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Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Poulette. I'm
Speaker 1: an editor here at How Stuff Works, and today with
Speaker 1: me I have Jonathan Strickland, one of our writers. Howdy,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a good day to play a game. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of kind of cloudy outside. We were dealing
Speaker 1: with the remnants of a hurricane in Georgia, so uh,
Speaker 1: it's a good time to just relax on the couch
Speaker 1: and PLoP a game in the old Xbox three sixty
Speaker 1: and just take it for a world. You are gigantic
Speaker 1: editorial gaming room with every system that you could possibly imagine,
Speaker 1: in gigantic screens to play them on. Right, the chairs
Speaker 1: suspended from the ceiling and nice little harnesses. It's awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exists only in our imaginations, right, We don't have one
Speaker 1: of those. But we were talking about game developers and
Speaker 1: how cool it is that that some of the smaller
Speaker 1: developers are starting to get a foothold in the market again, right,
Speaker 1: and the and the console market specifically, because they've always
Speaker 1: kind of been around in the PC market, and and
Speaker 1: the Internet is really opened up the opportunities for people
Speaker 1: who are developing games for computers, whether it's web based
Speaker 1: or whether it's something you know, you download from a site.
Speaker 1: But video game consoles for a long time really didn't
Speaker 1: have that many independent developers producing games for them. And uh,
Speaker 1: there's a few reasons for that. Well. The first, let's
Speaker 1: let's kind of look at the recent past and how
Speaker 1: video games were developed. You have these enormous video game
Speaker 1: software corporations UM, and many of them have entire departments
Speaker 1: dedicated to produce just a single game, and some of
Speaker 1: the games cost millions and millions of dollars to produce. UM. Like, uh,
Speaker 1: there were reports that Grand Theft Auto for cost like
Speaker 1: a hundred million dollars to produce, which is you know,
Speaker 1: you're talking about a Hollywood movie at that point. That's
Speaker 1: kind of a huge that's a huge number. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no kind of do it. Um. And these games
Speaker 1: are so complex and so resource heavy that they require
Speaker 1: large groups of people working together to produce them. You can't,
Speaker 1: you know, you can't have just one or two people
Speaker 1: working to create a game of that size. And uh
Speaker 1: case in point, I mean take two Interactive, the company
Speaker 1: that that produces Grand Theft Auto. At the point of
Speaker 1: this podcast, as we talk now, um, at time of press, um,
Speaker 1: they are in discussions with Electronic Arts to uh to
Speaker 1: work out some kind of combination. Uh. You know, obviously
Speaker 1: they're going to if they decide to murder Jora agree
Speaker 1: to be bought out. However they structure it. They're doing
Speaker 1: so because of the costs about of the resources that
Speaker 1: e A would be able to give them to produce
Speaker 1: additional games in the future. Right, yeah, And now this
Speaker 1: isn't the way things always were back in the day,
Speaker 1: a day that Chris and I can actually remember. Um,
Speaker 1: video games were simple enough where it was entirely possible
Speaker 1: for a person or a small group of people to
Speaker 1: produce a game from start to finish and put it
Speaker 1: on on the market and uh and make money and um,
Speaker 1: like in the good old days. Oh well, we're not
Speaker 1: even you know a lot of the people. I've read
Speaker 1: several interviews in gaming magazines that said that a lot
Speaker 1: of these guys who are producing these high tech, super
Speaker 1: amazing immersive gaming uh interactions, they all started programming on
Speaker 1: their VIC twenties and Commodore sixty four's with the code
Speaker 1: that they used to put in the back of some
Speaker 1: of the magazines and the computing magazines. And you know,
Speaker 1: it used to be where you would find, you know,
Speaker 1: the local kid in your school and he had written
Speaker 1: this game, you know, after school, and they would distribute
Speaker 1: it at on floppy disks with a bag with a
Speaker 1: little instruction yeah for I don't know what five bucks
Speaker 1: or something like that. And even big quote unquote big
Speaker 1: developers would would do the same kinds of things. You
Speaker 1: could write off and and have him mail you the
Speaker 1: game actually floppy disk. A guy I know did exactly that,
Speaker 1: Richard Garriottum was he was he any good at it? He? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was? He handsome. Uh, he met some success. Richard Garriott,
Speaker 1: or Richard Lord British Garriott as he's often called. Um. Uh,
Speaker 1: produced the Ultimate Gaming Series and then went on to
Speaker 1: do many other things. Um, he's trying to go off
Speaker 1: into space right now, as I understand, but the Ultimate
Speaker 1: series really was incredibly popular, and that was one of
Speaker 1: those series. I was born out of a single person
Speaker 1: working on a game, just something that he thought was interesting.
Speaker 1: He was inspired by the Dungeons and Dragons paper and
Speaker 1: pencil game and worked out of his his parents garage
Speaker 1: and with his brother and formed Origin Game Systems and
Speaker 1: the rest is history. So but that was back when
Speaker 1: it was possible for a person or a couple of
Speaker 1: people to create a game. And then what happened was
Speaker 1: with the with the console system in particular at twenty sure,
Speaker 1: the market became flooded with lots and lots of terrible games,
Speaker 1: and I mean horrible, almost unplayable games. I've got many
Speaker 1: of them in my basement and I have played several
Speaker 1: of them. I can admit right now, I am one
Speaker 1: of the people who did own the a ET game,
Speaker 1: widely considered to be the worst videos game of all time.
Speaker 1: I can tell you that it's pretty bad. But you
Speaker 1: know what, I had a Raiders of the Lost Art
Speaker 1: game that I think might might tie for as horrible
Speaker 1: as the a a D game was. Where we're off Steven
Speaker 1: Spielberg's Twitter listening right, Sorry, Mr Spielberg. Um, but at
Speaker 1: any rate, all these games flooded the market and it
Speaker 1: it caused the market to crash. People got got fed up.
Speaker 1: There's no way to tell if you're going to buy
Speaker 1: something that was of any quality or not. And people
Speaker 1: kind of moved to the computer systems and they got
Speaker 1: away from the console systems. That wasn't really until Nintendo
Speaker 1: came on the scene that the console system kind of
Speaker 1: had a renaissance, if you will. And part of the
Speaker 1: reason was that Nintendo was almost draconian in what could
Speaker 1: come onto its system. They had very specific guidelines and
Speaker 1: uh and quality control, so you didn't have the glut
Speaker 1: of really horrible games on the Nintendo system like you
Speaker 1: did with the Atari system. I'm not saying that every
Speaker 1: Nintendo game was great, but there was. There was a
Speaker 1: much better ratio of good games to crappy games on
Speaker 1: the Nintendo system. And uh, it's it's actually continuing on
Speaker 1: like that today. If you look at games for the WEE,
Speaker 1: you'll see the official Nintendo seal on the outside of
Speaker 1: the box that tells you that it is in fact
Speaker 1: licensed by Nintendo. Right now, now, this is bringing us
Speaker 1: up to current day. Now, current day, you know, we
Speaker 1: get past the point where you have all these huge
Speaker 1: video game systems that are spending millions of dollars and
Speaker 1: and really um uh kind of kind of monopolizing the
Speaker 1: market in a way away from the third party developers
Speaker 1: or the the independent developers rather um well, now we've
Speaker 1: got a couple of game companies or game system companies,
Speaker 1: Nintendo and Xbox, that are allowing people to create their
Speaker 1: own games uh and even sell them across the their
Speaker 1: their internet based um services. So when Nintendo it's called
Speaker 1: we Wear and with Xbox it's the x and A
Speaker 1: Creators Club. Um. But it's these are the these these
Speaker 1: allow people to create their own games, whether it's you know,
Speaker 1: one person or a small group or whatever, and uploaded
Speaker 1: it gets pure reviewed. They can be um uh set
Speaker 1: out on the marketplace and people can actually buy these games.
Speaker 1: You can make money doing it, and it takes a
Speaker 1: lot of the expenses out of producing a game, out
Speaker 1: of the equation. You don't have to worry about distribution
Speaker 1: anymore because it's all over the internet, so you don't
Speaker 1: have to produce the hard copy and the box and
Speaker 1: the documentation. All of that can be done electronically, you
Speaker 1: just have to convince them to h to carry the
Speaker 1: title in their store. Right. Yeah, that's um, that's still
Speaker 1: still a big step. It's a bigger step with Nintendo
Speaker 1: than it is with Microsoft Endo, right exactly. It's that
Speaker 1: same thing we were talking about what the consoles early on. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they have, um, they have a developer Developers Kit that
Speaker 1: you can purchase for two thousand dollars and once you
Speaker 1: that immediately kind of will will cause certain people to say,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm just not even gonna bother and
Speaker 1: that that cuts out a lot of the crappy games
Speaker 1: right there, the people who are just curious because no
Speaker 1: one's gonna drop two grand just to find out if
Speaker 1: they can do it, right, Yeah, yeah I wouldn't. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to. Yeah, I'm done too. But that
Speaker 1: you also have to become a licensed developer with Nintendo
Speaker 1: in order to offer your games on their system. Otherwise
Speaker 1: you know, they won't carry it. So there is some
Speaker 1: quality control there. And now there's once your license, you
Speaker 1: could create whatever games you like and uh, they'll carry
Speaker 1: it based on the the E S R B rating
Speaker 1: so which is of course the rating system that tells
Speaker 1: you whether or not you know what age level the
Speaker 1: game is appropriate for. So, um, they're not as draconian
Speaker 1: as they used to be, but it's still a pretty
Speaker 1: tight grip. Xbox is a little more loose. They you
Speaker 1: have to have a premium account with the X and
Speaker 1: a Creators Club, which costs about a hundred dollars a year,
Speaker 1: so it's a subscription ba thing um, and then you
Speaker 1: get you get access to their Developers Kit. Everything is
Speaker 1: programmed in visual c sharp and um, you use that
Speaker 1: to create the games. You upload them, and the community
Speaker 1: kind of peer reviews it and if it passes Muster,
Speaker 1: it can hit Xbox Live marketplace and people start downloading it.
Speaker 1: Well that's that's pretty amazing. Um. You know, I was
Speaker 1: reading actually the other day, and we're not just talking
Speaker 1: about completely about consoles. There are other uh consoles that
Speaker 1: you may not think of his consoles that would be
Speaker 1: affected by this. I was reading a report in Macworld. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, people are if you go to the app
Speaker 1: Store on your iPhone or iPod Touch or in iTunes,
Speaker 1: you can you can poke around in there even if
Speaker 1: you don't have one of these devices. Um, they're independent
Speaker 1: developers developing games for the iPhone and the iPod Touch,
Speaker 1: and uh, there was an article and on August in
Speaker 1: mac World called a tail of two Tetrises, and an
Speaker 1: independent developer named Noah Witherspoon developed a game called Triss
Speaker 1: and it's basically it's very similar to let's just say,
Speaker 1: it's really really similar to Tetris, to the point where
Speaker 1: the Tetris company actually has threatened him with legal action
Speaker 1: and he has removed the game from the the iTunes store.
Speaker 1: But um, you know, even on on a on that level,
Speaker 1: you know, we're not just talking about you know, the
Speaker 1: PlayStations and the xboxes of the world. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are people who develop games for these other systems. And
Speaker 1: if you wonder why people might actually want to do
Speaker 1: this may not necessarily be to get an extra you know,
Speaker 1: twenty bucks for fifteen people to download it. The more
Speaker 1: people do this, the better they get at it. So
Speaker 1: some of these independent developers of today are going to
Speaker 1: be the people like Take two or You or the
Speaker 1: Square next of tomorrow. They could be the next big
Speaker 1: video game manufacturer. And some of them actually come from
Speaker 1: that background already, but they got out of it for
Speaker 1: one reason or another. And and now they're making the
Speaker 1: games they always wanted to make, because that's the other
Speaker 1: side of the coin of the big manufacturers versus the
Speaker 1: independent guys. UM. A lot of the big video game companies,
Speaker 1: they're going to concentrate on games that have a proven
Speaker 1: track record, so like first person shooters and and real
Speaker 1: time strategy and resource management games, things that that people
Speaker 1: know there's a market for. Whereas your independent gamers there
Speaker 1: are developers, they're they're more likely to um experiment and
Speaker 1: really try some really bizarre new things that that no
Speaker 1: sane video game company would pour money into, and it
Speaker 1: may turn out to be the next big hit. Sure
Speaker 1: you never know. I mean, Jonathan Blow with Braid is
Speaker 1: a good example. That's that's that's the current golden child
Speaker 1: of the uh independent developer community. UM. And it's even
Speaker 1: you could even argue that it's not that innovative of
Speaker 1: a lot of people have compared it as a sort
Speaker 1: of a mixture of Mario and Prince of Persia because
Speaker 1: you have a time time man meant thing where you
Speaker 1: can you can rewind time and uh. But even so,
Speaker 1: it's it's something that probably no major video game company
Speaker 1: would have poured resources into and now it's on Xbox
Speaker 1: Live and you can download it for like fifteen bucks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's gonna be a big opportunity for for some people
Speaker 1: to get their feet in the door, especially considering UM.
Speaker 1: I read an article um in Ours Technica was basically
Speaker 1: covering a report and screen Digest talking about how games
Speaker 1: are more expensive to make for this current generation of
Speaker 1: consoles than it was for the previous generation. So we
Speaker 1: may be seeing the end of the middle class developer,
Speaker 1: if you will, You may see the just the big
Speaker 1: names who can afford to do it in the little
Speaker 1: guys who are willing to take a chance and want
Speaker 1: to do something to get their their foot in the door. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, to get them get their name out there
Speaker 1: until they get picked up and become a bigger right. Well,
Speaker 1: the cool thing is, I think no matter which way
Speaker 1: you slice it, it's a really good time to be
Speaker 1: a gamer. We all have things to think about, like say,
Speaker 1: what's the best site to buy a new leather jacket,
Speaker 1: whether to buy the three or six metapixel cameras, But
Speaker 1: thankfully we don't need to think about online fraud because
Speaker 1: for every purchase you make, Visa keeps an eye out
Speaker 1: for fraud with real time fraud monitoring and by making
Speaker 1: sure you're not liable for any unauthorized purchases. How's that
Speaker 1: for peace of mind, safe, secure visa. So for my
Speaker 1: fellow gamers out there, game on, I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty exciting and uh, if you guys want to learn
Speaker 1: more about these kind of topics, you can read our
Speaker 1: articles on how the Xbox three sixty works, or how
Speaker 1: the PlayStation three works or how Thentendo we works. All
Speaker 1: of them can be found at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Let us know what you think, send an email to
Speaker 1: podcast at how stuff works dot com. Brought to you
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Speaker 1: you