Take Two Examples

The more distracted your company is with creating a video game, the better the game will be. The more distracted your company is with money and shareholders, even your quality with be diminished.

I feel, with utter certainty, that this is a rule that is seldom seen. When shareholders are kept at arm’s length in defense of the artist, you begin to see true art take form in the way of perfection.

Take 2 cases.

The first is the Nintendo 64. The big N’s decision to remain cartridge-based has been called stunning, and perhaps their largest failure. 3rd party companies fled en masse towards larger disc space and admittedly better 3 dimensional implementation and support.

And what did Nintendo’s core teams crank out? Masterpieces.

Ones like Mario 64, which sets a benchmark for quality that, despite all efforts including their own, is brought up in every comparison.

Another was Ocarina of Time, which was a world as fully formed as you could get, and few which any game has the chutzpah or design qualities to be as subtly beautiful. Every game before and since is compared to this one by the legitimate press.

It took a long time to make that game, and the release date always seemed out of reach. But quality, gameplay quality, that’s what they wanted and would only deliver. Nothing else.

It took an IGN 10.00 rating.

Next we have Grand Theft Auto IV. For the uninformed, Take Two is a spectacularly retarded business. Their core revenue streams are few and far between, and their gaming experiments flawed both financially and in execution.

The heads of Take Two are resisting an attempt by Electronic Arts to buy it, which is an important thing to its major investors. EA is offering more for Take Two than it is worth, according to essentially every major analysis.

But they want to discuss if after the game. Whether that’s protracted arrogance, the fiscal insolvency of parent Take Two pales in comparison to the IGN 10 rating that Rockstar’s gem has just received.

Obsession wins in game design. Sacrifice of common business practice wins in game design.

It’s an important lesson, one Sega doesn’t learn, that Squenix and Sony and sometimes Nintendo refuse to learn. But it produces the bulk of critical and financial success.

The real question is when will the industry realize that.