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Xbox cocreator Seamus Blackley floats a radical business model
If I had a dream about giant caterpillars attacking me through a forest of brightly colored mushrooms, my first instinct would not be to suggest to Bill Gates that we smoke a joint in the company hot tub and discuss funding it as a game. Yet in the early 1980s, programmers at places like Atari did exactly that — and got a few million bucks and a chance. And thank heavens, because it was that kind of daring that gave the fledgling industry its Centipedes and Asteroids.
Video and computer gaming has since grown into a $10 billion industry. Todayés titles are made by teams of as many as 100 people, cost on average $12 million to $15 million, and are some of the most intricate creative and technical works the entertainment world has ever seen. So how come every new release is just the same old crap? What happened to the days of seemingly endless innovation?
The answer, of course, is economics. When youére asking for several million dollars to produce, distribute, and market a game, people get cranky and conservative. You hear phrases like-demographic studyé and-leveraging a franchise.é You walk out of the pitch room as producer of Power Puff Girls Extreme Mountain Skateboarding.
Sound familiar? Ités the same scenario young filmmakers go through as they try to sell new concepts amid Hollywoodés stream of sequels and remakes. While games are not movies, there are lessons we can take from the film types. Chiefly, that investors backing creative ventures need to be thinking like the artists — hits are made by taking risks.
ENTER THE INDUSTRY'S FIRST INDIE PRODUCTION COMPANY
One way that Hollywood has addressed this problem is by creating production funds — limited partnerships that back the making of specific content. Think of investing in Madden Football rather than Electronic Arts. This aligns the priorities of the moneybags with those of the creatives — both want to do everything possible to make a kick-ass product.
Another advantage the film industry enjoys over gaming is a well-defined production process — a gaffer is always a gaffer, a best boy a best boy (whatever the hell that is), and in theory, everyone involved knows their various roles and how they fit together. This enables a director or producer to bring in specialists for nearly every aspect of the production.
But because the underlying videogame technology is evolving so rapidly, games require substantially more core staff than films do. As a result, companies are less inclined to hire specialists, and employees end up working outside their areas of expertise. This is a bad situation all around — a bored physics programmer could be happily applying his skills to another project, while you could be spending less on a junior coder to handle the interface.
Can these ideas be used to improve the way that games are funded and produced? Well, weéll see. A few months ago, I left Microsoft to help found our industryés first indie production company, Capital Entertainment Group, and its first production fund, Capital Entertainment Fund. CEG searches out the risky, hit-potential ideas that gamers crave, and employs CEF to work with the developer to snag specialists, provide support, and optimize the production process. We then partner with a traditional publisher to market and distribute the titles, and share the profits.
The result: Publishers get innovative titles at low risk. Gamers get something theyéll be stoked about. And we get to work on some damn cool releases. Ités a radical model, developed through careful analysis of what isnét working today. At CEG, we aim to buck the trend, to put out a few killer games that otherwise wouldnét get made, and to help, in a small way, explore and define the future of game development and production. We will not, however, be installing a hot tub. Some things are best left in the past.
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