You Cannot Manufacture Art

As an artist, writer, and general creative, I know that it takes many iterations to finalize a piece. I know that most of the pieces I create will not be my best work, nor will they find their way into the home of a generous patron or survive the test of time. While I will always strive to improve, make something better, and succeed at my goals – but not everything I produce will stick. That’s just how art is. I’m still thankful for any amount of time I get to spend on it and any person who shows an interest in my work.

As a YouTuber, I know this even more. Every video is callously graded on a scale of 1-10, where 1 is the best performing video within recent time and 10 is the worst. Most of my videos land around 5. Unless you’re producing watered down Mr-Beastified algorithmic slop, it’s rare that a normal human YouTuber just cranks out constant 1/10s. But I’m still grateful that I get to do this as my job, I still find a way to make ends meet, and I still appreciate the viewership I am able to amass.

There’s no guarantees in the creative world. You could tape a banana to a wall and find yourself set for life to make art whenever and wherever you wish one day, or (like so many of our artistic ancestors) your work could not find its place in the world until after you die.

This understanding of the creative process and the paths to success with it are constantly at odds with the video game industry. Once a menagerie of misfits hacking away at fantastical experiences from the heart, the 500 billion dollar industry is ran entirely by money-hungry executives and not by artists or enthusiasts anymore. Nearly every franchise you grew up loving because of it’s compelling characters, great stories, deep worldbuilding, and player freedom are now products in the money machine built with an obligation to make shareholders more and more money (uncountable amounts to the normal human being) instead of making better and better experiences.

Video games are art, and the executives are trying to manufacture it. That’s just not how art works.

Obviously, not every game needs to be fine art. The industry is bigger than it’s ever been (pandemic bubble aside) so there’s room for the low-quality experiences like your Fortnites and Apex Legends and Call of Dutys. But that also means there’s plenty of room for the true works of art, the true masterpieces – and the low-quality cash cows should be what funds those games.

We see this all the time in the film industry. Peter Jackson used his success with the Lord of the Rings franchise to fund his passion project They Shall Not Grow Old (a WWI documentary). The late David Lynch would often take his big successes (such as Blue Velvet) to fund more personal works like Mulholland Drive.

There are far fewer franchises in the film space than video games, however. It would be impossible account the number of multi-game franchises still running today, meanwhile thinking of big film franchises it’s difficult to out-number the individual (or small-scale sequels) films that are made. Films are made as individual projects. Funding is secured via Executive Producers and Producers, along with selling rights to a publisher/distributor and there are definitely big publishing catalogs of films that are taken as a whole.

But (at least from the outside) the funding and structure seems a lot less centralized. Between getting a script greenlit for a film, to directors securing funding for the films they want to make to actors funding additional films or shows as a producer themselves – often there’s many hands in the pot, which allows for a lot more individual creativity to be pursued.

The hyper-capitalism tends to be more tightly wound around specific corporations or objectives. Netflix, for example, transformed from a rental house to a full-blown publisher and churns out constant algorithmically driven “content” in the form of shows and movies. These are all informed by and have their success measured by algorithms and engagement metrics. They’re even demanding that scenes be conveyed in a way to be most easily consumed while multitasking now, too. While it’s easy to argue that some harm is being done to the medium on the whole as a result of Netflix’s cycle, their actions don’t directly impact a film someone else is making with a different source of funding.

Video games, on the other hand, have seen much more drastic consolidation than films and any recognizable franchise is under the umbrella of a horrible megacorp of some sort. And megacorps don’t understand art. And megacorps can’t be happy with an “okay” level of success.

It turns out that the latest Dragon Age entry, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, only sold 1.5 million copies. (Sold? The quote specifically says “engaged approximately 1.5 million players during the quarter” but describing a singleplayer game’s performance with “engagement” is creepy and unproductive here.) This is 50% lower than the company’s expectations and will likely have significant repercussions for the already-struggling BioWare development studio and the Dragon Age franchise on the whole.

Reality check time: Most game developers could only dream of having their games sell 1.5 million copies. That’s an insane number, it’s hard to imagine. Anyone who makes any creative work would love to have that many people be exposed to it.

Sure, it’s not the most popular entry in the franchise, nor the most popular game in EA’s catalog – but does that matter? Yes you need to keep an eye on trends with your work’s performance in any metrics-driven world – but as I said at the start: Not every work of art can be a masterpiece or your best work. That applies to games, too.

For a corporation like EA, that kind of sentiment just cannot exist. This is compounded with the fact that there was a 10-year gap between this entry and the last Dragon Age game (Inquisition), which always leads to unrealistic expectations for both the publisher and fans.

If we weren’t hinging our bets on 10 year development cycles for games, wherein the trends at the start of development inherently cannot be around by time the game releases, having the occasional “not the best” game wouldn’t be a big deal. Even for fans, it’s a lot easier to forgive a miss when we’re getting hits far more frequently.

BioWare really wanted everyone to think Veilguard was a “Return to Form” for the studio. They had nearly every launch review say it, so it must be true. But the reality is: That’s impossible. There cannot be a return to form for a studio no longer comprised of its original staff or a game franchise that releases under entirely different circumstances. Everything surrounding the development and release of Dragon Age: Origins – with BioWare hot off their Star Wars success and Mass Effect being an actual masterpiece – is different compared to Veilguard. Different studio, different relationship with the publisher, different expectations, and different industry. There’s no going back.

But we still could have gotten a good game. While I’ve not yet played it (but I will!) and I typically recommend refraining from parroting others’ opinions on games you haven’t yet played – one of the most common criticisms I’ve seen of the game is simply that it tries too hard to remind you that it’s a Dragon Age game from BioWare, forreals this time, and doesn’t trust itself to convey that through a good, traditional Dragon Age game – nor trust the player to take it that way.

It's a manufactured art piece. It took something you loved and tried to manufacture more of it, losing what made it special along the way.

You cannot manufacture art.

But you also have to have room for some misses alongside your greatest hits.