Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

Building Game Worlds
246
U L T I M A T E G A M E D E S I G N
desk at home for extended periods of time. The main household PC doesn’t tend to be
in the youngest child’s bedroom either. You can see that when you add up each of
these factors, there are some significant problems to overcome in getting large numbers
of PC toys out there successfully. This doesn’t mean that toy manufacturers
won’t try to crack this market with future products; they no doubt will, and it’s just
this kind of work that most independent developers don’t mind taking on to offset
their own costs in building more traditional electronic games.
A DVERGAMES
This is a sore spot for many developers, and I can sympathize entirely. You probably
don’t or didn’t want to get into the game business to make ads right? You fell in love
with Metroid and you said to yourself: “That’s it! That’s what I want to do!” Right?
Those are the perfect reasons to want to pursue gaming. Everyone wants to be a part
of building the next revolutionary game title. In fact, it’s why you suffer the multiple
trials of being a game developer in the first place.
Many (some would say “most”) of the games that get built today are based on licenses.
You can build an excellent game based on a license, but for the license holder
the game “is” essentially a commercial. At the least, it’s a form of commercial for the
brand based on the license.
Companies of every description that create products or services for specific demographics
by age and gender are eager to promote their offerings using games. If this
idea is a shock, it really shouldn’t be since this idea has been with gaming from the
beginning. Because of the increased risk and cost of making games for every next generation
of consoles, publishers are always looking for ways to offset their own costs
and limit risks. Getting corporations to buy in on the risk of a game is an attractive
idea to most publishers, and probably indicates a strong pattern for things to come.
Honda, for instance, spends more money on TV commercials in a single day than
it would cost to make a rock-solid PlayStation 2 game based on a series of its current
and forthcoming street bikes. A solid game has huge replay value. Many in the industry
hate to think this way, but you experience the commercial every time you play
the game. Remember Cool Spot for the Sega Genesis? A great game; plenty of fun.
Based on a state-of-the-art 16-bit engine for the Genesis at the time, it was ultimately
an ad for the soft drink 7-Up. If you spend $2 million on TV network ads for two
days, that’s it. You had an expensive impression, and it has passed. In the near future,
next time you go to the Honda dealer to check out some motorcycles, you might take
a game home with you to experience the ride as often as you’d like.
The success of America’s Army, a collaboration between military advertisers and
game developers, is exactly what I’m talking about when I mention “advergames.”
Considering the U.S. Army’s advertising budget, the cost of developing a game to