A common misconception in this age is that creativity means productivity. But creativity doesn’t mean completing things and shipping them.
I am very creative, but I am unproductive with most of my own projects. You know, those books I want to write and indie games I want to make. The intention to change that is always there, but it is what it is.
If you want to increase your chances of financial success you need to be productive, or “lucky”. But you can always choose creativity, it’s free.
I write for the Internet a lot, sometimes much more than I would. I feel an unstoppable desire to share my thoughts, especially on my beloved games industry. That has consequences, as you can imagine.
One of the bland consequences is that some people, usually more inexperienced, believe that I am “successful”. Meaning I make a lot of money. Well, my friend, in this age of Feudalism 2.0 I am struggling just like you. Thank God I can maintain my family with my work, but I have also the support of my parents often.
I have periods with 0 clients and 0 incomes, but I was born on the richest side of the World. You may want to say that I am very passionate, and I really am. But if you believe that I am economically successful, I am afraid you are in the wrong direction.
What I really achieved in the last 10 years was to not add problems on top of systemic ones. The fact that we live in a gig economy, that the job market is unstable, that the games industry is built too often on pure dreams… I cannot control that. What I can control is my way of being a professional.
When I say that I work in creative direction, vision, and so on, someone will probably imagine Hideo Kojima at work. That is not the case. Most of my job is to:
Important to note that I am always working, as a freelancer, on projects ideated by others. I do not agree with the basis of many of them, but those pay my bills. I am appreciated because I deliver and I speak clearly. I do not fight for my ideas, because I know that the more I am in the industry, the more I am biased as well as experienced. So who knows in the end?
After the shutdown of a Netflix studio, I read the opinions of many experts. One of the most common ideas is that Netflix needs its hardware to create a healthy games business.
To sketch up this idea, I also used LLM platforms. I will not publish any images, because they are based on stolen copyrights, but still, I want to admit that I used them for inspiration.
Netflix can reinvent the concept of the console, as they reinvented the business of VHS renting years ago.
The core audience is, of course, people (like myself) who have a Netflix subscription and who love video games. People that probably have kids, and work using technology.
We love to jump from series to series, we are nostalgic about the old days when games were simpler and gamepads had fewer buttons!
The new console should:
The games allowed on the platform should follow these rules:
The console can have a retro look but its colors and curved lines will attract new audiences.
The gamepads will have fewer buttons than new consoles. Every game should be simpler than competitors. Also, they can “wrap” a smartphone inside.
Sometimes I dust off my old Dreamcast, connect it, and replay Crazy Taxi, Soulcalibur, Frame Gride, and Chu-chu Rocket. I feel like they are gifts that I sent to myself from the past.
Before, the support contained the entire game, not just a license. You bought it and they lasted “forever”.
The market has evolved, and commercial expectations have changed. In the last generations, you can play a game you bought until it is removed. There are many reasons for this, but in the channels I follow to get information I often read the frustration of many people. Games are perceived as something expensive (it is not true, they are not) and uncertain. You buy the license, but you do not know if it will last.
Game-as-a-service has added limitations on top of that for this specific audience: they are always connected games, potentially infinite.
In summary:
– it is not clear whether the game belongs to you or not
– it is not clear how long you will have access when you buy it
– it is not clear why you have to wait for connections to servers and login to external services
– it is not clear who’s this guy on the other side playing with me and what are his real intentions
– it is not clear if and when you can beat the game
– it is not clear what will happen if you miss some event
In this, frankly, I prefer the old style, where the only thing that was not clear was how the game itself worked. Onboarding to games has improved a lot, but before you just had to press a button and you were in a few seconds.
Not anymore. Today, pressing a button makes us feel a bit spied on by systems that want to figure out how to get more money out of us.
It is very true that the industry has matured, that it employs many more people, and that these are increasingly sophisticated games. However, the player experience for this specific audience (which is a big audience) has worsened in many ways.
And I see a business opportunity there.
Reading the terrible news about a company that is praised in the industry, I think we are approaching one of the worst moments in the industry. I am talking about Roblox, of course.
The feeling I have is the domino effect, which will spread especially in businesses that are supported by attention.
We have all played that game that makes us think “but how can this game be so successful?“
Well, often it is because the numbers are rigged and the players are not real people, but machines. New technologies only make this situation worse. I am afraid that many CEOs are playing the wrong game here. Faking the numbers, looking for the short term, that is the result.
It’s sad, but it’s good for the future of the industry in my opinion. We need some people out.
I read with interest the reflections of some journalists, because of the release of Jason Schreier’s new book on the Blizzard company. The attention is focused, as it should be, on the projects and budgets.
Interesting details about failed attempts and canceled projects appear here and there. Some conclude that internally the situation at Blizzard seems chaotic.
Well, I’ve been working in the industry since 2007. I’ve never worked at Blizzard, but I’ve worked on projects that have had a fair amount of success in their small way: the internal situation is always chaotic. I’ve never seen, in my career, a single project/team where absolute chaos doesn’t reign.
“Only from internal chaos can a dancing star be born“, wrote the teenage girl in her diary when I was a teenager. There, that.
I was at IndieDevDay24 and I came with good insight. Only one selfie, this is me waiting for a free piñacolada.
Game development is getting faster thanks to growing technologies.
I was impressed by an overview of Construct that a nice guy gave me. You can make a prototype on the web as quickly as editing a video for TikTok.
Instant games combined with live elements can bring audience to small creators.
Another thing, you will read everywhere that tens of thousands games are published every year on Steam and that the market is overcrowded.
But then you meet people doing games for Steam and you discover that a huge portion of them made their plans on the concept of “hope”. They hope to find a publisher, hope to finish the project, and hope it will work.
Hope is not a good strategy. I get the beauty of tackling game development as a liberal discipline, without servile constraint. And I love it, but you should make a discerned choice.
Speaking of which, the best emotion for me is to meet former students. They always call me loudly, they make me sit and play their games. They take notes on my comments. I love to teach, also if there is a bureaucratic wall around teaching that pushes me away from it. But I always try to come back in some way.
You can control your development time and your budget. You can design good games around that. Game design is removing things!
Tens of thousands publish every year on Steam, but few take care of these things.
There is still much space for indie games, market saturation is just a Chimera.
I am currently stuck in a limbo, and I will not come out easily from here. But I will do it.
I am preparing all the material needed to participate to the IndieDevDay24. I have hired a freelance artist to help me to the promotional material (one pager and pitch deck) of Pawtners Case.
For now, zero publishers accepted to meet me. I don’t know if this is normal because it’s the very first time I am willing to pitch to indie publishers. Anyway, the experience is worth to me. I am doing something different, at least.
For the rest, here’s the limbo: from one side I have companies that are offering very high positions to me, but then they disappear because I have never held that same position in another company. From the other side I am getting in touch with smaller realities that value well my work but they are offering too low compensation.
That’s a mess, and it’s hard to be patient with money running out of the bank every month. Wish me luck, if you read this.
To understand the situation in which we are in the video game industry, I propose to make a parallel with the downfall of rock music.
Consolidation led to a loss of diversity and originality in rock music. Barriers were created for capable artists by producers interested in the short term. The arrival of Napster led to fewer record sales and also to more isolation in listening to music. Before you went to the store to chat, now you were alone casually looking for something to listen. The experience of listening to rock became fleeting and fragmented.
Today new platforms allow rock artists to find and cultivate their audience. This suggests the potential for a new era of creativity, which will probably not reach the ancient glories.
I want to leave every parallelism open to your interpretation today.
Mine is certainly too biased.
Have a great weekend!
I come to your house and I like your sofa, a lot. Then I can decide:
The first choice is similar to taking inspiration. Inspiration is doing my thing inspired by yours. It is different from stealing, which is taking your thing to do mine.
The current trend, I am sure it will end soon, is to use tools that take other people’s job and give it to you mixed with other robbed stuff. Which is worse than stealing, at least when you steal you know the victim. Here we’re talking on another level, completely.
It’s inevitable, they say. Well, it’s not. I am against that. You should too.