Too many of my coding heroes have gone down this year , and it has nothing to do with recession or poor returns. There is money enough in the video games industry to fund all the softcos that have closed shop this year. A great artist is not judged on sales , and the greatest art today , the most valuable was regarded worthless at the time it was produced. Similarly talent does not decrease because of poor sales , your favorite bands greatest albums may never even chart .Take a look at the Art and Music world , and you will find sycophantic managers and publishers ,who had little interest in their artists and only in short term profits . Such is also the way of the video games industry.
Talent like Bizarre Creations , like Pandemic ,like Infinity Ward produce art and entertainment , but each of these innovators are lost the second they sign up to a great publisher .The short term cash injection is really just a long chain attached to an anchor that is thrown overboard the second you sign on the dotted line .. so Bizarre will go the way of Pandemic and Infinity Ward....the way of Origin
The publisher ALWAYS kills the developer at the first opportunity to do so , and the opportunity always comes round , you are artists , they are business , these things do not come together well , just look at all forms of media that try ..
Right now however there is a solution . It is time for software developers to declare independence , and use digital distribution like Steam , PSN , and XBox Live , to handle publishing , with the talent you possess and the earning potential of video games well known to the public and business you should chase investment money without publishers , after all they are getting that money from the same people now aren't they , why not go take it yourselves , and eliminate the vultures from the equation altogether?
What publishers forget , is to gamers , software developers are the equivalent of great Artists , heroes , authors and great musicians , so eliminating software developers and laying off talent to suit annual board meetings is incredibly short sighted . You have rising costs for promoting and developing next years sequel so it outsells your AAA title from this year , eventually do the maths , the balance tips and your once AAA killer app is no longer cost effective , lay off time ..... Eventually this model takes out the publisher , however large it is.
This year independent , or what goes for independent coders are thriving on Steam and iOS , smaller coders like Rebellion scored one hit and kept going , but each of the great developers tied to giant publishers has been gutted , Pandemic , Infinity Ward , and soon Bizarre Creations.Take another example . Factor 5 were coding legends from the Amiga demo scene , and their games for the Amiga were also legendary .Hell their soundtracks for games were legendary. Unfortunately they got noticed by Lucasarts , taken to Skywalker Ranch from Germany and ended up coding with the Star Wars Licence , abandoning the games that made their name , later even worse noticed by Sony they fell for the motion gaming spell of the six axis and gave us LAIR . Notice how none of those games involved the word Turrican
, the game that made them , the game they should have developed and would have had they stayed independent , the second they signed , they lost their way.The moral of these stories is UNDER ABSOLUTELY NO TERMS SHOULD ANY SOFTWARE DEVELOPER TAKE ANY ACTION THAT THREATENS THEIR TOTAL INDEPENDENCE
You write the code , you seek the funding you publish the game ,you publish on every platform to maximize profits , if you lose it is because you messed up and not because the man in the suit needs to make savings to justify his annual bonus.
Software developers need to take a leaf out of the music industry's book and deliver their material directly to their audience .Why not follow the example of bands who release their product directly to fans and FREE , doesn't Prince get more respect and sales now that he deals directly with his fans? Do you not have a zillion ways of getting your games to your audience , none of them requiring you to be signed to a publisher about to put you on 3 months notice?Freed from what a publisher expects you to sell , you can set your own targets and goals , and you should keep going , that is key...
By now you should have learned the video game business is far more ruthless than any other , and this is to be expected , it does more business than any other...
Bizarre Creations have a unique talent in incorporating player skill rewarding mechanics into their games , whether its the one more try to beat your score on Geometry Wars , the kudos system in Gotham Racing , the sublime sKILL play in The Club , or the neon colored power up grabbing frenzy in Blur . These are coders who produce games that are tuned to your Pavlovian core gamer conditioning. These games are not hard , as some people find them , they are games that require skill and if want to play with skill Bizarre always deliver the goods.
If you waste their talent , and they have serious talent , just take a look at F1 97 and 96 for a full Formula one sim complete with Murray Walker commentary on one Playstation disc, something that Codemasters could not manage with F1 2010 on a PS3 Blu Ray ! Where was I ?if you waste their talent on a pseudo film licence that is exactly what you will do ..waste their talent.
Publishers beware ....... and for Softcos considering fighting for their independence check out this chap , who could probably have helped a few of the Infinity Ward guys with their problems...
checkout Bizarre Creations games here
