Enix now owns Hitman and Tomb Raider

[Julius Seeker]

I heard the news along the grapevine that Square Enix's takeover bid has been successful.

[SineSwiper]

EIDOS? Of all the things to buy? Square is becoming more and more like EA.

[Zeus]

Like a lot of Jap companies, they're trying to diversify. They have absolutely nothing to compete with Eidos' lineup. It's the same as them buying Taito (the guys who created Space Invaders and Bubble Bobble). It's a smart move on their part

[SineSwiper]

Square used to make good enough games to not NEED to diversify. People loved their RPGs. Nowadays, even the Final Fantasy series is faltering, despite the help of a RPG powerhouse like Enix.

This is just another attempt to make up for their lack of talent, by selling shitty Tomb Raider sequels (now with more FMV!).

[Zeus]

Squeenix currently has most of their eggs in the RPG basket and the majority of that basket is filled with the white "FF" and brown "DQ" eggs. They've tried all other colours but no one seems to want them due to people's pre-conceived notions that coloured eggs are not "natural". And they've only really got the one basket right now. Sure it's big but what if it drops? And what if the Japanese desire for their FF and DQ games wanes? What will they do then?

The purchase of Taito was a small attempt to buy someone else's basket since they can't seem to find one themselves. But it's pretty small. So why not get another one? Tomb Raider, whether you like it or not, is a good seller and a highly recognized IP outside of their Japanese stronghold. . Eidos has some marketable IPs worldwide even if they're a poorly run company. It's a smart business move.

[RentCavalier]

I will only care about this if they decide to have Lara Croft have a fist-fight with Tifa Lockheart. In bikinis.

[SineSwiper]

Squeenix currently has most of their eggs in the RPG basket and the majority of that basket is filled with the white "FF" and brown "DQ" eggs. They've tried all other colours but no one seems to want them due to people's pre-conceived notions that coloured eggs are not "natural". And they've only really got the one basket right now. Sure it's big but what if it drops? And what if the Japanese desire for their FF and DQ games wanes? What will they do then?

Maybe it's simpler, like most of their recent games sucking. Big projects like Infinite Undiscovery and Last Remnant has had lukewarm to downright bad reviews, and some of the previews of the latest FF13 games have people worried. The latest Star Ocean actually did well, but another developer (triAce) had a hand in that, too.

Face it, Square just needs to stop fucking up. Relying on Tomb Raider to earn you profits is no way to run a company.

I will only care about this if they decide to have Lara Croft have a fist-fight with Tifa Lockheart. In bikinis.

Teenagers like you are the reason why EIDOS continues to put out total shit like the Tomb Raider series. You are part of the problem.

[Julius Seeker]

Eidos was purchased for the purpose of expanding more developmental resources in the Western market. This purchase won't effect Square or TriAce as they are different development houses. Square Enix has had great success with other titles, I doubt the failure of a few B-titles they put together with excess developmental resources had any impact on anything.

[SineSwiper]

Eidos was purchased for the purpose of expanding more developmental resources in the Western market. This purchase won't effect Square or TriAce as they are different development houses. Square Enix has had great success with other titles, I doubt the failure of a few B-titles they put together with excess developmental resources had any impact on anything.

A few? The only thing they are really making any good money on are the ports of older games. They are almost as bad as Sega at this point with their Sonic franchise. Name five good games that they made in the past few years that wasn't a port.

Sure, there's the people that buy the shit because it's Square, but every bad game removes potential fans for anything else they put out. The general public can put up with crap for only so long.

[Julius Seeker]

Whether it is a port, a remake, or an original title is not relevant; the bottom line with success is profit. People will buy what they want to buy; remakes sell well because most of Square and Enix's old library is filled with classic titles that people would love to have remakes of. As well, other markets are seeing titles they have not seen before (ie. We finally got DQ5, and Europe finally got Chrono Trigger - even considering the supply issue). Square and Enix have lately been companies to release only a few big projects per generation; their next major ones are FF13, Versus, and Dragon Quest X. Square royally messed up their resources when Spirits Within bombed; they needed money, and tightening up the company meant a lot of comfortable people became uncomfortable and left.

Enix essentially bought them, and with some changes, many old faces began collaborating with the company again (Mitsuda for example). The company also became profitable again. I'll take awesome remakes of Square games I love over no Square at all.

Games released by Square Enix in the past few years that I feel are good, on top of remakes, from what I have played; FF12, Rings of Fate, The World Ends With You (One of the best games I have ever played), Revenant Wings, and FFTA2.

[SineSwiper]

Whether it is a port, a remake, or an original title is not relevant; the bottom line with success is profit.

What?! Sci-fi, or should I say Syfy, makes profit with their F-rated horror movies and ECW bullshit. It still doesn't make them a good company. How you make your profit matters a great deal.

[Julius Seeker]

Then tell me, what is the problem with enhanced remake that are both critically and financially successful to the company? What is wrong with Square Enix being successful releasing stuff that their fans want?

[SineSwiper]

Then tell me, what is the problem with enhanced remake that are both critically and financially successful to the company? What is wrong with Square Enix being successful releasing stuff that their fans want?

It's the kind of low risk, low investment, high reward stuff that is too easy to do. Sqaure has been doing it too easy for a while lately. And when they do try to make big risks, they well, don't make big risks. They make the type of RPG that is "safe" and has a bunch of pretty FMV, instead of focus on the gameplay. Games like Blue Dragon and Last Remnant. And frankly, people are bored and tired of that same old bullshit.

They did well with FF12, but was kinda lazy on the storyline. The World Ends With You was innovative enough, but I don't think it really worked. But those kind of projects are few and far between, and too often, logic falls by the wayside on a lot of their decisions.

[Zeus]

Whether it is a port, a remake, or an original title is not relevant; the bottom line with success is profit.

What?! Sci-fi, or should I say Syfy, makes profit with their F-rated horror movies and ECW bullshit. It still doesn't make them a good company. How you make your profit matters a great deal.

I think Seek is arguing that profits/revenue are the ultimate measure of "quality" since it, indirectly, encompasses the market's (ie. everyone's) idea of "quality"

[Don]

You can't live on ports of old games forever.

[Julius Seeker]

Whether it is a port, a remake, or an original title is not relevant; the bottom line with success is profit.

What?! Sci-fi, or should I say Syfy, makes profit with their F-rated horror movies and ECW bullshit. It still doesn't make them a good company. How you make your profit matters a great deal.

I think Seek is arguing that profits/revenue are the ultimate measure of "quality" since it, indirectly, encompasses the market's (ie. everyone's) idea of "quality"

You got that out of "the bottom line with success is profit"? Quality is only as relevant as far as it can take sales when speaking of success. Quality is also subjective for the most part; and it is the selling qualities that are the bottom line for the success of the company. It would be foolish of Square to abandon a good source of income, and even more foolish of "fans" who want only original projects to say Square shouldn't make these; as instead of funding fewer original projects (due to the changing nature of the industry over the past decade) they would be funding no projects. Plus there are millions of fans (including myself) who want remakes of our favourite games.

[Zeus]

What?! Sci-fi, or should I say Syfy, makes profit with their F-rated horror movies and ECW bullshit. It still doesn't make them a good company. How you make your profit matters a great deal.

I think Seek is arguing that profits/revenue are the ultimate measure of "quality" since it, indirectly, encompasses the market's (ie. everyone's) idea of "quality"

You got that out of "the bottom line with success is profit"? Quality is only as relevant as far as it can take sales when speaking of success. Quality is also subjective for the most part; and it is the selling qualities that are the bottom line for the success of the company. It would be foolish of Square to abandon a good source of income, and even more foolish of "fans" who want only original projects to say Square shouldn't make these; as instead of funding fewer original projects (due to the changing nature of the industry over the past decade) they would be funding no projects. Plus there are millions of fans (including myself) who want remakes of our favourite games.

I give up. I try to defend the guy and he takes it the wrong way ignoring all my posts above that seem to jive with what he's saying.

Sine, this is your battle now.

[SineSwiper]

I give up. I try to defend the guy and he takes it the wrong way ignoring all my posts above that seem to jive with what he's saying.

Sine, this is your battle now.

Wait, no. I was trying to argue with you, not him. Come back!

[Julius Seeker]

Zeus, I guess you didn't notice; but since my first reply I have disagreed with both you and Sine.

You argued that Enix bought Eidos because it was making sure it had eggs in different baskets in case Japan got bored with RPGs

Sine argued that the Eidos purchase was because their most recent games have sucked; completely ignoring most of their releases and the economics of the company.

I argued that Enix purchased Eidos for the simple purpose of expansion.

Also, altering an argument to change its meaning is not defending it.

[Zeus]

Zeus, I guess you didn't notice; but since my first reply I have disagreed with both you and Sine.

You argued that Enix bought Eidos because it was making sure it had eggs in different baskets in case Japan got bored with RPGs

I argued that Enix purchased Eidos for the simple purpose of expansion.

*smacks Seek in the head* Explain to me how our two arguments are different. Just because you move shit from one pile to the next don't make it look or smell different

[Zeus]

I give up. I try to defend the guy and he takes it the wrong way ignoring all my posts above that seem to jive with what he's saying.

Sine, this is your battle now.

Wait, no. I was trying to argue with you, not him. Come back!

Fine. Ignore Seek and we'll just argue with each other. Use quotes so I know what you're referring to since you're forcing me to use this inferior board script :-)

[Julius Seeker]

Zeus, I guess you didn't notice; but since my first reply I have disagreed with both you and Sine.

You argued that Enix bought Eidos because it was making sure it had eggs in different baskets in case Japan got bored with RPGs

I argued that Enix purchased Eidos for the simple purpose of expansion.

*smacks Seek in the head* Explain to me how our two arguments are different. Just because you move shit from one pile to the next don't make it look or smell different

There's a key difference in diversifying for survival and expanding for growth. One argument implies danger in the market, and the other implies success.

[Zeus]

Zeus, I guess you didn't notice; but since my first reply I have disagreed with both you and Sine.

You argued that Enix bought Eidos because it was making sure it had eggs in different baskets in case Japan got bored with RPGs

I argued that Enix purchased Eidos for the simple purpose of expansion.

*smacks Seek in the head* Explain to me how our two arguments are different. Just because you move shit from one pile to the next don't make it look or smell different

There's a key difference in diversifying for survival and expanding for growth. One argument implies danger in the market, and the other implies success.

And what would that success be based on considering their action to acquire Enix?

[Julius Seeker]

Continued growth of total resources.

[Zeus]

Continued growth of total resources.

So their purchase of a struggling company's assets has nothing to do with the fact that they're in a completely different genre and they're trying to diversify to mitigate their risks? It only has to do with acquiring assets and increasing their total resources, period?

[Mental]

EIDOS? Of all the things to buy? Square is becoming more and more like EA.

All the publishers have been orgiastically snapping up popular developers and creating monolithing publishing corporations. Even Blizzard sold out to Activision lately. It makes me fear for the health of their franchises.

[Mental]

Zeus, I guess you didn't notice; but since my first reply I have disagreed with both you and Sine.

You argued that Enix bought Eidos because it was making sure it had eggs in different baskets in case Japan got bored with RPGs

I argued that Enix purchased Eidos for the simple purpose of expansion.

*smacks Seek in the head* Explain to me how our two arguments are different. Just because you move shit from one pile to the next don't make it look or smell different

There's a key difference in diversifying for survival and expanding for growth. One argument implies danger in the market, and the other implies success.

I don't see the publishing consolidation of popular developers as "success" for anyone but the executives as the publishing companies, and certainly not for the consumers. It tends to squelch originality something awful in the development process.

[Julius Seeker]

Continued growth of total resources.

So their purchase of a struggling company's assets has nothing to do with the fact that they're in a completely different genre and they're trying to diversify to mitigate their risks? It only has to do with acquiring assets and increasing their total resources, period?

You have a profitable company that has been expanding a lot over the past decade, and is looking to expand further; it has taken note of the opportunities for expansion in the Western market and wants to aggressively pursue those opportunities. The reason for buying Eidos was expansion, not for survival. I haven't seen any evidence to suggest otherwise.

[Zeus]

Continued growth of total resources.

So their purchase of a struggling company's assets has nothing to do with the fact that they're in a completely different genre and they're trying to diversify to mitigate their risks? It only has to do with acquiring assets and increasing their total resources, period?

You have a profitable company that has been expanding a lot over the past decade, and is looking to expand further; it has taken note of the opportunities for expansion in the Western market and wants to aggressively pursue those opportunities. The reason for buying Eidos was expansion, not for survival. I haven't seen any evidence to suggest otherwise.

All I said is they were diversifying because their main market for their main source of revenue was in an overall decline and that they want to diversify a little bit. Hence the purchase of a company who's in a completely different genre and basically in a different market.

You don't actually think about what someone wrote, do you? What I've been trying to prove to you this whole time is we're saying the same thing just providing different support for the same argument

[SineSwiper]

The whole reason for this was to have a game that was basically a license to print money (Tomb Raider). It requires zero talent and zero capital to make a TR game, and yet millions of virgin teenage boys are willing to buy this shit.

[Julius Seeker]

All I said is they were diversifying because their main market for their main source of revenue was in an overall decline and that they want to diversify a little bit. Hence the purchase of a company who's in a completely different genre and basically in a different market.

You don't actually think about what someone wrote, do you? What I've been trying to prove to you this whole time is we're saying the same thing just providing different support for the same argument

No, what you have proven is that you don't understand the argument, even though it is clearly written multiple times now. You are providing a different argument for the motivation for the purchase of Eidos; this is the disagreement.

To clarify: I disagree that the reason they bought Eidos was because their home market is in danger of collapsing and the way to survive by having as diverse a business as possible. My argument is that they bought Eidos because of the opportunity for expansion, growth, increase in production (whatever you want to call it).

Enix is trying to expand their business and the factual evidence is clear:

1. They added Game Arts, Square, and Taito into their business previously.

2. They have grown a huge amount over the past decade; and their Dragon Quest series has only increased in sales, it's not shrinking as you have stated:
DQ6 sold 3.2 million,
DQ7 sold 4.3 million,
DQ8 sold 4.9 million,
DQ9 is expected to sell over 6 million

3. They have added new successful DQ side series' in recent years which have added millions more onto sales.

4. They recently attempted to purchase Tecmo, but failed; after they got Eidos when it went up for sale.

This does not paint the picture of a company who is diversifying for survival; it is the picture of a company whose heart is increasingly successful, and is now adding on new portions for the purpose of expansion.

[Zeus]

The whole reason for this was to have a game that was basically a license to print money (Tomb Raider). It requires zero talent and zero capital to make a TR game, and yet millions of virgin teenage boys are willing to buy this shit.

Not necessarily. Some of the games were good and the first two were very fresh back then. I haven't tried Legends but I heard it's quite good.

It's a bankable franchise. Regardless of the reasons, it's a good purchase

[Mental]

Enix is solid. These acquisitions don't scare me nearly as much as some others.

Also, Sine, it takes talent and capital, with a Capital C, to make ANY modern game. I would pretty much bet anything you like that you can't do a Tomb Raider game for a next-gen console for less than two or three million these days, even before marketing and distribution. That's erring on the lower side of what it usually costs to do a next-gen title. And no, that's not pocket change for anybody. I don't think you realize that nothing is a sure bet in the game industry, ever.

[SineSwiper]

Also, Sine, it takes talent and capital, with a Capital C, to make ANY modern game. I would pretty much bet anything you like that you can't do a Tomb Raider game for a next-gen console for less than two or three million these days, even before marketing and distribution. That's erring on the lower side of what it usually costs to do a next-gen title. And no, that's not pocket change for anybody. I don't think you realize that nothing is a sure bet in the game industry, ever.

If all you are doing is changing the level design, making a shitty story, and increasing the polygons on Laura's tits, that doesn't require 2-3 million dollars. Of course, with Square owning it, it WILL cost 2-3 million dollars to add all of the FMV. However, teenaged boys will pay $200 to see Laura in FMV, so it will make a ton more money. (Imagine something like the Bayonetta trailer.)

Also, DQ is another license to print money, and it goes in that same bucket of "old skool uncreative gaming" as Blue Dragon. (Hell, Blue Dragon was practically a hold over game before DQ8 came out.) Also considered Square to be the more creative of the two, but Enix has some talent in some of their other titles. (Hell, Altus would be a good choice in RPG talent.)

[Mental]

I'm sorry, Sine, but you haven't convinced me that you know enough about the back-end of the game industry to be able to make that call.

"Increasing the polygons on Lara's tits" requires high-poly-count modelers and animators, who usually cost at least sixty grand a year to hire, plus you need an animation lead at 100k. "Changing the level design" needs another similar team. If anything, the only part where you've OVERESTIMATED the analysis is on the FMV, which is getting cheaper all the time and closer to realtime graphics, but that's still expensive too.

There are two franchises that are generally considered a "license to print money" that I'm aware of in the game industry - Tetris, and Bejeweled. Both of them continually see massive bidding wars over various distribution rights. No other franchise that I'm aware of is "a license to print money". Depending on what the studio's expectations are and how much money they pump into marketing, distribution, promotions, et cetera, even the games you think must have made money sometimes make very little, break even, or even lose cash.

It pisses me off to hear you talk about the game industry like you actually do the research on this or know what it costs to hire somebody. You can't make a game for the GAME BOY ADVANCE for less than a hundred grand, usually, and the length of time that you can actually offer a game at full price and expect it to sell at all drops constantly due to industry competition and competition from doujin and other free titles on the internet.

For instance - Square made money on Kingdom Hearts 2. They still went into a brief period of turmoil around it because it was "below expectations". Was it profitable? Yeah. Was it a "cash cow"? That would depend on how good their auxiliary sales have been after the initial month or so, and the truth is that it's hard to even trust those figures anyway. Just like the movie industry, sales figures regularly get inflated, and few studios will admit to taking a bath on something unless it's obvious.

Just because a game seems unoriginal, or like a carbon copy of another game, doesn't mean it wasn't expensive to develop. Civilization 3 wasn't very far ahead of 2 in its graphics, gameplay, and et cetera. Does that mean it didn't cost a lot to develop? No. What ACTUALLY happened in that case was that Sid Meier made a bad call on trying to force some sort of mid-game "collapse" akin to the fall of the Roman Empire and the ensuing Dark Ages - but it wasn't much fun to play. They actually spent a gob of time and money trying that all out, realized at the end that they had to chuck most of it, and the rest was something that LOOKED like it wasn't trying to advance the genre that much - but without having attended E3 to hear the talk they gave on it, how would you ever know?

I mean, I don't give a good goddamn about Tomb Raider, so I have no idea what their dev costs are, or their returns. They keep making the damn things, so I assume they must probably be making money. But you do this kind of thing a lot, where you hold forth mightily on a subject that I have reason to doubt that you know about. You could be right that Tomb Raider is a "license to print money". But Dragon Quest 8, for instance, cost an absolute shitload to develop, and I don't even know that they made a profit on it here in the States. It does tend to be a "guaranteed hit" if anything is in Japan, but titles from that franchise have been criticized even there before, and nobody but Enix knows the numbers for sure.

I also urge you to consider that the world is in the middle of a massive financial meltdown that's going to clobber just about every single industry everywhere in the world, yet that's not likely to reduce the costs of making these titles much. The videogame labor market is almost always strapped for skilled developers with skilled labor demand being much higher than skilled labor supply, so labor costs aren't likely to drop that much even given the unemployment we're seeing, since most of the unemployed wouldn't know a high-poly-count next-gen console model from a diseased peach tree.

You keep talking like all that's involved in making these titles is slapping a new skin on all the existing content and then raking in the dough. It's not. People TRY that - and sometimes they're successful, and sometimes they're not. It takes effort to get just about anything out the door, and I don't see any evidence that you know that in your posts.

[Mental]

There are two franchises that are generally considered a "license to print money" that I'm aware of in the game industry - Tetris, and Bejeweled.

Sorry. I forgot Pokemon. That's about the only franchise where I'd actually agree with your implication that all you have to do is remake a few levels, slap some uninspiring new art over the old art, and then release it and watch truckloads of cash come rolling in. But Nintendo will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever let go of their lock on that one, so it's pretty tangential to this discussion.

[Kupek]

Also, DQ is another license to print money, and it goes in that same bucket of "old skool uncreative gaming" as Blue Dragon. (Hell, Blue Dragon was practically a hold over game before DQ8 came out.)

Not even close. DQ8 came out in November, 2005. Blue Dragon came out in August, 2007.

Have you played DQ8? It's wonderful. Yeah, it's old school gameplay, but it's done well. I've heard the same thing about all of the DQ remakes: they're a joy to play. I look forward to getting a DS Lite or a DSi so I can have fun with them.

Also, Sine, do some math before you say something won't cost $2 million. Let's assume that all people working on the game make $70k a year. In reality, some will make less, some will make more. This includes all developers, designers, and artists. Also keep in mind that game developers tend to be in high cost-of-living places.

At $70k a year, $2 million dollars pays for 28 people. If we want that money to be spread over two years, then it's only 14. For you and I, $2 million is a lot of money. But it's not a huge amount of money if you're running a business - people are expensive. Keep in mind I didn't even factor in benefits.

[Mental]

Also, DQ is another license to print money, and it goes in that same bucket of "old skool uncreative gaming" as Blue Dragon. (Hell, Blue Dragon was practically a hold over game before DQ8 came out.)

Not even close. DQ8 came out in November, 2005. Blue Dragon came out in August, 2007.

Have you played DQ8? It's wonderful. Yeah, it's old school gameplay, but it's done well. I've heard the same thing about all of the DQ remakes: they're a joy to play. I look forward to getting a DS Lite or a DSi so I can have fun with them.

Also, Sine, do some math before you say something won't cost $2 million. Let's assume that all people working on the game make $70k a year. In reality, some will make less, some will make more. This includes all developers, designers, and artists. Also keep in mind that game developers tend to be in high cost-of-living places.

At $70k a year, $2 million dollars pays for 28 people. If we want that money to be spread over two years, then it's only 14. For you and I, $2 million is a lot of money. But it's not a huge amount of money if you're running a business - people are expensive. Keep in mind I didn't even factor in benefits.

QFT. Also, take a look at how many people are usually listed in the credits on just about any non-portable game released. Probably anywhere from 25-50% of the staff will be QA, so the cost of paying them is probably about one-third to one-half of what it costs to employ the average non-QA person on the title, but any "full-price" game usually has more than 28 people working on it without even without counting the QA crew.

Japanese titles in particular tend to have staff of a hundred people or more per title and have for a long time. They also happen to pay their employees salaries so low that it would hurt your soul to know about it, which is really the only reason Japanese developers can employ so many people - for instance, I know someone in the industry who knew the lead engine programmer on Rez, and that guy made something like the equivalent of $27K the year he was working on that title. But given how many people are on those teams, it doesn't really end up being cheaper to develop there than in America, for the most part.

Do me a favor, Sine, and next time you finish a game, count up how many people are in the credits and let us know what the figure is. If you have time, try to research how long the game was in development for and then multiply that by the salary costs we discussed - figure an average of $70K for each non-QA employee and $25K per QA employee per year in the U.S., and let's say $25K for each non-QA employee and $10K per year for each QA employee in Japan.

(By the way, yes, the Japanese videogame industry salary figures really are that low. It hurts my mind just to even think about it, but there's far less of an expectation in that country that workers on the ground level ought to earn enough to be able to live without terrible human suffering, particularly when the skilled labor pool and especially demand for working in the game industry is so much higher than over here.)

[Don]

I think there's some problem with developiong games these days. It's really not clear to me that you needed all 200 people who show up on the credits to develop every game out there. Megaman 9 has about 60 guys listed on its credit and it's pretty clear it's not just Q&A and marketing (there are like 4 guys credited under music for example). I really think they could've got away with say... 10. I don't know if it's because they lack a good reusable environment but this model is really not sustainable if you need $2 milion to make just an average or even below average game.

All of the Touhou project is developed by 1 guy, and I'd say its quality is comparable to say an average portable game minus the character portraits. Granted the guy is more or less a professional game developer who decided to gone rogue (he worked for Taito before I think...) and he can draw, program and do music at the same time, but that's still just roles that could've been covered by three people total. There has to be some kind of happy medium between 1 guy being able to make a mid range portable quality game solo to 200 guys making a high end next generation game.

[Kupek]

I think there is a middle-ground, and that's the kind of game that shows up on XBLA, Wii Ware, PSN and some DS games.

[Don]

I think there is a middle-ground, and that's the kind of game that shows up on XBLA, Wii Ware, PSN and some DS games.

You need about 3 people to do a passable DS-level game (programmer, artist, someone else). I'm not convinced the middle ground is that games are no longer suitable to be sold in a box for any powerful console.

[Don]

To continue a bit on the 'happy medium'. Take a look at a game like Romance of the Three Kingdoms 11. It's a small niche market since people aren't even sure if they were going to bring it out in the US. But presumably since they're on #11 of the series they're probably not losing money. The game's staff certainly isn't huge, but the game is quite well polished. You don't have to explain why this game looks Ghetto with a capital G if someone else saw you playing it.

It seems like right now there are only two models for games. Either you're the huge polygon game that costs a zillion to make, or you've some game that looks like Ghetto with a capital G and you've to tell people that there's something really awesome about this game despite looking like it's a relic from 10 years ago.

Wild Arms was not Final Fantasy 7, but relative to the games at that time it didn't look that bad. Wild Arms Altered Code F was no FF10 or FF12 but again it didn't look especially ghetto compared to more expensive games of that era. Now I have no idea which made more or less money absolutely or relatively, but obviously whoever makes Wild Arms have much less resources than Sqix. So you would expect a game that doesn't look quite as good, but it doesn't mean it has to look outdated.

[Mental]

I think there is a middle-ground, and that's the kind of game that shows up on XBLA, Wii Ware, PSN and some DS games.

You need about 3 people to do a passable DS-level game (programmer, artist, someone else). I'm not convinced the middle ground is that games are no longer suitable to be sold in a box for any powerful console.

Actually, three people is pretty light for the DS, Don. That's more Game Boy advance level, or a mobile phone team. I don't have much experience at all with the number of people required for the DS, but I'm guessing you probably want at least eight or ten to make something decent. (Remember, you have to have enough content and gameplay to fill up both screens.)

Have you actually done any development yourself to have an idea of what's involved?

There are a few games on XBLA that were done by small teams - mostly the Dream-Build-Play winners. (Speaking of which, I really have to see if Dishwasher: Dead Samurai is out yet...) Some of them were even done by one person. But I can tell you the level of work required is absolutely insane, since that's what I've been trying to do with my spare time for the last few years.

[Mental]

I don't know if it's because they lack a good reusable environment but this model is really not sustainable if you need $2 milion to make just an average or even below average game.

For a "full" 360 or especially PS3 game, you really do. And yes, the development tools are still not that great, though they're leagues beyond their predecessors. A few friends of mine have seen the dev tools for the PS2, and their take on it was "I don't know how anyone finishes a game for this system, ever."

Honestly, I'm surprised so many developers have taken a chance on developing for the PS3 at all, though the user base is way better than when it first came out. A lot of people were saying at the beginning that there would pretty much be no way to make money developing for the PS3, though now you can take a pretty good stab at it in Japan at any rate. The 360 has enough of a user base that you have a lot better shot at making the $3 million or so that you need to make to make a $2 million dev cost worthwhile.

You need the most money to develop for the PS3, since the 360 has a pretty solid base of DirectX developers and experienced PS3 developers are hard to find - also because the PS3 does somewhat debatably have an edge on how detailed your models can be, which means you have to spend longer animating and modeling.

It probably helps that most PS3 developers are still Japanese, and like I mentioned above, the idea that you ought to pay your game employees enough to buy food and shelter hasn't really caught on there yet.

[Don]

I've been following the Touhou series, aka the shooter that was made by exactly 1 guy. It's pretty obvious that if you started with a decent tool, as the guy who makes Touhou obviously has, you can pretty much get away with just 3 guys: music guy, art guy, and programming guy. In the case of Touhou it's the same guy doing all 3 because he can do all 3, but it's not more than 3. If you look at the Touhou Danmukufu engine which is a 'make your own shooter game' engine, it is robust enough that you can make a decent game as long as you've the three generally non-overlapping roles covered. Concealed the Conclusion had a 5 man team and it's obvious their art guy sucks, so the game looks ghetto, but everything else about the game is quite professional. I've actually looked into the engines and it basically goes like this:

Create bullets 1 to 150.
Create attack pattern 1 to 100 using the bullet patterns above.

Stage 1:

Play music("stage 1 theme")
At 10 seconds into stage generate 8 little guys at position XYZ with attack pattern 3.
At 20 seconds into stage generate 2 big guys at position ABC with attack pattern 15.
At 60 seconds into stages generate mid boss soandso, attacking with pattern 16, 28, and 135.
At end of stage, display dialogue("blah blah blah")
generate 1 boss("soandso")
boss will use attack pattern 100, 101, 102, and 103.

The code for the whole game is well under 10000 lines of code when you plug it into the engine. Now, being a shooter, most of the meat of the game goes into creating the said attack patterns. That's obviously where talent and numbers come in. The team with more resources/talents can generate cooler attack patterns. But here the limitation is mostly talent, not size of your team. It's no doubt hard work but nobody said this is supposed to be easy.

We generally credit the success of franchise to a few guys in charge, like Kojima or Miyamoto. This is probably because a few really awesome guys coming up with some key ingredients helps a lot more than having 35 graphics guys making polygons. I realize graphics are a huge part of cost but there must be some way to come up with passable graphics without requiring a million dollars or the whole industry is doomed anyway.

[Mental]

Touhou and ZUN's work in general is a great thing to study in terms of making games that are fun without having to write a lot of lines of code, but it's not really a good analogy for creating games for the PS3 or 360.

I personally tried his stuff once, and I thought it was fun for a day or so, but it still struck me as just about the same game every time. It's not hard to make the same game over and over again and just switch up the constants, bullet graphics, ship graphics, et cetera. I haven't looked into the creation tools so I don't know if it's possible to ACTUALLY make gameplay mechanics that switch up the genre and add something new - i.e., Ikaruga. And bear in mind these 2D "bullet hell" shooter mechanics have been around for twenty years and are pretty well solved problems at this point.

It IS quite possible to make a custom toolset and graphic standard for character animation, level animation, particle effects, menuing, HUDS, inventory systems, character equipment and et cetera. There are two reasons this doesn't happen.

1. The heavy Japanese influence in the industry pretty much means that a "business is war" mindset is in effect, and everyone is trying to undercut everyone else all the time, and thus nobody has an incentive to make anything easier for anyone else, except maybe in terms of licensing an engine. Most of the big publishers HAVE some variant on these tools - for instance, between Fight Night 3 and Def Jam Icon, I can tell that EA is in possession of a pretty robust and reusable human character creator and animation kit that can vary features, clothing, et cetera. They just don't want anyone else to have them. This DOES drive down dev costs, but not as much as you think, because not very many people are familiar with all of these tools - plus the games they're using it on all seem to be marquee titles where they're spending millions on modeling the rest of the levels and doing the shaders and voice acting and everything else up to AAA levels anyway. I also know Nintendo has a pretty robust toolset for their own developers only, but Nintendo's secrets are locked up tighter than a college girl's legs in a room full of computer engineering majors, so it's hard to really know much of anything about what they're doing.

2. Publishers and console manufacturers in the videogame industry have this really, really supercilious idea that the extreme and bizarre difficulties in programming for any given console are a kind of way to "weed out" bad developers from good ones. I'm not even kidding about this. In other words, if you can work past the arcane combination of workarounds and bugs that come with developing for any console system (and I have never seen one for which this isn't the case), then you're a good developer and worthy to work with them. If not, then you obviously don't have what it takes. They will say this to you with a huge smile on their faces; I've seen it at E3 conferences. This may or may not be related to the fact that they're the ones who really have all the power in the industry and that it also frees them up from the responsibility of having to fix any given engineering fuckup that may be ruining your life.

In a perfect world, would there be a standard toolkit that runs on every system by now, created by some benevolent agency that cares about the future of gaming and advancing the art form and making sure consumers have a good time and developers don't die early from stress-related diseases brought on by a month of 18-hour workdays? Yes. This is, however, the real world, which means that, as usual, massive egoes, arrogance, blind myopia, and the usual stranglehold by the people who control the path to market are the prime determinants of how much of a chance there is that anything cool will actually see the light of day.

I'm not even going to go into the fact that a tremendous number of gamers don't actually care about advancing gaming as a form of entertainment either, they just want the same game as last year with a bit more content and the reassurance of marketers that whatever they have is super-awesome so that they can be good at it right off the bat and tell their friends how much they suck for not having the newest retread in a shiny new box. There's not as much incentive for publishers to break the status quo of long slogs of development as a result.

Believe it or not, I think Microsoft opening up the 360 to home development via XNA will change a lot of this. But it's going to take time. They were supposed to provide a good graphical GUI that really would open up development to the masses and do away with the need for endless lines of code that 90% of people will never understand, only their business plan for doing it was to buy or license the Torque game creation tools, which suck such unholy balls that Microsoft finally realized they were better off promoting the Torque engines as "XNA partners" and basically left everyone back in coder-land, admittedly with a programming language and API that sanely actually only takes one function call instead of seven or eight to draw a given sprite. (It's actually more like three lines with some initialization and setup required first, but it's still way better than anything that's come before.)

XNA is still awesome and I predict really cool shit will still come out of it within the next few years - hopefully they'll keep support of it going to the next XBox version too - but the truth is that it's really actually very hard to make good middleware and most of those who do keep it to themselves. It's going to get better, but it's also going to take time as well.

[Mental]

Do you have a 360, Don? If you can understand Touhou, then you can probably take a stab at XNA, which I'd highly recommend for you as a way to try to see if you can make a start at putting your ideas into something practical.

Even if you don't end up making a full game, it's a great way to see what something vaguely resembling modern console development is like and it can be a pretty awesome feeling to see something you made running on your own 360 anyway.

[Don]

Of course all the Touhou and bullet hell games in general are just the same game with different patterns. How is that really different from most RPGs, action games, fighting games, or FPS? If a niche genre can be solved, why not one that makes a ton of money? Like you said a lot of people just like the same old thing + 1. It'd seem like perfecting this process is a very good idea indeed. When they make Madden (year+1) they sure aren't rebuilding the game from scratch.

Let's take something like Star Ocean. What goes in such a game? Well you got a story, but that's totally independent of technology. Likewise music is totally independent of technology as well. You got some kind of world that you run around and talk to people and interact with. I'd hope by now this problem is essentially solved. It might take longer to render your newest model compared to 10 years ago but you're still just placing model X at location Z.

Now let's get to the actual combat engine, since Star Ocean has relatively heavy emphasis on combat even for a RPG. You got some kind of battlefield that you can move around in real time and attack enemy in various ways. Each of the Star Oceans has slightly different rules but overall you have some kind of box you and your enemies are in. They make some attacks based on some logic (no technology involved, just programming). You move your character around and give them some inputs. Depending on the current incarnations your selection of ability might be slightly different, but you can certainly start with a very basic system that handles real time combat in a boxed environment and then just tweak it as necessary.

Even if you don't have some kind of benevolent authority that just comes out with standardized tools to develop most common genre games, you'd at least think if you made say, Star Ocean 1, then you'd be able to keep the basic engine around for newer stuff. Granted sometimes there is a big change in technology and your old system no longer works, but I'd say anything made in the PS2 or later era should provide a solid base to work with. I really don't see the generation after PS2 enabled you to do anything you couldn't earlier not counting Wii's controller scheme. The games I see on XBox 360/PS3 more or less just looks like a prettier version of the same thing on PS2.

Now I'm quite aware doing stuff like motion capturing, good graphics, voice acting, and so on could use a lot of manpower and is probably where the money goes to. If you look at any game's credit the vast majority of the people listed are under graphics. Perhaps what the industry really needs is more standardized tools to produce graphic cheaply. I really have a hard time imagining your basic engine can be tough to do after games have been out for so long.

[Mental]

I realize graphics are a huge part of cost but there must be some way to come up with passable graphics without requiring a million dollars or the whole industry is doomed anyway.

Also, just as a postscript, I don't think this is true, except maybe about the PS3 in the U.S., which has turned into a colossal fuckup by Sony. The truth is that while any given title has strong elements of a crapshoot to it, the industry as a whole is still growing and is one of the few sectors that I think you can pretty much count on to stay reasonably healthy through the next few years of almost inevitable financial devastation. People like cheap forms of entertainment when things go bad - it gives unemployed people something to do while looking for work, or to take their minds off all the stress or whatever. Movies did fairly well during the Depression and I suspect it's going to be similar for gaming in this era.

[Mental]

Of course all the Touhou and bullet hell games in general are just the same game with different patterns. How is that really different from most RPGs, action games, fighting games, or FPS? If a niche genre can be solved, why not one that makes a ton of money? Like you said a lot of people just like the same old thing + 1. It'd seem like perfecting this process is a very good idea indeed. When they make Madden (year+1) they sure aren't rebuilding the game from scratch.

Let's take something like Star Ocean. What goes in such a game? Well you got a story, but that's totally independent of technology. Likewise music is totally independent of technology as well. You got some kind of world that you run around and talk to people and interact with. I'd hope by now this problem is essentially solved. It might take longer to render your newest model compared to 10 years ago but you're still just placing model X at location Z.

Now let's get to the actual combat engine, since Star Ocean has relatively heavy emphasis on combat even for a RPG. You got some kind of battlefield that you can move around in real time and attack enemy in various ways. Each of the Star Oceans has slightly different rules but overall you have some kind of box you and your enemies are in. They make some attacks based on some logic (no technology involved, just programming). You move your character around and give them some inputs. Depending on the current incarnations your selection of ability might be slightly different, but you can certainly start with a very basic system that handles real time combat in a boxed environment and then just tweak it as necessary.

Even if you don't have some kind of benevolent authority that just comes out with standardized tools to develop most common genre games, you'd at least think if you made say, Star Ocean 1, then you'd be able to keep the basic engine around for newer stuff. Granted sometimes there is a big change in technology and your old system no longer works, but I'd say anything made in the PS2 or later era should provide a solid base to work with. I really don't see the generation after PS2 enabled you to do anything you couldn't earlier not counting Wii's controller scheme. The games I see on XBox 360/PS3 more or less just looks like a prettier version of the same thing on PS2.

Now I'm quite aware doing stuff like motion capturing, good graphics, voice acting, and so on could use a lot of manpower and is probably where the money goes to. If you look at any game's credit the vast majority of the people listed are under graphics. Perhaps what the industry really needs is more standardized tools to produce graphic cheaply. I really have a hard time imagining your basic engine can be tough to do after games have been out for so long.

Sadly, you should try to imagine it. I agree with everything you've said, but the truth is that most companies do actually reinvent the wheel any time they start a new franchise. Publishers and developers are too scared of making something that looks a lot like what's already out there. I think it's dumb, but that's how it is.

This isn't always the case, but even when it's not, sometimes it fails to help out the genre much. A good tool is supposed to free you up the time to do something original and unique by removing so-called "boilerplate" code that has to be rewritten every time. But let's take an example. I can tell Square has some kind of a fractal building/city creator going, because I've seen the same general "city" model/renderings/FMV used in FF12 and Lost Odyssey both. The problem I had is - the cities look almost exactly the same. That's not what a good tool or pipeline is supposed to be. You don't want the same thing over and over. You want something that frees you up from tedium without unduly enforcing any particular look or feel or mindset on the resulting content. And that's actually really hard to do.

For sequels, this isn't the case, but you still get bogged down a lot by the various idiosyncracies of the console, and somehow not having to recode everything from scratch often doesn't mean people don't try anyway. This is where I lose my ability to explain it all, since it doesn't make sense. But I can pretty much assure you that the "basic engine" you're talking about, sadly, is not really there in such a way as something like Touhou is. I mean, dot-X files (the standard 3d format for use with DirectX/XNA) still have massive compatibility problems when you're trying to export from something like Max/Maya to them unless you really, really know what you're doing. Textures get baked wrong, normals don't get computed correctly, or a vertex or two out of place at a boundary turns your well-crafted star cruiser into an Escherian 4D jigsaw that would no doubt revolutionize notions of space and time if only it didn't shatter your mind into jagged pieces trying to look at it and figure out where the hell your model went.

I mean, there's an RPG kit for XNA out there provided by some company Microsoft paid to create "tutorial kits" for the platform. But I don't want to use it. It "solves the problem", but not well or smoothly or in a way that makes me actually want to play a game using the technology. The HUD screens aren't smooth, instead, they break up the pacing of the game and make things feel jerky. The level engine is really pretty bare-bones. And the code is way too clunky and and it's almost faster to write something yourself than it is to wade through all the existing code and figure out how to customize it to your needs.

It somewhat surprises me the same way that it surprises you that nobody's figured out how to standardize some relatively basic engines yet. They haven't. I would point you back to my 1. and 2. above if you want an idea of some of the bottlenecks that hold these technologies back.