As discussed yesterday, Nintendo’s success is more of an opportunity a hindrance for major publishers. Nintendo can no longer be ignored, and publishers understand they must jump on the bandwagon quickly, especially if minimizing risk is an issue. It would, in fact, be a positive development for Nintendo’s success to substantially impact major software publishers. Our industry seems to have turned somewhat lazy and stale, recycling the same ideas, and limiting the creative process to prettier graphics on more powerful hardware, with little attention left for innovation and challenging entertainment.
Good 3rd party titles for the Nintendo consoles are rare because publishers gave up on Nintendo with the GameCube, a rational decision at the time. Even Nintendo admits that they did not make enough effort to motivate 3rd parties to develop games for the GameCube. Still, when Nintendo started transforming in a positive way, publishers were too slow to respond.
When the control scheme for the Wii was unveiled at TGS 2005, either you “got it”, or you didn’t. Most publishers didn’t get it and are now realizing their mistake. What Nintendo was trying to do with the Wii was revolutionary in terms of control interfaces. It’s no coincidence the Wii’s project codename was Revolution. Nintendo was going to change how games are played.
Now, it’s been 1 ½ years since the unveiling of the Wii remote control scheme, which is plenty of time to get products in the pipeline. EA didn’t get it, but they saw the error of their ways earlier than most and have progressively ramped up Wii development, first with internal projects, then by creating and buying studios fully focused on the Wii. They realized they couldn’t simply port games. They needed to be innovative, and that’s the only way forward in this industry.
Prototyping: The Way Forward
There is no reason why other companies can’t follow Nintendo’s model. Nintendo has vowed to help 3rd party developers more. There is no magical secret to Nintendo. Yes, they have excellent brands they can tap. But the success remains with the high bar they set with the game play of their titles, always releasing strong, fun experiences, and never sacrificing on polish. This can only improve the industry, and developer’s lives.
Being primarily profit driven, most publishers are therefore risk-averse. They would prefer that practices that had succeeded in the past continue to do so, without much adjustment, if any, on their part. This is a contradiction in terms, given the dynamic, fast-moving, creative nature of an industry that is fueled by youth, imagination and art, even as it begins to reach the mainstream customer base. Still, as in any other line of business, measured risks coupled with judicious strategies leads to success for both developers and publishers.
Nintendo recently announced 45 and 79 games in development for the Wii and DS respectively. Most of these games will never see the light of day. Some will be killed, others will be transformed into other games, and a few will be merged with other projects. This isn’t a negative reflection on Nintendo’s ability to develop games. Quite the contrary; Nintendo practices a development technique of prototyping all their games before fully developing them, while placing heavy emphasis on small teams researching and experimenting with different game and game play ideas. The better ones are developed further until a full development team is assigned to complete the game. Failed ideas are screened out, and new ones are sought, with very little financial cost associated due to the low overhead of running a small team.
Contrast this with the standard development practices of focusing on game concept and putting a team of 50-80 (or more!) developers on it, and investing multiple millions of dollars to develop the game, without having determined the sales potential, not even to get a sense of whether the initial investment will be covered. Nintendo chooses to spread its eggs in many small baskets, and to nurture the ideas that work.
We hope Nintendo’s development practice of prototyping will catch on with the rest of the industry. Publishers can no longer afford to spend millions of dollars on games unlikely to succeed, or are simply sub-par copies of other successful mass-market products. Yes, there will always be big money in that, but also many large failures. For every Gears of War and Grand Theft Auto, there are 5 other high development budget games that fail spectacularly. Prototyping should be right up the risk-averse publisher’s alleys. It minimizes risk (cost) by quickly and cheaply identifying if a game idea will work or not. Many prototypes will lead to a few select good titles being made, lowering the overall long term risk. Once publishers realize this, the smart ones will be able to transform themselves and capitalize on the success of Nintendo, as Nintendo has.
A stronger concerted move to the prototyping mindset would also benefit developers across the industry. Developers want to try new ideas all the time, but feel hamstrung by the bottom-line focus of their corresponding publishers, or parent companies. Prototyping is the equivalent of investing in an R&D department for game play ideas (as opposed to just R&D into technology). This should be massively encouraged. Companies can try to continue to slug it out in high-risk low-return multi-million investments of the same stale concepts rehashed, or they could try something new, spread their risks across multiple small prototypes, and discover a few great game ideas which would succeed on the same level as a Nintendo developed game.
