The International House of Mojo

My statement was intentionally provocative. Of course I'm not against better customer service and big producers catering to more niche groups. However, those things (while desired by us) are not necessarily what primarily draws people to indie games and kickstarting projects.

I'm more inclined to believe that the best (and inevitable) move for big companies to benefit from such market changes as Ron and Tim described is to create pretend independent studios that will have a prettier, more attractive offer than what small indie developers can muster - in effect killing most of indie initiatives. The main shift in company practices would be a shift in marketing. And probably would concern only those new branches of products.

I've never understood this argument, really. Seems to me that the only way these companies can become likeable is by doing likeable things, like the sorts of things Valve routinely does. And if they changed their business models to be more like that, then isn't that good for everyone, even if it's --shock-- motivated by money?

That's not what they should do, they have to realize that people want more things than they offer, and in different ways then they offer it. They raised the subject of DRM, which is old school primitive thinking, no different than the piracy protection techniques used in old floppy disk LucasArts games. The big fishes at the game industry look up to Hollywood as their model to follow, and Hollywood, just like the big record labels, they don't get it. They fear change and make stupid decisions. But it's not hard to understand why, their model worked well for more than half a century (for music). But there is currently more hope for the game industry, in my opinion, than for Hollywood. The video game industry has understood that making games out of movies, superheroes and whatnot, is for the most part, not where the biggest money is. Even though they exploit their successful franchises until there isn't a drop of juice left (and sometimes even past that point), those franchises originated within the industry. Hollywood would rather adapt ANYTHING (books, comics, videogames, anything that was popular for at least a little bit, at some point in time), than to invest in a genuinely good script (which could potentially make a lot of money). So there is more hope for video games, for a start they need to understand and drop stupid practices like DRM.

I for one hope that big companies won't change their business and marketing models to pretending they are hip, indie developers that want to have relationships with their fans. I've already seen attempts like that. Not everything can have attached a fake human face to, and not seem grotesque.

Wow, Wil Wheaton is even more annoying now than he was in Star Trek.