Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Death to the Games Industry: Long Live EA?
Greg Costikyan’s two-part epic Death to the Games Industry: Long Live Games concludes in this week’s edition of the online magazine The Escapist. While part one dealt with the well-established notion of the industry’s creativity-hobbling state part two focuses on solutions, or rather the solution. It is, of course, digital distribution.
Although as you read the piece it becomes clear that what he describes is either already in existence or coming to fruition as Steam, and even though Rag Doll Kung Fu is one of his examples, mention of the service is not made. Neither is mention made of xStream or GameTap (see sidebar for links) nor any other large-scale distribution platform. Costikyan is solely interested in indie games. Indeed, the tongue-in-cheek slogan for a hypothetical indie focused Steam equivalent is “Corporate games suck”.
Which helps lead me to an important point that is perhaps outside the scope of Costikyan’s argument. If casual/indie games are so good at making money, why would anyone bother making AAA titles? For the love of doing so is the obvious answer, but let us not forget that an enormous chunk of games are packaged goods commissioned by EA in the name of profit. These corporate heavyweights may not hold as much of an advantage online as they do in the two-week retail sales window but that isn’t going to stop them leveraging their huge customer base. Bundling casual games and a link to their online portal with retail titles or even going so far as producing a dedicated SKU packed full of them would quickly swamp the market. Perhaps this will be EA’s ‘similar approach to Steam’.
It would be a strange irony indeed if indie games, seemingly perfectly suited to digital distribution, were monopolised because of it.
Although as you read the piece it becomes clear that what he describes is either already in existence or coming to fruition as Steam, and even though Rag Doll Kung Fu is one of his examples, mention of the service is not made. Neither is mention made of xStream or GameTap (see sidebar for links) nor any other large-scale distribution platform. Costikyan is solely interested in indie games. Indeed, the tongue-in-cheek slogan for a hypothetical indie focused Steam equivalent is “Corporate games suck”.
Which helps lead me to an important point that is perhaps outside the scope of Costikyan’s argument. If casual/indie games are so good at making money, why would anyone bother making AAA titles? For the love of doing so is the obvious answer, but let us not forget that an enormous chunk of games are packaged goods commissioned by EA in the name of profit. These corporate heavyweights may not hold as much of an advantage online as they do in the two-week retail sales window but that isn’t going to stop them leveraging their huge customer base. Bundling casual games and a link to their online portal with retail titles or even going so far as producing a dedicated SKU packed full of them would quickly swamp the market. Perhaps this will be EA’s ‘similar approach to Steam’.
It would be a strange irony indeed if indie games, seemingly perfectly suited to digital distribution, were monopolised because of it.
