We deserve better. It's a common refrain among video game developers who work with major publishers. Churning out the latest iteration of Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed takes its toll: inflated workweeks and 12-hour days, lists of notes and changes from the faceless entities of EA and Activision and the like, with simultaneous requests to pick up the pace -- all the while making a tiny percentage of the game's profits, not knowing if there will be another job when the project ends.
"The publishing people all watch [a game] and then make passive, aesthetic appraisals of active, functional aspects of a game," wrote an anonymous developer, delivering a blistering attack of major game publishers. "This is because the bulk of execs can't and don't want to play or understand how games work."
This is the conflict at the heart of the gaming industry. Developers feel creatively stifled by the demands of the latest blockbuster game; when a major triple-A release brings in poor sales numbers, the publisher may shore up profits by simply cutting developers loose. A troubled Disney Interactive, for instance, laid off 700 employees this month.
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In recent years, however, the runaway successes of independently developed games such as Minecraft, Super Meat Boy and the Kickstarter-funded Broken Age have made independent game developers hopeful that they can make a living without turning their intellectual property (IP) over to publishers. Not only have digital downloads and crowdfunding made self-publishing seem like a viable alternative to working for a major developer, big-ticket gaming consoles like the PS4, Xbox One and Wii have begun to embrace indies, allowing developers to self-publish to their platforms and even doling out funding for innovative games.
Not all traditional publisher-developer relationships are quite so grim. Plenty, in fact, are perfectly civil, professional unions, if not perfect marriages. And for better or worse, major game publishers aren't going anywhere. However, the traditional publisher-developer relationship is eroding in significant ways, pieces at a time.
In the '90s and early 2000s, studios hoping to make "niche" games were widely suppressed by the limited number of titles retailers could support, and blockbuster franchises such as Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto were given preferential treatment, says Charles Cecil, one of the founders of UK-based video game developer Revolution Software. Digital distribution, from Apple's App Store to web-based downloads, has effectively exploded that model, allowing developers to publish without retailers and reap a greater share of their IP's profit.
"With digital distribution, you've effectively got an infinite number of [retail] slots," Cecil says. "You also can disintermediate and ship directly to your audience."
Crowdfunding platforms have radically changed the way developers can obtain funding -- independently, without the strings attached to partnering with a major publisher. Cecil brought Broken Sword: The Serpent's Curse to Kickstarter, promising backers a digital download in exchange for a $15 donation. The game received nearly twice its $400,000 goal.
"Every bit as good [as the money] was that we built a direct relationship with 15,000 of our fans," Cecil says. "Ten years ago, you would have paid a marketing company a huge amount of money to be given a way to communicate with 15,000 fans."
Double Fine's Tim Schafer shattered Kickstarter records when his campaign for Broken Age -- previously known as Double Fine Adventure -- raised $3.3 million. Like Broken Sword, Broken Age is a point-and-click adventure game, a niche genre not typically backed by major publishers. The game couldn't have existed without Kickstarter. "There's a small number of gatekeepers [at a publisher] that approve ideas or modify them, basically to mitigate the risk of any investment," says Schafer. "That's not the kind of process that leads to things that are innovative or risky or perceived as 'niche' investments."
Schafer, who founded Double Fine after spending more than a decade at LucasArts, had previously released titles in partnership with major publishers such as Electronic Arts and the now-defunct THQ. In recent years, he has also published titles with the backing of Indie Fund and Dracogen, programs that help indie developers fund projects.
"Doing independent development via Indie Fund or Kickstarter allows us to be free of the pressure to change our game and to avoid things that seem risky," Schafer says. "Now, we will rise or fall on our own merits."
Broken Age rose: The first part of the game has been released to praise from its backers. A second act is in development.
Not all games will succeed on Kickstarter, however, and even the ones that do succeed face challenges. Mingled with the positive reviews on Broken Age's Kickstarter page are reviews that express backers' disappointment. "I would not have pledged as much as I did or given money 2 years in advance if I had known what the result would be," one wrote.
"You will always be at the mercy of someone who's given you money, whether it's an executive at EA or a kid who gave you five bucks on Kickstarter," says Jason Della Rocca, co-founder of mobile game accelerator Execution Labs and former executive director of the International Game Developers' Association.
Plus, he adds, in a market saturated with self-published games and Kickstarter campaigns hoping to launch the next big thing, it's not always easy to drive downloads, let alone funds. "The very fact that you and I can release a game on the App Store tomorrow means that every other developer can do the same thing," he says. "That's where it's less about creating an awesome game and more about discoverability. Guess who is really good at discoverability? The publishers."
Certain consoles and publishing partnership ventures aim to tackle the discoverability issue, acting as cheerleaders for indie titles while allowing developers to retain their intellectual property (IP) rights. Sony in particular has built up an indie-friendly reputation in recent years, providing developers relatively hassle-free access to development kits, helping to market games released on the console and even, in certain cases, providing funding.
Developers who self-fund a game, either through investors, crowdfunding or partnerships like Indie Fund, can publish their games on the PS4 without having to fork over their IP or sign an exclusivity agreement, says Adam Boyes, Sony's VP of developer and publisher relations. There's also the Pub Fund initiative, which provides funding for developers who need a financial boost. "We basically help them do PR and market the content, put up banners on the storefront and bring [the title] to different events," Boyes says. "We don't give any creative input if they don't want any. We don't own the IP."
Microsoft and Nintendo, as well as Steam, have likewise unveiled self-publishing programs for independent developers who want to break into console games.
Cecil attributes these initiatives to an industry-wide realization that indie titles are prized by large communities of gamers. "If you want a really vibrant ecosystem for your platform, you want to attract independent developers as well as the triple-A titles," he says.
"These other platforms are allowing a place for games that can't sell 10 or 20 million copies to have an opportunity to be seen and played," adds Chris Roberts, who received $39.9 million in crowd-funding for the upcoming space simulator Star Citizen. "You don't necessarily need to sell ridiculous numbers of units to stay in business, as long as you're not a big publisher."
Despite certain predictions to the contrary, most industry experts doubt that major publishers will ever become obsolete. There are beneficial aspects of working with a major publisher, after all: marketing, distribution, a financial safety net, the ability to make a kickass first-person shooter.
"I would not try to independently produce something like Titanfall," Schafer says. "And those kinds of games are not going away. The indie games community is just offering something more. It's like how Sundance didn't get rid of blockbuster films -- it just added more variety and made the whole ecosystem healthier."