<font color="#ddbb00" size="+2">Phoebe and Games</font>
<p><a href="mailto:dave@paradise.force9.co.uk"><font size="+1" color="#ddbb00">Dave Flynn</font></a> (9/7/98) <i>This is a copy of a posting made to <a href="news:comp.sys.acorn.games">comp.sys.acorn.games</a></i>
<p>Hello all - interesting conversations & points being made!
<p>To skip all the Quake best level stuff, CD speeds, monitors and slagging sessions - I thought I'd post a reply to the original point of the whole debate, which was essentially:
<p>HOW ARE WE GOING TO GET THE BEST GAMES FOR THE Phoebe 2100?
<p>Basically, the problem has always been due to the size of the Acorn market, and it's companies. I work in the games industry full time - it provides me with my career. I do Acorn games for fun, it's my hobby, and I enjoy doing it.
<p>In the games industry, projects have budgets not in the thousands, tens
of thousands, or hundreds of thousands. To develop and market a game worldwide costs literally millions of pounds/dollars. Developers have large teams of dedicated programmers, tools and development programmers, artists, animators, level builders, editors, and playtesters. Not to mention all the support staff, marketing, production, legal, and logistical side of things. Today, people want cutting edge 3D entertainment, which requires developers to develop products on often unknown new hardware, to strict deadlines, and development
takes between 2 and 3 years (large teams - working flat out full time). However, all of this is justifiable, due to the fact that the mass-market games industry is now approaching the size of the film industry. Games sales can exceed three million copies.
<p>On the Arc, the user base is very, very small. Exceedingly good games sell a few thousand copies. Good games sell a few hundred. Because of this, most Acorn developers are small teams, sometimes only a single person, and on a small scale do all of the tasks listed above. On top of this, most Acorn programmers are enthusiasts - Acorns do not provide them with their career, but simply with their hobby in their spare time. As such, investing vast amounts of money in new hardware is unfortunately impossible, no matter how much each enthusiast would dream of doing so.
<p>On top of this, developing good 3D games is simply becoming far too difficult for a small team to do. At the end of the day, 3D provides mostly graphical finesse rather than groundbreaking new gameplay. Because of this, if only a few people are working on a 3D title, it can easily become little more than a graphics demo with added interactivity, rather than a fully fledged game title. This also is caused by time - working full time every working day, is very different to doing stuff in your spare time - in the evenings, and at weekends. Then the hardware cards come into play, requiring both additional
programming, tools, and the money required to buy the development and testing equipment.
<p>Right now, the companies developing Acorn games are small, and purchasing high end equipment with hardware 3D support, and then developing original games for that hardware is a difficult cost to accomodate from the word go. To fund such investment into games development, our Acorn companies need revenue, generated from simpler games that will appeal to a broader market base than those with simply the best equipment (and therefore have a better chance of selling more units).
<p>So, in short, arguing about who's fault it is that few top end 3D Acorn games are being developed, or griping about PC vs Acorn, PSX vs Acorn, or N64 vs Acorn, is simply wasting time and effort. And meanwhile the Acorn games scene is slowly shrinking - griping and moaning isn't helping the scene at all (after all, the PC vs Acorn game debate, along with DOOM and Quake has been going on for some 10 years now).
<p>Acorn gamers need to support the Acorn games companies, and buy their products so that development can continue. However, this isn't a one way deal - developers have to be responsive and understanding as to what the Acorn games scene is about too. Attempting to sell a piece of software at 35 quid that is of PD quality, is both patronising to Acorn gamers, as it is damaging to the company promoting it. It's true - there is a lot of sub-standard Acorn game software around, but a programming team's first attempts should be placed into PD, or coverdisks, not sold as 'full price commercial'. As they improve, then they can sell cheap budget priced software, and finally full price software. That way, customers won't think they're 'crap', they'll simply see game
development teams getting slowly better, and will support them (so long as the asking price is reflective of the level of quality in the game). I'm sure you can recall some recent titles that had they been a little more sensibly priced, wouldn't have been viewed as harshly as they were.
<p>In turn, if more games are produced, more interest will be generated in the games scene, and only then will the possibility of more recent software conversions become viable (like the Tomb Raiders, FFVII's, and so on), and original top end game development.
<p>For now, the Acorn games scene simply doesn't have the foundations to produce and sell big games. It's a small scene that can only support small games, and conversions of older 'big' games. As Acorn enthusiasts we're all guilty of speculating and talking more often than actually doing or producing something ( it seems to go with the territory ). However, if we spent a little more time attempting to create what we want, rather than moaning about what we don't have, we could all be doing the Acorn games scene a huge favour.
<p>All in all, I hope just a few people will read this and perhaps change their way of thinking about Arcs, Arc games, and Arc game development. The last thing any Arc game developer wants to do is annoy the Acorn gamers out there - we need your support, and by getting it, we'll continue to support the Acorn games scene by producing more (and hopefully better) games.
