So, what does a publisher do, anyway? Are they just glorified, outsourced marketing? Do they deal with licensing on the consoles? What’s stopping the developer from “publishing” by just putting the game out on Steam or GOG?
It’s a big question these days about whether you should get one or not, but they traditionally do a lot of things that game developers may not be great at:
- marketing (this is a huge upside as marketing is time consuming and expensive)
- storefront management and relations (many publishers have connections with people who control digital storefronts so they get special treatment)
- resources for developers (some publishers serve as resources for less experienced developers if they need additional help)
- community management (this kind of falls under marketing, but some publishers have staff that manage outreach and community platforms)
I’m not an expert on this so anyone who knows more please expand on this or correct me if I’m wrong. This is what I know as someone who has looked into publishers for my own games but ultimately didn’t use one.
This might fall under what you’ve already mentioned but they also have relations with large publications and streamers.
There’s thousands of games released every year but there’s a good chance you can only name less than 30 of them. We often underestimate the power of big marketing.
So true on the power of marketing. I really speak from experience on this too, because I released a game I spent three years of spare time on, tried really hard, but with no marketing budget and no idea what I was doing it barely got any eyes on it. Learned a lot from that experience.
“If you build it they will come” is largely bullshit from my experience. People will never try your stuff if they don’t know you exist.
Interesting, thank you for the insightful reply.
Apparently they didn’t make enough money when self-publishing. At least from what I gleaned from reading the article.
Well this way they’ll get zero money
As opposed to negative money?
Publishers do many things, but in this context they provide funding to develop the game. It’s clear that this developer didn’t have sufficient internal funding to develop their next project. That’s why they were talking about working with other groups, and finding a publisher, in this context it just means they needed funding to develop. They just don’t have the money
That really sucks. I really liked Moon and Mars was fun, too. I’m definitely in for the kickstarter on Home. Here’s hoping they can find a publisher soon.
What I always wonder will these things is.
Where did the money from the earlier games go?
Taking the most positive likely option, developer salaries. Possibly repaying past investment that they used to pay salaries before they published as well.
Obviously corruption is a possibility, but it’s not the only possible answer.
You know where
