Is bit about beth explicitly forbidding to post on RPGCodex true?
EDIT: Anthony, got any stories about evil publishers?
I have no idea on the first thing.
On the second thing, my opinion on publishers has changed over time.
Evil is never a word I would use to describe them.
For many of them, it is simply a question of watching over their money which they have invested in something getting built. If milestones don't get reached, they get nervous. This is completely reasonable.
If you hired a guy to build you a roof before rainy season starts, and they were running late, you might get more than a bit nervous, you might start to get downright angry, especially if you didn't have the money or the time to get a second contractor on the roof.
That is a metaphor for the publisher trying to get a game developed for a certain quarter in order to meet a certain target.
I think most reasonable people can understand what I just wrote.
Where publishers and developers go wrong, is the micromanaging publisher, or the publisher that keeps moving the goal posts, or the NEW publisher that doesn't actually understand the game business. I think we can all see how those can create problems.
Why do publishers get so much blame?
Well, for one, the developers are who gets most of the press, and they are also the ones who interact most directly with their gamer fans. Often, the developers will BLAME publishers unfairly to cause misdirection.
This is not ALWAYS true, sometimes the publisher, as in those later cases I mentioned, will do something that does legitimately hurt the game development process. Such as moving up a release date, or micromanaging the product, or something like that. Experienced game developers can adapt to these and make do.
All businesses put money first, they have to or they wont stay in business. Sometimes you find companies that put their customers second, and their own people third. Those are usually very good companies. Sounds weird I know, but that is a recipe for a good company.
Then you have companies that put their own people very far down the list. They do things like mandatory 6 or 7 day weeks, mandatory 10, 12, or even 14 hour days. Those companies are very bad. EA still gets a lot residual hate for the "EA Spouse" situation, which was 100% true, and actually even worse that stated.
Remember, publisher's aren't some alien force from another planet, they are human beings doing their own job trying to accomplish their own goals and get home to their significant others and families too.
I'm not trying to make excuses for publishers. By and large my experience with publishers has been pretty good.
LucasArts: pretty darn good group to work for, good support, I would have liked some stronger marketing.
Atari: pretty darn good to work for, but they had some internal troubles that made some areas difficult. Things like that happen in business, but we finished NWN2 and we got two more expansions for which I am grateful to have worked on.
Sega: pretty darn good to work for, and very patient. They had their own money troubles, remember the year they cancelled
Aliens: Crucible, they posted a 260 million dollar loss or something like that, and that obviously caused some concerns, which were understandable.
Bethesda: good in some ways, AMAZING in other ways. They are excellent marketers, which as a game developer, you love to see your sweat and blood well marketed. They provide a lot of support for their developers. They are strong ... and a bit cold on the business end, which over time I have grown to understand. Especially now that I am helping run 4 businesses.
Square Enix: wonderful to work for, simply wonderful. Can't really complain about them at all. Would have liked a bigger budget I guess, that is something that could have been better i guess.
This is overall a review on the BIG issues. Sure, there are day to day, or week to week things that might make you groan or something, but that's life when someone else is the boss.
So I understand that my experience with publishers is not normal, and maybe softened over time too. I know some of this might be decline for you guys, but if I try to objective and understand, I find most of this to be true. i wish i had known it more when I was actually still developing games as I might have stressed less.
, no one at Obsidian told me to post this, I thought it would be prudent to make it explicit that I am my own man sharing some stories about the great places I've worked and the great people I worked with.
