According to this IGDA - Quality of Life White Paper, game developers are suffering from a low quality of life, and a related GIG News article relating to it.
We need to think very carefully about the coming wave of transnational business practices. I've no idea what the future holds, but I fear there is no way to compete with the wages paid to outsourced labor. NAFTA was small beans. It's more likely that the populace will have to petition the government to impose restrictions on companies that want to end-run national economies. Of course, that's about as likely as the Feds putting the brakes on companies that abuse State-level governments, even when the states are unable to hold their own against them.
BTW, yes: "The job of a puzzle designer is to make people feel smart." – Scott Kim, Casual Games Summit.
Here's a bonus idea from our GDC roundtables. A TV network never sends a series into full-scale production until they have written a sample script and a "series bible", shot a pilot episode or two, and reviewed the concept in detail more than once. Movies go through a similar process, with pre-production routinely lasting years. Why don't we sign prototyping contracts more often?There are a lot of people working really hard all over the world who would happily trade places with most game developers with little fuss, and probably a good measure of thanks. I'm not an apologist for the situation, but I think developers are going to be screwed by outsourcing, just as textiles, garment, cell-animation, have gone that way in the past. While I recognize that there is a good deal of skill and talent involved in making games, and the garment and textile industries are primarily trades that can be accomplished by the minimally educated, I feel I've also seen a lot of non-Japanese and non-US success stories lately. The Eastern Bloc nations seem to be putting out PC-based first person shooters faster than a chain-gun; Serious Sam did well, You Are Empty looks great, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. may even have some story in it. I can't help but wonder how much effort it would take to voltron together a team using one of those sexy engines with an experienced game design effort, and put together something stunning and relatively inexpensive. Moreover, I wonder if any of the major publishers are already moving on it, rather than just talking about it.
After all, a publisher can fund fifty $100,000 design-prototype-and-find-out-what-really-works-for-the-player deals for the price of a single AAA game that fails in the marketplace. One of the main reasons why projects slip and fail is that we go into production without having a clue what feature will make the game fun. By funding more experimentation early on, without tying it to a full-scale production budget, not only would we experience fewer late-cycle cancellations, we probably would get more (provably successful) gameplay innovation as a bonus.
We need to think very carefully about the coming wave of transnational business practices. I've no idea what the future holds, but I fear there is no way to compete with the wages paid to outsourced labor. NAFTA was small beans. It's more likely that the populace will have to petition the government to impose restrictions on companies that want to end-run national economies. Of course, that's about as likely as the Feds putting the brakes on companies that abuse State-level governments, even when the states are unable to hold their own against them.
BTW, yes: "The job of a puzzle designer is to make people feel smart." – Scott Kim, Casual Games Summit.