Über Publisher
Gestern abend bin ich im Demigod-Forum auf einen Post gestoßen, der soviel wahre Worte enthielt, dass ich ihn Euch nicht vorenthalten möchte.
Als Antwort auf die Aussage, dass Publisher zwar lästig, aber notwendig sind, meinte User Damicatz folgendes:
In the old days, before broadband became a commodity in most countries, that may have been true. But now days, a developer can skip the publisher and go straight to Steam/Impulse.
Take for example Introversion Software. A small independent game studio that was on the brink of bankruptcy. They originally published through a traditional publisher (Strategy First). Strategy First squandered their money and ended up going bankrupt themselves. Much of the royalties that Introversion was supposed to get they didn't because of Strategy First's bankruptcy which means that they didn't get proper compensation for the box sales of the game. Introversion later decided to release their games on Steam, independently. Now, they are turning in significant amounts of profit and have expanded their staff to the point where they can work on two games at once instead of just one. Instead of being a few gamers in a bedroom writing games and trying to get their hard-earned compensation from greedy publishers, they are now a thriving and ever-growing development studio all thanks to Steam and the freedom it gave them.
Everything that is wrong with gaming today is the result of old-school publishers like EA, Activision, Atari, Take Two and THQ. The cookie cutter formulas and shallow gameplay and the constant milking of well known IPs is their doing. The intrusive DRM is their doing. Games getting buggier and buggier and the concept of release now and patch later is their doing.
That is the reason so many of them are starting to prefer consoles to the PC. Consoles are a closed-platform where players give up their freedom to choose who and where they buy their games from. Consoles are a closed-platform where players give up their freedom to mod games and to create their own games.
The big publishers realize their days are numbered on the PC. Digital distribution allows game developers to completetly bypass them. No more middle man is required in order to be profitable at game development.
On consoles however, the publishers still have control. The only digital download source on the console is one sanctioned by the console maker. The barrier of entry for console game development is much higher. Unlike a PC, you can't just make a console game, you have to pay royalties and licensing fees. That's the reason console games are more expensive than their PC counterparts because it's a closed platform.
I say let them go over to consoles. PC Gaming is better off without companies like EA. The console will be the platform for shallows cookie-cutter releases designed to satiate the proles and the PC will be the platform where small and large game developers alike can release games the way they want, design games how they want and retain control over their own artistic creations with no publisher setting unreasonable deadlines or dumbing down/mainstreaming the game in pursuit of the almighty dollar.
Dem habe ich nichts weiter hinzuzufügen. Danke!
