A Long Tail Game Manifesto

Game industry verteran Greg Costikyan has launched a new independent games publisher called Manifesto Games that is built on a classic Long Tail strategy. Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The site will offer independently-developed games for sale via direct download--a single place where fans of offbeat and niche games can find "the best of the rest," the games that the retail channel doesn't think worth carrying. Three types of games will be offered: truly independent, original content from creators without publisher funding; the best PC games from smaller PC game publishers, including games in existing genres like wargames, flight sims, and graphic adventures; and niche MMOs.

While games were once the domain of hobbyists, today, the game industry considers any title that sells fewer than 1 million copies to be a failure; "The typical game store only has 200 facings," notes Costikyan, Manifesto’s CEO. "They can only carry best-sellers. On the Internet, there is no shelf space and you are limited only by how well you can market yourself, your site. This is where niche product can rule."

Manifesto believes that an independent game market is analogous to film or music, where less commercial offerings aimed at identifiable markets and produced at lower budgets than the "blockbusters" can achieve profitability and critical success. "The game industry has become moribund,” notes Costikyan. "Because of ballooning budgets and the narrowness of the retail channel, it is now essentially impossible for anything other than a franchise title or licensed product to obtain distribution. Yet historically, the major hits, the titles that have expanded the industry to new markets and created new audiences have been highly innovative. It is time for us to find a way to foster innovation, because it's not going to happen if we leave it to the large publishers."

You can read more about this in a long and lively interview Greg did with Joystiq, and follow all the progress of the company on his blog.

Comments

[Paul Morriss]

I reminds me of the days when you *typed* your games into your home computer from a magazine. I sold a few in those days, maybe I could again with Manifesto, if I had the inclination and energy.

[Shaye Horwitz]

The only flaw with Manifesto's strategy, as I see it, is this: the types of games they're offering do NOT seem to include the hits, like Half-Life 2, Rome: Total War, etc. Isn't that something the article said you needed (and the example was MP3.com)? And I don't know if they're using any sort of filter, which is definitely key.

[Adam Jorgensen]

Shaye, you just missed the point. Manifesto is not intended as a distribution channel for hit games, which have no problem moving copies and keeping their publishers fed. It's inteded as a channel for the kinds of games that, while not uber-hits will nevertheless reap in profit for the creator.

Get an idea of what Greg is talking about by reading his articles Death to the Games Industry (Pts 1 and 2) in issues 8 and 9 of The Escapist magazine (www.escapistmagazine.com)

I hope Greg has a lot of success, because then maybe I can start moving my game ideas into the world without having to sell my soul to a publisher :-)

[Shaye Horwitz]

Oh, I've read Death to the Games Industry. Good read, too. I'm just not sure it'll work. Manifesto Games could easily fall into the same trap as MP3.com. Quote:

"In 1997, an entrepreneur named Michael Robertson started what looked like a classic Long Tail business. Called MP3.com, it let anyone upload music files that would be available to all. The idea was the service would bypass the record labels, allowing artists to connect directly to listeners. MP3.com would make its money in fees paid by bands to have their music promoted on the site. The tyranny of the labels would be broken, and a thousand flowers would bloom.

Putting aside the fact that many people actually used the service to illegally upload and share commercial tracks, leading the labels to sue MP3.com, the model failed at its intended purpose, too. Struggling bands did not, as a rule, find new audiences, and independent music was not transformed. Indeed, MP3.com got a reputation for being exactly what it was: an undifferentiated mass of mostly bad music that deserved its obscurity.

The problem with MP3.com was that it was only Long Tail. It didn't have license agreements with the labels to offer mainstream fare or much popular commercial music at all. Therefore, there was no familiar point of entry for consumers, no known quantity from which further exploring could begin."

How exactly is Manifesto Games different?

[Chris Anderson]

My point about needing both the tail *and* the head only applies to aggregators. Manifesto is a publisher. Its games would presumably be available elsewhere in some properly aggregated marketplace.

[Jeremy]

I must admit I'm a big of a skeptic myself but I know a big shakeup through the ability to download games should hit the at some point. I think the demand gamers have for better and better graphics makes it difficult for these small independent gamer makers to get real traction. Independent media of all types usually emerge with the mass market gets stale and stops innovating. These independent makers, I predict, will ascend but it will be a slow (as opposed to an explosive) ascendancy.

[industry models and talent, industry model and talent, industry models and talent studios, industry]

These independent makers, I predict, will ascend but it will be a slow

[ps3 spiele]

The main problem I see is that the portal themselves are utilizing community building to achieve lifetime customer loyalty, and if the developers try to compete against that, then the portals would nip the whole thing off at the bud when negotiating the initial publishing deal--stating that the developer cannot design such a system into the game that will lead the customers away from the portal and to the developer's own community. When that happens, what then? If no portal is willing to sign a contract with you unless you don't compete against their online community service, what do you do then?