Video games, celebrity and the golden goose

Lately I am obsessed with video games, not so much in playing them but figuring how they work. It's kind of surprising that companies like Amazon and Google tell you how their entire infrastructures are built but as my fellow CNET blogger Don Reisinger points out, the gaming industry is shrouded in anonymity and secrecy.

It makes me think there is a huge opportunity for some kind of open source-esque video game console and game development. Gaming is a market dominated by 3-4 giant players just like how software was, and music has been. We've seen the effects of open source and SaaS on giant software vendors and what digital music did to the music industry. Will gaming be next? It seems ripe for a shake-up.

Today Venture Beat brings us a Q&A with Insomniac Games chief Ted Price on cloning the golden goose which gives a bit of a window into the world of game development vs. publishing.

Overall the state of the gaming industry makes me think that the companies who doing everything browser based are going to be very successful at some point.

If anybody is interested in discussing gaming either for this blog or privately, please hit me up.

[Mike Dartt]

While I'm pleased by the rise in browser-based games and small downloads for consoles, I'd be surprised if an open-source approach proved tenable for anything large-scale. The big companies spend millions of dollars on individual games in part because they need dozens of experts to do high-quality jobs: artists, actors, sound engineers, musicians, developers, modelers/animators, level designers, etc. And these experts often need expensive tools. Both the utility software and the music arenas only require a fraction of these resources, and the major gains in music have mainly been distribution from what I've seen. I can't say that I know of many (really, "any") people who have made a living without professional recording and engineering, not to mention publicity, etc. Open source works well for utility software because the main expenses are individuals' time and computers they probably already have, given that there are a lot of free development environments, compilers, etc. The movie industry is slightly more comparable in terms of what goes into a production, but again, I can't say that I know of any successful "open source" projects there. There's a difference between "open source" and "free/volunteer;" the latter sometimes works in artistic environments, but I doubt one would see open source making a dent. Add in high costs of entry and/or manufacturing, and the likelihood plummets.

[RachelParti]

Ten years ago if you would have told people that the combination of advanced cell phone technology and a site called youtube would turn every kid in America into a film maker you would have been laughed at.

We have already seen an explosion in homegrown 2D games and it is just a matter of time before advances in technology will do the same for 3D games. We already have 3D worlds that allow users to create their own content. It will not be long before that content includes game levels.

The PS3 is still an expensive luxury for most, the Wii has not gotten a decent adventure game since Twilight Princess and XBOX still caters to the FPS crowd. There is a huge void out there for all kinds of games and the commercial studios are not filling it. Nature abhors a vacuum. Within the next five to ten years the gaming industry will be facing the same challenges that television is now.

[daverosenberg]

You raise some good points Mike. I don't know that I agree completely but I do think that the "specialty" nature of video games presents some very challenges. I do think that there could be a way to make video games more easily built--just like how webapps got much easier when people had the tools to build them. I would suspect open source to be a way to get there.