Publishing games for the greater good
Despite the games industry’s relative youth compared to other entertainment industries, it seems to have grown commodified and financially conservative pretty quickly. This is just the Way Things Are, I guess, but I came across and interesting press release that went out the other day, describing an unusual publishing venture.
OneBigGame is a non-profit publisher (hm?) that, once it has established net revenue, plans to donate all its proceeds to charities benefiting children around the world (what?), establishing itself as a charitable organization by proxy. This week the company announced its board of directors, which consists of a number of big names to those who cover the industry.
The whole thing is founded and chaired by Martin de Ronde, the founder of what is now Guerrilla Games (the Killzone people). Its board includes Kuju (Battallion Wars, Crush) CEO Ian Baverstock and Game Developers Conference director Jamil Moledina, and its advisors include Shiny (MDK, Earthworm Jim) founder Dave Perry and gaming pioneer Mark Cerny (Marble Madness, etc.).
It’s certainly hard enough getting any new publisher up and running these days, let alone one that doesn’t intend to make its executives rich. But it might see an advantage over other startups simply because of its nature–all else equal (developer royalties, contract terms, etc.), OneBigGame would stand out among other publishers.
And its staff have been involved in a number of successful ventures. Baverstock’s Kuju has become one of the world’s larger independent developers, and Cerny received a Lifetime Achievement at the Game Developers Choice Awards, being called the “master collaborator” because of his impressive ability to help bring success to his business partners’ games–a crucial skill in a publisher.
Tags: non-profits (what?), publishers
February 17th, 2008 at 10:17 am
What a great idea and one that I, for fairly obvious reasons, would love to see succeed.
It looks like it was started in 2006, do you have any idea how well it’s performed since its formation?
February 17th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Digging around the site I found that they haven’t done much but that should change in 2008. They are just getting started it looks like, even though they may have officially been formed in 2006.
February 17th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Umm. What if those huge publishers that already rake it in just donate a lot of money to charities? And charities of their own choice, for that matter. I mean, I’d like to think they already do, but the idea of developing projects specifically for this publisher sounds pretty funny to me. Like an unnecessary business plot.