Take-Two gets Civ rights, Civ4 for late 2005

[One_Mean_Rabbit]

Um, some of these comments shows a real ignorance on how the industry works. Sure, it's easy to see the big bad publishers as the Bad Guys. They push the developers on dates, axe certain features, etc.

Well, who do you think PAYS for these games? Little developers??? Who do you think PAYS for the advertising pre and post launch??? Do you think us hardcore fans are the ones that buy 100's of thousands of copies, or the 12 year old kid who saw a neat ad in his gaming mag?

Fact is, is that it is usually the Publisher's money at stake here, which gives them every right to demand things get done on time. I for one will gladly take a quality publisher like Take Two over trusting Firaxis or Atari to deliver.

For those that do not know, Take Two has had a great history in building little known developers into giants. Rockstar, GOD, and others are a few examples. Granted, I may be a bit biased, *I have many contacts with them from my last company, and cannot WAIT for info to start flooding in...* they really are a top notch publisher, who are not full of themselves like EA is.

Trust me, this is a GREAT move for Firaxis. Having Take Two's up and coming clout, this will be good for all of us. More sales = more expansions + more sequels.

[Solver]

And yet publishers get more money than the developers from a game usually, which is really, really unfair. What fans enjoy in the end is the game itself. A game that takes years of very hard work to create, work by the developers... but at least as much money goes to the publishers who advertise it. Gah.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Solver
And yet publishers get more money than the developers from a game usually, which is really, really unfair.

1) If there were no publishers, there would be no games. They may not do much of the work, but as OMR already explained they finance the development phase. Remember, a game developer doesn't make a single penny until the game actually hits the stores. During the 1-3 years it typically costs to develop a game, often (almost) ALL expenses are paid by the publisher (this largely depends on the developer of course: a large and successful company probably has some cash of its own). If a game flops, the devoper loses little to nothing directly (though it hurts their reputation, which is usually the most expensive asset they have), but the publisher loses millions of dollars.

2) As a *very rough* rule of thumb, the profits of a game are distributed as follows: 1/3 developer, 1/3 publisher and 1/3 retailer. Deals that involve sublicensing to a seperate distributor can even lead to the developer getting more than half of the profits. So, no, the publishers do not necessarily get more.

Again, those are very rough numbers. In reality it depends on many factors: the developer's experience and track record (e.g. Firaxis would be able to broker a better deal than you if you started a development company tomorrow), the amount of money the development will cost the publisher (the more it costs them, the higher their risk, so the higher their share of the profits), the type of game and market you're aiming at (e.g. the typical TBS game is less likely to become a hit than an FPS), how much code (e.g. game engine) or content (story, characters) the publisher contributes, what external licences or royalties are involved (think sports games, or 'movie-games'), how well the game ends up doing (usually the more copies are sold, the larger the share that goes to the developer). And finally, individual particularities of the game involved and how good of a negotiator the developer and publisher are.

A rookie developer may be lucky to get 20% out of a deal, but it wouldn't surprise me if Firaxis' deal for Civ4 ranges at least into the 40s.

(Note: I don't have actual factual info about the Take2-Firaxis deal, but I have a good source on how publishing deals work, if anyone is really interested in more details I can PM/IM it)


This may be a good time to remind everyone of the column David Ray (a former Activision programmer) wrote a few years ago, which explains a little bit about how the gaming industry works: How and why do bad games get made and published. (Not that I expect Civ4 to be a bad game of course )

[Keygen]

Originally posted by Gramphos

Well, that tells some things, but there is still gaps in what Hasbro Interactive did.

Well, to fill some of the gaps, in relevance with Civilization franchise, if I remember correctly Microprose was the original developer/publisher of Civilization, got bought by Hasbro wich was bought by Infogrames afterwords and that is how civ end up with Inforgames - Atari now - until its recent purchase by Take-Two Interactive.

[Keygen]

And to supplament Locutus, publishers always hold - exept few exceptions - the exclusive rights over the games they publish and not the developer, and that is a huge advantage.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Solver
And yet publishers get more money than the developers from a game usually, which is really, really unfair. What fans enjoy in the end is the game itself. A game that takes years of very hard work to create, work by the developers... but at least as much money goes to the publishers who advertise it. Gah.

But it's how the american (and to a large extent international) corporate system works, for better or for worse. With a few exceptions - very few - authors get only a small amount of the profits of their books (often less than a dollar per book sold); developers of massively successful new drugs often get nearly nothing unless they're lucky enough to be a solo biotech firm (very rare). Capital breeds capital; it's necessary to have capital to gain more capital, and publishers (most of the time) have the capital.

Probably why most people (or some here anyways ) have the idea that the best games come from self-publishing devs is that they never hear about the thousands - literally - of self-published flops, or even the probably dozens of could-be-successes that never make it to the retail shelf, because the developer tried but failed to self-publish. If Firaxis sold Civ4 on its own behalf, far less money would come in. (Assuming it had the rights to do so anyway - that's $25m as we've just seen.)

Developers choose to work with publishers - choose totally voluntarily, with the exception of this situation where the publisher owns the franchise rights - because it increases their profits, not because it takes away from them. If taking a game that would sell $150k without significant marketting and giving it to a publisher nets $2m after the publisher markets it, then even taking only a 20% cut gives you $400k, far more than the $80-$90k the developer would have netted beforehand...and with civ4 i think we're talking about a bit more money than that.

[Max Sinister]

I think people are fascinated by self-publishing simple because it gives you the (good) feeling that you've got everything under control. Your control.

Oh, and about the corporate system: We still haven't seen everything what Open Source can + will give us.

[One_Mean_Rabbit]

Originally posted by Solver
And yet publishers get more money than the developers from a game usually, which is really, really unfair. What fans enjoy in the end is the game itself. A game that takes years of very hard work to create, work by the developers... but at least as much money goes to the publishers who advertise it. Gah.

Of course, because while developers put man-hours/love/talent into the games, the publishers give the developers MONEY to do all of that. On top of that, they spend MILLIONS in advertising and merchandising.

Fair? Are you a socialist?! haha Business is NEVER fair. The developers do fine, or else they wouldn't exist in the numbers that they do.

[Grim Legacy]

At least Firaxis is still the developer, that's the most important thing. Reading this thread's title made me think they might have 'outsourced' it. That would be crazy of course.

[girlfight_club]

Originally posted by Locutus
What, driving around the capital city stealing people's chariots and running over and shooting random spearmen passing by?

Well, they've kicked ass at destroying civilization, let's see how well they do at building it!

GFC

[Alex]

Originally posted by ixnay
Well, at least it wasn't EA; if that happened we'd have EA GAMES PRESENTS sid meier's civilization iv PRESENTED BY EA GAMES and the soundtrack would consist of nothing but rap music.

So true...

[Trifna]

It may have been mentioned somwehre, but what are the advantages and disadvantages of Take-Two taking Civ from Atari? I already know that Atari threw its game early, but I still don't know otherwise.

[Maquiladora]

The same Take Two that released Hidden and Dangerous..... brilliant game but very bad bugs like falling through the floor and dying while crawling...

[alms66]

You can't really blame bugs on the publisher. That's like blaming the record company for putting out a crappy CD.

[Maquiladora]

If the publisher gave the developers enough time to test and fix it then how did such a bug get out? There wasnt even a patch to fix it...