EA has grown so large they will "Challenge Everything" in their path that goes against their profit margin.
However I find it hard to believe its hard for small studios to have success. If the studio develops a good product and releases it to the masses on the internet or xbox live arcade, or the number of homebrew scenes, you will get attention. You just have to make a good product.
IMHO, some of the best games lately are free or not the latest and greatest. Corporate big wigs are pushing mainstream games into a corner and beating them a lead pipe for every bit of control over the flow of money and players.
Activision and EA Corporate Big Wigs have fubared Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (tm) and Bad Company 2. Both games will suffer in the long run with lack of an SDK for the modding community. There is also a lack of dedicated server files, which remove the option for hosting your own game servers. The communities have spoken loud, and the developers do here this. Infinity Ward and Dice have already lost employees because they disagree with EA and Activision's control and greed.
In the end I am very loyal to the companies which remain respectful to its fans and work with the people, and not for the money.
Valve, iD, 3dRealms, are just a number of companies that are more concerned with producing a good game, and sharing the success all around. Love to 3rd party developers with SDK's, love to the players for not charging massive amounts of money for DLC, just good old love for developers.
In retrospect, I'm sorry for the abused developers all over. But they have a choice, and they choose to endure that reality. But some will choose to break off and make a startup.
Valve was created by 2 former Microsoft employees, and they started small, and look at them now. They have produced games, software, and contributed to the community with massive amounts of information, and content to award the player, and the developers (both in house and 3rd party).
Same goes for Epic Megagames, which continue to release Unreal Tournement games, with updated fresh engines.
Id Software will continue to produce the next Doom and Quake. (Where it all began.)
3dRealms if I remember correctly has gone under, but I pray to god someone buys the Duke Nukem Forever project and finishes it soon.
To quote Steve Ballmer: "Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers"
Now I need to get back to my job... as a developer.
[I apologize if I was unorganized or off topic]
However I find it hard to believe its hard for small
studios to have success. If the studio develops a good
product and releases it to the masses on the internet or
xbox live arcade, or the number of homebrew scenes, you
will get attention. You just have to make a good product.
Do you have resources/links to support this rather bold statement?
James Silva has won recognition from Microsoft, has co-authored books on XNA game development. He's another kid that in the middle of no where upstate NY that did a great job, made a good product and is doing well for himself.
Also if you just look for indie game developers -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_indie_game_developers
alot of these games appear on STEAM (steampowered.com) and are distributed to many customers successfully for Win/Mac/Linux.
In fact most game developers started out as mod teams. Back in the Quake days, Team Fortress was made, and now the same people that made that made TF2. Left 4 Dead started out as a mod for HL2, and turned into a full fledged game on the OrangeBox engine.
Last thing that comes to mind is -> "http://sandboxgamemaker.com/ which is another production that has been very successful. My friend who's on the dev team has had stories come back from teachers in Europe and California that use this software with kids, and has helped them learn and find passion in their work.
If it pleases the court, I'd like to end with this. If you wish for me, I ask for a brief recess to prepare material. :-)
Man.. I'm sorry if this isn't the response you're looking for, but the only thing that comes to mind now is that if you enjoy what you do, you'll be more successful then the person who is only looking for success and not enjoying what they do.
All the people I listed were people that do this out of passion, and have become successful over time.
I dunno man, I admire them, they don't have a daily job, they have a daily dream.
Yes there are hard times, but everybody has their own difficulties, and when there is failure, you learn and try again towards success. I believe any entrepreneur will tell you that to win, you are going to lose, you are going to learn, and you will eventually be successful.
All I'm saying is that unfortunately "if you build it they will come" does not a good business plan make.
You will probably need to market your stuff even if you've produced something awesome, and it's not particularly easy to find success in the indie-gaming market in large part because it is attractive to so many other people.
EA has grown so large they will "Challenge Everything" in their path that goes against their profit margin.
However I find it hard to believe its hard for small studios to have success. If the studio develops a good product and releases it to the masses on the internet or xbox live arcade, or the number of homebrew scenes, you will get attention. You just have to make a good product.
IMHO, some of the best games lately are free or not the latest and greatest. Corporate big wigs are pushing mainstream games into a corner and beating them a lead pipe for every bit of control over the flow of money and players. Activision and EA Corporate Big Wigs have fubared Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (tm) and Bad Company 2. Both games will suffer in the long run with lack of an SDK for the modding community. There is also a lack of dedicated server files, which remove the option for hosting your own game servers. The communities have spoken loud, and the developers do here this. Infinity Ward and Dice have already lost employees because they disagree with EA and Activision's control and greed.
In the end I am very loyal to the companies which remain respectful to its fans and work with the people, and not for the money.
Valve, iD, 3dRealms, are just a number of companies that are more concerned with producing a good game, and sharing the success all around. Love to 3rd party developers with SDK's, love to the players for not charging massive amounts of money for DLC, just good old love for developers.
In retrospect, I'm sorry for the abused developers all over. But they have a choice, and they choose to endure that reality. But some will choose to break off and make a startup. Valve was created by 2 former Microsoft employees, and they started small, and look at them now. They have produced games, software, and contributed to the community with massive amounts of information, and content to award the player, and the developers (both in house and 3rd party). Same goes for Epic Megagames, which continue to release Unreal Tournement games, with updated fresh engines. Id Software will continue to produce the next Doom and Quake. (Where it all began.) 3dRealms if I remember correctly has gone under, but I pray to god someone buys the Duke Nukem Forever project and finishes it soon. To quote Steve Ballmer: "Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers"
Now I need to get back to my job... as a developer. [I apologize if I was unorganized or off topic]