Stute Developers

When I was a kid, my folks picked up a copy of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories.  It was not the complete collection, and as I found out later it was a somewhat sanitized version of it, but a lot of the well known stories were there like "The Elephant's Child" and "How The Leopard Changed It's Spots."  After reading an interview with Jamil Moledina on Ars Technica, another of those stories comes to mind, "How The Whale Got His Throat."  In the story, the Whale gobbled up virtually every fish in the oceans except for one, a "Stute Fish," who suggested that the Whale try having Man for dinner, though he did warn the Whale that Man was "nice, but nubbly."  The Man which gets eaten by the Whale turns out to be a Scot and something of an engineer, and manages to not only get out of the Whale's belly but also manages to keep the Whale from ever eating any fish again by rigging up a grating in the Whale's throat made from a pair of suspenders and a rubber dinghy that the Scot was floating around on in the middle of the ocean (because his mom told him he could).  The Stute Fish goes and buries himself in the mud somewhere along the equator to hide from the Whale.

I'm reminded of this story because despite Moledina's impressive resume and the generally concise interview he gave to Ars Technica, I'm not convinced that EA's "EA Partners" program is anything even remotely helpful to the average indie game development crew, possibly because I have the distinct feeling that EA's definition of a indie game developer is considerably different than what most people would use.  How many truly indie developers are out there with dev kits from Sony, Microsoft, AND Nintendo?  If we're talking about the hand-to-mouth garage developer, the one who's using whatever freeware and open-source tools he can legally obtain, and probably pirate copies of 3DS Max or Maya if they're not feeling real picky, chances are that even getting one dev kit constitutes a major coup on their part.  For the small team still in college, pretty much the same story.  Once you're big enough to be able to get those dev kits, you're not really operating on indie cred anymore, and you've probably managed to make enough coin to afford to pay people a little money.  By EA's definition, "indie" seems to be synonymous with "not currently signed to or owned by a publisher."  And with that definition in mind, the concept of EA Partners gets ominous, because it feels disturbingly like an offer from a Mafia don.

"Sure, we'll help you get your product on to the Big Three.  But one day, we're gonna come to you with a favor, and that day, you're gonna owe us."

Moledina's evasion over the question of IP ownership with the EA Partners program sent up a great big red flag for me, and it should probably do the same thing for any developer who might be considering this. While the interview references a statement Moledina made at the Gamesauce conference, there is a gaping hole in the statement that sounds very strange coming from a guy who ostensibly knows as much about game development and the way the industry works.  The quoted statement was this:

""It's an odd thing, because we continue to see and hear from developers ... that they're being forced to give up the IP.  Publishers are not that good at taking advantage of the IP unless the original creative team is involved."

What's wrong with this picture?  Could it possibly be there is a paradoxical, or at the very least dichotomous, nature to the statement?  Or might it be the unspoken truth that whether or not publishers are good at taking advantage of IP, they'll still yank it away if it looks like it's making money?  While Moledina goes on to state that developers shouldn't be afraid to "keep what [they] deserve," it's deeply troubling that he will not acknowledge even the possibility that the publisher will behave badly and take over the IP against the wishes of the developers.  Without even a tacit admission of this reality, or even the potential for this reality to manifest within the EA Partners program, very serious doubt is cast upon Moledina's assurance that EA is "very developer friendly."

All of the arguments that Moledina puts forth seem to hinge entirely on the assumption that an indie developer has neither the resources, nor the ingenuity, nor the clout to get their game out onto the consoles.  While it's entirely possible that some developers would fail on all of those criteria, it's also possible that such developers were never trying to meet any of those criteria to begin with.  Some of those indie developers are quite happy to develop for the PC and not have anything to do with the consoles.  Moreover, it occurs to me that if Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo really are getting serious about trying to bring high concept indie titles to their respective consoles, the devs are the ones who are going to be holding the whip hand in any sort of negotiations.  While the Big Three might have a lot of potential sources for new titles, the fact that they're reaching out to a developer means the developer has what the Big Three are looking for, and the devs are the ones who have the ability to modify the terms to suit them.  A shrewd indie will strive for a win-win situation, which will doubtlessly give them clout, which will make future negotiations easier.  The fact that an indie developer doesn't necessarily have the marketing department EA has at it's disposal doesn't mean that they're doomed to the purgatory of bargain bins and penny ante PayPal sales.  Any halfway competent marketer who knows exactly how to work social media can generate a lot of buzz for a game on a very shoestring marketing budget.  While an indie developer might not be cranking out million copy blockbusters, they aren't relegated to single digit sales numbers either.

The Stute Fish in Rudyard Kipling's story avoided getting eaten by the Whale by swimming alongside the Whale's eye.  The Stute developer can prosper by doing the same thing: staying by the eye of the big whales but staying well away from their maws.