Iron Tower Studio - An Evening with Annie Carlson
Vince D. Weller continues his knack of gathering interesting interviews with a nice little discussion with ex-Obsidian writer, Annie Carlson. The conversation ranges from her experiences with Obsidian bouncing around different projects to industry issues:
What's wrong with the industry? Simple question, I know.
Man, how long do you want this interview to be? Jeez…
…It’s not just one thing, obviously. I have my own pet concerns, but the thing that keeps coming to mind for me is that companies pour money into games to get the latest everything, and turn out an industry that’s AAA or Bust. Either a game is a huge success, or it tanks and the team gets laid off. There seems to be less and less room for investment in games that are out to be modest successes, that don’t try to excel on every single artistic level but create something solid. More modest, mid-range titles that may not be the very best-looking thing out there, but are fun as hell to play. I feel like that’d offer up a lot more opportunities to take risks and offer up unique concepts – if you don’t have to sign up a massive budget to it and can make good use of existing technology you’re familiar with, everybody saves money, and the gamer wins in the end.
As far as smaller, more affordable projects go, CRPGs have the advantage in many ways because it’s far easier to develop for them than multiple consoles – but due to the technical demands (whether in terms of raw power or simple dedication to troubleshoot the damn thing), many people don’t invest in computer games. It’s odd that there seems to be this split in computer gaming between the very hardcore and the very casual, with MMO players often bridging that gap. I think one of the things that made World of Warcraft so successful is that you can play that on anything, and it’s very easy to troubleshoot. Sure, not every game can have a virtual army of Game Masters on hand to help with issues, but I think there’s a kind of stubborn pride among hardcore computer gamers in that they have the patience to install the patches, to investigate the bugs, to tweak the settings, etc. Your average gamer will simply not give a toss, and while I do tip my hat to those who have braved the wilds of unpatched games, I think taking that for granted is hurting the PC-only titles out there. Actually bothering to come up with something that’s as technically intact as possible (and I’m not talking bugs so much as make the freaking thing easy to patch and provide actual support) would, I think, go a long ways to helping with that.
And piracy. You guys don’t even know how horrible piracy is to PC sales. You can go “oh it’s a victimless crime” as much as you want, but when publishers look at sales as a way of giving business to developers (and even royalties), it is a huge problem. If you Torrent a game, you may be saying “oh, I didn’t hurt anyone,” but the game industry isn’t like the movie industry, where everyone gets paid no matter what, and you have multiple investors. Especially with smaller or self-published studios, there’s a lot more at stake. Not to sound like your mom or anything, but it is a problem, and handwaving won’t fix it. I don’t know precisely what will, but right now I’m erring on the side of speakin’ the truth from the developer’s perspective. I know what it’s like to be poor – when I was a college kid I had to beg and borrow my games from friends – but please, don’t steal shit. Shut down that Bittorrent link and give some poor dev that pizza money you’ve been saving. It’s what helps them make more games you enjoy.