![]() But I don't think it would have been enough, even if their games sold through the roof. Greater sales would have helped (though with party-based crpgs this often comes at the cost of gameplay - not so much with hybrids, as TES/ME are quite inefficient in their mechanics Deus Ex has more 'meaningful' interaction despite far simpler mechanics). In the CRPG business it may be very difficult to be that successful but that changes absolutely nothing. If the developer is incapable of being sufficiently successful then trash contracts, layoffs and/or the company going down are your options and there is nothing wrong with that. There is no blackmail there, contrary to how some here see it. Of course if there are many desperate, roughly equal developers (money-wise), the supposed sole publisher can just pick out the most desperate and feed it scraps. Even If there is only one publisher offering a deal a successful developer can still negotiate for a better contract because the publisher knows that they make more money for them. A developer will have to make themselves tempting enough that the cheaper alternative developers are not good enough (do not make enough money) for the publishers. if Kotor 2 had brough in twice or thrice the money Kotor 1 did, then yes, publishers might just try to offer better contracts to Obsidian so that they would make games for them instead of the other publishers. By success, I mean monetary success in this case if that was not clear before. There would be a reason if Obsidian had been more successful in the past. With a choice between blowing off Obsidian and making just as much money (or more) by funding a different game, or giving them a better contract and not only paying more in this particular case but also encouraging other developers to get uppity, why would they choose the latter? ![]() ![]() For a crpg there might literally be no other publisher that's interested in that kind of game.and there's NO publishers that are interested in 'good' crpgs by Codex standards.Īnd even if none of that was the case, the publishers have an incentive not to weaken their bargaining position with other developers by offering better or more flexible contracts. Moreover, game publishing is an oligopoly - the publisher has a massive number of alternate developers they can work with instead (again, all the publisher cares about is the $$$), whereas the developer only has a handful of publishers to choose from. Good crpgs aren't exactly big money these days - if anything there seems to be an inverse relationship. Possibly, but given that Bioware couldn't get a decent timeframe for DA2 from their EA owners, I wouldn't bet on it. ![]()
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