Digital platforms allow devs to circumvent publisher contracts entirely, says O'Luanaigh
British developers must avoid draconian business terms demanded by major publishing corporations, the chairman of Tiga’s self-publishing committee has said.
In a call to action, Patrick O'Luanaigh said “for too long developers have laboured under the traditional ‘give your IP away, never see royalties’ model”.
O'Luanaigh (pictured), who is also the managing director of online games group nDreams, said Tiga “strongly supports the trend towards online gaming and self-publishing”.
He believes independent developers must not so easily relinquish their IP when negotiating contracts with publishers and, if possible, should publish games themselves across internet platforms such as browsers and smartphones.
O'Luanaigh’s comments come as Tiga issues new data from its comprehensive survey of British studios, which finds that the UK game development scene is now predominantly focused on digital and social game projects.
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“Online gaming can deliver greater company stability and revenue sustainability for studios,” he added.
“This is because studios can circumvent traditional publisher business models and build relationships directly with customers. Network gaming businesses can create original games, retain their IP and attain greater financial stability.
“Tiga will help indie developers and digital publishers to take advantage of the shift towards self-publishing and network gaming.”
Tiga said it will soon publish a guide to self-publishing book, intended to offer expert advice for the UK’s start-up studios.
Developers getting Royalties for all of their games was absolutely standard from 1982-1995.
Developers owning their own IP was also possible from at least 1989 - 1995.
This IS the traditional model.
When the big corporate publishers and platform holders with their arms full of licenses and big chequebooks descended in 1994 it didn't take them long to undo all of the developer power that we had built up, particularly in the UK, throughout the 80s and early 90s.
Most people who entered the industry after about 1997 will not be aware that these previous world ever existed.
I still have the contracts and the knowledge and would love to share this with other developers, as I did recently in Denmark.
The development community needs to be re-empowered as a whole and unfortunately the lack of ability to negotiate terms in a way that is good for both developer and publisher is really pretty frightening considering how good we used to be at it collectively.
The trick is for developers to work collectively so retaining IP becomes 'normal' instead of 'difficult'.
As for royalties, recent experiences tell me that most investors hate the idea of royalties. They see it as losing control of company assets. I recently had an investor who said he preferred to pay me considerable consultancy fees rather than royalties with a lower up front cost. This is based on fear and ignorance in my opinion. The way to entice good teams and professional is to pay royalties to people who back themselves. This does not threaten anything in the long term.
Similarly whoever controls the IP deals can be done to satisfy both parties, providing the licensing rights for each format, sequel and territory are separated and optional within the agreement and can revert to the developer if no action is taken by the publisher.
I would be very happy for a group of us to convene a meeting of UK developers to discuss these issues and at least arm everyone with some different negotiating options. Maybe it would also be good to invite some publishers along to explain the dilemma for developers.
Essentially those of us making original games are artists and generally we back our art. If publishers are smart they can use this desire for IP retention and royalties to reduce the amount of money they are risking up front on games. That way assuming 3 out of 4 games fail at least they are saving reduced development fees for 3 titles and only losing the additional royalty money on the 4th title once advances have been exceeded.
Provided publishers can cover their costs from the money coming in up until the point that the developer has recouped their advance then everyone is quids in. Publishing is not as expensive as it used to be, there are no up front cartridge manufacturing costs to bear and everything is digital.
Time to go back to the old model, before the traditional model that Patrick refers to. It is actually better for both publishers and developers.
