Is the iPhone sparking a small studio revolution?
This week’s Develop Jury turns its attention to the rising number of microstudios, and today's the last day you can offer your view.
The news that Activision is making deep cuts to its workforce typifies the hyper-caution publishers are exhibiting in a post-recession economy. Even longstanding studios such as Neversoft seem to be facing cuts.
At the same time, a perhaps bigger trend is occurring. There is a growing mass of developers unhooking themselves from the publishers’ strings to jump into the high-stakes world of solo iPhone development. Most recently, two key Rockstar Leeds developers have formed their own outfit.
Our question for you this week’s Develop Jury is all about where these two trends are going. We ask:
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There are a number of questions you can consider in your response:
Have we hit a peak capacity of studios and investment, as the industry shifts more and more to smaller teams for more agile platforms?
Is this just an iPhone trend? Surely we’ll see more platforms that seek to democratise game development?
And what about the expanding number of game engines? Are they not becoming more and more accessible – and affordable – for the bedroom coder, the soloist and the microstudios to thrive in?
Developers and industry members can send their answers to rob.crossley@intentmedia.co.uk, while the comments section below is open to all.
Its not just iphone, XBL/PSN/Wii are now potentially open to indies compared to a few years back
I was about to make the same comment. Recently, positive news stories for smaller devs always attribute the benefit to the iPhone as if some saviour of humanity, but there have been multiple smaller game platforms that have become successful and lucrative over the last few years.
I definately think that with XNA being such a useful tool and Unity and Unreal releasing free versions of their engines, developers can do a lot more with fewer resources and a lot less risk from now on - at least up until the moment they want to make their idea commercial anyway. For tiny companies and solo developers, the financial outlay is lessened still.
There are so many more options and creative freedoms for solo developers and small teams than just the iPhone.
No, I don't think we're anything like peaking with the number of small indie studios and hobby enterprises (I certainly hope not). But perhaps the question specifically meant large studios, like the header says, in which case that number will always be in constant flux as new developers grow successful, old ones drop away, projects get picked up and some get cancelled... Perhaps the number won't rise much higher than now, but that's not to say that the names and faces won't change.
Investment levels will likely rise, however, as more projects require more cash and so a major dev splitting into two or more studios likely means two or more projects starting up. Even if they each ask for less, the cumulative amount may well be more.
as popular as the iPhone is, i think part of this has to down to the fact that so many devs have been laid off in recent months that they have little choice other than to work for a small indies or even start up their own studios.
No bad thing in my opinion, too many talented people are at the mercy of large publishers (in short Activision) and a lot of the soul is being squeezed out of the industry.
obviously it's bad that so many are loosing thier jobs, but if it encourages an indie revolution then great! too many studios with a lot to offer are either making the next game in a stale franchise (that's crap anyway) or are out of work altogether.
Hopefully it won't be long before these studios start creating big games without the constraints imposed by publishers and give us something new.
I think we have already hit one form of a peak. We'll probably see leaner proven studios taking longer to make better games they specialize at (like Bioware, Blizzard or Infinity Ward). The console market is growing, but they cost of development has grown faster.
The iPhone isn't the answer. There will be an eventual shake-out of iPhone developers with some of the most successful ones being acquired leaving the churn of small independents out there. iPhone game development is a chancier business model than console game development. It's more attractive because of the smaller scale of team and cycle time sizes, but it's still very hard to make money there too.
The proliferation of gaming platforms, digital distribution and ubiquitous gaming experiences will drive our market. Personally I'm very excited about the future.
Tom
you may say its people being layed off, but all the startups I know are by people who were key (programmers and artists)in developing other titles. I can think of 3 off the top of my head and none of them were pushed. They all wanted creative control and the credit they deserved
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