WEB3 GAMING NEEDS PUBLISHERS

DEAR WEB3 GAME DEVELOPERS: You still need publishers.?

In the web2 world, many gamers think of AAA publishers and developers/studios as one and the same, since many major game studios are owned by one of the big public game publishers. ??

Electronic Arts owns Respawn, Activision owns Blizzard, PlayStation owns Naughty Dog, etc.

In this set-up, it means that green-lighting, development, marketing, and go-to-market all happen in-house. ??

This relationship can be a double-edged sword for developers:

THE LESS GREAT

On the one-hand, you’re at the whim of publicly-traded companies who will make commercial decisions for the stock price, and the magnitude of success (read: profit) triumphs over creative or even fan wishes. ??

This can lead to a lot of frowns for developers and the players they want to please.

Take, for example, EA’s shelving of Apex Legends Mobile , a game that not only won Game of the Year, but whose console and PC counterpart is saving EA’s bacon right now. Respawn remains confused about that play.???

Or Warner Bros. pulling the beta of Multiversus despite it reaching 20M users, angering gamers who enjoyed the game, and even more-so those who spent money on items that they might never see again. [Huh, if only there were a way to ensure digital ownership…]???

Or poor No Man’s Sky, an ambitious game that needed way more time and expectation setting, but was rushed to market by Sony through outsized marketing and attention with unfortunate results .???

THE GREATER?

Despite all this, publishers keep the space humming along and are a vital piece of bringing us the games we love.???

In much of the gaming universe, it's common to see studios work on a game while shopping it around to publishers to help take it to market. Publishers are the marketing big guns—they've got existing audiences and marketing teams who can help put the glitz and glam into user acquisition.???

After all, most developers feel like they've "made a great game," it's just now about getting people to know about it and play it, and cross promotion + paid #UA (+ content creator luck) = happy devs. ????

Let’s put some of the numbers into perspective to get a sense of just how much game publishers matter:

Last year, 10,963 games launched on Steam alone. There are over 280,000 games on iOS. And yet we only hear about a few dozen of these games. ??

Why? Marketing. Paid by whom? Publishers.???

THE MAJOR WINS

Pubs are also in the position to help with other bonuses that developers—normally just desperate to finish and ship—can benefit from, like:

1. Legal teams. Help finalize those pesky trademarks, IP agreements, and just generally covering the proverbial tuchus.??
2. Tech infrastructure like existing player profiles, centralized loyalty or reward programs, higher rev take first-party stores, etc.??
3. IP rights. As a dev, if you can get access to existing IP via a publisher, that's a major win since licensing takes time and upfront money.??
4. Intelligence. Data on monetization, competitors, user segmentation, and more help refine game designs and economies, hone marketing and localization, and actually ensure your development time and ad dollar is well spent. The number of times I’ve worked with developers who were building the wrong game for the wrong people on the wrong platform…?
5. Relationships. Help with store approvals, game store featuring, major content creators, and more.??

This last point sounds like a soft skill, but it’s the difference between a great game actually reaching fans and not.?

The dev and publisher relationship requires a fine balance. Candidly, publishers can be biased by their standout successes and suggest that the way things are done there should work for a game or studio of any size. ??

That’s not the case: your average shooter game can’t hope to achieve the same metrics as a Call of Duty or Battlefield. Insights and best practices from these games can be helpful, but where and EA can (sort of) get away with an $80 Darth Vader unlock, Joe Schmo sci fi game probably can’t.?

On the flip side, developers—driven by a creator’s love for their art, lore, and world—would sometimes rather die on the proverbial sword than see their design tweaked or narrative changed based on the suits-that-be.???

Building a strong and empathic relationship between studio and publisher is vital.???

WASN’T WEB3 GOING TO FREE ME FROM ‘THE MAN?’

Only a few major publishers have said they're onboard for #web3 (e.g. Square Enix and Nexon ). And there are few web3 publishers in existence (Fenix Games , Gala Games) - but none with track records. (Of course, there are few blockchain game devs with track records: this is high risk all around!)

This makes for a dangerous reality: most blockchain games developers are left to their own devices to get to market and scale the reach of their titles. For some who have been burned by developer <> publisher relationships in the past, this almost sounds too good to be true.?

In this entirely new ecosystem, going alone is a terrifying prospect not only to developers, but for the investors who fund them, because:??

• Distribution platforms are new ?
• No one has nailed monetization??
• User acquisition and attribution haven’t been solved??
• We’re missing about 3B of the world’s gaming population ?

However, developers I talk with are also excited by some of the opportunities unique to blockchain gaming that may give them greater independence from publishers. ??

On a few of these, they’re not wrong:?

• Data is public: on-chain data analytics is not trivial, but being able to more easily benchmark and see the behaviors of gamers’ spending patterns is a massive new unlock that the web2 world has never had. ??
• But fair warning: without the context of proprietary off-chain data benchmarks and performance metrics, you will have an incomplete picture of success.?
• Alternative funding: Can gamers fund your project? Possibly, in part. The speculative bubble of pre-product NFT mints has largely died, but that doesn’t mean that funding through fans is off the table. ??
• New models including milestone and deliverable-based fundraising could help offset risk on both ends. Fans and investors can continue to invest in the game as different milestones are reached in the creative and development timeline.

SO, DO PUBLISHERS GO AWAY?

Absolutely not. There are attributes of the blockchain world that could help indie studios succeed where it was harder to do before, but let me make this plain: we need publishers. But they also need developers.???

It won't be like this forever, but there's an opportunity for the right publisher to swoop in and provide fundamental games expertise and insights, in addition to capital, marketing collateral, and perhaps reach to some users, with a bent towards knowledge in the web3 world. No one has it all, yet. ?

In the near term, things look kind of funky..

Do guilds—built for a play-to-earn era that no longer exists—pivot into marketing roles? ??

Do some of the chains—who already invest in games—try to scale up teams that look publishing-y? ??

With these institutions that have been set up practically overnight, we’re missing trust and deep relationships that let all of these parties feel confident in supporting each other where there’s mutual value.?

But I’m more excited than ever. Someone asked me recently, “Does blockchain gaming seem quiet right now?” In a sense, it does, which is exactly what I want. ??

No splashy announcements, no hype. ??

Normally, games are in development for years before you hear about them; a complete reversal of the shout-until-it-works MO of web3.???

What the quiet means, is that we’re on the cusp of big things. Behind the scenes, studios and distribution partners (who may be publishers we all know by name!) are setting the stage for what will be a stellar year of releases, built by trusted and experienced developers who have the know-how and network to put their titles in the hands of players.?

And I’m ready for it.

ALL credit due to the author, Sam Barberie . Sam is an executive and founder in games and web3. He has worked with every major game publisher, developer, platform, and media company in crafting their gaming strategies and perfecting some of the biggest titles in history. His platforms and experiences launched at companies like SuperData Research, Nielsen, and Animoca have fundamentally changed the interactive media industry. ???? ??