Sometimes, The Spy Games are Too Much

Previously, I wrote about why clandestine conduct regarding upcoming projects can be a good thing (or at least a necessity). But excessive secrecy can also be harmful. Especially so in two ways, one impeding developers, the other inhibiting the audience.

Simply, the culture of secrecy that pervades most game development prevents developers from collaborating with each to advance their craft as a whole. Especially in terms of design, what I consider the most nascent aspect of game development, a lack conversation makes systematic progress in this area difficult.

Part of this stems from the understandable, but often unchecked, corporate desire to control a game's message. Saying in an interview that an in-production game is suffering from some
serious challenges is probably not conducive to generating excitement about your game. But even after a game ships, there often doesn't seem to be enough deep conversation about what the objectives of a game were, what worked and what didn't in meeting those objectives and what could be done to solve such problems in the future. The postmortems Think Services put together are good, but they're only 4-6 pages.

Some local events facilitate these conversations wells (e.g. Boston Postmortem), but obviously offer little to those not local. And if your city doesn't have a development community strong in this regard, it's a pretty difficult thing to change (believe me, I'm trying). Part of the reason why GDC is such an important event is that those spatial constraints are temporarily removed. But it's also once a year, and perhaps because of such, it's a pretty ... chaotic event.

As a pseudo-aside, one fantastic trend (as usual, set by Valve) is adding developer commentary to games. While some of the comments are known best practices to experienced developers, others are surprisingly technical. And it's useful to hear things you may "know" but haven't been at the front of your mind for a while. This is a trend I'd really, really like to see more studios adopt.

It's unfortunate but true that one of the best ways to spread development knowledge around is to close a successful studio. While the closure of Looking Glass still saddens, its extremely talented ex-pats ended up at Irrational/2K Boston, Harmonix, Bethesda and others. This spread of talent produced some of the best games of the last decade.

So, that's the cost of excess secrecy to developers. But the audience suffers here as well. The need for secrecy and to control the message shapes the conversation the audience has about upcoming games, and it's not for the better.

Prior to a game's release, statements about it from the publisher/developer are almost universally ebullient and vague. Descriptions of features are almost always glowing. I'm often struck by how often a pre-release interview just sounds like flipping through a thesaurus for "intense," "visceral," "over-the-top" and "compelling." Only rarely is the essential why discussed.

Unfortunately, this drives conversation about a game toward its "objective" quality at the expense of basically everything else (the absurd fixation on percent scoring isn't helping this either). Rather than ask, "Is it interesting?" the conversation is primed for "Is it good?", where good is how closely a game lives up to its pre-release promises.

Now I understand the need to sell a product (all too well; this exclusively keeps me housed and fed); this isn't a call for elimination, just moderation. Reaching a little further, and honestly, expecting more from ourselves and our audience, would serve both well. Secrecy in the games industry isn't going away, nor should it, but we should really be asking if we're being secret for the right reasons. Letting it all hang out from time to time would probably do us all some good.

It's All Cloak & Dagger

If I had to wager, I'd say the most common reply to the question, "What are you working on these days?" for those working in the games industry is, "I can't really talk about it." There's a great deal of secrecy in the industry. Sometimes it's necessary, simply due to the way projects evolve. The relationships with the media and public also necessitate some amount of secrecy. But more often that not, it's excessive and may actually be stymieing the advancement of the medium.

Making games is hardly an exact science, but I'm not sure many outside the industry realize exactly how much things can be in flux at the beginning of a project, and even well into production.

I know of projects that have radically changed directions in their early stages. Sometimes good ideas just don't have enough substance to merit a full game. Certain business conditions, which can be legitimate, may necessitate changes. Seemingly core features may prove untenable for artistic, technical or design reasons. Legal constraints regarding rights, licenses or something else could also change a game from its initial concept.

Anyone not familiar with the way games are made might see such changes as sign for concern or of poor leadership. The truth is, this is how the best games get made. There's a lot of chaos and experimentation at the beginning, which gradually settles toward something good. But if every tech demo, vertical slice, prototype, etc. was available for all to see, not only would lots and lots of it appear quite rough, but it's a recipe for disappointment and a diagnosis of schizophrenic production.

It really is the case that more often than not, it's better to be tight-lipped about a project until it's pretty close to being done. And even then, it will probably still change quite a bit.

Developers' relationship with the press is another big cause of industry-wide furtiveness. Entertainment journalism covering other media (film, TV, even music) is largely about people. While absurd and unfortunate in its own way (gossip rags, etc.), actors, musicians, directors and the like are emphasized more than their current work. But for games, it's all about products.

There's a number of reasons for the focus on product, but going into these would be a whole other post (at least). Suffice to say, it's partially due to the different genesis of different mediums. Film/TV grew from the theatre tradition, which has always been about actors, directors and playwrites as much as the actual script itself. After 400 years, one can't just talk about Hamlet. You talk about the performance of Hamlet by these actors and this director. The software tradition games grew out of is far more anonymous.

Modern Warfare 2 just launched, selling a ludicrous number of copies, but I couldn't tell you the name of a single person that worked on that game. Granted, I haven't followed IW that closely since the first Call of Duty, but I think I'd be able to name at least one person. Conversely, despite that fact that I'd rather shove bleach-soaked pipe cleaners in my eyes that watch a minute of Twilight, I can tell you the names of the stars, their characters' names, the director and a number of the producers/writers (although the Twilight Rifftrax is quite brilliant).

While there are some simply amazing game journalists out there, most simply write previews/reviews and post press releases. With gaming news and sites' profitability tied to pageviews, any information about an upcoming game is worth posting, no matter how unsubstantiated or trivial.

But this can actually be at odds with the ultimate success of a game. Oversaturating the media builds up audience expectations to levels that are impossible to reach. Combine this with the fact that almost nothing substantive is ever said about a game before it's released (more on that later), and too much media coverage too soon can be a bad thing. Dakitana and Duke Nukem Forever are the most infamous examples, but lots of games have fallen prey to this. I'm glad that many developers and publishers have shortened their media cycles and I hope they'll continue to do so.

This post has become longer than I was intending, so it's now a two-parter. Next time, I'll discuss that while some secrecy can be good, excessive secrecy not only harms developers' ability to learn from each other, but might well be impairing the audiences' ability to have deeper and more substantive conversations about games. Until then, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on secrecy. Bane or boon?