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| [Sep 20, 2010, 3:14 pm ET] - Share - Viewing Comments |
Computer and Video Games quotes Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, who has made another of his head-scratching statements about the game industry. Presumably chuffed over Activision's ten-year deal with Bungie, Mr. Kotick calls Bungie "probably the last remaining high quality independent developer." CVG provides a brief list of the indies that one would deduce he does not think are high-quality: "Valve, Epic, Ninja Theory, Level-5, Insomniac, Foundation 9, Gearbox, Sucker Punch, Rebellion, and Terminal Reality." He also suggests that Activision alone has the publishing chops to match up with Bungie, saying of their publisher hunt: "But as they started to go and look at the obvious candidates, they realised that no company other than Activision had the skills that they needed to be successful for the vision of that product." Thanks joao.
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| 43. |
Re: Kotick on Bungie & Indies |
Sep 21, 2010, 07:35 |
Beamer |
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Have you seen the buzz "Amnesia-Dark Descent" has been generating here? Near-universally positive buzz no less
Did you see them complaining about how they're not sure they are going to sell enough to stay afloat?
Also, Sepharo, I fail to see how "I think it's a near perfect game in a genre I don't particularly enjoy" isn't "positive."
Consider yourself awaken. Publishers and shitty mainstream devs will be a thing of the past for the PC soon enough.
Funny, I've said they'd fill holes from major publishers and people here called me crazy and said I was an idiot. But these guys aren't making the same caliber game. It'll be years before an indie can make something that looks like Crysis. In the meantime graphics tend to be something people value extremely highly. How often do people here point out that it sucks that we're being held back by consoles graphically? Indies can keep up better right now due to that. If CryTek were able to do CryEngine 3 without regard for consoles we'd be so far beyond what any indie could crank out.
Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad
Is being published by a Russian publishing company. So there goes that point.
Natural Selection 2
Wake me when it finds success.
Also, who the hell considers Natural Selection AAA? Who expects it to even hit a million? Who expects it to have the buzz of a AAA?
Love
Haven and Hearth
Minecraft
Penumbra
Cave Story
Ok, fine, a bunch of games with 2D or rudimentary graphics, outside of Penumbra, which had an 8 man team plus outsourced much of their graphics work to another studio that also had a multi-man team.
Lastly, how many people here even played these games?
Most gamers, all of us included, concentrate on big releases by big teams with big graphics. Most of us expect a certain level of quality. Indies will never, ever match the big money publishers for that. What they can offer is ingenuity, which games like Minecraft spit out in spades far beyond what the big money publishers can offer up.
But, in the long run, the graphics and polish are what push us. We enjoy the ingenuity, but we don't focus on it. That's not going to change any time soon.
Again, with music, we could easily replace recording companies. With a laptop and the internet. With movies, even film companies are seeing themselves slightly less useful, but only slightly. With publishing, well, the release of the Kindle has done nothing to make book publishing companies less relevant. And with gaming, DD has done nothing to make video game publishing companies less relevant.
So long as these things take significant amounts of capital publishing companies will be around.
You need someone to both invest the money and share the risk. Publishers do this. This is a good thing. I don't see why you guys want it dead. Want it to change? Yeah, sure, that'd be awesome. But want it dead? Who the hell is going to fund 9 figures to make the next Red Dead Revolver if not a publisher? Who is going to give Firaxis the money to kick out an ultrapolished, graphics intensive turn based strategy if not a publisher? |
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