7 ms·

Did you guys consider video games? I think that's already a viable alternative form of entertainment. I would argue video games already killed Hollywood, they j

by skb_ 15y ago

Did you guys consider video games? I think that's already a viable alternative form of entertainment. I would argue video games already killed Hollywood, they just never pulled the sword out. $50 for 100+ hours of content vs $10 for roughly 2 hours? No contest.

pearle 15y ago
I understand your point but, multi-player aside, how many $60 games (that's the standard pricing these days for AAA titles) provide 100+ hours? They are very rare. Skyrim is the only recent qualifying game that jumps to mind.
- natesm 15y ago
  Why put aside multiplayer? I think I've paid $0.50/hour for my copy of Battlefield 3.
  - pearle 15y ago
    I do not argue against the fact that multiplayer games have a longer potential playtime, however not all games have multiplayer so you just can't say that a $50 or $60 game will definitely have 100+ hours of entertainment value.
    - eru 15y ago
      You are probably looking at the wrong games. Most people who aren't already into games, won't buy the 60 USD games. Casual games will catch them. Think Solitaire or Tetris, which lots of people have sunk more than 100 hours over the years into. Or even evil Farmville.
      - marshray 15y ago
        I think in a sense you've identified the issue too. For every dedicated player who will pay $60 and be disappointed when he beats the game in 50 hours, there are 99 or 999 who want a game that they don't have to invest as much in. Players like me want to play on our own terms and come and go as they please. I used to play a lot of WoW but shutting down all my VMs and rebooting out of Linux to do so is now a big disincentive. I have tried to get into some PS3 games but the long mandatory updates the system forces you into just makes me hate it. Oh my god and the loading screens that plague the PS3 are just horrid. (Sorry I'm not trying to complain, just trying to give you guys some ideas. :-)
        eru 15y ago
        I guess Nintendo serves these demographics pretty well. (Not that there's no space for a competitor.)
        marshray 15y ago
        Yes, more than once the kids and I have flipped over to the Wii to play while waiting for stuff to load on the PS3. Sometimes we don't bother to flip back.
      - pearle 15y ago
        No, I was responding to the comment that $50 games provide 100+ hours of entertainment. I was just claiming that this is not necessarily true.
        eru 15y ago
        Oh, OK. Indeed some games play much faster than that. To become very specific: Portal is a fine game. And much shorter.
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  That's changing the playing field. We're talking about money and time, why exclude multiplayer? Especially considering how much time gets spent on multiplayer games, how popular primarily multiplayer games are (Halo, CoD, WoW), and how much money gets spent on them.
- autumn_ 15y ago
  There are very few, at least in the Western eye. Only two that come to mind are the latest Zelda, and Dark Souls.
marquis 15y ago
If movies disappeared (which I don't believe they will as the barrier to entry has lowered so much) I would probably just read books and go out more. Games are great and I fully support them but it's not a form of entertainment for everyone.
- nkassis 15y ago
  I don't think movies have to dye for this RFS to work just that the business model that Hollywood uses isn't working. Putting a ton of money in a few blockbusters and trying to squeeze every last penny from DVD/BR sells isn't the way to go.
  - underwater 15y ago
    Isn't that the way gaming is headed too, though? You have massive companies like EA publishing blockbuster hits built by huge development teams.
    - landhar 15y ago
      On the other hand, the past few years have been very good for indie game studios: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_indie_game_developers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_indie_game_developers
    - vidarh 15y ago
      But that is the result of the cost of making games more "movie like" in the scale and complexity of the art and technology. As more and more of the technical complexity goes away and the cost of the art as well will drop, these big productions will start to face immense pressure from smaller teams. You already see more and more games use licensed engines, and eventually the power of the platforms we deal with will intersect with rising quality of low cost or free engines at point where most people can start with an existing low cost engine and compete technically. We started with a situation where off-the-shelf game engines was unthinkable, because game engines were optimized for a specific gameplay and intertwined with the game logic, but already there's a huge market for games made on licensed engines (and as far back as the 80's you had the first attempts at making "game maker" programs that used off the shelf engines and tools to cut the effort of making games) Similarly on the art side you can expect to see more and more advanced tools that take away technical complexity of working on the art and return the focus to the art process itself and even simplify that. E.g. consider a hypothetical tool where an artist creating a new character can pick from a catalogue of hundreds of pre-made skeletal structures, choose characteristics of the muscles and size, movement characteristics etc., pick from pre-made physical characteristics as a starting point for alterations, pick from catalogues of clothes, hair, eyes and so on - even other parts like the voice of the character, and have the software fill in the rest in terms of animation and other aspects. Imagine a cottage industry of artists that design catalogue items for tools like this - you can already license tons of ready-made 3D models, after all, as well as specialized software for things like creating landscapes, plants, trees and a bunch of other 3D structures. Of course none of this would remove the need for developers or artists, but it will free them to focus on game play and the actual art rather than how to work around technical limitations, and it becomes a massive leveller for smaller teams if you can start with an off the shelf engine, and populate your game with a bunch off catalogue item characters and then customize rather than having to start from scratch. Incidentally a lot of these changes will eventually benefit independent movies as well in terms of making advanced CGI and postprocessing cheaper and more accessible.
nkassis 15y ago
I think video games is one of the reasons Hollywood is dying in the first place. What other thing in the last 30 years has really been a direct competition to Hollywood. The Internet is definitively on the list too.
- nvarsj 15y ago
  The video game industry is not necessarily distinct from Hollywood. Check out Vivendi, for instance.
potatolicious 15y ago
I don't think video games are a full substitute for TV or movies. They are completely different experiences - one is purely passive, and the other is active and participatory. There are lots of game fans that would claim that this distinction is what makes games superior, but for a lot of people I think that's what turns them off. The passivity is a virtue in many places.
- jim-greer 15y ago
  I'm really not optimistic on getting people to stop watching TV or movies. Maybe there's some way of producing and financing them that's smarter but I wouldn't bet on changing behavior that drastically. People have been consuming stories about other people forever, and they're going to keep doing that.
  - alexsb92 15y ago
    But you don't really have to stop watching TV or movies. You just have to move the production of such content away from the big media corps. It reminds me of one of freddiew's Behind the Scenes video, in which him and Jon Favreau were talking how it's so nice when someone provides the toys/funds, but at the end of the day it's the actual artists who call the shot. Why not apply the same kind of contracts movie studios make with directors and actors (base amount, and maybe some % of revenue), in reverse, so the artistic driving force between the project negotiates the same amount of deals with the financier. It would be like a VC deal, where some people/companies would have preferential treatment at getting the money back and all that.
  - potatolicious 15y ago
    > "I'm really not optimistic on getting people to stop watching TV or movies." Why do we need to? I hear this sentiment from gamers sometimes, where passive (story told to you) entertainment is almost used in a derogatory way, as if the fact that the audience is not actively participating makes it worse. It seems to me a kneejerk reaction to years of everyone treating gaming as an illegitimate artform. Why do we need to change this behavior? What is wrong with consuming stories about other people?
gabaix 15y ago
Facebook is a good replacement too. Watch the idealized movie of your friends' lives.
ohyes 15y ago
Video game industry is nearly as bad as Hollywood.
- MetallicCloud 15y ago
  I think the indie scene is shaking up the status quo, so hopefully that is also changing. Maybe an easier way to distribute indie movies to a wide audience?
- Quiark 15y ago
  But I think indie games are more visible, they even get some space on Steam (yay!), so maybe all is not lost.
pg 15y ago
I mentioned games explicitly in the RFS.
DanBC 15y ago
Does anyone have figures for pokemon red / green (during the first few years of release) vs the whole of hollywood? But I suspect that game production has been Hollywoodised; you have big publishers and big studios and whole teams of people. It's getting better with the rise of indie gaming, but that's still a tiny fraction of the market.
- whatusername 15y ago
  Do Angry Birds and Cut The Rope and Plants Vs Zombies count as "Indie" games? I don't think that fraction is all that tiny any more.

by skb_ 15y ago

pearle 15y ago

I understand your point but, multi-player aside, how many $60 games (that's the standard pricing these days for AAA titles) provide 100+ hours? They are very rare. Skyrim is the only recent qualifying game that jumps to mind.

natesm 15y ago
Why put aside multiplayer? I think I've paid $0.50/hour for my copy of Battlefield 3.
- pearle 15y ago
  I do not argue against the fact that multiplayer games have a longer potential playtime, however not all games have multiplayer so you just can't say that a $50 or $60 game will definitely have 100+ hours of entertainment value.
  - eru 15y ago
    You are probably looking at the wrong games. Most people who aren't already into games, won't buy the 60 USD games. Casual games will catch them. Think Solitaire or Tetris, which lots of people have sunk more than 100 hours over the years into. Or even evil Farmville.
    - marshray 15y ago
      I think in a sense you've identified the issue too. For every dedicated player who will pay $60 and be disappointed when he beats the game in 50 hours, there are 99 or 999 who want a game that they don't have to invest as much in. Players like me want to play on our own terms and come and go as they please. I used to play a lot of WoW but shutting down all my VMs and rebooting out of Linux to do so is now a big disincentive. I have tried to get into some PS3 games but the long mandatory updates the system forces you into just makes me hate it. Oh my god and the loading screens that plague the PS3 are just horrid. (Sorry I'm not trying to complain, just trying to give you guys some ideas. :-)
      - eru 15y ago
        I guess Nintendo serves these demographics pretty well. (Not that there's no space for a competitor.)
        marshray 15y ago
        Yes, more than once the kids and I have flipped over to the Wii to play while waiting for stuff to load on the PS3. Sometimes we don't bother to flip back.
    - pearle 15y ago
      No, I was responding to the comment that $50 games provide 100+ hours of entertainment. I was just claiming that this is not necessarily true.
      - eru 15y ago
        Oh, OK. Indeed some games play much faster than that. To become very specific: Portal is a fine game. And much shorter.
InclinedPlane 15y ago
That's changing the playing field. We're talking about money and time, why exclude multiplayer? Especially considering how much time gets spent on multiplayer games, how popular primarily multiplayer games are (Halo, CoD, WoW), and how much money gets spent on them.
autumn_ 15y ago
There are very few, at least in the Western eye. Only two that come to mind are the latest Zelda, and Dark Souls.

marquis 15y ago

If movies disappeared (which I don't believe they will as the barrier to entry has lowered so much) I would probably just read books and go out more. Games are great and I fully support them but it's not a form of entertainment for everyone.

nkassis 15y ago
I don't think movies have to dye for this RFS to work just that the business model that Hollywood uses isn't working. Putting a ton of money in a few blockbusters and trying to squeeze every last penny from DVD/BR sells isn't the way to go.
- underwater 15y ago
  Isn't that the way gaming is headed too, though? You have massive companies like EA publishing blockbuster hits built by huge development teams.
  - landhar 15y ago
    On the other hand, the past few years have been very good for indie game studios: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_indie_game_developers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_indie_game_developers
  - vidarh 15y ago
    But that is the result of the cost of making games more "movie like" in the scale and complexity of the art and technology. As more and more of the technical complexity goes away and the cost of the art as well will drop, these big productions will start to face immense pressure from smaller teams. You already see more and more games use licensed engines, and eventually the power of the platforms we deal with will intersect with rising quality of low cost or free engines at point where most people can start with an existing low cost engine and compete technically. We started with a situation where off-the-shelf game engines was unthinkable, because game engines were optimized for a specific gameplay and intertwined with the game logic, but already there's a huge market for games made on licensed engines (and as far back as the 80's you had the first attempts at making "game maker" programs that used off the shelf engines and tools to cut the effort of making games) Similarly on the art side you can expect to see more and more advanced tools that take away technical complexity of working on the art and return the focus to the art process itself and even simplify that. E.g. consider a hypothetical tool where an artist creating a new character can pick from a catalogue of hundreds of pre-made skeletal structures, choose characteristics of the muscles and size, movement characteristics etc., pick from pre-made physical characteristics as a starting point for alterations, pick from catalogues of clothes, hair, eyes and so on - even other parts like the voice of the character, and have the software fill in the rest in terms of animation and other aspects. Imagine a cottage industry of artists that design catalogue items for tools like this - you can already license tons of ready-made 3D models, after all, as well as specialized software for things like creating landscapes, plants, trees and a bunch of other 3D structures. Of course none of this would remove the need for developers or artists, but it will free them to focus on game play and the actual art rather than how to work around technical limitations, and it becomes a massive leveller for smaller teams if you can start with an off the shelf engine, and populate your game with a bunch off catalogue item characters and then customize rather than having to start from scratch. Incidentally a lot of these changes will eventually benefit independent movies as well in terms of making advanced CGI and postprocessing cheaper and more accessible.

nkassis 15y ago

I think video games is one of the reasons Hollywood is dying in the first place. What other thing in the last 30 years has really been a direct competition to Hollywood. The Internet is definitively on the list too.

nvarsj 15y ago
The video game industry is not necessarily distinct from Hollywood. Check out Vivendi, for instance.

potatolicious 15y ago

I don't think video games are a full substitute for TV or movies. They are completely different experiences - one is purely passive, and the other is active and participatory. There are lots of game fans that would claim that this distinction is what makes games superior, but for a lot of people I think that's what turns them off. The passivity is a virtue in many places.

jim-greer 15y ago
I'm really not optimistic on getting people to stop watching TV or movies. Maybe there's some way of producing and financing them that's smarter but I wouldn't bet on changing behavior that drastically. People have been consuming stories about other people forever, and they're going to keep doing that.
- alexsb92 15y ago
  But you don't really have to stop watching TV or movies. You just have to move the production of such content away from the big media corps. It reminds me of one of freddiew's Behind the Scenes video, in which him and Jon Favreau were talking how it's so nice when someone provides the toys/funds, but at the end of the day it's the actual artists who call the shot. Why not apply the same kind of contracts movie studios make with directors and actors (base amount, and maybe some % of revenue), in reverse, so the artistic driving force between the project negotiates the same amount of deals with the financier. It would be like a VC deal, where some people/companies would have preferential treatment at getting the money back and all that.
- potatolicious 15y ago
  > "I'm really not optimistic on getting people to stop watching TV or movies." Why do we need to? I hear this sentiment from gamers sometimes, where passive (story told to you) entertainment is almost used in a derogatory way, as if the fact that the audience is not actively participating makes it worse. It seems to me a kneejerk reaction to years of everyone treating gaming as an illegitimate artform. Why do we need to change this behavior? What is wrong with consuming stories about other people?

gabaix 15y ago

Facebook is a good replacement too. Watch the idealized movie of your friends' lives.

ohyes 15y ago

Video game industry is nearly as bad as Hollywood.

MetallicCloud 15y ago
I think the indie scene is shaking up the status quo, so hopefully that is also changing. Maybe an easier way to distribute indie movies to a wide audience?
Quiark 15y ago
But I think indie games are more visible, they even get some space on Steam (yay!), so maybe all is not lost.

pg 15y ago

I mentioned games explicitly in the RFS.

DanBC 15y ago

Does anyone have figures for pokemon red / green (during the first few years of release) vs the whole of hollywood? But I suspect that game production has been Hollywoodised; you have big publishers and big studios and whole teams of people. It's getting better with the rise of indie gaming, but that's still a tiny fraction of the market.

whatusername 15y ago
Do Angry Birds and Cut The Rope and Plants Vs Zombies count as "Indie" games? I don't think that fraction is all that tiny any more.