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Tara Reid And The Future Of Game Development
Thanks to GameSpy for its article covering Naughty Dog's president Jason Rubin discussing why gaming needs to do more for its talent. Rubin explained the strange title of his lecture by referencing to Sony's E3 2003 party: "After several calls, lots of hassle, waiting in a long line, and a trip through the metal detector, Rubin was able to get in. Meanwhile, Hollywood darling Tara Reid simply strolled into the party. This got Rubin thinking about how much money and attention publishers garnish celebrities with. By contrast, the business does a really poor job of promoting its own talent." He went on to note: "Very rarely do you see a developer's name on the box, and sometimes you don't even see the developer's logo", and urged a change of attitude: "Developers should look at publishers as people they hire to sell the game they made."
Needless to say it was super-embarrasing to be seen as a hanger-on at an event that is supposedly in my honor.
The business is there for itself, no one else. Those people want to hang with rockstars/game designers because it makes them feel better about themselves and their lack of creative talent. They're 9-5ers at heart, employees with an employee mentality, but still want a cool rock n' roll job. Who the creative folks they're hangin with/sucking off of are is the most unimportant part to these parasites (hence, no one bothering to put me on the guestlist), we're just a tool for them to get the valuable product they need.
In the record businiess record producers and musicians used to run labels, now it's cut-throat businessmen. I remember when folks like Richard Gariott and Ken Williams *made* the games they sold....
It's really sad that the publisher gets all the glory
But the publishers are usually risking more money and reputation then the developers. Publishers have spent many years and millions of dollars to build up their reputation and their supply channels. It is usually not possible for a small to medium size game development company to support a staff of sales people who can get the games on the store shelfs, marking people who will make a successful ad campaign along with paying for developers to write the game. As with any entertainment business, the gatekeepers, the ones who can get products to the people and the ones you can get people to want the product are the ones who are going to profit the most.
Why not go back to the individual programmers? If you say the developers should be treated like authors are in the book world, the effect will be that developers' names will get bought up, programmers will get fired, and crap will be paraded around just to capitalize on the name.
If you're going to go to the actual content, use nintendo or square's 'dream team' concepts -- they *always* used to tout the people who worked on the game, and each had their own individual feel.
Read jack phelps dot net
Good companies know that "marketing is everything" (no I'm not in marketing, I'm a developer too), because you could have the best product in the world, but if noone's shouting from the rooftops you're going to get buried by your competition who is. VHS vs. Betamax comes to mind, as does BeOS, OS/2, and many other superior, dead products.
In this case the publisher is the marketer. Without the publisher the games don't get sold. If the developer wants to put his name on his own box and try to develop "the channel", more power to him. But if he wants to succeed, he'll swallow his pride and let the marketing people call the shots.
He can still throw in the Easter eggs with his name, after all.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.