That's the direction the PC game market is heading.

We most definitely do need boutique developers, and we need more studios to boost their ideas to a common awareness as well. More games that push the envelop of creativity, innovation, the better.

p.s. Aubrey Beardsley, eh? Very smooth.

Well... yeah.

There really isn't an arguement here. Might as well ask "Slavery? Y/N"

developers should have enough balls to follow the "orange box" path as they spend minimal moolah and pack in the profits! but i then i spose that it depend on the kind of game. obviously GTA 4 would have a wider market, so R* capitalized on that and shove fuckloads of adverts everywhere. Whereas portal would appeal solely to gamers who check kotaku or actually give a shit.

I whole-heartedly agree. Quality games with adequate prices. That's why I have high hopes for platforms like Steam and WiiWare.

@arstal:
A direction that will kill it.

I don't think too many non-pc publishing houses would be willing to go the orang box route... But you can tell classic pc publishers already like the idea (epic with free mods on ps3)...

I'd have to agree. It would be good to see more titles like Portal that don't need perfect graphics, hours of playtime and zero originality.

Portal was arguably one of the best games of last year but it didn't have half the bells and whistles that it's competitors had but it did have great ingenuity that isn't seen much these days in big-budget games.

The only problem lies is: is it feasible? Regardless of overall game simplicity, Portal, while not costing near as much as say MGS4 or GTAIV would have still cost a fair bit and are the games developers willing to divert some of their funds to smaller production 'boutique games' from their big-budget hits?

@Garo:

How would it kill it? GC2 made at least $10mil in profit (not revenue, profit), and probably closer to $30-$40mil.

GC2 was made on a budget of around $1mil, what was the budget for Portal?

It's the big box games that are killing the industry, not the small ones.

We just need more episodic games. Sam & Max worked. Half-Life 2 episodes didn't work because Valve always takes an unholy amount of time with their games.

Still, there is big hope for the episodic format, if done right, and if people want it.

@arstal:

Is it so? Then why do we have the best year ever referring profits? It was because of CoD4, Halo3, AC and not because of Aquaria or Line-Rider.

It's quite funny how people give Valve credits for their recycling philosophy and then call it innovation.

I think we need more boutique developers. Portal was a very enjoyable game to me and that's all I care about.
Does it take more than a single day to play through? Check.
Is it enjoyable? Check.
Is it available at a reasonable price? Check.
Does it come with other good games along with it? Check check check.

At the end of the day, I don't give two shits about how epic the games I own are. Instead, I want something that's fun and cheap. That's why I still go to the bargain bins at video game stores to find old video games. That's why I play Flash games. Because I don't give a shit about the Halos of the world if there's a cheap (or FREE) game that's just as fun.

i think would be an exception.

i think most BIG studios will keep making BIG games.

but i DO think smaller companies might be VERY interested in heading that direction.

when you don't have a massive budget, making a smaller game allows you to increase the overall quality, and reducing the risks of loss, if you fail.

Portal is a great example of being able to tell a meaningful story in a game thats only a few hours long.

I find past a certain budget point a lot of big games seem to reach past gameplay and start spending resources cramming the game with things like cutscenes and kitchen sink design that only water them down overall. That and of course risk aversion unto mediocrity.

Boutique seems fairly vague to me, but I'd say we already have some representatives - done big budget you get things like the rise and fall of Clover Studios, or lots of D3 publisher's catalog (Earth Defense Force, The Oneechanbara), and done on a smaller scale, you have the fertile realm of indie games which aren't good just for being independent, but are often able to experiment more freely with low budgets and fewer restrictions from shareholders/corporate owners.

So... bring them on! Lately they're proving we're much farther from running out of innovation than it seems!

@Moonshadow101: HA! Very succinct and pithy!

What a (slightly, ever so-slightly) misleading headline. I thought that someone might have written an article that tried to argue that we need MORE MORE MORE MORE BIG BUDGET GAMES AND ALSO BEWBIES. I would have been really interested to read that. But this? Abbot's preaching to the choir.

Is the sky blue? Is water wet? Is the existential certainty of your perception in doubt? and etc. etc. etc.

I think the that episodic gaming is preventing itself from becoming popular right now.

Episodic gaming, by nature, would be perfect for a more "average" gamer: Gamers who only have an hour or two monthly to play.

However, that group doesn't even know that the episodic system exists, or at least thinks that it is not worth the time/money to buy a short game, when in the end they would be getting a game they would be more likely to enjoy and finish.

That group is less likely to trust a system like Steam, too. They think they're liable to lose their investment due to a server error or if their computer crashes.

On top of that, the group that would benefit the most from episodic releases have never even heard of them, due to lack of advertisement. I don't think most people have heard of Sam and Max, let alone the new episodic series.

If XBL and the Playstation Store created a section for episodic content only, where you could find your series and find any new episodes, then it could become more well known and more popular.

Personally, I would love to see some good episodic series released that way.

Rather than spending 100 hours straight on an RPG, perhaps spend 5 hours each month forwarding the storyline, and have transferable stats from episode to episode. If they developed the game ahead of time, they could even spend that time working on the next season, so right after they finished that first, a new season could begin.

That would give me time to play other game types, too. Maybe an episode of a shooter, and an episode of a platformer.

I could keep ranting, but I just hit "preview comment" which made me realize I need to stop, and let someone else speak.

I can't wait until this gets popular, though.

@Garo:

That's because those are actually good games. They'd be good games on half the budget.

Fact is, there are probably too many companies trying to do big budget, mega-hit games. This will lead to a good number of failed studios. There's only so many big-box games a person will buy in a year.

studios aren't slimy/desperate enough to go the orange box path. IMO Valve is only a two-game company, HL and TF. A game should be judged on the entire process that it took to create that game. I still dont understand why Portal is a FPS fanboy's wet dream. (Cute and fun, but no masterpiece.)

@ Garo:

Here, here.

@globones: You sure about that? Valve is indeed a two-game company. I can say the same about other companies like Blizzard and Firaxis, masters of episodic content and whom release games only when they are done, just like Valve and unlike publishers like EA.

So are you saying the process to create the game is more important than the end product?
That's a really sad way to look at it.

Portal is a FPS wet dream? You've completely misjudged the scope of gamers who adore the game. FPSers, puzzle enthusiasts, casual players, and gamers in general. It is indeed a masterpiece, just like short stories are often far more brilliant than 800 page fantasy/horror/scifi tomes.

@ StrikerGold:

Length was never the issue. Is creating a great game and game engine from the ground up a more remarkable achievement than a Half Life2 mod with a cool concept with weak narrative?

@braagh: That sounds like video game television shows, where you wait each week to play/see the next one and what happens to continue the story line. It's interesting but I don't think it would mesh well with people since they'd get tired after a month or so.

Portal was (near) perfect because:

1. The concept/twist on physics was original
2. Used a well-understood control scheme
3. Supplied an intelligence+personality that wasn't altogether necessary, yet enhanced and cemented the experience throughout
4. Didn't outstay its welcome (most of us were dying for more)

What was the last game you played that made you truly hungry for more?

@kylo4: It's debatable, I, for one, have yet to play anymore than the original Sam&Max game but the episodic content is a great idea and one that I hope more companies adopt.

braagh makes a great point. Creating an episodic RPG of 5 hours in length that perhaps doesn't have tons of spit and shine in the graphics department would be great. Think about it, with an episodic RPG you could improve more on the story and characters (perhaps even devoting whole episodes to a specific onewith each episode) while at the same time changing any gameplay mechanics that were recieved negatively by the community.

If developers did this till they've got a 50 hour main story (10 episodes) they could then release the complete "season" in one release for the same price as a new, big-budget game which would in turn would turn new people onto the RPG depending on how well they market the 'all-in-one' release. For a small development team the prospects to grow by using episodic content is immense.

Is it just me or has Portal just been making these video game sages think profusely non stop? One day it's about the length of the videogame with comparison to Ico, now this and I swear a couple others along the way.

It's crazy how Portal is still tickling the thinkers.

@globones:

Think you're missing the point entirely, because really, Portal is kind of an example, but it's not the basis for this entire idea.

The point is that if every effing studio tries to make multimillion dollar games, then the entire effing industry is either going to collapse or become a pure sack-of-crap.

Longer dev times and higher costs will mean fewer total released games, more dead studios, and less innovation. What publisher wants to pay a hundred mill' for a game that ISN'T a sure-sell-clone?

And no -- more money and more time don't make great games automatically. They give games more breadth, more shine, whether good or bad. Sorry, I'd rather have 5 good core games a year with different concepts than one huge blockbuster with loads of extra content.

The point, Portal or no, is that we need to support developers who are willing to make games with a focus on making solid games, being able to finish more than one a freaking year, and trying new concepts.

I'm not sure the budget is what is the problem at all. Developers tend to focus on making the flashiest nicest looking game, and oftentimes forget the other aspects.

How many games have we all criticized for poor story, poor controls, even a poor premise for a game at all?

Then many of them want to rush their game onto a set deadline so people can preorder it, and have a copy, and don't test it as they should. This may not hurt the initial sales, but it can't help the long term sales of a game to be fatally flawed and buggy.

I think we would all love to see project games get packed into bigger titles as a bonus, much as back in the days with films you would get to see a 10 minute Warner Brothers animated short before the feature started. Unfortunately, we know that publishers or studios are going to take the easy route, much as they did with DLC and give us crap. We will probably end up getting XBLA titles that are already released or something like that.

@JohnnytheFuture:

Didn't Aubrey draw like giant penises? I'm pretty sure he did.
Also, I'm glad someone else noticed this.