It’s a literal poisoned chalice, the ultimate bad deal. Yet most players took it, glugging down the brown stuff at one point or another in order to survive.
It’s the same dilemma faced by the large independent developer. Where small indies can keep costs low, and publisher-owned studios enjoy corporate security, outfits like Obsidian exist for many years in a mode of terrifying fragility. With hundreds of employees on payroll who need a cheque at the end of every month, these developers rarely have the option of turning publishers down. They need to sign the next project, balancing creative integrity with practical compromises. For a decade and a half, it was Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart’s job to circle that toilet bowl without ever resorting to slurping the cursed liquid within.
“There is a seedy underbelly to game publishing and development, in which there are a lot of developers that have to make games they wouldn’t choose at all to do, to keep the doors open,” Urquhart told IGN Unfiltered a few years ago. “It’s a really hard decision to make, particularly when the deal you’re getting is maybe not even one that covers your cost. We’ve been offered a lot of that stuff, and we’ve made the conscious decision to turn it down.”
DARK ALLIANCES
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Bu hikaye PC Gamer US Edition dergisinin March 2021 sayısından alınmıştır.
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