| Conina said: Well, many developers don't need a publisher as middle man anymore, they can self-publish their game on Steam, Xbox Marketplace, PS Store, Nintendo eShop and the app stores. The percentage of games, where the publishers really had control over a product, was much higher before digital distribution. |
Self-publishing is easier, but finding any significant success or exposure through that is very difficult. Developers with a vision for a game which costs some sum of money which cannot be obtained easily will find a much harder time getting a publisher than in the past. In addition, in the past, despite publishers having a significant amount of control, the risk was much more minimal for a product. Which allowed for more risky business ventures.
So, if you want to self-publish great, but then your game is more likely to be very simple in nature and get much less exposure (due to the overwhelming amount of games in general). If you want a more complex game you'll need a publisher, but the game will need to be marketable to some extent. Is this conducive to a huge amount of variety? I think that can be debated and isn't as definitive as Mnementh suggests.
If game development was as simple as just "self-publishing" then we wouldn't see the amount of developers that are being purchased. Most developers, to find significant success with a complex product, need an amount of resources that are practically impossible to get alone. Even indie studios are facing significant acquisitions, with over a hundred being purchased in the last five or six years.
