and sometimes they miss. I’m really reminded of some stuff Paul Barnett mentioned while he was at the LIFT convention, when he was explaining online gaming to people who never played games at all.
http://joshdrescher.com/2008/02/09/your-daily-dose-of-barnettics/
I guess the main problem I see is that GRGM is a designer, who dreams big but doesn’t have the specifics down yet. And by not having those specifics down, he makes it nearly impossible for anyone else to follow in his footsteps.
February 15th, 2008 at 3:03 am
Rawrsaur, I don’t think you really read what he said, for example the last link I posted. It’s really incredibly non-controversial. Instead of no method for considering game designs based on merit before they are created (current situation) he suggests some method. Well, duh. It certainly would be better (for the industry, for gamers, for designers) if something like this existed at all. His suggestions, as lion-gv pointed out, are similar to the new movement in the industry that’s just starting, so it’s only a matter of time.
Just to clarify for him, he’s not advocating taking any design ideas to a game company. A game company is a factory that’s not setup to take advantage of this. He’s saying you give lots of designers a chance at submitting designs to a publisher or investment group and then one or more people who actually know something about games weed out the chaff and look for an actual good idea.
You’re all caught up on this step as some impossible thing, but consider that currently these decisions are made like this “Spiderwick is coming out so we need a game for the movie. It’s going to be a 3rd person action, platformer. It’s going to focus on character customization and various other buzzwords. Now, let’s get someone who knows something about games to do the rest.” Nice! Well, it is nice if you own the Spiderwick IP maybe, but it’s not exactly a great idea for so many games to be conceived in this backwards way (well I guess it is great if you want a pervasive factory system across the whole game industry).
It’s difficult to predict which books or movies or buildings will be good, but there are ways of explaining what a work in those mediums will be like ahead of time, and then get somewhere with them. If you are saying “what method could possibly work for games though? How can anyone ever know?” then you are bogged down in the details. You shouldn’t need to know the details of how that will work to realize that attempting it is better than not attempting it at all. That is not even a strawman argument. There is no mechanism for a designer to do what GG is talking about. (not yet!)
Let’s look at an example. Say Clint Hocking (just throwing that name out randomly, he’s a good designer) wants to make a horror game. His company says no, they are a factory that needs to turn out another military shooter with one extra doodad tacked on. Clint could take his amazing horror game idea to…somewhere (instead of no where, the current model) and have a chance (greater than 0%, the current chance) that the response will be “yes, let’s put a production company together that’s capable of making that game happen.” Clint leads the vision in this example, technology appropriate for the project is licensed or whatever (as opposed to whatever tech a particular factory happens to have), and so on. They come together for that project. inkblot thinks you can’t outsource stuff to do this, but wideload games and a few others are showing that you can. Just to throw out another random name, Massive Black is an awesome art house, and they will do any art you need for your entire game.
It blows my mind that you guys are so afraid of this.
Also, for clarity’s sake, lion-gv misunderstood the word “lottery” above. Grassroots was not referring to him or anyone winning the literal lottery then doing this model. He was referring to making a hit game as analogous to winning the lottery and that this process is somewhat like buying lottery tickets because the games it produces could be hits. They are coming from passionate people with a vision who have the right technology and support system built around them, but most importantly that the project was greenlit because at least someone who knows something thought it would make a good game that people will like, as opposed to “well we need something on PSP for Spiderwick.” If you’re really afraid you won’t get that PSP Spiderwick game, I wouldn’t worry. Service-oriented factory companies will still be around to make those too.
Yeah you could say “But Clint could create his own company to do this, and he could be CEO of it, figure out the accounting, how to incorporate correctly.” That’s not really a good use of his talents as a game designer.
Again, I thought GG was quite clear in the link I posted in comment #74. There isn’t much there to disagree with unless you’re putting words in his mouth (for example by saying the designer walks away when project is approved, or by saying only a few Miyamotos could even exist (which is not relevant to his points), etc). It really helps me zero to convince status-quo apologists here of anything, so it’s kind of a waste of time for me to even post anymore. I originally posted to show you insightful information from another source, and if you can’t grasp it, then sorry to hear that. I’m going back to editing the huge spreadsheet of design data for Yomi card game right now and then various art director tasks on it. Lion-gv is doing the same right now.
February 15th, 2008 at 4:04 am
————-
Let’s look at an example. Say Clint Hocking (just throwing that name out randomly, he’s a good designer) wants to make a horror game. His company says no, they are a factory that needs to turn out another military shooter with one extra doodad tacked on. Clint could take his amazing horror game idea to…somewhere (instead of no where, the current model) and have a chance (greater than 0%, the current chance) that the response will be “yes, let’s put a production company together that’s capable of making that game happen.” Clint leads the vision in this example, technology appropriate for the project is licensed or whatever (as opposed to whatever tech a particular factory happens to have), and so on.
————-
Maybe I’m assuming too much here, but who came up with the idea for, say, Katamari Damacy or Rez? I don’t think it’s far fetched to believe that the scenario you described above has more or less happened in the current industry (was this the case for either of these games, or not?)
February 15th, 2008 at 4:55 am
The guy who made Rez is the brains behind the company “Q?”. It’s possible he founded the company after releasing Rez, and somehow got Rez made at a larger production house (I honestly just can’t remember)… but he definitely founded his own company. Which is an easy solution to this whole issue… GG and Sirlin are just saying that shouldn’t be the only way to resolve it.
The guy who made Katamari Damacy is an artist, and I just don’t know how he got a game company to accept his ideas. I think they might have even commisioned him to do some design work or something, after he expressed interest in video games. Since making the first Katamari, he completely moved off the team, and though sequels were boring, and after unsuccessfully trying to pitch some more ideas he “became bored with the stagnation of the games industry”, and to my knowledge, is currently trying to create designer playground equipment to sell to parks in japan.
February 15th, 2008 at 5:03 am
I happen to know how Rez was approved because Mizuguchi-san was asked this at the International Game Developer’s panel at GDC two years ago. His answer was that he went to the meeting with the suits who hold all the money. He told them he really, really wanted to do this project, then explained it in like 2 minutes (which is impossible, if you know what Rez is). Then he left immediately so no one could ask him questions. He felt he was better off if no one understood what it was he wanted to do. The board said yes, somehow, because they wanted to keep him happy I think.
That’s a nice answer for someone like him. He’s a guy with great ideas and we should all look up to him. But the handful of people who hold positions like that do not have the monopoly on good game designs, just like the top studio heads in the film industry do not have a monopoly on good screenplays. If anything, this re-enforces GG’s points.
February 15th, 2008 at 5:10 am
Mizuguchi-san (Rez) is the creative director of Q?, which he founded, and they do in-house production (Luminez) as well as directing products that are wholly outsourced (Ninety Nine Nights).
Takahashi-san (Katamari) is making a new game at Namco called Nobi Nobi Boy, but he does wish to design playgrounds.
Sirlin; while your point about the lottery may be true, upon re-reading that particular post, it did start of by him saying: “I win the lottery and get to finance a videogame?”
February 15th, 2008 at 5:40 am
Am I the only person here who realizes that no two people in this thread can even agree on what GG is suggesting?
This is kind of silly since GG isn’t here defending himself and the people who are defending him are really just defending themselves and what they read into his arguments, not what he is actually saying.
His writing is vague and self-contradictory. I’m probably guilty of picking out the parts I don’t like but other people here are guilty of picking out the parts they do like and ignoring the rest.
The links I posted above, and the link lion-gv posted about stop-gated production, are more articulate and in the same spirit. I haven’t seen anyone object to any of them.
February 15th, 2008 at 6:19 am
At least you know vaguely how well licensed crap, or a technically competent cookie-cutter title, will sell (I am not defending the status quo, to be clear…). If I had money I would feel safer with a proven team, designer, or IP than with a design which I estimate might be good –unless I have some excellent way of estimating. This isn’t desirable, but I wouldn’t expect change unless games are funded in a different way or they made more money.
I agree that his suggestion would be a much better state of affairs, at least for me the consumer and for designers. But I think to get from here to there takes more than one guy selling a design document. Maybe all you need is one large company which can consistently look through a mountain of designs and pick out one that will sell well enough to break even. Or maybe soon the slowly increasing number of people who think about games will make a good game more profitable than a military FPS with a gimmick, and everything will resolve itself. That would be cool, but I don’t think it has happened. Sorry for the pessimism.
This is all unrelated to GG’s plan if he were able to finance a game.
February 15th, 2008 at 6:21 am
lion-gv: I agree with Sirlin. I thought it was quite clear in GGs post that the “lottery” was an analogy for getting rich if your game happened to be a hit, and just losing some money if your game sucked. But a finance company could potentially fund a lot of designers, hoping to “win the lottery” with a few hits. (You’re right that his very first sentence is quite ambiguous, but just delete it, and everythign else seems consistent)
James M: It still seems to me like the biggest positive is that he’s actually being vocal about those problems needing to be solved. I mean, I haven’t gone through and read everything he’s ever said, but if it’s even slightly consistent, and he’s saying it loudly enough to get banned from IGDA, then he’s doing a lot better than most people… suggesting he do nothing *is* equivalent to defending the status quo, despite your attempts to claim you’d never actually say that whenever anyone attacks you >.>
I also thinks Sirlin’s big explanation (77), was quite clear, and it certainly hasn’t contradicted anything I’ve