Pondering Dynamix

When the rumor broke a few weeks back, I was really shocked. Dynamix? How could Dynamix get shutdown? They made Tribes and Tribes 2 for crying out loud! Then, I thought about it some. And it got really simple:

You can't use a mainstream budget to make a niche game. And that's exactly what Dynamix did.

I believe things transpired as follows...

1) Dynamix made Tribes, a rock solid, ground-breaking title WAY ahead of its time; so far ahead, in fact, that it probably generated more kudos than it did revenue. Still - it did well. For a niche title. I don't think anyone can argue that Tribes wasn't a niche title. It catered to a subset of the hard-core shooter fanbase. In other words: a subset of a niche crowd. That's like niche-squared.

2) Tribes gathered a typical niche fanbase: Rabid. Vocal. Loyal. They made it seem like Tribes was a runaway best-seller, especially if you were inside the bubble of hard-core PC gaming. You knew that Tribes rocked. You didn't necessarily play it, but you knew that it was awesome. I'm not saying that it wasn't mind you. Make no mistake, Tribes was a hit. It did what few PC games have ever done - accomplished exactly what it set out to do. In one fell swoop, Tribes created, polished, and delivered on a silver platter a very focused kind of first-person multiplayer, team-oriented gameplay. Being very good at a very specific kind of gameplay doesn't make it a bad product, it just gives it very focused appeal.

What I'm getting at, though, is that there was a reaction to the game that was disproportional to the scope of its appeal. And that reaction made Sierra's head ring.

Now, this is, I believe, the seed of Dynamix's downfall. The applause surrounding Tribes made it sound like a blockbuster hit. Especially to Sierra. Anything that sounds like a blockbuster hit, or even hints that it might set the stage for a blockbuster hit, makes cha-chingy sounds go off inside all those hollow publisher heads. Sierra was seeing green. They let the accolades for the game drown out the reality of the bottom line. Which brings us to...

3) Tribes 2 got greenlighted with a huge budget. This was the beginning of the end.

Here's the deal: Tribes did well. It did well because the developers never blurred their vision for the kind of gameplay they were trying to create. They made a game that scratched that really hard to reach itch for a group of FPS addicts that had begun to recognize that the standard multiplayer FPS gameplay was shallow. The problem was that Sierra (NOT Dynamix) took the acclaim for Tribes and plugged it into their publisher calculator and got a really big number out the other end. If Tribes had done well, Tribes 2 would do a lot better they reasoned. Only it doesn't work that way.

And it doesn't work that way because Dynamix didn't compromise...

4) They took their huge budget, took their time, and did exactly what they'd done the first time: made a gorgeously crafted title with a water-tight focus on a very specific kind of gameplay. They set out to make a finely-honed successor to Tribes. They didn't set out to make a game with broad appeal. If you didn't like Tribes, you sure as hell weren't going to like Tribes 2. This was what Sierra obviously didn't anticipate.

This was the death blow to Dynamix.

The Tribes 2 budget was a mainstream budget. Publishers don't greenlight mainstream budgets unless they expect to make mainstream revenues (right?). Sierra expected big sales from Tribes 2. They didn't get it. I'm going to sweep under the rug the fact that Tribes 2 came out buggy and a complete resource hog. I think it came out buggy because Sierra had finally wizened up to the fact that they'd paid Arizona dollars for a hardest-of-hard-core game. They were expecting a bigger and better version of Tribes to have bigger and better sales. This was a totally unreasonable expectation when you appreciate the fact that Dynamix wasn't at all worried about Tribes 2 having a broader appeal. For evidence that they weren't, I can just point at the game's design: It's a custom-tailored suit.

So, let's step back for a second. I've argued the following: Dynamix made a great niche game (Tribes). Sierra misinterpreted the game's success (and the very nature of the game itself) and authorized a huge budget for Tribes 2. Dynamix made a second great niche game (Tribes 2) that didn't have a snowball's chance of making enough money to cover the budget. Not only will it not recoup the development costs, but since it's an online-only game, it has very high maintenance costs as well, and suddenly, Dynamix looks like a real money pit. Poof.

Now, before I move onto some industry-wide observations, I want to wrap up a few notes about whole sordid scenario. First, I've heard all about the idea that Vivendi forced the closure of Dynamix because it was desperate for a tax event so that it could show earnings for the quarter. Or whatever. So what. For all I know, that's true, but it doesn't matter. It's totally moot. That just explains when Dynamix got shutdown, not why. I don't doubt for a second that if Dynamix was making a profit, they'd still be in business, and Vivendi would be solving it's tax issues some other way. In other words, sure maybe Dynamix got shafted because of corporate posturing by Vivendi, but Dynamix certainly didn't make it a tough decision. I'm convinced their fate was already sealed. It would have taken a VERY generous publisher to turn a blind eye to the financial evaporation occurring at Dynamix. Notice that I just put the words "generous" and "publisher" right next to each other. Another note is that this entire hypothesis is completely unsubstantiated. I don't have any numbers regarding how profitable Tribes was, or how big the Tribes 2 budget was, or how much money Tribes 2 has made thus far. I do have the following comment from Psyclone, an ex Dynamix employee (this was posted on TribalWar):

"Do the math folks. At this point I wouldn't call T2 enough of a success to keep the doors open, look at what it's costing to support/patch it, and the little bit of money from T1 was gone a long time ago."


So as far as I'm concerned, we've put to rest any mystery surrounding the death of Dynamix. But I feel as though it also touches on a very disturbing trend in the PC games industry.

There are too many developers making niche games on a mainstream budget.

The more I think about Dynamix, the more I suspect that this little scenario is getting repeated ad nauseum throughout the industry. I think it's a good part of why Looking Glass folded (poor business management not withstanding). I think it's why virtually all of the MMOGs are going to fold before they see the light of day. There are lots and lots of developers making niche games with mainstream budgets. I don't know why they do it. Maybe the developers do it because they're hard-core gamers, and not business men. Maybe they're in a state of denial and don't want to admit that their games are niche games. Maybe it's because the developers just can't help themselves; they can't keep their projects under control, and the publishers are too stupid to stop giving them buckets of money. If you gave me 5 million dollars, I sure wouldn't want to make "Roller Coaster Tycoon". I'd want to make my dream game. But that's just bad business. It's suicide, really. Especially if I'm a small development studio that's living off publisher advances and haven't made enough money to have any sort of nest egg for the business.

A bizarre side effect of all of this is that we're getting some really great hard-core PC games. We're likely going to lose a lot of talented game developers in the process, but we're getting focused games, probably some of the most sophisticated, elaborate, targeted hard-core games we'll see for a long time. Tribes 2, Baldur's Gate I/II, Grand Prix Legends, GP 500, Mechwarrior 3, Deus Ex, Heavy Gear II, Falcon 4, IWAR 2, System Shock 2... Those are just the ones that come to mind.

Fallout from this inability to do math will come in the form of PC studios jumping ship to console development. This is no revelation, it's been happening the last year and a half. They're doing it because there's the perception that console games produce more reliable, predictable revenue. Is this true? Perhaps, because it caters to a more traditional retail entertainment base, but I'm curious how well that holds up when you start saturating the industry with lots of developers desperate for cash, and at least 3 solid console systems on the shelf. It becomes a buyers market. Besides, unreliable revenue isn't really the problem. The problem is too many studios spending too much money on games. I seriously doubt that consoles are the warm, welcoming bosom that some developers are expecting. After all, what's to stop them from spending too much money on their console games?