Gaim Mastr
May 2nd, 2004, 12:49 pm
I saw this interview (http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/04/29/news_6094912.html) that GameSpot had with Bill Gardner.
Bill Gardner, the former president of Capcom North America had recently announced his new publishing and distribution company (O~3 Entertainment (http://www.o3entertainment.com/index.php)), which will be based in Santa Clara, CA, and will work with PC, console, and mobile games.
The company, that also has former Capcom executives Chris Jelinek and Hanako Watanabe on staff, has been "in stealth mode" since early January but is to "set up shop" at this year's E3, where they plan to evangelize a new approach to publishing which will favor smaller developers and original titles.
Quote from Bill...
I would say that what I had been seeing, even while at Capcom, was that there were so very many studios and younger developers trying to enter the business, and they were getting blocked by the overwhelming costs of building properties. These folks were following their own dreams and building games, and then couldn't find a way to market because of unwilling or greedy publishers and distributors. I think that something is "broken", in that we are beginning to discourage original thinking and innovation by going the "licensing/sequel" route as a measure of success. The current status seems to be that, unless a product can move a million plus units, the “big” players aren’t interested. The smaller publishers have not built the marketing, operations and distribution infrastructures that will take a product from golden master onto the retail shelf. There is a huge investment to implementing a full service publishing company that many people overlook.
I'm glad that people like Bill are actually trying to do something from the inside to keep the industry from degrading into being run by companies interested only in rehashing ideas of past successes through exorbitant licensing fees.
One big problem with the way the industry is working now is that it takes way too much and costs way too much to get a game out to market in a quality state. That's why we have situations like the one with DE: Invisible War and ToEE. I have to wonder how much of this has added to the HL2 situation as well.
Bill Gardner, the former president of Capcom North America had recently announced his new publishing and distribution company (O~3 Entertainment (http://www.o3entertainment.com/index.php)), which will be based in Santa Clara, CA, and will work with PC, console, and mobile games.
The company, that also has former Capcom executives Chris Jelinek and Hanako Watanabe on staff, has been "in stealth mode" since early January but is to "set up shop" at this year's E3, where they plan to evangelize a new approach to publishing which will favor smaller developers and original titles.
Quote from Bill...
I would say that what I had been seeing, even while at Capcom, was that there were so very many studios and younger developers trying to enter the business, and they were getting blocked by the overwhelming costs of building properties. These folks were following their own dreams and building games, and then couldn't find a way to market because of unwilling or greedy publishers and distributors. I think that something is "broken", in that we are beginning to discourage original thinking and innovation by going the "licensing/sequel" route as a measure of success. The current status seems to be that, unless a product can move a million plus units, the “big” players aren’t interested. The smaller publishers have not built the marketing, operations and distribution infrastructures that will take a product from golden master onto the retail shelf. There is a huge investment to implementing a full service publishing company that many people overlook.
I'm glad that people like Bill are actually trying to do something from the inside to keep the industry from degrading into being run by companies interested only in rehashing ideas of past successes through exorbitant licensing fees.
One big problem with the way the industry is working now is that it takes way too much and costs way too much to get a game out to market in a quality state. That's why we have situations like the one with DE: Invisible War and ToEE. I have to wonder how much of this has added to the HL2 situation as well.