Extra Credits: Publishing deal
 

Extra Credits has started to talk about their fundraising with a complete update on the situation. It's good to hear that they have a chance to help so many people. But I'm wondering if this will allow for more independence in game production? I've noted in another thread how more game makers already are looking for their own autonomy. But will this method of publishing actually work to help out more people? Will the IP issue come back to haunt this fund? What about ways to reward the fund outside of buying the games?

There's a lot of unanswered questions. It's pretty exciting to see something like this occur.

Jagos we just had an entire thread basically saying how you shouldn't rely on a youtube video to explain what you are talking about. So could you please actually give information on what the update is, how they are helping people, how this aids game development, some examples of what the unanswered questions are, ect.

Rockethubs explanation

The very same link is on the Youtube. It was posted in another thread not too long ago.

alright, cool, I do approve, heck might be applying for this in a few months. 50/50 split is better then what you'd get from most investors too plus its a self feeding system. My only concern is it in the early stages, a few bombed games early on could empty the fund.

Also take note, they aren't saying the triple A studios are bad, just that instead of whining that they aren't being innovative we should take matters into our own hands.

If you listen, they won't be planning to fund people for a while. They are taking pains to be as transparent as possible. So they'll go through the successes and failures. I'm not quite sure if some developers would really be up to this new transparency/ democratic process in gaming. That's one of the concerns I have. How would a developer feel when they have all of their business put in the public's eye?

Anyone else find the new episode isn't working? Certainly isn't for me. :/

It worked for me. It's funny, a lot of people are clamoring for Six Days of Fallujah to come out on the link...

I think that the problem with their model is that if they fund 10 games, statistically, 9 of them are going to flop/run way overbudget and be unfinished, or whatever.

I can't see it staying afloat as a thing that's letting people get paid to pursue what they like. They're going to have to be as selective as a publisher in this, and really just offer better terms.

sadly this is the reality. People think the big studios are just uncreative or dont like to fund experimental ideas. Truth is that there is a completely legitimate reason for it. Honestly I suspect this will end up like most publishers like Capcom or EA, that churn out guaranteed money makers so they have the extra cash to take risks.

edit: scratch that, thinking it over abit doing that is antithetical to their stated goals. Crap this might actually be doomed to failure

... Are you ignoring this right here?

No? It's entirely true.

"Publishers can't take risks because 9/10 games fail, and they'll go broke."

"NO, I CAN REFUTE THAT! LOOK AT THESE PEOPLE DROPPING OUT OF PUBLISHERS BECAUSE THE PUBLISHERS REFUSE TO TAKE RISKS BECAUSE 9/10 GAMES FAIL AND THEY'D GO BROKE."

Aero's argument is about the larger publishers refusing to take risks. There are a number of successful smaller companies that take more risks on original games. Then there's also the fact that these larger companies kill projects if they don't make deadlines. These companies are making money outside of the original big publisher deals.

I'm not going to believe an anecdote of a statistic just because you say it. I'm going to ask that you have proof of this concept.

If I had my notebooks from class last year, I would give you the citations. I've got a books which undoubtedly have such things in them, but they're huge and I don't feel like looking through them when I have better things to do.

So instead, I'll link a site and say read stuff here. Read post mortems on Gama Sutra.

http://www.gamasutra.com/

Edit: Better yet, read those, and keep in mind they're just the ones that actually made it fully.

Additionally:

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...n_video_gaming

20% of games make a profit. 10% of published games generate 90% of the revenue. Meaning, 20% of the games don't lose money, and 10% of them are responsible for most of the revenue of a company. Numbers vary from source to source, the ones I had to cite for a final last year gave 10% of the games being non-failures, these numbers agree with that.

Those 10% are the staple non-risky games.

This isn't anecdotal evidence, this is hard facts from the industry.

in addition to what RPG said, most indie studios do fail. Just not spectacularly because they dont invest as much money. But I assure you, alot of small developers spend year of solid work, drain their bank accounts, then have nothing to show for it.

One reason people think indie game industry is doing so well is that, as private companies they dont need to disclose how well they do. The only ones that do are the very successful ones to show people they are very successful. You try to hide your failures, EC even mentioned this in a video.

I can also confirm that his statistics are correct, roughly. My own research was even more pessimistic showing a 95% failure rate on new studios

I'm not positive but MMOs have changed a lot in the last few years.

You now have F2P creating a bunch of revenue for new companies.

You also have a ton of freeware that seems to make money on Armor Games, Newgrounds, and quite a few other places. There's actually more ways now than in the past to make money in gaming. So essentially, the larger studios make more money, but they also have more costs. If the smaller labels are making enough to cover their own costs (Gratuitous Space Battles and Angry Birds comes to mind), then is it really a bad thing to split up that 10%? The pie has actually gotten bigger and there are more ways to make revenue in this day and age. Even if you're 14.

-E-

Also, the stats on your quote rpg, are horrifically old...

The gaming market is up to $65 Billion

10% of that to smaller companies isn't necessarily a bad thing considering.

The numbers are the first ones that I found, not the actual source of my original statement. That was in a book or a class, and I can't find it. I had to cite it on my final though.

Look, I have two relevant degrees here. (Well, in progress. And one's only marginally relevant. The more important thing is that I wanted to say that). Unless they're as picky (That's to put it kindly. They'll actually have to be pickier, since they have less of a pool to take hits) as a typical publisher, they will go broke, quickly.

Edit: The quote had no stats on the actual value of the gaming industry, so I have no idea where you're going with that.

You are also misreading it completely, if you think that 10% of games making a profit means that 10% of the global profit of all games together is made by each game that makes a profit. Like, there's no argument that can be made against one that has no grounding in fact.

this isn't what they are funding, for one thing alot of it is shovelware, second of all they make money because they dont cost anything. Most flash games are done in a programmers spare time, and more importantly most are generic un-artistic casual games based more on simple psychological techniques then actual creativity or innovation.

They are talking about funding things that you know, require funding. Games that require small teams.

You are also only talking about the successes, for every success there are 20 that live and die in obscurity. You are citing the exceptions, not the rule.

Two things have happened though.

1) They're setting up a Second indie fund, which seems to do the same thing as before.

2) I don't know where you're saying exactly the 9/10 games are failing. If you're talking about console development due to costs and licensing, then yes, I'll agree with you on that. But what needs to be considered now is the fact that there are a lot more games and avenues toward distribution.

What I'm saying about MMOs is that most of them 5 years ago didn't survive due to the fact that WoW cut into it considerably. Enter F2P, which undercut that model and forced WoW to change. It's less about subscriptions and more about having an in-store.

You now have mobile gaming as a viable source for revenue.
You have Unreal making the gaming engine cheaper
You have a world of digital distribution and a bevy of ideas.

In essence, the tools are getting cheaper, but the quality of games are getting better. The only thing I've heard about a publisher failing is Ubisoft, spending more time on DRM than making money.

In fact, out of most reviews I've seen, it seems to be heavily publisher centric than on anything that a developer has done wrong.

Like the Ars article, the fact that a publisher is allowed to nix a game that is over budget seems to run with those thoughts. At least with EC's take, it seems to do a lot better in giving developers control of their own resource.

Again, I'm not having trouble with saying that games fail. But that's a pretty big blanket assessment we don't know all of the reasons a game has failed.

The pie will never be so large that the Pareto Principle won't be in effect. As I'm saying up above, it's rather hard to say "this game failed" when it's the publisher nixing the project.

Oh I see where the confusion is coming from. I'm not saying 90% of all games fail, its difficult to identify what failing is, and it can fail for many reasons.

I am saying 90% of developers fail. And dont put all the blame for cut funding on publisher, as a rule they have completely legit reasons for cutting funding. Take Duke Nukem for example, that was the developers fault and if not for the publisher taking it out of their hands it would never have seen the light of day and been a 100% investment loss