Develop: David Braben on the future

David Braben is a legend in the games industry, most famous for the ground-breaking and stupendously popular Elite series.

At the Develop conference today, Braben delivered his keynote speech on the topic of 'The Future' and what it means for us as gamers and the industry as a whole.

Braben believes there has never been a better time to be in the development business, with the rise of online distribution platforms (like Steam) and the year-on-year growth of the industry.

But what does the future hold, other than better graphics, larger development budgets and more EA Sports yearly updates ... sorry, releases.

Naturally, Braben sees his own company, Frontier Development, as being in the vanguard of innovation and design, especially with titles such as The Outsider and LostWinds.

Gamers are all frustrated game designers at heart, Braben believes, and understanding this is the key to good games design.

Basically, harnessing the negativity of the average gamer is key to producing something special - critical internal comment eliminates the 'bad' elements of a design right from the start.

LostWinds was Braben's first game to come from this critical creativity phase. The design was prepared, discussed and savaged for a while, until WiiWare gave Frontier the means to put the game out.

All of the initial ideas came out of the initial one week criticism process, called Game of the Week, where a new game idea would be postulated at the beginning of a week and would then be 'debated'.

Systems like WiiWare allow developers to drastically accelerate the development process. Braben demonstrated an intriguing 'on-the-fly' process, where the developers could actually alter the game from within, without even stopping the game.

Braben said the experience on LostWinds highlighted that it is still possible to make games in four months with a small development team.

With online publishing on WiiWare or Steam, Braben says the publishing process was 'de-risked', allowing developers to produce games that would be too 'dangerous' from a boxed copy standpoint.

Moving on, Braben said The Outsider was coming at the same things from the complete opposite angle to LostWinds.

Story-telling is the key with The Outsider, with the game being non-linear and focused far more on narrative and intriguing plot than many others.

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Braben controversially said there was more innovation nowadays than ever before, saying that the general quality of titles now is far higher than in the early days.

He then went on to say that the games industry is moving closer to the holy grail of 'respectability', with commonly held views about 'geeks', violent games and so on being so, so wrong and outdated.

The industry as a whole grew by 26 per cent in 2007, eating into the revenues of TV and cinema quite substantially.

Braben said marketing is becoming less important than actual game quality. Player-player communication is now at least as important as reviews, plus you have easy access to videos and demos, so people can make up their own minds.

For the future quality of games, this is a good thing - designers can no longer rely on big name licenses to make money.

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However, Braben had some warnings for the industry, especially when it comes to retailer and how they project the 'image' of gaming to the public.

Pre-owned games were described as being part of 'retail piracy'. Such games are going round a large number of times, so retailers are only stocking the very, very latest games on shelves.

People are finding it very difficult to buy new copies, not pre-owned ones, of games that have been out for a little while.

How can the industry help retailers stop this pre-owned cycle? Braben advocates unique codes on discs or packaging as a way of preventing the pre-owned 'curse'.
Giving added value to purchasers of new, non-pre-owned games is another way of making it more worthwhile for customers to go for a new package.

All this moves on, essentially, to online distribution, something which Braben believes will be the cornerstone of the industry in the near future.

In the end, Braben wanted to provide an antidote to the negativity that often clouds the industry, with tales of studio shutdowns and so on. Innovation is up, new opportunities are being created all the time and the industry is constantly changing.

Oh, and Elite 4 needs to be "absolutely right" before it can be unleashed on the world. "We haven't forgotten about it," Braben said.