作者：Debbie Bestwick

在最近的Steam Dev Days大会上，Valve联合创始人Gabe Newell宣布取消Steam Greenlight。Steam过去12个月所使用的后端工具几乎完工了，这意味着开发者可以创建自己的商店页面，设置价格，并简便的管理自己在该平台上的游戏生命周期。

此举将有效为所有人打开市场大门，我对2014年究竟有多少游戏将涌入这个平台十分感兴趣。Steam在2013年的发展令人瞩目，发布了636款游戏——同比上年增长66%。

所以，人人都有了开启这个国王大门的钥匙，那么这对独立开发者意味着什么？我建议你还是准备好应对措施，因为这并不意味着所有人都会一帆风顺——前面的道路可能会很艰难。当然，Steam的用户基础将持续增长，但随着大量游戏发布的涌现，你该如何确保自己的游戏获得曝光度？

多平台的AAA游戏无疑将跻身前列，因其庞大的营销预算而独占优势。但小型独立游戏作品可能就要艰难求生，这一点很可惜，因为恰恰是这类游戏通常能够传递玩家渴求的创新性和体验。现在人们进入所有平台的门槛都在降低，独立开发者拥有大量选择。

传统主义者可能偏爱与发行商签约，由后者来处理所有销售、营销和分销环节等事务的模式。这并没有什么错，但却要求你出让大部分收益，那么你还能真正保留自己的独立身份，甚至你是自己的IP吗？

digital-self-publishing(from janefriedman)

也许你该自己包办一切？你可以自己应付这些新型在线工具，这究竟有多困难呢？写几段文字，放几张截图——点击“发布”然后你就可以等着看自己的游戏攀向榜单高峰——或者石沉大海杳无音讯。

实际上，自主发布需要大量时间。难怪发行商需要雇佣整个专注于销售和营销的团队：他们可都是全职工作者。你真的有时候打理自己的公司，开发和发布游戏，给予每个学科足够的关注吗？这只会让你自己陷入手足无措的境地，不是吗？

我相信独立开发者需要的是选择和自由。毕竟，我们并不处于一个“以一敌百”的世界。对我来说，答案就在于独立开发者要与想法相似，并且已经在新兴数字领域有所建树的合作伙伴建立关系。这种合作可以令独立开发者灵活地管理自己的事业。

发布即服务

发布工作可以视为一项服务菜单，而独立开发者可以从中选择自己已经拥有并且可以自主执行的技能，以及他们需要为自己的游戏公司输入的技能。

这是一个从公布产品，到发布，以及之后数月和数年时间的完整生命周期。开发者应该精心选择那些能够为平台提供最佳措施建议，帮助提升曝光度，提供开发和制作资源、美术、代码、音频、QA、本土化、客服支持、PR、营销以及销售，甚至是财政支持的合作伙伴。

对于所有为参与竞争布需要扩大自身技能的人来说，所有层面的创新都是其生存的必要元素。我笃信今后大家都不需要发行商。我们需要的能够提供我们自己不能胜任之事的合作伙伴。我们可以期待这一行将会出现前所未有的信任与透明度——这对所有相关人都有好处。我们应该主张利益分成能够反映这一点，最重要的是我们应该保留自己的IP，以及对自己游戏的控制权。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Is self-publishing right for all Indies?

By Debbie Bestwick

Debbie Bestwick explains why going it alone might be more damaging to your game than you think

At the recent Steam Dev Days conference, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell effectively said that Steam Greenlight is going away. The back-end tools that Steam has been working on for the past 12 months are almost complete, meaning developers can create their own store pages, set pricing and manage their titles’ lifecycles on the platform with the minimum of fuss.

This will effectively open up the route to market for one and all and I’ll be very interested to see how many titles will flood onto the platform in 2014. Steam’s growth has certainly been impressive with 2013 seeing 636 titles being released – a year-on-year increase of 66 per cent.

So, with everyone having been given the keys to the kingdom, what does this mean for indies? Well, I suggest you pack your waterproofs, because it’s not going to be plain sailing for everyone – things are going to get rough. Sure, Steam’s userbase will continue to grow but with an unchecked deluge of releases, how are you going to make sure your game gets noticed?

Multi-platform, triple-A titles will undoubtedly rise to the top, buoyed by their substantial marketing budgets. It’s the smaller, independent titles that might just struggle to get noticed and that’s a shame as these games are more often than not the ones that deliver the innovation and experiences that gamers insatiably desire. The route to market on all platforms is becoming far less restrictive, leaving indies with options.

Traditionalists may prefer the old model of signing up with a publisher and letting them handle all the sales, marketing and distribution side of things. There’s nothing wrong with that at all; but it does involve letting go of a larger slice of your revenue and do you really retain your independent identity, or even your own IP?

Maybe the answer is a spot of DIY? After all, you’ve been handed all these new online tools so how hard can it be? A few lines of text, a couple of screenshots, a nice piece of key art – just click ‘publish’, sit back and watch your game climb the charts – or sink without a trace.

In reality self-publishing takes time, lots and lots of it. It’s no wonder that publishers employ entire departments focused solely on sales and marketing: they’re full-time jobs. Have you really got the time to juggle running your business, developing a game and publishing it, not to mention giving each discipline the focus and attention it really needs? Looks like you could end up caught between a rock and a hard place, right?

What I believe independent developers need is choice and freedom. After all, we don’t live in a ‘one size fits all’ world. For me, the answer lies with indies forging ties with like-minded partners that are already operating in the brave new digital world. Such collaborations should allow indies to operate with full flexibility.

Publishing as a service

Publishing duties should be viewed as a menu of services from which indies can choose which ones they already have the necessary skills to carry out for themselves and which they need to plug into their games business.

It’s all about the complete lifecycle management of a title from its initial announcement right the way through launch and then months and years after. A well chosen partner should be able to offer advice on best practices for platforms, help with discoverability, development and production resources, art, code, audio, QA, localisation, customer support resources, PR, marketing, sales and, in some cases, financial support.

Team17 recently announced its return to third-party publishing with a deal done for the game Light. Just a Pixel is a small independent developer based in Brighton, consisting of two ex-EA employees. In addition to maximising the success of each title, our focus is to help and share our knowledge with indies to understand the gaming revolution that is happening.

Innovation on all levels is fundamental to survival for all and people need to broaden their skill sets in order to compete today. I firmly believe that no one needs a publisher anymore. We need a partner or partners that deliver the parts we aren’t skilled to handle. We should expect an unprecedented level of trust and transparency – it’s beneficial for all concerned. We should expect the percentage splits to reflect this and most of all we should retain IP and be in control of our games.（source：develop-online）