Distribution > Content?

Gamasutra reported today on the comments by game business analyst Mitch Lasky that distribution power is more valuable than developing good game content.

I think content matters more than that, but even so it's nice to see the value of a smart distribution model getting the attention it deserves.

I've been saying for years that id's success -- and the enormous kick-start their success gave to all PC gaming -- was due in large part to how the game design and distribution model for Wolfenstein 3D (not DOOM, which simply reused this model) were deeply intertwined. The game was built as a collection of levels with a boss fight at the end... and only the first collection was essentially free. Once you'd played the initial shareware levels, then discovered that there were two more collections of levels, each more over-the-top than the last, paying for "the rest of the game" seemed absolutely justifiable.

It was brilliant then, and it's still brilliant. All that remains to be seen is which developers and publishers will embrace it in its new "episodic content" form to work with the new broadband-enabled digital distribution portals coming into being, and reap the rewards thereby.

Some will naturally believe that retail sales of physical boxes have some special power that allows them to resist the allure of digital distribution. I think this misses what may be by seeing only what currently is. (The danger of straight-line projections, etc.)

Retail currently has two advantages over the ones and zeros of online distribution: one, it lets potential customers look at the game art and review blurbs on a physical box when deciding whether to buy a game, and two, it's still more comfortable than online shopping to older customers who buy games for their kids or grandchildren.

The second advantage is going to resolve itself with the passage of time.

The first advantage is one that digital distributors can counter in multiple ways, and some of those ways are unique to digital distribution. The obvious is to release each game with its own Web site full of glossy promotional content, and publishers are already doing that. I expect they'll become even more sophisticated at it over time.

Less obvious but perhaps ultimately more important will be the shift to design games for online distribution from the very start, allowing them to be designed to provide a small part of the game that can be downloaded and test-driven for free... which brings us back to the Wolf3D fusion of game design and distribution.

So who's going to control this brave new world of digital distribution of games?

I would be very surprised if the larger publishers like EA weren't already building their own portals. Their deal with Steam shows they're willing to test whether the retail channel retains its value.

In fact, I think it's a process that's already in progress across the computer game industry. Valve's Steam is just an easy-to-see example of the new "e-tailers" that are emerging as product accumulators. Sony Online Entertainment has been turning itself into precisely the same kind of one-stop-shop for MMORPGs for the past several years, either buying online games outright or making publishing/distribution deals with developers (through their "Platform Publishing" program) and making all the games available through their "Station Pass" system. CD Projekt recently introduced their GOG.com portal. Even Amazon.com can be seen as an important player in this emerging business environment of product accumulators -- the choice of Amazon.com as the target soapbox for opponents of EA's DRM protection of Spore suggests something of its growing importance as a game source.

The visible scramble by each of the big three console makers to provide their own online game distribution portals is another important thread in this pattern.

Within the next year or two I expect to see announcements from EA, Vivendi/Activision, and Infogrames/Atari of their own online distribution networks to try to compete with Valve. If their stables of games (and whoever else they can get to sign up) can be made large enough without becoming shovelware, that's probably going to be a successful line of business for the next decade or so at least, especially for those which value-add most effectively.

Whether all these will eventually shake down to just two or three big players, I can't guess yet.

Let Sony Publish Star Trek Online

I've expressed my own criticisms of Sony Online Entertainment's (SOE) game development choices over the years, in particular:

1. Releasing products before they are feature-complete and essentially bug-free.
2. Adding new features before fixing bugs.
3. "Fixing" minor balance problems with wholesale replacement of major systems.

That said, I don't think SOE is the mysterious replacement for Perpetual Entertainment as the developer of a Star Trek MMORPG. So, whoever does wind up developing this game, there's still the question of whether SOE is accepable as the publisher of Star Trek Online, specifically through SOE's Platform Publishing service.

I like the idea of a service like this. By cutting deals to give smaller developers access to Sony's significant online customer base, the developer gets their game published and seen by lots of gamers, SOE gets a piece of that action, and gamers see a game they might not otherwise have tried. That's a win for everybody concerned.

So I'm a fan of the Platform Publishing service. But what about the perception that SOE insists on control over a game's design in exchange for publishing it? (And that when they get that control, they honk up the game?)

Here's what Rusty from Flying Lab Software (devleoper of Pirates of the Burning Sea) said about meeting with SOE to consider a deal whereby SOE would publish PotBS. (I'm quoting several paragraphs so that it's clear I'm not taking anything out of context.)

... we weren't going to work with anybody unless we kept control of the game development and the community. That eliminated a lot of potential partners right off the bat. Let me tell you a few things that are different about working with SOE than with the other MMO publishers we talked with:

1) We keep complete ownership of Pirates of the Burning Sea.
2) We have no interference from SOE on the development/ideas of the game.
3) Because we financed Pirates ourselves, we keep most of the revenues so we stay strong and independent.
4) The contract they gave us actually says what we agreed to verbally.

Pretty basic stuff, I know, but we talked to maybe a dozen other development houses and MMO publishers, and many of them had one or more of the following in their relationships and contracts:

1) Publisher takes ownership of the intellectual property.
2) All sorts of verbal promises that never appeared in the contract.
3) Publisher approval over the game’s design.

All of this is why negotiating with SOE was such a breath of fresh air. I kept tensing at various points, expecting them to pull off the mask of humanity and say "Puny humans, our superior alien contract will take control of your game!" But thankfully for both us and all life on Earth, that never happened.

I'm not suggesting by posting this that I think a Star Trek MMORPG's new developer should definitely use SOE's Platform Publishing. Maybe the new guys'll think that a Star Trek MMORPG has a chance to score WoW-like numbers, and thus some other publishing deal with different terms might be more appropriate.

Regardless of which way that goes, I think the example of how SOE dealt with Flying Lab does tell us that signing with SOE as a publisher is not the kiss of death to a game's content. If a game blows, it won't be SOE's fault.

This time.