Small Games are Growing Up

Nowadays, you can easily find information about business in game industry if you attend conferences about games. GDC(Game Developers Conference) is one of these conferences which offers information about game market and business to the audience.

One of the main focus point in these conferences is about small social games like famous Farmville. The interest of the social games is growing in each day and this attract big designer who is famous about designing "old school" games in 80's and 90's similar to the today's social games.

The biggest differences between small social games and the today's big games are budget and their team work. A social game needs small teams and a very low budget. Thus, it affected the production time span of the games and makes it easier to funding the necessary resources. Social games can be created in six months with small teams however big games like "Dragon Age: Origins" needs more team work and a bigger budget around 40 million dollars. Chris Kohler, the author of GDC: Big Designers Find Satisfaction in Small Games, describes the comment of Brenda Brathwaite as:

“It feels to me like 1981 or 1982,” said designer Brenda Brathwaite at a Game Developers Conference panel here Tuesday afternoon. Brathwaite worked on the classic Wizardry role-playing games and is now creative director at San Francisco social media company Slide. “I remember, early in my career we would make a game in six months. I love the idea of just putting a game together with a small group of people. I can’t imagine anything I’d rather do.”

 Of course with the support of great designers, small games reach high quality. Small games attracts big designers for numerous reasons. Some of them like to work in small teams which, Eskil Seenberg implies that there is no office politics in small teams.

Even though small games are growing and they possessed more quality with the support of great designers, the big games (which described by the game industry as triple A games) still defend their throne with their physics (physx technology) and visual technological power.