An insider look from someone who works in a Publisher company.
Nothing really mindblowing, being honest, but it’s always interesting to read these type of articles, without prepared question, and without BS in the answers.
That’s a nice Q&A. Lots of interesting comments from the publisher guy.
…i don’t know. They come across as…too human?
Yeah, this one seemed suspicious to me as well. Could be anyone, really.
That was interesting. I wish someone had asked about what the publishers were learning from the “chase WOW, fail / chase COD, fail” pattern we’ve been seeing.
I liked his answers about Kickstarter.
I liked the DLC comment, don’t buy it then.
Also they must have access to stats etc we don’t have and he said more than once that new IP just isn’t selling.
But he didn’t answer them in the end. He said it would need a separate article. Same as Steam.
Though I can imagine his answers:
-KS can’t be used for AAA development. Not even a single A development!
-We haven’t seen the results of the KS games. When some of them results of being mediocre, or just bad, people super-positive to KS will change.
-At some point, there will be a successful KS scam where someone runs away with a million under the arm. That negative news will impact KS badly.
Yeah, I was joking about his non-answer. Still, I think he’d have some interesting things to say to armchair publishers that second-guess why EA or Activision don’t use a Kickstarter model to fund more niche titles.
TurinTur: What is AAA Anyway? A game where the marketing/license budget is as big as a AA or A game?
It’s like porn. You know it when you see it.
Oddly enough, I have never had the ability to recognize porn when I see it, which made for some really awkward experiences in my teenage years.
It doesn’t even have to be a scam. Games run over all the time. Developers miss milestones more than they hit them. What happens when a kickstarted title runs out of money? Do they ask for more? Do they just fold? Are the investors protected in any way? If they sell out to a korean or chinese company, what happens to your $1000 investment, do you get your 100 free copies and dinner with the new dev team in Seoul? Do the new owners keep the original spirit of the game, or do they turn it into a mandarin-only F2P microtransaction-infected grindfest?
Well, I suppose AAA is “top of the line” budget. One of those 4 or 5 bluckbuster games that sell five million units or more. GTA, Ass Creed, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Skyrim…
AA or A, by extension, are games with still high production values/budgets and marketing (you wouldn’t confuse them with an indie game or a budget game) but clearly not as expensive.
If an AAA game cost 50-70 million dollars (without marketing), the A/AA games cost 20-30 million, maybe??
That’s still too expensive for Kickstarter.