Better Game Publishers? We Need Better Everything

In response to the editorial we linked last week (here), another anonymous game developer has responded with an editorial of their own.

Making a game is a team effort, so I often find that people are quick to take credit for successes and blame the rest of the team (or management!) for the failures. This isn’t unique to publishers, or even to games. So I agree: there are idiots who are working in publishing right now. I’ve worked for them and with them. But as someone who has also seen both sides of the fence, let me tell you… there are idiots everywhere.

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BladeVenom said:

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There are idiots everywhere, but what about the author? Of course not. You will hardly ever find a writer of an article like that take any share in the blame.

Publishers at this point are far more of an issue than developers. They expect success that is just not possible with the vast majority of games. SquareEnix expected every game it shipped to come close to COD for some ungodly reason and therefore since they didn't labeled them "failures" which is absurd.

Peter Moore's little response to EA being named the worst corporation in America pretty much shows the maturity level of the "big boy" publishers being at an all time low.

Big games can and do well and they can be both critical successes with the fans and critics alike. We need to stop holding gaming profit potentials to the standard of the COD franchise or the WoW franchise. If you spend too much making your game then that's your fault for poorly planning it in the first place , if you expect so much in return you will often be met with far less.

Until publishers begin to understand that they will continue to march forward to another gaming market crash.

Godmachine said:

We need to stop holding gaming profit potentials to the standard of the COD franchise or the WoW franchise. If you spend too much making your game then that's your fault for poorly planning it in the first place , if you expect so much in return you will often be met with far less.

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Are you suggesting that publishers meddle in developers' affairs to make sure that games are planned well and won't suffer cost overruns?

I can see that going over well in this forum. Can't have it both ways.

djsb said:

Are you suggesting that publishers meddle in developers' affairs to make sure that games are planned well and won't suffer cost overruns?

I can see that going over well in this forum. Can't have it both ways.

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wha?

Anywya, this is like a management problem. If management has problems, then verywhere under them will have problems.

Gah! Another piece of Kotaku drivel.

djsb said:

Are you suggesting that publishers meddle in developers' affairs to make sure that games are planned well and won't suffer cost overruns?

I can see that going over well in this forum. Can't have it both ways.

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I think what's suggesting is somewhat on morally acceptable grounds -- if -- the publisher is providing a majority share of the development costs of a title. For example, if my name was Peter Moo...oose and I am providing 40,000,000 million dollars of my company, EAT's, cash-on-hand to fund the next Call of Mutiny game and the CoM developer is only putting up 20,000,000 million, I think I would owe it as a responsible CEO basically providing 60% of the money for the project to take some kind of minor oversight authoritiy -- at least in how money is spent.

That being said, I think publishers should still aim to adopt a 'Ship-when-ready' policy and not 'ship when fixable via patchs -- later'.

Trash cash grabs are just the way the gaming industry works now. Gamers complain about every game and pirate it anyway. They're buying consoles en masse and limiting games to console ports yet they grumble about graphics. Really, the consumers are to blame, not the developers or publishers.

Ban all Gawker media sites.

One issue that drives the industry to pump out sequel after sequel is that, with games at $60, people who buy games don't want to take chances with game series they are not familiar with. Some gamers will, but the masses don't want to do that.