This article is a companion to its predecessor that described gaming’s productivity problem but did not identify causes. Here we will focus on a subset of potential causes that are the most informative and deal with why we may be experiencing the problem now. The productivity problem is a natural consequence of the growth of gaming, but there are steps developers can take to push against the trend and improve their chances in a competitive environment.
Developers are less experienced than before
The flourishing of independent games around the mid to late 2000s continues to have an outsized influence in terms of inspiration and setting expectations for developers. Some of these influences are recognized as being outdated, such as the belief that merely showing up on Steam is sufficient for success, but more subtle misconceptions remain.
One notable characteristic about the early cohort of independent developers is that they almost universally had previous experience in the games industry, usually at large publishers. In fact, many modern developers that find success also have prior industry experience, although there is now an indie sector in which to gain that experience.
It is not news that people with more experience are better at something, but it does clash with the ideal of independent gaming being a source of more and diverse voices if the projects made by industry outsiders aren’t commercially viable. This is a necessary consequence of the initial success of independent games. The first cohort of digitally distributed games demonstrated the viability of this type of game development. As more developers without prior experience enter, it gives rise to a productivity problem that didn’t exist in earlier times.
Professional experience is not a necessary condition for success, but new entrants without experience are less likely to have skills that previous newcomers took for granted, and these skills are less likely to come up in talks and other forms of guidance precisely because they are taken for granted by incumbents. It is difficult to overstate how helpful exposure to a professional environment can be. In my own experience, you can draw a clear line between work I shot before my first job on a professional film and after based on the quality. Even experience at a less than ideal firm can be instructive, since many small businesses are born out of a founder’s conviction that there is a better way of doing things.
Some developers have a temperament that makes them suited to working somewhere to build up their skills, but it will not suit everyone. A good general skill is the ability to recognize where the shortcomings are to make sure they are addressed. This can mean putting in the time to build the competence, finding collaborators, or simply being flexible enough to identify and adapt to circumstances.
Sometimes experience is as simple as learning the tools. It is surprising to see how many developers have gone full time but later reveal they are unfamiliar with basic functions in programs like Unity. Gaming is simply too competitive not to be working with features that save time. Developers cannot directly affect the discovery algorithm, but they can build skills that save time, lower costs, and increase the value of the product they sell, and should allocate their time accordingly.
Given that the ideal of independent development is that more and diverse developers will enter, it is inevitable that productivity problems will emerge as the number of inexperienced developers grows. Individual developers will need to develop the kind of discernment that allows them to identify gaps before they become fatal to a project. Incumbents can help by pulling experience and its relation to productivity out of a blind spot and recognizing that the audience for advice is less likely to take the same things for granted as before.
Game development is now a form of consumption
Running a business involves a certain kind of lifestyle that comes with its own benefits and drawbacks. One benefit is that there is more freedom to make certain decisions that can be framed as consumption decisions rather than purely business.
Development as a form of consumption can be understood with the example of a hobbyist project. Someone who builds model trains as a hobby does not aspire to make living doing it, even if they’d accept the job if offered. The same goes for hobbyist games. So is putting a silly message in the middle of an otherwise serious game because the developer is in a trolly mood. While it does not involve a direct exchange of money, the consumption is satisfying a whim at the potential expense of the overall game and its sales.
Just as consumption isn’t necessarily good or bad, development as consumption should not be seen as bad or a lesser form of development. It becomes a problem when consumption choices are mistaken for production choices.
Some of these choices apply to any small business and could be things like taking a year long vacation or paying a massive dividend that leaves the firm short of cash. These aren’t wise choices, but there isn’t a basis for complaint so long as nobody gets fired and you pay your taxes. In fact, if someone is able to do this and operate a successful business, they might even be someone worth learning a thing or two from.
Most consumption choices are less clear. A video editor needs a computer to do their work, but they do not need a fully loaded Mac Studio with dual Pro Display XDRs. Such expenses can be justified on business grounds, since better computers do more things, but they are more than necessary.
One of the consumption choices in game development is a lifestyle factor that can be summarized as “having opinions on Twitter.” Gaming is part of the entertainment industry and so carries with it a certain mystique, and being associated with a popular project makes people pay more attention. Social media is one way games reach their audience, and so participation can be justified on business grounds. However, much like computers can be over specified, much of our social media activity is unproductive if not outright counterproductive.
We recently witnessed a strong backlash to Unity’s recent price increase with many developers announcing they were moving from the engine. Whatever one thinks of the change, even Unity would say the initial announcement was unclear, and yet the number of announced departures only grew, even as the updated information was generally more favourable to developers.
Changing an engine is no small thing. Beyond the technical challenges of an individual project, it destroys human capital, and productivity suffers while it is replaced through training and experience. It is not a decision to be made lightly. Despite this, developers announced the changes within hours of the price increase, or even earlier when the Unity CEO dissed them.
These announcements are happening at a time when there have been significant layoffs at companies like Epic and Embracer in response to rising interest rates and slower than expected growth. These companies are justifiably criticized with the observation that the people laid off were not responsible for management’s strategic decisions. Yet is difficult to imagine people asking developers switching engines what they owe to employees hired for their Unity experience, or anyone else who will be affected in cases where the transition doesn’t turn out. Epic and Embracer at least have the defence that macroeconomic factors are very hard to forecast. The consequences of an engine switch are far more predictable.
The Unity reaction is an example of a larger problem. What plays well on social media is not necessarily aligned with delivering a high quality project on time and on budget. Some consumption choices in game development are understandable and justifiable, otherwise what’s the point? But consumption choices are rarely productivity enhancing, and so a productivity problem reflects an imbalance between production and consumption choices. Like any other form of consumption, we need to make sure we only buy what we can afford.
Independent games are failing to differentiate themselves
It is interesting to compare the new release section on Steam against the early titles in PC gaming. Old games can be quite difficult to classify, and the ones that are easier to classify are often titles that are credited with creating the genre. The new releases section rarely presents such a puzzle, and the classification can often be as narrow as identifying the specific game the release is imitating. Early titles had their own imitators, but it is still worth asking if the opportunities enabled by affordable tools are being fully realized.
Most forms of entertainment have benefitted from a similar lowering of barriers. YouTube may be full of nonsense, but these exist beside videos with high production values on subjects so narrow they would never have been considered for traditional broadcast. Self-publishing distributes works I cannot imagine another human being interested in, while also giving us Metro 2033 and The Martian (both having their value reaffirmed with successful mainstream adaptations in other media). Gaming also has its independent successes, but the question is whether or not it should be doing better than it is.
There are commercial and creative reasons to differentiate a game. It is possible to run a profitable studio while failing to differentiate the games provided that the studio is more productive than the competition. The studio must be so good at making their games that they can undercut the competition and still remain profitable. Few developers can claim this kind of efficiency, and it is difficult to imagine much satisfaction from setting out on such an uncertain path only to implement other people’s games.
But the alternative is difficult in practice. We would all like to see more releases like BOOK OF HOURS and Return of the Obra Dinn, but these products don’t materialize by shouting “be original” at everyone reading a marketing article.
Differentiation is not just for creative success. Whether it’s a wholly original idea, a fresh approach to something established, or any of the other ways projects stand out, differentiation buys more flexibility. This is because the formula for that type of game is still being worked out. But differentiation is not a free ride. Developers may be able to take time to figure things out, but they still need to deliver the goods. Also, sometimes the result can be discovering that there were good reasons why nobody tried such a project before.
A differentiated game keeps its costs low for different reasons than an undifferentiated one. It benefits from lower costs to account for the uncertainty of the outcome. The costs can be adjusted according to the risk, although this can be a double edged sword since risk is difficult to assess and underfunding a promising project can be just as damaging as overspending.
The economics of a differentiated game are more favourable to independent developers and so it is a puzzle as to why we don’t see more. Difficulty can’t be the only reason, although impediments to and drivers of originality are topics deserving of their own article. Since the present focus is about causes for the productivity problem, it is sufficient to observe that there are far more undifferentiated games being released than before, though we should not be resigned to this remaining the case.
Productivity is not just a matter of counting costs. What matters is the output relative to what is put in. Differentiated products are more likely to amplify marketing efforts, above and beyond the fact that the underlying game is more likely to be appealing itself. In this environment it is up to the individual developer to take stock and decide what kind of project they are working on and whether or not the expected return is worth the cost. Differentiation is a good place to start.
SystemTalk 