State of the Industry: “Snack-Sized” Gaming

Listening to a recent episode of Rebel FM podcast, a listener posed the question regarding a saturation in game development and whether or not it is hindering innovation. While the debate for whether or not the video games industry is beginning to reach a point of saturation is just starting to brew, I think it is important to see how the landscape of game development is expanding. Due to this generation’s hardware becoming more externalized thanks to the internet, video games have truly become a part of main stream culture more than ever (much of this is also do to the Nintendo Wii). Moms are becoming the target of many publishers, your grandparents may soon be proud owners of the latest Nintendo portable and our pets can even have their own gamertag. While that last one may be a myopic point, game development is becoming more and more competitive, because there are so many markets to produce for. Publishers and Studios have undergone a lot of changes over the past year, due mostly to the state of the economy and frankly some bad decisions, changing the landscape indefinitely. Looking into how games are being published and developed today, as compared to say 5 years ago and we are starting to see a few emerging trends.


Small Developers, Big Ideas 

Indie Games have seen their share of failure over the past couple of years, but some have found great success on the platforms available to them. If you look at the metrics provided by Simon Carless at this years Independent Games Festival, PSN and Xbox Live have allotted 20% of independent games published the critical acclaim they deserved. Some examples of these include Castle Crashers, Shatter, Flow, Braid, Splosion Man, and Noby Noby Boy. The other 80% leaves a 50/50 chance to either succeed or fall flat. The Wii does not carry as much strength in this scene and once you carry over into the iPhone and PC market, it becomes highly competitive due to the developer base.

Looking at the studio behind the hit Castle Crashers, The Behemoth, it started out as two guys (Tom Fulp and Dan Paladin) making a flash game, Alien Hominid. Less than a year after the games stellar reception on PC, they were approached with an offer to port Alien Hominid to consoles. This would create the studio, bring in 2 more people and lead to the creation of Castle Crashers, one of the highest downloaded Xbox Live titles of all time. Braid is another fantastic example of a small studio, with big ideas. A brain child of Programmer Jonathan Blow, who without any art design, won the "Innovation in Game Design" award at the 2006 Independent Games Festival based on mechanics alone. Then he would contact David Hellman to bring a sense of style to Braid, where it would go on to find critical success on Xbox Live, PC and very soon the PS3. All of this might have been possible on PC 5 years ago, but for consoles, getting games like these pressed onto disc would have been a very expensive process. Some of the hallmarks of this genre are deserving of such a thing, but before their grand reception, it would have been a much more difficult process without digital distribution. This cannot always be a good thing, because with freedom from publishing costs, with each good idea there is comparable number of bad idea, but with respect to opportunity, it is ultimately good for the industry in my opinion.

“Snack-Sized” Gaming

As an adult gamer (I use this term loosely when describing myself), time is scarce to game. Work, school, and personal responsibility; all eat into my free time for gaming and sometimes I can't find enough time in the day to play a Dragon Age or Final Fantasy. Developers recognize this and with platforms like the iPhone, DSi and PSP, they are trying to develop games that are less immersive. A game where you could pick it up for 15 minutes, kill a few bad guys and go back to reality, doing whatever it is you do. John Davison, back on an old episode of the 1up podcasts referred to this style of games as "Snack-Sized", implying that it keeps that hunger we have to game at bay, while we are too busy for a 3 hour grind. It is a small snack for our insatiable appetite to game. The genius behind this is the way portable gaming is pushing the industry in new directions. The iPhone especially has started to affect the common price point of a downloadable title. At first, $10 doesn't seem like alot of money for a few hours of content. Going to a movie costs the same amount of money and 9 times out of 10 the most you will get is 120 minutes, including the commercials. (WTF is up with movie theaters and all the commercials now? Nevermind, not going to rant on that). With so much competition, price is being driven lower and lower. Some games will even hold specials on the iTunes store, dropping the price to $.99 for a limited time. You better believe people flock to that. Steam on PC does the same thing and has also found results.

Now, PSP has begun selling "Minis", "Snack-Sized" games which are targeting the exact same market as the iPhone. In fact, some of the games are direct ports of iPhone games and Sony has received some harsh feedback for selling them at prices much higher than a person can currently get on the iPhone. Casual gamers tend to be the main audience, since immersion is not the reason many of these people game. Instead, it is more of a time suck, a way to make the space between personal events or activities seem shorter. With the iPhone, Apple has the advantage. Most people will already have the phone on them for various reasons and whether your hoping on a quick flight or riding the train to work, "Snack-Sized" gaming will be there to help the time fly. But, as time goes on, the PSPgo is a much better piece of hardware for developing games, so in the right hands, Sony should be able to find a place with that audience. They just have to drop the price of the hardware.

Digital Distribution for Every Console

I have talked about this many times in previous posts, but I think that digital distribution is finally getting full support across all platforms. PSPgo is the latest piece of hardware to utilize it and Sony has decided that this platform will be exclusively digital distribution. Truly, for gaming this is a first for our generation. iPhone may have been the catalyst, but lets face it, that piece of hardware is a phone first and everything else second. But the PSPgo is all about the games. Although its launch was floundered by a poor price point and other issues, it will pioneer a future where digital distribution may become the primary method of delivering video games. I would go into how the Internet and Flash started the entire idea of video gaming in snack size, but my primary concentration was on consoles and how they have changed. Certainly, all games have roots in the personal computer.

*all pictures are a result of Google Image Search