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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."
well, it seems to be working pretty well for valve. best of lucks guys!
sometimes, i wonder if i'm the only conservative on teh intarweb. ah well, back to mah hogs and warmongerin'....
What good is self-publishing when EA will just buy you in a couple years if you get big/good enough?
The promise of the internet is that we all become publishers (if we choose)...from news, blogs, games, music, and movies....this is the "New Economy". The "Old Economy" is dominated by the gatekeepers, the middlemen--the ones that own the means of distribution, starting with railroads.
Let freedom ring!
"You have the option of insanity. I do not. And that makes me crazy!" - Brian to Angela, My So-Called Life
Mark grabbed his substantial belly with both hands. Since his girlfriend Janey left for college, he'd promised himself to take ten pounds off his 260-pound frame, but it wasn't going so well. In fact, he'd actually put on weight since she left. He missed her, and in her absence found himself eating lots of "comfort food." He now struggled to button his jeans under his gut; he promised himself to go on a diet and lose some weight before he visited Janey at school.
Meanwhile, Janey sighed and looked at a picture of Mark on her bulletin board. How handsome he was, with a head of thick brown hair, intelligent eyes, and a tall frame. And he carried his weight so well, with a delicious belly and the beginnings of a double chin. At 260 pounds, he wasn't a small guy, but she still wished he were bigger, maybe 300...350...did she dare to dream of more?
She'd never told him how much she wanted him to put on even more weight, but she'd tried to get the message across. She gushed over how much she loved his body. She stroked his belly during lovemaking, saying how hot it was. At meals, she'd subtly encourage him to eat more: "Oh, you can't be full *yet*!" She'd say, urging him to clean his plate, or "I bet you can eat a *few* more," with a challenging glint in her eye. She'd talk about her favorite fat actors, emphasizing their sexiness. But he either didn't believe her, or didn't want to gain weight. She tried to give up the dream, but it never disappeared entirely.
Looking at the picture of Mark, Janey had an idea. She scanned it into her computer, then signed online. She found one of her favorite webpages, a gallery of pictures of enormously fat men. She downloaded a favorite shot into her photo program, of a man holding up his shirt to reveal his huge breasts, giant stomach, and love handles. She took the head from the Mark picture, and put it on the fat body. She made Mark's face more jowled, and added a third chin. There!
Janey surveyed the results, and felt herself grow warm. She'd done a good job, and it actually looked like her boyfriend had gained at least a hundred pounds. The idea of making love to *this* Mark, his blubber bouncing against her, made her incredibly hot. She masturbated right then and there, imagining how his rolls of fat would feel under her hands. She put the picture up as the wallpaper on her computer, so she could look at it anytime. Janey could hardly wait for Mark's visit in a couple weeks.
On the day he was to visit, Mark stepped on the scale, wincing. Every time he'd tried to diet, it had only made him hungrier, and his consumption of junk food had actually increased. He looked at the scale and groaned: 275. Great. She was going to take one look at his fat ass and lose all interest. Half his clothes didn't fit anymore, and the rest were straining at the seams. And they'd only been apart for two months!
Discouraged, Mark went into his bedroom and tore open a bag of chips. He munched away, and wondered what to do. He thought about his girlfriend, and it occurred to him that maybe she wouldn't notice. She'd put up with his extra poundage before, and sometimes he even thought...she *liked* it. But no, that's silly. How could she, he thought, unbuttoning his tight khakis for comfort. He reached for more chips, to find that he'd finished the bag. Oops, he thought, guiltily hiding the chip bag in the garbage.
Janey couldn't wait for Mark to get there. She kept looking out the window for his cab from the airport. She'd cleaned her room and stocked it with all sorts of goodies, and was wearing her prettiest lingerie under her sexiest dress. Finally, she saw him pull up, and ran to the door. "Sweetie!" She shouted, throwing her arms around him. "Come in, come in!"
Mark paid the cabbie and they went inside, climbing the stairs to her room. Janey noticed that Mark was breathing pretty hard just from walking up the stairs, which excited her. Maybe he'd gotten more sedentary after she left.
As the door closed, he grabbed her and kissed her. "Oh, I've
Go public, rake in every kind of startup money, shell out some mainstream games and wait for the buy out. Sell them the brand and head off with the dough.
Then take the buy out money and go for #1. And THEN start to make the games you like!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
For the last over a decade, my company has done quite well for itself self-publishing our role-playing games. (Spiderweb Software, http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/ If you can pull it off, it's a great way to make a living. With electronic distribution and a huge profit margin, you don't have to sell too too many copies of your game to buy a house.
The problem is getting off the ground. Once you write your great game (oh, and it does have to be great), you have to get that first group of people to notice you. Then, hopefully, this core group will turn, through word-of-mouth, into an actual audience.
Once that very difficult thing is accomplished, you, like me, can live your basement-dwelling dream life.
Best of luck to Gamelab!
- Jeff Vogel
Spiderweb Software
Fantasy RPGs for Mac and Windows.
http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com
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)
We almost had a major publisher for A Tale in the Desert. They projected around 30,000 subscribers. Now, 3 years after release, the actual amount of money we put in our pockets each month is just a bit less with ~1300 subscribers than we would have made with a large publisher at 30,000.
;)
And, no bureaucracy, no suits second-guessing me, and I can try any crazy thing in the game that I want. My advice: If you can self-publish, do it. If you can't, find a way that you can
"As for Valve, steam would be great if it were open source, cross platform, and DRM free....it's a shame no one's came up with an alternative yet..."
It's called P2P. Copyright holders just love it.
It's worked well for Valve, and don't forget all the horrible things you hear about Publishers. Rushing the unfinished game, Stuff like that whole StarForce fiasco to "Protect their investment", etc. It'd be stupid to say Publishers are all Evil, but I think that Self-Publishing is a very working model.
At Mekensleepwe're thinking exactly the same way. We wanted to work on persistent, social, online games. And we wanted to release it all as Free Software. Unsurprisingly, publishers were not in a hurry to follow us there (not that I cared) and, from my previous experience, I had learned about the dangers of vulture capital.
So we decided that working on a small scale product was the way to go. With a little luck, it will provide a sustainable stream of revenues and at a minimum, it got us further along on the technological side of things.
So far, things are looking good.
Indeed, the futur looks rosy for independent, self published, developpers. If the Korean and Chinese markets are any indication, there will be some massive successes. And for the less successful - those who won't have enough pull to attract players by themselves - online distribution structures like Manifesto Games will help. Also in-game advertising seems about to become a big trend, at least for a certain type of games. I'm not saying it's a good (or bad) thing for gaming, only that smart indy developpers will take advantage of it.
To sum it up, if you can afford it and you know were you're going, I highly recommend self-publishing.
`It's an extreme sport.
OK first of all, there's a little bit of naivety going on here. Finding independant investors to fund a game's developement does NOT necessarily mean more creative freedom. Any smart investor will want facts and figures to back up any claims on potential ROI (return on investment). That means, ultimately, unproven concepts will be a hard sell unless you're a REALLY, really good salesman (or con artist!).
That means that generally, the game ideas that will get most investment will still be "proven" genres. As always risk is risk. Doesn't matter who the money is coming from, risk is always a deciding factor when large sums of money are involved.
It's easier to sell someone on "the next Bejeweled" than with "it's not like any other game ever made".