Do we need boutique developers?

The next wave of big-budget AAA video game releases is on the way from many of the top developers and publishers in the industry. These games receive an incredible amount of attention - in the last four days Kotaku has posted twenty stories devoted to GTA4 - and these games undoubtedly push the industry forward in many important ways.

While I'm as excited as the next gamer to explore Liberty City or try out Snake's newest camo gear, I'm also wondering if we're as focused as we might be on developing strong, high-production-value games positioned somewhere between big-budget titles and indie games. Obviously, many games fall into a middle range in terms of budget and commitment from developers (e.g. Capcom's Zack and Wiki), but I wonder if there are  lessons to be learned from independent "boutique movie studios" like IFC Films, or from major players like Sony, Paramount and Disney that have created or purchased in-house studios like Sony Classics, Paramount Vantage and Miramax.

These studios typically develop prestige or niche projects that rarely make or lose big money, but often deliver projects that push at the edges of the medium. Such films attract high-talent artists willing to sacrifice money for freedom, but whom have moved beyond the "shoot-it, cut-it and pray for a Sundance screening" phase of their careers. Occasionally - as in the case of IFC's Y Tu Mamá También, a single film can establish the credibility and viability of a brand new studio. In other cases, acclaimed films like No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood emerge as a collaboration between boutique studios (both were developed by Miramax in tandem with Paramount Vantage).

Sometimes I think Gabe Newell functions more like an old-school movie studio boss than a game software developer. In a way, he's sort of the Louis B. Mayer of gaming, and Valve the MGM. Back in the golden age of the American cinema, MGM's motto was "More stars than there are in heaven." Newell could make similar claims, and his strategy of keeping an eye out for the best and brightest talent in the industry and getting them under contract to Valve is reminiscent of Mayer's efforts to maintain MGM's stature. Fortunately, from all reports Newell is also a great boss to work for...a claim Mayer (often a tyrant) could never have made for himself.

Portal is a boutique studio project. Valve could have made it bigger, longer, and splashier and unveiled it as their NEXT BIG IP. Or they could have simply bought the team and plowed all those great ideas into the next edition of Half-Life. Instead, they made a game that was just the size it needed to be with just the amount of attention it required.

We need more boutique developers. I believe there is a vital market for such games and an enthusiastic community of gamers hungry for such experiences. Not every game requires a 3-year $100 million development and marketing effort. And there's something to be said for allowing gamers to discover a game and push it forward ourselves. This was a big part of Portal's success, in my view, packed as it was into The Orange Box with much bigger and more recognizable titles.

Having said all this, I must also acknowledge that I'm an industry outsider, and I'm sure I bring with me a certain degree of naivete about the complexities of funding and managing game development. Is the idea of boutique game developers feasible? Pie in the sky? Are they already here, and I'm simply overlooking them? Am I drawing tenuous parallels between the film and game industries? I don't know. But if you do, I'd love to hear from you.

Comments

[Afello]

What a coincidence! A friend of mine and myself were enjoying some sunshine a few hours ago when this subject came to matter. We both agreed that there could be a lively market for more "experimental" games, as long as the prices weren't to high. Platforms as xbox arcade and the upcoming wiiware (just 20 more days and i will be playing Lost Winds and World of Goo!) are excellent for this purpose!
I think these games could be used to explore new meanings of storytelling and/or gamemechanics. Because of the lower pricing or free shipping (more on that later) not only "open-minded" gamers like ourselves but even the more mainstream/hardcore/purist/casual/whatever gamers could be seduced to pick it up and giving it a spin. Gamers could be convinced that there are other ways of gaming to be enjoyed then the 3rd person shooter we've been seeing so many of lately. To make the film comparison: even my Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings/Blockbuster Movie fanatic "little" sister enjoyed Frida (the movie of course).
I think what Valve did could be inspiring for other game publishers. It is like the small feature Pixar likes to make, which they show before their main feature (for example Bounce that showed before The Incredibles). If a "small feature game" becomes a hit, so does the "main feature game" it is boxed with.
A well, basically I am re-telling your story Michael, but just so you know I would love to see this thing (this "boutique-game") happen more often. The only thing gamestudios have to do is shop around their inhouse talent more often and find the good ideas. If that's not working, maybe buy yourself a contract with a great indie-developer et voit la!

[Ian D.]

I remember talking to a friend who attended Digipen and asking him why there weren't indie game developers like there are smaller movie studios or small presses. He listed off all the expenses required in making a game--hiring the staff, buying a dev-kit, developing software. Developing even a small game is so expensive for the big houses (EA, Sony) that they want to push every game to blockbuster status to actually make money. I'm not sure what's changed, but I think we're actually seeing a revival in little games. Five years ago there was no market for the stuff being distributed through XBLA and Wiiware (and yeah, Afello, I can't wait for Wiiware to launch).

[L.B. Jeffries]

Digital distribution is doing a great job of knocking out a lot of initial costs to making a game: advertising, shelf-space, and the inability to count on long-term sales (people are still discovering 'Aquaria' for the first time every day).

Ian has a good point though, there are still huge barriers in the way. The best bet would seem to be making the development as easy as possible by building a game Engine with small developers in mind. If Epic were to have a change of heart and blow the dust of their old Unreal engines, they could probably still produce games that people would accept on WiiWare so long as they were stylish enough to not look dated. Hell, check out what this one-man project has managed to create just in terms of visuals. This is a game that looks far more interesting and fun than the dreary cities and brown temples of games today:

http://www.massively.com/2008/02/26/gdc08-when-love-came-to-town/

After all, Portal was made using Valve's engine and a lot of student development involves the Source engine as well. If a major studio were to offer the full array of sound effects, basic art (scenery, etc.), and chuck a low key budget for voice acting then they could begin to mirror the boutique studio scene.

STILL waiting on a video game that takes place in the dead of fall, in the mountains, with banjo music. Someday...

[sanchopaz]

The distinctions you make that matters most to me are quality and level of ambition. Big and small developers make all kinds of low and medium budget games that are forgotten the day after they're released. Some of these come in boxes and some are downloadable. These are by no means "boutique games."

The whole "boutique" concept suggests aspiring for something special, unique, ambitious, edgy, controversial--any or all of these combined. The "art house" crowd for movies may not be big, but they're devoted and they'll go out of their way to see something that interests them, and they'll pay to support it because it's not just a movie to them. They're buying a mindset that says "we need to support these projects." Not every one will be good, but the ratio of good/interesting to bad/boring is a whole lot better at the art movie house than at my local multiplex.

Yeah, the videogame/film analog isn't perfect, but when it comes to an audience looking for something worthwhile in a sea of mediocre recycled crap, I think the connection is apt.

[Korey]

From my daily sifting of the Internet, it does seem like there's a great deal of talk about these smaller, progressive games. But I wonder how representative articles I read from bloggers/writers online are of the willingness of gamers in general to try these new types of experiences. While I think the number of people willing to invest time and money in these types of boutique games is quite small, it does seem to be growing. There's also definitely a place for these games, particularly as my gaming time seems to be constantly decreasing these days. I'd much rather play a short, interesting, creative game than a long, boring, rehash of something else.

[christopher]

I think that Louis B. Mayer also said that there were two kinds of movies that make money: really cheap ones and really expensive ones. His implication was meant to be that the middle ground where you spent more money on production but the audience wasn't large was the least valuable territory to mine. I'm not sure if the analogy holds here, but I think that given the schism we see between the indie developers making $10-20 games and the big publishers (whose numbers are ever shrinking due to consolidation) making $60 AAA there might be something to that aphorism.

[OmarDa]

Christopher, to extend your (and Michael's) analogy, the death of MGM and the big studios was their inability to be flexible enough to make the kinds of independent, artist-driven movies that emerged in the 70s. Mayer's famous aphorism was true in the 30s, but his clinging to it and other old ways of doing business also brought about the demise of the studio system. Their resistance to the boutique model (oversimplifying here, I know) was one reason MGM as it used to be died.

[JC Barnett]

The sentiment you express, Michael, is not an uncommon one. I've heard it in several places now, but I doubt it's going to happen. Nobody is going to make a game, with all the budget and manpower required, to simply "make art"; it needs to sell, it needs to make its money back and then some. Between the developer and the product stand the publisher and the platform manufacturer who all want their cut and who all have high barriers of entry.

Games as art are purely for the free amateur, who can experiment without the yoke of consumerism. But as a result this also limits the size and amount of gloss in the game, neccesarily.

And despite wishes of likeminded people like us to see more daring, experimental titles, it is obviously not in line with the general public's wants and desires. Zak & Wiki, an excellent title, sold rubbish. A game with a popular movie IP can sell bucketloads, no matter how derivative and dull it is.
And though WiiWare and XBLA Creator's Club are slowly opening the doors (somewhat) there just isn't enough of a market yet where pure, arty, vanity projects can ever be worthwhile in terms of positive attention, kudos or, well, money.

Yes, the game market is growing and diversifying, but it's not there yet.

[Michael Abbott]

@JC I'm not really making an argument for "art games" here, nor do I think a developer or publisher ought to make a money-losing game. The sweet spot that film studios like Miramax have found is what I'm looking for: high-caliber releases made for less money that target an enthusiast audience. These "boutique studios" are actually more fiscally responsible than many of their mega competitors who play a high risk/high reward strategy most of the time. If the summer or Christmas blockbusters hit at the box office, they'll make big money. If not, they lose big.

Films like the ones Miramax has made lately aren't "pure, arty, vanity" projects. Sure, they're excellent films, but they've also been popular and made money. The kid who's first in line to see the latest Spiderman movie may not care about these films, but plenty of other people do. What I'm wondering is if the game industry can find a similar sweet spot.

@Korey You raise a question I often think about. I don't know how connected we bloggers and enthusiasts are to the so-called mainstream of gamers. My excitement about a certain game or genre may extend no farther than the keys on my own computer. It's probably true that we make a lot of noise sometimes, but relative to the ebb and flow of the whole consumer market, we probably don't reflect or speak for anyone but ourselves. And yet we keep writing. Crazy, huh? ;-)

@L.B. Somebody should make a list of all the potentially great settings that have never been used by video games. It would be a long list. And I second your call for banjo music. We need more banjo!

@Ian and Afello I guess it's easy to understand the push for blockbusters since they receive so much attention from the gaming press. Chris Dahlen has an interesting point of view about this which he posted about recently. Basically, he thinks we're making too many "games of the week" that take years and big money to make, and we finish them in a weekend then move on to the next biggie. He thinks this isn't sustainable in the long run.

[Corvus]

I firmly believe we're going to see more and more boutique development models. Three Rings is essentially a boutique studio and Puzzle Pirates is a huge money maker for them. Jenova Chen's That Game Company (fl0w) is funded by Sony, but left to their own devices. Valve has opened their tools to any and all who wish to use them for PC distribution and Audiosurf, single developer studio, was a big success. Microsoft has Live Arcade for the 360, Nintendo has the upcoming WiiWare channel for the Wii and Sony has... whatever it is Sony has for the PS3 (sorry, haven't been paying enough attention).

The industry would like you to believe that multi-million dollar budgets are needed to make quality games that people will want to play. After all, EA is built entirely around that model. If they admitted that "two guys in a garage" could still make compelling games, they'd have to completely change the way they do business. But the fact of the matter is, huge chunks of the industry are beginning to question whether this is true and splintering off into their own studios in order to make games that actually reflect their personal core values on some level.

I see a lot of the average gamer and I can tell you that quite a few of them spend more time playing small titles on Live Arcade than they do playing AAA titles.

[christopher]

@OmarDa: I'll certainly concede that today's media environment is a far cry from the star system of the 30's and 40's where Mayer and Thalberg reigned. So perhaps the analogy is overdrawn...still, I think there's something that is skewing videogame development to the top and bottom here. Personally, I'd love to see the rise of boutique developers, but I'm not conviced at all that it's viable in the current market landscape. I also think that if we're talking movies, the "independent" film of today is quite a different animal than the "independent" of the 70's. In many ways, today's indie film is more like a trojan horse for the studios to infiltrate the art house circuit rather than any sort of maverick production. I also think that in comparison to videogames, film has quite a good network built up to distribute this sort of thing to its audiences--there is a solid place for these films to be seen and targeted publications for them to be marketed that allows them to be successful at times and even occasionally break into the mainstream. And I also don't think you can ignore the angle that indie films can make use of star power in a way that would be impossible for a boutique developers attempting to create new IP.

I do think that distribution-wise, the advent of Steam et al and the rise of a wider range of blogs and the like to audiences interested in prestige games will help smaller developers. There's also little doubt in my mind that the falling cost of dev tools + engines and the ever decreasing expense of memory and processing power will be a boon for the boutique developer. But where I'm not convinced these developers will be able to compete is in the market for mind share--the landscape out there is incredibly competitive and one thing that is distinctly not getting cheaper is the cost of getting your game noticed. Really small indie developers who are selling their games for $10-20 can maybe afford to wait for buzz to develop on their games, and the bigger houses can afford to drop millions on marketing for their $60 games. I'm not entirely sure that developers looking to that middle ground can viably ensure that their games garner eyeballs in the marketplace as it stands. I think they're at a real disadvantage there....but I'd sure love to be wrong about that.

(A last aside on Zach and Wiki, since that keeps coming up: personally, I think Capcom dug their own grave on this title. The idea of creating a smart and fiendishly difficult puzzle game and yet disguising it in a wrapper of kiddie looking character design and baby styled voiced acting was an amazingly flawed decision from the get go).

[Denis]

The other problem with Zack & Wiki was exactly as you stated. It was never really picked up beyond blog sites I read. I can never really recall any advertisements for it, meaning had I not seen it on this site and heard about it on the podcast, I would have skipped over the game completely (and I rather enjoy it, though I'm trying to hammer into my brain that having eight Wii games I have yet to complete does not mean having to play all at once).

Does this mean we'll start seeing more viral attempts at advertising? The use of advertisements for games is particularly curious for me (CTA, the Chicago Transit Authority, recently banned GTA IV from being displayed on buses, though I see it plastered on entrances to the El and on billboards all around Chicago). What a more affluent boutique gaming industry could bring about is more interesting attempts at advertising to push said games. I think we need this in general.

[Michael Abbott]

I wasn't nearly as clear about this in my post as I should have been, but I didn't intend to suggest that I consider Zack and Wiki an example of a boutique game. It's really more of a low-to-middle budget title that didn't get a lot of attention from its publisher to promote it. Lots of these sorts of games are released - some good, some bad - but they aren't the kind of ambitious, push-the-edges types of games I'm thinking of. The ill-fated Clover Studio is more my idea of such a boutique developer, and Okami can be seen as the result of such an effort. Capcom clearly started that studio with a mandate to innovate, and they did. But I guess this very example may prove my hopes for more such niche developers will be difficult to fulfill.

Christopher's concerns about mindshare also make sense to me, and I don't have an answer for how this can be overcome...aside from suggesting that the power of viral marketing, user forums, etc. seems to be growing every day. Denis' suggestions are particularly interesting to me, especially if these boutique developers could be as clever promoting their game as building it.

Corvus' argument, on the other hand, gives me more confidence that the industry and the market are moving more in the direction of making such a thing possible. As I said before, I'm rather naive about these things, coming to all this as an enthusiast without deep knowledge of industry realities.

[Steve]

I fully support striving toward the 'boutique studio' model (see my stuff about 'game noir,' etc.) I'm not an industry-outsider, but maybe the day job will choke the life out of me yet.

[Michael Abbott]

I hope the day job doesn't kill you, Steve. Who would design all the cool levels then?

But if, god forbid, it ever does, you could always become a full-time blogger. Who needs food on the table anyway?

[Chris]

It looks like someone was listening to your pleas, Michael:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18427

[Michael Abbott]

@Chris Now that's what I call fast service! :-) Looks like it's time for an update post.

Thanks for the link and the heads-up.