Saturday Soapbox: The high cost of high standards

[Administrator]

According to Square-Enix, Tomb Raider had a disappointing launch. Tomb Raider sold 3.4 million copes in its first month. These two sentences don't belong in the same universe, never mind the same paragraph. In light of this and other complications that saw the company post a $138 million loss for the year, it's currently planning a review of itself. Much like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, presumably this will read "Good gameplay, really dumb bosses."
Unfortunately, the madness behind this thinking isn't unusual. Sales disappointments can be valid, like with EA's Syndicate reboot, but increasingly they're feeling like an attempt to avoid facing the inevitable - that games are simply too expensive to make for the number of copies they're likely to sell. It's why popular publishers and developers alike are perpetually on the edge of bankruptcy, why almost nobody not working out of their own spare room can afford to take real creative risks any more, and why the next-generation's even higher development costs should be a looming shadow of doom rather than a beacon of hope for all but a lucky few. Everyone wants to have the next GTA or Assassin's Creed 3 or Call of Duty, but the simple fact is that most can't. Their sales are outliers, not sane targets.
At this point, I was going to draw a unflattering comparison between the games industry and a sweaty gambler at a roulette table, but on second thoughts that's not accurate. The industry is really trapped in the much less noble game of chicken, especially when it comes to technology - though to be clear, it's still often in a very sweaty state. And you know, that's understandable. In a world where nobody really has a clue how games will perform in the big bad market, to the point that mega-licenses like Star Wars: The Old Republic can fall on their faces, it's good to have something objective to cling to and universally agreed pipe dreams like 'photo-realism' to chase after. Better technology. Who could argue against that? It even has the word 'better' in it.
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