Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

Global Game Jam Keynote Speeches

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 8, 2011

Brenda Brathwaite, John Romero, Graeme Devine, and Tom Lehman gave speeches prior to the start of the Global Game Jam a week and a half ago. While they were specific to the whole “make a game in 48 hours” thing, many of the principles they spoke to were applicable for indies all over.

Graeme Devine may go on record as being the first major game developer to publicly pronounce the death of the mainstream games biz. Raph Koster spoke some time ago predicting an “extinction-level event”  in the AAA games industry, and it sounds like Graeme is pronouncing it “indies.”

Even I won’t go quite that far. But it does seem like the rise of indies over the last few years has been transformative even at the lofty heights of AAA development. Maybe if there hadn’t been a global recession, it wouldn’t have had so much of an impact. I don’t think the incredibly big-budget games are going to go away – there’s far to much money to be had for the top winners in the high-stakes game.

By far, my favorite speech was Brenda Brathwaite’s.  While it was the most tuned to the challenges of a 48-hour experience, it was also spoke to the more general issues of working with a team, and scoping your design to fit reality.

Many thanks to Gareth Fouche (@GarethNN) of Scars of War for pointing this out.

Global Game Jam at UCSC


Filed Under: Game Development - Comments: Read the First Comment



  • LateWhiteRabbit said,

    I think an “extinction event” is on the way for the AAA games industry. I don’t think it will wipe out the old “dinosaurs” but it will change their world permanently and see only the smaller and fleeter dinosaurs surviving the impact.

    I think that the fact that the games have incredibly big budgets are exactly why – the lack of creativity has little to nothing to do with it. The top winners may receive a lot of money, but look at what the odds of winning are, what the stakes they have to ante up with are, and, most importantly, look at how the returns are diminishing with each “win”.

    I think profit is much better considered as a percentage than an actually number. A publisher might make 200 million off a game, but spend 180 to make it. Compare to to a game that costs 400K to make and makes a $1 million back. The first is a profit of only 10%. The second is over 100% profit.

    The big publishers and studios are gambling the house and car, hoping ONE of their gambles will pay off big and cover the spread on the rest of the games. With that system it is inevitable that eventually the odds will burn them. There will come a year, maybe even two years, where a publisher doesn’t have ANY game that makes enough to cover their costs. And then they can do an imitation of a dinosaur, and for the same reason – too big to move quickly, too slow to adapt, too much required upkeep for the new world of scarcity.

    The global recession just made things apparent a little earlier, but the AAA games industry is in the same boat as the blockbuster movie industry. Movies and games are costing exponentially more to make and market, and they are seeing smaller and smaller profit margins. Money going out is increasing, money coming in is decreasing. You don’t need an economics degree to see where that ends.

    The AAA games industry has forgotten how to be sustainable, just like the movie industry has. They forget that all the hits and blockbusters of the past were not engineered to be so – they didn’t have huge budgets. They were original games or movies made on a shoestring that became hits.

    With digital distribution and the decline of brick and mortar stores selling games, publishers even have less and less need to exist. All they essentially do now is market.

    Look up. The comet is already starting to glow in the distant sky. We small little indies scurrying underfoot are about to get our day in the sun.

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