We Don’t Need Game Publishers, Hardware Makers or Retailers

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While we may not agree with everything this guy says, the idea that we can do without middlemen in the gaming industry is very, very true. It would be nice to see the entertainment industry as a whole (music and movies) go this route too.

While publishers, retailers and hardware makers might still be adding value, they are no longer required. Using the miracle of the internet, game creators can make videogames — good ones! — and sell them to game players without any involvement from traditional publishers, retailers or hardware makers. And when creators don’t have to put their work through the gauntlet of middlemen, with everybody down the line taking their cut of the profits, they can sell those games much more cheaply.
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Geesh, look at how well Minecraft is doing. I know it's not a main stream game but it's priced well, $15 I think, and all funds go to the developer. No middlemen and it's doing pretty well. I agree. If a game/movie/music is worth the price the seller is asking, people will buy it. If it has markup after markup added to it, people will shy way or pirate it.
 
The value that is often overlooked is the promoting and marketting the producers and retailers do. Producers get ad spots, internet spots, etc. Retailers, for big ticket titles will have midnight releases, or list the game in their flier, etc. You can't honestly tell me this never generates sales.
 
BloodyIron said:
The value that is often overlooked is the promoting and marketting the producers and retailers do. Producers get ad spots, internet spots, etc. Retailers, for big ticket titles will have midnight releases, or list the game in their flier, etc. You can't honestly tell me this never generates sales.
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Generates sales yes...but I'll bet those additional sales revenues are entirely consumed I retail overhead and distribution costs.
 
It will be interesting to see how the 3 high profile Kickstarter games, Double Fine Adventure, Wasteland 2 and to as lesser extent TAKEDOWN work out when they are finally released.

We might be seeing the future of game publishing.
 
Good in theory. But over the years, cutting out the middleman just means more profits, not cheaper prices.

eBooks
Digital movies (rent or "own")
music
 
I agree with the whole article! And it will be much easier to find people who want to play games aswell since most of the employees of those retailers/middle men will be without a job and will have plenty of time.
 
Demon10000 said:
Good in theory. But over the years, cutting out the middleman just means more profits, not cheaper prices.

eBooks
Digital movies (rent or "own")
music
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Aren't eBooks substantially cheaper for the end consumer?
Isn't it cheaper to stream two Netflix movies a month than to rent two from a brick and mortar shop?

You can pay $10/mo for a service like Rhapsody and listen to all kinds of music, cheaper than the price of one CD. If you're OK with ads, you can use Spotify instead.

And in all of these cases, there are still middlemen, just not as many.

So I guess what I'm saying is... citation needed.
 
Demon10000 said:
Good in theory. But over the years, cutting out the middleman just means more profits, not cheaper prices.

eBooks
Digital movies (rent or "own")
music
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Most ebooks still go through publishers, which decided to rape consumers even worse then with paperbacks.

Digital Movies are in the same boat as publishers, the medium has changed, nothing else.

You can now buy just one track instead of a whole CD.
 
matrisking said:
Aren't eBooks substantially cheaper for the end consumer?
Isn't it cheaper to stream two Netflix movies a month than to rent two from a brick and mortar shop?
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That really depends on what movies you are wanting to watch. Netflix has no new releases at all.

And RedBox is cheaper ($1.20) per rental while netflix is $8 a month for DVD. Blue-Ray bumps it up to $10 per month.

You can pay $10/mo for a service like Rhapsody and listen to all kinds of music, cheaper than the price of one CD. If you're OK with ads, you can use Spotify instead.

And in all of these cases, there are still middlemen, just not as many.

So I guess what I'm saying is... citation needed.
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There is also Pandora which is free(with ads). Not sure how much the paid subscription is.
 
cyclone3d said:
There is also Pandora which is free(with ads). Not sure how much the paid subscription is.
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I just looked at the paid version last night and it was $36/year so $3/month. Pretty darn cheap and I think I may go ahead and upgrade.

I'm also a long-time Netflix subscriber, doing the streaming only right now.

And I donated to the Wasteland 2 and Shadowrun Returns kickstarters. I *just* missed the Double Fine one or I would have jumped on that as well.

In short, I'm all for cutting out the middle man and gladly back that up with my money when there is content I want or believe in. I think this is a fantastic part of the age we live in.
 
Toward the eBook discussion: Is everyone already forgetting the ongoing lawsuit for price fixing because of Apple?
 
Demon10000 said:
Good in theory. But over the years, cutting out the middleman just means more profits, not cheaper prices.

eBooks
Digital movies (rent or "own")
music
Click to expand...

I think the article cited the situation where a developer bit the bullet and sold his $20 game for $5 on Steam and just sold the heck out of it. I say that is cheaper prices and and more profits based on scale. I don't know what the numbers are but that seems like it would justify the whole model.
 
Completely agree as far as the entertainment side of it goes. What game devs like Double Fine are doing with Kickstarter is phenomenal.
 
DOOMHAMMA said:
Toward the eBook discussion: Is everyone already forgetting the ongoing lawsuit for price fixing because of Apple?
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I was reading the comments waiting for someone to mention this! Ebooks are due for a price drop...sadly it will likely only be $1-3 methinks.

As far as "the future", J So has it right, we'll need to see how these big kickstarter games do.

On a slightly related note, app stores (both apple and google) really need to provide a better way to find content. I should be able to search more specifically than "action, casual, puzzle", even the 3rd party appstores like appbrain only do so well to organize things. That if anything is one of the biggest hurdles to a small time developer trying to make it big, especially with MS pushing an "app store" into Win8 (and assuming future editions).
 
Problem with the big kickstarter projects so far is it's all been remakes and revivals of old games/studios. The projects that get a footing are where the company has already had support, and is a game which is pretty meanstream for their audiences tastes. There hasn't really been any wholey original major titles that have made it big on it, and at the moment it seems like just a load of old not quite major ex-studios vying for another go at attention.

Will be good to see some fresh new talent (what the site is supposed to be for) coming through with new original content than this onslaught of nostalgia projects. Otherwise, after a while the whole thing is gong to lose momentum and die.

Still would want bullfrog/shiny to come back first...:p
 
I agree that this is a better solution, and moving towards this model is overall prefferable.

Playing devil's advocate,after we fire all the store employees, marketers, box and disc manufacturers, who is actually going to have any money to actually buy the game since nobody has a job anymore
 
cbutters said:
Playing devil's advocate,after we fire all the store employees, marketers, box and disc manufacturers, who is actually going to have any money to actually buy the game since nobody has a job anymore
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Those people can all go be game developers too.
 
cbutters said:
I agree that this is a better solution, and moving towards this model is overall prefferable.

Playing devil's advocate,after we fire all the store employees, marketers, box and disc manufacturers, who is actually going to have any money to actually buy the game since nobody has a job anymore
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Hm, so you're saying the money will evaporate? Wouldn't cutting cost to the consumer allow said consumer to have more money and spend it elsewhere? If the markets can't adapt, what do we do?
 
J So said:
It will be interesting to see how the 3 high profile Kickstarter games, Double Fine Adventure, Wasteland 2 and to as lesser extent TAKEDOWN work out when they are finally released.

We might be seeing the future of game publishing.
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I think we are, and I hope this kind of thing happens in the movie and music industry too,
 
awsiemieniec said:
Geesh, look at how well Minecraft is doing. I know it's not a main stream game but it's priced well, $15 I think, and all funds go to the developer. No middlemen and it's doing pretty well. I agree. If a game/movie/music is worth the price the seller is asking, people will buy it. If it has markup after markup added to it, people will shy way or pirate it.
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If minecraft is all id have to look forward to if there were no longer massive publishers to push out high budget titles, id be pretty pissed off.

Not saying there are truths in this article, but there is something to be said for some games having massive money behind them.
 
4saken said:
If minecraft is all id have to look forward to if there were no longer massive publishers to push out high budget titles, id be pretty pissed off.

Not saying there are truths in this article, but there is something to be said for some games having massive money behind them.
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And yet Rage still happened
 
The guy is wrong, here is why, core competency. The middle man is changing his role and streamlining, but he is not going anywhere. Publishers like VU just get replaced by players like steam or google, but there will always be value in having a middle man who has an up and running back end to allow a game developer to concentrate on making the game and let the "distributor" handle the customer transactions, server hosting, communication.

Tribes ascend is a great example of when a studio tries to do it all themself, pretty basic things take a long time to get running. Things we take for granted on steam. Sure some players will always try to keep all the profit for themself, but trust me it is not super easy and cheap to get up and running to accept a world full of payment methods, convince people to trust you enough put their credit card in your new website, advertise your game, distribute the installers efficiently from locations all over the world and have a good built in socail system.
 
BloodyIron said:
The value that is often overlooked is the promoting and marketting the producers and retailers do. Producers get ad spots, internet spots, etc. Retailers, for big ticket titles will have midnight releases, or list the game in their flier, etc. You can't honestly tell me this never generates sales.
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Nope. It may get my attention but, flattery aside, I rarely spend a single dollar on a game without coming here and checking on the feedback for it.
 
Hell I should fix that to there are only a handful of games that EA is the publisher for that one of their studios or subsidiaries didn't create.
 
Crotan said:
Hell I should fix that to there are only a handful of games that EA is the publisher for that one of their studios or subsidiaries didn't create.
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I prefer to call them "labels", as all those EA studio names redirect to the EA corporate site for basically anything apart from PR and email domain.
 
Problem is the publishers are not just the middle man, they are the man who thinks he knows everything and often ends up ruining great franchise.

IMO, many publishers are not in touch with what the gaming community wants. Otherwise, someone would have picked up Wasteland 2 a long time ago for example. The fact that people are throwing $100 or more at Wasteland 2 through Kickstarter and they ended up with more than 3 million dollars shows that the publishers are completely clueless to the potential of the Wasteland franchise.
 
We saw the same thing when Louis C.K released his own comedy show on DVD for $5 without any producers, marketers, or anything. Sure, he's already an established comedian that millions love, so it's easier on him, but he made boat loads of money off of that. I bought it, and it was hilarious. Well worth the $5 I spent on it.

Now, imagine if other people decided to do that? Developers like DICE, Infinity Ward, etc. all cut out Activision and EA, sold their games at $25. The people who actually worked on the games and put in the long hours to get it to release, AKA the developers, would reap all the benefits. They'd sell a hell of a lot more copies, and make a hell of a lot more money. And it wouldn't go towards the publishers, retailers, or anybody else except them.
 
Ohmycaptain said:
We saw the same thing when Louis C.K released his own comedy show on DVD for $5 without any producers, marketers, or anything. Sure, he's already an established comedian that millions love, so it's easier on him, but he made boat loads of money off of that. I bought it, and it was hilarious. Well worth the $5 I spent on it.

Now, imagine if other people decided to do that? Developers like DICE, Infinity Ward, etc. all cut out Activision and EA, sold their games at $25. The people who actually worked on the games and put in the long hours to get it to release, AKA the developers, would reap all the benefits. They'd sell a hell of a lot more copies, and make a hell of a lot more money. And it wouldn't go towards the publishers, retailers, or anybody else except them.
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There's a couple things you're not taking into account here. First of all, the two companies you listed likely wouldn't exist in their current form without EA. Top talent costs money, and you don't see a lot of multi million dollar kickstarter projects being funded by folks who nobody has heard of.

It's the chicken and the egg debate, but in this case, it's pretty clear cut. Louis CK would not have made a million dollars selling a video DRM free if nobody had heard of him before. I bought the video, I enjoyed it, I certainly got my money's worth. BUT I only bought it because I've seen CK's material before, and enjoyed it previously. I contributed to both wasteland 2 and takedown because I know the devs. Not personally of course, but I've played their resume.

Furthermore, publishers eat a lot of titles that are shit. I don't like the state of the industry any more than most people here, but sometimes good developers make bad games. If they didn't have a publisher bankrolling them, that'd be it. There is a massive graveyard of dead game companies as proof of this. A great many of them created incredible games too.
 
Blakestr said:
Nope. It may get my attention but, flattery aside, I rarely spend a single dollar on a game without coming here and checking on the feedback for it.
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"It may get my attention"... that's the point.... it gets your attention. You might come on here to check up on it later, but the advertising goal is to get your attention and make you aware so you then proceed to either buy it or investigate further.

I'm the sort of person who thinks advertising doesn't really work on me, I skip ads whenever possible and rarely pay attention to them, but then if a certain game weren't advertised around the place then chances are no one would ever hear of it to know about it in the first place. Even most the indie games that have done well on Steam have received "advertising" in the form of being on the front page and positioned in the eyes of users, opposed to many games which are buried within the depths of the program only to be seen during sales or using the search function.

Publishers still have a place in promoting products and importantly supplying the necessary development funds. A game may make $50 million, but someone needs to supply the $30 million to make it in the beginning otherwise there'd be a lot of starving game developers.
 
I love everything about this. Let the creators get all the money from what they created.

It will be a pleasantly disastrous situation for the publishers when they have to compete against people who are able to sell games for $15 because nobody is taking a cut of their profits.

Ideally, all the best creative people will be making their own games and publishers will suffer from the brain drain, only being able to choose from uncreative code monkeys.
 
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