AlexDL78 wrote:Josh is a demigod of code, sent to save us from the ennui of the mainstream capitalistic dev companies who no longer care about challenging and sophisticated games, who only see the cash rolling in.
Praise be his name!
But seriously, the 'mainstream' dev studios can learn a LOT from our Josh
I appreciate the concept you're aiming for, but you also have to keep in mind larger game studios have to shift their focus. They become an entity that requires different approaches in that they have more people they are responsible for. Josh has himself to account for, and that's about it.
Say the head of a larger game dev has a goal in mind, but they need the backing of a full company to achieve it, and you'd be delusional to think Josh's procedural approach could be applicable to any game. (no! Down Josh! Bad Josh, this is not a challenge!)
At that point, you need the resources to back you up, and the resources to keep those resources coming. Then you get embroiled in a lot of monetary concerns and the like, and keeping investors happy, and making your project sound good. The catch is any untested concept is more likely to fail than succeed. You usually only hear about the small studios that came up with some unusual concept and succeeded... because they succeeded.
But you also have to realize, if you took into account all the projects that were actually started, you'd realize most end up in the dust. This is what you call a bad investment. Especially to investors who may not know games deeply enough to predict that a small game about portals is going to hit it big, when the usual Army Simulator 4 rakes in the profits year after year. (Hell, even Valve didn't expect it, and I'd say they know a thing or two about games)
You also have to keep in mind ventures like Kickstarter are still in their infant stages. They've shown great potential, but they're not established quite yet. Up until now, if you wanted to have the money to pay for employees and to keep your own family fed, you needed investors.
That said, I'm very excited for the prospect of Kickstarter, and the like, as it opens up new doors to let gamers dictate what they want to be made, instead of being left to pick out from what has been pre-approve by people who may not be gamers, or have different priorities (And those priorities may be entirely legitimate, just not the same as yours).
The other thing you have to keep in mind, is a lot of gamers take an elitist attitude, dictating that they think X game is better than Y "mainstream" game by some subjective definition of purity. But at the end of the day, numbers still point that Y "mainstream" game gets bought more than X. It's driven by he consumers, after all, if people didn't buy them in large quantities, they wouldn't be making them year after year. (I'm looking at you, football/soccer/basketball/hockey games *shudder* )