SXSW08: Virtual worlds and indie games to dethrone publishers

Multiverse cofounder Corey Bridges' talk at SXSW Interactive may have had the title "Virtual World and Game Development: Rise of the Indies," but it soon became clear that "Rise of the Indies" was a nicer spin on "Fall of Publishers." The talk turned out to be surprisingly inflammatory as Bridges predicted the death of the traditional video game industry in favor of near-universal adoption of virtual worlds. "Video game publishers are dead. They're walking corpses. They just don't know it."

Bridges has the track record to back up wild predictions, having been right about things like graphical web browsing, online mail-order DVD rental, and, uh, computer security (by association, as in he was involved with each of these early on). To see this person attached to an MMO development platform is basically troubling for people who would like to continue ignoring MMOs.

Bridges analogized the future of game development to the history of the Web. In the early days, he said, everyone expected the large media companies to provide the quality content online. This turned out to be spectacularly false as the majority of interesting stuff online is created by normal people, and the "big" web media companies -- Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, etc. -- started up totally outside the existing media establishment.

He then presented the case of the other big media industries: the film and TV industries with their falling box office revenues, writers fighting for online profits, and video stores struggling against Netflix; the music industry, with its closing record stores and flailing trade group; and newspapers, whose circulations continue to shrink. Looking at it this way, one could see a grim future for any big media company.

According to Bridges, game publishing has troubling economic issues already, like the cost of games (which discourages experimentation), their short shelf life, and the small percentage of profits that developers receive. The stress then leads to stressful conditions for employees (he cites EA Spouse here).

These problems lead to an environment that encourages indie development, as does the widespread proliferation of broadband, and the growing availability of middleware. This is happening concurrently with an explosion of popularity of virtual worlds, for which, of course, his Multiverse is a universal client and a tool for indie development.

The future of games, according to Bridges, involves new genres for a variety of gamers, not just the hardcore ones. Playing games will lose its stigma as an entertainment medium, much like manga in Japan is accepted. Virtual worlds will begin to blur with the Web in general, and the virtual world, game, and social network industries will cross-pollinate. Publishers will consolidate (which, of course, we're seeing now) and will continue to survive, but with more competition from "boutique firms" who will offer developers financing, management, marketing, and recruitment without as much need for physical distribution.