Game Development Conversations
On Supply & Demand
Software is a strange business, be it games or otherwise.
I was reading a recent Gamasutra interview with Square Enix president and CEO Yoichi Wada. They speak on the subject of mergers and acquisitions that the company has been through. Yoichi Wada believes that he is creating a larger family of creative minds, expanding resources, and giving the company a chance to continue growing. On the surface, I can see the idea of this plan. And, assuredly, based on the company wealth, you can’t argue that he’s completely mistaken.
However, he also asserts that Japan is behind the west, that they have lost their position as leaders in designing core gameplay. If you’ve read my rants about FFXIII, you’ll know that I agree. In my own discussions on the subject, it seems strange to me that Wada, who appears to be an observant man in general, has not addressed the problems of working with larger and larger groups of creative people.
The phrase “too many cooks in the kitchen” comes to mind here. When you spread a creative idea out over too many minds, even brilliant ones, you can end up with a bland version which lacks the creative spark that started it. Many people I know cross this barrier in single-digit numbers, finding it difficult to maintain a vision across a group of five or more minds.
Obviously, there are may companies functioning with 50-100 employees, and some have more. You can say that having a large team increases your production potential, that you can provide more content to your customers per title. But here we run into the concept of supply and demand. There are a few aspects at play here that make the business of software different from other businesses.
Once upon a time, the biggest industry was manufacturing. We had assembly lines, and more people meant more product could be created. More production meant more product to sell, and hence more profit. As some point, people realized that there was a limit on what could be purchased, and they called this paradigm Supply and Demand.
We have yet to realize the full value of this principle in the game industry, but the manufacturing scenario isn’t quite comparable to software development. I have no doubt that in some of the larger corporations in the games industries, there are CEOs and executives who are still living the in world where “more = profit”. In some desktop application software companies, this is quite literal. Both from personal experience, and those shared from colleagues, a prevailing belief that more code equates to progress has been witnessed. I wonder also if this applies to content for the games industry, or possibly for staff, or acquired companies as the case may be. So, if more != better, how to do we evaluate our role in the balance of customer expectations and their willingness to purchase our products?
To find out, there is another layer that needs analysis. How do we define supply as software and game developers? We’re already saturating most markets I’m aware of to overflowing, and people keep spending money on software and games. Much of our “stock” is turning into digital content, which has little cost to make available… since purchase of digital downloads essentially requires only the transfer of data. This leads me to believe that “number of titles available” and similar concepts is insufficient to define “supply” for the software world.
I’m going to say that “Quality” is the supply we offer. And it is the reason that demand is still very high on software and games. The people are searching for a quality experience. For desktop applications, customers are looking for reliable service, ease of use, and powerful features to create content or organize data. In games, customers are looking for an opportunity to attain a sense of greatness, or to escape to another world, or in a story that sparks their imagination.
And in this medium, our standards are constantly changing. We have the opportunity to re-frame expectations with every season of games that are produced. And largely, we do. But the titles that rise to the top, the memorable ones… they are made by the peddlers of quality, not the largest selections of mass-content-producers. Certainly, you can distract customers with lots of content. But in the long term, they will remember what you gave them for their money. Customers will return to those who have supplied quality.