The Digital Jungle

Nobody knows more than I do about the struggles in getting deals signed - I've spent my career doing advance/royalty deals and business development at not only Kuju but companies all over the world, and it's very difficult to argue that you want to keep the IP when the publisher is putting millions of pounds into not only making, but marketing that game. They want to keep the IP.

But once you've given away your baby - your magnum opus of an idea - there's not a great deal of motivation on the part of developers to make it exceptionally good, other than professional pride. Now, developers do have a lot of that, and want to make as good a game as possible, but it behoves them to make the best game possible if they end up owning that IP - they can build value in that IP, which builds value in their own organisation.

That's an excellent question. It's amazing what you can do when your heart is fully in it, it isn't a massive margin and when you're motivated by the ultimate sales to the consumer - you can make a little bit of money go a long way.

I know a guy who sold his house to make a game, and I'm not suggesting everybody rush out and do that - but it's a level of commitment that I can't stand by and not support. They put their hearts and souls into making a game and they want a publisher that'll get behind them and support them - but be invisible to the consumer and not eclipse their efforts.

The days of the monolithic brands promoting themselves are gone I think - consumers want to engage with the creatives, and it doesn't take a massive amount of money to develop these titles.

What I think we'll see is with these publishers laying off staff who have families and don't to move, they'll have some redundancy money, pool it and make themselves a game. They know what they're doing, they're professionals, great at making games - they just need somebody to work with who'll support them.

Developers are the creatives in the industry, and the big publishers can't argue that their most important relationships aren't with those creatives, they're with the buyers at Best Buy, WalMart, GameStop and Game. That seems a bit backward, a bit strange, that they don't value the people that make games the most highly in their organisation. That can't be anything but a broken model.

Well, Playfish has a very interesting business model - they've done something very smart and very well. As a work-for-hire or independent developer, it's very difficult. You see companies like Chrome laying off staff, what happened to GRiN and various other studios having a very hard time of it.

They've got a lot of bums of seats they've got to pay, and that means going to publishers and getting advances. Their customers aren't people who play games - their customers are publishers, who give them their money. And once the deal is signed the developer is motivated to spend as little as possible to get their game finished, because that eats into their profits.

That's fine when there's lots of money around and publishers are spending money on work-for-hire or new content, but the economy is shrinking, so that's just not going to happen.

Now, with this digital revolution if you like, it's facilitating what the consumer wants - which is engaging in a relationship with the creatives.