Hardcore Gaming's Salvation?

Quarter to Three talks to three developers about the profits and perils of bypassing the traditional retail market

Con't.

Qt3: What sucks about selling direct?

Wardell: Ego. Let's face it, most game developers are in it partially out of ego. The PC game industry is a fairly crummy business financially. To put the two different groups we have at Stardock in comparison, look at it this way, WindowBlinds, developed by a relatively small team (under 8 people) has around 4 million users. No game we ever make will ever come close to that. Heck, few games will ever have that kind of following and it is not that uncommon for non-games to have hundreds of thousands or millions of users. When a game developer can afford a nice car, it's newsworthy. But I know shareware utility authors who could buy and sell John Romero's ass any day they wanted but it's not big news because it's much more common outside the game industry to do well writing software.

So when you're selling direct, a lot of that glory goes with it. The glory of having that big booth at E3 and having people come up to you and say "Hey, you're Joe GameDesigner, you made BaldurCraft Tycoon! You guys are awesome!" You won't get that if you do a direct game. From talking to other developers, whether at Blizzard or GT Interactive or at smaller companies, I can say that many developer's dream is for their mom's neighbors or kids to have heard of the game you're working on.

Luckily, I'm not a real game developer. I'm a game player who writes games that I want to play. :)

Dunham: Most games are still sold retail (except possibly for Macintosh).

Moylan: Dealing with website ordering scripts, warehousing and fulfillment issues, and therefore having less time to devote to making games.

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