Sybixsus
11-09-2004, 09:55 AM
When I was writing books, I was very familiar with the concept of vanity publishing, but I'd never come across it in the games industry until recently. But with my last game ( Anime Bowling Babes ) I've had a couple of big, well known retail publishers interested in publishing it. I obviously don't want to name names here, but we're talking publishers with a history of signing games for millions, first class marketing and games on shop shelves everywhere. But in both cases the deal on offer was no better ( in one case, worse ) than you'd get from a small non-exclusive deal in a small European market. Now obviously getting your game on shop shelves and having a retail track record is desirable in the sense that it gives you publicity and is bound to have to a knock-on effect with future games from both publishers and the public, so I had to think about the deals for.. oooh, about ten seconds.
I don't expect to hear back from either, I don't think for a minute they were just dealing hard, it was very apparent once the initial niceties were out of the way that they were very relaxed, really didn't care if they got the game or not, so long as they got it cheap. I haven't second guessed my decision to turn both down flat once, because they really didn't give any impression of dedication, and one of them had a huge lawsuit against them not so long ago for underpaying the developer for a seven figure sum, so it's not like you'd put your faith in getting money down the line anyway.
Anyway, I was curious if anyone else had noticed this, and whether there was a trend forming among big publishers to try and get games on the cheap ( and I really do mean VERY cheap ) because presumably a number of developers will be so blinded by the thought of a retail deal that they won't see how bad the deal is. I can imagine this being quite a lucrative area for publishers really, because there are enough indie developers out there that they can afford to get turned down by 99/100 if they get the 1/100 with such a weak deal for the developer that the publisher can't lose.
I don't expect to hear back from either, I don't think for a minute they were just dealing hard, it was very apparent once the initial niceties were out of the way that they were very relaxed, really didn't care if they got the game or not, so long as they got it cheap. I haven't second guessed my decision to turn both down flat once, because they really didn't give any impression of dedication, and one of them had a huge lawsuit against them not so long ago for underpaying the developer for a seven figure sum, so it's not like you'd put your faith in getting money down the line anyway.
Anyway, I was curious if anyone else had noticed this, and whether there was a trend forming among big publishers to try and get games on the cheap ( and I really do mean VERY cheap ) because presumably a number of developers will be so blinded by the thought of a retail deal that they won't see how bad the deal is. I can imagine this being quite a lucrative area for publishers really, because there are enough indie developers out there that they can afford to get turned down by 99/100 if they get the 1/100 with such a weak deal for the developer that the publisher can't lose.