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Are Game Publishers a Necessary Evil, Or Just Necessary?
An editorial at GameSetWatch examines whether game publishers really deserve all the flak they get from gamers and developers alike. While some questionable decisions can certainly be laid at their feet, they're also responsible for making a lot of good game projects happen. Quoting:
"The trouble comes when the money and the creativity appear to be at odds. ... Developers and publishers often have a curious relationship. The best analogy I can think of is that of parent and child. The publisher or parent thinks it knows best, because it's been there before (shipped more games), and because 'it's my money, so you'll live by my rules.' The developer — or child — is rebellious, and thinks it has all the answers. In many ways, it does know more than the parent, and is closer to what's innovative, but maybe hasn't figured out how to hone that energy yet."
In a way, you may or may not need a publisher depending on what you're developing. A lot of the generic titles that the "industry" keeps pumping out require a publisher for marketing such a mediocre game. But then you get the unconventional games whose development is actually hampered by having a publisher breathe down your neck and make games easier for the general public.
Useful but not necessary. Their alignment would appear to be chaotic/neutral. Rolling aggainst DEX for an FP...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Films, books, music and games all have publishers that push for them to complete for deadlines, yet I've never heard of an artist (painter, sculpter, whatever) pushed for a deadline due to their sponsors money issues, Certainly for public displays marking an event, but they're generally given generous amounts of time in the first place prior to starting.
Maybe someone will burst my bubble and reveal that all artists are pushed by publishers, it's just that we never hear about it, but if not, what is so different about a painting or sculpture as a labour of love than a game or film as the same?
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
A bit easier to answer that question eh? :-)
But seriously, it's clear that publishers lend a degree of expertise to any business, but at some point their contributions may start to be outweighed by their negative influences and or their inability to adapt to a changing industry.
In the games business this balance may be still be in the favour of the publishers since it's a much more technical business than say music publishing... but in the future the balance may tip the other way...
The analogy is completely wrong and misused.
For starters, where's the car?
Ahahaha.
I'll have whatever the writer is smoking.
Just Evil.
Just evil.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
Book publishers edit, ship, manage the printing of, and distribute books. They also balance the riskiness of publishing each individual book across their portfolio of books. In the same way, movie studios are good at financing and distribution, but a big part of what they do is invest in multiple pictures, so that even if one movie bombs there are always others.
Something -- regardless of what it's called -- has to be able to hold a portfolio of games. To make informed investments, that entity is probably going to have to understand the industry. That knowledge is likely to be valuable and applicable high-level marketing and strategy decisions, and *rightly or wrongly* the investment will only be made if that knowledge can be applied, or if the investor has some power of the developers.
Workers in other very capital-intensive creative industries -- film and television, for example -- tend to be stratified into two economic classes. People in the upper classes eventually get money and are then able to call the shots. There's no reason why the same thing can't happen in gaming. But money will, for the most part, determine who has the power.
If EA was a parent, I think I'd rather be an orphan.
...sometimes a good thing and sometimes a bad thing. Publishers can obtain and manage capital, and if they deal fairly and wisely with the devs they fund it's a good thing.
If, on the other hand, we have something like Activision/Kotick, well, that's pretty indefensible.
A publishing house that has degenerated to the point where it cares exclusively for ensuring its own well-being is an evil one. There has to be a symbiotic relationship, not a lethal parasitic one.
Publishers can do good and bad, and have done both. Likewise developers can do well one their own, or poorly. Overall I'd say publishers are useful.
One of the biggest things they do is provide resources to get games developed that otherwise might not be able to be made. If you are a small games studio, you probably don't have the money to work on a large scale title for a couple years with no money coming in, and additionally buy other things you may need (like if you need to hire an outside composer, because you don't have one). Well, a publisher can provide that. You sell them your idea, they pony up the money for you to make it a reality.
Another useful thing they do is setting deadlines. If they are stupid about it sure it can be a problem, but when it gets down to it this needs to be done. You can't work on a game forever. Technology changes, you have to get it out in a reasonable timeline. While developers might get all wrapped up in their project and just want it to go on forever, publishers can be more objective and set goals. A game that isn't everything you want, but it fun and actually on the market is much better than a "perfect" game that never exists.
Also even if a game studio totally develops a game in house, self funded and everything, they may choose to sell it to a publisher. Reason is that when a game is released there is still stuff to be done. It has to be marketed, it has to be distributed, etc. A game studio doesn't always have the staff/resources for that, so they hand it off to someone else.
An example of a situation where a publisher was really needed was Duke Nukem Forever. While it technically had a publisher (Take Two), they weren't in the typical arrangement of funding it. As such 3D Realms could basically do what they pleased, they were footing the bill. What happened was a decade of unfocused running around and now a canceled game because they ran out of money.
Now an example where a game was fine without a publisher would be Galactic Civilizations 2. Stardock decided that since they'd been screwed over by a publisher on GC1, they'd just self publish. The game came out in a reasonable amount of time, with a low budget, and sold well on account of being a rocking title.
Overall, publishers are probalby useful. In part just because it creates something of a division between the creative and business sides of a game. You'll notice that even large integrated game houses often function in the developer/publisher setting. EA owns a lot of game companies, and if they wanted to they could simply make it all "EA". They would be the developers, publishers, and so on. However they don't seem to do that. They have separate internal game studios, with their own headquarters and so on that develop the game, and the EA publishes it. Even their EA label stuff is that way. EA Sports is a subsidiary in Vancouver (with it's own CEO and so on), whereas EA itself is in Redwood.
My guess is they do it that way because it works better. The development subsidiaries are just "developers" and just worry about making the game. EA itself then worries about funding, marketing, and so on.
1. Create a bad analogy
2. Get lost in your own analogy because it's so bad
3. Make sure you submit story title as a question
4. YESNOMAYBE
PS: Publishers suck. Haven't you noticed how hard it's getting to find PC games, even in game stores like Gamestop? THEY have decided to shift everything to consoles, because consoles "can't be pirated". They are middlemen that often add little value to software, and yet expect EVERYONE (devs AND consumers) to dance to their tune.
It's the 21st century. If Steam/Gamersgate/whoever can sell me a game online as a download and/or as a boxed set, ANY developer can. This model has worked successfully in the past for independent companies that have chosen to implement it. The cost of the bandwidth is nothing compared to what the publisher is going to screw you with.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Yes
I have an Internet connection. I can rent bandwidth and rent or buy space on a web server. I can broadcast news of my game via social networking, message boards and other free medium. If I can work out how to write games, managing a web server isn't going to be brain surgery.What the fuck do I need a publisher for? I'm not unique.
Publishers fuck off.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I am a game designer, and I don't see any point at all to game "publishers". Everybody can rent a server for a couple of dollars, and offer his game there. People can pay with paypal. It's also really easy to offer other payment options (e.g. with web shops). Then you can pay a marketing company to do advertisements for you. Put videos on YouTube, make a nice game site, maybe some local real-world ads. And a ton of viral marketing.
What more do you need nowadays?
Sure, you can always also put it in web shops, like Amazon, eBay, Steam, etc. But only as a second thought, because it has a big price attached to it most of the time, and you have to check its profitability first.
That's why I never ever go to actual game "publishers". With them, you are very unlikely to be profitable at all. Because they take giant profit margins of the actual retail price. And on top of that complete insult, they also want and assume all kinds of rights, and may actually damage your business. (e.g. Don't be surprised it they loudly think about suing you for still selling the game yourself on other channels!!)
So I call the title of TFA "game publisher FUD". Plain and simple.
If you so much as think about contacting a game publisher, you already have done your first error. Don't make the second one.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Oh oh, you roll'd a fumble...
No.
Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
I can't help but wondering if it is a matter of size. It seems, just from casual observation, that the bigger the publisher gets the less inclined it gets to allow innovation. Actually that seems to be a pattern in most areas, perhaps, as profits and revenues increase, human caution kicks in. More to loose, less to gain so to speak.
Taking risks is only natural for those with either nothing to loose or with enough resources that a loss doesn't matter.
Of course this is just speculation, and I have enough papers to read to bother looking into this. Anyone else?
Since you mentioned trademarks of Dungeons & Dragons(tm)(r)(c)(sm).
Judging by the releases over the last few years, as well as the reaction of the actual developers, Wizards of the Coast in bed with "New Atari" isn't any better as games publishers than others.
Personally, I think they'd sell tickets to Gary Gygax' grave if they thought it could make them money.
But I confess that I like shiny games with nice graphics and an interesting storyline. That's not to say there's no indie games out there like that, but on the whole... (I liked Prey, for e.g.). Perhaps minor gamemakers could form some sort of coalition and flog their wares on a site like DubLi or eBay which both have some kind of global reach?
People have varying degrees of love or hate for Apple, but most will agree that even as frustrating as it can be for developers, the Apple App Store has been wildly successful at promoting, delivering and managing the marketing and updates of iphone and ipod touch applications. They take 30%, but they handle all the mechanics and don't require you to sell your soul. The beauty is that any regular joe developer is on a level playing field against the big boys - the EAs and the Zynga's of the world. Any one can build a game and successfully sell it through the App Store.
Why can't this model be created generically outside of Apple to apply to all other applications, games, books, music, art and anything else that traditionally required a publisher or middleman? Combine the best features of App Store, Zazzle, Amazon, Ebay, and Deviant into one really cool, state of the art website where the owner takes 25% or something and lets the developer/artist/writer call the shots?
The problem is the large publishers like EA and Activision and Atari (many of which also have in-house development shops) and the fact that said large publishers wont publish anything thats in any way new or different.
What the games industry needs is publishers that are similar to what Fox Searchlight and similar studios are to the movie industry (i.e. someone willing to do smaller indy games).
And we need publishers (and retailers) that realize that not all games need graphics that push a GeForce 9800GT to its limits, audio that is best heard on a 8.2 channel speaker setup and 5-year development times.
why WOULDN'T the developers know more than the publishers?
For one thing, the companies that control access to the platform (e.g. Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Valve) prefer to deal with larger, more established companies, and that usually means publishers.
Of course not! The FOSS games available are so wonderful in comparison to the crap the publishers push! They don't even support Linux for the most part! These jerks in the suits don't understand me anyways!
A better analogy is that publishers are like RIAA members, and developers are like artists.
You don't need an RIAA member to get the approval of Philips to put your album on CD; a band can just start selling copies through CDBaby if it comes to that. But you do need a publisher to get the approval of Nintendo or Sony to put your game on a disc or on the console's online store. And without the possibility of a console version, there aren't enough PCs in the TV room to make a viable market for some genres.
I've been developing an indie game in my spare time for a very long time (I don't want to quit my day job). I should have a demo out by the end of the year if all works out; and the full version done some time next Summer. I currently don't have a publisher, or any real ironclad marketing-distribution plan...though the trailer is almost done.
I'd like to delegate the work of marketing and distribution to a publisher so that I can focus on development. I've had no luck in exciting any publisher (big or small) with my game. None of them actually told me *why*, but my guess is it's for one or more of these reasons: I'm an unknown and therefore undesirably high-risk, they prefer the game be 99.999% done before I pitch it, I simply haven't looked hard enough, or the game is just bad and undeserving to be published.
Having said that, I'd like to hear other indie teams share their experiences with publishers (or lack thereof), marketing and distribution. Viral marketing and listening to your player base is a no-brainer; but the rest, to me, is still a mystery that will only be solved through experience and asking many questions.
There is now room for both the small, single-person game shop (as long as that person is a programmer, game designer, artist, editor, and publicist) and the major, high-dollar, high-end company (yes, it costs money to create really big games). That small-game person becomes... the publisher. On a smaller scale, but the same thing a "game publisher" does.
If you're good, you can create a one-author game, put it online, and let people download it for some amount of money. If you want to make money with it, or get more than a few dozen people to buy/play it, you're going to need some sort of promotion. Which means you either need to hire a promotion group, or farm the game out to someone who will promote it (take out ads, convince reviewers to play it, etc). You know - a publisher.
If you put together a team (ten or twelve people), create a hugely successful "big" game, market it, and make a lot of money at it, bad news - YOU'RE the publisher...
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Selling leather handbags on Slashdot? Seems like this AC is a perfect example. If he had a publisher, he'd have known that Slashdot isn't the place for him.
I did some checking and I found out that Wizards is actually a for profit company. Your post made me think for a second that they were a non-profit organization created to help spread D&D around to poor and underprivileged people.
You may want to check that out yourself. You seem to be confused about why Wizards is in business.
This, to me, is where our watered down version of capitalism fails. Now, I'm a capitalist, but I'm not one of these fanatics who call socialism evil. Socialism works if done correctly and capitalism works if done correctly. To admit the biggest failings of both systems, socialist economies tend to be too focused on a limited number of industries which might make it more difficult to withstand tough economic times, while capitalist economies tend to spread too thin among all manner of industry, perhaps creating problems with quality specializations and therefore affecting the overall view of products from those companies.
However, as I said, they both have their place. And they're not mutually exclusive. You can have both in balance or in moderation.
Anyway, pardon me for digressing. Going back to my original point, our version of capitalism in the US is corrupt, plain and simple. And it's not because of over-regulation. Regulation can indeed stifle competition, but it can also encourage it. And this is perpetuated by both major parties. This is a subject where we are firmly entrenched on the Right. There are Democrats who speak out for moderation, but they aren't exactly vehement about it and most of them aren't generally willing to crusade for it.
However - and this is coming from a very unabashed liberal - our "Right" actually fails to achieve or even try to achieve the traditional outlook on economy. The supposed champion of capitalism in this country, the Republican party, has very little interest in promoting true capitalism. On the contrary, they regulate it more than the Democrats do.
Our legislation and tax practices are heavily stacked against the small businessman in favor of the corporations. This is deliberate and our government has every reason to continue this trend, particularly because the poor and the middle class show no interest in challenging it.
Think of this: an entrepreneur might open a small business in a poor area. The owner is local, the employees are local and the business is tailored to the needs of that community. The money made generally stays within that area and if the business is successful, ultimately proves to be a great benefit for the other members of that community. At the same time, it is greatly in the owner's best interest to deal honestly and provide quality service and goods. They simply cannot afford to screw up. And yet, these businesses are the most common targets of the IRS and local agencies like the various health departments. It makes sense for them to. The big businesses not only can hire professional accountants to keep everything kosher, they can keep lawyers on hand to help them cover their butts when the tax laws become inconvenient. The small businessman is prone to mistakes. He or she must do everything themselves unless they have a family member who can figure it out. The health department can find all sorts of reasons to fine a small business. A small business in the food industry can have an industrial sink that's an inch too narrow according to arbitrary city or state guidelines and not only receives a fine, but is given a short amount of time to remedy the situation before the inspector returns and gives them another fine.
But the small businessmen are a feisty bunch. They'll fight through all of this and, with luck and struggle, make it to the point where they can consider making a small profit. The economy of the neighborhood inches up. More potential small businessmen are encouraged to give it a try. The local economy seems on its way to a small renaissance.
And this is what Wal-Mart and McDonald's have been watching and waiting for. Up pops the Megalomart to take advantage of a slightly more affluent community that is still just poor enough to go for the incredible bargains on low quality goods in order to keep making it. The myth that the politicians and pundits have drummed into our head is that these monoliths create more jobs, so the small businesses be
Omnes tuae crepidines sunt nobis sunt. Ascendo tuum!
"Are Game Publishers a Necessary Evil, Or Just Evil?"
I have an Internet connection. I can rent bandwidth and rent or buy space on a web server. I can broadcast news of my game via social networking, message boards and other free medium. If I can work out how to write games, managing a web server isn't going to be brain surgery.What the fuck do I need a publisher for?
A publisher represents you to the console makers, which hold the digital signing keys to the console bootloaders. If you decide to make a multiplayer game PC-exclusive, you have to make it good enough that people will spend either $1,800 for three additional PCs and monitors for players two through four, or $450 for a gaming PC to connect to the TV.
Without commenting on the validity of the analogy, I for one found that as I get older I increasingly realize my parents were usually right.
Music downloads now exceed physical sales
A single at typical encoding settings is 4 MB; even over dial-up, a single takes only 15 minutes to download. Your video game is probably at least 10 times that if not 100. And to distribute a game in a genre not well suited to PCs, you have to gain the approval of a console maker that prefers to work with big publishers instead of small self-publishing developers. Music doesn't have such a gatekeeper.
I guess complex software never gets written by hobbyists
Nintendo flatly refuses to work with hobbyists.
or by sponsored professionals
Video games are more than complex software. They are also complex meshes, textures, audio, etc. I don't see as much evidence of mass collaboration on those as I do on system and business software.
game Publishers are typical corporations. They only think about one thing, money. They don't think about customer satisfaction, quality, enjoyability of the game, or even giving customers what they want. Instead they tell customers what they want.
Many customers want classic games like Bard's Tale and Master of Magic to be remade for modern systems. But when they tried to make a console version of Bard's Tale it was nothing like the C64/Amiga/Atari ST/Mac/Apple //GS etc version and became stupid and they tried to make it a parody of the original game and it failed badly. Master of Magic 2.0 couldn't be made because Atari bought the rights to Simtech who made the game and Microprose owns the Civilization type engine it was based on. So if they do make a game it will be nothing like the original Master of Magic.
If Game Publishers cannot come up with original games, they ought to look at past hits from the 1980's and 1990's and remake them for modern systems. But sometimes that means buying the IP from the original company that made the game and not all original companies are willing to give up their IP much less sell it.
IP often gets in the way of making a good game, and game Publishers suing each other does not make the gamers happy.
Most modern games I am not happy with, and I play old games via DOSBOX or my Amiga emulator and they are more enjoyable than modern games for modern systems. I own the old games, and wouldn't mind buying the new modern versions if they sold for a reasonable price and didn't need a lot of resources and RAM to run.
That is another thing, some modern games need 3G of RAM and a 3.0 Ghz processor or higher to work, why? How bloated can a game be to require that much RAM and that fast a processor?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
We have a wide spectrum. Avant-garde. Commercial. Some artists get large grants from the government or private foundations. Some don't. It's like movie production. Or theater production. Or sculpture. Some things can only be done with the large amount of investment that commercial dollars can provide. Some can be done in the artists free time with little up front investment. Getting the commercial dollars involves having more hands in the mix to make sure the end product is commercially viable.
These complaints go back to ancient Rome.
Oh yeah, you know all those XBLA and WiiWare games must have gone through "an established publisher."
I haven't looked at XBLA closely, but WiiWare development has the same requirement for a dedicated office and a track record on another platform as Wii Game Disc development.
Didn't see any comment mentioning this, but without publishers willing to localize games, small time game companies would not be able to afford to localize games for different regions. I'm thinking publishers like Atlus and NISA here.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Seems like we have a lot of industries are split into creators, publishers, and distributors. Publishers are a middle-man, and they sometimes help, but sometimes get in the way. The biggest problems arise when the publisher is completely unnecessary, so they try to block creators and distributors from meeting. This is the RIAA situation today: Anyone can put their music onto iTunes if they want to, and RIAA companies are becoming marginalized. So they respond by trying to strangle the industry.
When you ask questions like this, you'll get a lot of answers and just spark debate.
The only answers that contain the true form of "answer" are from the subjects in question. Ask the developers. Ask the publishers. What are their answers?
Once you have those, there will be another debate to be had, because there will be liars and truth-tellers. Both will be coming from positive and negative perspectives.
In the end, there isn't an answer. Just hypothesis.
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Large game publisher simply provides one thing. Resources as in money for development and marketing. Other then that they dont really contribute anything to the game itself or the quality. I would much rather see an environment where you have independent game developers who have avenues to distribute their games like Steam as an example, and network to connect good developer projects with investment for capital.