I think in some ways a publisher can be good. Someone there to say hey we need a product we can sell and this is when we need it. But I also think there gets to a size of development team where it’s hard to make are because you just feel like a corporate drone and not a member of a team making something fun.
But the AAA games industry is full of overbearing publishers and absolutely gigantic teams with giant projects and giant budgets that cannot fail.
Smaller devs also can’t fail, not much anyway. But success was easier to reach because they didn’t have to make as much money. Now success means make all the money and that’s just fantasy. I guess you don’t make it rich if you make it easy to win.
We had a good publisher once. They picked us up, helped us cross the line and stuck with us while we stayed in the black for most of a decade before they lost interest and sold us to someplace who was awful but didn’t fire half of us immediately.
There are publishers out there that are good and useful. They are not in the majority.
I think in some ways a publisher can be good. Someone there to say hey we need a product we can sell and this is when we need it. But I also think there gets to a size of development team where it’s hard to make are because you just feel like a corporate drone and not a member of a team making something fun.
But the AAA games industry is full of overbearing publishers and absolutely gigantic teams with giant projects and giant budgets that cannot fail.
Smaller devs also can’t fail, not much anyway. But success was easier to reach because they didn’t have to make as much money. Now success means make all the money and that’s just fantasy. I guess you don’t make it rich if you make it easy to win.
We had a good publisher once. They picked us up, helped us cross the line and stuck with us while we stayed in the black for most of a decade before they lost interest and sold us to someplace who was awful but didn’t fire half of us immediately.
There are publishers out there that are good and useful. They are not in the majority.