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DICE 08: EA CEO - garage studio model dead by 2010

Posted Feb 10, 2008 at 09:58AM by Isaac C. Listed in: Cellular Games Tags: Electronic Arts, N64, DICE Summit, John Riccitiello
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DICE keynote speech from EA's John Riccitiello: garage studios are dead - Image 1 


The video game industry is a big deal now. Last year, the industry's growth beat the US economy's growth four-to-one. But with growth comes change, as Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello pointed out during his DICE Summit 2008 keynote speech.

Riccitiello expressed that the industry is in need of a new publishing model. The rising cost of development, he expressed, will level the playing field among the big developers and that this will cause smaller developers to be squeezed out of the industry.

He adds that by 2010, there will be fewer major publishers than there are today, and that gone are the days when you can open up a studio in your own garage. Smaller studios have it tough because of development costs; it's either "create a hit, or else."

He says that one of the reasons for this is because of the proliferation of platforms. Ten years ago we had the PlayStation, N64, and the PC. Now even mobile phones are part of the gaming industry. So what would this mean for indie developers? He says:

Now if you're an independent developer... I think that's tough. Not impossible but tough... As much as I would try to inspire you to believe that the garage model might work, I think it's hard.


Bigger studios can risk putting up a new franchise that isn't a hit because they have other hit games that balance it out. On the other hand, he explains that because of rising development costs, games are getting less creative and less innovative.

He explains that this is why publishers need a new model in creating games. Casual games are a different matter, he remarks. "One of the things I really love about casual is that you can iterate faster and in the process take more risks and experiment more."

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4 Comments


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   by mreverdred01 - 2008-02-10
 » I don't think so
What about PSN and XBL downloadable games? Those are extremely simple. You would need to make the investment of around $10,000 for the developer's package, but that money would come back to you if your game was good.

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   by SynGamer - 2008-02-10
 » I completely disagree...
...with EA's outlook. With the number of programs available to make games with high-er end computers, 'Garage Studios' are still entirely possible. And you don't even need to make a complete game, just start one, get the basics, and sell the idea.

   by lavino - 2008-02-10
 » in the 80's or 90's...
All you need to write game is a PC or Mac. Although you lack the tools like DirectX and SDK and etc... Writing games is all about how you can put together a bunch of code (assembly if necessary). Nowaday to do games for consoles you need license, you need approval, you need their dev SDK, you need publisher etc etc. The industry itself is making all these impossible (or in a way they wanna make money before you can even start writing the first line of code). So, in a way EA's CEO is right if it is dev for consoles. However, once in a while some cool idea will come out from a bunch of garage coders. They might not have the tools/funding but their ideas out shine the big corps.

   by kittykat - 2008-02-10
 » I disagree with one statement...
Development costs are not the real reason why games are becoming less innovative, that is merely an excuse. Game developers could look at all the Flash games that people are developing and offer to buy their ideas or invite them to help in the creation of an innovative game. It's been done before, and not many people would turn down a sum of cash plus royalties for something they created for fun with little or no expectations for financial gain in the first place.

I believe that it is us, the consumers, who are mostly to blame for the lack of innovation in video games. Yes, you read that right. When we purchase a game we vote for what game developers do next with our dollars, the moire successful a game is the more likely game developers are to apply the same efforts into creating the next game.

The solution: Do your research. Download a demo or rent the game first, after checking out a few game trailers to decide whether or not the game is worth your attention. Purchase only innovative games, and game developers will only create innovative games. Purchase crap, and they will create more crap.



As for the rest of the article, I do agree with the notion that developing games into a finished commercial quality product on a console system from your home is hard these days, with all the costs and red tape required just to get the game into a store where people can purchase it.

HOWEVER, that only applies to console systems. People could still develop games for the PC and sell them using a web site without need for an expensive license, so the idea of a garage gaming company might remain out of the mainstream but will likely never completely go away.



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