Joel Burgess interview
- Thread starter Tannhauser
- Start date
Jiggly McNerdington
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
That's just it, Nintendo didn't make Tetris. They bought the rights to it and used it to push Gameboys. It wasn't a "High-money" company that developed it, but it was Gameboy that bumped Tetris' popularity up.Bad_Karma said:Oh yes, sure... so you like to compare low-money companys with Nintendo buying Tetris? And then tons of big companys trying to claim the right on the game?
So yes, you stay half-correct, but no big one would dare to make a game that's only about gameplay, i think
If you're the leader of a well to do/big game developer, are you really gonna say "Hey guys, let's make a puzzle game", paying the salaries of your dozens of employees to get a puzzle game out that in all likelihood won't sell anywhere near as well as Tetris and most likely wouldn't even cover the cost of making it, or are you going to make a big budget game that has better odds of turning a profit?
Hell, even the recent fairly popular puzzle game Lumines has a tiny team. http://www.mobygames.com/game/psp/lumines-puzzle-fusion/credits
If you ignore the music, publisher, and "Special thanks" of the credits, the people who actually worked on the game comes out to 14.
Looking at Fallout 1's credits (And it has a small development team compared to almost any game today) http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/fallout/credits there's a hell of a lot more, even ignoring sound/music, marketing, and possibly QA if you're so inclined.
The point I'm trying to make I guess is that it's overkill for most big name developers to make something as simple as a puzzle game. It's not that they want to twirl their mustaches and tie gameplay to the train tracks.
Literacy_Hooligan
First time out of the vault
Vault 69er said:xdarkyrex said:But that's not money
....
Oh, maybe not now. But eventually it will be. For all of Bethesda's mistakes and bad leadership, their redeeming feature for years has been easily moddable games.
If they deny us that.. I bet they'll lose a lot of customers. I suppose they'll count on 360 kids bolstering them up.. but that won't last, mark my words.
Isn't this why Interplay wandered into the wasteland in the first place? Making games for PlayStation come first, PC games later (never that is)
Bernard Bumner
Still Mildly Glowing
Literacy_Hooligan said:
Interplay did perfectly well with some of its console titles; remember that they were publishing games for console platforms during the mid-1990's like ClayFighter and Rock n Roll Racing, without sacrificing the quality of their PC products.
The demise of Interplay has as much to do with buy-outs, (mis)management, and the vagaries of economics as with the design of their products; they were in big trouble before any of the issues with BOS being shit, for instance. Look also towards companies like Looking Glass Studios for examples of the fact that quality products for the PC don't ensure success in the weird world of games production and publishing.
Literacy_Hooligan
First time out of the vault
Bernard Bumner said:
One way or the other, does anybody else see signs of "mis - managment" ? Is Fallout a curse? Uuuuuuurghhhh!!! Beware of the one who shall buy Fallout licence will suffer from the curse of Broken Dreams. Booooooooooooo!!!!
I'm joking of course. Or am i?...........
Bernard Bumner said:
Whoa there, Bumner. It's true that Interplay did fine on the 4th generation consoles, but that doesn't change the fact that they were slipping by the 5th generation, and Herve's obsession with publishing for 6th generation consoles was an utter failure.
Bernard Bumner
Still Mildly Glowing
Brother None said:
Yes, which tends to suggest that it was actually Herve's piss-poor excuse for business skills, rather than console development per se that caused the problem.
Interplay circa the mid- to late-1990's could have rolled with the punches of disappointing console product sales, and did latterly, but Herve didn't recognise the trend of diminishing returns and react (othher than by panicking and pulling the plug on their development schedule for their foundation platform). By the time Herve had his finger on the button, the company had been severly damaged by the takeover, and all that. They needed a period of sensible product development and release, where they could ship some quality games - on whatever platform - to generate the revenue that would have stabilized the company.
It wasn't as if Interplay were releasing great products and people weren't buying them; they were making bad games, and games that there wasn't a market for. That is simply poor delivery of a bad business strategy.
I'm much more inclined to blame the people running the show - Herve and the money-men who supported him - than any particular sector of the market.