And relax…
Huzzah. Finally some time to chill out and calm down. Over a month of deadline crunch with Barco has somewhat taken its toll. Today will be entirely devoted to games and catch-up reading.
Some talk over on The Chaos Engine about the forecasted crash of the games industry (due to rising costs), and asking why the big publishers (EA, Activision, Ubisoft) aren’t doing anything about it. For example, trying to rein in the relentless next-gen march, even when it massively inflates costs. The general consensus is the upcoming problems are real, and largely inevitable; but that publishers aren’t doing anything now because they’re still making money.
Massively short-sighted in my opinion – its like we’re a big Katamari ball rolling down a mountain; the outlying bits (the developers and smaller publishers) are being smashed off along the way, but the inner core is just keeping its head tucked in and hoping it will be left at the bottom. Even collecting new bits along the way (as the smaller publishers/developers reform and try again) won’t help in the long run, not to mention the carnage that its causing along the way (in the form of massive venture capital losses). It will only take one bad experience investing in a developer/publisher that falls apart under the current development conditions for a big VC to swear off the games industry for good – making it even harder for new developers to form and build.
In other news – more rumblings about the future US release of Brave, for which I’ve been doing a little bit of work. More details as and when I can…