Activision Blizzard has a vast portfolio of best selling games such as Guitar Hero, Call of Duty and Tony Hawks.
Activision Blizzard has operations in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Romania, Australia, Chile, India, Japan, China, the region of Taiwan and South Korea.
Activision specialises in contemporary games designed to appeal to the mass market unlike Tale of Tales, which is a independent game development company that appeals to more of a niche market.
"The purpose of Tale of Tales is to create elegant and emotionally rich interactive entertainment. We explicitly want to cater to people who are not enchanted by most contemporary computer games, or who wouldn’t mind more variety in their gameplay experiences. For this purpose, all of our products feature innovative forms of interaction, engaging poetic narratives and simple controls."
http://tale-of-tales.com/blog/information/
This quote clearly explains that Tale of Tales developers intensions are to be different from developers like Activision, they offer a very artistically surreal experience as I discovered when I played The Path, a production of Tale of Tales. Although Activision has the advantage when it comes to funding and having a wider portfolio of successful games Tale of Tales has a specialty that the consumer won't find in any of Activision's games.
My Report
In this report I will be looking at Epic Games paying particular attention to Gears of War 2. I am then going to compare them to Tale of Tales, an independent games developer, and one of their games The Path. I have played both of these games and am hoping they will help me understand the differences between mainstream and independent game developers. Mainstream AAA+ titles dominate the game industry with well-advertised releases, huge hype from the media and legions of dedicated fans. Funding of course is a key factor in the success of these companies allowing them to use the latest technology and pump money into marketing their products.
Independent games on the other hand do not have this advantage these low budget game developers have a fraction of the resources that the big commercial companies have, much smaller teams working on their projects and a smaller reputation.
Epic Games are a very successful games developer their Unreal series has sold in the millions and Gears of War and Gears of War 2 sold over 12 million units. One aspect Epic Games boasts about is the Unreal engine used to create their games, this technology allows the developer to produce high quality games expected from top titles like Gears of War. It also provides Epic Games with a source of extra revenue and networking opportunities by essentially renting the licence for the Unreal engines to other game developers who then have a business agreement through the Epic Games partners’ programme. The exact cost for access to the licence is not publically known.
AAA+ Games attract some of the best games designers giving them a better chance of creating successful game. Lead game manufacturers such as Epic Games and Microsoft game studios can almost be considered as a guarantee of quality for any game with their logo on the box. Although the logos do not guarantee the game will be good the buyer can normally assume with confidence the graphics, audio affects and cinematics will be of good quality.
To better understand the process of making an AAA+ game I watched a behind the scenes DVD on the making of Gears of War 2. Firstly Epic Games developed the story and the script and the voice actors worked on their parts. A contributing factor to Gears of War 2 being a top of the range game is the calibre of the voice actors and the quality of the story. The amount of effort put into making this game shines through but can be easily taken for granted. The audio effects are of a very high quality and Epic Games has a full choir and an orchestra playing separately and mixed together in a sound studio using a similar method to the making of a film soundtrack. The cinematics in the cut scenes use actors in special animation suits that track the body’s movement to get realistic movement. There is also a lot of programming, artwork and game testing carried out in a long, complicated and iterative process to ensure they make it as good as possible.
It would seem that AAA+ games are just too good to compete with then. However independent developers like Tale of Tales have their own advantages. For example I consider myself a firm supporter of AAA+ games but after playing The Path I found it to be enjoyable in a way very different to Gears of War 2. It was simple yet effective creating a powerful atmosphere although the graphics are inferior to Gears of War 2. The path works very differently there are no enemies to fight and the goals are vague and self motivated, with many quirky features and even more promised in other Tale of Tales products on their website its clear that they appeal to a niche market and anyone looking for this experience is unlikely to look towards Epic Games or any other AAA+ game developer.
The way these companies operate contrasts as Epic Games has a vast network of employees under pressure to produce lots of best selling games. Tale of Tales on the other hand has only 19 people advertised on their website working on their games and have a much smaller output of games.
A disadvantage for AAA+ games is that they are not as free as independents if for instance the vast majority of new realises from big companies are sequels as they are the franchises making them the most money some good examples of this are Halo and Call of Duty. This limits the creativity because the developers have to keep to what they know will sell and cant deviate too much so not to anger their diehard fans. The pressure on the big game companies to bring out sequels to a deadline can interfere with the end result for example Fallout New Vegas although a great game is riddled with bugs and you get the impression it maybe needed more time to be perfected. AAA+ games are also judged a lot on how advanced the technology used to create them like how many enemies can be on screen at once, how detailed the graphics are and the smoothness of the gameplay. Independent games on the other hand are expected to be inferior in these ways so less is expected of them and they are judged on other aspects such as their originality and quirks.
To conclude if you were to choose which is superior the facts speak for themselves; AAA+ games sell more copies and make more money and use the latest technology to push the frontier of games forward. And although I enjoyed The Path I still prefer Gears of War 2 and I and many more like me are willing to pay £40 for some releases if you were to ask me to buy a game like The Path for that price I would refuse every time. So independent developers definitely have their place in industry but the big companies like Epic Games are at the top for a reason, in short in my opinion they are superior.
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