Death to the Games Industry - Part II

hapwned writes "Following up on Greg Costikyan's first part of his article from last week, The Escapist goes for round 2 vs the Game Industry. Costikyna goes on to explain what they should do instead: 'One thing developers can try to do - and should do, if they can - is to take over that first additional piece of the value chain. They should try to fund their own development. If you can fund your own development, you get some big advantages. First, you can negotiate a higher royalty rate with the publisher, because they have less capital at risk. Second, you are not utterly at the publisher's mercy during the development process; if the publisher-side producer wants you to do something really stupid (and horror stories abound), you can tell him to screw off. And third,you can retain ownership of your own IP, so if you build a successful franchise, you (rather than the publisher) reaps the benefit.'"

Comments

New Sports Games...

[BrookHarty]

Does EA own the rights to every sports franchise? Seems they have a good lock on all major sports.

Cryptic Studios Comes to Mind

[Bellum Aeternus]

This is exactly what Cryptic Studios did with their development of City of Heroes. Their CEO funded the entire thing right up to thr point of their deal with NCsoft America. Seems they have (one of?) the best deal[s] of any MMO developer out there.

Not bad for their first game.