Hollywood? No Cricklewood! Games big & little brothers...

Having just read N’Gai Croals latest missive in Edge, ‘Hollywood Blues’ I was struck by the oft heard “Games are bigger than Hollywood” idea that he reflects on. Sure the big ticket items such as Call Of Duty, Modern Warfare 2, or GTA (or even now Red Dead Redemption) can be put up against the best of Hollywood, both in audience numbers, mainstream advertising, and pure sales figures, not to mention production costs, but is it an appropriate comparison otherwise?
I think not. The above titles point to filmic action, great visuals, immersive soundscapes and often long, convoluted (and often rubbish, just like the Hollywood blockbusters!) scripts.

However that is not the games industry, or games for that matter. If we are comparing games to other media and we take some games to reflect Hollywood, then we need to look at the other “Games what I wrote” that don’t have $100 million dollar budgets, or killer marketing backup. Most games are done on a tight budget, with few staff and tough deadlines. Portable titles, PC casual games, Xbox Live Arcade and indie titles, and Wii and PS3 downloads all churn out product. Facebook is an ever increasing market for small games (well big ones too, if you look at the numbers playing Farmville and Mafia wars) and the iphone and the Elysium that is the iPad look to provide new platforms for games too. These are all relevant parts of the ‘games industry’ and often the parts that provide consumers with day to day contact too.

The blockbusters might be a summer or Christmas treat, but more often it’s the nibbles and day to day play on a PC or on the bus or tube that people engage with. You can see (possibly) what I’m getting at. Cherry picking Hollywood as games rival (“oooh! We’ve beaten them! Yaya!”) is one thing, but I think we need to remember that the visual medium is dominated by television and not Hollywood.
Television has expanded massively over the last few years, with the creation of many new channels on satellite and cable, all desperate for content, working to tough deadlines and budgets, and facing the threat of a democratised technological production medium. Television studios are under threat, scrabbling for ad revenue, and attention amid the ever growing number of rivals for consumers eyes and pockets. Games are but one rival, as is on demand internet TV and internet browsing / facebook etc in general.

The games industry is in a state of growth and flux, and is the least “settled” of any of the visual media, even though the others are all threatened by the march of technology. Even while it boats of growth, many games studios are going bust, cutting staff numbers or struggling to survive. The ‘pipeline’ of production is still not really fixed or uniform. The tools used to create titles are still not really adequate. There is no well developed “3rd party outsourcing’ for video games as a support industry. These support facilities are developing, sure, but not common, and nor is the idea of using them a lot accepted as part and parcel, except maybe for some localisation or testing, or to get art assets. Many are small companies or individuals. The wheel is still being developed and reinvented a lot of the time. None of this is a criticism, as the games industry is dealing with tech that is still evolving at an incredibly rapid rate, and getting a feel for a market that no one fully understands yet. In fact the consumers too aren’t fully developed or understood.

It’s my generation that are the first generation of gamers, who are now developers, and we are being constantly amazed by what’s possible. The ‘youth of today’ (how I love that expression!) will grow up to be the first “wired” generation, used to being online and in touch all the time, so who knows what they will come up with (or what tech they will have available? 3D vision, non physical controllers, time-travel!!??)
Perhaps gamers and industry people need to think a little more broadly than just beating Hollywood at their own game, and start to try and think of how to compete with television, in everyone’s lives, every day. The variety of TV (big ticket dramas, sports, throw away serialisations, kids cartoons, gameshows, music TV etc) reflects games more accurately, and this is where comparisons should be drawn more regularly.

N’Gai finishes with the proverb “may you live in interesting times” and I think this certainly applies to games. The question is, will games recognise the world they are in, as well as the times?