Does "publisher" matter to you?

[noahd]

well, in retrospect, publishers don't mean as much as developers, except for branding, like disney.

going on ea this is the list of ea games i bought; dead space, dragon age, mirror's edge, mass effect, crysis, the sims, simcity 3 and 4, american mcgee's alice, battlefield.

now going back to how much a publisher is this is want it comes down to, i bought dragon age and mass effect because of bioware and previous bioware games. like the star wars titles. most every other game is bought at the game's name and game play value. even though crytek, visceral, and others like westwood. are all good. but ea is like a grave yard. for gamers like me. as soon as ea touches it, it has to go on the game's value. or it just goes down like the other 80% of ea's titles throughout the years.

games need publishers, sometimes for money, sometimes for a branding and marketing. in the 90's and into the 00's ea's market was the sims, sim city and sports games. that's how small they were, not too much they could do to ruin things. you knew what to except from them, and you got x. but everyone's head started turning when the sims became over priced garbage and origin came out. these two things they decided to do along with the legal battles and offerings to buy out company's and to try and go around the other company's on the way they treat their games. one of the reasons why ea pulled a lot of games from steam.

ea's been putting it's foot in it's mouth for... 7-8 years now and the more it continues, the more ppl see it as a bad company. even after you get under ea's skin and find out what really goes on with it.

mind you, i didn't mind that ea published these games. but you can see how few games ea actually releases, and how few people actually buy of theirs. as i said, once you get to see how ea effects the dev's and the product game either before it's released or after, you begin to see the "ea effects".

 

[Snotnarok]

The pub never mattered to me, I never understand why there's even topics asking who's your favorite pub/dev.

Here's what matters:
Is the game fun?
Is it worth the money they're asking or should you wait for a sale?
Is there DRM? How bad is it? Is it always online? Limited installs?
Are my friends going to play with me in the game? (multiplayer only)
Is it for a device I have? If PC can mine handle it currently?

I have quite a few Valve games and enjoy them, but I bought Left 4 Dead expecting them to follow through on their word "Team Fortress 2 like support/updates" and they instead put out a sequel I didn't buy it. I got it a year later when a friend gifted it to me. Would I buy another valve game? See above questions.

 

[Get_A_Grip_]

As far as I'm concerned the publisher doesn't matter to me unless they've thrown some horrible DRM into the mix.
I've never not bought a game just because it said EA, Activison or Ubisoft on the box.

 

[Yopaz]

publishers are no longer needed.

Games no longer require funding to be made? That's a relief.

OT: No, not really. I don't buy games published by EA or Activision, but that's more because they don't publish games I want rather than me having a bias against this or that publisher. Publishers are important to pay for the development of games and some publishers rather play things safe and release games they know will sell in order to get back the money they put into its production.

 

[chikusho]

I usually think of publishers within the context of what I'm buying.
For instance, I'll never by a PC game from EA, because then I'd have to put up with shitty Origin.
Also, I won't buy a PC game from Ubisoft, due to their also retarded always on DRM structure in the past.

 

[Therumancer]

At one time the publisher didn't matter too much to me, but it's become an increasing factor in my purchuses. Especially nowadays the Publisher has a lot of control over what goes into a game, what it's overall quality is going to be like, and how it's monetized. The decisian to say load a game with microtransactions or how they are going to handle DLC typically happens due to publisher influance, rather than that of the devs (they simply implement what makes things work for the publisher for the most part). What's more with the way the industry is turning out I've found that to confront certain trends you need to know who a lot of the publishers are and make desicians accordingly. No matter how good a game might be, or how it looks, if you buy a game published by EA your supporting their business practices and making it so you'll see more of those practices in the future.

To put things into perspective, I really liked the "Dead Space" franchise, I own the first one for multiple platforms, and the second one for PC (Steam) which I've played and beaten. Despite really liking it, I passed on "Dead Space 3" not because the game looks bad, or I didn't like the ideas involved, but because of EA's involvement and how they inserted microtransactions into the structure of a single player game. It can be the best game in the world otherwise, but I am simply not going to tolerate garbage like that.

I understand why a lot of people, especially big time gamers, want to ignore the publisher aspect of things, grit their teeth, and play the games they like or think look cool, but to be honest that's how we as gamers have dug outselves into a huge mess of day #1 and on-disc DLC, microtransactions, and situations like Mass Effect 3 where the developers themselves will be used to lie to us for marketing purposes... understand the problem with that game's ending was not just that it was craptastic, but that promises about it were made by the devs before the game's release which were not only not met, but it was revealed in a "behind the scenes" app that they never had any intention of answering all the questions or providing an ending anything like what they promised... combine that with the anger over day #1 plot intristic DLC amd yeah... another good example.

 

[Aetherlblade]

publishers are no longer needed.

Games no longer require funding to be made? That's a relief.

OT: No, not really. I don't buy games published by EA or Activision, but that's more because they don't publish games I want rather than me having a bias against this or that publisher. Publishers are important to pay for the development of games and some publishers rather play things safe and release games they know will sell in order to get back the money they put into its production.

I think he means that crowd funding can take care of that. However, 1 step into the game industry and you know that that is a fallacy for all but the smallest projects and teams. Games cost a LOT of money and time to develop, so unless you have a good kickstarter, a good private investor AND a rich owner to pay for a relative short development cycle, I doubt you can pull that off.

Aside from that, publishers also PUBLISH. That means they spread your stuff around the world so it can be sold, they often make the comercials etc. Plus, publishers such as Steam, Uplay and Origin make for really good sales platforms that get your stuff sold easily and more then without them in most cases.

Another thing is that if the game fails, the developer doesn't take the full hit. The publisher suffers as well, which migh save the company. (though that is why the Publishers want such a high amount of influence over the game!)

-I know this wall was a lot of rambling. (just my experience from inside the industry)

 

[Atmos Duality]

When the publisher controls the developer, it does matter to me.
A lot.

Usually, the publisher is the entity who will be raking in most if not all of the gross revenue; this is true for ALL AAA publishers, in fact.
(bonuses to the developers aren't assured even if the game is a success; some publishers will "fire" the developer just before bonuses would kick in and then, maybe, rehire them for another job to keep costs down)

And they rake in the gross revenue because they're the backers for the game. They call the shots, and will be at best indirectly involved in the game's production.

As a rule of thumb, I think that the larger the Publisher, the more important it is to pay attention to them.
This is partly because larger publishers tend to micromanage their best or "core" developers more closely, and are thus more prone to meddling to keep those at the top happy.

But mostly because Publishers with the largest portions of the market share, are inevitably going to flex their economic muscle in some manner (this isn't necessarily bad), and HOW they flex that muscle will depend entirely on those in charge of the company.

Which means: A publisher who pushes the envelope with one game is more likely to keep pushing that envelope with all of their games until challenged. Alternatively, a publisher who competes within the market more strongly is less likely to push undesirable measures onto the consumer.

Plus: If you look closely, you can "see" the influence and attitude a publisher imparts to any game they publish at a given time.
(EA is pushing for more online multiplayer and microtransactions for example)

So if those influences are(/not) something you want to see in games, it stands to reason to adjust your purchasing decisions accordingly. Or at least consider them before purchasing any game.

 

[AyaReiko]

Yes.

I created the Paradox Rule specifically for this. (The Paradox Rule: If a game is published by Paradox Interactive, but not developed by them, then it is most likely going to be crap.)

And some pubs have a reputation for excessive Executive Meddling (i.e. EA), and usually not in a good way.

 

[The_Echo]

Yeah, the publisher matters.

Do I care? Not really. Hell, I don't really care about the dev half the time. I just look at the game and see if it interests me.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

shout out to the late THQ, I dearly miss thee.

most publisher know what they're doing, some do good, some do bad, few know of themselves wether they do bad or not.
thing is, though, the best publisher will hardly be noticed when playing the game, while the worst constantly remind you.