ROUNDTABLE // DEVELOP LEGENDS | BETA


Baverstock adds: “The knowledge of how to make games, the production process and expertise, is much deeper and much wider than it was back then. Couple that with some fantastic technology that’s widely available for a low price and people can make better games more effectively with smaller teams. When you’ve got bigger teams, you can make even better games.” There are also stronger opportunities for games that would not have fared well back when Develop first launched. As one panelist observes, niche games have finally become very profitable. “As a Japanese publisher, we’re now able to bring some pretty esoteric stuff to console digitally that might sell a few tens of thousands of units,” says Holmwood. “Retail would never have touched those products before, but now we’re able to do that. It means for anyone that’s making something a little bit more off-the-wall, it all becomes feasible.” Braben agrees, adding a more remarkable example: “If anyone would have proposed World of Tanks ten years earlier, saying it’s about Second World War tank battles, publishers would have said no, we want space in there, laser guns, cutscenes.” Baverstock concurs: “Can you imagine going to a publisher with that? Never mind the fact that it’s free, that would have totally freaked them out – just the game concept would have made them show you the door.” Climax founder Karl Jeffery says that, for all the differences compared to the industry of 2000, today’s games development scene has some noticeable similarities with a more formative period. “It’s going back to the 8-bit days, when you used to make games on your own: art, code, everything,” he says. “That was an exciting time, especially seeing small indies, hyper-talented individuals who could do all


of the development, then go and market the bloody thing and make a fortune.” But Braben has a less nostalgic view of this


era: “In 1982, we were still ruled by publishers – unless you were going to put cassettes in Jiffy bags. Publishers had such narrow views of what a game was. There were rules you had to follow: three lives, an extra life at 10,000 points, ten-minute play time – that was the one that really annoyed me, because it was all based around the arcades.”


PUBLISHER POWER


Fast-forward to today, and the dynamic between development and publishing has evolved, according to Kristensen. “Our relationship with publishers is different,” she says. “We’re not reliant on them in the same way because we can support smaller budgets and there are alternative sources of funding that we can utilise.” Baverstock agrees: “The power of the publishers has been eroded. Even the studios that historically have been much dependent on them have now got other sources of revenue, other routes to market and effectively more power within the ecosystem. “In 2000, the balance of power between publisher and developer was terrible. But now it’s coming around full circle where content creators have the real power. Them and the distribution platforms, and not the guys in the middle.”


He goes on to predict that studios are likely to develop a genuine knack for marketing. Unlike the aforementioned musicians, devs will have to engage with their audience. “That means we need more marketing in our creative industry than any of the others,” he says. “And I still think many developers are not very good at that – that’s the weak link.” Jeffery argues the erosion of publisher power is fundamentally due to the shift


WHAT DO YOU THINK?


WE ASKED MORE notable development figureheads what they thought the single biggest change to the industry has been over the past 14 years.


FIONA SPERRY


Three Fields Entertainment I formed Criterion Games in 2000 and the only route to market was boxed retail products. I spent most of that first year having endless meetings to find a distribution partner for Burnout. Flash forward 14 years, and the biggest


change? Digital distribution. It’s now possible to self-publish digitally across every viable games platform: from PlayStation and Xbox to Steam to iOS and Google Play. That changes everything. It’s exciting for small teams to be able to reach a global audience and to be able to bring the kind of imagination, innovation and creativity that would scare off most of the old fashioned traditional publishers.


ALICE TAYLOR MakieLab Mobile has to be the obvious answer, although my brain also ran through MMOs, F2P, Unity, indies and VC funding there. All of those have had a really big impact since 2000. But it’s pretty clear that mobile has changed things in a really massive way, certainly in terms of


gamut of customer. That said, I don’t think mobile is so available to everyone any more. It’s a ridiculously busy market, and dominated by squillionaires who can purchase Top Ten positioning (Big Fish spend $6m per month to stay in the Top Ten). The walls have grown high. There’ll be some crashing. VCs are pulling back. Getting attention is, as ever, immensely hard. The best should forever float to the top though: I look at Fireproof and Vlambeer for that. So inspirational it hurts.


TONY BECKWITH Studio Gobo I remember in around late 2000, someone in Brighton said to me the games industry would go the way of the TV industry. I’m old enough to remember when there were only three TV channels and yet by 2000, the TV industry had fractured into hundreds of channels thanks to new


platforms and business models, satisfying every kind of niche and taste. The games industry has been slightly behind TV but a similar fracturing has happened since 2000 and it continues to happen. Video games have fractured into more and more niches, exploring every type of business model and with availability across an increasing number of platforms – I even used to joke we’ll be playing games on the kitchen fridge one day. Ultimately, I believe the industry is on a path to ubiquitous gaming, where everyone on the planet games in one form or another.


BEN MURCH Rodeo Games The rise of digital media. Back in the dark days, the only way to get your game out was to physically place it in the hands of the consumer. The expense made it nigh on impossible for any bedroom coders to do so. Then the internet and – more importantly... ish –


Steam came along. Suddenly we didn’t have to leave our homes or wait for the post to get our gaming fix. Competitors quickly caught on, and we now find ourselves booting into a cacophony of download services every time we turn our machines on. Devs now have a many ways to release our titles, fixing one problem while creating the issue of an engorged marketplace. Both a curse and a blessing, digital media has changed the game forever.


JUNE 2014 | 17


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