Shrapnel Games Blog

I saw an interesting thing over at Ogre Cave today that got me thinking. They’re reporting a rumor that uberonline store Amazon has just bought a print-on-demand outfit, and being a gaming site were thinking out loud of the impact it would have on the world of gaming. Is Amazon poised to offer cheap game materials to the masses? Is this the end of your friendly neighborhood gamestore?

Of course not. Just as RPGNow and Drivethrough RPG haven’t through selling PDFs even Amazon won’t make much of a dent with their print-on-demand (POD) services. POD, while initially hailed as the Next Great Thing(tm) during the dot-com nineties, hasn’t exactly set the world on fire. Just like Steam, the idea isn’t altogether bad, but the reality leaves a taste of ashes in the mouth. Material quality can vary, expectations are often higher than what they should be, and overall there are simply better alternatives.

There’s also a bigger monkey on the back of POD than material quality though, and that’s quality in general. Tell me which statement will gather more appreciation from an audience…

(A) “Why yes, I’ve just had my novel published through Doubleday. You can find it in the new fiction section of your local Barnes and Noble as a hardback.”

(B) “I’ve just had my first novel published. It’s a print-on-demand book, let me send you the URL so you can order it. I was going to take it to a publisher but realized that it was such a work of genius that the staggeringly incompetent idiots who run those publishing houses would have no clue as to my greatness.”

Yeah, that’s right, B is obviously the one that will get you all the hot chicks.

Let’s face it, POD just reeks of self-importance, of questionable material, and utter crappiness. Yes, I’m sure there are many golden nuggets out there but you have to search through a lot of nuggets chock full of corn (if ya know what I mean) to find them.

Unfortunately in the age of reality television, of 24 hour news, of the Internet everyone seems to think that what they have to say/write/design/etc is so freakin’ awe-inspiring that they have to get it to the masses, and if the masses don’t appreciate it that just means the mob is a fickle creature. Why, sorta like this blog I’m writing.

While we live in an age that allows ideas to be shared around the world this doesn’t mean that they should. And this is where publishers come in.

A publisher is a gatekeeper. A publisher sifts through all the material coming in, picks what to publish based on their criteria, and decides what is better left untouched. Yes, a publisher can only publish so much so there are still plenty of good ideas that go unpublished. Yes, a publisher (especially in the world of gaming) can stumble with some of their releases. What ultimately helps the consumer though is the knowledge that hey, even if you don’t end up liking the product at least you are safe in knowing that there were other people who oversaw it. They proofed it, played it, listened to it, edited it, whatever. It was touched by human hands, thought about by human minds, discussed by human voices.

If Joe Q. Smith put up a game for your downloading pleasure on his site that he created you may find it’s a work of unsurpassed joy or it could be a spyware infested buggy mess. You don’t know Joe Q. Smith. You have no reason to trust Joe Q. Smith. He could have slapped it together in a couple of hours and made it available. No playtesting may have occurred, no hardware compatability. You’re in a position of being a blind man trying to cross a minefield.

But if newcomer Joe Q. Smith took that same game and had it published by Game Publisher A-Z, wouldn’t that make a difference? Here’s someone who is willing to stand behind Joe Q. Smith. And maybe you already know that Game Publisher A-Z comes out with killer games so the trust is already there. Why even wait for the reviews?

So in the end as more and more self-publishing occurs the need for publishers will become more evident than ever before, otherwise the consumer will simply drown in a sea of bad choices.

-Scott

Buy me a trip to the moon
So I can laugh at my mistakes
I can see the end from here
From this perspective it looks kind of silly
Satellites and astronauts
Tell me there are greater things ahead

–”Satellites And Astronauts”, In Flames