Jaded Scribe said:
Doom was originally released back in 1993 where the internet was just coming to the main stage, and things were different. There was less content out there.
It's not the lack of content. There were plenty of old games out then, you just don't remember them because they weren't any good.
Steam, which you keep claiming is the be-all-end-all, is a publisher. Valve makes the money off it.
I used them as an example, I never said they were the be all end all, so you can stop with the straw man argument. They're not a traditional publisher, they're a content delivery service.
No, actually Apple was late to the music party due to a contract signed with the Beatles. In exchange for using the Apple name, they agreed to stay out of the music business. It wasn't until they doled out $30 million to Beatles representatives that they were able to get out of that contract and push forward with development of music-related software and hardware.
That's irrelevant, as the iPod still required piracy to be able to survive. There's no way someone could legitimately own enough music to fill up the hard drives in them, and there still isn't unless you start adding in videos. Piracy was necessary for the iPod to become popular, and from there Apple found another way to monetize it so they could make money from hardware sales and music sales.
So the artists want to keep the big companies around? Ever think that maybe the game developers do to? Blizzard, BioWare, etc. Could do all this themselves. They don't need Activision or EA, yet they work through them.
Because it's the current business model and publishers are muscling alternatives out, not because it's the best option for developers. That's why the Gathering of Developers existed a decade ago.
Seriously? Do you not understand what's happening here? Large, already well-known artists will continue to put out the massive marketing, and squash the little indie groups, no matter how good their product is.
That won't last forever. The moment people start seeing an alternative to large stores like HMV, and artists that are put out by major publishers and marketed on MTV, they'll look there instead, and the marketing will have very little effect. People are already starting to look for new projects on Kickstarter, it's only a matter of time before it gains more momentum.
Ok, so there's one example. One example does not denote a healthy pattern. I've seen many groups struggle and fail despite doing all the right things.
It's a start of a trend, and it happened despite music labels using their old model. The sooner publishers are driven out the sooner this starts happening more often.
Again, Doom is an old example,
That's beside the point. It's a good example, as in it was a good game. It was successful because it was good. Crappy games fail under the shareware model, which is how it should be.
when the markets were far different than what they are today. Steam has nothing to do with publishers, pro or con. They are distribution. They work with, and make money, for a lot of big publishers. They act as a publisher for smaller games, taking their cut just like any other publisher.
The traditional publisher model is paying the developer a lump sum for development, and earning all the profit. Taking a cut is a different model. The good games will earn more money for the developers while the bad ones will earn less.
But they have a greater opportunity with a big publisher.
Only because the publishers created a market in which developers are dependent on them.
Why do you think even mega-houses use publishers? They provide a great deal of help. I'm a hardcore gamer, but I'm more likely to buy a game with a publisher label on it than dig through the internet to find better games.
One more reason publishers need to be driven out of business, as that should never be a standard by which someone buys a game.
You really think word of mouth works in our society?
It's not just something I think. It's a fact of life. Word of mouth is the best marketing, it's well known by every business, and they resort to other means of marketing if they can't get good word of mouth. Winning makes the best boxing gear, period. All the top boxers spar with it, and buy it. None of them get it for free, it's that good that they pay top dollar for it. Winning doesn't have any ads, anywhere. They don't have a flashy website, in fact, they're a pretty small operation, but everyone who ever buys their products will tell you that they flat out are the best - if you can afford their price. Next up after that is Shevlin, that makes custom gloves for you, at a fair price, they're not top quality like Winning, but they're close. They don't have any advertising either, relying entirely on word of mouth and they do very well. That's good word of mouth marketing. Companies like Everlast have to sponsor fighters because their products don't stand by themselves. They're lower quality, or even crap quality, and all the money goes into the marketing to sell them. Now naturally big companies can put money into advertising anyway, but if the consumer model is to look for products with good word of mouth and ignore advertising, as is happening in a number of sectors, then the advertising will have little effect. I already ignore it in music, and find my new music through word of mouth or services like Pandora. Old methods are dead to me, and a lot of others, and it's much better this way. The sooner more people catch on the better, and the sooner publishers are driven out of existence the sooner people will catch on.
Marketing is everywhere, for everything. Without it, you will NOT get noticed. You may grab a little word of mouth, but it's a one in a million shot, and even if your product is awesome, you have no guarantees.
If your product is awesome, you do have a guarantee that you will always have business.
Advertising is how companies, of any product, reach their customers and let them know what's coming out.
It's how they used to do it. The internet has changed that. People used to get information from newspapers and TV, it was info that was pushed to them. Now a lot of people don't use it at all, and seek out information that they want, even from very small sources. The internet is changing so many things, and is making publishers obsolete. The quicker they can be made to realise it and disappear, the better.
I love the term "sell-out". Because they shouldn't care about the money, right? This isn't like, their career or anything. This isn't how they are putting food on the tables for their families, right?
Yes, and far more often than not they're unable to put food on the table because a publisher doesn't take them up. I have first hand experience with not having food on the table. Using a modern model, it's actually possible for musicians, and authors to make some money even if they have a niche product that isn't popular enough for the publishers to take up, because there's no money being taken by the middle man. It's already happening, small products with niche markets are thriving thanks to the new business models that don't rely on publishers, and they never would have been able to do it before.
Again, you clearly don't have any clue how owning a business actually works. Yes, it's feasible to make good games without a big house. I'm not disputing that. The problem is that without a publisher, no matter how good your product is, you've reduced your profit margins by huge amounts. Some select few have enjoyed major success, but they are exceptions.
The publisher takes the profit margin. The profit for the actual developer won't decrease, if anything it'll go up. Consumers pay less, developers make more, publishers go fuck themselves. That's what will happen. You're confusing the millions publishers are making with the thousands developers are making.
This is a business. The people that do this may be doing something they love, something creative, something that's important to them. But that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be able to live a certain quality of life.
Publishers prevent that quality of life far more often than they facilitate it.
Publishers provide stability.
No, they don't, Firefly and Crusade getting cancelled are perfect examples of the lack of stability.
Publishers provide funding to put together better products.
They used to. Things have changed now with costs for almost everything going way down. Some of the best products are very low budget. Just look at Jenova Chen - he releases flOw for free, then an updated version for PSN, and then puts out Flower. The thing is, it's just as feasible to do it through Kickstarter rather than requiring publisher backing, and that's exactly what's happening right now with Kickstarter. It's not happening with games (yet), but it is happening with other media.
Publishers provide distribution.
They used to, they're not needed anymore.
They generate the word of mouth.
No they don't, good products and the people using them generate word of mouth.
Without it, the best a company could hope for is to be an underground success, which won't net them the necessary funds to support a life for a family.
Tell that to Greg Stolze, who as an author is making just as much as he did before with publishers, but is now working with a direct to consumer model that's far better for everyone involved (except the publishers, who now get nothing).
In your world, a lot of good games would fail. It wouldn't just be the bad games. A lot of quality games would fall through the cracks. Probably even more that do now.
The reason quality games fail now is because they're overshadowed by bad ones with good marketing. Without marketing, games would stand on their own merits. I couldn't tell you exactly why World of Warcraft is succesful, but I know it's because it's good, because they had much less marketing than Everquest, and despite the head start and all the money SOE has, Everquest couldn't overpower it. World of Warcraft isn't successful because it has a big publisher with lots of money put into marketing, it's successful because it's a good product that gamers get their friends to play.
You really need to take off the rose-colored glasses that gives you this crazy notion that your world will work out to the idyllic paradise for game developers that you think it will turn out into.
I don't have rose coloured glasses. I know it works because I've seen it working other media where people used to make the exact same claims you make now about gaming.
Again, you can offer one example, that's an outlier. How many good games haven't enjoyed that kind of success? How many in your rainbow paradise would continue to be unnoticed? Without publishers helping them advertise, probably more.
There's also Team Fortress. A second example. Hell, Half Life was a third since they came out of nowhere and became massive. There aren't many examples though because of publishers, they muscle out the indie devs. Without publishers they'd do much, much, better.
You've provided very few examples.
Actually, I provided a ton, several times. You just aren't smart enough to check out the resources I provided.
And you don't seem to understand that these involved a great deal of luck. If it was a stable method of making money, it would already be in place.
It didn't involve luck, it involved skill. Good games succeeded. And it already is in place and working, you just don't know about it.
But, you're still going to be missing out on a ton of sales. More sales = more money = more and better games. Publishers get you that money.
More sales is more money for the publishers, not the developers.
No, piracy is not a part of any system. It's theft. It's someone believing they are entitled to a product without paying for it. It's wrong.
Piracy is under the category of "Adventure Capitalism". Learn.
The Ransom Model is incredibly risky, and is unlikely to provide a small team with enough money to be able to quit their dayjobs. I certainly wouldn't bet my family's livelihood on it.
It's incredibly successful, and it actually works where a publisher never would.
Again, this just boggles me. You would rather struggle and fail, despite your excellent product, and fail because your buzz lost momentum, despite being amazing.
Sorry, I prefer the more reliable method of advertising.
As a consumer, I don't. I prefer poor products to never get the chance.
That's awesome for them, it really is. But it doesn't prove your point by a long shot. For every one of those success stories, how many more died in obscurity? Publishers give them a chance.
It absolutely does prove my point. Publishers aren't good for the artists. They're good for publishers. That's it. Not even for consumers.
There is no such thing as equal footing. It will never, ever, exist.
It will once publishers are driven out of existence.
How many videos have gone viral just because of how bad they are? Remember William Hung? How many good videos will never get found?
Your happy rainbow world where every good product will receive it's due credit will never exist.
Once advertising is taken out of the equation, and consumers start looking for products based on actual quality, it will.
And is now underwritten by Activision. Clearly they were able to continue that model...
Everybody who wanted Doom has already bought it.
And how many good ones, who could have had the chance to be picked up by a publisher, will lose? And how many bad games will go viral anyways? Your paradise won't change anything.
No bad games will go viral. Bad videos go viral because they take 2 minutes of your life. Nobody will recommend a bad game. None of the good games will lose, because for one, for developers to make the same money they make now under publishers, consumers will have to pay far, far less, so consumers can afford far more games than they do now and more developers will have a chance. Publishers take most of the money. If the money went directly from consumers to developers, devs from any successful game now could retire after one game.
I have provided a great deal of content. You have offered outlying or outdated examples of failed systems, or systems that work only on a small scale.
No, I've provided very current ones, you just don't know anything about them and haven't done the research on them to even know a little bit, so you just ignore it and focus on the few examples you do know even a tiny bit about.
All just to disguise the fact that you think you deserve to enjoy products without paying for them.
I pay for products that are actually good, or when the money goes to the developer. If the developer has already been paid their lump sum by the publisher, I don't care if the publisher gets paid. If the publisher tanks thanks to piracy, the developer will still be able to ransom a subsequent product.
And what does Firefly and Crusade have to do with piracy?
They died, and it wasn't piracy that killed them, it was publishers. There's no stability, no guarantee of livelihood when you depend on publishers. Publishers aren't good for developers. It's luck for a developer to make money through a publisher, not luck for a developer to make money through a more modern method.
The bottom line, despite the tangent you dragged me on, is that piracy takes money away from everyone. Not just the publishers. Game companies get less money, and they lose talent for more lucrative jobs.
No, it only takes away from the publishers. The consumer isn't hurt because there's always a market for good games, and they'll get put out. The developer isn't hurt because if they make good games consumers will pay them directly. If they didn't make good games, obviously they don't get paid, but if you're not good at your job, find a different one.
If a Kickstarter project is put up for Mirror's Edge 2 or Descent 4, it would get plenty of funding.
You're against publishers? Fine. I really don't care. Go buy only games that aren't attached to a publisher.
Publishers are far too pervasive for that to be viable. They need to be driven out before that becomes an option.
But piracy hurts the little guys first. The big guys will continue to take their cuts before anything else, so you aren't hurting the publishers.
Publishers don't take a cut. They pay the devs a lump sum before the game is released, then the publishers make all the money. Once a game is released on the shelves, the developers already made their money.
You're hurting the employees that busted their asses to make you that game, and now, thanks to your greedy, childish attitude that piracy is okay, isn't getting their bonus since sales marks didn't hit the right numbers.
Good job. /golfclap.
Good games get the sales, bad ones don't. Alternatively, niche products that are good but simply don't appeal to people never make the sales. Plenty of people talk about how awesome Psychonauts is, I'm unimpressed with it, although I do see that it's creative and interesting. Under the publisher model, a sequel will never get released because it doesn't appeal to enough people. Under a publisher free model, the few people that do like it can pay the money directly to the developers, giving them enough money to justify releasing it.
