Tokyo and tech through the eyes of a split pea

Bubblegeneration

Bubblegeneration, by Umair, always has inspiring if not eloquently put thoughts. Love his most recent post, from which I quote:

Like many media industries today, the games industry is dying a death by incrementalism. That’s because of it’s economics: as the industry’s matured, publishers (suits and droids) have iron-clad economic control over what gets produced and made by studios (geeks, artists, and anti-suits and droids). Unless you’re an established independent producer, you have to stake future royalties against an advance from publishers (or record labels, book publishers, etc) in order to finish production of your good.

Now, the suits and the geeks have very different ideas of what will sell: the suits want to target the ‘80% of the market’ that focus groups and other crapware have told them will buy. The geeks want to push the envelope and make cool things. Of course, we know the rest of the story: the suits win, because they control the $$. That’s where strategies like license-based games (think Mary-Kate and Ashley Pt 666) come from – suits think licenses will sell.

Of course, this doesn’t work out: creative people like geeks, artists, and musicians are much closer to their potential consumers than suits, so they’re usually far better judges of strategy, marketing, etc. That’s why media industries are rotting.

Emphasis mine :)