5 ms·

Game Publishers Are Obsolete – So Why Haven’t Developers Ditched Them Yet?

26 points by EddieRingle 15y ago

jblow 15y ago
Why is this on HN? The author of this article does not know anything about the game industry. The reason most developers of $60 games sign with publishers is because they do not have the money to develop games of that size themselves. Whether it is a good idea for them to be doing this is really a different question (and it is complex to answer).
- waterlesscloud 15y ago
  What do games cost to produce these days? Obviously it's quite a range, but what are some benchmarks? What does a low-end iphone game cost to develop? Angry Birds? What would a Modern Warfare clone cost? World of Warcraft? I have no clue what the cost neighborhoods even are for any of those things...
  - joeconway 15y ago
    http://frictionalgames.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/perception-of-000.html http://frictionalgames.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/perception-of-... There's a reasonable introductory answer
  - forrestthewoods 15y ago
    High end Modern Warfare is on the order of 100 million which includes 30 to 40 million in marketing. You're looking at least 40 million in just game development costs for high quality AAA titles. Smaller $15 downloadable titles of high quality vary but are on the order of 3-5 million. Tim Schafer was recently quoted as saying a proper Psychonauts sequel would cost $20 million which sounds about right. Mobile games are a bit of a wild card. High end iOS games can easily break a couple of million dollars. Other mobile games can also be done with a 2 man team living off ramen. The minimum entry fee however is rising every day.
  - hythloday 15y ago
    SW:TOR, which you can compare to WoW, has been estimated to have cost $500 million(sic) to produce[0]. [0] http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01/17/analyst-believes-star-wars-the-old-republic-had-a-500-million/ http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01/17/analyst-believes-sta...
citricsquid 15y ago
> So there’s the trade off, I suppose. Stick with a publisher and gain assurance that your game will see some income for a few days, or go it alone in the hopes that gamers will see your show of faith of publishing independently and buying your game as thanks. Minecraft creator Mojang did this, and it’s earned millions and millions of dollars since the game’s initial release. Not really. Notch built the game alone and went it alone until there was success. Mojang (as a company, publisher and studio) evolved from Minecraft so you can't use them as any example of anything. The only thing they prove is that if your game is good enough and has enough buzz you don't need a publisher, but doesn't everyone know that already?
seanalltogether 15y ago
I don't think we'll see publishers go away, I think we'll just see the terms of the contract be a bit more favorable toward game studios/musicians/writers/etc. There's always going to be a need for investment money to bring new ideas to market, and getting loans will be much easier from a publisher that understands the business vs a bank.
zabuni 15y ago
This article is naive. First, most of the games they discuss that cost 40-60 bucks, the CoDs of the world, require enough capital outlay to deter any small band of developers. You need money for art assets, voice acting, advertising, sound design etc. etc. You can get by with the just a couple of developers on laptops, but you have to scale back your ambitions (see Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress, Spiderweb Software). The biggest pot of money is on consoles, even with the recent trend towards PC gaming that happens at the nadir of a console generation. You have to be a big boy (at least moderately big) to be on those. Large publishers can, and do, use Steam just as much as the little guy. And can afford an advertising budget. Don't get me wrong, I love me some steam. I love 2d shooters, and there never has been a better time for playing them. But pay-per-view didn't lead to the death of big budget movies, and this won't lead to the death of larger games.
- angersock 15y ago
  There's no excuse for not being able to make a game of at least Counterstrike quality anymore. Our tools have come so far, and our computers have become so cheap, that the barrier to entry to making a solid, fun, good-looking game is removed. Gone. Poof! All you need to do is be willing to learn and stubborn enough to execute, and you'll make it. And you know what else? We need this. We need hordes of little velociraptor indies to outbreed and outsell publishers. We need the bloated megacorp AbstractGameFactorys to die. We need to free up the IP, we need to encourage genuine risk-taking and technological progress, and we need to do our damnedest to kill off these fuckers before they irrecoverably damage the market and the gamers.
  - res0nat0r 15y ago
    Why can't there be room for both? I want the next MegaCorp MMO from Blizzard, which isn't possible from someone like an indie shop.
    - zanny 15y ago
      League of Legends started out tiny and they are bigger in the "mmo" space than WoW is in terms of active players. Definitely not in terms of revenue, but they are definitely indie gone huge. And they now have the staff to add new characters to the game every two weeks. The WoW devs add new wireframe modeled mobs maybe a half dozen times an expansion.
eggbrain 15y ago
The article seemed fairly naive -- the reason why more developers haven't ditched publishers is the same reason why everyone working at BigCorp doesn't quit their job and do a startup -- I mean, Mark Zuckerberg did a startup, and he's a billionaire! The reason they don't is a mixture of financial obligations (children, wife, etc), risk management (failure rate is high, career advancement goes out the window at your current job, lots of money invested with no guarantee of return, etc), size of challenge problem (publishers have everything already in place vs you having to do it all yourself), and having the personality for it, among other things. We can look at examples like Mojang and see huge successes, but it's a self selection process -- we almost always only hear about the successful indie companies, not the ones that tried to get the word out and got nowhere and failed. Finally, the authors final suggestion of organizing a boycott or a movement seems right in line with "online petitions" and "If this baby gets 1000 likes he will get his cancer treatment". The most effective way to fight Publishers who treat their developers like crap is to vote with your wallet -- a trait that many gamers seem unwilling to do (See: Modern Warfare 2 boycott, Mass Effect 3 boycott, etc).
- plasticsyntax 15y ago
  I mostly agree with you, but I need to be a bit pedantic and point out that a boycott is voting with your wallet. It's better, actually, because you vote with your wallet and tell the publisher that you did and you encourage others to follow suit. This way publishers can't just blame something else for the lack of sales for Generic 3d Shooter: Curbstomp Edition.
  - eggbrain 15y ago
    Well, there's a difference between participating in a boycott and "participating" in a boycott -- the first is voting with your wallet to not buy X (and telling the publisher publicly that you aren't), and the other is yelling and screaming that you aren't going to buy it, then ending up buying it anyways (see the MW2 Boycott Group who ended up having egg on their face: http://nerdnirvana.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/abXW9.png http://nerdnirvana.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/abXW9.png) After participating in a few boycotts myself (and following through on what I said I would do, not just grandstanding), only to see companies continue to make record profits, its hard not to feel like you are fighting against the tide coming in.
verganileonardo 15y ago
Publishers are "content curators", they assure the gamer/buyer that the games for sale are high-quality. If you flood the market with lots of indie games (with a high ratio of low quality games), review websites will become stronger and more relevant in the industry and assume the role of content curators. Today, review websites are already powerful. If publishers 'left' the game industry, their influence would be transferred to review sites and indie developers will be in the same position that they are today.
hythloday 15y ago
In working for both first-party (EA/Sony etc.) development studios and third-party (Kuju/Argonaut etc.) ones, I've noticed the following functions that publishers fulfil. I've mainly worked on AAA titles, with a smattering of MMOs, so this doesn't necessarily apply to other segments - specifically, I'd expect indie games to work very differently. This is doubtless an incomplete list. 1. Money. I've put this first for obvious reasons, but as the article alludes to, the industry cycle itself is incredibly unsteady (I can look up the exact figures, but I recall that something like 50% of yearly sales of boxed games are done within one month around Christmas), alongside the studio financial model being obviously unsteady (work for 3-5 years to release a game that generates 90%+ of its lifetime revenue in 2 months). When you look at it like this, publishers look like the subservient ones: a studio that produces a flop often has another title in development with another publisher, and just misses out on royalties; a publisher that has a string of flops goes bankrupt. If this relationship didn't exist, AAA studios would be less likely to stick together (as the failure of even one game would disperse the team) - that means no Blizzard, no id, no Bethesda, no Rare, no Lionhead, no Bioware - essentially any studio who have ever pushed back a game, or released a market failure or a slow-burner would probably be out of business. 2. Platform-holder pressure. Sony, MSFT, Nintendo have (no so much now) incredibly strict rules about what games can do on their platforms, ranging from "no printf() calls" to "no GUI elements within 12 pixels of the edge of the screen" to "your game is not allowed to crash after being played for 48 hours straight". As a developer going straight to platform, you have zero leverage with the platform-owner (remember, they know that if your game flops you're gone as a company). Going through a publisher, well, far be it from me to imply that any underhand tactics, such as threatening to delay other titles so they don't coincide nicely with the platform-holder's plans, might occur. 3. Boring stuff. Games need hosting, translation, websites, promoting the game to retailers (which is a more adversarial process than you might expect), supply chain logistics, getting the game rated, getting manuals written, dealing with returns from physical shops, collector's editions, merchandise, blah blah blah...after a decade of work in the industry, I'm aware that my knowledge here barely scratches the surface of what's required to put out an AAA game once the code is signed off and the assets finished. This is doubtless the easiest function of publishers to replace, but no-one except publishers offers this service at the moment, and any studio who deliberately goes without this is shooting themselves in the head. 4. Quality. This doesn't always work well, but a publisher is often the first party to see the game outside the studio, so they have the best information to predict the state of the art when your game launches. Advice like "those shaders aren't good enough" is never easy to hear, but it's always better than releasing a game that is panned for dated graphics. 5. Media relations. This doesn't get talked about much...but publishers are the ones with all the power over both paper magazines (exclusives, pre-reviews etc.) and online games sites. In return for access to games before the release date, there's usually a subtle or not-so-subtle pressure to give the games a positive review. (This is why games that are given an average of 8/10 being regarded as a flop.) Media outlets that don't follow this protocol are simply frozen out of the pre-review process. I don't think this is a good thing for the industry, but in the same way as point 3 above, any developer who forgoes this process is putting themselves at a disadvantage relative to other development studios following a more traditional model.

26 points by EddieRingle 15y ago

jblow 15y ago

Why is this on HN? The author of this article does not know anything about the game industry. The reason most developers of $60 games sign with publishers is because they do not have the money to develop games of that size themselves. Whether it is a good idea for them to be doing this is really a different question (and it is complex to answer).

waterlesscloud 15y ago
What do games cost to produce these days? Obviously it's quite a range, but what are some benchmarks? What does a low-end iphone game cost to develop? Angry Birds? What would a Modern Warfare clone cost? World of Warcraft? I have no clue what the cost neighborhoods even are for any of those things...
- joeconway 15y ago
  http://frictionalgames.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/perception-of-000.html http://frictionalgames.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/perception-of-... There's a reasonable introductory answer
- forrestthewoods 15y ago
  High end Modern Warfare is on the order of 100 million which includes 30 to 40 million in marketing. You're looking at least 40 million in just game development costs for high quality AAA titles. Smaller $15 downloadable titles of high quality vary but are on the order of 3-5 million. Tim Schafer was recently quoted as saying a proper Psychonauts sequel would cost $20 million which sounds about right. Mobile games are a bit of a wild card. High end iOS games can easily break a couple of million dollars. Other mobile games can also be done with a 2 man team living off ramen. The minimum entry fee however is rising every day.
- hythloday 15y ago
  SW:TOR, which you can compare to WoW, has been estimated to have cost $500 million(sic) to produce[0]. [0] http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01/17/analyst-believes-star-wars-the-old-republic-had-a-500-million/ http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01/17/analyst-believes-sta...

citricsquid 15y ago

> So there’s the trade off, I suppose. Stick with a publisher and gain assurance that your game will see some income for a few days, or go it alone in the hopes that gamers will see your show of faith of publishing independently and buying your game as thanks. Minecraft creator Mojang did this, and it’s earned millions and millions of dollars since the game’s initial release. Not really. Notch built the game alone and went it alone until there was success. Mojang (as a company, publisher and studio) evolved from Minecraft so you can't use them as any example of anything. The only thing they prove is that if your game is good enough and has enough buzz you don't need a publisher, but doesn't everyone know that already?

seanalltogether 15y ago

I don't think we'll see publishers go away, I think we'll just see the terms of the contract be a bit more favorable toward game studios/musicians/writers/etc. There's always going to be a need for investment money to bring new ideas to market, and getting loans will be much easier from a publisher that understands the business vs a bank.

zabuni 15y ago

This article is naive. First, most of the games they discuss that cost 40-60 bucks, the CoDs of the world, require enough capital outlay to deter any small band of developers. You need money for art assets, voice acting, advertising, sound design etc. etc. You can get by with the just a couple of developers on laptops, but you have to scale back your ambitions (see Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress, Spiderweb Software). The biggest pot of money is on consoles, even with the recent trend towards PC gaming that happens at the nadir of a console generation. You have to be a big boy (at least moderately big) to be on those. Large publishers can, and do, use Steam just as much as the little guy. And can afford an advertising budget. Don't get me wrong, I love me some steam. I love 2d shooters, and there never has been a better time for playing them. But pay-per-view didn't lead to the death of big budget movies, and this won't lead to the death of larger games.

angersock 15y ago
There's no excuse for not being able to make a game of at least Counterstrike quality anymore. Our tools have come so far, and our computers have become so cheap, that the barrier to entry to making a solid, fun, good-looking game is removed. Gone. Poof! All you need to do is be willing to learn and stubborn enough to execute, and you'll make it. And you know what else? We need this. We need hordes of little velociraptor indies to outbreed and outsell publishers. We need the bloated megacorp AbstractGameFactorys to die. We need to free up the IP, we need to encourage genuine risk-taking and technological progress, and we need to do our damnedest to kill off these fuckers before they irrecoverably damage the market and the gamers.
- res0nat0r 15y ago
  Why can't there be room for both? I want the next MegaCorp MMO from Blizzard, which isn't possible from someone like an indie shop.
  - zanny 15y ago
    League of Legends started out tiny and they are bigger in the "mmo" space than WoW is in terms of active players. Definitely not in terms of revenue, but they are definitely indie gone huge. And they now have the staff to add new characters to the game every two weeks. The WoW devs add new wireframe modeled mobs maybe a half dozen times an expansion.

eggbrain 15y ago

The article seemed fairly naive -- the reason why more developers haven't ditched publishers is the same reason why everyone working at BigCorp doesn't quit their job and do a startup -- I mean, Mark Zuckerberg did a startup, and he's a billionaire! The reason they don't is a mixture of financial obligations (children, wife, etc), risk management (failure rate is high, career advancement goes out the window at your current job, lots of money invested with no guarantee of return, etc), size of challenge problem (publishers have everything already in place vs you having to do it all yourself), and having the personality for it, among other things. We can look at examples like Mojang and see huge successes, but it's a self selection process -- we almost always only hear about the successful indie companies, not the ones that tried to get the word out and got nowhere and failed. Finally, the authors final suggestion of organizing a boycott or a movement seems right in line with "online petitions" and "If this baby gets 1000 likes he will get his cancer treatment". The most effective way to fight Publishers who treat their developers like crap is to vote with your wallet -- a trait that many gamers seem unwilling to do (See: Modern Warfare 2 boycott, Mass Effect 3 boycott, etc).

plasticsyntax 15y ago
I mostly agree with you, but I need to be a bit pedantic and point out that a boycott is voting with your wallet. It's better, actually, because you vote with your wallet and tell the publisher that you did and you encourage others to follow suit. This way publishers can't just blame something else for the lack of sales for Generic 3d Shooter: Curbstomp Edition.
- eggbrain 15y ago
  Well, there's a difference between participating in a boycott and "participating" in a boycott -- the first is voting with your wallet to not buy X (and telling the publisher publicly that you aren't), and the other is yelling and screaming that you aren't going to buy it, then ending up buying it anyways (see the MW2 Boycott Group who ended up having egg on their face: http://nerdnirvana.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/abXW9.png http://nerdnirvana.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/abXW9.png) After participating in a few boycotts myself (and following through on what I said I would do, not just grandstanding), only to see companies continue to make record profits, its hard not to feel like you are fighting against the tide coming in.

verganileonardo 15y ago

Publishers are "content curators", they assure the gamer/buyer that the games for sale are high-quality. If you flood the market with lots of indie games (with a high ratio of low quality games), review websites will become stronger and more relevant in the industry and assume the role of content curators. Today, review websites are already powerful. If publishers 'left' the game industry, their influence would be transferred to review sites and indie developers will be in the same position that they are today.

hythloday 15y ago

In working for both first-party (EA/Sony etc.) development studios and third-party (Kuju/Argonaut etc.) ones, I've noticed the following functions that publishers fulfil. I've mainly worked on AAA titles, with a smattering of MMOs, so this doesn't necessarily apply to other segments - specifically, I'd expect indie games to work very differently. This is doubtless an incomplete list. 1. Money. I've put this first for obvious reasons, but as the article alludes to, the industry cycle itself is incredibly unsteady (I can look up the exact figures, but I recall that something like 50% of yearly sales of boxed games are done within one month around Christmas), alongside the studio financial model being obviously unsteady (work for 3-5 years to release a game that generates 90%+ of its lifetime revenue in 2 months). When you look at it like this, publishers look like the subservient ones: a studio that produces a flop often has another title in development with another publisher, and just misses out on royalties; a publisher that has a string of flops goes bankrupt. If this relationship didn't exist, AAA studios would be less likely to stick together (as the failure of even one game would disperse the team) - that means no Blizzard, no id, no Bethesda, no Rare, no Lionhead, no Bioware - essentially any studio who have ever pushed back a game, or released a market failure or a slow-burner would probably be out of business. 2. Platform-holder pressure. Sony, MSFT, Nintendo have (no so much now) incredibly strict rules about what games can do on their platforms, ranging from "no printf() calls" to "no GUI elements within 12 pixels of the edge of the screen" to "your game is not allowed to crash after being played for 48 hours straight". As a developer going straight to platform, you have zero leverage with the platform-owner (remember, they know that if your game flops you're gone as a company). Going through a publisher, well, far be it from me to imply that any underhand tactics, such as threatening to delay other titles so they don't coincide nicely with the platform-holder's plans, might occur. 3. Boring stuff. Games need hosting, translation, websites, promoting the game to retailers (which is a more adversarial process than you might expect), supply chain logistics, getting the game rated, getting manuals written, dealing with returns from physical shops, collector's editions, merchandise, blah blah blah...after a decade of work in the industry, I'm aware that my knowledge here barely scratches the surface of what's required to put out an AAA game once the code is signed off and the assets finished. This is doubtless the easiest function of publishers to replace, but no-one except publishers offers this service at the moment, and any studio who deliberately goes without this is shooting themselves in the head. 4. Quality. This doesn't always work well, but a publisher is often the first party to see the game outside the studio, so they have the best information to predict the state of the art when your game launches. Advice like "those shaders aren't good enough" is never easy to hear, but it's always better than releasing a game that is panned for dated graphics. 5. Media relations. This doesn't get talked about much...but publishers are the ones with all the power over both paper magazines (exclusives, pre-reviews etc.) and online games sites. In return for access to games before the release date, there's usually a subtle or not-so-subtle pressure to give the games a positive review. (This is why games that are given an average of 8/10 being regarded as a flop.) Media outlets that don't follow this protocol are simply frozen out of the pre-review process. I don't think this is a good thing for the industry, but in the same way as point 3 above, any developer who forgoes this process is putting themselves at a disadvantage relative to other development studios following a more traditional model.