the co-creator of the Oddworld universe has taken a look at the direction he sees that industry heading and he doesn't want to play.
This month, he ended Oddworld games with a bang -- by shutting down his 60-person San Luis Obispo, Calif.-based development studio and moving to the Bay Area. In a chat with HollywoodReporter.com columnist Paul Hyman, Lanning talks about the huge hurdles for game developers today, why he is all about protecting his original IP, and the reasons he believes he has a 2-1/2-year window to make his transition.
Interesting stuff. MMORPG's are changing the PC world, I expect the same with the NextGen consoles...
Black Lives definitely Matter Lorini!
Also: There are three ways to not tell the truth: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Semi-interesting, although he's crying about issues that have been going on for the past 5 years. The guy wants to make CG feature films akin to Final Fantasy as opposed to family entertainment, but we know that hasn't been successful in the past. He seems like he doesn't know exactly what he wants to do.
But seriously, he has good points, though I think those points are limited to high-dollar titles. Which is another reason I'll be looking more and more at the indies for hope for the future.
"I've been fighting with reality for over thirty-five years, and I'm happy to say that I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
Pretty interesting. I've written many times about the negative influence of the blockbuster mentality on game quality, a trend that just keeps increasing. But because I pay no attention to consoles, I didn't know this: "Costs are going up, but not because the quality expectation is higher. Costs are going up because of the design of the next-generation hardware." The higher the development cost, as I hope we all know, the more homogenized the product, as developers are compelled to stay with the safe and market-tested.
Just one more reason to expect originality mostly among indie developers making PC-original titles.
I agree with looking to the indies for future games, but there is always a part of me that looks at Elder Scrolls 4, Dragon Age and GTA: San Andreas and can't wait. But then most of these companies have earned their success, and while I'll be always be a PC kinda guy, I have to admit that the death of Ionstrom and Troika shows that the future is in consoles.
Ironrod wrote:Pretty interesting. I've written many times about the negative influence of the blockbuster mentality on game quality, a trend that just keeps increasing. But because I pay no attention to consoles, I didn't know this: "Costs are going up, but not because the quality expectation is higher. Costs are going up because of the design of the next-generation hardware." The higher the development cost, as I hope we all know, the more homogenized the product, as developers are compelled to stay with the safe and market-tested.
Just one more reason to expect originality mostly among indie developers making PC-original titles.
I think this is going to apply to PC games as well - one of his points is that the costs of content creation are going way up with the new technologies. I wouldn't say that PC's are exempt from this, just that there are more innovative ways to get around it in the PC dev world.
I do think that we are going to continue seeing many more games utilizing the same engines as it can dramatically cut down development time. You may also start to see subdevelopment houses dedicated to content creation for said engines - though I was reading something about actors and the actors guild wanting more (any) residuals from game sales, as comp to the current flat fee. I think that will happen pretty soon too, and drive quality content prices up even further...
Black Lives definitely Matter Lorini!
Also: There are three ways to not tell the truth: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
