Recent mergers and acquisitions have been big news in the entertainment industry. Electronic Arts recently announced its intentions to buy Take-Two Interactive on the website http://www.eatake2.com/. In 2007 EA acquired the company that owns the lauded BioWare and Pandemic Studios. Activision and Blizzard just had that record-setting merger at the end of last year.
In the movie world DreamWorks SKG, the independent brainchild of Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen, was acquired by Viacom in 2006. Miramax had been operating as the biggest independent movie studio but was actually owned by Disney, and in 2005 Disney took full control. Increasingly we are seeing independent movie and game studios snapped up by the major ones and brought into the fold. How is this going to affect our entertainment? Are high risk movies and games going to still be made? Will movies like Lord of the Rings, Kill Bill, and Chicago still come out? Will all the mergers in the videogame world bring gamers less choice in which games to play?
It’s doubtful we’ll be seeing very many high risk movies in the near future. Most of the major studios do have one or two boutique labels for their indie films, but those movies are all low budget affairs. Would Scorsese be able to get studio backing for Gangs of New York these days? I do not think so; it would be too big a budget for a movie that would not break box office records. Would Moulin Rouge or Chicago be made? No, musicals just do not make enough money back these days and are much too costly.
Is this even a problem? Indie movies like Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, and Napoleon Dynamite are still being made and are finding more success than ever. That might be a good development in the creation of all these boutique labels. But our major big-budget movies are being made more and more for profit above originality. Look at the big movies of ’07: Shrek the 3rd, the Bourne Ultimatum, Spiderman 3, Harry Potter 5, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Many of these movies are good movies that definitely have their merits but where are the new ideas? Where is the next Godfather saga, or next Lawrence of Arabia? Or even Lord of the Rings adaption? Those movies were epic enough in scope to need big budgets and major studio backing. But their artistic visions came from the director. They were huge risks that paid off in the end; risks that a major studio probably would not take today and an independent studio could not afford.
The Activision/Blizzard merger and the EA takeover of Take-Two means that two companies are going to be producing the majority of games we will be playing in the near future. There is going to be less competition in the videogame world, and we have already seen that quality suffers without competition. EA bought the exclusive NFL license a few years ago and many think that the Madden series has been declining in the subsequent years. With no other licensed American football game on the market, no one is pushing EA to continue to improve. If EA acquires Take-Two it will also acquire 2K sports – Take-Two’s sport gaming division and EA’s main competition in the sports videogame market. Is EA going to feel the need to continue its NBA, NCAA, and NHL games when 2K is no longer releasing theirs? No, they will probably just worry about their bottom line.
Many sites and people have claimed that 2007 was a great year in gaming and that the best games of 2007 brought new ideas and innovations we have not seen in a while. Call of Duty 4, Portal, Mass Effect, BioShock, and Rock Band were all praised not only for their overall quality but for their innovations to storytelling or gameplay. Will Activision/Blizzard and the new massive EA play it safer than they did before? If BioWare had developed Mass Effect under the EA umbrella would they have been forced to change it to Knights of the Old Republic 3? Would EA have allowed the dark tone and storyline of BioShock or would they have insisted on changing the game to make it more palatable to the mainstream? These are things that are impossible to say right now, we just have to see how EA handles BioWare, Pandemic, and possibly Take-Two.
Critics accuse both Activision and EA of iterating their series too often. There have been too many Guitar Heroes and Tony Hawk’s already some say. And EA releases its sports franchises every year without fail, sometimes with minimal updates. Is the game release calendar going to be flooded with sequels just like the movie release calendar is? Already the majority of the big games coming out this year are sequels or new versions of old IPs. Rainbow Six Vegas 2, the next Madden, Mario Kart Wii, Ninja Gaiden 2, Fable 2, Street Fighter IV, and more. BioShock 2 was recently announced. Are we going to see games made into series that shouldn’t be? Are great game experiences going to be ruined by their sequels like the first Matrix movie was?
If EA does takeover Take-Two,that will not be a good thing. I think we will see a drop in quality in sports games and possibly in some other games as well. The big budgets for games will go to sequels and we will see less and less new ideas implemented in full-fledged retail games.
There is still hope. The Wii’s WiiWare channel, the 360’s XBLA, and the Ps3’s PSN are all (or will be) great places for indie developers to start from. Developers who find success there may then be able to make more full-featured console games with minimal interference. The boutique movie studios are making a lot of great indies and getting them more exposure than ever. And let us not forget that most of the major game studios, including EA, started out as small ones.
How did EA get so big in the first place? By making good games, and the major film studios are still around in large part for making successful movies. And EA and other major videogame developers are still taking risks. Boom Blox, Little Big Planet, Wii Fit, and Spore are all major releases coming up soon from major game studios. Each of them offers new ideas in gaming; none of them are sure-fit hits. Visionary directors such Martin Scorsese and Baz Luhrmann are still able to make their movies with major studio backing.
Things might get bad, boring, and bland for a while. Everything we see or play may have a ‘2’ or ‘3’ in it. But talented people who believe in themselves and their vision enough have often figured out how to get their grand ideas on the big screen or on a console. Look at Terry Gilliam’s Brazil as an example. Or how Robert Rodriguez has nearly avoided Hollywood altogether. Eventually things will even out, and will finally get to see Peter Jackson’s the Hobbit, or play through Ken Levine’s (BioShock game designer) next immersive world.