Bungie Aerospace
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Bungie Aerospace
So Bungie has unveiled something new. It's some sort of publishing/support service for independent developers to get their games made and onto mobile devices.
I think it sounds interesting, but the proof will be in the pudding. They're obviously out to make money, they are a business after all. However, they do encourage professionals and even college students to apply.
I'm sure there are quite a few people on here who are interested in creating games, and maybe more specifically mobile games.
What are your thoughts on this?
Extra reading
So Bungie has unveiled something new. It's some sort of publishing/support service for independent developers to get their games made and onto mobile devices.
I think it sounds interesting, but the proof will be in the pudding. They're obviously out to make money, they are a business after all. However, they do encourage professionals and even college students to apply.
I'm sure there are quite a few people on here who are interested in creating games, and maybe more specifically mobile games.
What are your thoughts on this?
Extra reading
Replies
As long as they are associated with Activision, and this is a publishing deal, no thank you.
But now it seems like they just announced they will help you make mobile games.
What a let down.
What about the other names they reserved? Dead Orbit and the other one I forgot.
Is Activision unfair to third parties? They recently have a rep for being evil but when you look into it, every publisher is evil in their own special way. Look at Bethesda vs. Interplay with the Fallout MMO, that is some low down dirty pool but I'm not going to write off Bethesda/Zenimax as a big evil I'd never deal with.
Maybe this is the fruition of that.
On a similar note, published indie game? Oxymoron
Bungie will fund projects/developers they believe in, as well as offering development and marketing support. In return, I'm sure they get a stake in the product. Indie developers are in dire need of more funding options, so this is great.
You guys should look up the Indie Fund. This appears to be pretty similar to that.
I have no problem with this. It sounds like a good idea to me. The indie scene could use more support in getting their games exposure and possibly a leg up into console publishing. An established company like Bungie could be in a great position to facilitate that process.
Major publishers have been turning a blind eye to small-time indie developers for too long. I think its wonderful that Bungine is looking to take a chance on supporting promising indie development.
I feel like it would be better if they just created what udk is only with whatever engine bungie has.
lol wat? Are you guys 12?
More potential avenues for independent development and publishing is certainly a good thing, having a company with the resources to actually back it up, is also a good thing.
I'm sure you guys would prefer Jerry the Hobo down the street publishes your game, for true indie cred, but its just not going to happen.
Right now there are basically two ways to get a game funded in the games industry. Do something super small scale, that you can fund it out of your pocket, or withsmall donations on kickstart etc. Or do a full scale AAA production with major backing from a large publisher.
There is VERY little middle ground. So I'm all for any company that is looking to bridge that gap and offer more viable publishing options to the middle ground of the industry. Anyone that cares about the viability and sustainability of the games industry outside of blockbuster AAA games, and strange quirky 1-in-a-million games like MineCraft, should see the potential for these sort of publishing arrangements.
With such limited information on what this actually is, its really hard to say "lol this sucks".
PS: I'm sure all Bungie wants to do with this service is make shity Halo clones, I mean, thats what they love right? Its not like they purchased the rights to the Bungie company back from Microsoft so they would have say in whether or not they were going to work on Halo 17 or not, no... That never happened.
The bottom line is, more studios/companies who are offering services to help support independent development is decidedly a good thing.
Certainly, more information on fees and what services are actually offered(as only vague information is available) is required before forming any real opinion on this either way. But the mere fact that large, established and respected studios are starting to do this is a very good sign.
Thats two companies going after each other; quite a bit different from one company buying games studios and then religiously and systematically screwing them over...
You all need to not be so quick at dismissing the idea without knowing all the facts. Pretty sure Bungie wouldn't be doing something stupid, a lot of thought and planning would have gone into this.
If you guys think that marketing is essentially just word of mouth or free, or forum posts... then think again. A lot of games have well over their development costs (which of course exceed the tens of millions with the higher budget stuff) spent on marketing alone.
See the gears of war ads on billboards and in cinemas? Yes it's a bit of an extreme example, but if you keep your head buried in the sand and think that large franchises just pop up out of nowhere and that no other factors are to do with it, then you are truly VERY mistaken.
Listen to EarthQuake, through the sarcasm there is a lot of truth, and he obviously cares more to educate you guys than I do, I'd rather go make something.. which I'll go do now
If you want to make a career out of making your own games you will need a distribution partner (aka publisher) to market your game. Of course they will take a cut of the revenue, marketing isn't free, but without them you won't be making any money so it's always worth it.
And yes yes I know, the Minecraft guys did it without a publisher, but for every Minecraft there are THOUSANDS of self-published games that will never make any money.
So if you want to make "indy" games for your own masturbation go ahead and shit on Bungie for being "the man", but for the rest of the indie devs who are trying to get their game in front of as many players as possible, and to make enough money so they can continue to fund future gaming projects this is fucking awesome.
Hats off to Bungie and I hope more developers follow in their footsteps.
A majority of my friends didn't know what Braid, Psychonauts, Section 8 or the Witcher were because they weren't Ubisoft, EA, Activision and Bioware respectively.
It's good that Bungie is helping the small guys, it honestly is, and it's great that many small projects might become something big, but it comes with bitter irony knowing if it wasn't for one the big guys, the small guys, no matter how innovative or good, would have never been known.
Unless the games makes it one Steam, in which it turns into a solid gold hat.
The only way I imagine this could be a bad deal is if.
1. the cost is too high eg they take 50% of all your profits forever
2. they dont have the marketing power or connections to really push your game to the right market( this is quite easily a possibility even for bungie, unless they get on the good side of some big names like google or apple )
3. there are no guarentees on the mobile app stores, being a publisher is a risk as they will be claiming that they can make your game profitable but in reality that is not truely predictable - great games disappear off the app charts all the time
Oh no, bungie is doing a great thing, lots of projects could be started with this funding, but there's a limit to how big their purse is, and how many games they can expose before they saturated their exposure tactic.
Minecraft is just well beyond anything, the revenues of that game can keep them going alone.
An indie-studio doesn't need anywhere near that to keep one or two persons employed fulltime.
And as many developers show, a distrubition partner is super helpful, but it isn't a must, many independant developers distribute their games, drm-free, on their own.
But still, if an indie-developer couldn't make a project in the first place, they probably wont make one with bungies help, it'll just be a bigger cauldron of soup and a few more chefs.
In the end this sounds like a regular publisher deal, but one targeted towards smaller sized developers, and one that is more likely to accept new game ideas.
They'd still require the team to be a solid one that can prove they can bring their idea to life, we have no idea if they retain IP rights or how much of the revenue they'd take, or if they front with all cash or nothing, but we'll see.
In the end the concept of "indie cred" or "indie games" as some kind of genre term is bullshit.
You either make a game with the help of a publisher, or you make one with your own funding on your own time, both can turn out great, both have downside and upsides.