Shape of the game

There are cycles to all things it seems, the Lion King taught young children about the circle of life, who are we to argue with Disney? So, armed with the knowledge that we are all part of a great circle, how does this apply to the theme of the moment? I read an article where the future shape of games was discussed. The theme appeared to be that in the current economic climate the old models of gigantic fifteen hour first person shooters was over. Essentially as a question that boils down to do people want Skyrim or Angry Birds?

I am beginning to think I have some kind of greed complex, or maybe a desire to overstretch myself. I quite fancy playing Angry Birds and Skyrim, maybe a bit of Modern Warfare 3 followed by Cut the Rope. For me these games are simply that, just games, I am beginning to wonder if that is a symptom of age? Have I been around the circle and am seeing things come back around again?

The desire to make smaller, casual games, and have them become episodic, it seems to me, is nothing more than a symptom of the economic situation. Developers are feeling the pinch, as budgets rise to compete with the powerhouse yearly episodic titles like Modern Warfare and Assassins Creed, the price of failure is greater. If your huge budget game does not do amazingly in the sales wars, then there is a good chance that the gamble taken with the money to create the game will not be repeated. The publishers and investors simply won't tolerate a critically acclaimed game that flops in the crowded market. There will be no further cash given out for the well meaning developers, no matter how much they have learned, there will be no more cash for another try.

With this in mind it isn't surprising that the developers are making noises that the publishers are pushing up from behind the scenes. They want to see the end to the model that currently doesn't seem to be working. They also see success in for example the mobile phone market of things like Angry Birds. A game that doesn't push any technical envelopes, doesn't have any really coherent story, and the levels can be knocked up fairly easily, for an audience that seems to lap it up and pay for the same game over and over. Don't mistake that for a swipe at Angry Birds, I love Angry Birds and have bought and paid for each of it's iterations on several devices plus paid for the mighty eagle as well. I have played Angry birds for longer than some AAA titles on console and with that idea in mind, it occurs to me that I would have or should have paid £40 for the privilege.

Angry Birds is a fairly good example of what I like to call the convergence effect. Angry Birds was the right game, at the right time, the stars aligned, it was cute, it was what was needed on emerging smartphones, whose controls didn't suit current dual analogue stick gaming trends. Simply put, Angry Birds was lucky, it fell into it's success by accident, there is no other explanation, there are hundreds of games in it's genre, most of them were free flash games. The App store explosion and it's affordability made the convergence phenomenon, it could equally as easily been one of any number of other games that rose to the top of the App gaming pile.

What have developers learned from Angry Birds and it's peers? That basic games sell on smartphones and remakes of Doom sell only on nostalgia. There is a market for what could be called big budget games on smartphones, Things like Dead Space and Infinity Blade have done well. At the back of my mind, at least, runs that thought that this would be so much better if I was using a traditional controller to play with. Dead space, for one, I struggled more with the controls and getting it to do what I intended than anything the necromorphs did. Infinity Blade was a good example of a huge budget engine game that got retrofitted to the control scheme and basically turned it into an on rails movie with random swiping of the screen. I bought both for the iPad and went back to playing Angry Birds fairly quickly. It isn't that people like that simple retro game model on smartphone's merely that the control scheme dictates it.

What I would call a basic game, something like space invaders or pac-man, something with 2D sprites and simplistic gameplay mechanics evolved because of hardware. The shape and form of games was closely dictated by the power of the hardware they ran on. The business model for delivery has changed each time a new media for game storage was created. I remember when I first started being interested in computers and games, actually typing in lines of basic code from magazines like "Your Sinclair." The move to actual media like cassette tape, then to cartridge, CD, DVD, BLU Ray etc. allowed games to grow. There was an almost direct correlation between the availability of the storage space on the media and the power of CPU's and graphic cards to push polygons.

For most of the 80's and 90's platform games and side scrolling shooters ruled the world. People complained of being tired of platform games and top down or side scrolling shooters the way people complain of being bored with First person shooters today. There have always been attempts to bring 3D game to life, however it was John Carmack who seemed to single-handedly dragged gaming out of two dimensions with his work on Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake.

Once games designers freed themselves of the shackles of 2D they were loathe to go back. In the early noughties anyone making a 2D game would have been looked at as if they were insane. There are exceptions, I am talking generally, 2D and basic game-play games never totally went away. Like an infinite amount of monkeys producing Shakespeare, there are always a given amount of fans of anything at all in the world. Some people I think just like obscure things to be different from everyone else, though, that is their choice, and all power to them for making it.

The current resurgence in fairly basic gameplay 2D games rose with the smartphones and the new marketplaces found on games consoles. Console makers realised that online downloadable games were an opportunity too good to miss. Microsoft it seems can be given much credit for the rise of smaller downloadable games through their Xbox live Arcade. This forum exploded along with release of the console, fueled by titles like Geometry Wars, which was originally included as part of the big budget AAA title Project Gotham Racing 2.

It seems to me that twenty something developers, not old enough to remember, are looking at what they don't even realize is the past and thinking it is the future. Games don't need to go backwards, however, they also need to remember their roots at the same time. The market has opened up room for retro 2D games to see a new and justified lease of life on smartphones. The market is there now thanks to great internet infrastructure for truly episodic games, that allow people to only buy the next section of the game when they are ready to play it.

What shouldn't happen is for developers to imagine that this is what everyone wants, if I have learned anything in life from Abraham Lincoln, it's that you can't please all of the people all of the time. If something like Modern Warfare 3 is taking all your sales then that is just the school of hard knocks smashing down your door. If you can't compete with Modern Warfare at its own game then should you just give up? No, I don't believe that is the answer either. Investors should realize that some money is better than no money, budgets should be carefully managed and realistic expectations made. Surely it is just as profitable to have a stable of ten smaller games that sell reasonably well and keep everyone involved in food and clothing, than to try to compete with game franchises that gobble up super human profits.