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[pramod]

Compared to everything else....books, movies, computer software, etc...from what I see of all these other industries, it's quite rare for a project (whether it's a new software application or movie or novel) to have a lot of resources poured into it, and then have the whole project cancelled for some reason and never see the light of day. But for video games, it seems like the number of failed projects actually exceed the number of successfully completed games. I wonder why this is?

This comes from my personal experience as well. I've worked for both game dev studios and software companies. I can't recall a single software project I worked on that was officially planned and started that ended up never seeing the light of day. Even if it was buggy or incomplete, we still released it. But I've worked on more failed game projects than successfully published games.

 

[bati]

Probably a combination of prohibitive development cost and future brand damage - a bad game likely wouldn't inspire buyer confidence for the second game in the series (if it happened). Plus the cost associated with post release support (patches).

 

[ReBurn]

I don't think games are unique in this way. Without a doubt fewer novels are ever published than written. More songs are not recorded than recorded. When you are relying on someone else to see your potential then the chance of failure is always greater than success.

At least we live in a world where platforms exist for people to self-publish. It costs creators upwards of 30% for their revenue, but it has opened doors for artists.

 

[pramod]

Ok maybe books were a bad example...since it's mostly just dependent on one guy writing it who can lose the will to continue whenever he wants....but for things like business software, or movies....things that involve many people, a lot of pre-planning, etc....once you decide to start the journey you usually do everything in your power to see it through to the end. But not so with games it seems.

 

[DiscoJer]

Lots and lots and lots and lots of books get optioned for movies, but very few ever get made.

Or if they do, they are disaster. Like growing up, the Prydain books by Lloyd Alexander were huge, Maybe not Harry Potter huge, but pretty darn close. But all that ever happened was a crappy animated movie.

Or A Wrinkle in Time, that might not yet be a disaster, but it took nearly 60 years to bring it to the screen.

Another big series as a kid was Dragonriders of Pern. That's been in development for decades. More recently, A Wheel of Time, that was optioned ages ago and all we every got was a really awful thing with Billy Zane aired as an informercial so as to keep the screen rights alive for the optioning company.

 

[DonJimbo]

The publishers fear that the game bombs and they lose consumer trust

 

[Blam]

It's much easier to royally fucked up a game then it is a software program.

Games usually have a trailer showing what they want to do. Software is pretty much always 1:1 or a future update.

Movies/Books are also hard to fuck up, but it can be done.

 

[Deputy Moonman]

I don't think games are unique in this way. Without a doubt fewer novels are ever published than written. More songs are not recorded than recorded. When you are relying on someone else to see your potential then the chance of failure is always greater than success.

At least we live in a world where platforms exist for people to self-publish. It costs creators upwards of 30% for their revenue, but it has opened doors for artists.

This is true, but game developers are scrutinized under a watchful eye pre-release in a way that authors and musicians never are. That's the tough nature of being a game developer, unfortunately. They have to market their games way ahead of time to build interest/hype and also release periodic updates on their progress a lot more often. We don't really follow musicians and authors the same way, so when a writer or musician scraps something we often never even know about it.

 

[KaaiCluney]

In the case of software-other-than-games, the requirements are (usually) pretty well defined at the outset, so it’s easier to make sure the project is staying on track much earlier in development. Where games are concerned, there is also a huge dependence on content, assets, and things-other-than-engineering, which make it much harder to evaluate overall quality until much further into development.

Many modern game studios are much better at accounting for this earlier in the development cycle – mostly by just embracing the fact that game development is unpredictable, and realizing that there are questions that can be answered early enough to move forward with confidence (which is a much larger subject, and outside the scope of this.)

On the other hand, many modern game studios still suck pretty bad at it, and depend on the belief that “it’ll all come together near the end,” which it often does – usually in the form of crunch, and major revisions to systems and content. When it doesn’t, though, whoever is providing funding has a decision to make: Throw money at the problem, or pull the plug?

A lot of projects still get cancelled, but – while I don’t have hard numbers handy – I can say (anecdotally) that it has improved quite a lot over the years.

As far as movies and music go, the up-front risk and cost are much lower. You can have one writer spinning their wheels on a screenplay, or a musician writing away for years before their work is abandoned or cancelled. The difference is that the technology required to make a movie or record an album is, in most cases, already there, and there are very few questions as to feasibility. Once the shooting schedule is locked in, or the recording studio is booked, it’s usually just a matter of execution, and the exceptions to this are almost always big news.

This has also improved immensely over the years as the industry grows up, but – with constantly changing platforms and technology – it will be a long time before it reaches the stability the music and movie industries.

 

[ReBurn]

This is true, but game developers are scrutinized under a watchful eye pre-release in a way that authors and musicians never are. That's the tough nature of being a game developer, unfortunately. They have to market their games way ahead of time to build interest/hype and also release periodic updates on their progress a lot more often. We don't really follow musicians and authors the same way, so when a writer or musician scraps something we often never even know about it.

I think that's because of the way games are marketed. There's a lot of hype around pre-release games because developers show off their stuff so early.

I'd argue that people follow musicians and authors more intensely than developers. Developers are often faceless companies. Musicians and authors are people and the relationship with their work is much more personal.