GDC - The Importance of Self-Publishing

Eric Zimmerman, head of the Gamelab development project, has announced on the eve of the Game Developer's Conference that they're moving to a self-published format. From the article: "I think we have something else to offer ... and we've decided that it's hard finding partners that share this kind of vision and that want to take the risks that we're talking about to really create new sorts of games. And additionally we're working in a field right now of online games with a downloadable distribution model, which means that we can self-publish. It's relatively straightforward for a small company to publish."

Comments

Re:Duh Duh Duh...Another One Buys the Dust

[Nataku564]

Two possibilities to avoid buyout.

#1 : Dont go public. This does deprive you of initial startup money, but leaves you free to do whatever you want.

#2 : Go public, but dont relinquish the majority of shares. You lose some initial revenue, but you are safe from buyout.

I prefer 1, personally.

Well Garage Games is an example of a blending

[Rifter13]

Self Publishing isn't always easy, but Garage Games seems to have hit upon a good balance. They release game engines as a sandbox for developers, let them create great games, and then help the developers distribute the game. Some of the top developers are showing up on Xbox Live, and before that were quite successive. (Marble Blast, Dark Horizons: Lore, Tube Twist, Orbz are a few)

Re:Thi is the promise of the internet

[Metaphorically]

The bitter truth may be that there's growing restrictions by huge companies learning that they can squeeze a few more bucks out of all the participants, but that's not a good excuse to sit back and do nothing. If you have a dream of making a game, have a dream of publishing yourself or have a dream of spreading your maniac manifesto, the best time was four years ago. The second best time is today. Last time I checked you can still set up a site with shared hosting for less than 10 bucks a month and put up a pretty wide range of whatever the hell you want with little or no hassle.

If you want to publish games and the web is your medium then there's plenty of time before that door slams shut. Get off your ass and get to work. That's what I'm going to do when I'm done complaining here. You need some help getting started? My vehicle is SVG and DHTML, there are lots of things you can build with free open source tools. Some quick examples: Freecell, Connect 4, and a simple templated puzzle example.