Diner Dash by GameLab

On a recent post at Play This Thing, there was mention that the original developers of “Diner Dash” have shut down – GameLab.  This comes as a surprise because Diner Dash amassed a fortune and started a whole new genre of casual games- logistical multi-tasking challenges such as Cake Mania, Fashion Dash, and other spin offs.

Now to understand what happened, it would be more accurate to say that Diner Dash amassed a fortune for the publisher – not for the developer.

A game publisher is very much like a venture capitalist.  They take the risk, and they take the fall or reap the benefits.  In this case, publishing Diner Dash was like hitting the lottery for PlayFirst.  And, it seemed that a deal was reached where PlayFirst took the Intellectual Property rights and ran with it in a stunning number of sequels.

My wife really got into gaming with Diner Dash.  And was sorely disappointed in the quality of Diner Dash 2 when it came out.  She told me that though the graphics were better, it “felt different.”  And upon inspection, it turned out that with a winning franchise, PlayFirst took the development in-house and cut out GameLab.

I’m not trying to paint PlayFirst as some bad guy.  They took the financial risk and should reap the reward.  There are a great number of games on their site that they have taken a risk on, and I am willing to bet that some of them were financial failures.  It could very well be that PlayFirst had the idea, took the risk, and outsourced the development to a third-party because they couldn’t build it themselves.  But the real lesson here is that the real “gold” of the game industry is the Intellectual Property rights of a franchise.

To avoid a lot of this heartache, some indies go the route of self-publishing.  Jeff Vogel, of Spiderweb Software, and well-known for his hardcore old-school RPGs has been self-publishing for years and retains all rights to his IP.  But currently, he is also ruminating on the health and stability of his business.  So owning your own IP doesn’t guarantee you financial success.

A publisher can guarantee more financial stability because they offer a steadier flow of money and more marketing power than having to do it yourself.  In many ways, this is a win-win situation.  And the majority of the risk goes onto the publisher if you fail.

Darwinia by Introversion Software

You might think that I may be gung-ho about doing it all yourself and not listening to the big corporations.  The only thing I can say is that the big multi-million dollar corporations are worth millions of dollars because they know how to run a business and can offer serious firepower and advice – advice not taken by the embattled Introversion software.

Darwinia was one of the biggest indie hits in 2006 winning many awards including the grand prize at the Independant Games Festival.  Microsoft encouraged Introversion to continue with Darwinia+, but everyone at Introversion did not want to be told what to do, so they continued with their own visionary product “Multiwinia.”  They had the “Field of Dreams” vision to “build it and they shall come…”

Multiwinia collapsed with no real momentum on sales, reviews or hype and because of that, the company has taken serious financial backlash.  They are on their way to recovery, and as fellow indies, we should do our best to support them.

Self-publishing or not, there is always risks in owning and operating your own business.  This is not a place for the timid.  But there is no other place I’d rather be.