 Mike Wilson’s divine
dream of a developer-owned publisher is now a reality. Combine one ego-drenched name, a
tossed salad of the hottest polygon spatterers in Texas, seven zeros of financing and the
resulting synergy is the Gathering of Developers. Behind the primped PR-gloss of what game
companies want you to hear, GameSlice Editor-in-Chief Geoff Keighley unearths the
undeniably fascinating tale of why this We-Are-The-World-esque concoction of developers is
a suit-driven game publisher’s worst nightmare, and a hard-core gamer’s ultimate
fantasy.
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"The party's over [for game publishers]. I'm expecting a horse head in the
mail..."
---Mike Wilson
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It Was Bound to Happen
What Mike Wilson is doing with the Gathering is a whole new way of publishing software.
Without doubt, change in a multi-billion dollar industry can often be hard to come by, and
as such, Wilson is simple and effective with his message to all the major software
publishers in the industry: "The party’s over," he says, "and I’m
expecting a horse head in the mail from each coast. Luckily we have our own Texas Mafia
started down here."
"The profits made
will not feed a publishing engine, but a creative engine."
---John Romero on g.o.d.
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What exactly is Wilson doing that’s going to be the party-pooper for major
publishers such as GT Interactive and Activision? His concept, in short, is to team up
with a number of independent developers who would own their own equity share in a
publisher. As John Romero points out, "The concept is definitely cool. What developer
wouldn’t want to own their distributor? The profits made will not feed a publishing
engine, but a creative engine." With a group of developers joined together as a
publisher, the hope is that the relationship will afford developers "…more time
to make our games, and more funding to help create a triple-A product," remarks Brett
Combs, Vice President of Terminal Reality.
A board of directors for the Gathering will be comprised of the business staff on
Wilson’s end and one representative from each developer with a share in the company.
By "eliminating the middleman," Romero explains, "the developers will make
more money, thus they will be stronger, more stable and be able to grow." Other costs
can be minimized by joint-resources such as the motion capture, sound studios, and laser
scanning facilities Wilson plans to set up in Texas for the use of all developers in his
group. |
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Scott Miller calls the concept of developer-driven publishing "revolutionary,"
but the heart of the issue seems to revolve around the idea of having more control over
projects. As Ritual Entertainment Vice President Jim Dose states, "[the Gathering]
recognizes that developing brand name loyalty with users is far more effective at the
developer level than the publisher level."
g.o.d. CEO Mike Wilson
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Part of a loyalty relationship with consumers involves marketing, an issue that
developers often feel is mishandled by larger publishers. Combs explains that "The
current notion in the publishing industry is that developers don’t have a clue how to
marketing their products. The Gathering will prove these publishers wrong." Combs and
other board members are looking to prove their point by allotting equal marketing budgets
for all titles and, as Wilson explains, "If a developer feels like a product was
marketed poorly under the Gathering, they should point the finger at themselves."
The creative-driven control at the Gathering is not anything new, says Wilson.
"Madonna did a similar thing when she started Maverick Records. It happens in every
industry where a few large companies are doing a bad job, or at least not as good a job as
a few smart people could do," with the obvious implication being that Wilson thinks
that g.o.d. will be the saving grace for the industry. |
