David Jaffe, director of such games as Twisted Metal and God of War recently came out slamming developers for complaining about their lot when it comes to the relationship they have with publishers.
His comments were in response to this article written by a games developer operating anonymously (presumably to protect himself from retaliation from publishers).
"I reject the tired accusation that it's the publisher keeping game developers down. And I reject that accusation because of the classic line that I am sure you've heard before: you are worth what you can negotiate,"
I'm not going to get into a big thing about the flaws (and indeed strong merits) of his position and what the implications of it were if anyone were to really take him seriously (no one should, he's only worked on PlayStation exclusives since the early 90's).
But something occurred to me. While I'm sure most have at least a working knowledge of the publisher/developer relationship - developer makes a thing, publisher funds and releases the thing - not many seem to really understand how that system, under its current implementation, crushes developers, hurts franchises and stifles creativity.
So let me walk you through an example of how that whole thing goes down. For the sake of protecting the innocent I will be using fictional names for franchises, developers and publishers.
Developer CryoSnare comes up with an idea for a game called Bread Trace. They've done well with a few previous titles and the concept is attractive enough that the publisher, BA, gives them a budget for development. Not much is said at this stage because the publisher doesn't really know what kind of game it is. They're mostly empty suits that think an Xbox is a funny name for the shoebox they keep in the back of their closet.
Bread Trace happens to be a wild success. BA is delighted with the break away hit. Who would have thought that a game about drawing lines around pieces of bread would be so successful. Well, lets make a sequel. At this point slightly less empty suits come in with some "helpful suggestions". Meanwhile the development studio is just delighted that they get to keep making their game. "Wow, you're going to give us a budget to implement this stuff? I wanted to do that in the first one but didn't have the money. Cool, thanks."
Then the unthinkable happens. The second game is even more popular than the first. BA just realised they're on to a cash cow. Maybe this could be their Ball Of Booty. Activizard has been cleaning their clocks for years with their model of re-releasing the same, high quality, game every year. But we need to change a few things to really capture that mainstream appeal. This is where the butchers come in with demands to make the game into what the focus groups tell them people want. BA, using the power of the purse strings, makes sure that the developer adheres to their demands.
"Lets just tweak this here, and change that there, and add a multi-player function to this, originally, completely single player experience. Oh, and lets hold part of the story and game experience hostage to force people who don't want to play multi-player to connect on-line And then we can have a score board and then lets put in some micro-transactions too cos that's been performing really well for us in mobile markets. Well, thats just the perfect game, isn't it.
Oh no. Bread Trace 3 flopped due to ridiculous expectations and a budget that was wholly unsustainable due in large part to publisher interference.
LOOK what this terrible game did to poor little BA, it cost them so much. they'd better terminate the franchise... and the developer... and then burn the studio down... and salt the earth.
*doesn't really know what salting the earth is supposed to do*
Source: Escapist Magazine, Kotaku
