Jason Rubin, founder and former president of Naughty Dog, Inc., thinks the key to becoming a successful game developer is waiting to be exploited in the game industry: “finding holes and filling them.”
Rubin took that stance on the final day of the Vancouver Game Summit in his keynote speech. Though Rubin was once highly successful and well recognized figure in the game development community – he is credited with the Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter games -- he’s no longer a part of it. Now as an outsider, he sees games in a new light. “When you stop making games and start playing them simply for the love of it,” he said, “you get a different perspective, and you kind of look at the industry differently than when your head [was] down constantly creating them.”
One of the benefits of being an ex-developer, says Rubin, is having the ability to look back on his own career with a unique point of view. “My perspective, which is very different now than four years ago when I left, is that opportunity is knocking, and that everybody in this room has chances and opportunities that they didn't have four years ago and probably haven’t had for over a decade in the industry. It's a great time to be a game developer.”
How Trends Affect One or Many
In his talk, Rubin gave an overview of his career, tying it to notable points in the growth of the industry. For example, Crash Bandicoot became prosperous around the same time that Sony’s PlayStation saw its fat years. “The Crash Bandicoot titles were obviously extremely successful for me,” Rubin said. “There was a year where 5 percent of all PlayStation software sold was a Crash Bandicoot title.” 
He also talked about how the transition from cartridge to CD affected the overall industry: it brought down costs while bringing in money to developers and publishers. “That meant that all this extra cash from our products priced the same was split between the developer and publisher and didn't go to silicon and manufacturing, which no one benefited from. So it was a great time in the industry.”
Rubin reminisced about those first years of games on disc. “If you look back at the industry, I think that’s the point, up until now, when game developers would get together at places like this and were most excited about being game developers. The opportunity, the gold, was right there. The streets were paved with it. You could make really inexpensive games, sell millions of units, and rake it in. There were also a lot of independent developers at the time."
The eventual rise in the cost of games, which “walloped” the industry according to Rubin, was an industry trend that coincided with the release of the Jak and Daxter series for PlayStation 2. He said the cost of development for a Crash Bandicoot title rose from $2 million to $3 million, while for the Jak and Daxter, the increase was from $10 million to $15 million. “Some [games] were even more expensive then that. All of a sudden we were spending so much money making and marketing, but selling it at the same price,” Rubin said. The effect was that developers took home a much smaller portion, relatively speaking. “We started to see serious contractions in the amount of money a developer can make. This also caused a lot of developers to start selling themselves. That effectively crushed the buzz of the Crash Bandicoot days.”
The next (and ongoing) period of his career is what Rubin refers to as the “out of industry period.” And from the outside, Rubin’s assessment is that things are a bit bleak, particularly for independent developers. “You have budgets now on games like GTA and Call of Duty that are in the tens of millions. Often you hear rumors of 50 to 60 million on some of the bigger titles -- certainly 20 and 30 is a norm for a triple-A title -- that almost no indie developer could ever finance, even with a deal with a publisher,” he said.
“So independence has almost disappeared. If you really think about, the triple-A independents -- Insomniac, Epic, Valve, just to name a few -- [they] are very few and far between, and they had to have successes before. They had to build a giant coffer and be able to finance their games, or at least partially finance their games. Their independence in a lot of ways is questionable because they had to sign multi project deals and were kind of bogged down.”
Diversity and Distribution
With all these factors at play, Rubin decided the world of gaming wasn’t for him anymore. However, he does still see holes that could be filled, areas that show the promise of prosperity. Now is the time, he said, to capitalize on the growth and diversity of the industry: untapped demographics, games for women over 50, games for girls and games for girls tied to merchandising, distributed though broader platform choices on mobile, portable game devices, and PC.
“The game industry is finally diversified,” Rubin said, “There are finally women over 50 playing video games, finally girls, and kids, and boys of different ages … that are playing games, and they’re not all shooters. And that’s where the opportunity is today.”
Just as Crash Bandicoot saw its rise in part because it moved in tandem with the rise of PlayStation, so games for a diversified player base will have an uptick when a diversified platform base sees its glory day. “That’s important because broader platform choices bring in different types of people,” thus changing the types of games being made, said Rubin.
When Rubin released his very first commercial game, he had to use guerrilla packaging -- the games were plopped into Ziploc bags -- and simply went around asking retailers if they would give it shelf space. Now, with the availability of so many distribution methods, developers have a better chance of getting their games to consumers: pay per pay, digital download, physical items (for example, plush toys and trading cards that are essential to some electronic games), micro-transactions, subscriptions, prepay, and up sell. “The smaller opportunities are growing faster than the giant retail industry, so the opportunities to a certain extent are better with smaller distribution models.”
Not long ago, Rubin was at a ’tween clothing store, where he found video games being marketing to young girls. As part of his keynote speech, he showed video footage that he filmed while inside the store: he picks up a plush toy and says, “These innocent looking creatures are actually video games. Buy one of these Webkinz and go online, and you’ll be able to play in a video game world that didn’t come from EB or Best Buy. It came from a children’s clothing store for girls.”
All Webkinz that are sold come with a code that unlocks mini games on the Wbkinz web site. “You buy a piece of clothing, you enter its code, and it shows up on your character online. It’s so not a game, but it’s brilliant -- but most of what you’re doing is just playing mini games”
Rubin also noticed that Limited-Too, the clothing store selling Webkinz and preteen clothes, sells Nintendo DSs, but only in pink and with a limited selection of games (Nintendogs, for example). However, the in-store price for the unit is $10 more than at other retailers. Upon asking the sales clerk why this was the case, Rubin was told the “parents just don't know” and buy it anyway for their kids.
Filling Holes
When Rubin left the game industry, he knew it was time to find new holes to fill. “We left for various reasons that were beyond our control. We couldn’t continue making Crash Bandicoot games rationally, so we left and started doing new stuff. And this is a good example of why you stick with it when you succeed, because when you succeed, you’re like, ‘I can do anything!’ And this is what happens to you: You make probably an equally good game, Crash 1, and Jak 1, but you don’t get the hole right again. You don’t fill the appropriate hole that you did with the previous title, and in this case the hole that really wanted to be filled was violent adult action games -- that was Grand Theft Auto.”
Though the Daxter titles sold well, Sony requested more sequels that people didn’t really want. People wanted Grand Theft Auto. From a financial standpoint, Rubin felt there wasn’t anything more in gaming, that is, no more holes to fill.
In his first post-game career project, Rubin created Flektor, social networking site, which featured web-based photo and video editing tools for the users.
“For the first time, I was interested in Myspace. I never had time as a developer. I was playing around with Myspace and kind of became a addicted to it, so I went to their marketing director who’s a friend of mine, and I said, ‘You guys need this online mash-up tool to take video, audio, photos.’ And she [said], ‘We don’t have time.’ So I [said], ‘Fine, we’re going build it and sell it to you.’ And we did, one year and ten days later, and the public number is more than $20 million, so again we managed to find a hole to fill.”
He also tried his hand at being a comic book creator with Iron and the Maiden. “Why did I make a comic book? I think there should be R rated 3D animated movies, I don't know why there aren't. We watch 3D animated R rated games; why wouldn’t movie audiences want the same thing? So I made a comic book as a way to pitch it. Will it work? I don’t know, but that’s the hole I’m trying to fill.”
Rubin also briefly mentioned a possible return to the game industry with “Project X,” a hole in game production, which he hopes to fill (though he did not give any details about Project X might be).
Advice for New Game Developers
Another topic Rubin touched on in his keynote address was how fledgling game developers should go about starting their projects. His advice, essentially, is to minimize the number of people involved.
“Do you love management? If you don't love management -- A lot of people that start independent projects hate management but want to make their own games. [It’s] very hard to do that. Pick something small enough that you’re not managing people. But for the most part if you love what you do, i.e., you're a modeler and you love modeling, you're probably better off being a modeler than being an entrepreneur, because as soon as you start your own thing, you work less on things and you manage more.”
Another tip Rubin had for newcomers to the industry was that they should realize they have value outside the game industry. Unlike NBA players or film directors, whom he cited as examples, game developers can take their skills and go into other businesses.
“Think of Michael Jordan when he tried to play the other sports. He sucked,” said Rubin, referring to Jordan’s short-lived attempt at baseball. “We do have alternatives as technical people in this world, and you'll find when you actually try things -- like the internet, like 3D animated movies if you're an artist -- that there's a huge opportunity out there, and in many cases it’s better money, a better lifestyle, and less challenging.
“You guys could go and do other things, and that’s what creates your value to publishers, or to whomever it is you're working with. You need to realize that. You do have other opportunities out there. It may not be making games, that may be your love, but because of that opportunity you have the ability to walk away.
“The people in the game development business are the best technical people, the best entertainment people, out there, and I say that after being in a couple of these industries, nobody out there competes with the talent in the game industry.”
Albert T. Ferrer is an artist, animator, and freelance game writer in Vancouver.
