E3 takes on a very international flavor

Keeping costs down
With video game development an increasingly expensive venture, domestic publishers are looking overseas for talented (and cheaper) game programmers and artists.

"Our aim towards reality or hyperreality is putting pressure on the size of teams and the amount of money you need to spend on making games," said Scott Steinberg, vice president of entertainment marketing at Sega. "The big titles with a more epic scale are going to cost more."

A typical Triple-A title, such as a "Madden" or "Halo," costs anywhere from $3 million to $10 million to make. Games for the next generation of consoles are expected cost double that.

That reality is one of the reasons the Taiwanese government sponsored a booth at E3 this year.

Slide show   Games galore Images from the E3 video game show in Los Angeles.

"One of the things we’re trying to do at E3 is to get game publishers to outsource," said Bill Wagner, a director of business development for Taiwan’s Information Integration Inc.

Wagner’s company was one of several government-funded companies that put Taiwan’s IT industry on the map in the 1980s. Now the company, again with government subsidies, is trying to convince U.S. publishers to look to Taiwan's game development industry as a place to send work.

"The reality on the whole protectionist question," said Wagner, "is that I don’t think there are enough people in the U.S. [to create the games] for the next generation [consoles]. The next generation is going to demand so much that they will need to look elsewhere. The bar is going to get set higher and higher."

Seeking a bigger audience
Some foreign game companies, on the other hand, are mainly interested in getting their own games to a wider audience.

"In former times we concentrated on the German speaking market, but now we’re beginning to license games worldwide" said Christopher Kellner, a public relations manager for Germany’s DTP Entertainment.

FREE VIDEO What's hot at E3 May 18: MSNBC's Tom Loftus reports from the video game expo. MSNBC

DTP is showing off "Tony Tough 2" at E3. The game, a sequel to an adventure game which won moderate praise in the U.S. gaming press, was developed not just by Germans, but by people based in Italy, Ukraine and Brazil.

"We look for development teams anywhere we can find them," Kellner said.

Webzen, a major force in the online role-playing market in Asia, is on target to release a major multiplayer title in the U.S. next year. The South Korean company has offices in several countries, including, as of 2005, the United States. It is also co-developing another title, "All Points Bulletin," with the Scotland-based game studio that created "Grand Theft Auto."

Kimok Park, Webzen's strategy officer, said that Asia's success in online gaming has triggered the interest of Western publishers. At the same time, the next generation of consoles, with their focus on online and multiplayer gaming, is motivating more Asian developers to try their hand at the Western market.

"Now that the cultural barrier between the East and the West is diminishing in online gaming, the online games business has become a global industry," Park said.

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