With the videogame industry becoming more of an entertainment outlet than ever before, many developers from countries outside of the US and Japan are starting to get into the business. EA Partners’ Nick Button-Brown recently elaborated that Europe is where the innovation comes from:
"There’s more creativity in Europe than there is in America. The Americans are much more refined in their processes, it’s all about the money. There are less chances taken and there is more money being thrown at developers in the US.
"Taking less chances means there’s less failures, but I can’t see the US having ever come up with Grand Theft Auto. There are a lot of really good European developers and they all bring slightly different things and there are big cultural differences as well, that they are willing to exploit,"
Later on he added that the cultural diversity of Europe gives depth to their creative ideas, thus promoting innovation through progression.
"So many developers are multinational. Go to Crytek and they have 27 national languages there. And that’s interesting because they are bringing in so many different areas and ideas to the studio, particularly with the influx of Eastern Europe – you’re getting such a wide range of experiences to pick from.
"We like that multiculturalism. What we’re getting now are more worldwide titles. We used to have the German industry that produced German titles, the UK would deliver tongue-in-cheek games, but now it’s become much more globalised and what we are seeing is European titles that can sell worldwide,"
Finally, he mentioned that Europe is a breeding ground for larger publishers to buy out, which creates increased attention in the European sector.
"There’s still a lot of good European developers out there, they are being bought up with some frequency but that means there’s room for new ones to come along as well," he said.
"EA doesn’t normally pick up complete start-up developers because it’s quite risky, but Crytek is a good example. We signed them up as they finished off Far Cry and they’d done the hard work of setting up the company and we felt they were ready to deliver something big."
It’s very amusing to find that Electronic Arts, a primarily US-based company, talking about US game makers merely thinking about profit and not innovation. Either way, Europe’s videogame innovation is great for consumers from all areas, even Japan.
Source: Games Industry Biz