Continental Differences

Here I go again with my skewed opinions. Now I would like to point out the almost imaginary difference between the business practices of American (ok, ok, mainly Electronic Arts, I really can’t pull Acclaim into this) and European game companies. The hypothesis goes like follows: American companies pay more attention to business management like obtaining copyrights and keeping very tight financial control. European companies are more product oriented and focus on making games with a bit more originality as a flavor.

This has resulted into a situation, in which the American game companies are in fine shape and shopping around for suitable additions to their empires. European companies are a sorrier story. Financials of many European companies are less solid and product palette has variegated assortment of gems and stones.

European companies have tried to create unique products from scratch by fusing different media channels like TV, games and books, results vary, but the attempt is there to create original content. American companies have tried to secure the same multi channel results by resorting into bought copyright and following the pattern of mixing standard game ingredients into the franchised game world.

Clearly the American mix is working better and every time that European company has bought rights of any famous content franchise, they have managed to get rather good results. There is just something about that ready audience awareness that brings the cash into the box. Should everybody now rush to get as much content as possible? To me, it seems like most of the valuable and easy-to-convert rights have already been bought. Now it could be time to do something else, like joint effort from moviemakers, writers and game studios to simultaneously create content that supports the whole. That would be totally different approach, where the content in different medias would support the story from different angles and take it forward, instead of just playing the same story in different format.