Video Games Were Better in 2005 When They Cost Less Money
670Games were better during the PS2 era, the 2000s.
By the late 90s, games development studios were between 20-40 people with your typical computer game development budget being between $1-2m. 2005 is the absolute pinnacle, and the point of this video. It’s the sixth console generation; technology has come on unbelievably, and there’s enough money and manpower on deck to pretty much make any game you can imagine. SHOEHORN The technology was there to to make things look good, but not quite good enough to be called realistic. This is probably the last limitation that forced developers to be frugal, creative and innovative. The rule book hadn’t been written; control schemes weren’t established, genres were still up in the air. Creators were drawing from their own wells, inventing things for the first time. There’s playfulness, and proper innovation without the borders that see today. Just think about how many incredible franchises came out of the PS2 era.
When Halo 2 launched in 2004 and outsold Pirates of the Caribbean, it was clear to everybody that games were a license to print money and I think this is the turning point of the whole industry. Investors and publishers had coined the term “AAA game” as a way to separate these bigger budget projects from the usual, run-of the mill computer games. When the Xbox 360 launched in 2005, the term “AAA” was well-entrenched in gaming culture. Publisher and shareholder-backed AAA development budgets were now in the range of 20-50m dollars. In a short period of time computer games had gone from costing tuppence ha’penny to the GDP of a small island nation. In order to develop on these new consoles, developers needed to pony up for more staff and more computers, or watch this now rapidly-growing industry leave them behind. In most cases, they had to rely entirely on money from investors and corporate interests. In bringing Haze to PS3, Ubisoft insisted that FRD crush more features into the game, to maximise AAA market appeal and lessen the risk of their investment. FRD are a perfect analogy for this period of games history. They were the darlings of the industry, going from being unable to do wrong to being overworked and stretched beyond all reason, ultimately leading to their collapse. The AAA mega-hits that investors and shareholders were now demanding flew in the face of riskier, creative games that washed their face.
This widening gyre, this growing disconnect between innovation and financial interests has only grown in the last 10 years. We’re seeing now what happens when the industry at large allows investors and corporate non-gamers to take control over creativity and design. Those incredible developers we were remembering, who are responsible for those brilliant innovative games, are basically all gone now. They’re either bankrupt, or bought up by the big studios which means the team has been all fragmented up, or they’ve been forced into mobile or F2P. It feels like the Spirit of 2005 is being extinguished.
You might say money kills art. That limitation breeds innovation. That necessity is the mother of invention. You could say YOU CAN’T GROW WITHOUT PAIN. You might say that games cost too much to make nowadays, or you might even say they make too much nowadays, that the risk is too high to try innovating. You might even say if games cost so much to make now that they’re at risk of not making any profit, then maybe these big companies need to look into smarter ways of spending their money.
Digital delivery platforms, crowdfunding etc question the continued need for those big corporate financial entities. Both Senua’s Sacrifice and Dark Souls did well with small teams on a limited budget. Both bypassed the traditional route to market and have been met with financial and critical success. Both feature innovative gameplay and a story worth telling. That’s the Spirit of 2005, alive and well. Games like Rust, PUBG or Rocket League aren’t AAA outings, they’re not going to set the world on fire, but they’re not pixel platformers either. They pick their battles when it comes to budget and all these games prove that the medium-sized developer, the Spirit of 2005, is a sustainable business model.
#spiritof2005 #thegameshow #videoessay
SOURCES:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/10/31/why-have-video-game-budgets-skyrocketed-in-recent-years/
http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_game_costs
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/01/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-big-video-game/
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-04-26-the-collapse-of-free-radical-design
https://www.engadget.com/2014/11/06/the-game-that-killed-free-radical/
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130957/dice_feature_the_search_for_.php
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hldCtjT9baI
"Telecom", "User Friendly" and "Dreaming" by Lee Rosevere are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
https://leerosevere.bandcamp.com/album/synthcronicity
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