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Kotaku: "We Need Better Video Game Publishers" [Update: David Jaffe Responds]
- Thread starter Deitus
- Start date
I often wonder if this might be something exclusive to the games industry. That would be like movie execs not watching films. It's dumb and doesn't help anyone.
Don't worry, if the article is good people will still click. I know I did.
He has some points. But there are no (big) studios anymore that could negotiate with a pub, because they are all owned by the pubs. Last big independent dev was Bioware until they got bought.
There's is Obsidian, but they are the exception to the rule.
Valve would like a word with you about that.
SolidSnakex
Member
It's actually nice to see the article open up with that. This seems to be something frequently ignored in most games media. It's something needs to be looked even deeper as it's a big problem with the industry. And it pretty much all goes back to how this generation essentially killed of the mid-tier market in the west. We're now left with either indie or AAA. There's no in-between. Which inevitably is going ot lead to a lot of crashing and burning since it's impossible for every AAA game to hit its sales target.
That's one reason why I don't think that 10k's post was entirely off base. I don't think we should ignore the role the press has played in fanning the flames for more AAA games. When that's what receives the majority of the attention by the press, and when it's what wins the majority of the GotY awards, then what else are publishers going to emphasize? Of course there are often many fantastic AAA games released each year that do deserve a lot of attention, but there are also quite a few games that don't fall into that category and are often pushed to the side.
I think this image should've been a much bigger deal than it was
An image like that speaks volumes in an industry where developers get shutdown or publishers are disappointed after selling millions of copies.
In case you have not read David Jaffe long reply on this, do it.
I will just quote this from his article, and since it is Kotaku I would not be surprised
"
* It would not surprise me if this was written by one of the editors and attributed to AGD(ANONYMOUS GAME DEVELOPER). I have no inside info, just saying I could see this being the case."
read it
You Are Not As Good As You Think You Are
http://davidjaffe.biz/
I will just quote this from his article, and since it is Kotaku I would not be surprised
"
* It would not surprise me if this was written by one of the editors and attributed to AGD(ANONYMOUS GAME DEVELOPER). I have no inside info, just saying I could see this being the case."
read it
You Are Not As Good As You Think You Are
http://davidjaffe.biz/
Do you think Sony's executives are forcing this on him though?
That's what this article would have us believe.
Dark Octave
Banned
Who is that new publisher that's out?
"Smooth Hustle and Flow Productions" or something equally R&B sounding?
"Smooth Hustle and Flow Productions" or something equally R&B sounding?
Absolutely not. I believe that's entirely Cage's own warped sense of what video games should be.
HyperCubed4
Member
GAF's familiar with David Jaffe, yeah. On that topic, I'm pretty sure Jaffe has a NeoGAF account. I'd like to hear his thoughts on this matter. Or as much as he could say without getting in hot water with a publisher.
EDIT: apparently I can't read and this actually was Jaffe commenting on the matter. Whoops.
On the topic of publishers: they should at least be somewhat knowledgeable on what is going on with their game. They don't have to be emotionally attached to the game like all of the designers probably are, but at the same time, publishers should at least know the basics of game design.
grimshawish
Banned
Damn right.
Tomb Raider is evidence enough of this, the thumb screws were applied and a PR team were sent in to teach the devs what to do. It was a fucking disaster and anyone whose played the game knows how utterly alien the marketing and the final product are.
Truth is publishers have people not very good at marketing. Instead of pushing Dead Space's USP more...EA removed it and tried to compete in an over saturated highly competitive end of the market. Fucking mental.
Then they turn around and say 'see, no one wants horror games', conveniently ignoring the unarguable disaster that was Medal of Honour.
----------------------------------
Developers are doing their best, but the contradictions and terrible strategic vision coming from publishers is pretty poor.
At the same time however; how many development disasters have there been? We need to move to a situation where we have competent directors who also have significant say over you know...the direction of the product.
Problem? These people can only become developed and into those positions where the video game industry includes more tiers of gaming than just 'AAA' and 'metacritic over 85'.
You know why they ask for a metacritic score? Cause the people fucking going over your CV have no idea what their looking at to actually pass judgement. Its a ridiculous smoke screen made by hangers on to hide their inability to do their job; you can have the smallest role but if its not a metacritic over 85 then your somehow bad at the job you did.
Its absolutely insane. We need big blockbusters but also just you know...games.
That way talent can be created AND come through.
Nintendo isn't magic; it gets the best out of developers because its basically a giant developer who decided to go the ultimate independent route. Hangers on wouldn't last 2 seconds and would be identified quickly; but so would people requiring development.
Its muddy and a complex industry wide issue. Am hoping some of the 'development houses' we've seen remain independent begin to expand and publish their own products. Something might come through.
Who knows what'll happen. But the industry is quickly becoming a stubborn stagnant place where the same people are working on the same games to the same criteria.
Tomb Raider is evidence enough of this, the thumb screws were applied and a PR team were sent in to teach the devs what to do. It was a fucking disaster and anyone whose played the game knows how utterly alien the marketing and the final product are.
Truth is publishers have people not very good at marketing. Instead of pushing Dead Space's USP more...EA removed it and tried to compete in an over saturated highly competitive end of the market. Fucking mental.
Then they turn around and say 'see, no one wants horror games', conveniently ignoring the unarguable disaster that was Medal of Honour.
----------------------------------
Developers are doing their best, but the contradictions and terrible strategic vision coming from publishers is pretty poor.
At the same time however; how many development disasters have there been? We need to move to a situation where we have competent directors who also have significant say over you know...the direction of the product.
Problem? These people can only become developed and into those positions where the video game industry includes more tiers of gaming than just 'AAA' and 'metacritic over 85'.
You know why they ask for a metacritic score? Cause the people fucking going over your CV have no idea what their looking at to actually pass judgement. Its a ridiculous smoke screen made by hangers on to hide their inability to do their job; you can have the smallest role but if its not a metacritic over 85 then your somehow bad at the job you did.
Its absolutely insane. We need big blockbusters but also just you know...games.
That way talent can be created AND come through.
Nintendo isn't magic; it gets the best out of developers because its basically a giant developer who decided to go the ultimate independent route. Hangers on wouldn't last 2 seconds and would be identified quickly; but so would people requiring development.
Its muddy and a complex industry wide issue. Am hoping some of the 'development houses' we've seen remain independent begin to expand and publish their own products. Something might come through.
Who knows what'll happen. But the industry is quickly becoming a stubborn stagnant place where the same people are working on the same games to the same criteria.
And according to Zeschuk's recent comments, publishers don't have nearly as much influence on the development as the general public seems to think, not at Bioware anyway. Different dev/pub, but it makes you think.
grimshawish
Banned
I think their overall 'engagement' with the community has been great.
They get shit and still do post shit (mostly their questionable 'eastern' segments); but they've been doing great articles filled with really rich discussion over the last few months.
Interesting to read.
GiantBreadbug
Member
As long as games are treated more as a business than an art, we will continue to face the same problems.
Videogames don't need publishers and big budgets to exist. AAA games do, but they're not exactly looking very healthy right now.
It's why the Jaffe bit disgusts me. So business-minded, but seems to be forgetting that the games industry was built upon the backs of hard working developers with visions of great, fun games, not market-savvy business types who know what sells.
But I suppose I'm a bright-eyed idealist.
Videogames don't need publishers and big budgets to exist. AAA games do, but they're not exactly looking very healthy right now.
It's why the Jaffe bit disgusts me. So business-minded, but seems to be forgetting that the games industry was built upon the backs of hard working developers with visions of great, fun games, not market-savvy business types who know what sells.
But I suppose I'm a bright-eyed idealist.
I think both positions have merit.
Ultimately I don't think there are enough publishers, and the dominant ones are run by the type of executive that this Kotaku article is referencing. If you want to develop a game at that level or scale, you have to work with the few large ones that exist, which devalues the "you're only as valuable as you can negotiate" argument.
Sega is down. THQ is out. We're marching ever faster to a 5 publisher business.
I have a feeling shitty, buggy games are more often the result of inept developers or "acceptable" QA issues (lag, frame rate, non-game breaking) than the publisher. I'm sure there are many cases of publishers messing with or limiting/expanding the scope of a game, but this just sounds like passing the buck.
"We never do anything wrong guise, we just make games for you."
"We never do anything wrong guise, we just make games for you."
Sega is down in the console space. In the PC space, it's doing great with Total War and Football Manager and has just added Company of Heroes and Warhammer 40K. It can focus on digital distribution only in the PC realm.
thisisneogaf.gif
That article isn't really relevant to the general public unless you are surfing the web and working in the industry.
If the executives in charge of companies are incompetent, that sure isn't my problem and I can't even vote with my money to change anything. It's up to the people within these companies to act and take action.
If the executives in charge of companies are incompetent, that sure isn't my problem and I can't even vote with my money to change anything. It's up to the people within these companies to act and take action.
Devilgunman
Member
No, it doesn't, if judged by contents of the article.
Publishers often issue hard deadlines. Denying extensions or refusing to delay are seemingly common in the business, so yes, they could easily be at fault for acceptable QA issues.
The Dutch Slayer
Member
So witch now not a video game publisher company, is going to invest 100 mil into a project and does not know if they made back the money in 4/5 years?
Problem will always be video games are a business and need to make money.
If you have big project they can not have a lot of risk because than they do not know if they make back the money.
Simple as that.
Problem will always be video games are a business and need to make money.
If you have big project they can not have a lot of risk because than they do not know if they make back the money.
Simple as that.
BruiserBear
Banned
I was thinking all the same things. I'm sure there are some stupid and shitty publishers that do interfere with games, for the worse.
But suggesting that everything is because of them, is a bit hard to believe.
grandjedi6
Master of the Google Search
I believe Sega is also profitable nowadays.
Tummi Gummi
Member
Publishers can and have enforced patch-limits for games - I remember EA did this back in the early 00s for a while, ostensibly to improve the base quality of the games, but unsurprisingly just resulted in a bunch of broken PC titles abandoned after patch 1.02. Patching can be expensive - why put team members on a patch for something you've already sold when they could be working on an entirely new product?
A fair point. I definitely didn't want to quote the whole thing and take away credit and revenue from Kotaku. I started out by highlighting a few key points I thought needed to be seen, and the necessary context to explain them (because quoting out of context could potentially be worse than quoting too much). I maybe went a bit overboard though. Still it's a rather large article, and I quoted less than 1/3 of it, which doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
I'm not going to go back and remove quotes, but I'll add more emphasis that people should visit the source material.
No I believe Cage said himself Sony gives him complete freedom. They just give him the money. Cage himself wants games to be interactive movies.
Fried Food
Banned
I know it's cool to hate on kotaku on here, but this really isn't the piece to do it
Aliens: CM is a perfect example of when developers are dicks (assuming that the shit went down the way it has been told). Evil fucks exist everywhere, they are never just on one side of an argument or issue. What it boils down to is that this is a business. As long as some of these publishers are investing, in some cases, tens of millions of development dollars, they should be able to set goals or criteria a game should meet to help it reach at least some minimal sales goal.
Some of the stuff mentioned is stupid, but these aren't high profile directors or actors that have a guaranteed built in audience like your Spielberg, Lucas, Clooney, Depp etc. Many of these people have no concept of how to run a business and they need their hand held through the process. There have to be markers set that will allow the game to meet some type of sales goal, otherwise AAA titles will cease to exist in the near future.
Some of the stuff mentioned is stupid, but these aren't high profile directors or actors that have a guaranteed built in audience like your Spielberg, Lucas, Clooney, Depp etc. Many of these people have no concept of how to run a business and they need their hand held through the process. There have to be markers set that will allow the game to meet some type of sales goal, otherwise AAA titles will cease to exist in the near future.
I think it's good to call out these types of practices by publishers. You would think that as their primary business, they'd be working with developers to make the best kinds of games, not hindering the process from the outset. Not being familiar with the development process and game design could be a huge roadblock if it is true as said in the piece.
Reading this also makes me think that posts like these need a bit of editing/cleaning up before publishing. Nevertheless, still a good read overall.
Another good post from Kotaku. Keep it up guys.
Reading this also makes me think that posts like these need a bit of editing/cleaning up before publishing. Nevertheless, still a good read overall.
Another good post from Kotaku. Keep it up guys.
Yeah, pretty much. If a publisher requests something that makes your game worse, how about you push back and make a compelling case for the better solution instead of just conceding? Developers at large don't seem to realize there's a world of difference between being an obedient employee and being a good employee. Ruffling the boss' feathers is going to create some tensions along the way, sure, but saying "yes sir" to every order and then turning in a finished product that's unmarketable trash as a result is gonna have a much more dire fallout.
Also, this is a really dumb point to make. This happens in every industry, and for clearly obvious reasons. You remember that movie where the Microphone Rigger did an amazing job? No, because nobody cares. I'm sure your job is important and you do it well, but the audience can only be expected to put a couple major faces to any given project and you're the guy halfway through the credit roll, under a job title with a sea of names 5 wide and 20 deep. You're not going to get booked for a lot of interviews, sorry.article said:
It's profitable enough for Sammy to pretty much allow Sega to write a blank check to save Relic from the death of THQ, adding another PC Strategy Game Developer to their portfolio in a similar vein to Creative Assembly.
Basically Sega pretty much said "This whole AAA retail console game thing isn't working out so we're dumping it for mid-level PC games and the kid-friendly Sonic the Hedgehog which are working out for us" and it worked out for them.
SneakyStephan
Banned
Is it a great article just because we don't like publishers?
Where are the sources for all these claims? Where did they get their information?
Looks like more clickbait to me tbh.
(are there any proper sources for their claims? I refuse to give shitaku clicks)
AlphaTwo00
Member
Your assumption here is that devs don't push back. Do they? Or would it be a case where a few have pushed back, failed to get traction and then give up?
VeryGooster
Banned
I thought this as well even though I thought Jaffe made some good points.
The "written by an editor and assigned as AGD" theory seems out of nowhere.
grandjedi6
Master of the Google Search
See, Jaffe's flaw is that he assumes every employee has the ability to negotiate their terms of contract. But this is very difficult to do in a fast growing career whose job market is currently in a contracting period. Especially in an industry that favors youth over experience (and youth are notoriously willing to negotiate down so as to get a foot in the door).
unagisensei
Member
Having briefly worked on the business/publishing side of one of the largest game publishers, I'd agree with the comments about execs having never played games. It was shocking to me how frequently I would be in a brainstorming type meeting where senior folks would be throwing out different types of "monetization" ideas in such a way the belied their complete ignorance to the way a particular game or console worked.
Perhaps even more concerning was the pervasive, though mostly unspoken, attitude that "hardcore gamers" were basically people wasting their lives, whereas execs like themselves had better things to do than throw away their lives playing video games. At times it felt like we were drug kingpins trying to figure out a way to charge more and/or make our product more addictive to the unwashed masses and addicts who actually consumed our product.
I'm not saying that every exec needs to be a super gamer, but it's pretty sad when many don't even own a console or PC capable of playing the games they're producing. I promise situations like this don't exist in film or publishing. Most if not all of those folks are fairly avid film viewers and readers. Instead, execs who were known to actually play games were generally talked about as the exception to the rule.
I think other creative mediums there is also more trust given to proven creators. Has anyone ever heard of the equivalent of a director who has "final cut" rights in the videogame industry?
Large publishers also don't dedicate resources to more sophisticated, artistic projects in the same way that film or book publishing does. Sure there are the summer blockbusters, popcorn genre flicks, and 5 ghostwritten James Patterson bestsellers per year, but there are also the "prestige" pictures put out for Oscar season and the type of serious literature that shows up on NY Times best of the year lists. In many cases the attention generated from these awards is enough to make these more thoughtful efforts financial successes. As long as video game execs dismiss games as mostly a waste of time for high school/college students and people who never move out of their parents basements, you'll never see a similar model embraced by the large publishers.
Perhaps even more concerning was the pervasive, though mostly unspoken, attitude that "hardcore gamers" were basically people wasting their lives, whereas execs like themselves had better things to do than throw away their lives playing video games. At times it felt like we were drug kingpins trying to figure out a way to charge more and/or make our product more addictive to the unwashed masses and addicts who actually consumed our product.
I'm not saying that every exec needs to be a super gamer, but it's pretty sad when many don't even own a console or PC capable of playing the games they're producing. I promise situations like this don't exist in film or publishing. Most if not all of those folks are fairly avid film viewers and readers. Instead, execs who were known to actually play games were generally talked about as the exception to the rule.
I think other creative mediums there is also more trust given to proven creators. Has anyone ever heard of the equivalent of a director who has "final cut" rights in the videogame industry?
Large publishers also don't dedicate resources to more sophisticated, artistic projects in the same way that film or book publishing does. Sure there are the summer blockbusters, popcorn genre flicks, and 5 ghostwritten James Patterson bestsellers per year, but there are also the "prestige" pictures put out for Oscar season and the type of serious literature that shows up on NY Times best of the year lists. In many cases the attention generated from these awards is enough to make these more thoughtful efforts financial successes. As long as video game execs dismiss games as mostly a waste of time for high school/college students and people who never move out of their parents basements, you'll never see a similar model embraced by the large publishers.
It's an editorial -- you don't need sources for an editorial.
Have you ever read an op-ed piece in a newspaper?
If they push back to any appreciable degree, then that rather undermines all the "developers rule, publishers drool" ad hominems bandied about in this article, now doesn't it?
flatearthpandas
Member
It is allegedly written by a current developer who wishes to remain anonymous.
They are claims that cannot be sourced.
So we can either believe they are what they say they are and accept an obviously one-sided but still better informed perspective on the developer-publisher relationships or not. Either way, there isn't much we can act on. But we can still be aware of the information, whether or not we believe it.
Also worth noting that Jaffe said he did in fact agree with most claims the article makes. Jaffe's response was pretty level, and it centered around the idea that if the publishers are screwing developers that hard, the developers need to get better contracts. Which can be another topic in and of itself, I think.
Just_myles
Member
I instantly thought Mass Effect 1 to Mass effect 2. Huge Huge example right there.
LorDjidane
Member
Ok I read the article. I can surely agree with it but I won't qualify it as a great piece. This is too black and white with no actual example or quote to corroborate some written assumptions.
chun li's thighs
Member
This falsely puts all the blame on a publisher for this issue. Of course a publisher is going to want to get the most out of their money by low balling. It's up to the developer to examine their abilities and resources and push back and say "that's not going happen, we need X amount of cash and/or Y amount of time". That's contract negotiations.
This completely dismisses the stories we've all heard of unscrupulous developers. Hell, (and I'm kinda tipping my hand here) I've spoken to a developer on this exact issue and one of their main management flat out told me that it's not that simple and excused their actions because they need the money/work.
I'm sure it's been discussed in this thread and I haven't read the whole thing, but I'm sick of publishers being outed as the villains because they're the ones with the money. I've worked with many devs who simply didn't hold up their end of the bargin.
At the end of the day the devs are trying to do the least amount of work for the most money and the publisher are trying to get the most work from the least amount of money. The heads of both sides are business men trying to drive that point. If you're going to blame anyone, blame anyone trying to turn a profit.