With the one exception of
With the one exception of Creative Assembly, I don't think we are capable of doing so in the near future. Don't get me wrong, I have a great deal of faith in the talent and technology available in Australia, but there are obstacles. The one, major problem I see obstructing this possibility is the apparently lack of talent, vision and experience in the leadership of many corporations. I do not say this without exception, but many of the larger companies, at least those that choose to attempt AAA titles, seem to suffer from poor management. Just recently there was a major 're-shuffling' at Krome, for example, for just such a reason (among others).
As the industry matures a little, and merit overcomes incumbency in many senior roles, we might be in luck. In the mean time, I hope to be surprised or, at the very least, continue to see some great small, casual and independent games.
"and merit overcomes
"and merit overcomes incumbency in many senior roles'
That there sums up the biggest failings in the local industry that I have come accross.
Seniors tend to have senior (or even management) roles not because they are the best candidate, but simply because they have more 'experiance' in the industry.
The problem in some
The problem in some Australian studios is that people who were in charge of average to mediocre (going by ratings) titles for one reason or another are kept on and put in charge of new projects.
Its as if somehow company owners believe the same group of leads who made an 40-50% rated game will magically improve their skills and ability and produce a runaway AAA hit on their next attempt. Maybe in some rare cases but its generally not what happens.
There are many talented people in the industry but a lot of them are either not given the chance to show their talent or they aren't encouraged and mentored correctly and their talent is wasted. Some few lucky ones may get a few titles under their belt and move to overseas studios in hope of getting a bigger break there.
A studio needs a healthy balance between those who are young (in their career) and eager to learn and those who are older, wiser and able to mentor them.
Also, to the above poster, are you confusing CA Australia with CA UK?
I think LA Noire is going to
I think LA Noire is going to be a AAA title at least my fingers are crossed for it
Here's hoping! Other than LA
Here's hoping! Other than LA noire there's only a couple of projects I know or have heard of that sound pretty big. Now if they are AAA material is anyones guess.
Yes, but it seems that the
Yes,
but it seems that the potential weak link woudl be management. No doubt even that can be overcome, but damn, how owuld you assemble that team?
I think the management is lacking even at the more successful studios ATM.
yes, but it takes a AAA team and AAA management as well.
yes, but it takes a AAA team and AAA management as well.
The talent is definitely here, no doubt about it.
All the moons would have to be aligned.
We certainly should be competing with the rest of the world a bit more aggressively though that's for sure, tax breaks etc.
To answer this question properly
In order to answer this question properly, I think we need to define exactly what a "AAA" game is, the definition changes depending on who you speak to. In this short thread on gamedev.net - http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=489423 - we have three different definitions:
1. A high-quality title, ie metacritic score 90%+
2. A big budget title with high production values
3. A very well marketed title that sells a lot of units
IMO, even though definition 1 is the one press and marketers would have you believe is true, I believe it's actually more of a combination of 2 and 3. With that in mind, you need to ask yourself whether government assistance can help achieve that.
I'm of the belief we should be able to stand on our own two feet and not rely on the government to help. Every developer has to start somewhere, and if most Aussie developers start out developing iPhone or Wiiware games, so be it. I mean Blizzard - arguably the largest and most successful developer in the world, started out doing ports for Windows, Amiga and Mac games. I think too many Aussie devs aim too high at first - every other successful developer I can think of, from id, Bioware, Relic, Retro to Capcom, Naughty Dog and even Nintendo - all had pretty humble beginnings. Problem is, not too many Aussie devs, with the exception of perhaps Krome and possibly Melbourne House (or whatever they are called now), have really been around long enough. We need to walk before we can run. Whether government handouts can help achieve that walking part is the question we should be asking.
Refinement and iteration
That's actually a pretty damn good point. Those companies you've mentioned have had the time to grow and gradually become more experienced from developing games that were well in their capabilities, and each release was a refinement of their previous game, with some boundaries pushed with each iteration.
If we look at the casualties of the local game development scene, the recurring theme seems to be the project being too big of a leap being the demise for the developer. Auran with Fury (coming from Trainz), Pandemic Brisbane with Dark Knight (coming from Destroy All Humans 1 and 2), Perception (coming from.. some arcade speed boat game in the late 90's), Transmission Games (from Heroes of the Pacific to Heroes over Europe - a mammoth leap in content requirements for the same budget), Fuzzyeyes (from Hotdogs to Edge of Twilight) etc. An extraordinary amount of risk taking in there!
Hindsight is always 20/20 of course, and iteration / refinement wouldn't have worked for all those companies (Auran, a veteran company in the games industry, had problems with Dark Reign and the market was saturated at that point, so perhaps it was a good idea that they didn't specialise on that. And the market is a bit too niche when it comes to Trainz etc). The Next Big Thing was perfect for Pandemic though, and the trailer for that looked awesome.
It's unfortunate that you don't get too many chances at big titles in the industry, otherwise those developers listed would fare much better on their second attempt, and it's a shame that these developers, most of them absolutely capable of great product, were (for the most part) disbanded and the valuable lessons learnt gone with them.
Same thing happened with THQ
Same thing happened with THQ (airbender to warhammer) and to a lesser extent creative assembly (shifting to its own full blown console RTS in stormrise). Difference is these companies survived that risk and live to take another one, hopefully more successful.
After a lot of thought on how
After a lot of thought on how to reply to this poll I think the question isn't necessarily one that can be given a meaningful answer.
Tax incentives would not guarantee large games, but would increase the chances of them being financially feasible to develop in Australia.
At the same time there is nothing about not having tax breaks that means AAA game development can not progress. Both the US and UK for example manage to produce many AAA games without tax incentives encouraging them. The bigger problem to my mind is considering how to keep top game industry professionals in Australia. Too many of our talented members travel overseas for work, and once there have little to draw them back to the Australian games industry.
True, keeping the talent - as
True, keeping the talent - as well as luring the best talent - is key to improving. I think it's something of a chicken-and-egg complex, though - the best developers apply to the companies already making the AAA titles (whatever their definition) because those are the games they want to work on. With the best of the best at their disposal, it's easier for those companies to maintain that quality, whilst making it harder for unproven companies to lure the necessary talent to advance. Their best bet is to hire people with potential, and hope they both realise it AND stick around long enough for the company to benefit. But this format requires iteration, like what was mentioned above. It's hard to convince the young rising stars who can go work for Bioware or Blizzard or Bungie NOW to stick around and be patient, especially if they've been frustrated by incumbent designers/leads.
There's no easy solution to that. So long as people can still see some progress in their career path - or even in their company - they'll probably stick around, but if they stagnate, or worse, decline... that's when the best talent gets impatient and jumps ship, and then you're moving backwards.
Retaining talent
Retaining talent is one of the big challenges of the games industry. The reasons why staff leave studios / the games industry are varied and many. Burn out, financial / better quality of life in other industries, social / life reasons (growing family etc)..
Even the top tier companies like Blizzard still suffer through staff turnover. I'm sure some can recall the notable exoduses over the years from Blizzard, particularly the Diablo staff and others who went on to form new studios.
The Starcraft 2 bonus dvd mentions that only 5 of the original 15 art staff worked on the sequel. While 12 years is a long time since the release of Starcraft and it's impressive that they still have the original five, it still means they've lost two thirds of the art team within a decade. While it obviously doesn't affect Blizzard's performance (it certainly hasn't affected Starcraft 2, and Diablo 3 looks great) since they can still draw exceptional talent based on their reputation, for other companies (particularly in smaller industries like Australia), losing experienced staff is a much bigger blow.
Keeping people, etc
Yeah, it's a bit of a catch 22 I guess. People go overseas to experience the wider world of game dev, which is probably good for them. They may get to work on bigger, better funded projects, etc. If they come back, with a number of years of experience, and maybe with experience at a much higher level (in terms of production quality and project scope, that is) than they could have acheived in most companies here.
When they get back, they'll probably be on half the wage to work on much smaller, potentially worse resourced and managed projects.
I'm not saying that every company here isn't doing great work, but opportunies are limited everywhere in the world at the moment, so it's all in all pretty hard for our local dev teams to tackle much more than any project that keeps them running for the next 6 months, and there really isn't much room or value in that scenario for taking on great AAA experienced talent, to be honest.
Some of them are so deluded
Some of them are so deluded they believe that every single title they produce is triple A even though the reviews clearly prove otherwise. To borrow and modify a line, 'I've heard the term triple A so often it's lost all meaning'. I don't know if those saying it actually believed it or were just hopeful.
I wonder if we want to
Sure, big budget games are great, its like going to see a big blockbuster movie, its all there so to speak. But you couldn't come up with a riskier business model in a riskier industry. Relying on one publisher to carry you through a long development cycle, while pushing the boundries of graphics, gameplay, technology, and then hopefully pulling off a big hit is a gamble. In addition, you're up against people like Blizzard who can take what, 5 years to do a sequel? Why would you want to compete there unless you had very deep pockets?
As online publishing and subscription/microtransaction models continue to improve, I dont know why more developers are ditching their publishers and self publishing. If you have a constant revenue stream coming in while you are developing future titles, it sure beats the hell out of holding your hand out to your publisher and hoping they don't pull the rug out at any moment.
Bioshock series?
The Bioshock games, along with others already mentioned, are proof that Austalia has the capacity for Triple A quality work. They weren't entirely done here, but then triple A titles done in just one country are a rarity these days.
I don't think there's really any major reasons why triple A titles can't be made here. We'd invariably be targetting games for different cultures and populations to ours. Projects being run in places like California have a massive amount of entertainment industry resources, experience and history to pull from. Austalia isn't too bad off in that regard, but still...
With the right creative focus, and enough cash to build your team with seniors and leads with not only experience, but experience in what you are trying to make (as much as possible), then I think you'd have a good chance.
And yeah, kick some ass LA Noir team :)
> They weren't entirely done
> They weren't entirely done here, but then triple A titles done in just one country are a rarity these days.
Bioshock wise; I don't think they did much other that hit recompile. Once it was released and developed on console, there is really not much to do for a PC port. While it's nice to think that a significant contribution was made to Bioshock locally, I think we're kidding ourselves if we believe that is really the case.
LA Noir must be a money pit. Don't get me wrong, I hope they release something really good, but they've been at it for some time now, changed publisher and it's been pretty quiet. I'm starting to worry for them.
Ok, time for a new poll. This was spurred on by the recent rumblings from the GDAA of the news that Screen Australia is requesting a bespoke offset package for games. An offset program, capped at 20%, combined with a proposed 45% R&D tax credit program by Minister Carr Australia would make Australia very strong competition to Canada, Shanghai, Singapore and many others as a game developer hotspot.
The question put forward is, with the funding and incentives provided, are we up to this elusive task of accomplishing a modern world class triple A title?