Archives for November 2009

Nobody Knows Anything

November 2, 2009 By Mark Leave a Comment

Yesterday, in another context, I referenced the above famous saying by William Goldman. Today, a perfect example:

“I’m dumbfounded,” Mr. Simon, 82, who has won a Pulitzer and three Tony Awards, said in an interview. “After all these years, I still don’t get how Broadway works or what to make of our culture.”

The NYT article then blithely proceeds to explain how Broadway works, what to make of our culture, and why the abrupt closing of the revival of Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs was essentially inevitable. But only after the fact.

Because Nobody Knows Anything.

— Mark Barrett

Valve, Writers and Success

November 2, 2009 By Mark Leave a Comment

Long-time readers know I’ve been harping on this subject for at least six years, but it deserves the harp. One of the more successful and forward-looking game developers over the past decade has been a company called Valve. It’s more recognizable titles include Half-life, Half-life 2 and Portal.

As I noted as recently as September, Valve has had a professional writer on staff throughout its admirable run. My own opinion, as a writer, is that these two things — writer-on-staff and success — are actually related. The interactive industry being what it is, however, this tends to be a minority opinion, and the rationale is always the same: there’s no money for a staff writer. To which I reply: maybe if you had a writer on staff, you’d make more money.

In any case, today Gamasutra put up an interview with Mark Laidlaw (the aforementioned writer) and Eric Wolpaw (a second writer hired by Valve — apparently because the first hire turned out so well). It’s worth a read if you’re trying to break out of the game-design box you’re in. Because good writers know how to do that.

— Mark Barrett

Art, Entertainment, Ethics and Exploitation

November 1, 2009 By Mark 2 Comments

I read an article yesterday (via JurieOnGames) about the supposed difference between game development in China and the West. I’ll deal with the nationalism of the speaker who was featured momentarily, but the article itself did a good job of framing the issues anyone confronts when merging art and commerce. This is particularly true in light of attempts to monetize free content, which is being explored in both the interactive (online gaming) and non-interactive (publishing) markets.

As I noted previously, attempts to emphasize money above all else are ultimately pointless. If you’re in business to make money, yes, you should focus on making money. But saying that money comes before everything else is a literal lie if you are in the entertainment business, because everyone knows it’s a horrendously bad way to make money. Mining zinc is better. Building houses is better, even in today’s market. Making cereal is better.

The article in question focuses on “Zhan Ye, president of GameVision,” who was “speaking at the Virtual Goods Summit in San Francisco on Friday.” In the article, Ye states that a new breed of Chinese developers is building games from the ground up that are focused as much (or more) on monetization as they are on art, entertainment or fun. He paints all Western development (including Western-trained Chinese developers) as failed precisely because monetization is not the primary focus during every step of the production process.

It’s tempting to dismiss Ye’s comments as either uninformed or nationalistic hype. But Ye is genuinely talking about a paradigm shift from creating and selling entertainment on the merits to actively exploiting customers. [ Read more ]