This Is No Game....

Greg Costikyan came home from the Game Developers Conference in high dugeon:

A Specter Is Haunting Gaming

The mood at the Game Developers Conference this year was, fundamentally, one of despair. To even the blindest apologist for the silly, if monstrous, construct the game industry has become, the handwriting on the wall was clear. Ten years ago, you could find a dozen publishers to pitch to; today, perhaps five. And of the remaining, half are on their last legs: the Vivendi Universal game group will almost certainly be in someone else's hands by the end of the year, Infogrames is fucked, Activision is screwed, 3DO is tottering, Acclaim is in dire straits. The only companies with evident strength are the manufacturers--Sony and Nintendo and Microsoft (included on this list not because they make any money in games, but because they have deep pockets)--and EA, despite the fact that it has utterly failed to make a go of online gaming which, two scant years ago, they claimed was the future. (And it is, but EA is too fucking stupid to listen to those of its employees who understand how online gaming works, and instead try to make it work like its sports game franchise. Which it doesn't and never will.)

Costikyan laments the surviving game publishers' flight to the relative safety of licenses, franchises, and sequels, and warns that it is the independent developers, losing access to publishing and distribution channels in the course of the industry's meltdown, who are the source of the innovation and new thinking that generate hits.

His manifesto generated a storm of commentary, as has his followup postings here, here, here, and here.

I'm not much of a gamer to speak of, and most of what I know about the world of game development I've learned vicariously from my partner Debbie's experiences working with Eric Goldberg and Crossover Technologies (later Unplugged Games). Yet the little I know is enough to make this heated discussion fascinating to me.