Ex-Gathering of Developers Alumni Start Indie Publisher

Though this industry is still in the grasp of the mega-publishers, new models of distribution and production are popping up all the time. As demonstrated by Steam and Stardock, there’s a definite place in the market for the little man, which brings us to Gamecock Media. Gamecock, a new Austin-based publisher, is promising to “make games that look like anything out there for less money.”

According to an article in the NY Times, ex-GOD (Gathering of Developers) executives plan to announce the formation of a new publishing house today. GOD was a coalition of independent developers who banded together to get more leverage against the major publishers, but was bought out by Take-Two shortly after inception and eventually made into 2K Games. However, some of the old employees are still holding on to that independent spirit.

Mike Wilson, CEO of Gamecock Media and former id Software employee, plans to shake things up a bit. “Most of the big publishers are publicly held, and Wall Street wants you to own trucks and have a floor of accountants and grow by a certain amount every year,” said Wilson. “We want to bring some fun back to the game business.”

Fun, however, isn’t the only incentive for small developers who want to sign with Gamecock, there’s also IP rights retention, which is very important to most developers. By offering less upfront capital and outsourcing distribution, Gamecock makes publishing cheaper in the long run but overall riskier for the developer. The counter-balance to that risk, though, is that Gamecock offers the highest possible royalty rate for every copy sold instead of the industry standard fluctuating rates based on game success.

This kind of upstart is what the industry needs to keep from growing stale. New blood in the publishing business leads to new properties and chances taken that could lead to exciting new developers… if they can manage to stay around.

loading

Comments have been disabled for this post