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t.john harris
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2022-08-26
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A Letter from
John "The Mad Gamer" Harris
[DAVE'S PREFACE]: LOADSTARites -- John
wrote me an email and brings us up to
date on the adventures of the Mad
Gamer.
Besides the game I'm working on
(which is not what I'd call a major
commercial product, heh), I've got a
couple of game designs kicking around
but I haven't done a lot with game
creation lately. I created a
Neverwinter Nights module that could
randomly scramble dungeons, but not
much other than that. I did have an
e-mail conversation with (I feel like
I'm name dropping here) Chris
Crawford. That was a real ego booster.
But in general, my philosophy of
game design doesn't mesh well with the
really sad "modern" game industry. I'd
say, without exaggeration, that, like,
95% of games released today are simply
not worth the time to play them, let
alone the money. It's not an accident,
either: the mechanics of the computer
and videogame industry are such that
they're even more Hollywood than
Hollywood right now, and it's very
difficult to get any sort of
originality out onto store shelves
because almost all studio bosses and
publishers simply won't take a chance
on anything that they see as even a
slight risk.
Modern game development is an
extremely insular field, where
everyone feeds off of the same old
ideas and themes. Take Spider-Man, or
as I like to call him, "Hyphen-Man." A
lot of people talked about the game
that was released when the movie came
out, but there's probably been a least
a half-dozen Spiderman games since
they started making them.
There are just no new ideas in
that area. And the industry has
calcified so throughly into genres
such as "First Person Shooter" or
"Roleplaying Game" that there is
severe resistance to releasing
anything that doesn't fit into them
neatly. The classifications created to
help people talk about games have
become brick walls.
What all that blather means is
that I can't say that I see much help
for me getting employment in the
"mainstream" game industry any time
soon.
So I'm trying my hand at
shareware. When I get out of school
([finally!]), I dunno, maybe I can
find [some] slightly enlightened
studio. Even if you play by their
rules, it can be difficult finding a
game developer job. But if that
doesn't work I do have other skills to
fall back on, so I guess there's no
need to despair yet.
John Harris
[DAVE'S RESPONSE:] The problem is
distribution! Say you wanted to market
a game through WalMart. Each store
would need four copies of the
software. WalMart has 3300 stores, so
you will need 132,000 copies. That
means at least a Quarter Million
dollars in CD-ROMs, boxes, printing,
and shrink wrap.
But it gets even messier. To create
the game, eight people worked three
months -- call it $60,000 -- and
another eight management people spent
the same time at twice the salary --
$120,000. The corporation has
overhead, and wants a very nice
profit, so double $180,000 to
$360,000.
While it would seem that the price of
design, profit, and production would
be just $5 per box, WalMart insists
that the distributor buys back any
boxes that do not sell in two months
-- which could be half the items. Now
we are $10 "wholesale" price. So
WalMart has $1,320,000 tied up in just
one game. WalMart wants to double its
investment -- but remember that only
half the boxes will sell. The other
half will be bought back at cost. So
WalMart needs to either set the price
at $30, or "turn" the inventory dollar
over four times or more a year and
charge $20.
If the game is advertised on TV, you
can double or triple everything.
Effective TV advertising is a
multi-million dollar proposition. And
with $3 million on the line, no one
wants to back a dud.
Now with movies, one can get a super
star (I was going to mention Arnold,
but he's busy right now in another
fictional role!) for $15 billion,
which would guarantee $30 billion at
the box office on the first weekend
before anyone notices that the movie
sucks. The only "super stars" software
houses have are sequels to successful
games. (Once upon a time the name "SID
MEIERS" was good for something. But
you really don't want ordinary
programmers thinking they are
indispensible.)
Mass marketing generates profits so
huge, plain old folk like you and me
cannot fathom the numbers. But it
fills the shelves with only a small
number of items -- and cannot risk
true creativity.
I know I am "preaching to the choir,"
but tiny outfits like LOADSTAR [can]
risk creativity. See our new method of
compensating authors of significant
programs. I have developed a "no fuss"
PC method of presenting our wares, so
even main-line computer users can load
and run LOADSTAR creativity and
intelligence. What we all need to do
is quit worrying about our so called
obsolescence, and start talking about
breaking the stupor of mass marketing.
DMM