• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Trent Reznor pitched a game(and his thoughts on the industry today)

neorej

ERMYGERD!
More Fun To Compute said:
Great comment. What gets me about gaming communities, from people on forums to the professional websites, is how many people seem to rate games by how serious and businessman like companies are. Like, they need games to be a serious industry like razor blades and napalm manufacturing more than they want to play and enjoy games. Maybe they have mortgages to pay off or something but that sort of attitude is not very attractive.

This argument was also used by recordcompanies, yet Trent has found a way to produce music, deliver it for free to his audience and still make money. I think he might have an idea or two on how to reform the gamingindustry before it fucks itself in the ass AGAIN.

Seriously, this whole concept of "this franchise sells, let's invest in it and pump out 36 sequels a year" is tiresome. It's a good concept on the short-term, but in the long run, ppl are gonna grow tired of that franchise, and you'll need a new franchise.
I think the best way to about it is the middle-ground. Make money with franchise that sell NOW and use (part of) that money to invest in new franchises.

Besides, I also think Trent is referring to the Activision <> Double Fine situation where Activision would only invest further in Brütal Legend if Double Fine turned it into a Guitar Hero-spinoff. That shit is fucked up. You've got someone sitting at your desk, with a great prototype of potentially a great game and you tell him to turn it into a Guitar Hero-game?
Companies don't need to be run by gamers, I understand these people are in it for the money, but at least have the brains to invest in people that know what they're up to. Activision told Harmonix they wouldn't invest in a Guitar Hero with full-band-play, because Activision believed that kind of game would never sell. We all know what happened.

Activision DOES invest in new franchises. But not enough. Prototype was a potentially great game, but needed a shitload of more polish before being rushed off to the stores because ZOMG INFAMOUS IS OUT!

I agree with a lot on Trent in the interview, except for the Madden: This Year-bit. OK, I don't know about Madden, but over the past 2 years, the FIFA-series has taken leaps and the "owh this is last year's FIFA with extra polish"-feeling is gone. Plus, EA has shown massive balls by investing in a completely new RPG, a open world metal-game with little-to-none-guaranteed sales AND decided to go up against Blizzard mano-a-mano with the Star Wars MMO.
 

oracrest

Member
Good to see him point out that a lot more experimentation is happening via digital downloads, and not the full blown packaged titles.

Or at least acknowledging all the red tape involved with making games the old fashioned way.
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Segata Sanshiro said:
I think generally people just don't like businesspeople. They're kinda on the "Lawyer List".

Plus it's an industry that prides itself on ambition and creativity.

The comparison to mobile phones and hotels is a bit different as both really have a defined, practical purpose. A bad, bland hotel/phone is unlikely to be popular because what makes it bland and uninspired damages its practicality. Not to say that there isn’t milking or cheapness in those industries, but even mass market consumption expects quality. Teen girls desperate for a camera in their phone are likely to pick the one with the fanciest features, and thus likely the one that is more advanced.

Games, film, and music are mediums that inherently attempt to create something artistic and entertaining. Pioneers and those passionate about those mediums, and working within them, would often throw caution in the wind and risk everything to create the ultimate dream game/film/song that they've been thinking about.

That's where the stereotyped suits can cause hurdles. A music artist may have a track list for a CD that they're really very passionate about, but a producer or suit that has no care for artistic integrity has the potential to change it about if they feel it will sell better. In the case of a game, a creative and potentially amazing title may not get green-lit simply because a publisher doesn't see it as making money.

Making money is still very important. Food needs to go on the table and if no money is made no products can be produced, but in artistic industries you can run into problems where the creator of the art has their vision for the product, something they feel very passionate about, while the producer of the art simply doesn’t feel these visions hold any weight and are willing (and often able) to change the creation to something that will increase their paycheck.

Producer goes home with more money while the artist feels their creation is no longer ‘theirs’, or that the final result just isn’t want they intended.
 
FartOfWar said:
Trent's responses or the interview as a whole? We talking about the video linked in the first post? I felt like I was watching the Chris Farley Show. "Yeah. Wolf 3D was cool!"
That was more of what Kevin Rose was doing.
 

twinturbo2

butthurt Heat fan
I just love his comment on Joystiq about how he feels that Robotron 2084 seperates the men from the boys.

I can't get past Wave 5 in Robotron, though, so I'm still in the fetal stage at the moment.
 
Monroeski said:
You know, I totally understand why people don't like "soulless suits" running game companies, but I don't understand why people don't get why that happens or feel like it's an amazing travesty.

It is a travesty, in a way.

One guy goes to McDonald's restaurant management college and gets to run his own fast food outlet. Hooray for the restaurant industry, everyone is happy, triumph of capitalism and so on.

Another guy learns fine cuisine, which he loves with a passion, from a famous Chef and wants to open his own restaurant but the Bank manager will only give him a loan to open a franchise fast food restaurant as he has better odds of making a steady income this way. The problem is a lack of culture.
 

SamBishop

Banned
Darunia said:
seriously. i've never seen the guy live and I only remember him looking like this:

trent-sm.jpg


i couldn't believe that was reznor sitting in that chair. how long has he been like this?

Go get the Beside You in Time DVD. Seriously. Better still, get the Blu-ray. One of the best concert discs you'll ever see. They play a great mix of old and new, and, yes, the guy is huge.
 

Proc

Member
SamBishop said:
Go get the Beside You in Time DVD. Seriously. Better still, get the Blu-ray. One of the best concert discs you'll ever see. They play a great mix of old and new, and, yes, the guy is huge.

I much prefer "And all that could have been" : http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00005RZPO/


Maybe its just because I saw that beside you in time tour in the flesh, and they played pretty much the same set and same light show. Maybe I just want something I can never have?

That Closure VHS is pretty rad too, with clips of Manson and Bowie interspersed. I wish they'd release that on DVD
 

vulva

Member
^^^He released Closure on DVD via Pirate Bay a few Christmases ago.



I'm a pretty big fanboy, and this interview confirmed to me why I am. He has the maturity of most artists while having the sense of excitement and wonder that the 12 year old me had. He sees the importance of fun and not getting too wrapped up in making the video game world the most realistic possible. I'm sure if he made a game, it wouldn't really be innovative or game of the year material. Instead it would be something you could have a lot of fun with, and just feel satisfaction playing.
 
Am I the only person that liked "With Teeth"? Yeah? Well, f it, that stuff was good.

Yaknow what a very Reznor-ish game was? Dishwasher: Dead Samurai.
 

Polk

Member
Monroeski said:
Many, I might even say most, people work at companies whose product or service they are not totally gung-ho for. CEOs, CFOs, and executives in general are quite often where they are because they are good businessmen. Their passion is managing companies, working out financing deals, the prestige of having your company's name on a blockbuster product, etc. If they do it in an industry they love, that's great, but if it's somewhere else, so be it. I would bet most people in this thread don't work for companies they totally love and support, either. Hell, judging from a lot of the threads I see most people around here hate their jobs and the company they work for and wish they were doing something else.

I love when the head of the company making games is a gamer, too. It is great when you know they are committed from the top down to creating a game that people will love and that they themselves want to play. However, that doesn't mean I think we should demonize other people when their priorities are different. I mean, hell, they're still selling a shitload of copies of their games, derivative overpriced crap or not, so obviously they're providing a lot of people out there with what they really want to buy.
You know. I think biggest problems with "souless suits" are they are only interested in BIG profits. If you can't pitch game as blockbuster it's really hard to get them interested. But I can't say I can't understand them. They have shareholders to satisfy. But making factories from developer studios just can kill creative mind. And that's frightening and sad.
You know why there are other movies then summer blockbusters? Because movie studios at least can understand that people need as much diversity as possible. And even smallest profit is still profit. And that's the truth big video game companies need to learn.
 

Oni Jazar

Member
Interesting Sony hate given that he thanked Sony and Nintendo in the YZ liner notes. Maybe he didn't get into the MAG beta.
 

ZeoVGM

Banned
Oni Jazar said:
Interesting Sony hate given that he thanked Sony and Nintendo in the YZ liner notes. Maybe he didn't get into the MAG beta.

To be fair, PS2 Sony is very different from PS3 Sony.
 
Top Bottom