Big Download a une excellente interview avec Chris Peck, l’un des fondateurs d’Outerlight, le développeur de The Ship et de Bloody Good Time (prévu pour le 27 octobre dans Steam). L’article commence par une bien mauvaise nouvelle : le studio a fermé ses portes il y a plusieurs mois, juste après avoir terminé le développement de Bloody Good Time. Actuellement, seul Chris Peck continue de faire vivre le nom Outerlight, avec l’espoir que les ventes du jeu seront suffisantes pour relancer la machine.
Apparemment, les choses se sont très mal passées avec Ubisoft :
What was it like working with Ubisoft on the game?
Contractually, no comment.
In general, having worked in the industry for over 12 years, I can say that the creative freedom and the efficiency of independent development is somewhat inevitably lost, and that the milestone driven nature of working with a publisher is both open to abuse by publishers due to it’s basis on subjective results (try to define « good » & « fun » in a contract!), and inefficient due to the slow turnaround of feedback and the distance of the working relationship.
While I have never met a developer who has a good thing to say about a publisher, I was still hoping that it would be a lot more of a co-operative venture, taking the best of Outerlight, and the best of Ubisoft, and combining them. On a positive note, I can say they had an excellent QA team in Romania.
While people often compare the games industry to the film industry, I’d rather compare a games team with a band, trying to come up with a new hit album, the publisher being the guy that sits in the corner and suggests you try a major rather than minor key for the chorus, and maybe change the lyrics to mention lady Diana…oh, and have you thought about hot backing singers, and maybe wearing monkey suits, marketing says they are both big right now. Not ideal.
Le reste de l’article est également très intéressant à lire, avec des réflexions sur le modèle économique des petits développeurs indépendants.
