Hollywood and the computer game industry

Boy, I wish Ron Gilbert could have read this post and tell me when he thinks about it.

I’ll put a note in his blog.

I just finished watching yet another episode of Unscripted, a show
about a few actor wannabe’s and their struggle in the cruel harsh world
that is Hollywood.

They go to auditions, do stand-in and extra jobs, go do an acting class, and have emberrasing moments in their personal lives.
All throughout this show, there are mini-speeches given by their acting
class teacher, which reminds me every single stage director I’ve ever
met. Pompous, arrogant, cocky, man who acts as if he knows everything
better then everyone else, especially better then you and me, but in
real life he’s a loser who is yesterday’s news and all he can do now is
teach acting in the local high school.

He keeps having speeches about how hard it is, how tough it is to be
successful, how much the work itself (the acting work) is what’s
important, and there’s talk about talent, and agents, and politics, and
backstabbing, and all sort of shit.

But then I get reminded of the industry i try to be in.

The game industry.
Like Ron Gilbert say all the time, even though the game industry really
really wants to be as big as Hollywood, it’s light years away.

The budgets for the largest games ever made, only makes a small tiny fraction in comparison to big time movies.
And to think that you might enjoy a movie for about two hours, but most
games have 30+ hours of game play or they don’t get a publishing deal.
Online games have much more then that in game play hours.
From what i know, games like Warcraft, gets budgets of something like
10 million dollars, while the crappy game I slaved over had no more
then 300,000$ as it’s budget. while movies like Star Wars, as IMDB tells me, have budget of $115,000,000 (estimated).
Hell, the crappy company I work for, who makes this really boring file
storage servers used to store the rendered data that makes movies have
a budget of more then 10 million dollars.
Oh and let me tell you about the cruel world of programmers… or
rather the cruel world of Israeli High Tech. Those actors in the series
complain that they have to work while they’re looking for they’re
break, that they feel uncertain, that it’s a tough world where dog eats
dog, where you get back stabbed by your best friends, where you don’t
know what the future holds, and that if you’ll make it or not is not up
to you, because there are agents, and directors, and producers and a
whole lot of bunch of people who have more power then you and all you
got is your acting work.
Well, it’s the same here in my world. I don’t know if and how
long my job’s gonna last, I don’t know if the company I work for
is going to exists in a month, I don’t have any power over what i do,
or what i don’t, and especially I don’t have power over weather
I’m successful or not.
At least in the Hollywood acting industry, if you got talent, and
you’re working hard, and with some luck you get to be successful, and
famous and rich. In my world, both the probability of that happening is
lower, and the amount of money and fame you earn is much less.
I think that statistically, the mean average of our industry’s gain as
an individual is lower by a few orders of magnitude then of an
individual in Hollywood. This is worth checking up, because i might be
rambling nonsense here.

In any case, and i want this written down first so i can have a copyright on it, my idea is this:
Lets make a TV show/movie/comic strips/flash cartoon/computer game
about guys who are trying to get a break as game developers, and the
harsh life and environment they are in.
We’ve all seen SO MANY movies and tv series about making TV and movies.
But in recent years, I almost haven’t seen one game that’s about making
games. Yeah, you might think there’s not enough exciting material
there, not enough meat to work with, and that’s where I disagree, and
where i come in the picture. Do you think that there’s enough meat in
the commercial flight business to make a whole show about ? or in
office life ? It’s the same thing. What makes a show/movie/game is it’s
story, or stories. Not the setting, but the setting is what sets the
environment. And i say let’s have game making as the environment !
I haven’t seen any game developing in games since good ol’ larry 3.
Let do it !

And remember, if you do it before me, I’ll sue you, because now that I’ve dated my idea, it’s mine !!!