Throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.
Two posts in one day... amazing.

It looks like Flagship Studios is going under. That's pretty disappointing, considering who they are... that was Bill Roper's gig. However, I'm looking at a bunch of these "children of the Blizz" studios and noticing some trends.



Castaway Entertainment ate it about 3 months ago. Flagship just bit it recently. Arena.net continues to push the pseudo-MMO with their guild wars franchise... which, while not bad isn't anywhere near the resounding success of previous Blizzard titles. Not much news out of Red 5, who had a good amount of funding. What does this mean? Why are these developers floundering?

The more I think about it, the more it comes down to Blizzard's particular style of game development, and how it doesn't work very well for anyone who isn't Blizzard. Blizzard is very undisciplined with their design. They make sweeping changes, they're never on time, and they often have to spend huge amounts of time prototyping and trying out various features before realizing that the idea sucks and should be scrapped. However, they have proven to be very good at figuring out when something is fun, and polishing it to a fine sheen once they've actually found it. The problem lies in finding it; that's where all the time goes.

I was one of the lucky handful to take part in the original starcraft beta, way back in the day. That beta process took several months... if I remember correctly, it was toward the end of 1997 that it happened. Back then, Starcraft was a far, far different game than it is now. Archons could mind control. Templars, Queens, Defilers and Science Vessels had attacks (Queens even had the glaive wurm attack). Mutalisks had a short-range 20-damage acid spore attack. Wraiths could not attack ground units unless they researched an upgrade at the Control Tower. Scouts used to do 15 damage to ground units instead of 8. And so on and so forth. That was a long time ago, and the game has changed significantly since then. If you look back at Warcraft 3, Diablo 2 or World of Warcraft, you'll notice similar sweeping changes in their histories too.

So what's this got to do with the other studios kicking the bucket?

Blizzard is given a lot of leeway when they make games, because the game ends up being very good when it finally *is* finished. They sell a lot, and have a good, strong brand name. This is because the Blizzard executives are actually very good at their jobs, and protect their brands with near religious zealotry. Whenever Blizzard puts a game out, they can pretty much guarantee several million sales. The Blizzard execs are that shield between the developers and the higher ups that want their product NOW.

The problem is that Blizzard's developers are not disciplined. Making changes willy-nilly throughout the entire development is pretty nerve wracking, since it puts things into a state of constant flux. When I say "disciplined", I mean things like finalizing certain basic core functionality, in order to build areas around it. For example, think about a game like Super Mario Bros. The levels are built with a few basic systems. Mario can make a maximum running horizontal jump of X units, and a standing horizontal jump of Y units. Mario must run at least Z units before making the full length jump. Then, based on these assumptions, levels are laid out. No jumpable gap can be wider than Y units, unless it has at least Z units of run space before the jump begins. Then the jumpable gap can be extended to X units.

Now suppose that later on, the designers decide that Mario needs some sort of special at-will power, where he can crouch for two seconds to charge up, and then make a horizontal jump of X+5 units (further). All of the previously difficult jumps just got trivialized, because rather than requiring players to run and jump and barely make it, they can just crouch and jump across with no timing or skill requirements. All of the work spend balancing those levels gets a monkey wrench thrown in, because of late additions to the game that weren't there when the level was being built.

In some cases, this can have weird results on old content. World of Warcraft has a ton of issues stemming from this... legacy items have some unintended effects on new content, or new stuff makes old stuff completely trivial. This sort of thing often invalidates a lot of work (and thus time) spent on building things. It isn't fun to spend five months building a square house, only for the architect to decide he wants a round one instead.

You *can* make a good game this way though. Blizzard's proof of this. It's the reason why they are always so late on their release dates. However, not many studios out there have the kind of clout that Blizzard does. Blizzard can do this because they can afford to. They know that they've earned a gazillion dollars in the past, and that their owners will extend them the courtesy they need, even if it means another two years of development and several more million dollars in funding.

Picture a studio that doesn't have that kind of clout. If they go with a similar strategy, they end up with a bunch of stuff that doesn't get ironed out. However, if they ask for an extension, often the publisher will not grant it... or grant it, but not give them any more money, because the publisher has a contract that says they will give $X million for a game by Y date. They are faced with a hard choice - ship the game in the unpolished state, or face possible starvation to make a better game. Most studios choose the former, because people like to eat, and because good game does not always equate to great sales.

There's an old concept floating around, showing that the earlier in a project you change something, the less expensive it is. Conversely, the later in the project it is, the more expensive it becomes. That illustrates this concept completely. I fully believe that if more studios had the leeway that Blizzard does when it comes to development, we'd have a lot more good games. But that's mostly a pipe dream, because people need to eat, and games need to sell for that to happen. You're not going to earn as much money from a movie licensed game that isn't released with the movie. You're not going to earn as much money from a football game that isn't released at the beginning of football season. People aren't going to keep giving you money unless you can convince them that it will make more if they keep giving you money, and you work on it a little longer. That's just how it is.

--Rawr