Are developers too dumb to make good RPGs without publisher oversight?

[PorkyThePaladin]

I am on a pretty nasty run of playing a lot of publisher-less RPGs, ie games from relatively small and/or independent studios, and despite having some great stuff (in most cases), these games just SUCK in really key but seemingly easily fixable ways. Some examples below:

Underrail - great game (before the shit DLCs) but then ends with Shit Caverns that sucks all the fun out of the room, like Crispy. The most horrible last part of any game ever, negates everything good about it.
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - not a huge fan of it in general, but still, if they removed some easily fixable shit, like lowering enemy stats to DnD standard so that you wouldn't have to gulp 20 prebuff potions before every fight, removed the 43,000 enemies with permanent debuffs, annoying enemies like mandragora swarms or not, etc, the game would become much better.
ATOM RPG - fun game overall, but what the fuck is up with the combat balance, why are there fights where you get ambushed/jumped by like 6+ enemies with massive damage where you have no way to defend yourself given the combat system (no cover, can't go first round alpha strike because of how sequence works, armor/dodge are very flaky). Or who thought it was a good idea to lower ability points at higher difficulty levels? Like year, let's take the thing that makes RPGs fun and remove it at highter difficulty, galaxy brain shit right there.
Divinity: Original Sin - the humor, the cheese seller, etc.

So I was thinking, we give publishers a lot of grief here (mostly well deserved, they are greedy fucks that care nothing about the art of video games). But, are developers too dumb/autistic to design/develop good games without some feedback/oversight from reasonably decent publishers? During the golden age (late 90s, early 00s), you had developers being run by smaller sized publishers with business people who actually somewhat cared about games, and it was a good balance. They could give feedback to developers when the latter were being straight up retarded. "Hey, you know something Styggie, I don't care what your daddy issues are, Deep Caverns needs to be cut, bre..." or "Swen, I know you are from Belgium and all, but this cheese shit just ain't funny!"

 

[notpl]

Oh, good, another one of these.

 

[Beans00]

In atom you just need to use grenades you just suck

Deep caverns are bad but they didn't ruin the game you're just bad they only take a few hours


I made some music videos about me beating those games

 

[Tyranicon]

Publishers are garbage, most devs are garbage. Simple as.

Does rando indie game 564365# need a publisher for game stuff? Probably not. Publishers generally just want to protect their investment and maintain the launch schedule, most of the time they don't really interfere with content in a good way.

 

[Cryomancer]

Publishers are garbage [2]

Many RPG's got destroyed by companies like Jowood.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Games need someone in a position of authority willing to rein in members of the development team, or the developers as a whole, to keep them on track, in terms of the game mechanics, content, deadlines, and expenditure. This does not necessarily require intervention from the publisher, as it could be a Warren Spector-like figure in the role of producer, or it could be the development lead.

Obviously, a single-person indie developer won't have anyone providing that kind of forceful input, but a beta or early access can provide input from play-testers to serve the same function, albeit at a relatively late point in the development process.

 

[Lord_Potato]

EA just cancelled a promising Star Wars game. Fuck publishers.

 

[Darth Roxor]

i think the title should just be shortened to 'are developers too dumb'

 

[Feyd Rautha]

Divinity: Original Sin - the humor, the cheese seller, etc.

Fuck off.

 

[Bester]

i think the title should just be shortened to 'are developers too dumb'

Dumber than the gamers, for sure. We could measure the average IQ of gamers and it'd be ~100, but the average IQ of devs would be around ~95 due to a prevalence of the mentally deficient ones. It probably changed around 2010, too. It used to be the other way around.
A free idea for a paper in sociology.

 

[Arthandas]

We could measure the average IQ of gamers and it'd be ~100

This sweet summer child has never been to the Steam forums.

 

[ciox]

Publishers wouldn't even greenlight many fledgling projects, not unless the game's development and online following was already so advanced that they could do fine without a publisher.
The publisher also has no actual ability or knack to improve a game's balance or mechanics, all they can do is put the game through focus group testing, which will sand off almost everything that's interesting about a game.

 

[luj1]

EA = development hell

 

[Funposter]

So I was thinking, we give publishers a lot of grief here (mostly well deserved, they are greedy fucks that care nothing about the art of video games). But, are developers too dumb/autistic to design/develop good games without some feedback/oversight from reasonably decent publishers?

publishers should employ me to go into dev studios and if one of the designers or artists has a bad idea, i get to spit on them until they stop.

 

[bionicman]

"i don't like these games, therefore devs are dumb", I think OP is the dummy here, no offense

 

[Glop_dweller]

At one time [in the US] the automatic transmission was a luxury option, and a manual stick shift transmission could save you a few thousand off of the purchase price. Now the manual transmission costs more than the automatic—and simply alerting potential car thieves of it can serve as effective theft deterrent.

The mass audience has changed for RPGs (and games in general); where the gaming equivalent of a stick shift is now seen as market poison, and the automatic (hand-holder) is considered the minimum acceptable product (for anyone who is not a lunatic). This of course is total bullshit, but most people don't know how to drive a stick-shift; most RPG players don't have the slightest idea about roleplaying, or what makes a great RPG. The developers...besides making their games to suit & appeal to the majority—at this point probably count themselves among them, and agree with the majority. I remember asking a dev on InXile's Torment (before it released) why the PC has no walking animation, and the dude drew a blank; could not fathom why it was necessary. That was the day that I lost all hope or respect for mainstream developers.

Modern RPGs are straight up ego-empowerment fantasy, with no respect given to the effects of the limitations of the player character—these restrictions being now mostly cosmetic instead of defining the experience.

 

[NecroLord]

I think the blame cannot be put solely on publishers.
It's a hellish mix of developer incompetence and creative bankruptcy and publisher greed that led to this rotten game industry.

 

[pOcHa]

Publishers are garbage [2]

Many RPG's got destroyed by companies like Jowood.

yeah, and pyranha bytes florished without them... oh, wait

 

[Glop_dweller]

Was it just me, or did Jowood's intro video cause horrendous frame drops when starting their games?

 

[lukaszek]

Publishers are garbage [2]

Many RPG's got destroyed by companies like Jowood.

take it back, jowood published gorasul

 

[luj1]

Go watch what Frank Zappa said about 60-70s music

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

At one time [in the US] the automatic transmission was a luxury option, and a manual stick shift transmission could save you a few thousand off of the purchase price. Now the manual transmission costs more than the automatic—and simply alerting potential car thieves of it can serve as effective theft deterrent.

The mass audience has changed for RPGs (and games in general); where the gaming equivalent of a stick shift is now seen as market poison, and the automatic (hand-holder) is considered the minimum acceptable product (for anyone who is not a lunatic). This of course is total bullshit, but most people don't know how to drive a stick-shift; most RPG players don't have the slightest idea about roleplaying, or what makes a great RPG. The developers...besides making their games to suit & appeal to the majority—at this point probably count themselves among them, and agree with the majority. I remember asking a dev on InXile's Torment (before it released) why the PC has no walking animation, and the dude drew a blank; could not fathom why it was necessary. That was the day that I lost all hope or respect for mainstream developers.

Modern RPGs are straight up ego-empowerment fantasy, with no respect given to the effects of the limitations of the player character—these restrictions being now mostly cosmetic instead of defining the experience.

The issue though (at least as far as this thread goes) is that creative types aren't always the most balanced/logical people. It's not just video games, look at artists in other fields. Victor Hugo wrote Notre Dame (one of the great classic lit books), and in there, he has several chapters casually describing Paris architecture and/or sewers. These people sometimes get carried away on whatever their passion of the moment is, and you need something/somebody to reign them in, whether it's a publisher, or someone senior in the development company or somebody else along those lines.

Indie developers really struggle because of this, since there is no one like that around them (unless they have somebody honest in their life who is into games), so they can sometimes go full retard.

 

[Shaki]

Yes, I'm sure Redaxium would be great if Prosper had a publisher to rein him in.

 

[toro]

 

[Serus]

Not sure about CRPG developers but Porky could use a publisher. One that only rarely publishes anything at all and when it happens, the end result must be of decent quality, if not, Porky has to pay a fine.