Imagine P:E is released, sells quite well, and Obsidian decides to use the traditional publisher model to fund the sequel

[Leferd]

It's been more than alluded to that Obsidian received no royalties or bonuses for New Vegas. Straight contract work.

 

They missed their bonus by 1% for failing to achieve an 85% metacritic score.

[Karranthain]

It's been more than alluded to that Obsidian received no royalties or bonuses for New Vegas. Straight contract work.

 

They missed their bonus by 1% for failing to achieve an 85% metacritic score.

 

Aye, so the fact that game made over $300 million shouldn't be even factored in.

[Tigranes]

If only Obsidian got 45 million from New Vegas.

 

I don't know how that image calculated the distribution, but going with the figure, most of the time, that "15%" isn't profit for the developer. Most of that 15% would be swallowed up by the money publishers paid developers monthly (or by milestone) to keep up development. There's very few instances in the history of game development, after the early 1990s, where a developer ends up with tens of millions of dough after a successful game. In fact, there's probably less than five...

[HungryHungryOuroboros]

It's been more than alluded to that Obsidian received no royalties or bonuses for New Vegas. Straight contract work.

 

They missed their bonus by 1% for failing to achieve an 85% metacritic score.

Ah ****, I forgot about the "no royalties contract" part.

 

All the same, I'm sure Obsidian didn't pick a deal that could turn $45 million-ish(a good rough guess from Fallout 3 sales) into $10 million. They probably got a raw deal and a lot less than they should have, but I'm still sure plenty more than is reasonable to expect from an OPTIMISTIC projection for Eternity.

[Karranthain]

It's been more than alluded to that Obsidian received no royalties or bonuses for New Vegas. Straight contract work.

 

They missed their bonus by 1% for failing to achieve an 85% metacritic score.

Ah ****, I forgot about the "no royalties contract" part.

 

All the same, I'm sure Obsidian didn't pick a deal that could turn $45 million-ish(a good rough guess from Fallout 3 sales) into $10 million. They probably got a raw deal and a lot less than they should have, but I'm still sure plenty more than is reasonable to expect from an OPTIMISTIC projection for Eternity.

 

As per Tigranes' post, I really doubt that they could've made $45 million profit - that could've been, at best, the whole sum, with development costs included.

[Morality Games]

Companies that have to employ dozens or hundreds of people. Project Eternity supports at maximum a 30 person payroll.

 

A very optimistic projection for Project Eternity sales would be upwards a million (reproducing the success of the original Witcher). For the expansion in that situation, probably half a million or less. Taxes in the gaming industry are low, but between that and whatever Unity charges apply (which will be low), they would be lucky to get 20-30 million dollars in raw profit.

 

A more realistic projection is about half a million copies and maybe two-hundred thousand expansions, which would go from 10-20 million.

 

 

Project Eternity is just a start and that's exactly what I meant by my post - we'll see how that model develops in the future; right now it's insufficient, but Kickstarter is still very much fresh - as we haven't even seen any of the big projects (Wasteland 2, Shadowrun, Double Fine etc.) released yet.

 

I'm guessing here, but I'd suppose that 10-20 million of raw profit (assuming that's what it'll be) would be way more than they got for New Vegas, for an instance. It's only a conjecture, but I'm fairly sure about that.

 

Well, Kickstarter and Amazon take 10% of the donations for themselves. If crowd sourcing evolves into a new form of preordering that everyone participates in to produce projects with hundreds of thousands of backers and upwards ten million in pledges (which is conceivably the future of computer gaming), then either Kickstarter will have to amend its fees or a new venue will be supported specifically for game developers. 10% of the development fund is one thing, 10% of total profits is another thing entirely.

 

Crowd sourcing can attract two types of company -- the kind that is happy to take games and genres "order up" with little expectation of profit (beyond simply making the payroll) and the kind that is looking for some start up capital to grow or maintain a large market share.

 

Obsidian is probably the latter company, though there is some middle ground between the two.

 

They probably got a raw deal and a lot less than they should have, but I'm still sure plenty more than is reasonable to expect from an OPTIMISTIC projection for Eternity.

 

Optimistically, the two are about the same.

 

The difference is that Project Eternity demands a much smaller development team that is already being financed with the Kickstarter fund. That means the 20-30 million (or 10-20 million) can be directed toward employing the larger work force on a bigger project.

 

That being said, they could still make sequels to Project Eternity or other Unity-driven IPs "on the side," additional profits of which could assist in the above project.

 

This is all speculative though. I have no idea what Obsidian wants or expects out of Project Eternity in terms of the broader future of its company. It could well be it will just smooth out the odd ends of its payroll with some extra cash for bonuses or a rainy day.

Edited October 21, 2012 by Morality Games

[teknoman2]

To be honest, I think they would go independent the second they'd be sure that they can sustain the company that way.

Understandably, Obsidian plays it safe now - they don't want to burn bridges just yet. They might need publishers in the future, hence the diplomatic remarks.

 

As for PE : I'm sure they won't have to deal with the publishers. They will either self-fund it or launch another Kickstarter campaign.

You can't keep a company the size of Obsidian running on projects the size of Eternity. Eternity is not New Vegas. It's not going to bring in $300 million. To "go independent , they'd have to fire a LOT of people.

 

Hence the :

 

"the second they'd be sure that they can sustain the company that way." This won't happen anytime soon; we'll see how PE fares and how big Kickstarter grows though.

 

And by the way, Obsidian got only a very small portion out of these (alleged) $300 million.

usualy the publisher covers the cost of production by paying for hardware, software, salaries, and so on. if the game sells well or if some term of contract is met, the developer gets a bonus that is all in all pretty insignificant in comparison to the money the publisher gets by the sales. and of course, the developer gets no % per sale, unless specifically cited in the contract.

its something like this

i have a construction company and someone asks me to make a skyscraper. i start work, i get the materials, the workers, the machinery and withing 2 years i complete my work. as the work progresses, i present the bills and receipts to the owner and he pays the building expenses and the worker's salaries. once the job is done, i get my pay and go home. i have no claim to the profit from renting the building because i built it... it doesnt belong to me, unless the owner has signed a contract that says otherwise.

[Karranthain]

Well, Kickstarter and Amazon take 10% of the donations for themselves. If crowd sourcing evolves into a new form of preordering that everyone participates in to produce projects with hundreds of thousands of backers and upwards ten million in pledges (which is conceivably the future of computer gaming), then either Kickstarter will have to amend its fees or a new venue will be supported specifically for game developers. 10% of the development fund is one thing, 10% of total profits is another thing entirely.

 

That could very well be the case, hence my first post.

 

Crowd sourcing can attract two types of company -- the kind that is happy to take games and genres "order up" with little expectation of profit (beyond simply making the payroll) and the kind that is looking for some start up capital to grow or maintain a large market share.

 

Obsidian is probably the latter company.

 

Possibly - or they're looking for an alternative, should they fail to secure further contracts from the publishers (they've mentioned several failed pitches in the interviews). After all, as we've mentioned, PE could very well end making a profit large enough to be comparable to what they've made off off New Vegas.

 

The difference is that Project Eternity demands a much smaller development team that is already being financed with the Kickstarter fund. That means the 20-30 million (or 10-20 million) can be directed toward employing the larger work force on a bigger project.

 

That being said, they could still make sequels to Project Eternity or other Unity-driven IPs "on the side," additional profits of which could assist in the above project.

 

This is all speculative though. I have no idea what Obsidian wants or expects out of Project Eternity in terms of the broader future of its company. It could well be it will just smooth out the odd ends of its payroll with some extra cash for bonuses.

 

And then there's that. And yeah, it's all purely speculative - what I meant by my original comment (that started this discussion) is that Obsidian would surely go independent if only they'd be confident that they could sustain the current size of the company. Will that be the case? It's way early to tell - we'll see just how big crowdsourcing will turn out to be. And just to be clear, I'm thinking distant future here (10+ years).

[Hassat Hunter]

I'd prefer it if Obsidian retains complete control over the IP, with merely someone to distribute the title's physical copies (if that ever happens).

I think CDPR had a setup like that with Namco Bandai for Witcher 2, where they paid for their own development, but had someone to distribute the actual disks.

And even THAT backfired horribly...

It wouldn't bother me either way--Obsidian wouldn't be stuck in a position of being slaves to the publisher's whims either way because they'd know they could just walk away if they didn't like what the publisher wanted.

Sorry, selling your soul doesn't work that way.

Oh, did I say "selling your soul"? I mean "contracts"...

I can see this happening -- that is to say, happening without significant backlash -- if and only if the publisher in question has a good reputation with PC and old school gamers in particular, and is known for not pushing developers around. The obvious profile in my mind is that of Paradox Interactive, although in their case they are not very large, and deal mostly in strategy games.

Yup, that was the only publisher I could think about as well where this wouldn't be a horrible, horrible thing.

And Paradox has done non-strategy games stuff, including TBS. So RPG shouldn't be too much a stretch...

 

Still prefer self-publishing of course.