It’s not so black and white, Clair Obscur : Expédition 33 has that level of quality and polish because the team behind it was able to find a publisher to finance it. Everything has nuance, we got shafted on subnautica 2 but we had other great games, some self published, some not
Comment on Pop it in your calendars
ter_maxima@jlai.lu 3 weeks ago
Publishers are cancer. Self publish whenever possible !
Vermingot@jlai.lu 3 weeks ago
Wolf@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
You Don’t Need a F-ing Publisher*
*unless you do.
It would just require smaller teams making lower budget games that are more focused on Art than sales, which I would be really happy about honestly. Too many people are in this industry solely to rake in the big bucks.
ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
A self-published game with a focus on quality will outperform any AAA game.
Wolf@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
If you are going to compete with AAA games it’s going to require a big budget, which not all Devs have access to.
A high quality AA game would probably do great, but would be unlikely to outsell a AAA with hundreds of millions of dollars for budget.
Obsidian made a fantastic game with Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire but it was considered a ‘failure’ sales wise (at least at launch), despite being well received.
Obsidian sold to Micro$oft despite making very high quality games and their crowdfunding campaigns consistently earning more money than they were asking for. The stated reason was they found it hard to keep their employees paid consistently and they didn’t want to lay people off. Also that they thought they could do just as good as other big players in the industry if they had access to larger budgets.
I think it was a bad move. They managed to survive the massive round of 9,000 jobs cuts to Microsoft’s gaming division (this time), but you just know that Microsoft would cut them in a heartbeat if they though it would save them a dime in the future. That being said I think it’s understandable to want to see your employees paid, and it’s just a sad fact that AAA games require huge budgets nowadays, so I can kind of understand why they sold, even if I don’t agree with it.
Muaddib@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
I’m still waiting for Obsidian to finish writing the second half of Tyranny and I won’t be buying another of their games until they do.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Source?
Pretty much every popular indie game has a publisher. Publishers are great because they provide relatively low cost marketing, the trick is to be careful when signing a contract that you don’t sign away too much while still getting value from them.