Develop 2010: Publishers declined to own one of the most popular games of all time
Bejeweled has in the space of ten years become one of the most popular games of all time, but pessimistic publishers previously turned down offers to buy the title even at a bargain-bin price.
Gasual Gaming kingpin PopCap has sold over 50 million copies of Bejeweled since it launched in 2000. The game still today enjoys some 10 million monthly active users, and 200 million games played each day.
But when the first build of the game was finished, some ten years ago, unnamed publishers didn’t take the offer to snap up the game for $60,000.
The extraordinary revelation comes at the fifth annual Develop Conference, through an enlightening speaker session which focused on the evolution of Bejeweled during the social gaming revolution.
Speaking for PopCap was Dave Bishop, an industry veteran now working at casual gaming giant – who himself was surprised to discover Bejeweled didn’t sell at such a low price ten years ago.
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It wasn’t the first time today that publishers have been called out on their hyper-pessimism.
In a separate session, Joe Danger studio Hello Games listed responses it heard from publishers when pitching the popular PSN title. One publisher said that “collecting giant coins feels unrealistic”, while another asked if monkeys could be in the game.
It's not a revelation to me, it sounds very familiar. We couldn't sign The Ship, or any other title, for love nor money.
With artwork & a design doc they wanted to see assets, with assets they wanted to see action, with action they wanted to see a vertical slice with finished assets.
A vertical slice is basically a game...um...that's why we went to the publisher, to fund the game! Once we have done the vertical slice, why would we need a publisher?!
Not only is there the cost of any assets you need (such as a movie or demo), there's the cost of travel & attending shows. All of this makes pitching costly (I'd estimate we blew a good £500k pitching & courting with demos).
Then there's the difficulty of pitching. If you pitch an existing idea with a twist, they ask what makes it unique, or why you can deliver a similar title to a rival. If you pitch anything innovative, you can see they struggle to grasp the idea, and the question comes, but what other game is it like, & how does it play?
I once overheard two publishers at the airport (a lot of people fly out at the same time after shows, so the airport can be a great place to hear gossip!) saying they were tired of being pitched games in a post apocalyptic universe (fair enough), and the best pitch they'd heard was "It's die hard...but in space" (which oddly enough, isn't a game, it's a movie, nice idea, but I wonder how the hell that would play?!). That's about the level of subtlety and depth your pitch needs. If they can't get it in a moment, it's a hard sell. And if they get it, they will want the movie & demo, so you better have those to hand!
And, without being accusatory, assuming they like it, what is to stop them developing the idea themselves? An NDA is largely meaningless, given an idea can be tweaked to be "not the same idea". E.g. substitute in monkeys for jewels, and call it Bemonkeyed (ok...probably not a hit).
In my experience, the publishers either lack imagination or don't want to take risks with innovation, and giving them the benefit of the doubt, simply find game budgets too daunting to make any kind of instinctive decision on.
I heard many a publisher say we had one of the best pitches with The Ship, and that if budgets were still at 200k they'd have signed it there and then.
As an interesting side point, while we struggled to sell ideas to Publishers, speaking to other developers, they almost always get an idea (and often show a little passion about it). I remember seeing Joe Danger when the guys were pitching it, we loved it immediately & we're really impressed with what they had done (basically a finished game), and it begs the question why all the publishers didn't get it.
Off topic, but the deal you'd get with a publisher, assuming they signed, would suck anyway, so why bother?!
And if they don't like your unrealistic giant coins (someone tell them about Mario), or think the game would be better with Mexicans, or flying monkeys, they will be free insist you make those changes if you sign to them.
Someone remind me the good points about Publishers? Oh yeah, money, distribution, and marketing. Oh wait, distribution is now steam, and marketing is the internet & games communities. So that only leaves money?
Someone find some money please? :)
