Very well said, Jesse. While certain publishers have certainly made themselves out to be asses, I don't believe it to be worth condemning them as a whole; I think better business practice, and us voting on that with our dollars, is the wiser route - imagine how many titles wouldn't get made without publishers. Because of the voice given to gamer's via the internet, which changes policies and business models (Microsoft would attest to this), I think we can hold publishers and developers alike to a higher standard, and that would prove more positive for everyone rather than a call to remove publishers from the equation altogether.
Publishers: A Necessary Evil
A recent update from Double Fine gets Jesse thinking that maybe publishers aren't completely useless after all.
It’s been a little over a year since Kickstarter kicked down the door of the video game industry and introduced itself. Double Fine’s then untitled adventure game utilized the crowd funding site to finance a game in a genre that most have presumed dead, or at least mostly dead (which means a little alive), for quite some time now. No reasonable publisher would hand money over to a studio not known to be especially financially successful, for an unproven IP in a genre that some younger gamers may not even know exists – and it’s hard to blame them.
The rest is history, and Double Fine Adventure went on to bring in a metric ton of money from a group of gamers that included Double Fine fans, adventure game fans, and those just interested to see if this experiment in funding could even work.
Double Fine Adventure, like so many others, was the first in a series of projects I backed on Kickstarter. It was hard not getting excited about the premise of games being made that most publishers would typically pass on. I've backed Wasteland 2, The Banner Saga, Diamond Trust of London, Shadowrun Returns, Torment, and Shovel Knight. Of those projects, Diamond Trust of London is the only one to be completed, though Shadowrun Returns is nearing release as well.
Tim Schafer and company’s initial goal for the project was a modest $400,000. They instead brought in over $3 million. Most would see that as indicative of being a great success, but now that time has passed and the project has been delayed numerous times, something else has become apparent. Could it be possible that publishers, for all the ill will we as the gamer collectively hold for them, aren't completely superfluous after all?
The difference in what Double Fine asked for and what they received was a tidy sum of $2.9 million. This is by no means a lot of money in development dollars, but to the everyman – the backer – it’s quite the pile of bones. But even with this money, Double Fine has never ceased to ask for more from the community.
It’s hard to quantify how much has actually gone into this game outside of the initial funding (and even that amount is questionable since backer rewards and Kickstarter’s cut come out of those monies). Double Fine has set up a tip jar for folks to donate to development, has set up a “slacker backer” donation program, participated in a Humble Bundle, and most recently, has elected to participate in Steam’s “Early Access” program, which will deliver the first half of the game in January of next year.
All of this has been done to secure funding beyond their initial budget of $400,000. It is understandable that as budgets grow, so does the scope of the game, but there comes a time when something has to give. We all want Double Fine to make the adventure game they want to, but they also need to exercise more financial responsibility than they have up to this point.
It’s at this point that it becomes clearer how important the role of a publisher actually is. As backers to a Kickstarter project we may have some small amount of input regarding how the game is designed, but this input does not come with any actual authority. The recipient of monies received via Kickstarter is not beholden to those backers. They are not held to deadlines, quality standards, or budgets. We’d like to think that as backers we are essentially the publisher, but this quite simply isn't true.
A publisher “backs” a game by funding it, but this funding is usually fixed, and comes with goalposts to incentivize efficient development. If a developer wants to get that publisher money, they better stay within their allotted budget and hit goals by a certain date. You’d be absolutely right in saying that this can result in a poorer quality product than the developer would like to deliver, but the game will get released on time.
Double Fine’s handling of this project has not been all that great. They've missed deadlines, have gone way over budget and we still have no idea when to expect a finished product. It’s only because of Tim Schafer’s general likeability and our optimistic hope that our money hasn't been wasted or underutilized that we aren't hopping mad about this. It’s a double standard to be sure. If EA or Activision took our money and didn't deliver a product on time – instead asking for more money while pushing delivery dates back – we’d be pissed. We’d be calling for heads to roll. We may even vote them the worst company in America.
Oh right, that happened anyway.
The point I am making is not that publishers aren't just suits looking to make a quick buck, even if it comes at a cost to a developer. It’s that there is a reason we have them in the first place. We need them to fund the games that are just too damn costly for us to back on a forum like Kickstarter. We need them to keep developer aspirations in check – those dreams and wants are fantastic, but they’re often expensive and superfluous.
Most importantly, we need them to help produce games without asking us for money up front before development can even begin. We need them to not make overly optimistic promises to us as customers, and we need them to deliver. Period.
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