Now, go ahead and work through your rage.  I implore you, resist the urge to track this guy down and stab him.  I know he SEEMS evil, but he’s actually totally spot-on – and not JUST about Zynga and “social” games.

A Simple Fact About Games:

If you’ve played nearly ANY “popular” game, you’ve played a derivative game.

World of Warcraft is just DikuMUD with a decade of somebody else (actually, NUMEROUS “somebody elses”) footing the bill to work out the kinks, expand, revise, polish and improve it.  All Blizzard did was come in and (to lift   Bailey’s phrasing) “add a +1″.  Ditto for every popular shooter, RTS, DOTA-clone, etc.  Even “jackpot” indie hits like Minecraft are built upon the shoulders of earlier, less-polished efforts.

I feel bad for indie developers who come up with wonderful new ideas, achieve moderate success and then see their ideas devoured by huge Mega-Studios, but that’s just LIFE in every form of industry.  Invent a new, magnificent widget in your garage that takes years of effort and every penny you have, then becomes the “darling” of gadget-heads everywhere?  A factory in China will be making a cheap-as-hell knock-off a week after it hits the market unless you have the kind of legal and financial muscle to influence the Chinese government.  And if you dodge that bullet, you can bet your ass major electronics companies will have lifted every significant aspect of your design within a year.

Yes, Zynga is a particularly soulless example of this behavior, but it’s foolish to pretend that there would actually BE a games industry without derivative “inspiration”.  What Zynga does is creepy, sad and (perhaps) ethically dubious, but it’s silly to pretend that it’s NEW.  So go ahead and be mad, but be realistic.

“Ere the Moon has climbed the mountain, ere the rocks are ribbed with light,

When the downward-dipping tails are dank and drear;

Comes a breathing hard behind thee, snuffle-snuffle through the night–

It is Fear, O Little Hunter, it is Fear!”

- Rudyard Kipling

Over the past week, lots of folks from around the industry have been linking and nodding approvingly in response to this article offering “7 Reasons You Don’t Want To Work in the Video Game Industry”.  Like most things that get people worked up, there’s some truth to what is written there, but I take issue with much of what’s on the list.  My main complaint is the suggestion that most of these problems are unique to game development somehow.  With one exception, they are not – and I don’t mean that in the sense of the problems being shared in a limited way with a small number of other jobs. 6 out of the 7 are problems that apply nearly universally to ALL jobs.  Specifically:

7. You Won’t Work On A Game You Like

(1/2 true) You won’t ALWAYS work on something you love, but you often will. When I was getting started doing testing and support work, I had to deal with some stinkers, but I also got to work with lots of stuff I really enjoyed. Once I was properly into development, I never worked on a game I didn’t love again.  But beyond that, how many OTHER industries allow you to work on “things you like”?  Almost none, by my reckoning.  The worst thing I’ve had to do as a game developer is more interesting to me than the best thing I can imagine doing as a lawyer.

6. You’ll Be Expected To Move Far, Far Away

(true) Maybe not right away, but if you stick around long enough, expect to be shuffled all over the planet in cattle class. The good news: This usually doesn’t happen until you’re fairly senior in the industry.  I find it odd, however, that the author focused on the issue of having to travel abroad to work with international teams (which, as I mentioned, tends to mostly impact Management).  The more widespread (and problematic) scenario is that you’ll have to move around domestically to find work, often once every few years.  Regular state-to-state relocation makes it hard to do things like buy a house or feel comfortable starting a family.

Oddly, this wound up protecting lots of developers (myself included) when the housing market tanked.  I never felt comfortable or confident enough to get the $350-500,000 mortgage that would have been necessary to “own” a reasonably-sized home in the DC area (where I lived when the Recession hit).  As a result, when the housing market collapsed, I felt like I’d dodged a MAJOR bullet.  When I was laid off couple years later, I felt the same way.

5. The Fans Will Attack You For Everything

(true) Fans will get mad at you, but it’s only because they love (or want to love) your work. There are far worse things than lots of people giving a damn about what you do.  In addition, the fans will ALSO be your strongest, most steadfast advocates.  Personally, I get something out of both strong criticism and vocal praise, so I don’t consider this to be a “problem”.  This is probably the ONLY thing on the list that is “unique” to game development (and its other creative brethren).

4. Nobody Will Understand Your Job

(false) People understand game development WAAAAY better than many jobs. Imagine being a cop or a lawyer or a doctor, where a huge chunk of the population watches 30 hours a week of procedural dramas that TOTALLY misrepresent their jobs. THOSE guys are misunderstood, not us. In addition, almost no job is really “understood” by people outside that field. Do YOU know what your tax preparer does when it’s not tax season? I assume mine fights crime in a magical kingdom filled with math wizards.

Also, who CARES?  Honestly, unless you’re desperate to constantly be told how special and interesting you are, do you really give a damn about your spouse’s co-worker’s husband being intimately familiar with the ins and out of your daily routine during a chat at a dinner party?

3. You Can’t Complain – Literally

(1/2 true) You can complain about serious issues – forced overtime, hostile work environments, etc. just as much as any other person can. I know of NO cases where someone complained about a legit workplace problem and was then punished (much less fired) for raising it.  Most studios have well-trained, diligent HR departments who take that kind of thing VERY seriously.

Obviously, if you bad-mouth your employer or berate your coworkers or the product you’re working on publicly, you’ll get fired. But you’d get fired if you did that ANYWHERE.

2. You Will Work So Many Hours, You Will Essentially Stop Existing

(true) Yep. You’ll work long hours. Crunch exists and it sucks. Companies know this and (generally) try to make it suck as little as possible, but that doesn’t excuse it.   It’s worth noting that, as the Great Recession drags on, this type of “work more with less” approach is becoming the norm EVERYWHERE.  Leaving game development won’t magically help you “start existing” again (assuming you could find work at all).

1. You Will Get Fired

(1/2 true) You probably WON’T get fired. That would mean that you were removed with cause based on poor performance. If you do good work, you almost certainly won’t get fired. You probably WILL get laid off. If you HAVEN’T been laid off before, you’re probably very young. But that’s also true for nearly every OTHER industry in the world right now aside from repo men and undertakers.

So what’s it all mean?

To me, it means that the game industry has positive and negative features that you should consider before deciding to pursue it.  MANY of the negative features it has are shared with MOST professions, but very FEW of its positive features exist elsewhere. There are excellent reasons to think long and hard before diving into game development – even when times are good everywhere else, but there’s no reason to think about it as a “scary” industry that dooms all who enter to suffering and defeat.

We live in unsettling economic times, regardless of the industry we work in. This calls for caution and patience and long contemplation of our options. If you’ve done the leg work necessary to learn what game development would REALLY be like and the risks and labor seem “worth it” to you, then I say be not afraid – go forth and take your shot.

Actor in a leading role

Who should win: Colin Firth
Who will win: Colin Firth

Actor in a supporting role

Who should win: Geoffrey Rush
Who will win: Geoffrey Rush

A win for Bale would be great since he was equally excellent, but tie goes to the better film.

Actress in a leading role

Who should win: Natalie Portman
Who will win: Natalie Portman

To quote myself from elsewhere: She went down the “How to Win An Oscar” list and checked every box. Lost an unhealthy amount of weight for the role? Check. Straight actor doing same-sex love scenes? Check. Commenting on a comfortably damnable subject? Check.

Actress in a supporting role

Who should win: Hailee Steinfeld
Who will win: Hailee Steinfeld

There were some very weak contenders in this category. Steinfeld is the only sane choice.

Best motion picture of the year

Who should win: Black Swan, True Grit or The Social Network
Who will win: The King’s Speech

Anything but Inception will do, really.

Achievement in directing

Who should win: Tom Hooper or Darren Aronofsky
Who will win: Tom Hooper

Sometimes, precision and reserve can win the day. The lack of a nomination for Nolan seems to indicate that the Academy is feeling that way this year.

Adapted screenplay

Who should win: The Social Network
Who will win: The Social Network

Honestly… they made a movie about a website gripping and intense.

Original screenplay

Who should win: The Kids Are All Right
Who will win: Inception

I just have a bad feeling about this one. I hope I’m wrong.

Best documentary feature

Who should win: Exit Through the Giftshop
Who will win: Inside Job

EXtG was amazing. A Banksy acceptance speech would be potentially mind-blowing. But Inside Job lets Hollywood think it’s super-duper-important, so it’s got a leg up there.

Best animated feature film

Who should win: How to Train Your Dragon
Who will win: Toy Story 3

Not a great showing this year for this category. Toy Story 3 was deeply mediocre, especially by Pixar standards. HtTYD was at least wacky fun.

Achievement in art direction

Who should win: Inception
Who will win: Inception

I think Inception will pick up a lot of the more technical awards and get snubbed in all of the major categories.

Achievement in cinematography

Who should win: Black Swan of The King’s Speech
Who will win: Inception

People seem to think that CGI, slo-mo and practical gags Kubrick pioneered in the 70s are a revolutionary visual styling.

Achievement in costume design

Who should win: True Grit
Who will win: The Tempest

Not much thought going into this one. Alice in Wonderland shouldn’t win because it was pure CGI rubbish. The Tempest has Shakespeare on its side and sometimes that seems to help. True Grit had cowboys and I like cowboys. Meh.

Achievement in film editing

Who should win: Black Swan
Who will win: Black Swan

That movie scared the bejeezus out of me. Mostly due to its editing.

Fans of video games aren’t getting the best, most creative work from our industry because the American health care system sucks.

Over the holidays, I spoke with a lot of friends and former co-workers just to say howdy and catch up. It was mostly a casual affair – reminiscing about past projects, poking around for gossip, trolling for swag, etc.

But one conversation really stuck with me.

I was speaking to a fairly close friend who I worked with for a few years a while back. He’d moved on and has been working for a Large and Well Known Studio developing A Highly Anticipated Game ever since. He’s immensely talented and creative and has – on a number of occasions – made it clear that he’s got some great, challenging ideas that would (in my humble opinion) make great games. And he hates what he is doing currently.

The explanation was no surprise – he’s working on another big team on another big game where creativity is suffocated by fifteen layers of management and every bold suggestion gets chewed up and ruined by bureaucracy and fearful marketing. There are other factors as well – hating the area he’s living in, being far from family and old friends, etc. but the main issue is that he’s doing loveless work on a product he has no passion for.

Obviously, I ask: Why don’t you quit? Go somewhere else? Find a small team that’s hungry and willing to take risks? He’s got the talent and experience and the types of ideas that would make for some REALLY interesting, truly different and unique games. Why stay somewhere you hate working on something you don’t give a damn about?

The answer was simple – he and his wife are expecting their first child in about 6 months. While he hates what he’s doing and where he works, Large and Well Known Studio offers him and his family fairly good health insurance. Quite understandably, he doesn’t want to risk losing that coverage with a baby on the way. So, instead of striking out and making something new and really interesting, he’s really got no choice other than staying where he is, doing what he’s doing and hanging onto that insurance.

I really had no good response to this. His concerns are 100%, totally valid.

Going from REEEEEALLY nice company-provided insurance to insurance I pay for on my own was traumatic, disappointing and expensive as hell. Luckily, my wife and I are both healthy and have had no serious prior medical issues that would have made it hard (or impossible) to find coverage. But if she HAD been pregnant while we were looking – or worse yet, if she’d had some serious problem in the past – I don’t like to even imagine how awful and terrifying that process would have become.

In the US, health care is one of those core needs that can either provide a great sense of security or a terrible sense of fear. The VAST majority of Americans rely on their employer to provide it for them. The result of this is that the VAST majority of Americans rely on their employer for their health and the health of their families. And THAT relationship kills creativity because it forces many people (ESPECIALLY in a weak economy) to be beholden to their employer regardless of the quality of work they’re doing.

When I left my old studio, I knew I wanted to do something radically different and challenging and – yes – risky. I was proud of the work we’d done and loved the people I worked with (and for). I know there are plenty of horror stories that go around about working for one of the Big Publishers (or for a studio consumed by them), but that never jived with my experiences. I was given opportunities that I am extremely grateful for and I was taken care of me the entire time I worked for them. Even leaving the studio, the experience was about as positive as I can ever imagine such a thing being.

Nevertheless, at this point in my career, I knew that I REALLY wanted to work for a small, independent studio. Luckily for me, my wife and I are healthy enough that I had the option of trying something bold and new. As a result, I enjoy work now more than I have in YEARS because I’m doing things my way, on my terms, with a small, dedicated team of people who are equally passionate and excited. I have high hopes that we’re creating something that will be fresh and entertaining to players.

But if my wife HAD been pregnant or one of us HAD suffered from some terrible illness previously, what then? I would – almost certainly – only have felt comfortable taking another position within Another Large and Well Known Studio. I would have climbed back into another huge team working on another huge project. In short, I would have been forced to curtail my creativity for the sake of my family’s health.

Talk about a shitty choice. And not just for me. As I said in that opening statement – FANS aren’t getting our best work because many, many people in our industry are afraid of risking their health for the sake of doing something new.

If you’re afraid that leaving or upsetting your current employer may – quite literally – cost you the health of your family, what sort of artistic or creative endeavor could possibly convince you to do so? What video game idea – no matter how excellent or exciting or new – would be worth risking the health of your spouse or your children?

To be clear, I am not SOLELY blaming our godawful healthcare system for the creative woes of the video game industry, but I CAN say with total confidence that things would improve significantly if people weren’t worried about something as basic as medical coverage. You’d see a huge explosion in independent development. You’d see bad games fail to launch because the people working on them would simply walk away. You’d see good games succeed because they’d attract those same developers.

And this isn’t just applicable to video games. How much innovation in EVERY field is lost because the people who have the ideas can’t risk the health of their families in order to pursue them? Opponents of universal health care often cite the (entirely theoretical) negative impact it would have on small businesses while also arguing that small business is what “drives” our economy. Leaving aside the rather dubious nature of both claims, how many people AREN’T starting small businesses because they don’t want to give up existing company-provided group health coverage?

Every person with a child on the way or with an existing child with special needs or a spouse who is suffering from (or who has recovered from) cancer or any of a THOUSAND medical concerns has to give up on the dream of self-employment. How many businesses has that sad state of affairs cost us? How many jobs are never created? How many great ideas and industries fail to develop? How many problems fail to be solved? How much art is sacrificed?

Now imagine a different scenario – one where, no matter what, you know your family’s medical needs will be looked after. What happens to my friend in THAT world? I can tell you this much – he wouldn’t be living in Los Angeles, working on a game he has absolutely no passion for.

If you don’t have to worry about your most basic, human needs, you are free to be infinitely more bold and creative and to take risks and to innovate. Great industry, great work, great science, great art – those are the fruits of that kind of confidence. And if that ever happens, we’ll all be better off.

I hold his opinions in high regard.  That is not to say that I AGREE with them all the time, but I find that he regularly displays an extremely difficult-to-balance mix of advocacy and objectivity in his writing.  Objectivity, contrary to the notions put forth by cable news outlets and the like, is NOT simply the act of “presenting both sides” or of creating a bullet list of positive and negative aspects of the thing being considered.  Objectivity allows you to (even DEMANDS that you) take a stand and defend your position, so long as you are willing to have your mind changed by a reasonable counter-argument.

This is, in my view, what made his work with Gene Siskel so compelling. They were two smart, strong-willed people who could ferociously disagree, but who could also be reasoned with.

And Ebert has had his fair share of public dust-ups that could easily have challenged that objectivity to the point of failure  (his feud with Vincent Gallo who – after Ebert gave a scathing review to “Brown Bunny” – mocked his weight and put a hex on Ebert’s colon, for example).  But he’s displayed a fine capacity for tolerance and reconsideration (going so far as to re-review a recut version of Gallo’s film positively).  THAT’S the Roger Ebert I love.

Tough as nails, honest, but fair.  A man who says what he thinks, but who is not dogmatic in his thinking.

Which is why I find his zealous criticism of the idea that there is potential for art in games so troubling.  This is not a new assertion from Ebert, but he has chosen to renew his dismissal of games with greater energy and volume as of late and it has garnered a great deal of attention (and an enormous volume of contrary arguments) as a result.  I’ve found many of these counter-arguments to be trivial (usually asserting that Ebert is “too old” or some such), but there are also a few that I think are quite worthy.  For example, Brian Ashcraft’s open letter on the subject is insightful and compelling.  I find Ashcraft’s comment that “[film criticism has moved past the question] “Is film art?” and has now settled on “Is this film art?”" to be worth consideration.

In spite of this, Ebert remains steadfast and, unfortunately, has primarily chosen to respond to his critics with derision and the kind of petulant defenses I’d expect of (and I admit that this is a cheap shot) someone like Glenn Beck or Intelligent Design “advocates”.  Arguing that the lack of  ”a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets” means that games cannot be art is preposterous.  What, then, was art before there was GREAT art?

Is there only “great art”?  Is anything less evocative that the Sistine Chapel simply to be dismissed?  I assume that Ebert would not claim that this is the case, but it IS the logical conclusion of the (quite weak) line of argument he puts forward.

His other significant act of rhetorical “Beckery” comes from his constant, but subtle, confusion of the act of CONSUMPTION and the act of CREATION.  He routinely targets the act of PLAYING a game as a means of arguing that the game, itself, is not artful.  But the same can be said of watching a film, reading a book, listening to music, etc.  Is there “art” to be found in the simple act of being part of an audience in those cases? If not, how is it a valid criticism of the artfulness of games?

This leads to the most profound weakness of Ebert-as-game-critic.  He has no idea HOW games are made.  He says things like “I tend to think of art as usually the creation of one artist” and then calls out the idea that Kings are responsible for the “vision” behind cathedrals or that film directors control and dictate the creative and artistic force in the production of a movie.  This may be the case (though it’s rare that a film gets made simply through the force of will and creative chops of a director, the art is collaborative and diverse beyond simple direction), but it is NOT something that game development lacks.

Quite to the contrary, we’ve had more than our share of “auteur” creators over the years – people without whom revolutionary and inventive new games would never have come about.  Will Wright, Sid Meier, Shigeru Miyamoto, Peter Molyneux, Richard Garriott, Hideo Kojima – the list goes on and on.  But Ebert chooses to cite John Carmack – an engineer, not an artist or designer – to flesh out his “insight” into the creative process of game making.  This may simply be an error of inexperience, but it displays an ignorance (willful or otherwise) of the vision and creativity necessary to develop games.  Yes, we work in large teams and we look to market trends to help get projects green-lit and we are interested in creating challenges that can be overcome by our audience, but so do movies.  Just because OUR puzzles require basic physical interaction in order for you to overcome them doesn’t mean they are substantially different from the puzzles often presented in great films.

Is there REALLY a difference between the “a-ha” moment that comes when you fully realize what’s been going on all throughout “Dark City” and the feeling you get from working out a puzzle challenge in a game?  It’s a sense of satisfaction that comes from ACCOMPLISHMENT in both cases.  The “big reveal” in a film is basically just a puzzle for lazy people – it does the work for you.

And as for the “creation of one artist” argument, I’ll just assume he means “controlled or overseen” by one artist – since it’s obvious that dozens if not HUNDREDS of people are necessary to make a “great film”.  We video game makers also regularly work with singular, creative visions that are controlled by a single person.  We don’t just feed engineers head-first into a marketing computer and wait for a game to pop out on the other side. For every new game that comes out, there is a person who has put their neck on the line CREATIVELY – a person who has loved, believed in, struggled for and advocated on behalf of a creative and – yes – ARTISTIC vision for that game.

We face the same trials that film makers do.  It’s hard to get money for bold work, but it’s a worthy thing to fight for and many, MANY people do.  It’s hard to control a team of hundreds of people while struggling to maintain your vision.  Compromise looms at every turn, but still people fight – and sometimes WIN – to make games according to that vision.

No, there isn’t great “art” in the PLAYING of a game, but it is intellectually disingenuous to judge a creative work simply by the mechanisms through which it is consumed.  The art lies in the CREATION, not in the CONSUMPTION.  If we are exclusively beholden to how our work is consumed, then nothing can ever be elevated beyond the simple label of “product”.

After all, I’ve watched “Citizen Kane” in my underpants and it somehow survived the indignity.  It’s STILL a great work of art.

The result?

You and I live in a world where we DON’T believe in lots of weird and wonderful things.

For example, we don’t believe that some lambs are the fruit of a magical super-plant.

No, really.

In an effort to figure out why cotton exists, medieval “scientists” decided that the best possible explanation was that a special kind of lamb sprouted from a plant and was connected to to that plant by an umbilical cord.  The Vegetable Lamb spent its life grazing about its host-plant and – once the plant died – the lamb died, leaving behind cotton.

THAT’s what science used to be like.  Totally insane, comic-book crazy explanations for EVERYTHING.

And I CHALLENGE you to tell me you’d rather live in a world where cotton comes from a stupid, boring little bush rather than from an insane plant/animal hybrid that exists in a legendary far-off land.

Some quick advice to bloggers new and old:

We love constructive criticism. Let’s face it – if you’re running a WAR blog you’re part of the most passionate, “plugged in” part of our community. You represent an important part of the “voice” of the community and part of that relationship means voicing concerns. While I usually won’t read ranting or aimless whining, but I’ve always got time for even-handed, considerate criticism of what we’re doing. Be tough, be honest, be fair.

That being said:

It’s okay to be a fan. I like reading about people having fun with our game. While it’s fun for Devs to read about people enjoying their work, it’s actually also an important feedback mechanism. Just like constructive criticism helps us know where there’s room for improvement, positive feedback helps us know what people are enjoying the most and, thus, what sorts of things they’d like to see MORE of.

Make sure we can contact you. We really DO read most of the WAR blogs we’re aware of and sometimes that means we have questions to ask or feedback to offer that don’t belong in blog comments.

So… yeah. Get out there and blog! If you start a new site, make sure to let me know!

Anywho, to clarify a couple of things:

Yes, I realize that no “big” studio would grant the kind of access necessary to make a good documentary on game making. That being said, it’s far more likely that indie developers would be willing to consider it, if for no other reason than the promise of free advertising. And the story you’d get there would almost certainly be a good one, as there are only two likely outcomes:

1) Plucky underdogs make good and achieve success against all odds.

2) Wide-eyed dreamers crushed by factors beyond their control.

I’d watch either version!

I’m not talking some sort of post-mortem, deeply controlled Q&A deal.  I want to see somebody tag along during ACTUAL development and tell the story of how games are really made.

I promise there are all sorts of indie-film honors just WAITING for the Bright Spark who first manages to pull it off.

The nature of our industry has made it far too easy for us to “fire and forget” products in the past with the result being the loss of awareness of the history of great games that have been released over the years. Furtive and legally difficult efforts have been made to preserve the availability of so-called “abandonware” and the success of handheld devices has given added life to older games that get ported to things like the DS, but even then all that’s being saved is the data.

What makes efforts like this archive helpful is the addition of context.

Without understanding where something came from or why it looks, feels and behaves the way it does makes it hard to appreciate the significance of many older games. How can you explain the significance of text-based MUDs to a kid whose first online gaming experience was a graphically intensive shooter on XBox Live? You need a narrative. What was the world like when these games came out? What sort of impact did it have on players? On developers? On future game makers?

People tend to try and compare what we do to movies, which I don’t think is correct. We’re a lot more like music. I was talking with Barnett a few days ago and he mentioned something that struck me as very true. Anyone who loves games – as with people who love music – almost certainly has a “season” in their past where that love was first established and fortified. What you experienced during that “season” is lodged forever in a priveleged part of your mind and psyche and – while you’ll continue to seek out and enjoy new games (or music) for the rest of your life – you’ll always have a disproportionate affection for the things you LOVED during that specific time in your life.

For most of us, that happens when we’re young. I distinctly remember rushing over to my best friend’s house in the Winter of 1993 to try and grab DOOM off of the U. Madison FTP server the day it was officially released. And then, of course, failing to do so and desperately trying to get onto a local BBS that had it available. I have fond memories of weekends spent playing through old Sierra adventure games with my friends – taking turns at the keyboard while the rest of the group shouted suggestions and demands. I remember playing the original Civilization for the first time, then losing the next six months of my life to it. I’ve enjoyed hundreds – maybe even thousands – of games since then, but the games I played in those formative years mean the most to me on a core, emotional level.

It’s hard to communicate what old games meant to people simply by porting them to a phone. You need to offer the human side of it as well to capture the full narrative and history of where we as an industry came from. I hope we see more of this sort of thing in the years to come because the work of the early generations of game developers deserves to be preserved and remembered not simply in screenshots and emulation, but also in stories and in the collective consciousness of new generations of gamers.