The digital game industry, which is often misunderstood to be more profitable than the film industry[1], has enjoyed explosive success and growth in recent years. But this success has come at a cost: internal industry consolidation and the escalating financial risk of game development threatens to arrest and suffocate creative exploration of the medium. As production values increase dramatically with each generation of game technology, with the average “next-generation” title for Playstation 3 costing $15 million and generally taking a minimum of two years to create, the pressure to financially perform has never been greater. This leads to the production of derivative, formulaic titles which exploit existing financially successful content, rather than exploring new ground. Furthermore, with the consolidation of power within the industry, independent production has become increasingly limited, especially due to licensing fees required to develop on any major platform other than PC.[2] This is especially problematic for an industry that has always thrived on the development of “small development enterprises.”[3] As the industry struggles under bloated production values and vastly shrinking ownership, it threatens to crush many of its original sources of innovation.
These factors have led to a market that cannot afford to take the risks necessary to innovate and expand. As a result, “dynamism and creativity” have been replaced by “tried and true genres, based on replicating the success of hit games”[4], even as concentrated control of market and distribution leads to “a relatively restricted repertoire of games promoted by well-connected publishing houses, and towards marginalizing or asphyxiating the projects of developers outside this circle.”[5]
What we are left with is a relatively small number of games able to reach a mainstream audience, nearly all of which are fiercely derivative and often iterative.[6] What has sold in the past defines, in large part, what will be made in the future, and what has generally sold in the past is violence. In many ways, the past success of violence can be explained by the origins of the modern digital game as a product of the military-industrial/entertainment complex (this will be explained in further detail in a subsequent post). Patterns forged during times of more open exploration of the medium, with less pressure to financially perform, have become solidified and ingrained within the industry as the individual production of games have become higher risk. Intensification of continually nuanced and varied forms of violence serves as a form of product differentiation and provides a way to “precision-target strategically important market segments.”[7] While the Entertainment Software Association (ESA)[8] boasts that 85% of all games sold in 2006 were rated E – T, violence continues to be a pervasive, marketable part of the gaming experience. If one examines the game sales by genre, as opposed to simply rating, they will clearly see a strong trend towards violent content. A minimum of 58% of video games and 63% of computer games sold in 2006 fell into traditionally violent genres and many games rated T still contain explicit levels of violence.[9] As political and cultural pressure builds to restrict violent video games, developers have decided to slightly sanitize the violence in their games so that they may earn a T rating, as opposed to an M rating, allowing their game to more easily reach a wider market segment while still featuring commercially viable violent scenarios. Popular games featuring mutilated bodies, dismemberment, murder, violent military scenarios, and the sociopathic destruction of life have all been rated T in the last two years. (Oblivion (until it was re-rated because someone created a nude patch that modded the texture files of the female characters) and Destroy All Humans quickly comes to mind)
On a small scale this might be acceptable or worth encouraging, but when we take this scenario into account on an industry wide scale, it is easy to see how development has become so stagnant and how it will continue to stagnate. Essentially the industry is driven by a desire to render “objective” reality in increasingly fine detail, while creating ever more complex scenarios of violence. Subsequent articles will discuss where this momentum may have originally came from (hint: think as far back as the first game ever created) and why this drive towards realism is so problematic aesthetically and creatively. [1] The number $7.4 billion is often thrown around to backup this claim. The claim itself is actually misleading because the $7 billion figure includes the sale of game consoles but the comparable film industry statistics don’t include the sale of DVD and VHS players. Without the inclusion of game console revenues the game industry could not be considered more profitable than the film industry. [2] This unfortunately may be changing for the worse. Microsoft has made recent moves to solidify and market games sold for PCs under the title of “Games for Windows.” This is likely part of a play by Microsoft to get a piece of all the revenues coming from development on their Windows operating system. This move would be catastrophic for creative experimentation within the game industry, as independent game producers, not to mention amateurs, already operate on severely limited budgets and the additional licensing fees would often be insurmountable. [3] Digital Play, 177. [4] Ibid. 250 [5] Ibid. 179 [6] For instance, the most profitable game to date is Halo 3. [7] Ibid. 249 [8] The leading lobby for the game industry. [9] http://www.theesa.com/facts/salesandgenre.asp (I couldn’t find the original source of this information, but this is a good place to start looking, if you are interested.)
This obsession with violence and domination, problematic in its own right, is leading the industry astray and seriously limiting developers’ ability to realize the creative potential lying dormant in the digital game as an aesthetic medium. When significant increases in technical sophistication (specifically in the realm of graphics) are a prerequisite for any blockbuster game, innovations of the past quickly become burdens for the future. If developer A spent years developing a complicated way of rendering violence and dismemberment for their first person shooter, this initial innovation quickly becomes a forward momentum for future projects. Their fans want more of this system, but better. Their producers want them to exploit the market share they have managed to carve out through their system of rendering violence. Now, instead of freely picking any project they like, they are pressured to continue and improve their past innovations. The aforementioned risk of developing a big title in the game industry, coupled with their past success and its conformity to the general trends of game design thus far (namely, violence sells) gives them every reason (and often little choice but) to continue with their past work. This cycle leads to iterative game design, as opposed to true innovation, and the system of “tried and true genres” which essentially recreate a few basic scenarios with minimal circumstantial changes and more sophisticated technology and techniques.
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