Ami Langton - Global PR & Marketing Manager @ Ripstone

Today was our eleventh and final guest lecture presented by global PR and marketing manager, Ami Langton. Previously Ami was employed at Bizarre Creations as a PR manager working on multiple AAA games such as Project Gotham Racing and James Bond 007: Blood Stone.

Ami’s presentation was a big eye opener to me when it comes to a publisher’s role within the games industry. For many years there have been two sides to publishing a video game, working with a publisher and self-publishing. In this report I will be getting to grips with both sides of the argument, understanding the benefits and disadvantages within both processes.

Working with a publisher can have many different benefits throughout the development of your game, for example the funding. Funding is a huge factor when it comes to the creation of a video game, there is no way that you can create a full video game and have it released without some sort of cash flow. Working with publishers can gain funding for the whole entire project, this includes;

• Wages/salaries

• Computers

• Software

• Licenses

• Language Translations

Although working with a publisher may seem good as they fund your project, overall this is a business opportunity and at the end of development phase, when the game hits the stores, publishers will expect to take a share of the sales until the development budget that they had invested was paid back.

“Game development can be a costly affair. In our experience, the monies paid to us to develop the game was always an “advance on royalties”, which meant the publisher would take our royalty share of sales until the development budget was paid back.” – Jools Watsham, 2013 Self-publishing is another common method of getting your game out onto the market. This method is very common when it comes to independent studios, but comes with an extreme risk. Self-publishing your game means that you’re responsible for the cash that is invested into the project. This is very common to make or break indie studios as the owners of the studio have to provide all cash for salaries, computers and software which sometimes can become too much. “I check our money situation on a daily basis. It has become a necessary habit to load up my excel doc, enter in funds earned from our current games and see how far our money stretches into the future”. – Jools Watsham, 2013 The quote from Watsham’s 2013 Gamasutra article described how he is constantly checking the money situation on a daily basis. This shows that independent developers are always checking on the finances of the project, this is also a step ahead to calculate the amount of money left until the game is released. For example if the calculations say that the team will have no budget left by the end of the next two months, then it is time for the team to build ideas to form where the remaining money will come from. Although the struggle of running an indie studio can be very hard, there are always other benefits that will help produce money for a budget for the next project. Self-publishing video games digitally means that the product will always exists somewhere on a market and will always continue to gain revenue for the company. This is a massive benefit of self-producing whilst an independent studio.

References: Jools Watsham (2013 Self-Publishing vs. Working with a (Traditional) Publisher. Blog [ONLINE]. Available from: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JoolsWatsham/20130930/201223/SelfPublishing_vs_Working_with_a_Traditional_Publisher.php [Accessed 30 September 13]. Ami Langton, (2015), Photo [ONLINE]. Available at:https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_400_400/p/4/000/1ab/086/1e8f1ec.jpg [Accessed 08 May 15].