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Nicholas Lovell
Home   >   Analysis and Opinion   >   Opinion   >   Does Triple Town’s capitulation to Playdom mark the end of an Era?

Does Triple Town’s capitulation to Playdom mark the end of an Era?

By on January 17, 2012

Last week, David Edery, CEO of Spry Fox, announced that the independent developers behind Triple Town had signed up with Playdom as their publisher.

tripletown

David set out the reasons why in a blog post:

  • Managing the technology of scaling is hard
  • Marketing is getting very expensive
  • We want to make games, not be sales/marketing/operational experts
  • Playdom offered a range of analytics and metrics tools
  • Playdom loved the game

While I fully understand Spry Fox’s reasons, it makes me sad. I think that this marks the end of an era. While I believe that self-publishing remains a viable strategy for independent developers, Spry Fox’s decision is an indicator that the golden opportunity for indies is passing.

We have a road map for what happens next. It happened from the early days of 8-bit computers to the current days of blockbuster titles taking $1 billion at retail. Smart indies decide to outsource sales/marketing/distribution to publishers. Publishers secure the relationships with customers and distribution channels, raise the finance and take the majority of the financial return. Over time, they become progressively more risk-averse, driving costs up but innovation down and creating endless clones of genres that are proven to work.

It doesn’t have to be that way. The web has changed the power relationship between creators and publishers permanently. Creators can build their own tribes of fans and control their own destiny.

I don’t blame David and Dan at Spry Fox. I think they have made a sensible financial decision. I think they will do very well out of being one of the early studios to take this decision.

But the capitulation by the makers of one of my favourite games of 2011 to publisher economics, while rational, is depressing.

About Nicholas Lovell

Nicholas is the founder of Gamesbrief, a blog dedicated to the business of games. It aims to be informative, authoritative and above all helpful to developers grappling with business strategy. He is the author of a growing list of books about making money in the games industry and other digital media, including How to Publish a Game and Design Rules for Free-to-Play Games, and Penguin-published title The Curve: thecurveonline.com