About the possibility of being Published
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From KS:
Dynamight Studios is a financially stable company. Careful business planning, coupled with backing from the three founders and private investors, make us feel safe about the future of the project. Moreover, we already have open channels with a few large game publishers that have shown interest in Fractured.
After the recent news about AoC that will get published by My.com in Eu i was wondering about our project:- How much weight will have a publisher on the game features and balance?
- On the shop and business model?
- On costumer service\game lifetime?
Because you earned my trust, but Trion, Gameforge and more or less every publisher expect a couples like Digital Extremes\Blizzard\Arenanet would not have it..
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Definitely something I'm wondering/worrying about, too. I hate seeing how most publishers love to come in and start making demands about things being done a certain way, because that never works out in the customers'/players' favor.
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Well let's hope that doesn't come to pass and if it does then hope for an exception to the standard way things tend to go!
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I set much hopes in our Dynamight Guys, especially into Jacopo, because till now he showed us a very straight line about his vision and the things he is setting on the Dos and Don‘ts he is standing for.
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@kralith said in About the possibility of being Published:
I set much hopes in our Dynamight Guys, especially into Jacopo, because till now he showed us a very straight line about his vision and the things he is setting on the Dos and Don‘ts he is standing for.
It all depends on the details in contract with publisher.
Does publisher have big power to change things, or not. Because if they do, then developers vision means nothing. Publisher can just go and change cash shop offer and prices how they wish, and game can easily become P2W.
I wrote before how I suspect that KS didn't have many people rushing in, majorly because publisher is not yet know.
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I think we can safely say to the devs, that we like their vision, and want them to keep it, and I think we can say that in the strongest terms possible.
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Really hot topic right now considering what just happened with Intrepid Studios/Ashes of Creation going with my.com as their EU publisher and mail.ru for the CIS.
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There is a pretty wide range of publisher interactions out there, from being little more than a toolbox to being all up and over things. Where a lot of places do not get a ton of trust most of that is tied up within whatever legal agreement is drafted.
On an aside, at least two of those you mentioned as good are bridges that have burned for me. I would not trust them with tying my shoe laces. One for being tone deaf over and over again in terms of monetization issues and having to backtrack (although at least they mostly have) and the other for outright insulting the customers.
I think the biggest thing will be what legal agreement information, if any, can be shared to show the depth to which a publisher will disrupt the system... and if none can be how badly things like cash shop issues disrupt the players.
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@jairone said in About the possibility of being Published:
I think the biggest thing will be what legal agreement information, if any, can be shared to show the depth to which a publisher will disrupt the system...
And we all know developers tend to not disclose their contracts with publishers.
So the only thing left for players is to judge the publisher through their own personal experience (and through other player experiences) and then judge the game based on who publishes it.
(AoC) Steven can claim he has the grip over my.com, but players have only his word on that. And players have had a lot's of bad experiences with recent MMOs being mostly money grabs, and it's hard (naive) to trust anyone's word today.
This is why choosing a "trusted" publisher means so much more than a few percent of income up/down you have to agree to share with them. A "trusted" publisher will mean a great bulk of players coming to your MMO, that otherwise would skip it in case of "not trusted" publisher.
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I am still of the opinion that getting a publisher is better for the long term health of the game than self-publishing would be, especially for a team with very little noteworthy experience to stand upon like Fractured.
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There are not just bad Publisher.
Some are good for small Indie Studios.
The question will be, if Jacopo can pick the right one.
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@gothix said in About the possibility of being Published:
(...) This is why choosing a "trusted" publisher means so much more than a few percent of income up/down you have to agree to share with them(...)
I don't think it's that easy, since they want financial backing by the publisher as well (right?). I doubt that every publisher out there is willing to take the investment and the longer the negotiations take, the smaller your current funding, the higher the pressure to accept.
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@jahlon said in About the possibility of being Published:
Really hot topic right now considering what just happened with Intrepid Studios/Ashes of Creation going with my.com as their EU publisher and mail.ru for the CIS.
I heard that was happening, but not much else - what happened?
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@therippyone said in About the possibility of being Published:
I heard that was happening, but not much else - what happened?
Basically Intrepid is self publishing in US only. They didn't want to self publish in EU due to complicated EU laws / requirements to self publish (multiple staff for support for several languages, privacy laws, etc.) so they decided to go with external publisher for EU, someone that already has the network, the staff and everything needed.
I don't know why in the hell would they opt for mycom though... that was an awful choice.
Steven claims he made sure that Intrepid keeps full creative control, and game will remain subscription based with CS holding only "cosmetics", but people just don't trust what mycom could do, and rightfully so.
Many EU players are currently considering to roll on US servers (regardless of the lag) just to not have to deal with mycom.
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@blah64 As long as the publisher in question is one of the .001% that won't completely destroy a game. The minute any publisher tries to alter a game in any way, said game is irreparably ruined.
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Yeah, legal disclosure has been something that... publishers seem to want to avoid. I can see why if they are going to screw over a game with monetization or other things people dislike (not like we don't figure that out really fast)!
I do think that the moment one set of dev/publisher breaks that ice, it will become a flood. People tend to like the assurance of knowing that the deal is decent, and as a result I'd expect it to boost sales to an extent, so long as it isn't one of those bad to worse deals.
Of course, as long as places like EA sell millions of copies of games with cruddy systems that make the game less about fun and more about milking whales... we probably won't see so many willing to leave that behind without some major impetus.
