Riding the Interactive New Wave

WiiWare.  PlayStation Network.  Xbox Live Arcade.

Welcome to the “New Wave” era of video games.  For all it’s technological advancements, on a progressive level the interactive industry is actually keeping about the same pace as America’s beloved film industry.  There’s even a chance we may be able make an adequate prediction on the future of video games based on this sometimes striking alignment.

In the years following Citizen Kane, film may have flourished, but filmmakers themselves were still incredibly restricted by the reach of big-name studios.  For it was the norm for studios like Paramount, who not only funded the majority of early films, to own the very theaters in which their movies were shown.

The result was simple but infuriating; if filmmakers wanted anyone to see (let alone fund) their work, they had no choice but to go through one of the big-name studios.  And for their part, all these companies wanted from their auteurs were the same tried and true genres – the lavish Hollywood musical, the inspirational historical epic, the predictable romantic thriller.  These artists were stuck in an endless loop commonly referred to as the “studio system.”  This paradigm would continue for seven years after Kane, until the courts finally intervened and ordered Hollywood studios to eliminate their anti-competitive practices in 1948.

This practice strikingly mirrors the console model of today – where the Big 3 regulate and approve what is available for use on their platforms.  In the 80’s, Nintendo of America went so far as to regulate the number of games allowed by each outside publisher (5 per year), without enforcing any such restrictions upon themselves.  Nintendo even faced their own antitrust inquiry in 1989 over claims of possible monopolization.  Talk about anti-competitive practices.

Nearly a decade after the Paramount decision, independent filmmakers were starting to gain momentum, thanks to this newly-leveled playing field.  This period of adjustment would eventually lead to the onset of the “American New Wave,” an age of low-budget, non-traditional cinema kicked-started by 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde.

Beyond the convention-shattering influence of the movie Bonnie and Clyde, was its revolutionary new business model.  Parent studio Warner Bros. had such little faith in the project they offered producer / actor Warren Beatty 40% of the picture’s gross, eschewing the minimal fee they usually offered.  The gamble was an enormous success for Beatty, and a financial blunder for the studio.  Bonnie and Clyde went on to gross $70 million worldwide, $28 million of which went into Beatty’s pocket.  And remember, this was the 1960’s folks – that’s like, close to a billion dollars in today’s money.

Going back to the relatively new digital storefronts of WiiWare, PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade, we can again begin to see a parallel development taking place.  Indie interactive developers, once resigned to the sidelines of the industry, are now on the receiving end of a vigorous courtship.  According to IGN, both Nintendo and Microsoft split earnings quite favorably with independent developers, with some seeing as much as 65% of the returns.  That’s a far cry from the lardaceous Nintendo of the 80’s who hoarded a bulk of that freshly baked video game pie for themselves.

But the biggest impact of the American New Wave was its upheaval of the stale genre styles studios had previously demanded from filmmakers.  The New Wave proved that there was a market for unconventional, offbeat films such as The Graduate and the 1969 Oscar winner for best picture, Midnight Cowboy.

Today’s gaming landscape faces a similarly narrow focus from big studios like Activision and EA.  They even have their own versions of the musical (Guitar Hero, Rock Band) and the historical epic (Call of Duty, Medal of Honor), with both beginning to show their age as of late.  And all signs point to 2010 being more of the same, as most of these franchises will be seeing their umpteenth sequels.  (Why Rock Band 3?  Why?)

So, even though there has yet to be an indie game that has reached the mainstream success of a Halo or a Beatles: Rock Band, doesn’t mean it’s too far off.  There’s a reason why Microsoft and the others are going out of their way to attract the current indie all-stars like 2D Boy and Behemoth.  Maybe it’s something the interactive industry learned from Warners Bonnie folly.  Or perhaps studios may just be coming to the realization they can’t sustain an audience on musicals and WWII epics alone.

We’re only on the cusp of the Interactive New Wave, and I guarantee in the next 3-5 years we will see something that will change the game much in the same way Easy Rider and The Graduate changed cinema.

So at last, enough of this Citizen Kane talk; where’s our Midnight Cowboy?

Images courtesy of Getty Images and Wikipedia (1), (2), (3)