This article is about my thoughts on the media business. “Media” meaning everything which enables people to communicate or interact with each other through cultural technologies. In this first article, I’ll share some thoughts on the gaming industry and my own history.
Recap: I have worked for about eight years in technology/media-related businesses. I studied multimedia art and production and had been learning as an autodidact in that direction since I got my hands on a Commodore PET when I was eight years old. I’ve always been fascinated by the potential of computers as creative tools. “Creative” not only meaning the output of your work but also the way you work.
In the early 90s, I became a big fan of the then-popular computer games like Ron Gilbert’s Monkey Island and Richard Garriott’s Ultima series, just to name a few. It became my dream to work with a small development team led by a mastermind game designer like Peter Molyneux or those mentioned before. The computer games business seemed more like a creative playground than an industry, and I mean that in a positive way.
Still with this goal in mind, I started studying. But from ‘98 onwards, I became more and more disillusioned. Producing computer games turned into a real business, an industry. EA swallowed my heroes like Origin and Bullfrog. LucasArts dumped adventure games (with Grim Fandango as last man standing) and focused on movie franchises (like many others). Of course, all this seems good from a business point of view. But what happened to game designers? They left. Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer from LucasArts. Richard Garriott and Chris Roberts from Origin/EA. Peter Molyneux from Bullfrog/EA. Warren Spector from so many companies I cannot remember. Certainly, everyone has their own story and was tied to these companies in different ways, and the circumstances under which they left varied. But I think what they have in common is that they were confronted with changing working environments where their creative minds and search for new ideas were no longer needed (or affordable). You don’t need a Tim Schafer to create FIFA 2000.
Watching this progress, I lost confidence and motivation. So a few things happened which got me on another track (still don’t know if it’s the right one). I (re)started doing short movies and animation. I designed web pages and (re)started programming. I did 3D visualizations for dubious provincial companies. I even made an e-card for a political party I do not support, but don’t tell anyone. So while doing some stuff worth mentioning and lots of crap, I didn’t stop following the developments in the gaming industry.
I must confess that I’ve never been “in” the gaming industry, but apart from that, I recognize parallels between my own efforts and those of these “lost designers”. I’ve never been employed by someone because I thought I couldn’t stand a Monday to Friday 8-to-5 schedule working for someone else. Of course, that didn’t stop me from working sixteen to eighteen hours a day for someone as a freelancer. There always was that kind of feeling of freedom being self-employed. Haha.
But look, I’m still self-employed, I’m still doing my own projects. And I’m still looking forward. And although I’m as far as I could possibly be from the business I once wanted to spend my working life in, I still see hope. Even now that the gaming industry has turned out to be that big (and McKinsey-like), there’s still hope for small independent developers. There’s even a utopia in my head: That somehow things in the gaming industry will develop like they did in the movie business, so that there’s room both for the big studios and for small art-house-like developers. Reading that, don’t think I like how the movie business runs. I’m just an optimistic pessimist.